She hit something; slammed into the shady figure hard, but she didn"t lose control.

I said, "What the f.u.c.k was that? You ran over somebody?"

She stopped and we stepped out of the van. She carried one gun and I carried two.

A black-bellied sheep was on the ground. I walked over to the animal, kicked its backside. It raised its head, frowned at the bright lights from the van, got up and moved like it"d had ten Banks beers too many, and stumbled into the darkness. We got back in the van and continued the rugged ride.

When she made a turn at the rum shop called Just a Fork in the Road, she made her way to signs pointing to Highway 2 for Welchman Hall and Highway D for Hillaby via Shop Hill.

"Tell me about my sperm donor, MX-401. Feel funny asking you that. If that"s okay."

"We can talk about Old Man Reaper, but don"t expect me to be sweet about it."

"Let"s go listen to bad karaoke, drink, and talk."

""Bad karaoke." Is there good karaoke?"

We dumped the stolen van on Hooligan Road and retrieved our motorcycles. We rocked it from b.u.mps and potholes that covered the areas where the hardworking natives and working poor rested their heads, zoomed across the smoother streets in Bridgetown, pa.s.sed by an outrageous LIME fete at the Carlisle House, DJs playing raunchy music, teenage girls bent over at six thirty and six forty-five, guys behind them pumping and dry f.u.c.king them so hard I was surprised the girls didn"t fall on their faces. We went down to the South Coast, back into the bright lights, the sea at our side, and made our way into the mouth of the Gap. As we rode I went back to the start, told her about the first time I met Old Man Reaper.

FORTY-SIX.

Diamond Dust talked to War Machine and his warriors. She had a wireless headset on, her children playing in the background. Diamond Dust, War Machine, and the top men were on a conference call using Skype. War Machine let her be in control. Let her spin this situation. Let her be Diamond Dust.

Some seated at a conference table, others standing, War Machine and his men watched Diamond Dust from a high-tech television with Internet capabilities, her face on a ninety-inch screen. She looked at them from the same size television screen in the den of her home.

Diamond Dust said, "This is out of hand. First the drug shipment that cost us millions. The last one was in Barbados. Now the Internet violation that has been detected in Barbados. Add that the Kiwi was tracked there-it has to all be connected. We have reviewed the drug bust. There were at least two firing on the runners. One could have been the Kiwi. There is no proof she ever left Barbados."

War Machine nodded and said, "Agreed."

"The members realize that the key runner we used there, before he was found slaughtered in the prestigious St. Lawrence Gap, he had spent time dancing with a European. That could have been the Kiwi. His death was a message to us all. Another insult to us all. A message from someone to us."

She said that she was dispatching other warriors to Barbados. She didn"t ask War Machine for his opinion. He nodded. Her connection had found that the Kiwi had ordered pa.s.sports but hadn"t retrieved them. They only had to find the Kiwi"s Bajan contact, the fool supplying her with doc.u.ments.

Diamond Dust said, "Substations are at Belmont Road, Government Hill, Pine Garden, and by the Garrison. Destroy the sites."

War Machine nodded, didn"t cross her strategy, watched his wife exercise her arrogance.

Diamond Dust asked War Machine, "What are your immediate plans?"

"Men have been sent to the clubs in the Limegrove area, restaurants on the West Coast, and to St. Lawrence Gap. She loves to party, so I"ve sent men she didn"t meet, weren"t a part of the intel that she left behind at her safe house in Trinidad, men she wouldn"t recognize, to those locations. Until we hear from your pa.s.sport contact, since you"re the expert, we"ll follow your orders, continue searching."

FORTY-SEVEN.

Hal"s Car Park Bar, St. Lawrence Gap Across the cobbled road from where I had killed the cricketer. Tourists and locals all over, street vendors busy selling food, vendors selling trinkets to tourists.

Petrichor laughed over the bad karaoke and said, "Dora the Explorer? That"s sick."

Her phone ping-ping-pinged again and I wrestled it from her hands. She laughed. For the past hour I had been sipping Banks and sending filthy s.e.xts to her husband every time he ping-ping-pinged. Petrichor was cracking up at the escalating exchanges between me and her clueless husband.

I said, "Look at the disgusting p.o.r.nographic message I just sent him. You"ve got work to do."

"Muddasik. Submarine. Row the boat. Wait. No way. You do that with Jell-O?"

"Hope you enjoy, and try not to get a yeast infection."

My cellular rang. The Barbarians. I took the call. Karaoke ended. Videos played. People were dancing and sweating. Beers and alcohol on every table. Petrichor walked away, Bailey"s in hand, and went to take a peek at Sugar Ultra Lounge. She said that she had seen a group of good-looking men going that way. Men in suits. They had stopped and looked at our motorcycles. I was buzzed and didn"t care. Every man or woman who pa.s.sed by the bikes paused. A couple of women had been rude and sat on one of the bikes to take a photo. Any other time I would have blasted them for doing that. I let Petrichor go alone. She was married, but she was still a flirty girl at heart. By the time she returned, I had my new marching orders from the Barbarians. I sat at the bar, rubbing my temples. If I had inhaled, I would have smelled Trinidad. I would have smelled Laventille Killers. Petrichor came back. Her phone pinged. She was needed at home. We went to our iron horses, shook hands again, and parted ways.

She sped away on the Ducati, went left and toward the West Coast. I went right, cruised down ABC Highway on the BMW, went back to Six Roads and being landlocked in my government cell.

Back at the safe house, I sat on the bed, the music from a fete across the road announcing that their Banks Beersponsored party was about to end. The single-pane windows rattled from the beat, soca jamming hard. I wanted to go over there. I should"ve gone over there and partied until the new sun made me sweat. I didn"t. I stripped, pulled off my clothing, let it fall haphazardly on the dusty tile floor, and danced to the beat as I headed to the bathroom, angry the night had ended. Showered, tipsy, guns at my side, stared out the window, binoculars in hand, watched the neighbors have s.e.x, then scattered the money from the briefcase on the bed, all thrown helter-skelter. Should have stolen it, but none of the sinuous cut-rock roads would lead me away. I crawled on top of those packets of freedom.

The Barbarians had asked what I knew about squatters. Big Guy had had an issue with the same squatters. Soon I would know why. I didn"t know if all of that had anything to do with the cricketer.

The drug bust here was just a few days ago.

I thought about what the other Barbarians had said.

Since I had been stranded here, they had been to New York and Miami.

If you looked up Miami in the dictionary, you saw drugs.

New York was another destination for the same product.

I bet the men sent here had been up in the States doing the same s.h.i.t I was doing here.

The music at the fete ended. The neighbors ended the show.

I applauded them, pulled the fan up close, let it blow across my damp skin.

I had had my first o.r.g.a.s.m tonight. As the air tickled my skin, that thought came and went.

I was afraid. I was angry. I was alone.

The s.e.xting had excited my mind as well.

Petrichor was probably with her husband doing those wicked things now.

That made me sad. Sad for myself. The life I had was so f.u.c.kin" sad.

I wanted to be on South Beach. On the Sunset Strip. In Times Square.

Silence covered my jail.

Tree frogs began singing their nightly song and killed that peace.

I tossed and turned in the heat and stuffiness of my prison until sleep came.

Soon Johnny Parker burgled his way into my dreams, came to me naked, fresh out of the shower, tall and athletic. I waited for him. He came to me with an ice-cold vibrator and warm a.n.a.l beads in his hands, a bowl of green Jell-O left on the nightstand next to a bowl of ice chips and Altoids.

Tree frogs sang as he f.u.c.ked me in the sweet, perverted way he used to f.u.c.k me.

FORTY-EIGHT.

The tail end of the Parish of St. Peter, situated between St. Lucy and St. Andrew Barbarians sent me behind G.o.d"s back, to the Atlantic Ocean side of the island to hike deep into the bush to have a tete--tete with a family of Rastafarians. They showed their hand this morning, told me just enough to carry out this mission. A bank that the Barbarians did business with had bought a large stretch of land in the ninth parish of eleven parishes-prime real estate that could be as profitable as everything built along the island"s platinum coast and Port Saint Charles, and now they were going to build luxury condos, mansions, and a high-end super center, something that would redefine that side of the island, maybe even construct a new church to collect 10 percent from the richest of the rich, only to find out they had inherited around sixty squatters. Three generations of squatters had been living back in the bush for decades. They claimed they had been there forty years, but there was no proof. No paperwork. There was an ongoing fiasco in Fort George with Sagicor about the same thing. A squatter and his family had been hiding out on their land for three decades, and now it was front-page news. Only this was RCSI land and they wanted no publicity. This problem had been lingering for weeks. I had to steal a van, wear jeans and sneakers, a long-sleeve cotton blouse, made sure I showed no flesh, wore only lip gloss, my hair now the lightest of brown, carried the heavy briefcase, then hiked an uneven dirt and rock trail that moved uphill, each step uneven and made for twisting an ankle, the trek being over a mile and taking thirty of the hottest minutes ever made. Soon I smelled food being cooked. I smelled fire. There was no smoke.

A little Rasta boy saw me hiking through the woods. There were more than a dozen kids playing. The little boy saw me first and called out some sort of warning and all the kids took off running, zebras fleeing a lioness. By then I was sweating profusely. The heat. No breeze. I pa.s.sed a ha-ha and hiked about another quarter mile before encountering a slender, shirtless man who had dreadlocks to his knees, a cutla.s.s in his right hand, waiting on me in the shade of a tree that had to be three hundred years old, if it were that young. Centipedes. Millipedes. Frogs. Lizards. Mongoose. Spiders. Monkeys up in the trees. Ants. I didn"t react to anything nature had put in my face or at my feet. Fifty yards behind him, his family had congregated. Men. Women. Dozens of children. Just beyond them was a shantytown made of a dozen homes no bigger than chattel houses, all thrown together, and each looked like it was ready to fall apart.

A gaggle of men and women were out. The women were cooking on an open pit.

He said, "You with the law?"

"I"m here on behalf of the people who own this land."

"They send you a long way to get to a place where you don"t need to be."

"They sent me a long way to talk to a man who refuses to leave this hill and talk to them."

"I have nothing to say to them."

"You"re an interesting man."

"How I interesting?"

"You"re squatting on someone else"s property, sitting on their investment, and when they offer you over a million as a settlement, you turn it down. That blows my mind, have to say that."

"Boss man sends a woman to do his dirty work."

"You speak for everyone? You have a committee up here, or are you the dictator?"

"I speak for my people and you speak for your people."

"Then you are the man I should speak with regarding both the provenance and ownership history of this land. If you need to see the deeds for the land, I have copies."

As we stood on a sloping hill underneath a tree, three fires were going on in the distance, black smoke billowing from the lowlands to the blue skies. Water tankers from C.O. Williams Construction were working overtime with the Barbados Fire Department. This was the middle of nowhere. No road. No way for a water tanker to get up here to bring me a bottle of Zephyrhills, Aquafina, or Dasani.

I said, "They want to know how you would feel if you were living overseas and came back and found someone living on your land. Would you see that as right or as thievery?"

"Tell your people I follow the law."

"They say that you build on the land like you bought it. Take more land as you see fit."

"I follow the law."

"The people I work for just want to follow the same law, even though it doesn"t benefit them, even though they will lose millions of dollars, even though you get to make up your own rules and occupy more land than you will need, even though you get to live rent-free while they pay a mortgage. An average home is only around six thousand square feet and you"re up here claiming more than nine acres. An acre is about ninety percent of a football field, and you are trying to steal over nine. Don"t you find that just a tad bit greedy? Don"t you have any dignity?"

"I follow the law."

"They can see you being ent.i.tled to the houses, but you"re claiming a forest and you"ve never spent a dime for the land. They have paid for the land and they have the doc.u.ments and your family just moved on and acted like they discovered it, like Christopher Columbus. It was already here. Someone had worked and paid for it, whether they were using it or not."

"I follow the law."

"They say you live off another man"s land without offering one penny for compensation. For four decades you have lived here in secret, have bred and bred and bred, and now that you are discovered have not offered to pay one penny. You"re no better than a common thief."

"I follow the law."

I touched my earpiece and waited.

They issued me my next instructions.

I opened the briefcase in front of the Rastafarian.

Inside was half a million in cash, money that had been my mattress last night.

There was no notable reaction from the shoeless Rastafarian.

He asked, "Why dem send you all the way to my property with this?"

I said, "The organization wants you to sign the contract. The contract will give you eight hundred thousand for land, land that does not belong to you, and give you an additional five hundred thousand dollars for housing, so you can build a true house, one with running water and electricity, by the standards of the island, and there is another lump sum of six hundred thousand. Plus for ten years you get an annuity of four hundred and twenty-five thousand dollars."

"The money in the briefcase? They want me to take that and just go away?"

"It"s a signing bonus. It"s money no one will know about. It can be looked upon as a gift."

"Then it"s another half a million that you add on to the other money."

"All they ask is that you keep it out of the papers, don"t go to an attorney, and that they are allowed to relocate you quietly. They will buy you furniture, new furniture, from Da Costa or Courts or that furniture store Design Decor at the roundabout by Parkinson Secondary in Pine."

"A bribe."

"No, a business transaction that favors you, a man who has never had a job in his life."