Ken Douglas - Scorpion

“ That’s horrible,” Maria said.

“ She was ruthless,” Broxton said.

“ But what about Jack Priest? She’s his agent, isn’t she? I see his books all over.”

“ Oh she’s had her successes. She’s sharp. When she saw a book with potential she ran with it. She’s gotten several six figure advances.”

“ It makes it hard for the person starting out. If someone with a reputation like Danielle Street’s rips off new authors, who doesn’t?”

“ Lots don’t. In fact I’ll bet most don’t. Dani was just hungry.”

“ Was?”

“ She sold the agency. Now she just lives the life of luxury.”

The taxi turned onto the highway and Broxton noticed that the driver kept to the slow lane. Cars and trucks of all ages and sizes flew by them, all in a hurry, junkyard fugitives racing along with cars fresh off the showroom floor. Speed tempered by chaos seemed to be the order of the day, and if Trinidad was governed by any law, it certainly didn’t apply to the highway, Broxton thought. Everybody was in a hurry to get somewhere. Everybody wanted to pass the car in front and nobody wanted to be passed.

“ Do they always drive like this?” Maria asked the taxi driver.

“ Mostly, except me and a few others that have lived long enough to develop common sense. And of course the man that’s been following us since the airport.”

Broxton turned and looked through the back window. “The green BMW? How can you be sure he’s following us?”

“ We’re in Trinidad. Look how people drive here. That’s a new sporty car. How come he doesn’t pass?”

“ If he’s following us, he’s following the wrong people, I’ve got nothing to hide,” Broxton said.

“ I don’t either,” Maria said.

“ So should I ignore him or lose him?” the driver asked.

“ You could lose him? In this?” Broxton said.

“ Not if we were racing to the Hilton, no, but I can lose him.”

“ I’d like to see that,” Broxton said.

“ So you shall,” the driver said, and he settled back and continued on down the highway. “I’m going to pass Port of Spain and go out toward Chaguaramas where all the foreign boats anchor, so take it easy and enjoy the ride.”

Broxton and Maria sat back and looked out the windows, the desire for conversation killed by the car following. The scenery flashing by was covered in green and dotted with billboards bearing familiar names-KFC, Pizza hut, McDonald’s-and although the billboards were in English, the houses on the side of the road reminded Broxton more of Mexico than America. There were a lot of poor people in Trinidad, and Broxton wondered why he hadn’t thought about it before. When he’d first been given the assignment he’d imagined Trinidad as a sort of south seas tropical isle. Tropical it was, but Trinidad was firmly planted in the twentieth century and it looked like poverty was endemic.

“ Port of Spain just ahead,” Dependable Ted said, slowing down. “We’ll be stuck in traffic for ten or fifteen minutes till we pass.”

Broxton turned to look behind and couldn’t see the BMW.

“ He’s back there, ’bout ten cars,” Ted said. “But not to worry, once we pass the yacht club we be losing him good.”

“ The city reminds me of Nairobi,” Broxton said.

“ Why, ’cause we’re all black?”

“ Maybe, but it’s more than that.”

“ Maybe ’cause we were both colonized by the British.”

“ That could be,” Broxton said.

“ We’re not all black, you know, ’bout ten percent white and the rest split ’tween African and Indian. That’s Indian from India not the American kind.”

“ I’d never really thought about it,” Broxton said.

“ But the white people run things,” the driver said.

“ How’s that?” Broxton asked. “Isn’t this a democracy? Don’t you have elections?”

“ We do. The government was African, now it’s Indian an’ the prime minister’s a light skin Indian fellow, but it makes no difference. Once they get elected they think they’re white and they start stuffing their pockets.”

“ That’s a shame,” Maria said.

“ Way it is,” the driver said.

“ The same all over,” Broxton said.

“ True, true,” the driver said.

Then they were past Port of Spain, the beach still at their left, the sun starting to hang low in the evening sky and the traffic had thinned considerably. Broxton noticed the bars on the windows of the homes that flew by. “It looks like you have a lot of crime.”

“ Not like you do in most your big American cities. Peoples just over react. Nobody wants somebody breaking into their house.”

“ A mall,” Maria said, looking out at the buildings to their left, between them and the beach.

“ We have some malls in Trinidad. Not great big ones like you do. But they’re nice, just the same. And up ahead is the yacht club. We gets a lot of foreign boats in Trinidad.”

“ We saw some this afternoon,” Broxton said, remembering the tall masts he’d seen earlier that seemed to be reaching up from the sea, trying to grab the plane and pull it down.

There was a short bridge up ahead where the road changed from four to two lanes. Cars were putting on the gas. Everybody wanted to pass the slow moving taxi before the bridge. Broxton turned and looked out the back window. Not everybody was trying to pass. The BMW was three cars back, still following. Broxton continued watching as a battered, left-hand-drive American Chevy flew past the car immediately behind them and kept on coming.

“ I think he’s going to try and pass us, too,” Broxton said, his voice rising. He was more than a little surprised that the car wouldn’t slow down.

“ Can’t make it,” the driver said, but it made no difference, the car kept coming.

“ He’s not passing, he’s coming in on the left!” Broxton shouted as the car plowed into the left quarter of the taxi, then slammed on its brakes as the taxi lost control. He threw an arm in front of Maria, keeping her pinned to her seat as the taxi spun onto the other side of the road. A pickup truck, coming in the opposite direction, clipped the taxi’s rear bumper, tearing it off.

Then they were off the road and spinning through a park toward a soccer game. Children screamed and fled the oncoming taxi and for an instant Broxton thought they were going to roll, but Ted let out a whoop, like an American Indian’s war cry, and spun the wheel into the slide, managing to turn the car away from the fleeing children, pumping the brakes all the while, trying to slow the car as they scraped along a huge tree.

Ted screamed again as the car slid by the tree with a soul wrenching sound that shrilled through the evening. The tree slowed the car, but it didn’t stop it, and Dependable Ted never stopped working the wheel.

“ Hold on,” he yelled from the front seat. Maria looked up and saw what he saw. Another tree, this one, thicker than the last, and it seemed to be charging straight for them as it loomed larger and larger in the front window, a giant, green grizzly, with raking claws on the end of the branches. Claws and jaws, reaching for her, reaching to tear her apart, but at the last instant the roaring rear wheels found purchase in the wet grass. The old Toyota shot forward like a race horse. Ted yelled again, because even though he was heading for the tree, he was back in control.

He spun the wheel to the right, missing the tree, but the branches scraped the side of the car as it headed, like a wild mustang, into a huge mass of green, the very edge of the rain forest. Ted jerked the wheel one last time and stomped on the brakes. The engine died, but the car continued its slide through the lush green vegetation, twice missing trees that would have brought it to a crashing stop, coming softly to rest in an almost anticlimactic absence of sound.