by Ken Douglas
Then he remembered something he thought about as he fell back into unconsciousness He knew how to get free. The phone. All he had to do was get a message to the operator and help would come running, but first he had to get the message to Maria. They had to work as one or they’d never get free.
“ Phone,” he tried to say through the tape, but it came out as ome. “Ome, ome,” he repeated.
She shook her head, indicating no. She didn’t understand.
“ Hone,” he said, empathizing the H part of the sound.
She shook her head and he raised his and looked beyond her, at the nightstand, the clock and the phone. Then he looked back into her eyes, then beyond her, then back into her eyes, then beyond her again. She blinked and scrunched up her nose. She understood, he wanted her to see something, to see what he saw and then her eyes lit up like a kid’s in school and he knew she got it.
“ Phone,” she said and he heard her distinctly through the tape. He wondered how come she could talk better than him and then he saw it. The tape over her mouth wasn’t on very well. He stared at it. She saw the direction of his eyes and blinked several times letting him know she understood.
She moved her head forward and he ran the side of his face against the tape, pulling it down with his chin and his cheek. One sweep of his face and the tape started to peel away, two and it gave way some more, three and it was hanging off her mouth and she could talk.
“ Help,” she screamed. Help us.” Her voice was loud and full of desperation and it was the sweetest thing he’d ever heard. “Hurry, help us, help us,” she screamed again.
“ It’s going to be okay,” she said to him. “Someone must have heard me. We’ll be free soon.”
He blinked at her.
“ They’re going to kill the prime minister at exactly five o’clock.”
He blinked at her. He remembered her husband saying that.
“ Help,” she screamed out again, but nobody came.
“ Ome,” he hummed through the tape.
“ Yes, the phone,” she said. She was breathing hard, panting heavy, like she’d just finished a race. “Let’s roll toward it and see if we can’t knock it off the hook. Ready, now,” she said, and he rolled with her toward the right side of the king-sized bed.
He was on the bottom now and she stretched her neck, trying to reach the telephone. Then she stopped. “It’s unplugged,” she said, staring at the wire dangling over the nightstand.
He sighed, breathing out through his nose. Any minute his bladder was going to cut loose and he didn’t want to do that.
“ My husband’s gone off the deep end,” she said. “I think he’s going to kill us.”
Broxton nodded. He wasn’t surprised.
“ The tape on your mouth isn’t like it was on mine. It goes all the way around, two or three times. It looks tight, that’s why I couldn’t understand you, but I think I can get it off. Hold still.”
He felt her teeth on his cheek as she bit into the tape that was wrapped around his neck. After a few attempts she had a firm grip and he winced as she worked the tape downward. It was tightly wrapped, but it stretched and he felt it pull away from his mouth. Then it was down past his upper lip and he drew in a great gulp of air. She wasn’t able to get it past his chin, but his mouth was halfway uncovered and he could talk.
“ Thanks,” he said, his voice a raspy whisper.
“ Now what?” she said. She was on top of him and they were both looking at the phone they couldn’t use. He felt her flex her fingers and then she squeezed his right hand with her left.
“ It wasn’t a dream?” he said.
“ No, it wasn’t,” she said.
“ I’m sorry, I didn’t know what I was doing.”
“ You were drugged.”
“ He didn’t tape our hands. If we had something sharp we could cut our way free.”
“ Like a broken glass,” she said. They were both looking at the nightstand and the glass sitting next to the phone. The same glass that not so long ago washed the pills down Maria’s throat.
Broxton ran his tongue over his parched lips as he looked at the little bit of water left in it. “Think we can reach it?”
“ If we turn sideways, maybe,” she said.
“ Yeah,” he said, eyes locked on the water in the glass.
“ Which way?”
“ Feet over the side of the bed, I think.”
“ Okay,” she said, and together they squiggled around so that they were on their sides and then they gradually slid, like two slippery snakes, over the side of the bed until they were both struggling to keep their legs dangling in the air and themselves from falling over.
“ You roll on top,” she said, and once he was over he stretched his arm, bringing hers along with it, but he was inches short.
“ We have to get closer,” he said.
“ All right,” she said, and they slipped and scooted sideways until Broxton was able to grab the glass with two of his fingers.
“ Got it,” he said, and he clamped his fingers together and raised it up.
And dropped it.
“ Shit,” he said. The glass landed and rolled onto the carpeted floor.
“ Over we go,” she said, and without giving him a chance to think she rolled and twisted, jerking him along with her, and then he was falling.
Chapter Twenty-One
Dani surveyed the site. The street below was teeming with the usual early noon crowd. People were pouring out of the buildings, grabbing an early lunch. Others were hunting for that hard to find parking space, still others were rushing to the stores for some quick shopping or doing a myriad other things that make an active city like Port of Spain bustle even in the heat of the day.
And the city wouldn’t sleep until long after the sun went down. Bars, restaurants, jazz clubs, rock clubs, calypso clubs, whorehouses, movie theaters and fast food joints all stayed open late to service the throng that entertained itself along the Brian Lara Promenade.
Brian Lara. Dani smiled at the thought of the new name for the Promenade, a wide walking park that could be counted on to be full of people out walking their dogs or themselves, greeting their friends, playing chess or checkers, or just people watching from the benches, all out enjoying the evening and the night. Brian Lara was Trinidadian and arguably the best cricket player in the game today. She loved it that the Promenade was named after him. She loved it because George hated it. Ten years ago he was the best, and today he was the attorney general and the most popular politician in Trinidad. He’d had his friends argue that the Promenade should bear his name, but popular as he was, he was yesterday’s hero. Brian Lara was today’s.
Looking down from her perch atop the Caribbean Bank Building, she held her arms out straight, palms wide, facing downward, thumbs extended toward themselves, the way a movie director might frame a scene. She imagined she was holding the rifle. She’d only get one shot, but it’s all she’d need. Ramsingh would be in her sights at five o’clock, by five-oh-one he’d be dead.
She’d get him before he said a word about the new treaty with the United States, before he had a chance to praise the efforts of the DEA in Trinidad, and before he spoke about the drug-fighting efforts of the Trinidadian police. The dedication of their statue would show the people just how incompetent the police and the security forces were, when the man dedicating it was gunned down in front of it.
Satisfied that she’d have a clear shot, she stood and walked across the roof. When she did the actual shoot she’d be one floor below. Cliffard Rampersad, George Chandee’s handpicked choice for the head of the security forces, would be on the roof. She smiled. The bait was set, the trap was ready.
She left the roof via the inside stairway, amazed that it wasn’t guarded. But Ramsingh was just the prime minister of a small third world nation, not the President of the United States.
She exited the stairway on the second floor and walked out in the middle of the bank’s busy loan departm
ent. No one noticed her enter or leave. She was just another young woman in a blue Caribbean Bank uniform heading downstairs for her lunch hour. Several people were seated in the waiting area to her right, waiting to conduct foreign business. What took only a few minutes in an American bank could take up to an hour here. People were talking, drinking coffee or tea, and passing the time of day. No one was in a hurry. It was the Trinidadian way.
She took the escalator to the street level, passed through the crowded lobby and in seconds she was through the double doors and out in the street.
“ Everything set?” Earl asked, holding the door open for her.
“ Couldn’t be better.” She slid into the passenger seat of her new Porsche. She didn’t mind Earl driving, in fact she liked it.
He moved around the front of the car, slapping the hood as he passed, and she smiled. He was enjoying himself. In some ways the man was a child, but he had nerves and he’d call a bluff every time. He overflowed with courage, but he didn’t understand caution. She’d have to work on that.
“ You’re really something,” he said, “you enter the bank looking like my mother and you come out looking like junior high school jailbait.”
“ You like them young, Earl?”
“ I like you anyway I can get you. Where to now?” He started the car, smiling.
“ Lunch at the Yacht Club.”
“ You think that’s smart? What if Ramsingh shows up?”
“ Think he’d recognize me, Earl?” She watched his eyes as he turned to look at her. She flicked her hair over her shoulders. The wig was hot, but she liked the way the blue-black hair matched the green contacts. She thrust her shoulder’s back, her breasts were larger, her smile was bigger, her face was innocent.
“ Your own father wouldn’t recognize you.”
“ Then let’s go to the yacht club.”
“ Show me the way and I’m gone,” Earl said.
“ Okay let’s go over it again,” she said. Their lunch had just been served, they were both having the special, meatloaf, potatoes with gravy, and plantain on the side.
“ Ramsingh takes the stage at five o’clock,” Earl said. “We know he’ll be on time, because he’s never late. You shoot, depart via the stairway, leaving the rifle. I run up screaming, ‘He’s down below, right under you.’ Then I make sure Rampersad goes into the room. Naturally there’ll be no prints on the weapon and when Rampersad sees it’s his gun he’ll pick it up, ’cause he’s dumber than dog shit.”
“ Then what?” she said.
“ Then I blow before the place is crawling with cops.”
“ You sure you can do your part?”
“ Hey, I’m a lot of things. Sometimes I drink too much, I swear when I shouldn’t, I bend the rules more than I should, sometimes I slap my wife around, but I ain’t no fuckup.”
“ Earl, you have a way with words.” She turned toward the yachts in their slips and pulled her long hair out of her eyes. Then she turned back toward him. “You’d never think about slapping me around though, would you, Earl?”
“ No, ma’am,” he said, grinning like a schoolboy.
“ Why not?” she asked, unable to hide the humor in her voice.
“’ Cause you’d probably cut it off and make me eat it before you killed me,” he said, grinning even wider.
“ And don’t you forget it,” she said.
“ I never would.”
She watched him as he dug into his food. In a few hours he’d be doing his part in the assassination of a prime minister, and now he was tucking into his lunch like it was the only thing on his mind. He had nerves of steel, nerves like hers.
He set his fork down and took a long drink of water. He was still holding the glass in his hand when he said, “The bodyguard won’t be a problem tonight.”
“ What have you done?” she said.
“ I caught him with my wife. They came up to the room for a little hanky panky.”
“ Earl, you’re being obtuse.”
“ Not fair to use words normal people don’t know,” he said through a good ol’ boy Southern smile.
“ Just get to the point, Earl,” she said. She couldn’t help herself, she still cared for Broxton. She hoped he hadn’t done anything rash.
“ Relax I didn’t hurt him. I got the drop on them and tied them up.”
“ Where?”
“ In her room at the Hilton.”
“ Shit. Now he knows we’re still alive. He’ll try and get Ram to call off tonight’s speech.”
“ You think you’re dealing with a twelve-year-old here? He’s not getting away. I made them take the pills, then I stripped them and duct taped them together, arms to arms, legs to legs, several wraps. Then I taped their mouths. They’re not going nowhere. Shit, they probably won’t even wake up till it’s all over.”
“ You’re sure?”
“ Sure I’m sure.”
“ What do you plan on doing with them?”
“ That’s up to you. It’s still your show as far as I’m concerned. You want I’ll call the hotel after it’s over and Mr. Broxton and my wife can live happily ever after, have ten kids for all I care, long as you think you can keep him from talking. Or if that’s not to your liking, I’ll stop by the hotel on my way to Rampersad’s and pop them both. It’s for you to decide.”
“ You’d do your wife?”
“ She’s been getting it on with your friend Broxton. She doesn’t mean anything to me anymore. No loyalty.”
“ Loyalty means a lot to you?”
“ Yeah.”
“ But you weren’t loyal to her.”
“ That’s different.”
“ How do I know you’d be loyal to me?”
“ That’s different too.”
“ How?”
“ You’ve earned it. She never did.”
“ You mean you’re afraid of me and you were never afraid of her?”
“ That too,” he said, smiling. “But afraid or not, after tonight it’s fifty-fifty. Fear don’t run my life and you’re not gonna either. I pay my way and I take my chances. We can be a team, you and me, but we ain’t ever gonna be anything else. If that don’t work for you, tell me now and after tonight, I’m outta here. I got enough stashed away that I can live real good down in old Mexico and I’m the kind of guy that the senoritas really go for.”
“ What about the money I promised you?”
“ I can live without it. I’d like it, but I ain’t gonna push. In fact if truth be told, I’m kinda thinking about walking away after tonight no matter how it comes out.”
“ Why?”
“ It’s your line of work. Someday someone’s going to walk up behind you and put a bullet in your brain and anybody that’s close to you is liable to go down as well. Eventually you’re gonna be expendable.”
“ I’m impressed, Earl. The average man would have said that eventually I’d get caught.”
“ There’s that, too, but I’d worry more about the other.”
“ Kevin was my control,” she said.
“ I wondered how you did it, but then it wasn’t my business.”
“ I met him in Israel years ago. He wrote that book defending the Hezbola’s right to take hostages.”
“ I remember the guy,” Earl said. “I thought he was a jerk.”
“ Yeah, that’s him. He was a reporter with an idea for a book. He sent me the proposal and I was intrigued. He also sent me the price of a round trip ticket and that intrigued me even more.”
“ So you went to Israel?”
“ Yeah. I liked the idea for the book, but unfortunately he couldn’t write anything longer than a news story, so I helped him with it. While we were working on it one thing led to another.”
“ And you wound up in bed.”
“ Yeah, but that’s not what I’m talking about. Kevin had all these inside contacts with the Hezbola and I saw a story developing that would make me a fortune. I was running all over the country interv
iewing all the wrong people and drawing the attention of the Israeli government. One night while Kevin and I were driving near the Golan Heights a couple of soldiers stopped us. They wanted Kevin to get out of the car, and when he wouldn’t they jerked him out and started using him for a punching bag. It was the last thing they ever did.”
“ What do you mean?”
“ Kevin kept a forty-five automatic in the glove box. I knew this, the soldiers didn’t. They were so intent on teaching him a lesson in Middle Eastern politics that they forgot about me.”
“ You shot the soldiers?”
“ And afterward Kevin turned me into an assassin. You could say that our roles became reversed. He became my agent. He’d hand me cash and a name and I did the rest. The incident with the soldiers turned me into a rabid supporter of any Arab cause. I killed to further their aims and got paid well in the process. After a few years it didn’t matter anymore. I was in too deep to quit, and besides I enjoyed my work. I got hooked on the challenge, the adrenaline and the adventure. They never knew who I was. Kevin kept it that way, both to protect me and to see that he never got aced out of his cut. But now he’s dead and they have no way to contact me. As far as the world’s concerned the Scorpion has gone into retirement.”
“ Jesus,” Earl said.
“ So what do you think, now that I’ve bared my soul to you?”
“ I think that now you don’t have to do Ramsingh.”
“ Think of the money. You can take Kevin’s place training the troops and heading up Chandee’s security. He’s already agreed to it. In a year we could leave here richer than our wildest dreams. You and me Earl. Forever. Do I still have your loyalty?”
“ Always,” Earl said. “Till death.”
“ And the money? What about that?”
“ I’d love being richer than God, but do we need it? I’ve been a crooked cop a long time. I’ve got enough for us to be happy. Let’s just go to Mexico. You’d love Cabo. We’ll lay on the beach, drink margaritas, windsurf and dance till dawn everyday for the rest of our lives.”
“ I want this Earl,” she said. She had plenty of money too, probably a lot more than he did, but she wanted more than plenty of money. She wanted it all. She’d worked for it, she’d earned it, she wasn’t going to walk away now.
