Chapter Twenty-Three
Dani went back to her place at the window and peered out. The crowd was quiet now, everybody was settled in, waiting for the unveiling of the statue, the speech and then the cricketeer. Dani remembered her father taking her to see Bobby Kennedy in downtown Long Beach when she was a little girl. He was running for president and everywhere he went he was mobbed. Men, women and children offered him a sea of hands, all wanting to be touched. Magic had touched Bobby at that time, that magical and tragic year. She remembered her father holding her up and she remembered shivering when the electric energy flowed from his hand and tingled through her. These Trinidadians felt the way about George Chandee that Americans felt about Bobby in 1968.
But Bobby was good, she mused. George is not. If ever evil sparked out of the eyes of a man, George Chandee was that man. For a few instants she thought about what she was going to do. In the grand scheme of things it made no difference, but this was the first time that she was going to put a man like George in power. Always before, her hits had been political, even the one in the United States. Maybe the successors to power in those third world nations weren’t always suited to the task, maybe they were fundamentalists, leftists, or idealists, maybe they wanted to stop a civil war, or maybe they wanted to start one, but in the past those that paid her always had an agenda that they felt justified murder. George’s only agenda, if it could be called that, was to amass as much money as possible, in as short a time as possible.
And if she thought about it, she had to admit that Ramsingh was unlike any man she’d ever hit. He wasn’t a fanatic, he wasn’t leading his people in a bloody war, wasn’t lining his pockets, wasn’t forcing them into slavery, didn’t have death squads, abysmal tax rates or even an insufferable personality. He was just a good man who would have been a fine prime minister about fifty years ago. But he was out of his league in a world of drug smugglers who were richer than God and still wanted more. They wanted his country and no power on earth was going to keep it from them.
She pictured his face, the craggy eyes, bulbous nose, crooked grin and that thick shock of gray hair. She’d never had to do a friend before. He was a man to her. A good and kind, but terribly incompetent man. For a second she was having second thoughts, but she banished them. Ramsingh was going to die in a few minutes and she was going to be the instrument of his death. That’s just the way it was.
She heard applause outside and lifted the blinds an inch. She looked down upon the square, and balled a fist in irritation. George had taken the podium and was waving to the crowd. Damn him, that wasn’t in the script, but it was just like him. He wanted to be on the stage when Ramsingh was hit. He wanted blood on his shirt, like Jackie in the limo. He wanted to rage against the assassin. He wasn’t satisfied with the charisma of a Kennedy, he wanted the power of a messiah.
She watched as George held his hands above his head, trying to quiet the crowd. He was clearly enjoying the applause. He beamed his best false smile and the crowd went wild. Mothers were holding up infants and she was again reminded of Bobby. Young girls screamed and swooned like he was a rock star. Young boys applauded. He was their idol, he was from them, one of them that made it.
“ I want to introduce a friend of us all. A true son of Trinidad and Tobago. A man who has given up much to serve his country. A true national hero. Let’s give a warm Trinidadian round of applause for my best friend and your best friend, Prime Minister Ramish Ramsingh.” George was screaming into the microphone, caressing it like it was part of him. “Ram is always here for us, let’s always be there for him,” he wailed, almost singing the words and the audience burst into a screaming round of clapping and foot stomping applause for a man they didn’t like, a man they all wanted to step aside. George could make them do anything.
Then to her horror Ramsingh stepped up to the podium and waved to the crowd. What the fuck was George doing? She wasn’t ready. He knew she was going to pull the trigger at five. Why was he bringing up Ram now? Why was he forcing her hand? Did he know she was going to implicate Rampersad or was he just stupid? She thought about it for a second. No, he couldn’t know. He didn’t know where she’d be shooting from. He was just being himself, trying to shake her up, trying to maintain control, trying to force her hand, even if only by fifteen minutes. Maybe he could, maybe he couldn’t. She had to hit him before he said anything about the treaty with the United States, that was the deal, but she didn’t have to pull the trigger a second before. She’d wait and watch George sweat.
Maria spun around the corner, took one look at the cars ringing the Savannah, saw a gap between the traffic and stomped on the accelerator, shooting between three lanes of cars. “Hold on,” she said, and Broxton threw his good arm against the dash, bracing himself. The protesting sound of squealing brakes shot through to his soul, but nobody came close to her as she flew between bumpers and fenders. “Going to cut across,” she said, and she gunned the rented Toyota and jumped the curb.
“ Look out,” Broxton said, and Maria spun the wheel, barely avoiding a pair of evening joggers. Then she was past the jogging path and churning up dust as she steered the car across the vast park.
“ Are you going around the cricket game?” Broxton asked.
“ Going right through,” she said. She was charging toward the game without a thought about the brakes. Broxton saw one of the players point. The bowler turned to look. He yelled and the players started to scatter as the Toyota ripped through the field, kicking dust and throwing rocks from the rear wheels as the players shouted at them when they flew through.
Seeing the players in their white uniforms reminded Broxton of the attorney general, George Chandee, and that niggling thought that if something happened to Ramsingh, Chandee would be the next prime minister. He remembered Chandee’s hard look on the plane, his flash of temper, and the look in his eyes when Ramsingh called him on it. He hadn’t liked Chandee from the get go and he wondered why the man was so popular.
Maria slammed the car into low and slid into a left turn.
“ What are you doing?”
“ I just remembered the road around the Savannah is one way. If I cut straight across we’ll be facing the wrong direction, we’d have to go all the way back around.” She stopped talking and gripped the wheel, hands tense as she sat rigid in the seat. She was approaching another cricket game in progress. This time the players were children and they weren’t bedecked in white uniforms. Maria laid on the horn, and some of the kids turned to look, but unlike the adults, they didn’t scatter. She jerked to the right to avoid a grungy kid with a defiant look on his young face, and then she was shooting, like a well batted ball, headed straight for the bowler, a wide eyed youth too frightened to move.
She turned the wheel a fraction, and they sped by the young bowler, showering him with dust. “Hey,” the batsman yelled as the car gobbled ground in his direction, and he swung the bat as he dodged the rampaging car, connecting with the front window as he was jumping back. Spider webs flashed across Broxton’s sight, but the safety glass didn’t break. Then the Toyota bowled over the stump and the sound of the bumper colliding with the wood was like an explosion inside the car, but Maria kept her foot on the floor as she headed for the stands.
They were empty now, but Broxton could imagine them full and wondered what they were for.
“ Carnival bands go through here. Hundred thousand people, big laughing party. Only ghosts in the stands now,” she said as she threaded the car through the bleachers toward the ramp. Broxton tried to imagine the stands full of gaily dressed people as Carnival marchers paraded before them in their scanty, bright costumes. He’d heard so much about the ultimate party, but he never imagined he’d be taking the revelers’ route in a speeding car, witnessed only by phantoms.
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.
