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.”
