Hurricane (10 page)

He looked for a ladder or drain pipe, and finding none, he dropped to his knees, lowered himself over the side and dropped to the alley below. He hit the ground running, charging toward the end of the alley, determined to make it before the police.

He didn’t.

The siren pierced him before he saw the car and he dove behind a row of garbage cans as the police car rounded into the alley, lighting up the night like a strobe light on a dark dance floor.

A second car followed the first and he heard two or more sirens on the street beyond, in front of the fabric shop. They were out in force. The man with the thick German accent had a lot of clout.

The two police cars braked behind the fabric shop and four cops piled out of four doors, all with guns drawn. Broxton shivered. The largest of the bunch started shouting into the store and two others began clawing at the barred door.

The barred door had the full attention of the four policeman and Broxton stood and eased his way out from behind the trash cans. The moon was almost full, casting ghostly shadows across the alley and affording him a perfect view of the policeman banging on the door. If one of them turned he’d be seen, cast in moonlight, an easy target.

He backed away from the cans and out of the alley, afraid to turn his back on the policemen. He crossed his fingers and said a mental Hail Mary, something he hadn’t done since he was fifteen, praying that the car would still be there.

It wasn’t.

He stared at the spot where it was supposed to be and clenched his fists. The roti man couldn’t have known it would take him hours, rather than seconds, to get to the end of the alley. It wasn’t his fault.

And Broxton couldn’t stand still all night. Any minute the police would break into the fabric shop. When they found it empty they’d come looking. He started toward Green Corner and the maxi taxi stand at a brisk walk.

It was a hot night. People were out on their porches. Some said hello, others nodded their heads when he walked by. All would remember him. He was white, out after dark, downtown.

He glanced at the sun-faded movie posters as he passed behind the Strand movie theater. A James Bond movie was playing. He hadn’t been to a movie in over a year.

Around front two young boys were buying tickets at the box office and blue lights were coming down the street. Broxton groped in his pocket and pulled out some money. He bought a ticket and stepped into the theater as another police car whizzed by.

The lobby was crowded and he felt the press of people as he moved toward the ticket taker. Inside the theater he fumbled forward waiting for his eyes to adjust to the dark, finding a seat seconds before the screen was hit with bright words on a black backdrop.

PLEASE DON’T SMOKE MARIJUANA IN THE THEATRE AUDITORIUM.

And most of the first row lit up. Then others amid laughing giggles followed suit. Not everyone, but at least two or three in every row. Broxton tasted the pungent smoke as it wafted through the theater and repressed a laugh. The Rasta man next to him lit up a cigar sized joint and a young woman a few seats down was taking a small, tightly rolled one out of her purse. She couldn’t be more than sixteen or seventeen, he thought, as she put the joint to her lips and lit it with the flick of a Bic.

Then he did laugh.

This is what he’d been fighting against. What he’d spent his life trying to stop. He glanced around the theater. No violence here. Just a theater full of people having a good time on a Saturday night.

He shook his head in wry humor. Only last week the United States Marine Corps had been sweeping over the country in their fast helicopters, seeking out the marijuana fields. After two weeks of gathering up and burning the weed the new Prime Minister thanked them and accepted a gift of five speed boats to further the fight against drugs.

Did the Prime Minister ever go to the movies, his cabinet, the senators, the police? Did any of them ever go to the movies?

He laughed louder.

“
Hey man,” the Rasta man said, smiling. He was holding the cigar between his fingers, offering it.

“
Why not,” Broxton said.

Chapter Six

The sky was still, clear and blue, and the tropical sun was torture. She felt the heat prickle her skin and she envied Meiko’s tan. Sweat rippled her brow and her mouth was dry.

“
Don’t think about it, Mom,” Meiko whispered, but it was hard to think about anything else. The Germans had been searching the island for over three hours. She was roasting, she was thirsty, and her stomach was aching the way it always did when she missed breakfast. But at least for the moment, she wasn’t grieving.

She fingered the coin. It had to be what they were searching for. The strange date on it had to have some significance or they would have given up the search long ago.

“
I’m going to slip in the water and cool off,” Julie said, and she wondered why she didn’t think of it sooner. For the last three hours they’d been sitting in the dinghy, taking turns holding on to a scrub of a branch to keep the rubber boat from floating out to sea.

And for the last three hours Julie had been worried about the tide going out. If the Germans saw the land bridge, they might cross it and search the smaller island as well, and then they would find them. For the first time since she’d been in Trinidad, Julie was glad that the water in the gulf was dark and murky and not crystal clean and clear like the rest of the Caribbean. The murky water hid the bridge.

She raised her leg up and over the rubber tube and silently slipped over the side. The water cooled her hot skin.

“
This is a lot better,” she whispered up to Meiko. She had the dinghy between herself and the sun and she loosened her tense muscles as she hung in the water. Her left leg started to cramp up from being scrunched under her bottom for so long in the boat. She was reaching under the water to massage it when she heard the sound of the outboards starting. By the time the cramp was gone, the Germans were, too, their powerful outboards roaring and fading off in the distance, as they headed for the shipyard in Chaguaramas Bay.

Julie climbed back into the boat, cool, but still thirsty.

“
We can go now. Right?” Meiko said.

“
Right,” Julie answered.

“
I don’t mean just back to the yacht club. I mean out of Trinidad.”

“
That’s a problem. We can’t sail at night, so we’ll have to wait till morning.”

“
What do you mean?”

“
I didn’t want to worry you, but I don’t know how to sail all that well.”

“
I know that, Mom.”

“
Hardly at all.”

“
What?”

“
Your father and I have only sailed the boat with the guys from the yards. We’ve never been out by ourselves before, and we’ve never sailed at night.”

“
In three years?”

“
The boat was in such a mess when we bought it. It took all that time just to get it ready.”

“
What are we going to do? If we stay in the yacht club that man will come back and take the boat.”

“
We’ll have to hide out for a day,” Julie said. “ We can do that.”

“
Where?”

“
There’s an Island between Trinidad and Venezuela. It used to be a leper colony. Nobody goes there anymore. It’s got a nice bay. We can go there for the night and leave for Grenada in the morning.”

Four hours later Julie was watching the setting sun as it painted the sky orange behind the deserted leper colony on Chacachacare Island. She spent a minute worrying and wondering about the wretched lives the lepers must have lived, so far from family and friends, and yet so close. They were like her, alone, but not alone. They had each other as she had Meiko.

“
It’s like a little city,” Meiko said. She was sitting opposite Julie in the cockpit and her words broke a five minute silence.

“
It was abandoned right after they found the cure.”

“
Anybody live here now?”

“
No. One time your father and I came out here and the army was doing some kind of exercises on the island. Another time some fishermen had a campfire going, but usually it’s deserted.”

“
Can you go ashore?”

“
Sure.”

“
Have you been?”

“
Yes. Your father used to like this place. The dormitory where they lived still has all the beds, but they’re all rusted out now. You should see the hospital. High ceiling, stained glass windows, it must have been very nice.”

Meiko studied the hospital in the fading light and Julie saw her quiver. Three two-story buildings made their way up the hill. They were painted a sort of beige-brown and the roofs were made of corrugated tin, now turning to rust. Trees surrounded the hospital buildings. The patients would have had a perfect view of the bay. It was a hospital, but it was a prison, too.

“
Pretty buildings for not so pretty people.”

“
Something like that, but they took good care of them. They had a church and a cinema and the ones that weren’t too sick had their own little houses. Look.” Julie pointed. “Can you see where the old road winds around the island from the doctor’s houses to the hospital?”

“
It’s all crumbling back into the ocean. It’s a shame.”

“
I think everybody just wanted to get away from here.”

They listened to the quiet sounds of the evening breeze and the gentle lapping of the small waves as they splashed against the dinghy trailing behind the boat. In the advancing shadows the hospital across the bay looked peaceful and inviting.

Julie clasped the coin and bit into her lower lip as her mind raced over everything that had happened in the last day and a half. Finding the bloated body, her husband’s death, the lien on Fallen Angel, the friendly policeman, the curious and kind of swashbuckling DEA man, and lastly, hiding from the Germans out at the Five Islands.

Staring across the bay, she was filled with a sense of wonder tinged by cold fear. She’d never sailed the boat by herself. Hideo had always had a couple of real sailors on board when they went sailing in the gulf. She’d never done anything on those trips except watch and worry about whether the two of them would ever be able to manage such a large boat.

But she’d done it. She got them to Chacachacare. And tomorrow she was going to get them to Grenada. She didn’t know how to navigate, but they had a GPS on board and it would tell them if they strayed of course, if she could figure how to program the position into it. Before she could do that she was going to have to figure out what the position was. There were charts down below and a book on navigation. She’d have to study those just as soon as Meiko fell asleep. She didn’t want to admit to her daughter that she’d been living on a boat for three years and didn’t know how to find an island the size of Grenada.

A shooting star bolted across the sky and Julie thought of Broxton, the DEA man, standing in the front of the dinghy and blazing away with his pistol, like some kind of cowboy hero. She wanted to tell Meiko about the incident, but she’d promised to keep the dead man a secret and she kept her word. Instead she’d told her daughter that Broxton was in a hurry to meet somebody at the Yachting Association and that she’d given him a ride.

“
Do you hear that?” Meiko said, breaking Julie’s reverie.

“
Yes, and it’s getting closer,” Julie said. She recognized the sound of a powerful boat moving fast across the water and in less then a minute a speed boat roared into the darkening bay.

“
Speed Demon,” Julie said, “Victor Drake’s boat.”

“
I like him. Tammy thinks I’m nuts,” Meiko said.

“
He’s her brother. She should know.”

“
He’s all right, Mom.”

“
Come on,” Julie said, “let’s put some fenders out.”

Julie went to the forepeak, opened the hatch, reached in and withdrew two rubber fenders and handed one to her daughter. Meiko watched as Julie hung the first one over the side, securing it to the lifelines. She copied her mother.

“
When did you learn how to tie a double half hitch?”

“
Just now. I watched you. I’m a fast learner.”

“
Are you guys okay?” Victor yelled above the sound of his engine. Julie thought his cultivated English accent made him sound a little gay.

“
Cut your engine and come aboard,” Julie yelled back.

“
What?” Victor yelled, louder than before.

Julie ran a finger in front of her neck, mimicking cutting her throat. Victor got the message and shut off his engine.

“
Are you guys okay?” he said, again.

“
We’re fine, Victor.” Julie tossed him a line, then she tied it off on a cleat. Victor secured the line to the bow of the speedboat. When he finished Julie tossed him a second line, which he tied to the stern. Then, with the small speedboat safely rafted up to the larger sailboat, he grabbed onto the port shrouds and pulled himself up and over the lifelines with the ease of an athlete. Julie didn’t like him.

“
I came by the yacht club as soon as I heard, and your boat was gone. I got worried and came looking. Are you all right?”