1937, November – 1938, January 9: (The Café Rex Shooting: Armand’s Plot, Calixte’s Nephew, the Kouri, and Calixte Exiled to Nice): Armand was also undercutti…

1937, November – 1938, January 9: (The Café Rex Shooting: Armand’s Plot, Calixte’s Nephew, the Kouri, and Calixte Exiled to Nice): Armand was also undercutting his master: in conspiracy with Frédéric Duvigneaud, the slippery Interior Minister, and a Captain Merceron, chef de la maison militaire, the major was plotting the assassination of Vincent together with Calixte, at which point Duvigneaud would seize the presidency and Armand would take over the Garde. Late in November 1937, Calixte learned he was to be bushwhacked on the Pétionville road while driving home — forewarned, he surprised and arrested the ambushers. A few days later Vincent replaced Duvigneaud in an abrupt cabinet shakeup, but his only reaction to Calixte’s accusation of Armand was to call in the major and tell him not to be foolish — Armand later snarled a savage warning to Calixte. On the evening of December 12, when Armand and Captain Merceron were enjoying a glass of rum in front of the Café Rex at the top of the Champ de Mars, a taxi cruised by carrying five persons. Abreast of the two officers the cab slowed, there was a blast of pistol shots, and Armand and Merceron toppled to the sidewalk, spilling their rum — the taxi, license P-3031, gunned its engine and tore off into the dark. Both officers were only wounded. The cab, stolen earlier, was soon found, and its occupants had been Lieutenant Bonicias Pérard and four other junior officers of the Garde — Pérard, a noir, was Calixte’s nephew. Next day there was a kouri, that spasm of panic that signals crisis in Port-au-Prince — people and cars dashed hither and thither, Syrians on the Grand’Rue began putting up iron shutters, machann scooped up their little stocks, parents snatched children from school. Vincent’s first act was to lock up Seymour Pradel and as many other opponents as he could lay hold of, including one plotter young but already steeped in intrigue and opportunism, Arthur Bonhomme, a leading griot. Ultimately sixteen lieutenants were implicated. On January 9, 1938, telling the American legation all evidence pointed at Calixte, Vincent sent him to Nice with the post of Inspector of Consulates and appointed Colonel Jules André, the soldierly mulâtre assistant commandant, to take command — André understood the situation: henceforth, Armand enjoyed a free run.