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.”
“ Earl, you have a way with words.” She turned toward the yachts in their slips and pulled her long hair out of her eyes. Then she turned back toward him. “You’d never think about slapping me around though, would you, Earl?”
“ No, ma’am,” he said, grinning like a schoolboy.
“ Why not?” she asked, unable to hide the humor in her voice.
“’ Cause you’d probably cut it off and make me eat it before you killed me,” he said, grinning even wider.
“ And don’t you forget it,” she said.
“ I never would.”
She watched him as he dug into his food. In a few hours he’d be doing his part in the assassination of a prime minister, and now he was tucking into his lunch like it was the only thing on his mind. He had nerves of steel, nerves like hers.
He set his fork down and took a long drink of water. He was still holding the glass in his hand when he said, “The bodyguard won’t be a problem tonight.”
“ What have you done?” she said.
“ I caught him with my wife. They came up to the room for a little hanky panky.”
“ Earl, you’re being obtuse.”
“ Not fair to use words normal people don’t know,” he said through a good ol’ boy Southern smile.
“ Just get to the point, Earl,” she said. She couldn’t help herself, she still cared for Broxton. She hoped he hadn’t done anything rash.
“ Relax I didn’t hurt him. I got the drop on them and tied them up.”
“ Where?”
“ In her room at the Hilton.”
“ Shit. Now he knows we’re still alive. He’ll try and get Ram to call off tonight’s speech.”
“ You think you’re dealing with a twelve-year-old here? He’s not getting away. I made them take the pills, then I stripped them and duct taped them together, arms to arms, legs to legs, several wraps. Then I taped their mouths. They’re not going nowhere. Shit, they probably won’t even wake up till it’s all over.”
“ You’re sure?”
“ Sure I’m sure.”
“ What do you plan on doing with them?”
“ That’s up to you. It’s still your show as far as I’m concerned. You want I’ll call the hotel after it’s over and Mr. Broxton and my wife can live happily ever after, have ten kids for all I care, long as you think you can keep him from talking. Or if that’s not to your liking, I’ll stop by the hotel on my way to Rampersad’s and pop them both. It’s for you to decide.”
“ You’d do your wife?”
“ She’s been getting it on with your friend Broxton. She doesn’t mean anything to me anymore. No loyalty.”
“ Loyalty means a lot to you?”
“ Yeah.”
“ But you weren’t loyal to her.”
“ That’s different.”
“ How do I know you’d be loyal to me?”
“ That’s different too.”
“ How?”
“ You’ve earned it. She never did.”
“ You mean you’re afraid of me and you were never afraid of her?”
“ That too,” he said, smiling. “But afraid or not, after tonight it’s fifty-fifty. Fear don’t run my life and you’re not gonna either. I pay my way and I take my chances. We can be a team, you and me, but we ain’t ever gonna be anything else. If that don’t work for you, tell me now and after tonight, I’m outta here. I got enough stashed away that I can live real good down in old Mexico and I’m the kind of guy that the senoritas really go for.”
“ What about the money I promised you?”
“ I can live without it. I’d like it, but I ain’t gonna push. In fact if truth be told, I’m kinda thinking about walking away after tonight no matter how it comes out.”
“ Why?”
“ It’s your line of work. Someday someone’s going to walk up behind you and put a bullet in your brain and anybody that’s close to you is liable to go down as well. Eventually you’re gonna be expendable.”
“ I’m impressed, Earl. The average man would have said that eventually I’d get caught.”
“ There’s that, too, but I’d worry more about the other.”
“ Kevin was my control,” she said.
“ I wondered how you did it, but then it wasn’t my business.”
“ I met him in Israel years ago. He wrote that book defending the Hezbola’s right to take hostages.”
“ I remember the guy,” Earl said. “I thought he was a jerk.”
“ Yeah, that’s him. He was a reporter with an idea for a book. He sent me the proposal and I was intrigued. He also sent me the price of a round trip ticket and that intrigued me even more.”
“ So you went to Israel?”
“ Yeah. I liked the idea for the book, but unfortunately he couldn’t write anything longer than a news story, so I helped him with it. While we were working on it one thing led to another.”
“ And you wound up in bed.”
“ Yeah, but that’s not what I’m talking about. Kevin had all these inside contacts with the Hezbola and I saw a story developing that would make me a fortune. I was running all over the country interviewing all the wrong people and drawing the attention of the Israeli government. One night while Kevin and I were driving near the Golan Heights a couple of soldiers stopped us. They wanted Kevin to get out of the car, and when he wouldn’t they jerked him out and started using him for a punching bag. It was the last thing they ever did.”
“ What do you mean?”
“ Kevin kept a forty-five automatic in the glove box. I knew this, the soldiers didn’t. They were so intent on teaching him a lesson in Middle Eastern politics that they forgot about me.”
“ You shot the soldiers?”
“ And afterward Kevin turned me into an assassin. You could say that our roles became reversed. He became my agent. He’d hand me cash and a name and I did the rest. The incident with the soldiers turned me into a rabid supporter of any Arab cause. I killed to further their aims and got paid well in the process. After a few years it didn’t matter anymore. I was in too deep to quit, and besides I enjoyed my work. I got hooked on the challenge, the adrenaline and the adventure. They never knew who I was. Kevin kept it that way, both to protect me and to see that he never got aced out of his cut. But now he’s dead and they have no way to contact me. As far as the world’s concerned the Scorpion has gone into retirement.”
“ Jesus,” Earl said.
“ So what do you think, now that I’ve bared my soul to you?”
“ I think that now you don’t have to do Ramsingh.”
“ Think of the money. You can take Kevin’s place training the troops and heading up Chandee’s security. He’s already agreed to it. In a year we could leave here richer than our wildest dreams. You and me Earl. Forever. Do I still have your loyalty?”
“ Always,” Earl said. “Till death.”
“ And the money? What about that?”
“ I’d love being richer than God, but do we need it? I’ve been a crooked cop a long time. I’ve got enough for us to be happy. Let’s just go to Mexico. You’d love Cabo. We’ll lay on the beach, drink margaritas, windsurf and dance till dawn everyday for the rest of our lives.”
“ I want this Earl,” she said. She had plenty of money too, probably a lot more than he did, but she wanted more than plenty of money. She wanted it all. She’d worked for it, she’d earned it, she wasn’t going to walk away now.
“ 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.