Ken Douglas - Scorpion

He slipped off his shoes, careful not to get any more dirt on the rug. He had his hand on the belt buckle, when he saw the flashing red light on the answer machine. He stepped out of the jeans and went over to the phone.

“ Earl, it’s me,” Maria’s voice came soft and low through the small speaker. “I won’t be coming home. You can feed yourself, or let Josie down at the diner feed you, or starve for all I care, but you’ve seen the last of me.”

He stood there in his jockey shorts, jeans under his left arm, right fist clenched and listened to the silence after the message. He had a car full of cash. Josie was young and luscious, he had a good job, he was looked up to. He knew he should be satisfied, but no woman walked out on Big Earl Lawson.

“ Son of a bitch,” he said as he threw his jeans onto the carpet. He picked up the phone and called the airline. It didn’t take him long to find out about the bombs on the plane or where she was. Shit, the plane was on the ground for less than an hour and she was calling it quits.

“ They stole my car.” The blue veins on his forehead were pulsing, his neck cords were throbbing, his hands were shaking, but his speech was clipped and calm. “I don’t care if he is your friend, I want him arrested and slammed in jail. I want him put so far away that I’ll never have to hear his name again. I want him buried so deep, that he’ll wish he was dead. I want him to suffer for the rest of his life. Do you understand what I’m saying?”

“ Calm down, George. This is another day. It won’t do any of us any good if you have a stroke,” Dani Street said. She’d never seen him mad, never heard him swear.

“ Don’t tell me to calm down. You aren’t shit without me.”

“ Cool your jets, George, and try to remember who you’re talking to.” He bit into his lower lip. She knew he was a man who suffered orders and taking them from a woman tripled the salt.

“ Sorry,” he said, the color beginning to fade from his face.

“ That’s better,” she said.

“ But he stole my car,” he repeated, and she shook her head. He was a smart man, but he was bullheaded, like a lot of Trinidadian males. She was afraid he’d worry about his car like an old woman until it was a festering sore that he had to do something about, and she couldn’t allow that to happen.

“ We need you, George,” she said. “It’s your plan. We can’t make it work without you. I can take care of Ramsingh. The Salizar brothers can move the coke. I can bury the money so deep the US will never figure it out. Kevin can whip your armed forces and police into shape and guarantee that they remain loyal. But without you we might as well fold our tent and take the show on the road.” She reached into him with her steady gaze and held his eyes. She waited a few seconds, blinked and turned away. He liked to think he was the stronger of the two and she saw no harm in letting him believe it.

“ What about your friend Broxton?” he said.

God he was stubborn, she thought.

“ He did steal my car.”

“ Come on, you had no business having your security people go chasing after him like that. Bill Broxton may not be the smartest man on earth, but he didn’t get where he is by being stupid. Credit him with a few brains. And why did they have to use your car?”

“ Not enough cars to go around,” he said.

“ And whose fault is that? You have five thousand police and only a hundred cop cars. It’s a wonder the criminals don’t rule the island.”

“ We’ll get more cars when I’m prime minister.”

“ Every election they say that and the police are still walking.”

“ Can we talk about Broxton? He’s here to keep Ramsingh alive.”

“ Of course he is. Credit me with a few brains, too. He won’t be a problem. When the time comes he’ll go one way, Ramsingh will go the other, and Ramsingh will die.”

“ When?”

“ Soon.” She couldn’t blame him for being upset. She should have done it by now. But she had that thing about Ram. He was her father’s friend. He was her friend.

“ If I didn’t know better, I’d say you’re stalling. But you wouldn’t stall, would you?”

She clenched her fists. She’d been so stupid. The odds that anyone would put her travels together with the Scorpion’s jobs were one in a hundred thousand, maybe one in a million. But it had happened. George Chandee had been captivated by her, probably because she was that rare thing in his life. A woman that wouldn’t go to bed with him.

He sent flowers. Took her to dinner. Offered her all the right complements. But his old magic failed to light her fires. And the more she refused, the more he desired her. He asked if there was someone else and she’d said there wasn’t. Maybe that was her mistake. Maybe she should have told him about her relationship with Kevin a lot sooner, then maybe he would have gone away. But she didn’t. She said there was no one, but he didn’t believe her. So he watched her.

He didn’t say anything when she’d returned from Zambia. She’d done a wonderful shoot for Save the Children just hours before the president was assassinated.

He was silent when she’d come back from a shoot in Ecuador. They’d gotten great footage of her with a pair of paper thin twin boys, but no one got footage of the leader of the opposition when he was gunned down leaving for work only an hour before she left for the airport. He didn’t come calling and confront her till she returned from Sierra Leone the day after the new President was shot during dinner.

Once was coincidence, he’d said. Twice was circumstantial, but three times was the clincher, the next best thing to a smoking gun. He was too smart to threaten her, or to blackmail her, instead, he said, he had a plan. She could have more money than she’d ever imagined. She’d never have to work again, never have to do another hit. All she had to do was something she was good at. Assassinate the prime minister. Shoot Ram and she got a hefty share of the spoils. And the spoils: A small oil rich country, ripe for the plucking and the profits gained from laundering the money of one of the biggest drug cartels in Colombia. Too much money to walk away from. It was just too much.

Earl wiped the sweat from his forehead. He was sweating like a stuck pig and he hadn’t cleared customs yet. He was standing behind a large black man with no neck. The son-of-a-bitch must spend his life in the fucking gym, Earl thought, as he concentrated on a fly that was moving downward over the ripple of muscle on the back of the man’s head. No Neck swiped at it without looking, moving hand and arm like a giant paw. Earl jerked his head out of the way, barely avoiding the grizzly strike. The fly turned to mush and blood on the hump that passed for a neck. It didn’t have a chance.

“ Watch it,” Earl said, without thinking.

No Neck turned and smiled at Earl. “Sorry.” He pinched the fly between thumb and forefinger and flicked it onto the floor.

“ Just missed me,” Earl said.

“ I’ll try to be more careful,” the huge man said. The encounter was over as No Neck moved up to the customs counter and Earl realized that like the fly, he was out of the man’s memory, no more important than the dust on the floor. He was brooding, thinking of home, not even gone a day and he missed Texas.

“ Next,” the custom’s officer said, and Earl felt relief flood over him. He was tired of the line, tired of the dingy airport and tired of the sweat pouring down his back. The sooner he got Maria and got out of Trinidad, the better.

An hour later the road weary cab pulled up in front of the Hilton Hotel. Earl couldn’t get out of the car fast enough. Less than two hours in the country and all he wanted to do was go home. He was disgusted by the run down buildings, the fading paint, the litter in the street and the sea of black faces. This wasn’t the good old U. S. of A.