by Ken Douglas
“ Okay, babe. I’ll stick with you,” he said. She sighed. She’d been right about him. He was the man for her. Together they’d be unstoppable.
“ It’ll be great, you’ll see,” she said.
“ There’s your man,” Earl said. She turned and watched as George came into the restaurant from the dock.
“ Look, Daddy it’s George Chandee, the Attorney General,” she said in a perfect White Trini accent, loud enough for everybody to hear. She jumped out of her chair and went up to him. “Mr. Attorney General this is an honor,” she blushed.
He smiled at her. “I’m sorry, I’m pretty busy right now.”
“ What’s the matter, George, don’t you have time for your friends,” she said, lowering her voice and dropping the accent as she took his hand. She turned to Earl, added the accent and said, “Daddy, Minister Chandee is going to have a drink with us.”
Chandee looked confused as Dani led him to the table. Earl stood and pulled a chair out for him. “Nice to meet you,” he said.
“ What the fuck’s going on?” Chandee said, ignoring Earl and glaring into Dani’s eyes. He’d never seen her in disguise before, but he was adjusting fast.
“ I didn’t want to talk on the phone.”
“ You blew it at the park. Again. Then Ramsingh takes off, God only knows where, on that boat of his. Now he’s back, Broxton’s out and everything’s back to normal. What’s going on?”
“ This is Earl,” Dani said, ignoring his last question. “I don’t believe you’ve met.”
Earl offered his hand and Chandee shook it. “So you’ll be taking Underfield’s place?” Chandee was talking through pursed lips and clenched teeth. He wasn’t a happy man.
“ Seems so.”
“ Not if you two don’t get it right tonight. It’s your last chance.”
“ It’s taken care of, George. Don’t worry,” Dani said.
“ That’s what you said last time and I’m still worrying.”
“ He goes down at five straight up. This time I’m pulling the trigger. There’ll be no mistakes.”’
“ It’s about time,” Chandee said, looking visibly relieved.
“ I guess you two got business, so I’ll be on my way.” Then he turned to Chandee and offered his hand again. “Been a real pleasure.”
“ Same here,” Chandee said.
Earl released his hand, turned and made his way to the old Indian Trinidadian sitting on the hood of his taxi in the parking lot.
“ Earl,” Dani called after him. He stopped, turned. “You forgot the key.”
“ Yeah, stupid of me,” he said.
She left the table and headed toward him, smiling as his eyes played over her body. “You’ll need this, unless you want to break a window,” she said, slipping the key into his hand.
“ I’d have got the job done, but this makes it easier.”
“ Be careful, big guy,” she said.
“ I’ll be careful,” he said.
“ One more thing.”
“ Yeah.”
“ I’ve been too sentimental about Broxton.”
“ Kind of wishy washy,” Earl said.
“ Exactly, but not anymore, it’s time I grew up. Go by the hotel and finish it. No bullets, make it look like a double drug overdose. George will make sure the cops buy it.”
“ You got it, babe.”
Earl cursed the old Indian under his breath. The bastard drove slower than his mother’s molasses. He checked his watch as he got out of the cab. He wanted to go up and finish it now, but he was pinched for time. Maria and her loverboy were going to have to wait till after it was over, but he wasn’t worried, the pills would keep them out. They weren’t going anywhere.
He gave the valet his room number and studied a tourist map of Port of Spain while he waited for his rental car. Cliffard Rampersad, the chief of police, lived in the rambling string of Victorian houses along the Savannah, not far from where Dani lived with her father, the American Ambassador. He was still studying the map when the valet honked the horn.
He jumped in the car and took off, grabbing a look in the rearview as he spun the wheels and laughed. The valet’s eyes were bugging out. Well, let him stare, Earl thought, because he didn’t tip valets.
Ten minutes later he parked in front of Rampersad’s house. High fence, decorative and deadly. Spikes on top. Rottweiler at the gate, eyeing him as he got out of the car. The house was at the southeastern end of the Savannah, not one of the stately homes farther up the road. Not a rich man’s home, but not a poor man’s home either. “You wanna win the game you gotta make the rules,” he said as he slipped out of the car and started up the walk like he lived there. He opened the gate like the Rottweiler was no more than a puppy. The big dog met his hand as he slipped a steak into its mouth and he made a friend for life.
Dogs smelled fear as your adrenaline flowed. Earl wasn’t afraid.
He knocked on the front door and waited.
No answer.
He waited and watched as the dog wolfed down the steak. Dani had been right, there was nobody home. Rampersad would be at the Red House going over security for this evening’s dedication speech. His wife spent her afternoons at the country club, tennis and swimming. There were no children and the police chief had no servants.
Piece of cake.
He opened the front door with the key and stepped into the entryway. A couch, two chairs, new and covered with plastic were the only furnishing in the sitting room on his right. The hardwood floor was covered with a fringed Persian carpet with plastic runners over it. Earl wondered if they took the covers off when they received guests. He passed through into a larger living room. This must be where the family spent most of its time, he thought, looking at the well lived in furniture and the giant screen television. He moved through the room quickly and into a dining room. A large table surrounded by six chairs set off the center of the room. The dining set looked new, a sharp contrast with the living room furniture, but the teak wood wasn’t covered.
From what Dani had told him the kitchen was the door to the left and Rampersad’s office was the door on the right. The rifle would be in the gun rack behind the desk. He pushed the door open and smiled as a hinge squeaked. It was a man’s room, floor covered in rich brown wall to wall carpet, walls covered in oak paneling, the paneling covered in trophies, lion and leopard from Africa, tiger from India, jaguar from Brazil, puma from America, buffalo, elk, kudu and deer. Rampersad was a hunter.
He spent a minute admiring the trophies. He was a hunter himself. Then he turned his attention to the back of the room and the large teak desk facing toward the door. The darker Trinidadian teak stood out like a throne against the lighter American oak. The chair behind the desk was also teak, but the gun rack the chair was touching was oak and glass. And in the rack, the hunting rifles. It was the World War II Springfield thirty-ought-six he was after.
Dani had told him all about the gun, but his hands trembled slightly as he opened the case. He looked at the weapon with a mixture a fascination and religious awe. Sometime, long ago, a gunsmith had put a lot of time in on it. It had a custom stock with a modified pistol grip so that the hunter could wrap his hand completely around it and still have a loose and easy trigger finger. It was the perfect hunter’s rifle and a flawless assassin’s weapon.
The bolt action would only suit a man confident and competent enough to hit what he was shooting at the first time. And Rampersad was such a man, if one were to believe the trophies decorating the walls were all brought down by him. He checked out the other six rifles in the case as he lifted out the ’06. All bolt action. Earl believed it.
He heard the unmistakable sound of a car pulling up into the driveway. Shit, he thought, as he replaced the rifle in the cabinet and eased the glass door closed. He remained behind the desk for a second, wanting to be sure, then he heard a key inserted into the front door, heard the door open, then close. There was a door on the right side of the room and Earl
moved toward it, opened it and found a full bathroom complete with tub and shower.
He heard footsteps crossing through the house and his instinct told him that soon they’d be coming his way. He had only one choice. He moved into the bathroom, eased the door closed, pulled the shower curtain aside and stepped into the tub. Was it Rampersad or his wife? And if it was Rampersad, was he armed? He heard someone set something down. He heard the heavy steps of a heavy man coming through the dining room.
“ Elizabeth, are you home?” It was a male voice. Rampersad.
Then there was quiet, followed by the familiar sound of water running in the kitchen telling him that Rampersad hadn’t stumbled on to his presence. Yet. The sound of the refrigerator door opening and closing told him he was getting something to eat, or maybe ice for his water. He strained for any drop of sound. He heard the scrape of a kitchen chair against the floor. He was sitting down at the kitchen table.
For a long few seconds no sound came. He was alone in the shower-tub with only his labored breath. The chair scraped against the tile floor again, sending shivers of ice over his skin, cooling the sweat on the back of his palms. Rampersad was getting up.
He heard the footsteps as they left the kitchen. They were getting closer. The squeaking hinge told him that Rampersad was in the den. He leaned back against the tile wall, willing his heart to quiet as the bathroom door opened. He closed his eyes, and survived by taking baby breaths, silent from even God’s ears. Every sound Rampersad made was magnified by the small room and his shooting imagination.
Rampersad belched and Earl silently shuddered, but stayed quiet. He heard the creak of tiny hinges as he opened the medicine cabinet. He heard him take out something, heard the rattle of pills in a glass jar, heard him pour them into a beefy hand, heard a sound like a drain being pulled on a tub full of dirty water as he gulped them down. He almost screamed when Rampersad closed the cabinet door.
Earl heard him leave the den, heard him leave the house and then he heard the car start. A close call, he thought, as he stepped out of the tub and left the bathroom. Back at the cabinet, he opened it again and lovingly took out the weapon, this time admiring the scope. It was a variable power piece of optics with a top magnification of thirty-five. He put the rifle to his shoulders, sighted through it, looking through the crosshairs, and whistled. A man, or woman, with steel nerves, and something to mount the weapon on, like a tripod or a window sill, would be a dead accurate shot at five hundred yards.
Ramsingh was a dead man, he just didn’t know it yet.
In an oak chest next to the gun rack, Earl found a leather rifle case for the weapon and the ammunition. He slapped a five round clip into the rifle, but didn’t chamber a round. Then he stuffed the weapon into the bag. “Mission accomplished,” he said. Then he remembered his friend out front and stopped at the refrigerator, where he liberated two pounds of hamburger. At the door he fed the grateful guard dog, then he whistled his way to the car.
He was still whistling when he pulled out into the traffic. He had the murder weapon.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Dani eyed the crowd below and wiped the sweat from her forehead. The room was air-conditioned, but it didn’t matter, she sweat before a hit, she always had. She was ten stories up, but she felt like she was down there with them. She tried to imagine the panic that would ensue when the prime minister went down.
A little less than two hours to go and they were packed in almost as tight as they were at the calypso fest. Already people were pushing and shoving, trying to get as close to the stage as possible. Everybody loved the cricketeer. It had to gall Ramsingh. To get an audience to listen to him he had to have George Chandee on the podium with him. Had to let him speak second if he wanted the crowd to stay through his own speech. Ah, Ram, Dani thought, turning away from the window, life isn’t fair.
But that’s what makes it so interesting. Who would have ever thought that she’d fall for a backwoods southern sheriff? Well, maybe not backwoods, but definitely not the type of man who was going to be invited into the Washington social scene. She’d miss the parties, the gowns, the gossip, walking with power, being in on the cutting edge of crisis, but she’d missed it for the last year and survived.
She dry fired the rifle, pulling the bolt back and shoving it home again, and squeezing the trigger. It was a heavy weapon, heavier than she preferred, but she’d make it dance in her hands in a very short time. Ram would die, George would have his country, and the Salizars would have no more problems laundering their money.
She moved her gaze back to the throng beneath her. The sun peeking through a moist, partially cloud covered sky painted the crowd below with a friendly brush. From her perch the people looked freshly scrubbed in the tropical afternoon. The lively and bright Caribbean colors-vibrant reds, bright greens, crystal yellows and razor sharp blues-worn by the average man and woman mingled with the dull grays of the light weight suits worn by the office workers, lawyers and politicians, to give the crowd both a sober and a festive look.
She was shaken from her reverie by a light knock on the door, three rapid taps, two slow, Earl’s signal. She lay the rifle down and shut the blinds, shutting off the outside. The blinds were efficient. A little light squinted in from the sides, but none squeezed through. She’d always liked the dark, felt at home in it. She’d always been an observer and the dark of night helped her to merge into the background while she watched.
She raised herself from the chair and went to the door. She tapped lightly, one time, Earl tapped back twice and she opened it.
“ Rampersad’s on the roof. Alone,” Earl said.
“ Arrogant. He should have some officers with him.”
“ Dumber than dog shit.”
“ He thinks he’s a prince and he doesn’t want to share his princely perch,” she said.
“ Lucky for us.”
“ Unlucky for him.”
“ The name on the door, ‘Martel’s Magic,’ what’s that?” Earl asked.
“ Michael Martel the Magic Man. He manufactures magic tricks here in Trinidad. He exports all over the world. He also smuggles cocaine and launders money for the Salizar drug cartel,” she said.
“ How do you know that?” he asked.
“ Trinidad’s a small place, not many secrets.”
“ What about the cops?”
“ George owns the cops.”
“ Yeah, I forgot,” Earl said. She watched him as he digested what she’d said. She liked it when he put his mind to work. She could almost smell the electrical impulses snapping in his brain as he worked it over. Then he smiled and she knew he got it. “You’re sending a message to George Chandee. You’re saying, ‘Don’t fuck with me.’ I like it, but what about Martel?”
“ About now he’s listening to my father tell him why he can’t ship his tricks to the States duty free. Dad will keep him tied up for about another hour, then he’ll give in sometime after Martel agrees to contribute substantially to the president’s next campaign.”
“ How do you know they won’t finish early?”
“ If they do, they’ll celebrate over drinks till dinner. I’m supposed to be the hostess, we’re having Peking duck. The Magic Man likes Chinese.”
“ So the prime minister gets killed by the police chief, shooting from Martel’s window. Your friend George is gonna be one pissed off motherfucker.”
“ The money laundering operation will come to a standstill. It’ll only be a temporary setback but it’ll remind them that the Scorpion has a lethal stinger.”
“ An hour-and-a-half to go,” Earl said, looking at his watch. “I’m gonna go and grab myself a quick snack. You want me to bring you back something?”
“ No, I’m fine,” she said.
“ Okay, I’m outta here,” Earl said, and she went back to the Magic Man’s desk and sat in his plush swivel chair, resuming her vigil at the window, as Earl went out the door.
“ Are you okay?” Broxton asked.
&n
bsp; “ I think so,” Maria said, gasping for breath. “Just got the wind knock out of me. Can you see the glass?” They were lying on their sides, his back against the bed.
“ Arm hurts, can you ease off it?” he said. Both their arms, his right and her left, were under her side. She arched her body and moved so that their arms were lying between them. He bit into his lower lip, against the pain. “I don’t think it’s broken,” he said.
“ Sorry,” she said. “I just wanted to get to the glass. I wasn’t thinking.”
“ It’s okay, I see it. I’m going to have to roll on top of you.”
“ Go,” she said, and when she was on her back he reached out and picked up the glass. He raised their hands and cracked the glass against the edge of the nightstand just like he’d crack an egg against a frying pan
“ Damn, cut myself,” he said, biting back more pain.
“ Where?” she said, turning, straining to see.
“ My hand.”
“ I see it,” she said, and now it was her turn to reach out their arms. She picked up a sharp piece of the glass. “If it sliced into you that easily it ought to slice through the tape.” They were slick with sweat as she brought her left hand through their bodies and sliced at the tape that bound their wrists together, and in seconds they each had an arm free. Then she handed him the glass and he cut through the tape binding their other arms. In a few more seconds they had the tape off their legs and were sitting on the floor, backs against the bed, panting heavily.
“ Want me to turn away?” Broxton said. Although they’d made love, they hadn’t really seen each other naked, and despite the situation, he was embarrassed.
“ Shit, that’s the last thing I care about,” she said, and she pushed herself to her feet using the bed for support.”
“ Can you help me up?” he asked.