A Wanted Woman Part 26

He was irritated, p.i.s.sed off, hated the stereotypical ignorance on the other end.

I picked the phone up. Took a deep breath.

I asked, "Is this the man behind the red doors?"

"Of course not, MX-401."

"You again."

"Me again."

I asked my contact what the next move was.

"Give him another week."

"Will I be here that long?"

They hung up. Then I hung up and slid the phone back across the desk.

Big Guy asked, "What they say?"

"Your coffee is horrible."

"Is it that bad?"

"Tastes worse than beer from St. Vincent."

Hands trembling, he did a jerky motion and opened his desk drawer.

I drew my gun and moved to his head so fast he almost shat his pants.

He pulled out a small black package. At first I thought it was a condom, but it was Organo Gold, gourmet black coffee, 100 percent ganoderma extract. Whatever that meant. I went to his small counter, found a coffee cup that looked clean, poured in cold water, sat the cup in the microwave and three minutes later I added the coffee, stirred it, sipped, sighed.

He asked, "What did those well-educated gentlemen have to say?"

"Don't worry about it."

"Dumb f.u.c.ks. How did America get to be a superpower with so many dumb f.u.c.ks?"

"Bombs. Those things that go boom. We won the big-d.i.c.k contest."

"I don't care how many bombs they have, they are dumb f.u.c.ks. Highest incarceration in the world. Most fat people. Highest divorce rate. Outrageous student loans. Everybody on antidepressants up there in that watch-p.o.r.nography-all-day, G.o.dless country, where people don't speak to their neighbors and spend all day and night eating fast food poisoned with hormones and antibiotics."

"Don't push it. No matter what country you hate, somebody lives there and loves it."

"Just plain dumb as a coconut. That's what happens when you live where they will spend three hundred dollars on a pair of jeans but won't spend twenty dollars to buy a book. I watch CNN. America has homeless people on every corner, is a food-stamp and section-8 country, and they talk down to us."

"We talk down to everybody, so don't feel special. We're those kind of Christians."

"Dumb f.u.c.ks. I mean, how insular can a narcissistic, drone-sending country be?"

I asked, "What do you do for the people I work for?"

He rubbed where I had hit him. "Whatever Retail Consumer Services, Incorporated needs."

"Pa.s.sports?"

"I can get top-of-the-line pa.s.sports. Would have been easier out the office I used to have in Super Centre Warrens. I am not happy with the way I was forced out. My business was there for a decade. Anyway . . . But I know a guy who knows a guy who knows a girl who can get it done."

"You can get me a clean pa.s.sport?"

"Maybe. Depends on the Jamaican guy that knows the Guyanese guy that knows the Puerto Rican girl that has the hookup in St. Lucia, if the guy hasn't gone back to Brixton in England."

"How long will it take?"

"Let me find out."

"Do that."

"You can watch Django while I make the call."

"I don't watch movies with black people depicted as slaves, maids, or butlers."

"Dem good. Why not?"

"Old Man Reaper said it's the reinforcement of the way the majority want us to see ourselves. Most are made or financed by white people. He said white people look at slave movies the way children look at movies about La.s.sie. Even if the white man never appears on-screen, the black man didn't free himself in the same forceful manner that he was taken, so white people are comfortable with that."

"d.a.m.n. I just asked if you wanted to watch a movie, not start a revolution."

"Start dialing or start losing fingers."

He made the call. I listened from the first word until he sighed in pain and hung up.

He looked at me and said, "Two weeks."

"Price?"

"They cost about ten grand each. High cost, but technology has changed the game and unless you want one from someplace like Zanzibar or Yugoslavia, it's top-dollar."

"I can get one in a few hours in the States and it won't cost ten grand a pop."

"You want it at that rate, go up there and get what you need. This contact supplied fake Canadian pa.s.sports to much Algerians. He hooked up a terrorist network and was able to send sleeper agents anywhere in the world. He probably sent more than a few terrorists to America."

I shook my head. "Ten grand each."

"It will be worth it, trust me. The color, the paper, everything is top-shelf."

"I need it in a week. After that, it might be too late."

"A week. A rush job. That would be top priority and would cost more money."

"Can you for sure make it happen?"

"The Barbarians didn't tell me to. They use the same contact."

"f.u.c.k the Barbarians. I could take a pinky, thumb, and ring finger and you'd walk around all day poking people in the eyes like you're one of the Three Stooges. What, you don't think that's funny?"

He looked at his hand, imagined what it would be like to send text messages with nine fingers, maybe wondering if he would then be ent.i.tled to 10 percent off his next manicure.

Nose broken and bloodied, he limped across the tiny office and made a cup of coffee. He was so shaky he dropped the cup and broke it. He kicked the cup to the side. It took him a moment, but he managed to make his coffee, then drank it down and made another cup.

He said, "Rastafarian squatters f.u.c.king it up for everybody. First lawless people were stealing my metal and taking it to B's Recycling, stealing from me and going up there and selling and making a profit, and now this squatter thing. Hard to be halfway honest in an all-the-way-wicked world."

I opened my backpack and took out four thousand Bajan dollars.

I said, "I will need six pa.s.sports."

He touched his head, his eye, then counted the money and shook his head like he had the upper hand in the transaction. "Six top-shelf pa.s.sports will cost a lot more than that."

"When they come in and they are clean, I will pay whatever you charge."

"Mind driving me to the hospital?"

I shook my head. "I'm not a chauffeur. Work that s.h.i.t out yourself."

He nodded and blinked his good eye, tears draining from the other.

"Stay focused. I need a half-dozen pa.s.sports. Hook it up. This is between your ears and the ears of Jesus's daddy. Repeat one word and I'll come back and next time I will not be this nice."

"I'll end up losing my pinky."

"No, you'll end up with a bullet hole in each hand, one hole in the head, and your w.a.n.ker cut off and shoved down your throat. Mag will open her shop and find you in the hallway."

He nodded again. "The cricketer."

"You know the island. You know what's not in the newspapers. What do you know about the cricketer they found dead the other day?"

"Same s.h.i.t happened to another guy not long ago. Rumor was that he had stolen drug money. Was stealing from a drug lord. That was the word that spread around the island."

I asked, "Cricketer was involved in the same dealings?"

"Only the drug lord, his spine wasn't removed."

"Was the cricketer involved in the same dealings as the drug lord?"

"Not at liberty to say."

"Was he?"

"Yes, but you didn't hear it from me. I heard that he gave up cricket and took over that aspect of the drug business when the last drug lord was taken out two or three years ago."

"What was his connection to the Barbarians?"

"I have no idea. If he was on the Barbarians' payroll, n.o.body told me."

I nodded, focused on my needs. "Six pa.s.sports. Get me as far north as Na.s.sau."

"To make that miracle happen, I will need the balance of the money very soon."

"Ten grand US a pop. You're gouging me."

"The government gouges everybody for everything, so as a businessman I have to pa.s.s on the cost to my customers. Tourists get tax breaks, but the citizens pay full price for everything."

He unlocked the gate.

I said, "Double-cross me and earn a Chelsea smile. Do you understand me, Big Guy?"

"Understood. I don't want to look like the Joker."

"I don't want to come back and act like the Joker."

"You are definitely his daughter. You're crazy just like him."

I thought about Sabina. Then the beautiful West Indian woman who had birthed me.

I said, "Not like him. Like my mother. Mean like my father; half-crazy like my mother."

"Half-crazy?"

"Don't push it."

TWENTY-NINE.

Six Roads Sleep-deprived since Florida. Antsy since Trinidad. Troubled since birth.

It was a little after ten in the morning. Outside held heat that rivaled the center of the sun, but it was ten degrees cooler than the inside of the safe house. I was too far inland to feel an ocean breeze.

I decided to do the geek shuffle, small steps, pigeon-toed, drooping shoulders, send the message that I was insecure, disorganized. That decided, I headed between homes on the edge of the main road, Farm Road, walked underneath a mango tree, inhaled the scent of gra.s.s and dead animals from the slaughterhouse. One of the neighbors was on his porch using his electric razor to shave; another was hanging laundry. The close-knit community woke up like rural Arkansas. First roosters crowed, dogs barked, then the roar and fumes of cars and transport buses dancing with the heat of the sun.

I came up on the red-hued rum shop a block over. A dread, wearing a hard hat, strutted over to a younger boy. The kid checked the streets before he strutted toward the short tree in front of the shopworn pub. The dope boys worked there day and night, and hid their drugs in the trees and bushes until a customer arrived. I'd seen many transactions as children sat at the bus stop at the foot of the rum shop. Their boss was a low-level drug lord who lived on the road next to the rum shop, and the rum shop was on the back side of Princess Margaret Secondary. If a man ran a drug business by a school, he would always have new customers. The laborer wearing the hard hat did a hand exchange, money for drugs, then crossed the road, took long strides into the heat, and went back to work at the Ministry of Transport.

Dope boys looked at me.