A Wanted Woman Part 32

"You charge the Bajans thirty Bajan, and that is fifteen dollars US."

"That for Bajan."

"Does the Jet Ski somehow run better for tourists and worse for a Bajan?"

"It run the same for everybody."

"Exactly. Don't gouge me. I know the economy is f.u.c.ked and times are hard, but don't disrespect me like that. You know what? I'll take my money to someone else. Have a nice day."

"Okay, pretty legs. T'irty Bajan, t'irty minutes. That Bajan price."

"Okay, thirty minutes."

I pulled on a giant red, yellow, black, and green crocheted brimmed hat, a novelty item that had fake dreadlocks hanging from all around its brim down my back. I rode the waves, struck them, porpoised the waters until I was on the backside of the Barbarians' other safe house. I rode by several times, made loops before I stopped and took out my binoculars. The Toyota RAV4 was there.

Zenga was upstairs. He had on red biker shorts and nothing else. There was a gym up there. He was doing speed sets. Pull-ups. Bodyweight squats. Chair dips. Calf raises. Inverted row. Lunges. Decline push-ups. Leg deadlifts. Chin-ups. Jumping rope at a boxer's pace.

Dormeuil was downstairs at a table poring over what looked like a map.

The black pyromaniac from Texas was outside walking the perimeter.

Soon two more SUVs pulled up in the front. Not many homes on the island had garages. Only a small percentage had carports. This one had a garage and the SUVs pulled inside.

The pyromaniac looked out to the ocean and saw me sitting there, rising and falling on the waves, the sea trying to push me back toward the island's sandy and rocky sh.o.r.es. The pyromaniac lit a match, lit a cigarette, and stared. I was a dot on a water vehicle. I took my bikini top off, sat in the sun topless, b.r.e.a.s.t.s bouncing. He waved for me to ride his way. I wanted to be sure he was looking at me and not off into the distance. I put my bra back on, adjusted the sorority sisters, then took off on the Jet Ski.

I went toward the east, vanished for five minutes, then doubled back.

By then they were closing the curtains and shutters in the house.

Before they had shut me out, I saw who had been in the SUVs. It was two SUVs loaded with women in short dresses. So they had found themselves a few Garrison girls. Drinks were poured. Tops came off. The women started to dance, to wine, to spread the eagle. They would be occupied for a while.

Prior Park section of St. James Parish. The newspaper had practically printed directions to the dead cricketer's front door. I found his townhome behind Redman's gas station, in a new development tucked away in a cul-de-sac. Looked like a fete. Many people were parked, all heading to his home. Many people. I wasn't the only one who had gotten directions from the newspaper.

My face was without makeup. My shoes were steel-toed, and my jeans were worn, carried a day's worth of dirt, and were loose-fitting. My top was a purple polo with the logo for Simmons Electrical.

There were dozens of other vehicles there, the first letter of the cars', SUVs', and trucks' tags telling me they had come from all parishes. Many men were there. It looked like every woman he had ever slept with had showed up to collect the panties and earrings they had left behind. When I limped up, bad skin, unattractive, they turned their heads away, went back to talking as if I were invisible.

"What de s.h.i.te? His d.i.c.k and spine was removed? How the s.h.i.te do you remove a man's spine? Do you pull his d.i.c.k so hard his d.a.m.n spine comes out? How sick would you have to be to do that?"

"That's not funny."

"I serious. How do you do that? Only the devil would do something like that."

"They said that the back of his neck had been cut, his spine taken out; that's all I know."

"I'm not surprised."

"I knew it would get him one day. Just didn't know it would be so soon."

"Hush. She coming."

The pregnant girlfriend was found and directed toward me. She had been engaged in a heated conversation with one of the cricketer's brothers, a man who felt he was ent.i.tled to his dead brother's car. The dead man's mother was there to investigate as well, wanted to find out what would happen to the house. Exasperated, about to explode, the luxuriously dressed pregnant girl saw me waiting and brought me a brand-new frown, asked me if I was another one of the cricketer's girlfriends. I told her "N-n-no."

She asked if he and I'd had a baby together. I told her n-n-no.

I was here on b-b-business, an appointment that he had scheduled last week with the homeowner. Backpack in hand, I told her that I was an electrician who had come by to do an emergency follow-up in-in-inspection on all electrical work that had been done by S-S-Simmons Electrical. Two homes had caught on fire and we wanted everyone to be safe and not endanger their homes and the lives of family. I told her I could come back another time, in a couple of weeks, a-a-after the funeral.

She put her hand on her belly and it looked like she imagined a middle-of-the-night fire, and said that she wanted me to inspect her home. She'd had enough bad luck to last a lifetime.

I was left to walk the upstairs portion of the home alone, clipboard in hand. The smallest of three bedrooms had been converted into a shrine to his weak career as a cricketer, and the entire home was a museum that honored his love of his British-born sport. I was in a home that didn't have the photos of any of his b.a.s.t.a.r.d children on its walls. A photo of the pregnant girlfriend was in a frame that was easy to move and hide when he brought other women here to be facedown, a.s.s up, grabbing sheets and screaming his name, if they knew his name. They probably did. I doubt if he knew theirs.

His bed was Italian and on a raised platform-a throne, raised up higher than the average bed, a place to perform and look down on the peasants. The only things missing were chairs for an audience.

It was the star in the room of luxury.

It was made of the best ebony, sapele, and curly maple, smooth lines. The bed also had iPad holders and charging stations, all that and a pop-up swiveling television and computer monitors.

The walk-in closet that he had shared with his pregnant mistress was the size of my safe house. He had clothes like he was a movie star, but she also had a very impressive wardrobe.

She had a plethora of expensive shoes. She'd done a lot of shopping in New York and London.

Then I saw his computer. He owned a 24-karat-gold-plated MacBook Pro with a diamond-encrusted Apple logo, 24-four-karat-gold gilding over the entire MacBook Pro case.

I looked at the wad of money that I had taken from a dying man.

When I was coming here, part of my intention was to return it, leave it sitting in a dresser, or maybe inside her lingerie drawer, but seeing I was in some sort of Fort Knox, I reconsidered.

Next to a row of high-end watches, a book-size jewelry box made of toffee birdseye maple and cherry was on the dresser. The simplest thing in the room. I walked across beautiful rugs, flipped the box open.

It was loaded with his bracelets and necklaces, but the rings were what made my heart race.

He had owned three Wellendorff rings.

He owned the same style ring the LKs wore.

I didn't believe in coincidences. I had stumbled into the enemy's den.

Someone was behind me. I sensed them before I heard them breathing.

I turned around and faced the pregnant woman of the house.

THIRTY-FIVE.

She asked, "Are you almost done?"

"A-a-a-almost done. T-t-ten m-m-m-"

"Ten minutes. How does everything look so far?"

"F-f-f-fine."

"I'll be downstairs when you're done."

"The man who d-d-died?"

"My husband."

I noticed her ring. It was a 2.4-carat blue diamond set in platinum between two diamond baguettes. She wore the same ring that Diamond Dust wore. She was the wife, not the wifey, not the girlfriend.

"Didn't know your h-h-husband play-play-play-"

"Played cricket?"

"Yeah."

"Neither did I. It seems he did a whole set of things that I had no idea he was doing. b.i.t.c.hes and babies. That's all Barbados is BBMing about. His b.i.t.c.hes and those babies. I'm too angry to be sad right now. I am the laughingstock of Barbados this morning. He horned me good."

Kids ran up the stairs with their mothers on their heels. That distraction pulled the cricketer's wife back into the hallway. She took the hands of two overactive kids, had words with their mothers about controlling them in her home, and headed back down the stairs. I pretended that I was busy working, looking at an outlet. The door to another bedroom was open. One of the dead man's baby-mommas was in there, heard her talking bad about the dead cricketer, said she should steal everything she could carry. A man was in there with her. He talked bad about the cricketer too. It was one of the dead man's half-brothers. Both had drinks in hand. A kid ran into that bedroom, called the woman Mommy, and she snapped and told the kid to go play with her brothers and sisters while Mommy talked to her uncle in private. The kid ran back out of the bedroom, almost fell down the stairs. Her mommy touched her baby-daddy's half brother with her fingertips. She put her gla.s.s down on the expensive bedside table. He ran his hand across the side of her face, then closed the bedroom door.

I headed back toward the golden MacBook Pro.

Ten minutes later I headed down the stairs, pa.s.sed all the people.

I asked the overwhelmed pregnant woman to sign off on the inspection.

I told her t-t-thank you, that all l-l-looked okay, and said that I was sorry for her l-l-loss.

She had no patience for an unattractive pair of red legs with a speech impediment.

Just as I was leaving, the woman the cricketer had argued with at Sugar Ultra Lounge hurried toward the house. Slacks, low heels, top with the Going Places Travel logo. She stormed right by me, entered what she'd a.s.sumed would one day become her castle, then came to a halt when she saw the collection of women and the gaggle of hyperactive kids, all resembling her dead lover, playing together.

She shouted at the top of her lungs and told the world that she felt like a f.u.c.kin' fool.

Warrens, Parish of St. Michael When I made it to the bottom of the hill at Warrens, I hit the roundabout and drove to the car park on the backside of Super Centre, the one that held Chicken Barn. Petrichor was there. This time she was early. I pulled up and she stopped texting someone. I handed her the hard drive that I had just stolen from the golden MacBook Pro. That last ten minutes I'd been left alone was all I had needed to change occupations. I told Petrichor about all the high-end s.h.i.t I had seen inside the dead man's house.

"A gold-plated MacBook Pro? What the s.h.i.te kind of operating system would that use?"

"The rings. That tells me that the cricketer had a.s.sociation with the LKs."

"s.h.i.te. I thought the Barbarians were trying to keep you away from the LKs."

"They put me deeper into LK territory. An annex for the s.h.i.t they're doing in Trinidad."

"I'm confused."

"That drug shipment I attacked probably had something to do with the LKs as well."

"Where was the cricketer that night?"

"Had to be at the end, waiting at the docks. Bet we hit them before they made it to him. He probably was far enough away to see the shootout, but had no interest in partic.i.p.ating."

"He might've been in his fancy car getting a b.l.o.w. .j.o.b."

"Maybe. Otherwise, he would've died the first night. He didn't die, so they sent me the next night to wrap up loose ends. That's the way I see it. Cricketer thought he was clear. He had planned to celebrate that deal, but we f.u.c.ked it up. Then he went to the Gap, was arrogant enough to go party anyway, got himself killed at church."

"Some people love to fete too much."

"You think?"

"Someone dies, people fete. People lose a job, they fete. Lose a drug shipment, throw yourself a fete. Nothing ever stopped a fete. Not in the islands. People in Trinidad, they hear a hurricane is coming, they have hurricane fetes all over the island. They had a state of emergency over there, so instead of going home to beat the curfew, they would leave work and go to the clubs and fete all night, then go to work the next morning and sleep. People being killed at a drug bust stops nothing."

"I'm learning. I'm sure the LKs will throw a big fete if they ever catch me. A real big one."

Petrichor said, "Now I'm feeling malicious and want to know what the h.e.l.l has been going on."

"Malicious?"

"Nosy. We call nosy people malicious."

"Why?"

"Because they are malicious and thrive on maliciousness."

"I need someone to be malicious and bring some maliciousness and check that hard drive for hidden files. Know anybody?"

"I know somebody who knows somebody. What are you looking for?"

"Anything on the LKs. He probably has nothing but p.o.r.n on his hard drive, but look anyway."

"Wait. Why would the Barbarians stop a drug shipment by the LKs?"

"Had to be business. Maybe somebody larger than the LKs had to pay them to step on toes."

"Crossing the LKs like that, first in Trinidad, then here, that could start an island war. They already fight over flying fish, have soca battles, but this would take it to a new level."

"I'm in the middle of something that I don't understand. I'll figure this s.h.i.te out on my own."

She asked, "Need me tomorrow? My husband will be on the East Coast all day."

"I'm good. I did a whole set of jobs like this when I started."

"This one paying much?"