by Ken Douglas
Then the Toyota was climbing the giant concrete ramp between the stands, putting on a show for no one, as the speed steadily climbed, till they topped the incline and they were speeding over the long stage built to handle over a thousand marching, romping, stomping people at a time.
“ The ramp at the end is gone,” she said.
“ That’s not good,” Broxton said as he realized what she was saying. The cement stage was about five feet high and as long as a football field, but they’d cut away the ramp on the end, probably to enlarge it, but the why didn’t matter. The only thing that mattered now was that the end ramp was gone.
“ Don’t stop,” he said.
“ Right,” she said, and she kept her foot to the floor as they sailed over the end.
“ Hail Mary!” he screamed.
“ Yeah!” she screamed back. They were airborne and the engine was howling in protest, then they slammed into the ground, front tires first, then the spinning rear tires. The car bounced and jerked left, but she whipped it back to the right and kept it pointed toward the Savannah ring road.
“ Good driving,” he said.
“ Miracle the tires didn’t blow,” she said.
“ Almost there,” he said.
“ Hold on!” she shouted, spinning the car to the left as they slid across the jogging path and then over the curb. She aimed between two cars on the ring road and for an instant Broxton thought she was going to make it into the traffic okay, but the driver of a beige pickup saw the car about to cut him off and accelerated. Broxton braced himself for the crunch as the Toyota’s rear end smashed into the front fender of the pickup, sending it spinning into an accident in the adjacent lane. Horns honked and people shouted from both the jogging path and moving cars, but Maria didn’t stop. Instead she stepped on the gas and took the first exit off the ring road and headed for downtown Port of Spain.
“ Ten till five,” he said.
“ We’ll make it,” she said, but the traffic was heavy and they were already slowing down.
He was afraid that she was wrong.
Dani slipped long fingers through the blinds and eased the window up about six inches. There was a touch of a breeze and they rippled slightly, but not enough for anybody below to notice. She lifted a hand to the dangling cord to bring them up, but decided to wait. She could raise them, sight in on Ram and pull the trigger all in less than fifteen seconds. She’d wait till after his opening and his customary few jokes. Usually he spent as much as five or ten minutes trying to warm up his audience, and lately, because of his sinking popularity, sometimes longer.
She watched as he raised his hands, asking the crowd to quiet down enough so he could be heard. The applause was for Chandee, but Ramsingh was basking in it like it belonged to him, while Chandee stood just behind the prime minister and to his right, gently clapping, as if he was leading the ovation.
“ Ladies and gentlemen, Trinidadian’s all,” Ramsingh tried to start, but even with the mike he wasn’t able to project himself above the din. He smiled, looked from left to right and lowered his hands. There was nothing he could do but ride it out. He wasn’t a big man, but standing at the podium, with the breeze rippling through his silver hair, and the sun at his back casting long shadows, he looked larger than life.
Chandee stopped his applause, apparently realizing that he was keeping the crowd going, but they didn’t stop with him. He started shifting from side to side. Ram was bathing the crowed with confidence, while the hero, the cricketeer, squirmed like a five-year-old in church.
George, she thought, always so confident on stage. The perfect snake oil salesmen, slick enough to sell taxes to the poor. Calm down, you’re giving yourself away. But Chandee couldn’t read her thoughts. She watched as he clasped his hands together in front of himself, almost like he was praying. She smiled as she looked down on him. He was afraid she’d shoot him. She liked thinking about it, but she wouldn’t do it. There was too much money riding on this, and it was all about the money. She’d be richer than her wildest dreams.
Part of her said, shoot now, get it over with, but another part enjoyed seeing the sweat around Chandee’s hairline. He’d wanted to push her into shooting early, wanted to play a little power game with her. She looked at her watch. Eight minutes till five. She’d wait. Let George shiver in the fear of his own making. If it looked like Ram was going to announce the drug treaty she’d do him early, but if not, she wouldn’t pull the trigger till five.
Then she saw Michael Martel pushing his way through the crowd, headed for the Caribbean Bank building, the building she was in, probably going to his office, the office she was in. She picked up the gun. Damn you, Daddy, you were supposed to keep him busy. She reached out and took the cord with slippery fingers and eased up the blinds a few inches. Then she slipped the barrel out the window, resting the stock on the window sill and she sighted in.
“ Seven minutes,” Broxton said.
“ We’ll make it,” she said.
The traffic was poking along and Broxton felt his nerves crawling through his skin. They were so close and so far, there was no way. In seven minutes she was going to pull the trigger and Ramsingh would fall. “Hurry,” he said, “please, hurry.” Ramsingh was more than a job, he was his friend, and more than anything he didn’t want to fail him.
“ We’ll make it.” She jerked the wheel to the left, punched the horn and stomped on the gas.
“ Shit,” Broxton said as the car shot over to the other side of the street, charging into the oncoming traffic. She kept one hand on the wheel, the other on the horn as she bobbed and weaved her way through the approaching cars leaving Port of Spain. Broxton wondered why the traffic going into the city was so dense. The rush hour traffic should all be going the other way. Then he saw the accident up ahead.
“ There,” he said.
“ I see it.” She maneuvered the car so that she was racing down the center line, forcing the oncoming cars to turn out of her way. A policeman standing by the wrecked cars blew his whistle and pointed at her, then at the curb, indicating that she should pull over. Instead she swerved to the right to avoid the oncoming traffic and pointed the car at the whistle-blowing cop.
“ Look out,” Broxton said.
“ He’ll move,” she said as the policeman jumped out of the way. They both felt the slicing sound of metal scraping against metal as the Toyota brushed one of the damaged cars. Then she was back on her side of the road with a clear path toward downtown Port of Spain.
“ Almost there,” she said.
“ Maxi,” he said, and she swerved to miss the mini van full of people, running the light on Park Street. “Another!” he shouted. She slammed on the brakes, skidding to a stop and allowing the maxi to pass in front of her, then she was back on the accelerator only blocks from the Brian Lara Promenade.
Dani watched as Martel stopped and talked to a shapely woman. Ram had started his speech and she was torn between listening to him, watching Martel, and keeping an eye on the clock. Earl would be expecting her to shoot at five straight up and she wanted to stick to the plan. Martel turned away from the woman, but she grabbed his arm, still talking. He looked pained, like he didn’t want anything to do with her. She was yelling to be heard above the applauding crowd, peppering her speech with rapid gestures. She was mad about something.
Dani checked her watch. Five to five.
“ Five minutes,” Broxton said.
“ End of the line,” she said.
Broxton looked up from the clock. There was a blockade across the street and police cars were parked in front of it, but there were no policemen in sight. They must all be with Ramsingh, he thought. He hoped they were watching the crowd and not the prime minister, but he remembered when Reagan was shot and how the Secret Service men had been looking the wrong way, watching their chief instead of scanning for potential assassins, and he shuddered. The Trini police force was no Secret Service.
She pulled up behind the blue and whites and
he was out the door and running before she brought the car to a complete stop. She grabbed her purse and was only a second behind him. Neither of them had bothered to close their doors.
He heard Ramsingh’s voice booming through the square before he saw him on the podium. The crowd was huge but well mannered. “Police emergency,” he said, pushing into the throng. “Move aside.” It was the calypso concert all over again, only this time the giant man wasn’t breaking trail for him.
“ Emergency, emergency, please step aside,” it was Maria’s voice behind him. “Police emergency, please step aside.” Her voice carried the authority that his lacked and people started to move.
“ Move, move,” he said, squirming through the living, breathing crowd. He was sucking air like a race horse straining for the home stretch, struggling like a salmon swimming upstream, pushing people aside with his bad arm, oblivious to the pain, adrenaline sparking through him, giving him the energy of the Gods. He sliced through the throng like a heavyweight through school children.
Dani looked at her watch. Two minutes. Martel was pulling away from the grabbing woman, heading toward the stairs. She kept her eyes on his bald spot, the evening sun gleaming off it.
“ And it’s with the unswerving support of men like George Chandee that we have been able to get this far,” Ramsingh was saying, “And with his help and others like him, we’ll be able to lower this horrible fifteen percent VAT. A value added tax is wrong. It hits the the hardest. I’d like to drop it immediately, but unfortunately I can’t, but what I can do is lower it to ten percent, starting tomorrow and I can promise you that before the next election, not after, I will replace it completely with a graduated income tax that will hit all of the people of our country fairly. And if the rich and the well to do don’t like it, they are going to have a fight the likes of which they’ve never seen before.”
What was he saying? This was not the anti-drug, pro-American speech George had told her to expect. Ram was singing her song, echoing the words she’d used against him so often. She couldn’t believe it. He’d finally seen the light. Maybe he was a man for the future after all.
She moved the sight away from Ramsingh, toward Chandee, thought of the money, then moved it back. What difference could he make anyway? They would never let him get away with it. He’d be run out of parliament by the end of the month.
She relaxed her trigger finger and looked toward Martel’s shiny bald spot. The woman had him in her grip again and he was visibly agitated, struggling to get out of her grasp.
She saw movement in the crowd. “Damn you, Broxton,” she muttered. He was seconds from the stage, charging through the crowd like a mad bull.
Martel finally succeeded in pushing the woman away and she lost sight of him as he entered the building.
She put her eye back to the sight. Ramsingh and the money, she asked herself, or Chandee and the future? She had all the time in the world. Money or honor? Her finger tightened around the trigger.
The two policemen on the steps going up the podium had their eyes on Ramsingh with their backs to the crowd. Broxton burst through them, knocking them aside. Now there was nothing between him and Ramsingh, except George Chandee.
“ Ram!” he screamed. He slammed into Chandee, sending the attorney general careening into Ramsingh and knocking the prime minister aside as gunfire exploded in the square and blood exploded above Chandee’s heart.
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