She said, "And from what we understand, the a.s.sa.s.sin was present at the Carlton Savannah. She was seen with or near our other beloved politician before he fell from the roof. We believe that she was involved. We believe that he had exposed her, then she attacked him and threw him from the roof. We have had more deaths in two days than one can bear. More murders in two days than I will tolerate. I love my island. I love my country and this breaks my heart. We want her found. We will stop at nothing. We have been attacked. There is a conspiracy, and all involved will have a day with justice."

As I sat in Piarco, sixteen miles away from where I"d had the shootout in Port of Spain, after I had glanced at flights to the United States, Canada, Central America, South America, and Europe, after I had glanced at destinations that weren"t mine, I looked out at the runway just as a sleek private plane arrived. War Machine stepped off the plane. He was angered; it showed. He was just coming back from somewhere and it looked like he wasn"t happy about having to deal with some issue.

Moments later Appaloosa, King Killer, Kandinsky, and Guerrero walked into the terminal.

War Machine entered. Went to his men. They pa.s.sed by without looking at the crowd.

Three days had pa.s.sed. My guess was they figured the Kiwi was long gone.

My palms were a river. Throat was a desert. Heart a drum. Belly growled from not eating.

My cellular rang. It was the Barbarians. After three.

Leaving me out here alone had been psychological torture, had been Guantnamo.

I said, "MX-401."

"Things have changed. We have a new plan. We need you back in the saddle."

I was being force-fed another a.s.signment. I needed to be sequestered at the North Pole, but they wanted to shove me back into the field. My jaw tightened in protest. I felt my brain swell.

My pointer finger moved over and over as I grunted and asked, "Here?"

"Not there. We"re done there. The man behind the double red doors is not happy."

"Well, I"m not exactly down here throwing a party."

War Machine and his men were marching out of the airport. Mrs. Ramjit was being played again in the news cycle. She wore diamonds, her German-made wedding ring stunning, unique. They all wore rings by the same jeweler. Thinking back, the priest and both politicos had worn the same style ring as well.

I was a n.o.body and I had the equivalent of $15 left in my pockets.

Across from me, another pa.s.senger read the paper, the image of the Kiwi staring at me.

The image of the red-haired Kiwi was all around me.

I would do anything they asked to get off of this boot-shaped rock. To get away, I would do anything to make it right.

THIRTEEN.

I fled Trinidad by Caribair, made my way to Grenada, stayed a night. Then the Barbarians secured my pa.s.sage on Liat to the Grenadines. They shuffled me around and soon I was dropped in Barbados. I was greeted by a storm when my flight landed at Grantley Adams International Airport. I walked through customs a tanned Paris Hilton blonde with sea-blue eyes and braces over false teeth, teeth that made me have an overbite like a rabbit. Backpack in hand, I looked like a teenager in a Princeton T-shirt, right arm covered in henna to make it look like I was a tat freak using a British pa.s.sport.

I left customs, sat inside of Chefette, and exhaled. Lost. Nervous. Isolated.

A political killing in Trinidad wouldn"t be front-page news on the island country of Barbados. The news here was on local concerns; the ATM at the airport had been robbed. Gun play at a children"s party in an area called Brittons Hill. Guys were rolling around in a car robbing people at gunpoint. People were going to events with guns in their waistbands. There was even an article about violent crimes up north in the Bahamas, police working twelve-hour shifts with no overtime compensation. Most of the islands looked like paradise built on sand and decorated with palm trees, but the local papers made them sound like South Central. Made it to the last page. Nothing regarding Trinidad. Nothing about an APB for a Kiwi. Using my cellular, I went online, found a website, played the unfiltered video from the bank, looked at myself, focused on me. Saw myself soaking wet, pa.s.sing through metal detectors and rushing into the bank. I was off. As I marched by the guard, I could tell I was off. Drugs had left me loopy. I remembered that horrible feeling. I watched myself approach the area where the target was, my hand in my bag.

Saw the politico freak out, pull his weapon from his open briefcase, and open fire.

I saw myself snap out of the trance and fire, my stance perfect, my movements becoming crisp.

Saw the priest run into the patch of my first shot, catch one in the center of his thinker.

He collapsed. Instant dead, just add lead, and customers dropped to the floor, terrified.

The politico lost it, backed away, fired shot after shot, missed me and hit customers.

I kept moving toward him, toward his shots, pulled the gun from my bag.

I screamed. There was no sound, but my mouth opened to scream.

I saw myself shooting to survive, shooting until the politico went down.

On the way out I shot the bank guard before he could lose his panic and shoot me.

I stepped over the dead, wounded, and dying and casually left the bank.

The marker showed that I was inside the bank for fifteen seconds, less than I thought.

It was the worst job I"d ever done. The worst f.u.c.kin" job ever.

My cellular buzzed. Text message. A coded message from Old Man Reaper.

An hour later I was at a KFC in Black Rock, a shopworn area near Eagle Hall farmers" market. From the airport I had taken a taxi down to that area, a section of the island above Deacons Farm Housing and below UWI Cave Hill. The next text message from Old Man Reaper came in while I devoured a chicken sandwich. After the message came I stepped into the bathroom and destroyed the phone. I finished my meal, left KFC, and went to the left, on foot, the rain falling hard. No umbrella. It didn"t matter. Wash Day Laundromat was across from the two-shades-of-blue, two level Wing Kwong Plaza. It was in one long building next to an auto-repair shop. The laundry shared a wall with a bootleg video store and the bootleggers shared a wall with a Chinese restaurant and the Chinese restaurant shared a wall with Chicken Galore. A Kia Cerato was parked at the end of the strip in front of South Garden Chinese Restaurant. Headlights flashed as a signal. I swallowed, then I walked through the storm, approached the car. I was a drenched zombie, my hair now the darkest of black, my makeup smoky, my fingernails and toenails dark, I saw the windows had limo tint. I tapped on the driver-side window knowing that I could be shot right there, that whoever was inside could drive off in the storm, let me die in this barren car park. That was how the Barbarians would eliminate a problem. I had done that for them a dozen times. The window rolled down, just enough s.p.a.ce for a loaded gun to send lead my way. Everything changed. I saw an a.s.sa.s.sin, and everything changed.

I had expected a man to be waiting on me, but a woman was inside. She looked like a teenage girl, but she was a woman. She was alone. She was younger, might not have been in her twenties, her hair tied up in a black scarf. Right off, despite her kind face, she had the hard eyes of a killer.

In an Italian accent I said, "I believe you have something for me."

"What"s your designation?"

"MX-401. What"s yours?"

"I have a question."

"Ask your question."

"The man named Reaper, is he your father?"

"Yeah. What"s it to you?"

"I"ve met him. We lived together for a while."

"You"re his girlfriend or something?"

"Reaper is my sperm donor too. He"s my father."

We stared at each other, searched for some resemblance, her more than me, found none.

For me no resemblance meant no trust.

I asked, "What"s your designation?"

"I"m a GDI, not a Barbarian."

"Never heard of you."

She sucked her teeth, shook her head, then retired her gun to the small of her back.

I took my finger away from the trigger of the one I had concealed.

Her supposed kinship meant nothing to me. It didn"t make me drop my guard.

I asked, "Why does this feel like a setup for a roadside hit?"

"Get in the car or catch a bus to Six Roads. You"ll have to go to Bridgetown, change buses, or catch a minivan, and that will have you in the rain another three or four hours. Up to you."

"You"re a GDI. Barbarians don"t freelance."

"If I had come to off you, you would"ve been dead while you were over at KFC eating your chicken sandwich. Would"ve used a high-powered rifle. From that house across the road."

I had sized her up from the start, told myself I could pull off my itchy wig and kill her in hand-to-hand.

I asked, "How would you have done it?"

She said, "One shot to your cranium. I wouldn"t chat with you. I don"t chat with targets. At least, not a pointless conversation. So, I repeat, it"s up to you. You can crawl to the safe house for all I care."

Soaked, I walked to the left side of the car and slid into the pa.s.senger seat, my soaking-wet frame transferring water to the seat and floor. Once I was inside, she handed me a new phone and told me that the Barbarians were p.i.s.sed off and would call me when they wanted to talk. She handed me a map that had been downloaded from Google, directions highlighted in yellow, the safe house circled in red, the description saying it had a blue gallery.

She said, "Check the glove compartment."

I looked in the glove compartment. There were three handguns. All loaded.

I asked, "Mine?"

"I cleaned and loaded them myself."

"Thanks."

"Just did what Old Man Reaper told me to do. Thank him when you talk to him."

I looked at where we were, at this strip mall that was practically empty.

The rain ended here, but the sky told me it was still raining elsewhere. She left the parking lot. I was tense. She made the left and took the damp road. Within a half mile three zooming trail bikes shot up from behind us, overtook a half dozen cars, then cut in front of us, each rider almost clipping the front end of her car. A fourth biker appeared and whipped around us, only this one took off her side-view mirror.

She snapped, "Muddasik."

She sped up to catch them, kept them in sight as she sped past a block-long psychiatric hospital, a place that looked more like a prison for those flying over the cuckoo"s nest.

The reckless bikers were caught at the light at Eagle Hall Market, in the left lane. She plowed into them going the full fifty kilometers per hour and knocked all but one of the rude a.s.ses into the intersection. She jumped out of the car. I did the same, stepped out of the car and left the door wide open. She popped the trunk and took out two crowbars, tossed me one. It was sticky. Already b.l.o.o.d.y. I beat the first one I reached, broke his legs, struck his knees, back, and elbows, and when he rolled over, I chopped him over and over across his helmet, made the headgear split. One made it to his feet, saw me beating his compadre, and came at me. I dropped to one knee and swept his feet from under him, made him fly up high and land real hard on his back, the wind knocked out of his body. My wig came off, exposed my bald head. I remained focused on the guy. I introduced him to the crowbar and a few broken bones. It would be months before he would be able to handle a motorcycle again. The first one my irate driver had attacked with the car, the last one in the line and the first to get hit, he was on the ground, on the rugged and uneven pavement, in severe pain. Old Man Reaper"s other child gave that dude h.e.l.l. She was stomping him like he was a roach. She raised her foot up and brought her heel down into his gut over and over and over.

She lost it. "Cutting me off like that was dead wrong. Bey, why did you do that?"

"Wha de ra.s.shole? You is a c.u.n.t?"

"You hear what this mango-skin fool said to me? The fool must be on rat bat."

"Yeah, they"re high. This one smells like Bacardi."

Again she raised her foot and brought it down on his gut.

The fourth guy, the drunk b.a.s.t.a.r.d was angry, came running at me, fists doubled.

My spinning back kick caught him dead in his gut, took him off his feet. He hit the ground doubled over. He stayed down, pulled himself into the fetal position, ribs broken.

The last guy picked up his bike, hopped on. Fight or flight had led him to choose flight.

A city bus entered the intersection and knocked him through the intersection and toward the R.A. Mapps rum shop. Everybody stopped eating rotisserie chicken and drinking Banks beer, watched the accident.

Old Man Reaper"s Bahamian daughter said, "That"s what you get. G.o.d don"t like ugly."

He lay on the ground, his arms moving, legs broken and twisted, calling out in agony. I picked up my wig, wiped away water, put it back on, then surveyed the area.

I said, "That blue building across from Downes Funeral Home. We"re twenty yards from the front door to the local police station. They"d arrest us for the fight."

"The fight is nothing. They would hang me for what"s rotting in the trunk."

She wiped rain from her face and walked back to the car. I told her to get in on the pa.s.senger side. She took her time. I drove away at a bank robber"s pace, the scent of rotisserie chicken, gas from Rubis, and the aroma from Legendary Fish Cakes filling my nostrils.

Her cellular rang.

She answered talking: "It"s done. Got what he deserved. Busy now. Pay me tomorrow."

Then she hung up and threw the cellular out the window.

She directed me toward Government Hill. From there I turned left at the J.T.C. Ramsay Roundabout, took to the ABC Highway, made two left turns, and ended up at the Sheraton Mall.

On the second level of the car park, we went to the trunk and she opened it up.

An elderly man was in the trunk, his body resting on top of thick, industrial, leak-proof plastic. The man had a close-cut gray beard, was bald, had deep brown skin, a green shirt, casual pants. His body wasn"t cold yet. Duct tape over his hands, ankles, mouth, and eyes. Plastic bag over his head. His throat had been cut, a strong clean cut, the trunk a lake of blood.

I said, "I caught you in the middle of working."

"Finished right before I picked you up."