The Reign of Rain Robinson

by Roy Glenn

  Jada took the scarf from around her neck and wiped her fingerprints from the gun before handing it to Carmen.

  “Now get out of here,” she said and then looked at the cook and the waitress. “What about them?”

  “I’ll take care of them,” Jada said and then she went to get her clutch.

  She took out the ten thousand dollars in cash that she had on her and walked to the counter. Jada stood in front of them and without making eye contact, began counting the money she had in two piles. When she was finished counting, Jada looked at the pair.

  “I was never here,” Jada said.

  When the cook reached for the money, Carmen very quickly placed her palm on top of the crisp bills.

  “Tell the police exactly what you saw. After he shot the two of them, I shot him. Understand?”

  “That man walked in here, shot them two people and then you shot him before he could getaway. Ain’t that right, George?” the waitress said and looked anxiously at the cook.

  George looked at Carmen and Jada and then to the pile of money. “It happened just like that. You shot that man,” he said and then Carmen moved her hand.

  “Exactly what you saw,” Carmen said and then she turned to Jada. “Why are you still here?”

  “I’m going,” Jada said and headed out the door.

  “Now you can call the police,” Carmen said and took out her phone to call her cameraman, Max.

  As the phone rang, Carmen gave some thought to the fact that it was now four thirty-five in the morning and maybe she should have just called the station and have them send a crew, which she was going to end up doing anyway. But she knew that if she did that, Max would be mad at her.

  “Do you know what time it is?” a half-sleeping, half-angry Max answered just before it went to voicemail.

  “Yes, Max, I know what time it is, and I’m sorry, but…”

  “What is it, Carmen?”

  “I’m at the City Diner on Broadway. Grab your gear and get down here.”

  “You’re supposed to be on vacation.”

  “I was … I mean I am. Just get down here, Max.”

  “I’m on my way,” Max said, and Carmen could tell that getting out of bed at that hour was the last thing he wanted to do.

  “Max.”

  “What?”

  “Thanks.”

  “You can thank me by buying me breakfast when I get there,” Max said as he quickly began getting dressed.

  “I am at a diner,” Carmen paused and looked at the three dead bodies on the floor, “But you might wanna eat somewhere else.”

  When the police arrived at the diner, the cook and the waitress told them exactly what they saw. “That man walked in here,” the waitress said and pointed toward the bodies. “He shot them two people and then Carmen Taylor shot him before he could getaway. Ain’t that right, George?”

  “It happened just like that,” he pointed at Carmen. “That woman there shot him.”

  Once the police had taken their statements, one of the cops walked over to Carmen and held out his hand. “I just wanted to shake your hand and say thank you.”

  Carmen shook his hand. “Thank you for what?”

  “You saved a cop’s life. I respect that.”

  Not knowing what else to say and always being embarrassed by the attention, Carmen simply said, “You’re welcome.”

  It was then that Max arrived with his camera. The cop stopped him immediately. “You can’t be in here.”

  “He’s with me and he has no intention of recording anything in here. Right, Max?”

  “Right,” Max said as he flipped the on switch on the camera and held it by his side, being sure to scan the room as he slowly turned to leave.

  “If you’re finished with me for a while, I’m going outside,” Carmen said.

  “Just don’t leave. I’m sure the detectives will have some more questions for you when they get here,” the cop said and walked away.

  “Come on, Max,” Carmen said and started for the door. “Tell me you got some of that,” she said quietly.

  “What’s my name?”

  “You’re Mad Max,” Carmen put her arm around him, “The best cameraman in the world.”

  “Damn right, I got it,” Max laughed. “I just have no idea what I got.”

  When they were outside, the news truck had arrived from the station. Carmen and Max wasted no time reviewing the footage that he caught. While the footage was edited, Carmen thought of something important.

  Gunshot residue. I don’t have any.

  Carmen looked at her watch. It had been at least thirty minutes since the shot was fired. She had read somewhere that gunshot residue deposits on the hands decline rapidly during the first hour after firing the weapon.

  But what if they want to test the clothes? Carmen shook her head. This isn’t gonna be as easy as I thought.

  “Don’t we keep an outfit for me in here?” Carmen asked.

  “I think we do,” Lacara Krisella, an aggressive, young associate producer said.

  “I need that outfit and makeup,” Carmen said.

  “Quickly people,” Lacara said, clapping her hands. “We’re live in ten.”

  “And I’m gonna need a little privacy.”

  “Everybody out!”

  Once Carmen had changed, and her makeup was touched up, especially her hands, a good spot was found, and Carmen went to work.

  “So much for the vacation,” she said.

  “In three, two, one.”

  “This is Carmen Taylor, coming to you live from The City Diner on Broadway; the sight of a triple homicide and you know what?” Carmen paused for effect. “I was involved.”

  “Ms. Taylor?” Detective Harmon said and her lawyer touched her hand to get her attention.

  “I’m sorry, detective. What did you say?”

  “Am I boring you, Ms. Taylor?”

  “Not at all,” Carmen said.

  “You said that was when you shot him. Why did you shoot him?”

  “So he wouldn’t get away.”

  “One shot, back of the head.” Harmon sat back in his chair. “That was good shooting.”

  Carmen shrugged her shoulders. “Lucky shot.”

  “I don’t believe that for a second, Ms. Taylor. You saved my partner’s life, remember? Or was that a lucky shot too?” Harmon paused. “The point is this. You shot him in the back of the head. That means that when you shot him, he was leaving, and you weren’t in any danger.”

  Her lawyer put his hand on Carmen’s stopping her from responding. “Is there a question you’d like to ask, detective?”

  “Tell me again how it happened after the gunman came in.”

  “I didn’t really pay him any attention when he first came in.”

  “When did you first notice him?”

  “I noticed him look around and then he walked up to Katana, raised his gun and shot her twice in the head.”

  “What did you do then?”

  “I took out my gun.”

  “Why?”

  “To protect myself.”

  “Go on, Ms. Taylor.”

  “Larry screamed and then the man shot him twice in the chest. Then he turned to me and I fired.”

  “And your shot hit him in the back of the head.”

  “Like I said, it was a lucky shot.”

  Chapter Five

  Jada was looking out the window at the dazzling view of the rising sun from her suite at The Peninsula Hotel. Since the new management didn’t know that it was her and Shy that shot up the Salon de Ning, they welcomed Jada back with opened arms.

  It was after eight o'clock and Jada still hadn’t heard anything from Carmen and that worried her. She had killed a man and then left Carmen to face the police. But she knew that Carmen was right when she insisted that she leave. Her lawyer, Patrick Freeman was working hard to get the promoting and compelling prostitution charges against her dropped. Jada knew that regardless of the circumstances, the police would cha
rge her with manslaughter. Despite that, when Jada left the diner, she still felt badly about leaving her friend.

  Jada stepped away from the window and began pacing around the spacious Fifth Avenue suite that once suited her needs perfectly, with its expansive living room, elegant dining room, majestic master bedroom, gourmet kitchen and private study. Now, it just seemed too big and empty as she waited for her phone to ring.

  The later it became, the more Jada was left to believe that Carmen had been arrested and charged with the murder that she had committed. Even though it was early, Jada needed a drink, so she went to the bar, poured herself a French 75 and sat down on the couch. Her mind began replaying the events that happened earlier that morning.

  It all happened so fast.

  Since each accused the other of being an obsessed workaholic that refused to take a vacation, Jada and Carmen were going to Paris. But before they left on the charter Jada had arranged, they went out for dinner and cocktails.

  Their evening began with dinner at Daniels on East 65th, and then the ladies went to Session 73 on 1st Avenue. By two o’clock in the morning, Jada and Carmen found that they had drank and danced the night away and were thinking about leaving Session 73 and either calling it a night or going someplace else. When Carmen suggested that they go to J.R.’s, Jada told her that she was drunk.

  “You must be if you think I’m going to dance at J.R.’s,” Jada said and signaled for the waitress. “I have a reputation to maintain, and so do you,” she said and practically fell in her chair.

  “You’re the one that’s drunk,” Carmen said and then she practically fell in her chair. That was when she got the call from Larry Brin and they went to meet him at the City Diner. Carmen had just gotten up from the table to talk with Brin and Katana Jackson.

  Jada laughed when she remembered thinking, Carmen is doing what Carmen does and we are not going to Paris, Jada thought as she sipped the drink that she thought she needed, but no longer wanted.

  When Katana was shot twice in the head, thinking that he was going to kill Carmen next, Jada quickly removed the .380 from her clutch. Then Castellano shot Brin twice in the chest and as he turned to leave, Jada fired one shot that hit him in the back of the head.

  “I’ve had a lot of practice lately,” she may have said, but Jada knew it was a lucky shot. She just pointed the gun and pulled the trigger. Aiming the gun was not involved.

  When she walked away from the diner, Jada walked by a man that she thought that she recognized. She stopped and looked back at him.

  “Excuse me, sir.”

  “Yes.” He stopped and looked at Jada as she walked back toward him.

  “I saw you earlier this evening at Session 73, didn’t I?”

  The man said nothing, and Jada smiled.

  “You’re Carmen’s bodyguard, aren’t you?”

  “Yes, Ms. West.”

  “There was a shooting inside,” Jada informed him.

  “Is Ms. Taylor all right?”

  “Ms. Taylor is fine. However, the police are coming, and I need to get away from here.”

  “I understand, Ms. West. I’ll get you a cab and then I will check on Ms. Taylor.”

  “Thank you.”

  Jada watched as he stepped into the street to flag down a cab. She remembered thinking that in her position, if she asked his name, he would tell her.

  But where’s the fun in that, Jada thought as he held the cab door open while she got in.

  She put the glass down and thought about how far she had come. She was a killer now, something that Jada never thought she’d be. However, if she chose to be honest, that was the definition of her life. Jada wasn’t who she thought she’d be, and hadn’t been since the day she got in the car with Diane at Fat Larry’s.

  That day, Jada West became somebody else. She never expected to be a dancer, never imagined herself as a high price escort or as a madam and never in her wildest dreams did she think that she would be running a criminal organization on several Caribbean islands.

  She had certainly come a very long way from the night that she went after Bullet. Jada laughed as she thought about how the recoil from firing the weapon put her on her ass that night. If it hadn’t been for Chanté showing up when she did, Bullet would have certainly killed her.

  That night, Jada resolved herself that gunplay just wasn’t for her. That lasted until the night Shy paid a visit to the Salon de Ning. She had just put Shy on notice that she’d be around, when a group of men came to kill her.

  “Fucking around with that damn Carmen Taylor.”

  Jada remembered that she and Shy were pinned down behind a car and they were taking heavy gunfire. Men were approaching from both sides. Shy stood up and fired on one until the PLR-22 was empty and the man went down. When Shy took cover to reload, Jada saw the other man coming around the car. She raised the Beretta that Shy had given her and fired three times; each shot hit him, and he fell to the ground.

  Jada laughed aloud as she thought about how she looked at the dead man and then to the gun in her hand and took a second to marvel at her work.

  Jada also remembered Shy yelling, “Don’t get cocky!”

  That was her first kill, but it certainly wasn’t her last.

  She thought back to when she, Johnny, Rain and Black went to stop the Grenadines from moving a shipment through Nassau. Jada remembered lying on the ground as the last one came toward her. She raised her .380 Mustang, fired and hit him with two shots to his chest and he fell to the ground beside her, ruining her outfit.

  “That’s what I get for wearing an Escada pinstriped suit and Jimmy Choo crystal-coated pumps to a gunfight,” she smiled and laughed.

  But after that, killing became easier to her. When two of her women were murdered and the killers had been found, Johnny was beating the man trying to get information when Jada grew inpatient.

  “This is getting us nowhere, Johnny.”

  Jada put the barrel to his temple. “You will tell me what I want to know. And you are going to tell me now.”

  When he told Jada that she wasn’t going to shoot because she needed him alive, she promptly informed him that she actually didn’t need him and pulled the trigger.

  Then Jada looked down and saw the blood splatter on her five thousand-dollar Akris outfit. She shook her head in disgust and shot him again. When Johnny asked why she did that, her response was simple.

  “For getting blood on my dress.”

  Jada had become a cold-blooded killer just like the people that she surrounded herself with. But in that, she realized something. Being cold-blooded is necessary, necessary to survive.

  When her cell phone rang, Jada bounced up from the couch and rushed to answer it. “Hello.”

  “It’s Carmen.”

  “Are you all right?”

  “I’m fine. Everything is fine. I just left the police station.”

  “So they didn’t charge you with murder?”

  “No. It was looking like they were going to for a while there. And he said that he still had questions. So, I don’t know.” Carmen paused. “The detective kept going back to the same point over and over.”

  “What was that?”

  “Why I shot him.”

  “Because he had just killed two people,” Jada said excitedly. The knowledge that Carmen still could be charged for a murder that she committed was unsettling.

  “He says that since he was shot in the back of the head, that he was leaving the scene, therefore I was in no apparent danger.”

  “I see.”

  “I’ve got to go to a meeting at the station with my lawyer so we can talk about this with management.”

  “I understand.”

  “I’ll call you later,” Carmen said.

  “Thanks for calling and letting me know that you’re all right. I was worried about you.”

  “I’m fine for the time being, Jada, but I gotta go,” Carmen said, and she ended the call.

  Secure in the knowledge that
Carmen was all right, Jada took a long hot bath, put on a La Perla silk nightgown and got in bed.

  Chapter Six

  “Ahhhhh, damn.”

  “That’s it; work all the details.”

  And she did. She swiveled and swirled and bounced and shook all over his length. She loved it when he talked to her like he did when they were out working a case. But here, right now, all that mattered now was him working her case.

  His palms gripped her ass tightly as she began to slam down onto him, using the strength of her thighs to push up and down as she watched him grimace to hold onto control. But she was working the hell out of him, so much so that when she felt him swelling inside of her, her body reacted and set off a set of spasms. One rolling into the next until she was shouting.

  “Fuck, I’m cumming, Papi!”

  He held her tightly against his chest as they both began to breathe evenly. As much as she wished she could have stayed there, she had to get up. One, because she had to work; and two, because she had fallen in love with him and didn’t know what to do about it. Staying would only make it more complicated than it already was.

  As she pulled away and gathered the sheet to cover herself, Kirk sat up in bed.

  “I’ve seen all of that pretty ass, detective. You might as well let me watch it shake on the way to the shower.”

  Laughing, Bautista dropped the sheet and moved into his bathroom to shower. She made quick work of washing, rinsing off the lather, drying off, and then dressing in a total of fifteen minutes, and she was out of there.

  “I love your style. No waiting for you to get dressed.”

  “Well considering I gotta go home to put on some fresh clothes, I didn’t think taking all the time in the world in the shower made sense.”

  “Is that a hint?”

  Bautista stood in the doorway. “What do you mean?” she asked innocently, even though it was a hint and not a very subtle one. She didn’t want to move in, not really. Not unless he wants me too. Bautista thought since they slept at his place all the time, that leaving clothes there made sense.

  Kirk looked at his sexy-ass partner.

  She was smiling and so was he.