"Only a fool would stick around on an island after doing a hit."
She said, "In other words, you have no idea."
"I need to get away from here."
Pa.s.sports came to mind yet again. I called Big Guy. He answered. I hung up. He was still alive, his head still attached to his body. He had enough pressure on him, from me and the Barbarians. I would threaten him again and deal with him in a few hours.
I said, "Black Jack asked me about the job in Trinidad, asked why it was set up that way."
"Why face-to-face? That section of Trinidad that holds Independence Square has a lot of tall buildings. They could"ve used a sniper like me and popped him when he stepped out of his car. I could"ve done that, disa.s.sembled my gun, and been gone to shop on Frederick Street before the screaming had stopped. If they wanted him dead at the bank, that"s the way I would"ve done it."
I exhaled a slow breath, replaying the shootout in my mind.
She said, "The Barbarians instructed you to open the briefcase?"
I told her about the gold mine that was inside.
She said, "Are you serious?"
"Yeah."
"Why would they trust you with that much money?"
"That"s easy. Because I am loyal and honest to a fault. I"m like the bank teller who works around a ton of money. Her job owes her, yet she waits on her paycheck to come so she can pay her bills."
"That being-honest mentality will do you no good in the end."
"Did me no good with Johnny Parker."
She faced me. "The hard drive."
"That"s business."
"Should have something from that soon."
"America soon or West Indies soon?"
"West Indies soon. What do you do now?"
"The Barbarians put me back on hold. I wait on the next set of instructions."
I was about to tell her about Zenga stalking me, but I didn"t.
I could handle myself. It would sound like I was asking for more help.
A shock of tingles came and I bent my head, rubbed my nose.
She said, "What"s on your mind?"
"You like this island?"
"You"re not feeling Barbados?"
"I"m trapped here. You chose to live here. It"s small. Claustrophobic."
"I guess that it would feel that way when you"re on the run."
"You like it here?"
"This is heaven."
"Why is this heaven?"
"You okay over there?"
"Keep talking. Why does my prison feel like heaven to you?"
"I"m in love."
"No one is after you."
"You"re doing better?"
"What?"
"Reaper, are you okay?"
"Keep talking. How is being married?"
"It"s great. We do corny couples" stuff. Movies at the Sheraton, flying kites at parks, picnics at Farley Hill, and a lime here and there. Went to see Air Supply. We go to the Plantation for Back in Time and jam to the old-school, or go down to Oistins and go back to the part beyond all the bashment and we two-step and tree-step. We go to most of the cavalcades. Jump with a Zulu. We do Foreday. Even if it"s raining, we go to Soca on the Hill or Reggae on the Hill. We party hard start to finish. We do everything we can find to do on this island. We get dressed up and do many other social events, things for adults."
"It"s more than s.e.x. You have a real marriage. You have what most people want."
"What did that Parker guy do to make you happy?"
"He was kind. He liked me. He made me feel normal. He made me fall in love."
"I feel that way now."
I shook my head, not wanting to talk about him. "Let"s get to work, Petrichor."
"Sure you can do this, Goldilocks?"
"Fetes should be over. Drunks will be tearing up the road soon. Time to work the next gig."
"I want to help you. I"ll see if I can pull some information on the LKs."
"Don"t f.u.c.kin" even try. I feel bad for ever asking Black Jack to help."
"You don"t have to scream, Goldilocks. I"m right here, not in China."
"Black Jack was found and executed within twenty-four hours of trying to break into their computer systems. They"re bad men. Do anything and I"ll kill your a.s.s, resurrect your a.s.s, then kill your a.s.s again."
"You"re scared."
Another moment pa.s.sed.
She asked, "Ready to roll?"
I mounted my crotch rocket and started it up.
The rumble almost reignited the tingles.
She pulled on her backpack and started the BMW.
I yelled over the rumbling motors and said, "Hey."
"Yeah?"
"Let"s change partners."
"Sounds kinky."
"Whatever. You have a one-track mind."
She gave me her BMW. More power. More speed. Heavier.
I said, "Feel this power. Love this."
"G.o.d, I love the way a Ducati vibrates. Like a three-hundred pound s.e.x toy."
"Been riding rough roads on a bike for over a month."
"It"s like opening your legs and sitting on a vibrator with the speed turned down low."
"If you"re riding up Highway 6, that three-mile stretch of nasty road by PLAE, riding a crotch rocket on that is like being on a magic vibrator, speed turned up high. Turned up extremely high."
She asked, "Does this qualify as girl talk?"
"It"s shallow, so it probably does qualify."
"You"re more at ease talking about your friends being decapitated."
"I am."
"He did you good. Guy upstairs did you good."
"No comment."
"Yeah. He did you real good."
"What happened upstairs was an interlude. Back to reality now."
FORTY-FOUR.
Parish of St. Michael Down in Black Rock we parked on the side of a rum shop near Christadelphian Church and switched our crotch rockets for a white van labeled MINT CONDITION INDUSTRIAL SERVICES, LIMITED. Then we moved to Hooligan Road and opened the back, inspected the tools.
For now, my mind was off rude Barbarians and deadly men from Trinidad.
My mind was away from thinking about Black Jack being slaughtered.
In the thick of the night, we took care of two jobs, one dealing with a powerful CEO, a man who had robbed many of their pensions and made himself megarich in the process. We had broken into his mansion up at Fort George Heights.
We delivered him to the Parish of St. Lucy. Then we sped south again.
The next one was a politician. We pulled the second target out of his two-story home in Lowthers Park, Christ Church. Petrichor had killed his air-conditioning system during the day, when the temperature was in the nineties, knowing that would force him to b.i.t.c.h and curse and call for a technician who would find the system unrepairable, causing him to leave his windows open and alarm off for the night. We compromised the windows on the ground floor and stepped across the carpet inside his concrete blockhouse, carpet being a rarity on the island, and while fans blew on high and covered any noise we made walking through his spectacular home, we took him out through his garage. He was a big man, a fat f.u.c.ker. Too big to knock out and carry. So after we had rendered an a.s.s beating that rivaled all a.s.s beatings, holding a gun to his temple, we encouraged the battered man to walk the green mile with us. Duct tape kept his hands behind his back. A black cloth over his head, a gag in his mouth, and earplugs kept him in the dark. We forced him into the van. Old Man Reaper"s Bahamian daughter took his SUV. It would look like he had left home. I followed her. The plan was to dump the SUV on one of the side streets in the next parish. That done, I climbed back in the van and we drove him out to the cane fields in the northeast, an area of chattel houses, outhouses, banana fields, tobacco fields-a section of farmers with a thinner population and dark roads that didn"t have much traffic through the night. We went off the main road onto a cart road, an unpaved strip that looked like it was made for a horse and buggy. No streetlights. We were far from city lights. Counting the stars in the sky was like trying to count grains of sand on the beach. Cart roads were where people drove to have s.e.x at night.
Cart roads were also where more than a few dead bodies were found.
The sea and cart roads, top two locations for disposing of the recently killed.
Only the sea would eventually spit what was left of the dead back up on the sh.o.r.es.
We stood to the side wearing oversize clothing and Guy Fawkes masks.
The politico was on his knees, delivered to the man who had paid for the job to be done.
He said, "Kenny Omar Payne, what happened to the promise for a clean campaign?"
"Look, don"t do this."
"What happened to the honesty and respect you promised the people of Barbados?"
"Think. Have mercy. For the love of G.o.d, I have a wife and children and-"
"You called my wife ignorant. Do you have any idea what that did to our children? To have my kids go to school the next day and deal with your foolishness? My daughter is seven and she cried herself to sleep three nights in a row. My wife graduated from UWI, reads Aristotle, and you stood on a platform and called her ignorant. She"s a mother, a wife who feels deeply, a woman who wants to encourage every Bajan to better Barbados by putting his shoulder to the wheel."
"Let me apologize to your wife and children, publicly, in the Nation. On radio. On CBC. Let my hands go; give me my phone, and right now I will apologize by BBMing everyone on the island."
"I have lost all respect for you. I will never subscribe to such lowlife and cla.s.sless behavior, which is the type of behavior that is typical of your party."
"It"s politics. It"s just politics."