by Ken Douglas
“ Your arm’s swollen,” she said, taking his offered left hand and helping him up.
“ Thanks.” He looked at the clock, two-and-a-half hours till five, plenty of time.
“ I need a quick shower,” she said, but first I think I ought to splint and tape that arm, just in case it’s broken. She went to the closet, took down a wooden coat hanger, broke the tops off it and tossed them aside. “This might hurt,” she said. He nodded, sitting on the end of the bed as she used the bottom of the hanger as a splint, taping it to his arm with duct tape. He shivered when she pushed the wood hard against his forearm, but he didn’t cry out.
“ Doesn’t hurt as much.”
“ You’re lying,” she said.
“ You’re right, it hurts like hell, but you did a professional job. Were you a nurse in a past life?”
“ First aid training goes with the job. I’m going to take that shower now.”
“ Wait, I gotta use the head first.” He hustled into the bathroom and relieved himself, sighing as the pain in his bladder eased. Finished he headed toward the phone as Maria passed him on her way to the bathroom. But when he reached it he saw that it wasn’t unplugged, the line was cut. He heard the water go on and he looked around for a weapon in case Earl came back. He settled on a vase. He picked it up in his left hand, hefted it, then turned it over, spilling the flowers and water onto the rug. If Earl came back now, he’d get a face full of vase the second he entered the room.
The water in the bathroom stopped running and in seconds she was coming out the door, toweling off. “The sooner I’m out of here, the better,” she said.
“ Right,” he said. “The phone’s been cut. We’ll have to get to another one, but we’ve got plenty of time.”
She looked at the clock. “It’s stopped,” she said. He must have unplugged it when he cut the phone.
He whipped around and looked at the time. Two-thirty, about the time they’d come up to the room yesterday. “You’re right. I don’t know why I didn’t see it,” he said, as she was pulling on a clean pair of panties. She picked a watch up off the bureau. “Four-fifteen, you don’t have much time.”
“ Shit we have to hustle.”
“ Not me. I’ll be on the eight o’clock flight to Miami. Tomorrow I’ll be in Madrid. It’s been nice knowing you, Broxton, but I’m going.”
“ Don’t go,” he pleaded.
“ I’m sorry. I need my own life for awhile.”
“ I love you,” he said.
“ I believe you think you do, but it was your girl’s name you were moaning through that tape last night.”
“ Please,” he said.
“ Don’t beg, Broxton.” She crossed the room and kissed him on the cheek. “You’re bleeding from that cut,” she said, then she added. “Give it a couple of months. If you still think you’re in love with me, give me a call. You’ll be able to reach me through Iberia in Madrid.”
There was a crowd around the reception desk. Broxton recognized the uniforms of an American Airlines flight crew mingled with a group of tourists, all smiling, talking and waiting to check in.
“ Excuse me,” he said, going to the front of the line and speaking to a young woman behind the counter. “I have an emergency situation and I need to use a phone.” The words emergency and phone, coupled with Broxton’s taped and swollen right arm, and the blood crusting on his left hand immediately quieted the crowd.
“ This way, please.” The girl was quick to recognize that he needed medical attention. She raised the counter and held it till he passed behind. “We have an emergency here,” she said as she opened a door to an office behind the reception area. She didn’t enter, but she left the door open. She was curious.
“ How can I help?” a young man in a white shirt and tie asked. His wide smile and close cropped hair reminded Broxton of himself when he was in high school.
“ I need a phone, it’s a life and death situation.”
“ Right there,” the man said, his smile gone.
Broxton saw the phone sitting on a wide desk next to a stack of computer print outs. He pulled out a chair and fell into it. There were two other young people in the office besides the man with the tie, both girls who couldn’t be much over twenty. The three youths and the girl at the door all regarded him with a mixture of excitement and fear. His shaved head, glazed eyes, bandaged arm and bloody hand, all added up to daring and danger, and they, along with the tourists and flight crew waiting to check in, were intrigued.
He scooped up the phone, and then he had to think. Who was he going to call? Ramsingh had given him his direct line, but the chances that he’d be there with less than an hour before his speech were slim. Still, anybody who answered would take him seriously. He picked up the phone and punched the buttons. He spent twenty rings drumming his fingers before he hung up.
“ How do you call the police?” he asked.
“ 999,” the young man said.
Broxton punched the numbers, more finger drumming and fifteen rings before someone answered. “Police Emergency, Officer Gopaul speaking.” The voice was male and he sounded bored.
“ My name is William Broxton. I have information about an assassination attempt against the prime minister.”
“ Yes, and when is this going to happen?” The boredom was stiff in the officer’s voice.
“ Tonight at five o’clock, during the dedication speech.”
“ I’ll make a note of it. Where are you calling from?”
“ The Hilton Hotel.”
“ That is unusual, usually you people don’t leave your address, but I suppose you could be making it up.”
“ What’s the matter with you?” Broxton said, his voice rising. “I’ve just told you that somebody is going to kill the prime minister and you’re accusing me of making it up. Don’t you think you ought to call Ram and warn him?”
“ So you’re on a first name basis with the prime minister?”
“ Yes,” Broxton said, and then he heard a loud click as Officer Gopaul hung up. “Shit,” he said. He punched the numbers again. This time he didn’t count the rings, but it took longer than the first call for Gopaul to answer.
“ Police Emergency.”
“ Just listen to me, Gopaul,” Broxton said. “I’m a American DEA officer working for the prime minister. In thirty minutes someone is going to put a bullet into Ramsingh’s head. Just get a hold of him and tell him Broxton says not to speak tonight.”
“ No, you listen. For the last couple of months we’ve been getting these kind of calls every day. We no longer take them seriously. The prime minister is unpopular right now, that is a fact, but he is safe tonight. He is dedicating the Police Services Statue and almost every policeman in Trinidad is on hand. Only an idiot would try anything against him there.
“ Just call him,” Broxton said.
“ I don’t know if you’re just another hateful citizen or if you’re for real, but if you are for real your information is wrong. Prime Minister Ramsingh is safe tonight, believe me.”
“ Call him, please.”
“ No. Now, if you have nothing further, I’m going to hang up again. Please don’t call back, this number is for real emergencies only.”
Stunned, Broxton replaced the phone in its cradle. “He doesn’t believe me,” he said to nobody in particular.
“ The police have been getting a lot of calls like that. It’s been on the news and in the papers,” the girl at the doorway said.
“ Would you like me to call you a doctor?” the young man with the tie said.
“ He didn’t believe me,” Broxton said again, and he looked up into the young man’s brown eyes and saw that he didn’t believe him either.
“ I’m sorry, sir,” he said, “but we have a lot of work to do.”
Broxton looked at the two girls in the room. They were trying hard to smile, but he saw fear in their eyes, and it made him shudder. He spun his gaze to the girl at the door and to the crowd of people waiting to check in
. They’d all heard him. They were all staring at him and most of them looked disgusted. To them he was no more than a beggar on the street who’d bullied his way to the front of the line and he was inconveniencing them all with his antics.
“ Doesn’t anyone believe me?” he said, and he realized the words were raspy in his throat. They probably thought he was drunk.
“ Is there a problem here?” Broxton looked up and saw a beefy security guard.
“ No, Jerry,” the man with the tie said. “This gentleman was just leaving.”
“ Do you want me to help him out?”
“ That’s all right, I can find my own way,” Broxton said. He moved away from the desk and started for the door. The guard stood aside, letting him pass. Outside of the office he ducked under the counter and started across the lobby toward the exit.
“ Sir?” the doorman said.
“ I need a taxi,” Broxton said.
“ One should be by just now.” The door man took in Broxton’s disheveled appearance and shook his head.
“ I’m in a hurry.”
“ Everybody’s in a hurry these days,” the doorman said.
“ I believe you, Broxton.” He turned. Maria was standing there, carry-bag on her shoulder. She looked like a crisp green-eyed angel. “I have a car. I can get you where you need to go.”
“ Thank you,” he said.
“ This way,” she said and she took off running. Broxton started off after her. She sprinted through the empty taxi rank and made a quick right into a parking lot. He saw her fish into her purse as she ran and by the time she reached a bright yellow Toyota she had her keys in hand. The doors were unlocked by the time Broxton made the car and she had the engine running by the time he slid into the passenger seat.
“ He’s speaking at the Brian Lara Promenade,” Broxton said.
“ I know the way.” She dropped the transmission into low and laid rubber as she spun out of the parking lot. She made a right onto the access road down the hill toward the Savannah without taking her foot off the gas. She drove like she knew what she was doing.
“ Is the time right?” he asked, looking at the dashboard clock.
“ Yes.”
“ Then we only have twenty minutes.”
“ We’ll make it,” she said, but Broxton saw the traffic ringing the Savannah and he wasn’t so sure.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Dani went back to her place at the window and peered out. The crowd was quiet now, everybody was settled in, waiting for the unveiling of the statue, the speech and then the cricketeer. Dani remembered her father taking her to see Bobby Kennedy in downtown Long Beach when she was a little girl. He was running for president and everywhere he went he was mobbed. Men, women and children offered him a sea of hands, all wanting to be touched. Magic had touched Bobby at that time, that magical and tragic year. She remembered her father holding her up and she remembered shivering when the electric energy flowed from his hand and tingled through her. These Trinidadians felt the way about George Chandee that Americans felt about Bobby in 1968.
But Bobby was good, she mused. George is not. If ever evil sparked out of the eyes of a man, George Chandee was that man. For a few instants she thought about what she was going to do. In the grand scheme of things it made no difference, but this was the first time that she was going to put a man like George in power. Always before, her hits had been political, even the one in the United States. Maybe the successors to power in those third world nations weren’t always suited to the task, maybe they were fundamentalists, leftists, or idealists, maybe they wanted to stop a civil war, or maybe they wanted to start one, but in the past those that paid her always had an agenda that they felt justified murder. George’s only agenda, if it could be called that, was to amass as much money as possible, in as short a time as possible.
And if she thought about it, she had to admit that Ramsingh was unlike any man she’d ever hit. He wasn’t a fanatic, he wasn’t leading his people in a bloody war, wasn’t lining his pockets, wasn’t forcing them into slavery, didn’t have death squads, abysmal tax rates or even an insufferable personality. He was just a good man who would have been a fine prime minister about fifty years ago. But he was out of his league in a world of drug smugglers who were richer than God and still wanted more. They wanted his country and no power on earth was going to keep it from them.
She pictured his face, the craggy eyes, bulbous nose, crooked grin and that thick shock of gray hair. She’d never had to do a friend before. He was a man to her. A good and kind, but terribly incompetent man. For a second she was having second thoughts, but she banished them. Ramsingh was going to die in a few minutes and she was going to be the instrument of his death. That’s just the way it was.
She heard applause outside and lifted the blinds an inch. She looked down upon the square, and balled a fist in irritation. George had taken the podium and was waving to the crowd. Damn him, that wasn’t in the script, but it was just like him. He wanted to be on the stage when Ramsingh was hit. He wanted blood on his shirt, like Jackie in the limo. He wanted to rage against the assassin. He wasn’t satisfied with the charisma of a Kennedy, he wanted the power of a messiah.
She watched as George held his hands above his head, trying to quiet the crowd. He was clearly enjoying the applause. He beamed his best false smile and the crowd went wild. Mothers were holding up infants and she was again reminded of Bobby. Young girls screamed and swooned like he was a rock star. Young boys applauded. He was their idol, he was from them, one of them that made it.
“ I want to introduce a friend of us all. A true son of Trinidad and Tobago. A man who has given up much to serve his country. A true national hero. Let’s give a warm Trinidadian round of applause for my best friend and your best friend, Prime Minister Ramish Ramsingh.” George was screaming into the microphone, caressing it like it was part of him. “Ram is always here for us, let’s always be there for him,” he wailed, almost singing the words and the audience burst into a screaming round of clapping and foot stomping applause for a man they didn’t like, a man they all wanted to step aside. George could make them do anything.
Then to her horror Ramsingh stepped up to the podium and waved to the crowd. What the fuck was George doing? She wasn’t ready. He knew she was going to pull the trigger at five. Why was he bringing up Ram now? Why was he forcing her hand? Did he know she was going to implicate Rampersad or was he just stupid? She thought about it for a second. No, he couldn’t know. He didn’t know where she’d be shooting from. He was just being himself, trying to shake her up, trying to maintain control, trying to force her hand, even if only by fifteen minutes. Maybe he could, maybe he couldn’t. She had to hit him before he said anything about the treaty with the United States, that was the deal, but she didn’t have to pull the trigger a second before. She’d wait and watch George sweat.
Maria spun around the corner, took one look at the cars ringing the Savannah, saw a gap between the traffic and stomped on the accelerator, shooting between three lanes of cars. “Hold on,” she said, and Broxton threw his good arm against the dash, bracing himself. The protesting sound of squealing brakes shot through to his soul, but nobody came close to her as she flew between bumpers and fenders. “Going to cut across,” she said, and she gunned the rented Toyota and jumped the curb.
“ Look out,” Broxton said, and Maria spun the wheel, barely avoiding a pair of evening joggers. Then she was past the jogging path and churning up dust as she steered the car across the vast park.
“ Are you going around the cricket game?” Broxton asked.
“ Going right through,” she said. She was charging toward the game without a thought about the brakes. Broxton saw one of the players point. The bowler turned to look. He yelled and the players started to scatter as the Toyota ripped through the field, kicking dust and throwing rocks from the rear wheels as the players shouted at them when they flew through.
Seeing the players in their white uniforms
reminded Broxton of the attorney general, George Chandee, and that niggling thought that if something happened to Ramsingh, Chandee would be the next prime minister. He remembered Chandee’s hard look on the plane, his flash of temper, and the look in his eyes when Ramsingh called him on it. He hadn’t liked Chandee from the get go and he wondered why the man was so popular.
Maria slammed the car into low and slid into a left turn.
“ What are you doing?”
“ I just remembered the road around the Savannah is one way. If I cut straight across we’ll be facing the wrong direction, we’d have to go all the way back around.” She stopped talking and gripped the wheel, hands tense as she sat rigid in the seat. She was approaching another cricket game in progress. This time the players were children and they weren’t bedecked in white uniforms. Maria laid on the horn, and some of the kids turned to look, but unlike the adults, they didn’t scatter. She jerked to the right to avoid a grungy kid with a defiant look on his young face, and then she was shooting, like a well batted ball, headed straight for the bowler, a wide eyed youth too frightened to move.
She turned the wheel a fraction, and they sped by the young bowler, showering him with dust. “Hey,” the batsman yelled as the car gobbled ground in his direction, and he swung the bat as he dodged the rampaging car, connecting with the front window as he was jumping back. Spider webs flashed across Broxton’s sight, but the safety glass didn’t break. Then the Toyota bowled over the stump and the sound of the bumper colliding with the wood was like an explosion inside the car, but Maria kept her foot on the floor as she headed for the stands.
They were empty now, but Broxton could imagine them full and wondered what they were for.
“ Carnival bands go through here. Hundred thousand people, big laughing party. Only ghosts in the stands now,” she said as she threaded the car through the bleachers toward the ramp. Broxton tried to imagine the stands full of gaily dressed people as Carnival marchers paraded before them in their scanty, bright costumes. He’d heard so much about the ultimate party, but he never imagined he’d be taking the revelers’ route in a speeding car, witnessed only by phantoms.
