Paradise Interrupted by Penny Mickelbury

Author:Penny Mickelbury
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penny Mickelbury
Published: 2016-07-29T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER TEN

Carole Ann was exhausted. She’d been arguing non-stop with David Messinger for three days and she was tired of the continual confrontations and tired of him. She and Jake argued— sometimes for days on end— but their arguments served to refine their individual points of view and to bring them, eventually, to a consensus. The arguments with Messinger seemed to serve no purpose. They simply disagreed on most matters and they neither liked nor trusted each other enough for either to feel comfortable yielding to the other. She had initially thought that since they both had the best interests of the government at heart that would serve as a bridge to common ground. When that failed, she held out hope that since he’d once been a criminal defense attorney, having a shared profession would instigate some desire for harmony. She no longer believed harmony possible. So, control of the situation was her only option. It was power play time.

She paced back and forth before Philippe’s Collette’s massive desk, the attorney performing for judge and jury. David Messinger sprawled in a fragile-looking side chair, his long legs splayed out before him, and C.A. knew that if this were elementary school and they were adolescents, he’d trip her in a heartbeat. But they were in the office of the head of state that they both served and decorum, if nothing else, would prevail. Messinger wanted to stage a series of raids, with help from the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration and the Coast Guard, looking for evidence of marijuana cultivation, harvesting, packaging, and shipping. It would have to be a sizeable operation, he’d argued, more than a couple of boxes of baggies and a scale. And, simultaneously, while the raids were taking place, the marijuana field would be torched. Two birds with one stone, he said, effectively shutting down a major drug cultivation and distribution ring.

Carole Ann’s first point on rebuttal— that even on a Caribbean island, cops didn’t conduct raids on bicycles— drew blood, and she forged ahead, relentless. She reminded Philippe how close to impossible putting out the fire in the excavation equipment had been, and asked him to imagine the potential for disaster brought on by setting fire to a square mile of forest. And employing the alternative— chemical deforestation— posed danger of a different kind, she warned, pointing out that many islanders relied on the land and on the sea for food and that poisonous runoff could threaten plant, animal and marine life for years. She warned that bringing in the DEA signaled that the island had trouble of the unmanageable kind, and that such a signal would most likely frighten off foreign aid— especially U.S. aid. And, further, any sign of such instability certainly would threaten tourism, not to mention the restoration of diplomatic relations with certain nations.

“What would you have us do, then? Allow the marijuana to grow unchecked? Allow it to be harvested and sent on to wherever it goes? That just is not acceptable,

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