Shattered Trust

by Leslie Esdaile Banks

  Juney reached over the seat and offered Akhan a fist pound. “Yeah, ’round here we all know some people that know some people.”

  “Can your boys make it look like a run-of-the-mill crash and sweep?”

  “We’ll do it lovely, will make it look like junkies got him.”

  “Then your boys will have to move quick. One needs to watch his position on the roof; the others hit the car, and then be out.”

  “We got you, Pops, relax.”

  “You still have that key that I gave you a long time ago? Plus the number I gave you last year?”

  “Yeah,” Juney said, his tone mellowing with respect.

  A silent understanding passed between them, both knowing that it was the glue that had forged their relationship ten years prior, as it had been a confer of the ultimate trust between two men that trusted no one.

  “I should be on my way for my morning walk right now. Five minutes, and your target is gone. He’ll know that something unusual in my schedule changed.” Akhan paused, staring at the young street soldier before him. “Be careful, son.”

  Juney nodded and extracted a two-way cellular from his baggy jeans pocket. “Like I said. We got this.”

  “Change of plans,” James said evenly as he watched Laura dash around the bedroom trying to stuff as many of their clothes into a suitcase as quickly as possible.

  She stopped moving about and stared at him. “Come again?”

  “This is insane and a bad plan, Laura. We go to a small hotel, or even a resort, and we have less room to maneuver. Here, we’ll have a beefed-up security system installed by the end of the day, can walk the perimeter in shifts with weapons without alerting the authorities, and if it gets ugly, can drop an assassin after questioning him, if we have to—without the chaos of innocent bystanders that could get hurt, or worrying about the Royal Cayman Islands Police.”

  “What are we gonna do, James? Just sit here?” She wanted to pull her hair out by the roots.

  “We can’t keep running, baby,” he said quietly, going to her to try to calm her with an embrace. “Don’t you wanna just stop running for once in your life?”

  She sighed hard and briefly laid her head on his shoulder. Weary beyond words, she had to agree with at least that much of what he’d said. This was supposed to be a sanctuary that she’d found so many years ago. The Caymans. Peace on earth. A country only one and a half times the size of Washington, D.C., that was devoted to banking and finance, her forte; a place where the dollar was still relatively strong and there was no formal taxation of any kind. No sales tax, no income tax, no capital gains tax, no property tax, no inheritance tax in a land overrun at one point by pirates, folks who obviously understood underground economies.

  Hell no, she didn’t want to leave her idyllic haven that was only four hundred and eighty short miles from Florida, a hundred and fifty miles south of Cuba, and northwest of Jamaica, and serviced by all the major airlines. Here, she understood the law—British common law, the language was English, but the people her own, with a substantial mixture of every world culture. Beauty, art, white-sand beaches ... Laura closed her eyes. A land where the Silver Thatch Palm reigned supreme, and stood tall next to wild banana orchids, and allowed Grand Cayman parrots to nest.

  “But what are we going to do?” she whispered, half as a question to James, the remainder of the query for herself.

  “Do what we’ve always done so far—bring it to them, before they bring it to us. Investigate. Find out who has an axe to grind, and then bust ’em.”

  She tentatively nodded as he withdrew from the hug.

  “You call Najira and tell her to stand down on the packing. I’m going to the garage and bring in some heat.”

  She sat down slowly on the edge of the bed and watched him go to the dresser to pull out his old shoulder harness and Peacekeeper.

  Watching him do that didn’t make her feel any better.

  It was his chance to be initiated, his chance to come up. Juney was da man, and more than that, was his big brother. All he had to do was open the safe under Juney’s bed, get the key to the old dude’s house, do what he was told, and be out.

  Ramir looked both ways and slipped out of the house, and then made a quick dash down the alley, trying to stay clear of growling dogs as he leapt over the short fence toward his destination—Brother Akhan’s back door.

  Sweat made his white T-shirt stick to his back as he worked the locks, cracked open the door, and then dropped to the floor, scrambling across it with agility. He immediately spied the coats on a hook by the front door, and yanked off the hoodie sweatshirt that had been tied around his waist. Moving quickly, he slid up the wall, hugging it like he were a part of it, slipped off the army fatigue jacket that the old man always wore, and then scrambled toward the couch on his belly, using his elbows and knees to propel him.

  In swift, jerky motions, he yanked at the worn pillows and crocheted sofa throw, stuffing them into the body of the jacket and hoodie to fill the fabric out. His hands trembled as he worked the fastenings, constantly glancing at the front window and back toward the hall. Finally satisfied, he shimmied on the floor to the kitchen and retrieved a mop, and hastened back to the overstuffed coat on the floor of the living room and stuck the long wooden handle up into the bundle of fabric. Sitting with his back against the wall next to the window, he shut his eyes for a second and mopped at the rivulets of sweat coursing down his temples. Then he pulled out his two-way.

  “Ready,” he whispered.

  “Do it,” his cousin ordered.

  Using two hands, he raised the coat to his far left, straining to keep the motion fluid but jerky enough to seem like a person had walked to the window from the hall toward the window. He carefully rounded his body with the scarecrow form and brushed the curtain just enough to draw a portion of it back so that the fatigue jacket briefly showed.

  Within seconds, two pops shattered the glass, exploding pillow contents from the hoodie where a head should have been and making yarn fibers plume. He instantly dropped the jacket and made a loud crash by kicking over the television. Then he was out.

  On hands and knees like he was making a break from a rival gang in a club, he found the back door, stood, and bolted, hurdling the fences, doing a hundred-yard dash that rivaled Olympic records. He hit the back door to his house and entered it, falling forward into the arms of a group of waiting friends. Everybody got down, guns drawn, spines pressed against lower cabinets and sections of the wall, breathing hard.

  He moved with calm precision, breaking down his weapons and gathering his equipment in a routine he could have accomplished in his sleep. Job three was completed. The roofs in this godforsaken neighborhood were a cinch to scale. There would be no eyes, no witnesses. These animals preyed upon and killed one another all the time. He released the window bars he was holding, jumped down, and adjusted his knapsack on his back. Two short blocks to his car and he was history.

  Blending into the block like a lost Temple University grad student, he in his rumpled corduroy pants and wrinkled college T-shirt fit right into the environment. A few crack addicts and women pulling laundry carts barely considered him as he stepped over two dead dogs in the alleyway that had been silenced for pragmatic reasons and entered the adjacent block.

  There was no need to run; a cup of coffee was in his future. It was a clean kill that would no doubt be attributed to a gang drive-by shooting that had gone wrong on an impoverished street. Doing jobs in neighborhoods like this was so easy that he almost felt guilty for taking payments for them ... almost.

  But when he spotted his car, he froze. Pure rage hastened his steps. The trunk was popped open, the passenger’s side window had a small hole in it, and the door was ajar. He bit down on his lip to keep from yelling in frustration. Now he’d have to take the bus or the subway in order not to risk a car theft as a getaway. The equipment could be replaced, but the information in his bag could not—at least not immediately, not without questions from
his employer, not without the major inconvenience of ditching the old identity for a new one. Fucking junkies. He hated these animals. No morals.

  Laura jumped up from the edge of the bed and grabbed her purse, desperately trying to get to her cell phone before it rolled over to voice mail.

  She didn’t recognize the number, but pressed her ear to the phone regardless.

  “Hello.”

  “You don’t know me,” a strange male voice said. “But Brother Akhan gave me this number for emergencies. This qualifies, sis.”

  “What’s happened?” Laura breathed out.

  “Write down this tag number,” the voice replied flatly.

  She immediately snatched paper and a pen from her bag and waited.

  “You good?” the young male voice asked.

  “Yes. Go.”

  She scribbled down the number she’d been given, along with the state licensure and rental car agency. “Is he all right?” she asked, nearly holding her breath.

  “Yeah. He’s cool. But he said you’d know what to do with the stash we got. Can’t keep it on us.”

  “What is it?”

  “Not on the phone.”

  Her fingers clutched the small credit-card-sized unit against her cheek. “You have to tell me something,” she said through her teeth, “because where I tell you to drop it will depend on what it is.”

  A long sigh filled the receiver, and then information began to pour into it so fast and so furiously that her jaw went slack.

  Laura squeezed her eyes shut tightly. “I know this is the last place you’d trust, but I need you to listen to me carefully. If Akhan trusted you to give you my number, I need you to trust me—then when you’re done, clear my number out of your cell for your own safety. Got it?”

  “Aw’ight. Lay it on me, sis.”

  “Go down to the roundhouse and take this to Captain—”

  “Po po! What are you, sick?”

  “Give the contents to a same-day bicycle courier service in Philly. Use the name James Carter as the sender. Mark the contents ‘urgent,’ and do as I say. That’s all I can tell you right now. I’m going to give you the name of a police captain that we can trust. Just do it.”

  There was a hesitation. “If this gets fucked up and the old man gets hurt, sis, I’ll find your ass and come looking for you myself.”

  “Thank you,” Laura said quietly.

  “You better know I ain’t playing, and don’t thank me for doing this stupid bullshit until I make up my mind that I’ma go there. Hear?”

  “I’m not thanking you for the delivery. I’m thanking you for coming after me if Akhan gets hurt. Now I know for sure that you’re legit.” Laura sent her gaze toward the bedroom door when James came into view. “So, I’ll say it again so you’ll hear me,” she added with emphasis and then gave him the name. “Thank you.”

  Another hard exhale filled the receiver. “Aw’ight. I hear you. I’m out.” Then the call went dead.

  “Talk to me, Laura,” James said, eyeing her. “What was that all about?”

  She stood and began pacing, telling him all that she’d heard as she made a slow, disoriented loop back and forth between the window and the bed.

  “That was the thing to tell him, wasn’t it?”

  James nodded. “It was.”

  “Fill in Steve and the rest of the crew,” she said, not looking at him as she gazed out the window. She waited for James to make the call and to verbally download all that she’d just explained.

  “So now we know,” she whispered once he’d hung up. “We aren’t just paranoid.”

  “Correction,” he muttered. “We’re paranoid, but with good reason.”

  “I thought this was all over,” Donald Haines, Jr., said quietly as he sat in his mother’s new waterfront condo.

  Elizabeth Haines continued to hug her body as she stared out the large picture window. She couldn’t even turn around to face him as he sat stunned on the sofa awaiting a response. Her son had aged; his handsome face now hosted lines from the strain. His once brilliant blue eyes now always held a haunted shadow within them, like hers did. She’d never wanted any of the horrors of her or her husband’s political lives of intrigue to touch him, but it had. Her dead husband’s business affairs and tangled web of political favors and back-scratching had shattered their lives. Donald had left her practically nothing, even the house that they’d built had been bargained out from under her as his last laugh in the will.

  But none of the carnage that resulted made any sense. The Mafia had received their pound of flesh; their casino charters and construction contracts for the new gaming houses coming to the state of Pennsylvania had all been preserved. Her ex-lover, a once renowned doctor, was behind bars for a very long time for Donald’s actual murder, and her son’s ex-lover was also safely put away for his complicit role on the travesty.

  A slight shudder passed through her as she remembered how narrowly she’d escaped the same fate. Who would be foolish enough to want to stir up that awful nightmare again? Even for vengeance?

  “Mother ... are you all right?” Donny asked quietly, standing and going to her.

  Who would kill the senator and his son? What purpose would that offer?

  She embraced him slowly, filling his arms. “No,” she whispered, a hundred thoughts attacking her mind at once. “After all of this, how can you or I ever be all right?”

  He hugged her tightly and nodded. “I know.”

  She stroked his back, gleaning as much comfort from him as he gave, and laid her head on his slight shoulder. “Have you spoken to Alan?” she asked in a careful murmur, almost afraid to open the wound that made her dear son bleed.

  She felt him tense, and then he drew away from her.

  “No. That’s finished,” Donny said through a thick swallow. “Why would I call or write him in prison after all he did to me ... to us ... to our family? That would be like me asking if you’ve been in contact with—”

  “I know, I know,” she whispered, closing her eyes. “Don’t be cross. I only asked because I’m trying to fathom who we might know that would be ruthless enough to murder someone ... trying to understand and work it all out in my mind, who might have been in business with the senator and his son, and only those two are likely. That is the only reason I mentioned it, and will never breathe their names again.”

  She watched her son rake his hair in agitation and then finally sit. “They can’t reach us or anyone we know from where they are. I don’t think.”

  They both stared at each other.

  “That’s just the point, my beloved. And be honest, it ran through your mind like it has run through mine ... you’ve thought about it.”

  He nodded after a moment. Her refined, blue blood stature was disorienting as he thought about the ruthlessness it concealed. Her fit, trim frame ensconced in a chartreuse designer cardigan, a strand of pearls gracing her throat, and her elegant crepe wool winter white slacks covering still shapely legs, made him wonder how she could have done all that she had. Her hair was pulled back in a neat, blond chignon, and yet her exterior beauty would always be marred for him by what he knew her capable of.

  “And don’t forget, mother dearest,” he said, his voice now brittle, “you also were involved in trying to do the same—murder my father. But the fact that you didn’t is the only reason you and I are even having a conversation today.”

  She turned slowly back to the window and stared out at the Delaware River. “I should have known that your visit wasn’t to merely check on me, but to look into my eyes while asking if I was involved.”

  “Then turn around and look me in the eyes and tell me. Were you?”

  She glanced at him over her shoulder and set her jaw hard. “No.”

  Again, they simply stared at each other for a moment.

  “You and I are so much alike, and you are your father’s spitting image. Donald used to handle me like this.” She turned away and continued to gaze out the window. “I s
uppose once trust is shattered, it’s like fine bone china that can never be repaired. I never expected this from my son.”

  He stood to leave, and picked up his London Fog raincoat, folding it over his arm. “But that I still love you as my mother is something. That is all I have left to give you.”

  She nodded and fought the tears, but never turned as he walked away. “Right now, that I will cling to. Thank you.”

  There was no answer, just the gentle close of the door.

  Chapter 5

  Laura stood inside the small airport with her family waiting for her uncle, her mind whirring. The brightly dressed tourists and returning natives of that land provided stark contrasts within the clean, brightly lit two-story building. Everything around her seemed to be moving in slow motion. Instinctively she knew customs agents would be leisurely stamping documents to admit people to the country. Baggage handlers would take their time in the island heat to throw luggage up on the huge conveyor belts. Mini-vans would take their sweet time to herd tourists into hotel shuttles. Red caps and families would greet weary travelers and usher them to a rented or owned car. Where was Akhan?

  When he finally emerged from a new throng of tourists, she hung back to allow Najira and Jamal to rush up to him first. Calmly, she entered the family reunion, so relieved to see the old man that it took her a moment to release James’s arm to go to him, lest she keel over.

  Wearing only a backpack as his luggage to complement his traditional uniform of African print garb, sandals and socks, a crocheted knit cap, and an exhausted expression, he greeted her warmly with a tired embrace.

  “Thank you, Laura,” he said just above a whisper. “We should go.”

  Making cursory acknowledgement of James and Steve, Akhan set his line of vision forward toward the exit, and kept his gaze sweeping as they walked to the parked vehicles. Only once he was safely tucked inside Laura and James’s car like a diplomat, did he close his eyes, breathe a sigh of relief, and begin to temporarily relax.