The Lady from Detroit looked down at the water, terrified.
She couldn’t swim. The fear of drowning lit up her eyes.
The assassin found strength, stood in the proper firing stance. Feet shoulder-width apart, the elbow of her dominant hand almost completely straight. Aligned the front sight with the rear sight.
Aimed for center mass. Then readjusted for the target she wanted the most.
The first shot hit Detroit in the front of her head. The next two opened a wound in her heart.
She ruptured her beauty. The same way that bitch had tried to claw away hers.
Well-placed shots. Like on a professional job. She was good. Had always been good.
But this wasn’t a professional job. Not a contract. This had become personal.
Her gun fired five more times. Crime of passion. A pissed-off woman.
Detroit was stilled. No insults, no treachery came from the dead.
Gun in hand, in pain, she stumbled toward the parking lot, but once again she turned around. She went back to the dinghy, pulled the rope free, let the rubber raft and her cargo head out to sea.
The dinghy went against the waves, rose and fell with each crash.
She mumbled, “Now who’s incompetent, cunt?”
As the rubber raft sped out to sea she grimaced, fired her final three shots, each hitting the dinghy. The dinghy would get swallowed by the Caribbean Sea, dragged down by its heavy motor.
Five seconds of agony went by underneath dark skies and rain. Felt like five eternities.
She stood there, panting, aching, made sure they were dead. No one came out of the water.
She wanted no errors. Not like the man who had followed her down Rhodes Lane.
The dinghy vanished into the Caribbean Sea, a buffet for the bottom-feeders.
The Lady from Detroit didn’t leap out of the waters like a creature in a horror film.
Didn’t rise up and come after her like the man had done at All Saints Road.
Still.
She waited, smoking gun in one hand.
Made sure she wasn’t slipping. Wasn’t incompetent.
Off in the distance she saw lights, the ferry leaving Jumby Bay, ten minutes away.
The fire at Long Island, it radiated a beautiful, hypnotic glow.
The fire at the luxurious home would be seen by whoever was on the ferry.
She had ten minutes to get away, ten minutes before she’d have more collateral damage.
But.
The gun was empty. She’d become angry, used every bullet.
The weapon was useless.
The gun in her hand, she tossed it into the Caribbean Sea.
She bent over and picked up her Blahnik, the other one inside the eye of the bodyguard.
She pulled that stiletto out of its resting place.
Never leave evidence behind.
Never abandon a wounded Blahnik.
Another wave of nausea surged, attacked her hard, came fast.
Took her to the ground.
She dropped her Blahniks.
More nausea as the rain tried to drown her as she stood on land.
She was being attacked by the skies.
And she was being assaulted from the inside, from the womb.
This attack, the final battle.
A battle she knew she couldn’t win.
Darkness covered her.
Consciousness faded as the ferry came closer.
Thirty-seven
beyond justice
My enemy
was on television, a small thirteen-inch number, her image in black and white.
My stomach tried to eat itself up from the inside, her image disrupting my digestive system.
I’d been obsessed, watched the same news over and over, never leaving the television.
She had been on the news all day. Today she had been
the
news. Since early morning when Hawks and I were in St. John’s hiding out at KFC. When I’d looked up and seen her on the small television screen. First her photograph had appeared next to a news reporter. That was followed by footage of her in the world of politics and religion. Picture of her with her kids. Picture of her with her late husband. People being interviewed followed those images. People who had tears in their eyes. I’d sat there with Hawks, no sound on the television, tried to figure out what the fuck was going on.
Below those images were what was the most important.
The date she was born. And today. The day she had died.
The next morning.
The Daily Observer
had black-and-white photos, the story on its front page. Had pictures of her body being fished out of the Caribbean Sea. So did the
Antigua Sun.
Their photos in color, pictures of Detroit. More photos of people on the dock behind the Beachcomber Hotel.
The papers said she had died a horrible death, multiple gunshot wounds, body dumped at sea. The same fate had befallen her army of nameless bodyguards.
The news that she had come to her homeland to attend a friend’s wedding at Holy Family Cathedral Church. On the eve of the wedding, she and her employees had been robbed at gunpoint, kidnapped, taken down to the docks behind the Beachcomber Hotel. They were killed by gunfire.
There was no mention of Jumby Bay. No talk of dead bodies. No talk of the fire.
I doubted if Jumby Bay wanted to have a reputation that would keep them from moving two-million-dollar properties. It was news. They fed the people the news they wanted printed. I didn’t trust any of those articles. I got online and went to
Wikipedia.com
. Checked to see if they had taken down the information they had posted about my enemy’s death. They had been wrong before. They’d killed off the comedian Sinbad and Sinbad was still aboveground telling jokes. Photos of my death in London had been sent out before, photos from a death that didn’t stick. Anything was possible. Her page on Wikipedia hadn’t changed. Said my enemy’s body had been found in the early morning hours in Antigua, not clear if it was a robbery gone badly or an assassination of one of the key political figures in the Midwest.
She was dead on Wikipedia. But that didn’t mean shit.
Anybody could post lies and bullshit out there.
Alvin White.
He’d broken into the house in Powder Springs. He went in through the back door, the boot on his foot the key to get it open. Breaking a window would’ve made the alarm go off. Breaking in the front or back door made the counter kick in, gave him sixty seconds of beeping before the alarm sounded and the phone started ringing. But the alarm didn’t go off. I’d given him the code to disable the alarm. Shotgun in hand he walked the house, top to bottom. No one was there. No buckets of blood painting the walls. I had him go to the bedroom, to the closets, then had him go down inside the basement.
He told me what he found. What was more important was what he didn’t find.
My heart sank so fast it hurt.
He said, “There is a note here.”
“What does it say?”
He paused.
I repeated, “What does the note say?”
He hesitated. “I can’t say.”
“What do you mean you can’t say? Say it.”
“Well, it’s like this. To be honest . . . I can’t read too good.”
I paused.
“You can’t read.”
“I never have been able to read too good.”
“You’re telling me . . . you’re telling me you can’t read?”
Again he hesitated. “That’s what I’m telling you.”
I groaned, rubbed my eyes.
I thought back to when I was at the hotel on Metropolitan, when Alvin had come in and Kagamaster, the owner, had put the newspaper in Alvin’s face. I remembered how Alvin had shied away from the newspaper when Kagamaster asked him to read the article about Sir Paul McCartney.
He said, “Might as well tell you this now.”
“I’m listening.”
“Was hoping you’d come back sooner than later. Didn’t want to say over the phone.”
“What is it, Alvin?”
He told me two people were inside the trunk of his orange taxicab.
Early evening.
We were at the two-level Antiguan house, the one we had passed up before, on Old Parham Road behind the eatery called Vigi’s. We were upstairs in the two-story, hiding out. Three men were outside. One man was inside, his attention on Hawks. He was a doctor who had come up from Devil’s Bridge. A man who did work off the books, work paid for in cash, British pounds preferred in this market, but the American dollar accepted. Another man was posted across the street at the
tyre
shop.
The doctor looked like Morgan Freeman. Couldn’t help but think that as I paid him, then shook his hand. He left, got in his black Mercedes, and drove off. Traffic on Old Parham Road was backed up but drivers let him in right away. I stayed at the window. Hawks was in the squeaky and worn bed, her foot elevated, doctor’s orders. My shift to be on lookout. Her turn to rest and try to sleep a few minutes.
No air conditioner. The place was hot, ceiling fans circulating warm air.
Ten minutes later a taxi pulled up in front of Vigi’s. A man wearing white shoes got out. He had on black pants, white shirt and jacket. A man who thought he looked like Archibald Leach, but I thought he looked like an aged George Clooney. It was too hot for the jacket he had on but I knew he had it on to shelter the nine-millimeter hidden underneath. The men he had stationed downstairs waved at him. He nodded his head and moved on. Konstantin had left with a driver and came back in a taxi. I guessed he had sent the driver on an errand. All I knew was he looked like a tourist, sunglasses on and a Nikon camera at his side. He had landed, gotten me and Hawks situated, then gone on an errand while the doctor patched me and Hawks up.
Konstantin hurried up the stairs and came inside.
He asked, “Package I ordered get delivered yet?”
“Not yet.”
“Sure you need it?”
“Not going to the airport without it.”
“Understood.”
I cleared my throat. “Any problem getting into the hospital to see the body?”
Konstantin took off his jacket. “Your problem is officially in the ground.”
“Sure it was her?”
“Word on the street was that she took two of her bodyguards with her.”
“Just her and two bodyguards were found.”
“Detroit and two bodyguards, both men. Both died from lead poisoning.”
“No woman with strawberry blond hair.”
“Only one woman.”
“Her braids made her look Puerto Rican. Color of her hair, could’ve been Scandinavian.”
He shook his head. “Two bodyguards. One on the pier. One in the water. That was all they found at that location. But people on the ferry had seen the bodies. No way to cover it up.”
“Makes no sense.”
“Not much in life does.”
“Show me what you have.”
He turned on the Nikon. Showed me the pictures he’d taken. A dozen pictures of Detroit, bullet hole between her eyes. Bullet holes in her chest. Beautiful woman who had died an ugly death. And they had done an autopsy. Didn’t matter if there was a hole in her head. He showed me photos of her cut open. Pictures were worth a thousand words. But not one word came from my mouth.
That could’ve been me. A dead body with no identification, unclaimed and dissected.
Konstantin said, “Satisfied?”
It took me a long while, but I nodded. It was her. My hands trembled. Hate. Fear. Wasn’t sure.
Konstantin said, “You didn’t get to put a bullet in her head.”
“She has two kids. Kids who go to a Christian school.”
“You okay with that?”
“Don’t have a choice. Have to be okay with that.”
“If it would make you feel any better, I can give you my gun with a full clip and arrange for you to get some alone time with her at her next destination. Either Barnes or Straffie’s Funeral Home.”
“That won’t be necessary.”
Konstantin asked, “You said another woman was working for her?”
“Strawberry blonde. She was at Jumby. Same one from London. Had braided her hair.”
“So she got away.”
“If she didn’t turn up in the morgue, she’s still out there.”
“She’s probably off the island. Probably took the first flight they had to get out of here.”
I asked, “Was the red-haired man in the funeral home?”
“Didn’t go through all they had. Just her. In and out. Had to rush. They ship the bodies from there to Holberton for autopsy. And it looked like they have had a busy week down here.”
“If Detroit had had it her way, there would’ve only been one body bag.”
Konstantin patted me on the back. “But she didn’t have it her way.”
“So you don’t know if the strawberry blonde was in one of those other bags.”
“Only one woman. Was taken to the woman.”
“She was injured. The strawberry blonde was injured.”
Konstantin asked, “Shot?”
“Looked like a gut shot. She was hurting.”
“But she got up and walked away.”
I rubbed my eyes, unsure. Was in so much pain last night, could’ve been delusional.
I said, “If she was shot she would’ve died before she made it to the hospital.”
“Gunshot to her gut.”
“She would’ve bled out before she made it to Holberton.”
“But you didn’t shoot her?”
“Wasn’t me.”
“Hawks get to her?”
I shook my head.
“You thinking whoever shot down Detroit and her men shot down the strawberry blonde?”
“Looking for facts. Not much making sense right now.”
He pointed at the center of his head. “That was a fact for your problem.”
I nodded. “Just need to make sure I don’t have another one out there.”
“An assassin who would fulfill her obligation even when the issuer had been terminated.”