Scorpion (6 page)

“
Yeah, the U.S. Senate. He went in 1980, a Democrat that squeaked through the Reagan landslide. One of the promises he made during his campaign was that he wouldn’t be a career politician. One term only, he promised. He turned control of his real estate empire over to Dani and spent six years on the business of the United States. Nobody could buy him, lobbyists were afraid of him, everybody respected him, because he didn’t take a dime. He had no campaign committee to feed, no exploratory committee for higher office to staff, no image to improve. When his six years were up he quit as one of the richest men in America.”

“
How’d he do that?”

“
While he was in office Dani sold all of his real estate and invested in some computer and software companies. Apple, IBM and Microsoft. She made him wealthy, but in his mind he’s still a poor boy from the wrong side of the tracks. He’ll never be anything but an aw shucks kind of guy. He couldn’t get used to all the money, so when the Democrats finally regained the White House and the President called, Warren went back into government. Three years later he had a heart attack. The doctors said rest, at least a year. But Warren couldn’t just lay about and do nothing. The president suggested an ambassadorship, somewhere where he could take it easy but still make a difference. Trinidad was the place. Warren gets a year’s rest with an easy job, then he’ll probably go back and help the president again.”

“
Wow, and that’s your girl’s father?”

“
That’s him.”

They were quiet for awhile, and she took the time to study the other passengers, some staring blankly forward, some lost in their own thoughts, some conversing softly, trying to forget that the plane was flying low and slow. She thought of Rick Nelson and wondered what it was like for him just before his plane plowed into that dark Midwestern ground. She imagined his pure sweet voice singing Hello, Mary Lou. She started singing, just above her breath. “Believe me girl, I just had no choice, wild horses couldn’t make me stay away, it’s all I had to see for me to say…”

“
Hey, hey, hey. Hello Mary Lou, goodbye heart,” he softly sang in answer.

“
I’m embarrassed,” she said.

“
I was thinking of Buddy Holly and Peggy Sue,” he said.

The plane lurched downward and she grabbed his hand without thinking. He felt good and kind and strong and she felt that nothing could go wrong just so long as she held on to him.

“
It’s all right,” the captain’s voice said. “We’re coming into Port of Spain. We should be on the ground in about fifteen minutes.”

Maria heard the landing gear coming down. It locked into place with a slam that sounded like another explosion and the plane jerked to the right again. The wing tipped, straining for the ground below. Someone screamed and Maria knew it wasn’t all right. Then the giant aircraft righted itself and she prayed they had it under control.

And for a few seconds they did. They were flying straight up, landing gear down. She let out a long sigh, and started to say that it looked like they were going to make it, when normal sound was erased by the tearing sound of metal. The sound rocketed through the plane, stealing the hopes and draining the dreams of all on board. Now the left wing tipped toward the ground and the nose arched upward for a second, then rocked to the left, following the wing. They were in an earthward bank, making a downward left turn.

She grabbed onto the hand that was still there and looked past the man sitting next to her and out the window, and all she saw was blue. But it wasn’t the blue of the cloud filled tropical sky, it was the blue of the ocean below.

The plane banked steeper into the turn. Maria was afraid that they were going to go into a spin, but they gradually eased out of the bank. She sighed again when the view turned from ocean back into sky and they were flying level once more.

“
Oh no,” she whimpered.

“
What?” Broxton said, and he turned to look too. “Shit,” he added.

She didn’t say anything, there was nothing to say. They were flying over Chaguaramas Bay, barely skimming over the tall masts of the sailing yachts anchored there. She saw the upturned faces on the boats below, saw the rolling waves as the plane blew out of the bay toward Casper Grande Island, level now, but still turning. She saw the Fantasy Island Resort on Casper Grande and she shivered, because she wasn’t looking down. A woman behind her screamed as the plane whisked by the tall trees. Then they were headed back out to sea, away from Trinidad, the ocean only feet below.

For fifteen minutes that seemed like forever, they flew low over the ocean as the plane made a wide turn, back toward Port of Spain. Maria held tightly to Broxton’s hand and stole a quick look around.

The elderly couple in the center seats across from them were locked in an embrace. The woman in the aisle seat behind was frantically writing in a pocket diary. Probably a goodbye to someone she loves, Maria thought, and for a second she thought about writing her mother a quick note. Just to say she loved her. She hadn’t said it in so long.

But she dropped the thought as the blue ocean disappeared and the green tropical jungle of the Caroni Swamp filled the window. They were skimming the trees and Maria knew they weren’t going to make it. She wondered what lived in the vast swamp below.

“
Bend down and grab your socks!” the captain’s voice screamed over the speaker system. “It might be a rough landing.”

“
He’s going for it,” Broxton said.

“
Good for him,” Maria said, but her thoughts were filled with gators and crocks and she wondered if sharks wouldn’t have been quicker.

Then she felt the plane crash into the ground with a shotgun sound. They seemed to be sliding out of control. She wanted to cry out, to scream at the cruel death only instants away. Then she realized they were rolling to a stop. They hadn’t crashed. They were on the runway. They were safe.

Someone started clapping, then someone else on the other side of the cabin clapped an echo back and she felt a blissful peace and uncanny joy take hold of her as she freed her hand from Broxton’s and joined the applause that filled the aircraft.

“
Ladies and gentlemen,” the captain’s voice broke out over the speakers. “Welcome to Port of Spain and thank you for your appreciation.”

The applause picked up and someone cheered. Then they were all cheering. The door to the cockpit opened and Captain Roger Herra stepped out followed by his copilot and the cheering increased to a deafening crescendo. Then as suddenly as it started, it stopped.

There was no panic. No one screaming, no one pushing, no one fighting to get off. They’d cheated death and they all knew it.

She watched as Broxton flicked open his seatbelt and stood. He stepped over her and bent over and gathered up the contents of the fallen briefcase and filled it. Other passengers were picking up around themselves, standing and stretching, the dangling masks, the only sign that this flight had been any different from any other.

Broxton gave the child a smile and Maria saw the gratitude in the little girl’s eyes. He handed the briefcase to her father and received a smile back for his kindness. Then he pulled his carry-on bag from the overhead locker.

“
I’m staying at the Hilton,” Maria said. “Maybe we could have dinner or something.”

“
I’d like that,” Broxton said. Then he asked her if she needed any help getting off the aircraft. She wiggled her foot. It didn’t really hurt very much anymore, but she nodded anyway. A small kind of fib, but she was still shaken up and she wanted to stay with him just a little longer.

Ten minutes later they were inside the terminal. Broxton had an arm around her waist, even though she didn’t need any help walking. She was dragging her bag on its trolley. He had his bag slung over his right shoulder. Then he froze. She saw him bite into his lower lip, saw the smile slide off his face, felt the spike that must be knifing through his heart.

She turned to see what he was seeing.

He was staring at a rack of newspapers, studying the front page of the Trinidad Guardian, caught by a color picture of a smiling blue-eyed blonde with her arms wrapped around the man from the plane, the prime minister’s body guard, Kevin Underfield. For a second she thought the blonde woman resembled the Barbie doll he’d handed back to the little girl. She was smiling up at the man and he was smiling at the camera, like he was the cat that just swallowed the canary. Then she read the headlines.

ARE THERE WEDDING BELLS

IN DANI’S FUTURE?

“
Your girl?” she asked.

“
My girl,” he said.

Chapter Four

Sheriff Earl Lawson heard the buzzing of the flies a few seconds before he inhaled the repugnant odors of dried blood and human feces. The nauseating smells filtered through dry and dusty air and assaulted him as surely as the plague of flies that attacked his face, tickling, biting, itching. Frantically he tried to move his hands to brush them away, but couldn’t. He shook his head back and forth, but it didn’t seem to bother them. He tried to move, but he was frozen in place, wedged in tight or paralyzed. Shivers tingled along his spine, sweat fed the flies on his neck and face.

He opened his eyes and was swallowed by the darkness. He strained to see, but flies attacked his open eyes and he forced them shut in an effort to keep them out. He fought a rising urge to scream. He squeezed his eyes into slits, trying in vain to see some light. Nothing but flies and more flies. The constant buzzing, combined with the roasting heat, made him feel like he was in an oven being baked alive, the pig in the pit, buried for the luau, flies on his face instead of an apple in the mouth.

He tried to speak, to call out, but couldn’t. Something was wrapped around his face, wrapped around the back of his neck, wrapped around his mouth. He forced his tongue between his lips and touched something sticky. Tape. His mouth was taped shut.

He struggled to bring a hand up, to pull it off, but his arms were frozen behind his back. He moved his wrists. Handcuffs. He tried to roll over, to bury his face into whatever he was laying on, anything to keep the flies off. They were at his nostrils. He felt one crawling in and he snorted it out, but it came right back, it or another, there seemed to be thousands. Terror gripped him. They were going to flood up his nasal passages, he was going to drown in flies.

No, the thought screamed at him, no, not like this. He fought for control, fought against the rising panic, fought the fear, fought the terror, and like a scalded snake, he bucked his body and managed to flop onto his side. That chased the flies away from his face and gave him the renewed energy for another jerk and twist. Then he was on his stomach, face against an oily, dusty carpet. In an instant the flies were back, but with his face pressed into the carpet they couldn’t get up his nose or into his eyes, but they were at his ears and on the back of his neck, crawling under his shirt.

Where was he? What happened? What went wrong?

Then he remembered the briefcase and shooting Johnny Lee Tyler. Somebody smacked him in the back of the head. Kids must have had an accomplice. How could he have been so stupid? There must have been two cars, of course. Darren’s father, it had to be.

He wondered if they got Jackson, too. They must have, otherwise he’d be home counting the cash. They must have come in that garage quiet and careful. Must have snuck up behind them. One clobbered Jackson and the other got him. He tried to slow his breathing, tried to think. There had to be a way out. He wondered again where he was and how long he’d been unconscious.

His legs weren’t straight. Before he’d rolled over they were bent at his side, now they were bent unnaturally and uncomfortably against something, a roof of some kind. He tried to straighten them, but they were wedged firmly against whatever he was encased in. He thought of a coffin and shuddered, but it couldn’t be, not with the flies. Besides, it was too big.

He heard the sound of an engine starting. Then he felt movement. All of a sudden he knew where he was. The car hit a bump or went down a curb, then accelerated, throwing him toward the back of the trunk and scattering the flies. He smacked into something warm. Not warm like human warm, but not cold like stone either. Something in between. A dead man turning cold.

Johnny Lee Tyler, Darren or Jackson. He wondered who, and he shivered, despite the heat. Maybe all of them were in here with him. Maybe one of them was alive, like him. Maybe Jackson. Between the two of them they could get out of anything. He moaned through the tape, a mournful sound, like a poisoned dog.

No answer.

He moaned again, louder.

Still no answer. Whoever was in the trunk with him was dead. He tried to think. The man next to him was dead, and he wasn’t. That was fact. Again he tried moving his legs, but still he couldn’t. They were tied together. Whoever taped, cuffed and bound him obviously wanted him alive. That was a good sign. You didn’t go to that much trouble with a man if you wanted him dead. He wondered what they wanted with him, what they’d ask of him.

But he didn’t wonder about what he’d do for them, because he knew the answer. Anything.

Please, God, let me make it.

A spasm of cold fear shot through him as he sucked hot air in through his nose. The dry air brought along other smells besides the coppery scent of blood and the revolting smell of shit — grease, oil, dust and death. He fought the rising bile. To vomit now was to die. He thought about death for a second and he wanted to scream and rage, but he was trussed up tighter than a rodeo calf.