“Because I am hot.”
There was only one way inside V. C. Bird, from Airport Road, no multiple entrances like LAX, no multiple levels like Atlanta, not complicated like Chicago’s O’Hare, not convoluted like Heathrow and Gatwick. A simple turn inside, one lane of driving past the cricket stadium and a printing company. The check-in area was outside, different carriers elbow to elbow. Could walk end to end in under two minutes. She took it all in as Matthew circled the front of the airport, a wishful scene in her mind, a scene where Gideon walked out of the terminal unaware, one shot to his head, and screeching out of the airport, ripping Airport Road back to Old Parham Road, getting lost in the web of communities, no helicopters to chase them like LAPD, no CCTV cameras to track them like in Central London, a clean getaway.
In her mind. In reality it wasn’t that easy. Sometimes less was more. Sometimes less was less.
Traffic could prove tricky if the target arrived when the terminal was this busy, when droves of tourists and locals were hustling up and down the brown and gray tiled walkway, others leaning and waiting against the stucco walls, salmon and green the most dominant colors. Matthew pulled over in the car park by the Sticky Wicket. They headed down the walkway, sweaty people passing them carrying tons of overpacked luggage, making their way to cars and vans that served as taxis. They blended in, just another snowy-faced couple at the airport. Snowy faces with mild tans. She slowed down when Matthew did the same, looking out at the grounds between the terminal and the Sticky Wicket, a striking landscaped area that, if there was a way for it to be done, could be used to pop the target from a distance.
She spied around, not seeing a clear getaway, no exit route that would make the job easier. She looked to her right, looked at her husband; Matthew driving, studying the ingress and egress, nodding.
She said, “Only one way out.”
“Looks that way.”
“It’s that way.”
She looked across the tropical grounds at the Sticky Wicket; grass the greenest of greens, palm trees, probably the most beautiful part of the island, maybe the most beautiful part of the world.
She asked, “Any idea what
sticky wicket
means?”
“Cricket term. Means a difficult circumstance.”
“Place looks amazing.”
“Probably the best-looking area on the island. Rich guy owns all that.”
She asked, “Who?”
“The guy who owns the Stanford Twenty/Twenty.”
“His name?”
“Sir Allen Stanford. Billionaire financier. Fifth-generation Texan.”
She said, “Wealthy guy.”
“He owns the restaurant, the cricket stadium, the bank we passed coming into the airport, the best gym on the island, that printing company across the lot, and God knows what else.”
“Ridiculously wealthy.”
“This section of the island is pretty much his.”
She motioned at the airport. “He flies in here and mingles with the locals?”
“Private plane. Has his own airstrip, gets out and rides his private boat over to Jumby Bay.”
“Jumby Bay. Is that where Britney Spears was?”
“No, she was at Crossroads Centre.”
“What’s that?”
“Rehab place. Eric Clapton built it. Whitney Houston was there too.”
“Go to rehab on a tropical island, hang out with all of the celebrities. Must be nice.”
“Glad you brought that up.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I went to Crossroads. Checked the place out.”
“Another job?”
“The facility is at the bottom of the island, southeast, overlooks Willoughby Bay, largest bay here. Has its own beach on the shoreline. Beautiful and serene, tropical, like Stanford’s property up here.”
“Who is the contract on?”
“They have thirty-eight or thirty-nine beds.”
“Not too many people. Nice. Sounds like an easy in and out.”
“Place stays full. They have one empty bed. Wanted to take you down there.”
She chuckled. “You plan on taking us down there for a second honeymoon?”
“No. Not us. You. Just you. You’re going.”
Her laughter ended. “You’re joking, right?”
“They help people with compulsive behaviors.”
“I’m not going to a place filled with alcoholics and crackheads.”
“That problem of yours. That problem of
ours
. You’re getting some help.”
“You’re joking, right? I mean, this is a joke and you’re getting to the part where we laugh, right?”
“We get this contract done, you check into Crossroads. You don’t leave this island. You don’t go to Miami or New York or Los Angeles or Paris or London or anywhere you might step off the plane and lose control. We get you help right here, right now.”
She didn’t say anything.
He said, “Shoes are your crack.”
“Blahniks are not shoes.”
“And crack is not cocaine.”
“Blahniks are Blahniks.”
Matthew went back to staring at an observation tower in the distance, studying the grounds.
She asked, “Are we sure we want to pop Gideon here in the middle of paradise?”
“If we could spot him in the crowd, we’d need a sharpshooter to hit him from that distance.”
“So you’re thinking about doing a Lee Harvey Oswald.”
Matthew studied the area. “And post him up on the other side of the grassy knoll.”
“And create mass panic. Not a good idea.”
“We could vanish in that mass panic.”
“If for some reason they managed to block the one and only exit—”
“I know. We let him get out. Away from the crowd. Find a way to box him in.”
“Gun him down.”
He nodded. “Plain and simple. Keep it simple. Old-school simple.”
She said, “We need to be out front, waiting and watching the flights.”
She watched the people, the crowd out front. Every face potential collateral damage.
She said, “Another problem is Gideon has seen us.”
“Well, whose fault was that?”
She didn’t reply. The fuckup in London would always be thrown in her face.
She asked, “Any more options?”
“I wish I could see inside. Need to see where else he could come from.”
“Didn’t you look when you came in from Barbados?”
“Want to double-check. And let you look at it, see if you see something I missed.”
She almost smiled. Almost. Didn’t. Just said, “Follow me.”
“What are you going to do, just walk past security and stroll inside the secured area?”
She told him, “Follow me.”
She went to the Liat counter, asked where she would go to see about lost luggage. They directed her to the opposite end of the terminal, pointed toward a guarded door, said lost luggage would be in that area. A guard was situated outside the glass door that led inside the terminal. She walked up to the guard, said she had flown in from Barbados last night and her luggage had been lost, that she wanted to check and see if her bag had shown up yet. The guard asked for the proper paperwork, the claim she should have filed with Liat. She told him she had left it all back in her room, said she had taken another taxi all the way from the other side of the island to check on her luggage. The guard made an unfriendly, irritated face, one that looked as if he was silently speaking of his disdain for tourists and their sense of entitlement, folded his arms in front of his drab and colorless uniform as he looked her up and down, saw white Cavalli jeans, the Blahniks, the low V-neck white blouse with vertical black stripes, a blouse bought in Paris on the Champs-Elysées and accented with a broad leather belt, the wide lenses on her Tom Ford Whitney sunglasses, inspected her haute couture from head to toe, the mechanisms inside his mind at work, came to some conclusion, then took a shallow breath that released a corner of his irritation, made a dismissive motion toward the doors, not saying a word, and let her inside.
She took the lead, let Matthew follow her inside, where she grinned and waved at customs, men who were busy screening passengers, men who stopped to address her. She told them she was looking for lost luggage. One of the customs agents was busy with an older woman, a small woman in a flowered dress with gray hair who spoke in patois, asking the old woman to step to the side, ignoring the old woman telling them she was in a hurry to get to a family gathering in Parham, opening the woman’s suitcases, old suitcases that had seen years of travel. The customs agent paused searching the old woman’s bags, pointed toward a single door between immigration and baggage claim, the door for Liat.
She headed toward that door. Inside a small room a girl was working alone, two people in her office, in search of lost luggage. When it was their turn, sunglasses off, she repeated the lost luggage story, had Matthew give her the information on the flight from Barbados. The girl pointed at a section near baggage claim that had at least one hundred pieces of luggage, all lost. Told her all lost luggage from Liat ended up in Antigua, invited the Assassin with Ass to look at the stacks of unclaimed and lost luggage, said there was more unclaimed and lost luggage in the back storage room. Then the svelte young girl went back inside her modest office and closed the door.
She told Matthew, “See what you need to see so we can go.”
“You do the same.”
“Already on it.”
While she pretended to look for her lost luggage she let Matthew inspect the layout, let him drift over to baggage claim, blend with the rest of the people who had come through immigration. The svelte girl from Liat came over, professional and concerned, doing her best to be of assistance, asked for a description of the lost bag, and she told the Caribbean girl that the lost bag was a Louis Vuitton on wheels, which should be easy to spot, then the Liat employee escorted her to another room that had hundreds of pieces of unclaimed luggage, luggage from all around the world. Again she was left alone. Alone thinking about too many things. The dead boy named Anthony Johnson. The faceless man she had danced with at Abracadabra. The morning-after pill.
Five minutes later she came back out of the dusty room, stifling a sneeze, and the more-than-helpful Liat employee asked her if she had filled out a form, then handed her one and walked away.
Matthew nodded, signifying he was done. They exited the same way they had come in.
She walked out first, sticking the useless form in her purse. Matthew led and she followed him, and she took in the area outside the exit, moved through the sweaty madness, taxis loading passengers, pickups and drop-offs at curbside, tourists getting rental cars, representatives from Sandals and from practically every resort and hotel on the island situated right outside the door, holding up signs; that activity would be massive when several flights arrived at once, making it easy for whoever came through to vanish in the crowd. A Big Banana restaurant was upstairs, and so was a lounge, but that lounge was for departures only. She saw something other than the taxi dispatchers, a post office, and a bank.
A police post was right in front of her face, right outside the exit, its façade blending in with the bank, snack shop, and everything else, its front door and POLICE sign being blocked by the growing crowd. The only reason she noticed it was because the door to the police station opened and officers rushed, came right at her, intense faces that made her want to run. The police officers bumped her out of the way, moved by her, damn near knocked her over as they rushed toward customs. She pointed that out to Matthew. He had missed the indiscreet outpost.
He nodded and walked on, went to Charles Snack Shop and bought two bottles of water, gave her one. By then the police were coming out of the terminal, the old woman handcuffed, the wig taken off her head and in a police officer’s hand, her dialect thick, first claiming she didn’t know how her bag and wig magically became filled with pounds of marijuana, then as they took her away shouting, “A little bush weed for me to smoke, just a little for me to smoke.”
Matthew took her hand and walked through the rumbling crowd. She held his hand in return and headed back toward the end of the terminal, stopping in the shade in front of the Virgin Atlantic counter, no one there at the moment. When Matthew stopped walking she did the same and looked back.
She sipped her water. “One way out. The target has to come through customs, out that door.”
She told Matthew he should post somebody at the door that led from customs into the country.
Matthew said, “I could post a guy, have him on a bench in front of the snack shop.”
“More than one. Just in case one of the boys needs Lasik surgery.”
Matthew nodded. “Any other suggestions?”
Now he needed her. Now she was the one in charge. The Cheney to his Bush.
She said, “Since you have a football team on your roster, post some of the steroid eaters outside the door. Put point men in both directions, opposite ends of the terminal, one toward the walkway that leads to the parking lot near the Sticky Wicket, another to the right, in the direction of the employee parking lot. One way in, one way out. Post somebody in a car down at Airport Road, that dirt lot that was right across the street as we turned into the airport, he sits there and if the target slips by he can establish a tail before he vanishes. Everybody armed, but nobody is to shoot, not without your order.”
Again Matthew nodded as he picked up his cellular and dialed.
He was a great assassin. Younger and agile.
She was older and cunning, skilled, smarter than her husband; she knew that.
He finished his call and hung up.
She asked, “We done?”
“Not quite. One more issue to resolve before we move forward.”
“I’m not going to Crossroads.”
“Crossroads is not the second issue.”
“What then?”
“You’ve been deceptive. You thought I wouldn’t find out. But I did.”