“It’s as represented,” he said in French.
Frantz nodded. “Bon. Then we have a deal. I’ll arrange for the fine to be paid, and for all the rest of it to be taken care of.”
“How long will it take for him to be released?” Jet asked.
“No more than a few hours, I wouldn’t think. Once they have the money, you’re of no more interest to them.”
“So we could be at the airport by evening?”
“I would think so. Why?”
“I’ve called in a favor for transportation off the island. The sooner we’re rid of the place, the better. No offense,” she said.
“None taken. You haven’t seen our best side, I’ll grant you that.”
“There’s a better one?”
Frantz sighed. “There used to be. Sadly, circumstances have degraded to the point where you now find us. What the future holds, nobody knows, but it likely isn’t good.”
“Why do you stay?” she asked.
“Where else would a broken-down lawyer go? I’m too old to start over someplace else. And my whole family is here. My whole life.” Frantz shook his head. “I was born here, and I’ll die here. On Judgment Day, none of it will matter.”
“I like to think there’s more than that,” Jet said, smoothing Hannah’s hair.
“The wonder of belief is that at the end, one of us will be right. I hope you are, but I’m afraid I am. I’ve seen too much to believe otherwise.”
Jet nodded. “When will you have confirmation that this is done?”
“I’ll call your hotel and alert you. Trust me. Everything is in motion now that Emmanuel here has given your bauble his benediction.” He gave her a shrewd look. “It must pain you to have to give the diamond up.”
“If it gets him out of jail, it’s worth it.”
“I’m glad you see it that way.”
Jet shrugged. “I want to put this behind us and move on.”
Frantz stood, shook hands with Emmanuel, and slid the diamond into his vest pocket. “Thanks, my friend.”
“Any time.”
After Emmanuel left, Frantz knelt unsteadily in front of Hannah. “She has your eyes,” he said to Jet.
“I like to think she got all of the good and none of the bad.”
He offered her a smile and patted Hannah’s shoulder. “And now, allow me to go to work on freeing your husband. Much as I enjoy the company, there’s business to attend to.”
Jet rose and took Hannah’s hand. “One question – can immigration stop us from leaving on some trumped-up charge?”
Frantz looked thoughtful. “Anything’s possible, but I’ll exert my influence with the gentleman working the evening shift at the airport – he’s a fixture there, and we know each other well. I’ve handled some sensitive matters for him, so I think it’s safe to say you’ll make it through without delay.”
“Thank you. I’ll be waiting by the phone.”
“You’ll be the first to hear.”
~ ~ ~
A pair of guards marched down the prison corridor amidst catcalls and hoots and stopped in front of Matt’s cell. He looked up, and one of the men pointed his truncheon at him.
“Stand up, you.”
“Why? What’s going on?” Matt asked.
“Stand up and step away from the door. And the rest of you, anyone move and you get your head cracked open right quick, you hear?”
Matt did as instructed and waited as one of the guards unlocked the door.
“Come with us,” he ordered.
“Where?”
“You’re being processed out, you are. Your fine was paid.”
“Really?”
“Best get moving quick, or they might change their mind,” the guard warned.
Matt didn’t have to be told twice. He followed the two guards out and they made their way to the administrative section, leaving the cells behind in favor of air-conditioned bureaucratic comfort.
Matt took a seat where indicated in a shabby office and signed a sheaf of papers. The woman processing him handed him a manila envelope with his few possessions in it. He took them, counted the money, and grunted acceptance.
“Sign here,” she said, stabbing a sausage-like finger at a line on a form. Matt did so.
“Anything else?”
“No. You’re free to go.”
“Is there anyone waiting for me?” Matt asked, suddenly suspicious.
“A boy out in the lobby.”
“A boy?” Matt repeated.
“That’s what I said, isn’t it? Hard of hearing or something, you?”
Matt didn’t linger to continue the interaction, instead pushing through the double doors to the front of the building. Inside the lobby, which lacked so much as a fan, a boy no more than eleven waited, shifting his weight from foot to foot.
“You here to see me?” Matt asked, approaching him.
The boy looked around nervously at the islanders sitting on wood benches and drew close. Matt leaned down and the boy whispered in his ear. When he finished, Matt nodded, withdrew a few bills, and handed him a ten.
The boy’s eyes lit up and he smiled. “Thank you, boss.”
“No, thank you. Now why don’t we go see about that car?”
Chapter 51
Ramón waved away an annoying fly that had singled him out for persecution and checked his phone. Clyde’s man would be by within minutes with the car Ramón had requested. That would be welcome, because Ramón’s leg was aching pretty badly now that the adrenaline from the chase had burned off and the tumble from the motorcycle was making itself known, and sitting on something softer than a hard plastic seat had considerable appeal – especially if the air conditioner worked.
He’d been waiting for four hours, but nobody but islanders had entered or left the prison. After baking in the heat most of the afternoon, he’d had his fill of Port-au-Prince’s dusty allure and was ready to shoot whoever needed shooting and get on the first plane out.
His phone rang softly and he raised it to his ear. “Si?”
“It’s Jon. I just received word that your man is being released within the hour.”
“Where’s the car I was promised?”
“It should be there any second.”
“Any further detail on the release?”
“No, just that the fine was paid and he’s being processed out, tout de suite island time.”
“I haven’t seen the woman.”
“Nor has anyone. My contact at court says he hears a prominent lawyer manhandled the fine for her, so she’s lying low. Which, after your motorcycle chase this morning, makes sense, no?”
“Yes, that was my fear. But he’ll lead me to her.”
“Good luck. Call me if you need anything more.”
Ramón hung up as a gold Isuzu sedan eased to a stop beside him and a gangly young islander wearing a T-shirt emblazoned with a cartoon dog playing pool on it stepped out. “Dis your car, mon,” he announced, handing Ramón the keys. “Compliments of Jon. It full up on petrol, so you good to go, you.”
Ramón slid behind the wheel and started the car, and was relieved to find that the climate control did anything besides blow hot air around the interior. He probed his sore leg with his fingers and made a mental note to see a doctor before he left the island – the hard landing had done more than bruise him, and he could feel a subdural hematoma in the ominous swelling near his hip. Nothing fatal, and he realized he’d been extremely fortunate, given Felix’s twisted remains – but still painful.
His pulse quickened when a taxi with windows tinted black glided to a halt in front of the prison’s main entrance and sat as though waiting for someone. If there was one thing Ramón had learned by watching the flow for the day, it was that cars didn’t stop for long, for any reason, on that street, lest they risk the outrage of other drivers and the harassment of the local gendarmes.
Two of those had been framing the prison doors for the entire day, apparently impervious to the temperat
ure or the dust that swirled along the patchy pavement. Ramón felt for his pistol in his bike jacket and tapped it as he waited to see what happened next. If the taxi was there to pick up the man, it was quite possible that the woman was riding along to meet him, in which case Ramón would be able to make short work of both of them – contrary to Mosises’ instructions, but Ramón suspected that at this point he’d be so delighted to have exacted his revenge that he wouldn’t dwell on the details.
As if reading his thoughts, his phone rang again. The number was blocked, which was vintage Mosises.
“Si?” Ramón answered.
“I just spoke with Renoir. He tells me the man’s been discharged?”
“I’m sitting outside the prison. He hasn’t been released yet, but he will be at any time.”
“I’ll have two men arriving this evening on a charter flight from Medellín. They’re at your orders, in the event you haven’t been successful by that point.”
“Thank you. Hopefully the excitement will be all over by then.” A thought occurred to him. “Do they have…sheets?” Many of Mosises enforcers were known to Interpol and wanted for crimes outside of Colombia as well as within its borders.
“That won’t be a problem. Renoir has taken care of it.”
So the answer was yes.
The prison doors opened and Matt’s Caucasian face appeared.
“I’ve got to go. I see him,” Ramón said, terminating the call. Mosises would understand, he hoped.
Matt looked around cautiously, obviously wary and looking like warmed-over crap, his close-trimmed hair insufficient to mask the discoloration from the blow to the back of his head or the dried blood. A lance of pain seared up Ramón’s leg, reminding him that the gringo wasn’t alone in having taken recent lumps, and he sat up straighter to relieve some weight from the damaged tissue.
Matt, spying no danger, moved quickly to the car and disappeared into the rear, pulling the door closed after him.
Ramón allowed the taxi to get a running start so he wouldn’t be too obvious, and then pulled after it, ignoring the toot of a tap-tap horn behind him. The Isuzu’s engine buzzed like an enraged hornet, and Ramón cursed the four-cylinder motor – it felt like it was barely generating enough horsepower to drive a lawnmower, much less a car, and flooring the gas did little but make noise.
The taxi held to a straight course for several blocks, and then ran an intersection, ignoring the traffic cop’s whistle and frantic waving. Ramón growled a Spanish curse and put the pedal to the floorboards, determined not to allow the taxi to get away.
That the target had spotted him was obvious from the maneuver. He wasn’t going to make the same mistake Felix had that morning, but he was going to stick with his quarry whatever it took, which right now meant narrowly avoiding being T-boned by a truck as he blew past the furious policewoman. He caught a glimpse of her in his rearview mirror, raising a handheld radio to her lips, and swore again as he sighted the taxi again, which was pulling away as it barreled down the narrow street, sending startled islanders jumping.
It made a right at the next intersection, barely slowing, and increased its speed so that by the time Ramón had followed it around the corner it had gained four more car lengths. A few seconds later and he would have missed seeing it dodge into an alley that skirted one of the numerous shantytowns littering the capital.
He made the turn and saw nothing but a dust cloud pulling away down a dirt lane barely the width of the car. A chicken dodged out of his path as he hit the gas and downshifted in an effort to coax more power from the anemic power plant. The motor whined like a spoiled child but did little to close the distance, and he slammed his hand into the steering wheel again and again in frustration, his swearing growing in intensity with each thud.
Another turn and he lost sight of the cab. By the time he rounded the corner, he was reduced to looking above the shanties for the dust cloud as evidence of its passage. He saw beige off to his right, drifting over the tarp roofs of the lean-tos, and took another turn as fast as he dared.
There. Up ahead.
The taxi’s brake lights winked at him, and then he lost sight of it again as it cornered onto a paved street at the far side of what had degraded into a tent city, the inhabitants the poorest of the poor in a country that had redefined a new low at the bottom of the socioeconomic scale. He goaded the reluctant sedan to the street, only slowing as he neared it, and almost collided with two men pushing wheelbarrows filled with five-gallon water bottles.
Ramón ignored the shaking fists as one of the wheelbarrows dumped over and the bottles ruptured onto the pavement, and focused on regaining a fix on the escaping vehicle. He was guessing at this point, but thought he could make out tire marks at the next street, where the cab had skidded before taking the right turn.
He went with his instinct and grinned when he spotted the taxi – far ahead, but drawing no farther away. One of the U.N. vehicles was lumbering in front of it, crawling along at patrol speed, and the cab had no choice but to slow for a block before zagging hard left. The delay bought Ramón the precious seconds to close the distance to no more than fifty meters, and for the first time since he’d given chase, his optimism surged.
Traffic grew heavier as the taxi rolled to the town center, preventing the cab from evading him again. Ramón could taste victory. He was savoring his win when a siren keened behind him. He checked the rearview mirror and cringed at the sight of a police cruiser closing on his vehicle, perhaps a hundred meters down the street, blocked by two cars crawling along on the narrow way.
“No. No, no…no,” he exclaimed before refocusing on the taxi, which slowed as it made yet another turn ahead. Ramón followed it onto the smaller street and braked hard when he came to a parking lot filled with other similarly painted taxis. His throat tightened at the sight of at least thirty cars, and then his eyes narrowed when he spotted the one he had been following – he recognized the scratches on its rear bumper after having tailed it halfway across Haiti.
He skidded to a stop and leapt from the car, adrenaline coursing through his veins as he moved toward the taxi. The driver’s door opened and an islander got out, ignoring Ramón, who was rapidly approaching. The Haitian waved to a group of six other drivers lounging in a group, a pall of cigarette smoke hovering over them, and strolled unhurriedly toward his friends. Ramón reached the taxi and, keeping the pistol in the bike jacket, pulled the door open, his finger on the trigger.
To see an empty car.
“What?” he hissed. He whipped around to where the drivers were gathered, the newcomer grinning while the others laughed. The driver leaned over to get his cigarette lit and Ramón called out to him, enraged, his voice hoarse.
“Where are they?”
The drivers looked at Ramón like he was mad, and the one who’d led him on the chase made a face.
“Whatchou talking about, mon?”
“You picked a man up at the jail,” Ramón spat as he stalked toward them.
“Yeah. And?”
“Where is he?”
“He jumped outta the car back by the church, he did. What’s it to you?”
Ramón’s pulse thudded in his ears and his face flushed. “You little bastard,” he growled, and unable to control his rage, drew the gun from his pocket and leveled it at the man’s head. “You think this is funny?”
The man’s eyes widened in alarm, and then his smile returned. Ramón hesitated, anger urging him to pull the trigger, and then he understood the driver’s demeanor as a siren whooped behind him and a voice called out, “You. Drop tha gun, you. Now, or I’ll shoot, I will.”
Ramón held both hands up slowly and dropped the pistol onto the dirt. When he turned to see the speaker, he was unsurprised to see two police, their guns at the ready, drawing a bead on him as they moved slowly toward him. “Keep your hands up. Don’t move or you gonna be fish food, you.”
Ramón understood instantly what had happened – he’d been lured into a trap
and had fallen for it. By the time Renoir could pull enough strings to get him released, the targets would be long gone, and there was nothing he could do.
“Officers, please, I can explain,” Ramón tried, but seeing the expressions on the cops’ faces, stopped talking. As the larger of the two men neared, Ramón made one final attempt. “At least let me call my lawyer. Please.”
The cops made short work of cuffing him, and one led Ramón to the cruiser while the other slipped Ramón’s dropped pistol into a plastic bag using a pencil in the barrel to lift it. Ramón spoke in a low voice to the cop as he opened the rear door.
“I’ll give you five hundred dollars to let me make a call. It’s important. Five hundred for one call.” He hated how pleading his voice sounded, but swallowed his pride. He had to get hold of Renoir. The clock was ticking.
“Yeah? You got dat on you, do you?”
Ramón nodded. “In my front pocket. That and more.”
The officer removed Ramón’s money, thumbed through it, and slipped it into the pocket of his shirt. “I don’t see any money,” he said, and Ramón’s stomach flipped.
“You’re going to regret this,” Ramón snarled, and then his head snapped to the side as the cop slammed his club into his skull.
“Oh, yeah?” the big man growled. “You almost killed a buncha people with your crazy-ass driving, you pull a gun on my man there, and then you lip off to me, you? Bruddah, you in a world a hurt, resistin’ arrest an’ all. You lucky we don’t feed you to the sharks with that mouth a yours.”
Most of this was lost on Ramón, who had lost consciousness a third of the way through the warning.
~ ~ ~
Matt held Jet in his arms for a long minute before releasing her and kissing the top of Hannah’s head. Jet gave him a dazzling smile and led him to a waiting car driven by Frantz. Jet made the introductions, and they got in. Matt turned to her with a quizzical expression.
“Where are we headed?” he asked.
JET - Escape: (Volume 9) Page 22