“Drinks on the house for the handsome couple,” Eric called to Shad, and the bartender shook his head. The boss must be getting soft in his old age, giving away free drinks and playing the odds with Danny, calling him handsome. He was attractive, maybe, tall like the Englishwoman, but they looked odd together. Sarah was pale like a baby chick, and Danny dark and sturdy like a tree. Janet had looked better with him. She was evil itself, but they’d looked more like a couple. It just went to show, two people could look good together and still be poison.
“Look like we making money tonight, eh, Solomon?” Shad commented to the man at his elbow. “We don’t have a crowd like this in a long time. I think we making enough money to get us through another few months, what you think? Like how we don’t have to pay Ford nothing. He even paying the musicians himself, say is to give thanks that Sarah come home safe.”
“But it don’t seem right without Janet,” Solomon sighed. “She would have like the party. I don’t know what make her mix up in all that drug business with Lizard girlfriend.”
“Queen of diamonds, that what she call herself, right?” Beth reminded them. “She forget to tell you the diamonds she was talking about coming from cocaine and ganja.”
Maisie handed a customer a bag of patties and brushed crumbs off her hands. “She make her bed, she have to lie in it,” she declared.
“She making her bed in Port Antonio jail tonight,” Shad said, “she and all Gecko posse. And they don’t even make a dollar yet.” He placed two beers on a tray and walked them over to Eric’s group.
“I thought you had the night off,” Danny said as he took his bottle and handed Sarah hers.
“I just helping out,” Shad said.
Jennifer touched Shad’s arm, her bracelets tinkling. “I hear you were helping out big-time the other day, too.”
“Your husband don’t tell you he saved us?” Shad replied. “If he didn’t come in—”
“Good thing you spotted that woman, man,” Eric said to Lambert.
“How did you grab her, anyway?” Sarah asked, leaning one hand on Danny’s shoulder like she wanted to stay glued to his side.
Lambert waved his wineglass. “After Danny and Shad knocked on the door, we saw Danny and that man—what was his name?”
“Slim Jim,” Shad threw in. “The sergeant said he owned the house, a longtime criminal.”
“Yes, so we see him and Slim Jim fall to the floor fighting,” Lambert continued, “and we know we have to do something. I drive along the side of the wall around the house and we get out, but we can’t climb over the wall because of the damn glass. So, we’re creeping along beside the wall when a taxi pulls up to the front gate—and who should jump out of the taxi but the woman, Francine, whatever her name is.”
“Franchette,” Shad corrected him.
“We decided to split up,” Eric said, nodding.
“I catch up with the woman as she’s opening the gate,” Lambert continued. “She sees me and starts to run toward the house, but I grab her and drag her up the driveway to the door—and she’s cursing and fighting me the whole time.”
“Thank God, Janet arrived after in her cousin’s taxi,” Danny said, chuckling. “If they’d come together, boy, you woulda had two crazy women to deal with.”
“When you walk in the door with Gecko”—Shad shook his head—“I swear to you, you look like an angel—”
“With a devil on his arm!” Danny added.
“I didn’t even know she was the leader of the gang,” Lambert put in, looking as bewildered as Lambert could look. “All I was thinking was that she’d make a good hostage.”
“You got in the way of history, boy,” Eric said. “She would have been Jamaica’s first woman don.”
“I still have a question for you, Eric,” Jennifer said. “How’d you make the car alarm go off?”
“I knew all hell would break loose once Lambert went in the house with a hostage. And then I saw Janet pull up in the other taxi, and I knew I had to do something. I had this idea that I would ram the gate with the car or something—I hadn’t even thought it through or anything—but the damn car door was locked when I got back to the car. I was sure Lambert had left the key in the ignition, so I tried pushing the window down so I could pull up the door lock—and the thing went off! The loudest fucking alarm (sorry, ladies) I ever heard in my entire life, right in my ears.”
“Best mistake you ever made, boy,” Lambert said, shaking his head.
“What I loved,” Danny added with a sharp nod, “was how Sarah kicked Man-Up’s leg in. I couldn’t believe it was the quiet woman I knew.” He looked at his companion with mock amazement. “You saved us, you know that?”
She wagged her head at him. “I suppose I did, really. I was so—so furious with Man-Up for roughing me up, and I could have killed Gecko for kidnapping me. I swear to God, it was all or nothing for me at that point.”
“It give us time to jump up and hold Batsman,” Shad said with undisguised glee, and, with a whinny and a spin on his heel, Shad did what Shad did best. He reenacted the entire scene from start to finish: Danny and Slim-Jim falling to the floor, Man-Up running in zipping up his pants, he and Danny getting tied up by the skinny man, Lambert breaking in with Franchette, Janet trying to battle Lambert from behind, the alarm shocking them all, Sarah kicking Man-Up and punching the daylights out of Janet, and, at the end, there wasn’t a person who wasn’t roaring with laughter, Sarah with tears in her eyes.
“What I want to know,” Danny said when the laughter subsided, “was how Shad knew the young guy, Batsman, was Lizard’s brother.”
“Easy, man,” Shad said, a warm feeling inside him, knowing he knew something that the rich American didn’t. “He brought his baby to show Carthena, and she is Lizard family. They all look so much alike, same short people, same round face, it hard to miss the likeness. Then Batsman and Franchette call each other by home names, not street names—only family do that.”
“That’s right, she called him Bertie,” Lambert recalled.
“He was either brother to Franchette or Lizard, but he stumpy like Lizard, so I took the chance.”
“And Clementine, the helper who took care of me, was his mother,” Sarah put in.
“Mother to Janet, Carthena, and Bertie,” Jennifer said, counting them off on her fingers.
“And don’t forget Lizard,” her husband reminded her. “Mother to the don himself.”
“A real family affair,” Danny said.
Eric waved his glass around the group. “Does anyone know anything about this Franchette?”
“She come from Bog Walk, near Kingston,” Shad said. “My cousin tell me that she living with Lizard five years now. You can’t live with a man like that and not get into the business. What make her different was that she was planning her own operation. Lizard is working England now, but they can’t touch him yet—so Neville say. She was going to start the American branch, like how she don’t have no record.”
“Lizard must be some kind of a liberated man, to let the girlfriend head part of the operation,” Jennifer said, winking at her husband like it was a private joke.
“I bet police hoping they can get to Lizard through Gecko,” Shad said, “make her talk.”
“The whole thing was—I don’t know—kind of flimsy,” Eric commented. “I mean, kidnapping Sarah in order to get a visa—how crazy is that?”
“That’s how most small businesses start,” Danny whipped back, “with one crazy idea.”
“It was actually quite brilliant when you think about it.” Surprised eyes turned to Sarah, who had a new shimmer of importance about her. “I was the only fly in the ointment. They already had Danny lined up—” She glanced at her dance partner, who looked away guiltily.
“And they’d set up an infrastructure ready to swing into action as soon as Janet got up to the States
—” Jennifer added.
“—with Lizard’s experience behind them,” Lambert said, finishing his wife’s sentence. “Not to mention millions hanging in the balance if they’d succeeded.”
“I guess all they needed was one small detail—the visa,” admitted Eric.
“A little obeah and Sarah out of the way,” Danny said, “they thought it would be all tied up.” He stroked his companion’s hand as he said it.
Roper and Sonja joined the group, glasses already in hand. “Sorry we’re late,” Sonja said. “A policeman came to ask all kinds of questions about Carthena.”
“They’re going to charge her, right?” Sarah asked.
“Apparently not,” Roper said, dropping his eyes. “We’ve fired her, of course, but—”
“But she was an accomplice, for God’s sake,” Sarah interrupted him. “She must have packed my bags and handed them over.”
“She denies it,” Sonja said, “and there’s no way to prove it, since there were no witnesses. Plus, she’s cooperating with the police. There seems to be some bad blood between Janet and herself that goes way back. Plus, Carthena is furious with Franchette for getting their mother—what’s her name?”
“Clementine,” Sarah said.
“Right, for getting her involved and causing her blood pressure to go up, but she’s even angrier with Janet for bringing their little brother into the whole thing, and he just got out of the Pen. She’s singing like a bird, told them that Janet and Franchette had been planning the business for a couple years now. No love lost between them, apparently.”
Shad frowned. “If Carthena was angry with Franchette, why’d she call to warn her?”
“She didn’t,” Roper said. “According to what she told the police, she called her mother to tell her what had happened and the mother told Franchette, and she must have called Janet.”
“And to think,” Shad said, the man who usually knew everything in Largo, “that nobody in Largo knew that Janet and Carthena was sisters, that they were even related.”
“Or that the woman in the bar with Carthena was a don—or a don in waiting,” Sarah added.
“A wicked family, Lord!” said Beth, who’d just joined the circle holding two beers. She handed Shad a bottle.
“Janet never talked about her family—a brother who’s a don and another brother who just got out of prison,” Danny protested, looking around at his companions, each engrossed in his or her drink. Shad fingered the edge of his starched collar. He knew they were all thinking the same thing: that the man from New York had been running after pum-pum, trading green-card promises for a piece of ass.
From outside the circle came Ford’s low drawl. “You guys like the set?”
“Brilliant,” Lambert said.
“I love the last song,” Beth said, slinging her arm through her man’s. She gave Shad her one-up smile. “Maybe Ford can play it at our wedding reception in July, right, sweetness?”
“A wedding!” Jennifer said.
“Oh, God.” Shad rolled his eyes up to the thatch as oohs and congrats came from the women in the group and the men grinned.
“Sure, I’ll play.” Ford nodded. “Just find me a place to stay—”
“No problem,” Sonja said. “You’re staying with us.”
“Not too late to change your mind,” Eric said to Shad, eyebrows high.
Shad rubbed his neck. “Too late, boss, but when I walking down the aisle in July, all of you have to bar the doors to make sure I don’t run.”
“I’ll be happy to do that,” Danny said. He looked at Sarah. “Like to come back for a wedding? We might need you to kick Shad behind the knees.”
She put her chin on his shoulder, her nose almost touching his. “As long as—”
“I won’t leave your side, I promise,” Danny said, looking contrite. Sarah gazed back at him through squinty eyes, eyes that weren’t sure they could trust him again.
“You have to come, everybody wants to see Shad tie the knot,” Roper insisted. “And of course”—nodding to Danny—“you can both stay with us.”
“Thank you,” Sarah said, her prim, clear syllables making a point.
Danny took a swallow of beer. “We might as well make it an even bigger celebration. Miss Mac says she’s definitely selling us the land, and by July we should be ready to go.” He turned to Shad and Eric. “What do you think, guys, a groundbreaking ceremony after the wedding?”
Eric’s eyes were as wide as saucers when he turned to Shad. When he opened his mouth, nothing came out.
“Don’t you want to think about it,” Shad pressed Danny, “after all this kidnapping and thing?” It was a risk, he knew, asking the man to reconsider, but if they were going into something big like a hotel, Danny needed to declare it publicly—with as much commitment and as many witnesses as a wedding.
“He’s right, my friend,” Lambert put in. “Jamaica isn’t an easy place. You’ve seen that for yourself.”
“I thought about it, and at first I thought I should just cut my losses, you know, but what came to me was that one bad apple don’t make the whole basket bad. Like how the Mafia comes from Italy, but people still going to Italy, millions every year. My mother said she could hardly see the fountains in Rome for all the tourists.”
Danny waved his hand westward, toward Port Maria and Annotto Bay. “If we let Janet and the Geckos frighten us away from Jamaica, then they running things. I’m not going to let them win. I love this island. I want to get into the tourist industry and this may be my one chance to do it. Besides,” he added, “I couldn’t disappoint the folks here, not after they’ve been so nice to me, giving me a welcome party and everything.”
“Here, here!” Eric hollered, making the patrons at the bar turn to see what the old white man was up to now.
Shad leaned over to Eric. “You inviting a certain lady to come for the groundbreaking, boss?”
“Absolutely,” Eric muttered, his mouth twitching.
“Onward to the groundbreaking!” Lambert shouted, like he was going into battle.
“To the New Largo Bay Inn—and to us,” Danny said.
“The New Largo Bay Inn,” the group echoed, raising their drinks.
“Amen,” Solomon called from his stool.
Shad clinked bottles with Beth. “Cool runnings,” he whispered, because tonight there’d be no dark water, no sharks circling Largo. Tonight he’d be stroking the baby hairs on his woman’s shea-butter neck. Tonight he’d be filled with the warm fullness of knowing there’d be money coming in for a hotel and a campsite and glass-bottom boats, money for books and a computer and a mattress that didn’t sag, and one day—maybe not right away, but eventually—money enough for a small-small diamond.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
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By the third book in a series, one is tempted to lessen the expressions of gratitude, but the truth is that I am constantly aided by others in the completion of each novel. In this case, my thanks first goes to the village of Long Bay in Jamaica, which I visited while writing this book and which continues to serve as the rough inspiration for the setting of the series.
I also want to thank the following people for their support during the completion of this novel under particularly difficult circumstances: Sonja Willis, Lauren Baccus, Sarah Jones, Heather Royes, Gabriela Royes, Larry and Maria Earl, Deborah Huntley, Louise Santana, Ruth Cooke Gibbs, Baji Daniels, Beatriz and Ricardo Hayes, Stephanie McIver, Ursula Folkes, Mable and Jimmy Densler, Barbara Blair, the president and staff of the University of the Virgin Islands and others too numerous to mention.
And, as always, my editor, Malaika Adero, continues to offer her sage and gentle advice, which always serves to improve the content and for which I’m deeply grateful.
Also by Gillian Royes
The Goat Woman of Largo Bay
The Man
Who Turned Both Cheeks
Business Is Good
Sexcess: The New Gender Rules at Work
We hope you enjoyed reading this Atria eBook.
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This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2014 by Gillian Royes
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