“ Call him, please.”
“ No. Now, if you have nothing further, I’m going to hang up again. Please don’t call back, this number is for real emergencies only.”
Stunned, Broxton replaced the phone in its cradle. “He doesn’t believe me,” he said to nobody in particular.
“ The police have been getting a lot of calls like that. It’s been on the news and in the papers,” the girl at the doorway said.
“ Would you like me to call you a doctor?” the young man with the tie said.
“ He didn’t believe me,” Broxton said again, and he looked up into the young man’s brown eyes and saw that he didn’t believe him either.
“ I’m sorry, sir,” he said, “but we have a lot of work to do.”
Broxton looked at the two girls in the room. They were trying hard to smile, but he saw fear in their eyes, and it made him shudder. He spun his gaze to the girl at the door and to the crowd of people waiting to check in. They’d all heard him. They were all staring at him and most of them looked disgusted. To them he was no more than a beggar on the street who’d bullied his way to the front of the line and he was inconveniencing them all with his antics.
“ Doesn’t anyone believe me?” he said, and he realized the words were raspy in his throat. They probably thought he was drunk.
“ Is there a problem here?” Broxton looked up and saw a beefy security guard.
“ No, Jerry,” the man with the tie said. “This gentleman was just leaving.”
“ Do you want me to help him out?”
“ That’s all right, I can find my own way,” Broxton said. He moved away from the desk and started for the door. The guard stood aside, letting him pass. Outside of the office he ducked under the counter and started across the lobby toward the exit.
“ Sir?” the doorman said.
“ I need a taxi,” Broxton said.
“ One should be by just now.” The door man took in Broxton’s disheveled appearance and shook his head.
“ I’m in a hurry.”
“ Everybody’s in a hurry these days,” the doorman said.
“ I believe you, Broxton.” He turned. Maria was standing there, carry-bag on her shoulder. She looked like a crisp green-eyed angel. “I have a car. I can get you where you need to go.”
“ Thank you,” he said.
“ This way,” she said and she took off running. Broxton started off after her. She sprinted through the empty taxi rank and made a quick right into a parking lot. He saw her fish into her purse as she ran and by the time she reached a bright yellow Toyota she had her keys in hand. The doors were unlocked by the time Broxton made the car and she had the engine running by the time he slid into the passenger seat.
“ He’s speaking at the Brian Lara Promenade,” Broxton said.
“ I know the way.” She dropped the transmission into low and laid rubber as she spun out of the parking lot. She made a right onto the access road down the hill toward the Savannah without taking her foot off the gas. She drove like she knew what she was doing.
“ Is the time right?” he asked, looking at the dashboard clock.
“ Yes.”
“ Then we only have twenty minutes.”
“ We’ll make it,” she said, but Broxton saw the traffic ringing the Savannah and he wasn’t so sure.
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.