Out of Control

“Sit down, Deidra, please.”

“Why?” Deidra asked and her hands hit her hips.

“Just come, sit for a minute before you go,” Harry said quietly and sat down on the couch.

Deidra rolled her eyes and sucked her teeth, but she went and sat next to Harry. “Okay, I’m sitting. Now what?”

“Have you bought your ticket yet?”

“No. I’ll buy one when I get to the airport. I’ll be safe there until my flight leaves.”

Harry looked his watch. “When is the next flight?”

“In the morning.”

“You plan is to sit at the airport all night?”

“It’s better than sitting around here waiting for them to come and kill me.”

“I don’t want you to go, Deidra. I would be lost without you.”

“I don’t want to go. But what choice do I have?”

“You can choose to stay here with me.”

“That’s not a choice, Harry. It’s a death sentence. You’re not leaving me any other choice.”

“You will be safe with me. I would die before I let anything happen to you.”

“And what happens to me after they kill you?”

“What can I do to make you stay?”

“Take their offer.”

Harry stood up. “No. I can not just give them my money.” He walked to the window and looked out. Maybe he should have gotten some of his men to watch the house.

Deidra got up and joined Harry at the window. “Then I have to go, Harry. It’s just that simple. These men have already killed Kitchner and now they killed Dexter. And they won’t mind killing everybody until they get what they want. That’s how they live. The only thing they understand is violence and death. You’re not a killer, Harry. So unless you have plans to kill Jamaica and this Mike Black, they are just going to kill you and take what they want.”

“Okay, Deidra. If you stay I will swallow my pride and do what you want.”

Deidra put her arms around Harry. “It’s not what I want. But it is the only thing that will keep us alive.”

The following day Jacara Delbridge arrived on the island from Freeport. She had heard that Jamaica was spending a lot of time in Nassau. Then she heard from Black’s mother that he had bought a house there. “That’s why I haven’t seen him in months,” Jacara said.

Jacara had become a showgirl in Las Vegas until she concluded that she would never be a headliner, so she decided to move on. She had come to the Bahamas for Junkanoo and a short vacation. Junkanoo groups "rush" from midnight until shortly after dawn to the music of cowbells. They compete for cash prizes in costumes made from cardboard covered in tiny shreds of colorful crepe paper. Some say the word Junkanoo comes from John Canoe, the name of an African tribal chief who demanded the right to celebrate with his people even after being brought to the West Indies in slavery.

She got a job as headliner at the Count Basie Square in the Port Lucaya Marketplace with the Port Lucaya dancers. After she met Black, Jacara cultivated a good relationship with his mother, which gave her the opportunity to interact with Black’s daughter, Michelle on a regular basis. It was something that Black didn’t like, but knew he had very little control over. “But if he knew what was really going on, he wouldn’t like that either. He would kill me if he knew the truth,” Jacara said aloud as she looked at herself in the mirror and prayed that her secret would stay that way. It wasn’t meant to go that way, but she had fallen in love with Mike Black and was hoping to leave her previous life behind her. Jacara hated to even think about the life she once lived and wanted nothing more than to bury it deep like Black had done to almost all of the people that were involved.

In her wildest dreams, she had painted a perfect picture of her new life with Mike Black. But she knew he was slipping away when she heard that Black was on the island with CeCe. He was on the island to meet with a group of Chinese investors and members of the Cuban government. When she heard that CeCe had arranged to meet with some local dressmakers who wanted to sell their creations for CeCe’s boutique in New York, Jacara arranged to be there.

“What’s going on here?” Jacara had gotten a call the minute CeCe came into the store.

“Oh, just a little show for a friend of Jamaica’s. She’s a big-time buyer from New York and we are trying to get her interested in buying some of our designs.”

“I don’t know about big time,” CeCe said. “But so far I like what I see.”

“Miss Collins, this is Jacara Delbridge.”