A Wanted Woman Part 14

"You steal?"

"Never have, but when I find three bears with porridge and beds, it's on."

"Goldilocks."

"Well, I'm Baldy-no-locks now."

"Funny."

"It grows back fast."

"You look cute. You can pull off bald."

"Thanks."

After that we went for the bow and arrow. She was amazing. Old Man Reaper had trained me with a bow and arrow, but I hadn't used one in a while, hadn't been needed.

When we were done, she waited for a minibus at the end of the gravel road.

She was going to ride a bus back to town, have her husband pick her up there.

We sat in the stolen car, chatting about the only thing we had in common.

Old Man Reaper. We made light of his many serious and redundant conversations.

She said, "You know he's Bajan right? He was born here, from the Pines."

"I know. He told me story after story about how rough he had it. Told me I should feel lucky that I had cable because they only had one TV channel, was lucky to know someone who had a VCR, and he used some kind of oil stoves, so I should be thankful we had an electric stove."

"You had an electric stove?"

"Yeah."

"Must be nice."

"Well, we were in America. We lived in Huntington Beach, California, for a while."

"California. Must be nice. I've seen the beaches on television."

"Yeah, well, day and night he went on and on about how his parents didn't have TV at all, only radio, and not everybody had a radio. Something called radio fusion or something."

She corrected me, "Rediffusion. It was called Rediffusion."

"And how his granddad went on a one-way trip and worked on the Panama Ca.n.a.l."

"G.o.d, he always ranted about how Bajans went to the Panama Ca.n.a.l way back when."

"He told me. 'Tens of thousands of black Bajans took jobs no other man would take.'"

"'On the ca.n.a.l, there were five thousand dead for every mile.'"

"Inhumane conditions. Jim Crow. Dysentery. Unimaginable diseases. A new kind of slavery."

She said, "Yeah, my sperm donor told me how rough people had it back in the day."

"He would go on and on, then make me work out, make me fight like a man."

"How was he? How was he to you? How was his personality with you?"

"He was like the Bible. Incredibly wise one moment, then extremely barbaric the next."

She nodded. "Same here."

I coughed, paused, looked into the distance.

She said, "Something is on fire. Bad times for anyone with asthma."

"A fire was down by the airport when I landed. The rain put it out."

"Strange. Out of season. Four or five big cane fires a day. Big fires all over."

I was glad when the bus came. Was glad to say good-bye. We shook hands.

I said, "Don't hurt anybody else before you get home."

"Will do my best."

"I probably won't see you again."

"I know."

She hopped on the blue-and-gold transport bus heading toward Bridgetown.

I left the stolen car where it was and waited for a bus on the opposite side of the road.

The rain came again and I stood there without any shelter.

A yellow minibus came, filled to the brim, people practically falling out of its windows. As lewd lyrics about female body parts blasted, I asked if it went as far as Six Roads. The conductor said something in dialect, saw I was confused, than he nodded and I climbed on board, took my soaking-wet frame and backpack and squeezed in. I ended up next to an old woman transporting a large bushel of okra, potatoes, and squash.

I exited the crowded bus at Six Roads, an unfamiliar world. For a moment, I stood lost between RBC Bank and Williams Equipment, got my bearings and headed away from the roundabout, toward a shopworn red rum shop. Men and boys who thought they were men speckled the street, sat on the concrete benches at the empty bus stops, owned the curbs on both sides of the road. Stranger. Outsider. Foreigner. Woman walking alone. I had all of their eyes. Bandanas wrapped around their heads and faces. My gun was at my side. I walked with confidence and kept moving by an open field, and at the end of the block, saw the pink, purple, and beige wood-frame homes under coconut trees, those being landmarks I had memorized. I saw the sign that said I had arrived at the Ministry of Transport and Works, Six Roads Depot, looked to my left and cut between cinder-block homes facing some sort of rowdy marketplace, that being an area filled with beer-drinking, laughing patrons. Music boomed, a.s.saulted my nerves like it was party central.

The two-bedroom safe house was under a thousand square feet in size. A rich man's closet. Two bedrooms probably big enough to hold all of Diamond Dust's shoes. Like a flat in London. Hot. Stuffy. Didn't want to open the windows or turn on lights. Curtains were thin. Found a fan. Turned it on. It rattled like it was on its last legs, looked like it hadn't been cleaned since mud was invented, but it circulated the staleness. The music across the road grew louder with each pa.s.sing minute. There were kinder renditions. Took my first cold shower, had no toiletries and was forced to use the Axe soap that was left there. Windows vibrated as I went to the dirty kitchen dripping wet, naked, carrying two guns, and searched the unfinished wooden cabinets for something to eat. Fuh Real Jerk Seasoning. Mauby syrup. Carib beer. Hairoun beer. The only place to eat around here was Chefette. Saw it when I had exited the bus.

Soon I heard an engine outside. It was the engine of a big truck, like a Ford F-250.

It roared over the calypso from across the road. The truck roared like the LKs had tracked and found me, and this was the showdown, the music across the road a perfect cover for gunfire.

The safe house became a tomb. I panicked, grabbed my weapons, took to the floor, crawled across the room, got near a window, prepared to shoot whoever I saw first.

I waited. Listened the best I could over the roar from across the road. There was a break in the music and I heard noise out front. Men talking, Bajan dialect, conversation indecipherable. Not the LKs, but that didn't mean they weren't still a threat. Music kicked back on. I waited some more. The vehicle rumbled, the horn blew three times, then it pulled away. I spied out of the small window over the kitchen sink. A motorcycle was out front. Matte black Superbike 848. The truck was easing by secondhand cars parked on the willowy road. I cracked the door, gun leading the way. A box was on the porch. I pulled the box inside and pulled back the flaps. Gloves. Helmet. Extra bullets and clips.

And five top-shelf wigs, various hues and styles.

When the rain stopped, I looked out the twelve-pane window, the next home being only three car lengths away. I went to the walls, clicked light switches on and off six times, eight times, ten times. Nothing happened. Soon I sat on the bed, saw the neighbors, but they didn't see me. Married couple. Her hair was wrapped up. His hair was short.

I understood why the binoculars had been left behind on the dresser. The last hired gun had sat here on this spot, taking in the carnal festivities.

With a fully loaded burner in my lap and two clips at my side, binoculars up to my azure eyes, like I was in the movie Rear Window, soca and dub and calypso the soundtrack of the moment, I watched the love show. The music made it impossible to rest, even if I could rest. This was as close as I would get to positive human contact for a while. After I downed two more beers, I lay in darkness and touched myself. I pushed two fingers inside of me, up to my knuckles, imagined Johnny Parker being inside me.

ICHIROUGANAIM.

FOURTEEN.

Forty days after the Trinidad debacle.

I remained on the island country of Barbados.

It was another night of guns and roses without the roses.

The Barbarians had yanked my chain four hours ago, after the sun had been swallowed by the Caribbean Sea. The last-minute a.s.signment was to end in St. James Parish, near Fitts Village.

Around midnight I followed a stolen BICO truck from the northeast side of the island, from the bush and cane fields in St. Lucy, from the country to the more cosmopolitan side of the island to Fitts Village. Two vehicles followed the ice-cream truck, two cars with darkened windows. From a distance, with night binoculars, I had watched them load up. All three vehicles had men and women who were heavily armed. The Barbarians wanted them stopped before they made it to the ships waiting at the sea.

Those were the orders from the man behind the double red doors.

Again it was a job made for three or four people, and I had been sent alone.

When the drug mules were in Fitts Village, I pulled out from behind the three vehicles on my motorcycle, sped in front of them, came to a hard stop, then hopped from my bike and drew my weapons.

I gunned down the driver of the ice-cream truck as his bright lights came straight at me. When he veered left and crashed, as his cohorts exited, I fired on them. I used a spray-and-pray, popped each multiple times, popped anyone who came from the second vehicle as they exited shooting, hit them in their legs, stomach, popped the targets so fast that the people stuck in traffic had no idea what was going on.

The third car following them came at me, came head-on, gun out of the window, but instead of running away, I charged the car returning fire, jumped onto the hood and flipped, a maneuver that Old Man Reaper had taught me years ago, landed on my feet. They ran off the road, dropped into a drainage ditch, crashed. Before anyone could exit the vehicle, I ran behind the driver and put two in his head.

Then Death let me know that it showed no favoritism.

A bullet hit my helmet, the impact jarring me.

Wearing a motorcycle helmet to hide my face had left blind spots.

At first I thought it had been a bull's-eye, that I was a dead woman.

I turned and saw the terrified shooter facing me. A woman. She thought that her one shot had killed me. Was confused why I was still standing. She raised her gun again, had her gun aimed at me and mine wasn't ready to reciprocate. Before I could put her at the bad end of a gun, pink mist came from her head. I hadn't raised my weapon, but pink mist came from her head.

A bullet had entered her head from my right, left a watermelon-size hole to the left.

The drug runner's body crumpled to the ground. I was still off, slow from lack of sleep, forty days without decent rest, had never raised my gun at her, but a sniper's bullet had found her and killed her.

Petrichor.

The urgent a.s.signment was to disrupt the drug shipment, to kill all the workers.

Then ghost. Back to my prison. Back to solitary confinement.

I ran back to my motorcycle, took in the surroundings for half a second, looked for hostiles.

Bajans had seen the shootout from their kitchen windows, then ducked when bullets shattered the gla.s.s. People who had come outside to investigate ran with their babies on their hips.

Many lay dead as I sped off into the night, two thousand pounds of marijuana left behind.

Again, I had almost been killed. That night, gunfire sounded like cannons.

In the morning paper the Police Marine Unit and the Barbados Coast Guard would be photographed next to taped polyurethane bags. They would take all the credit for the bust.

Without a doubt they would take the credit for millions of dollars of product left on the street.

That would disrupt one level of the local economy. It was a street hustler's bread and b.u.t.ter.

I sped off into the night, zoomed away from populated areas, through cut-rock road, through one of the many cane fields that had been on fire earlier in the day. I was used to the stench, the smoke.

A handful of cane fields had burned every day since I had arrived.

When I made it back to the safe house, another a.s.signment was waiting.

I wanted to kick chairs and turn over tables, but there were no tables and chairs to kick over.

FIFTEEN.

Six Roads, Parish of St. Philip Forty-one days after Trinidad.

With a grunt, I jerked awake, woke with a lurch, eyes wide, anxiety burgeoning, heart pounding, a cold .9mm in my hot right hand, a Kahr P380 in my left, both trained on the abrupt sound that had shocked me from my recurring nightmare. Disoriented, sleep-deprived, and stressed, the world a blur, I sprang to my feet like I'd never been asleep, in a rush, moved corner to corner, from room to room in the safe house, guns aimed, fingers on triggers. No one was here to kill me. The panic dismissed itself one breath at a time. I had exploded. Panting, I lowered my weapons. For now, I was safe.

I dragged my fingers over my short mane, whispered, "Trinidad. Get out of my d.a.m.n head."