“ The tape on your mouth isn’t like it was on mine. It goes all the way around, two or three times. It looks tight, that’s why I couldn’t understand you, but I think I can get it off. Hold still.”
He felt her teeth on his cheek as she bit into the tape that was wrapped around his neck. After a few attempts she had a firm grip and he winced as she worked the tape downward. It was tightly wrapped, but it stretched and he felt it pull away from his mouth. Then it was down past his upper lip and he drew in a great gulp of air. She wasn’t able to get it past his chin, but his mouth was halfway uncovered and he could talk.
“ Thanks,” he said, his voice a raspy whisper.
“ Now what?” she said. She was on top of him and they were both looking at the phone they couldn’t use. He felt her flex her fingers and then she squeezed his right hand with her left.
“ It wasn’t a dream?” he said.
“ No, it wasn’t,” she said.
“ I’m sorry, I didn’t know what I was doing.”
“ You were drugged.”
“ He didn’t tape our hands. If we had something sharp we could cut our way free.”
“ Like a broken glass,” she said. They were both looking at the nightstand and the glass sitting next to the phone. The same glass that not so long ago washed the pills down Maria’s throat.
Broxton ran his tongue over his parched lips as he looked at the little bit of water left in it. “Think we can reach it?”
“ If we turn sideways, maybe,” she said.
“ Yeah,” he said, eyes locked on the water in the glass.
“ Which way?”
“ Feet over the side of the bed, I think.”
“ Okay,” she said, and together they squiggled around so that they were on their sides and then they gradually slid, like two slippery snakes, over the side of the bed until they were both struggling to keep their legs dangling in the air and themselves from falling over.
“ You roll on top,” she said, and once he was over he stretched his arm, bringing hers along with it, but he was inches short.
“ We have to get closer,” he said.
“ All right,” she said, and they slipped and scooted sideways until Broxton was able to grab the glass with two of his fingers.
“ Got it,” he said, and he clamped his fingers together and raised it up.
And dropped it.
“ Shit,” he said. The glass landed and rolled onto the carpeted floor.
“ Over we go,” she said, and without giving him a chance to think she rolled and twisted, jerking him along with her, and then he was falling.
Chapter Twenty-One
Dani surveyed the site. The street below was teeming with the usual early noon crowd. People were pouring out of the buildings, grabbing an early lunch. Others were hunting for that hard to find parking space, still others were rushing to the stores for some quick shopping or doing a myriad other things that make an active city like Port of Spain bustle even in the heat of the day.
And the city wouldn’t sleep until long after the sun went down. Bars, restaurants, jazz clubs, rock clubs, calypso clubs, whorehouses, movie theaters and fast food joints all stayed open late to service the throng that entertained itself along the Brian Lara Promenade.
Brian Lara. Dani smiled at the thought of the new name for the Promenade, a wide walking park that could be counted on to be full of people out walking their dogs or themselves, greeting their friends, playing chess or checkers, or just people watching from the benches, all out enjoying the evening and the night. Brian Lara was Trinidadian and arguably the best cricket player in the game today. She loved it that the Promenade was named after him. She loved it because George hated it. Ten years ago he was the best, and today he was the attorney general and the most popular politician in Trinidad. He’d had his friends argue that the Promenade should bear his name, but popular as he was, he was yesterday’s hero. Brian Lara was today’s.
Looking down from her perch atop the Caribbean Bank Building, she held her arms out straight, palms wide, facing downward, thumbs extended toward themselves, the way a movie director might frame a scene. She imagined she was holding the rifle. She’d only get one shot, but it’s all she’d need. Ramsingh would be in her sights at five o’clock, by five-oh-one he’d be dead.
She’d get him before he said a word about the new treaty with the United States, before he had a chance to praise the efforts of the DEA in Trinidad, and before he spoke about the drug-fighting efforts of the Trinidadian police. The dedication of their statue would show the people just how incompetent the police and the security forces were, when the man dedicating it was gunned down in front of it.
Satisfied that she’d have a clear shot, she stood and walked across the roof. When she did the actual shoot she’d be one floor below. Cliffard Rampersad, George Chandee’s handpicked choice for the head of the security forces, would be on the roof. She smiled. The bait was set, the trap was ready.
She left the roof via the inside stairway, amazed that it wasn’t guarded. But Ramsingh was just the prime minister of a small third world nation, not the President of the United States.
She exited the stairway on the second floor and walked out in the middle of the bank’s busy loan department. No one noticed her enter or leave. She was just another young woman in a blue Caribbean Bank uniform heading downstairs for her lunch hour. Several people were seated in the waiting area to her right, waiting to conduct foreign business. What took only a few minutes in an American bank could take up to an hour here. People were talking, drinking coffee or tea, and passing the time of day. No one was in a hurry. It was the Trinidadian way.
She took the escalator to the street level, passed through the crowded lobby and in seconds she was through the double doors and out in the street.
“ Everything set?” Earl asked, holding the door open for her.
“ Couldn’t be better.” She slid into the passenger seat of her new Porsche. She didn’t mind Earl driving, in fact she liked it.
He moved around the front of the car, slapping the hood as he passed, and she smiled. He was enjoying himself. In some ways the man was a child, but he had nerves and he’d call a bluff every time. He overflowed with courage, but he didn’t understand caution. She’d have to work on that.
“ You’re really something,” he said, “you enter the bank looking like my mother and you come out looking like junior high school jailbait.”
“ You like them young, Earl?”
“ I like you anyway I can get you. Where to now?” He started the car, smiling.
“ Lunch at the Yacht Club.”
“ You think that’s smart? What if Ramsingh shows up?”
“ Think he’d recognize me, Earl?” She watched his eyes as he turned to look at her. She flicked her hair over her shoulders. The wig was hot, but she liked the way the blue-black hair matched the green contacts. She thrust her shoulder’s back, her breasts were larger, her smile was bigger, her face was innocent.
“ Your own father wouldn’t recognize you.”
“ Then let’s go to the yacht club.”
“ Show me the way and I’m gone,” Earl said.
“ Okay let’s go over it again,” she said. Their lunch had just been served, they were both having the special, meatloaf, potatoes with gravy, and plantain on the side.
“ Ramsingh takes the stage at five o’clock,” Earl said. “We know he’ll be on time, because he’s never late. You shoot, depart via the stairway, leaving the rifle. I run up screaming, ‘He’s down below, right under you.’ Then I make sure Rampersad goes into the room. Naturally there’ll be no prints on the weapon and when Rampersad sees it’s his gun he’ll pick it up, ’cause he’s dumber than dog shit.”
“ Then what?” she said.
“ Then I blow before the place is crawling with cops.”
“ You sure you can do your part?”
“ Hey, I’m a lot of things. Sometimes I drink too much, I swear when I shouldn’t, I bend the rules more than I should, sometimes I slap my wife around, but I ain’t no fuckup.”