Jamaican Wedding Part VII

“I have something to tell you,” DB said.

“Oh, dear God, I knew it, the chicken dance the nice clothes, the neatness. You’re gay,” I said.

“No, damn it I’m not gay. I’m getting married tomorrow.”

“It could be a cover up.”

“It’s not a cover up; well it’s not the kind of cover up you think it is. The truth of the matter is I work for the CIA. This wedding trip was partially planned here so that I could keep an eye on Macho Man when he sold that disk.”

I felt as if my head were going to explode. Just inside the building my friend was most likely lying with several holes in his head.

DB pulled out an ID that looked official. I held it up and studied it carefully. “These water marks look fake.”

DB snatched his ID. “They’re not fake. I’m not going to argue this with you anymore. We’ve got to get in there to save the Captain.” From a backpack he was carrying DB removed some sort of sub machine gun and handed it to me. “Have you ever shot one of these?”

“I was quite proficient with the beginner models, although they generally shot caps.”

“Just pull the trigger.”

“Right.”

“On the count of three I want you to open up the double doors and then I’ll burst in. I’m going to need you to cover me. Can you do that?”

“Of course I can. I’m a quick study.”

“Just do what I say…are you drunk?”

“Slightly but I tend to golf better drunk so I’m sure I can shoot better.”

The look on DB’s face told me that he was having second thoughts about involving me in this little adventure. Sure, I’d fucked up plenty of weddings, formal gatherings, inaugurations and so forth but this was no reason to doubt me now.

“You’re a pretty good actor. I thought you were really mad at me,” I said.

“I was mad at you. Now lets go. On the count of three. One…two…three…”

I thrust the doors open and immediately shots began to fly around us. DB ducked and rolled and then hid behind a box. I shot wildly throughout the warehouse blowing out lights and ripping into a crate of dill pickles. One shot hit the box DB was hiding behind right next to his head. Rum began to pour out onto red Hawaiian shirt.

“Watch where you’re shooting,” DB yelled.

“Drop your weapons,” I called.

“Shut up, I’m the one that’s supposed to say that.”

“Right. Come out with your hands up. We’ve got you surrounded.”

“That’s not what you say. You tell them to get rid of their weapons and lie face down with their arms spread out by their sides.”

“Get rid of your weapons. Lie face down with your arms spread by your sides,” I called.

DB had turned a very dark shade of red and I thought he might have some sort of aneurysm or heart attack. Evidently our techniques were clashing. Of course my technique was based largely on old cowboy movies I didn’t think it inferior to DB’s own CIA constructed ways.

“Screw you, I’m not coming out,” someone called.

“Was that Timball?” I asked DB.

“I don’t know what he sounds like.”

“Me either. Throw your weapon out so we can see it,” I said.

“Shut up,” DB said.

“I think you’re sending him mixed messages.”

“No, I wasn’t telling him to shut up. I was telling you to shut up.”

“Oh.”

“I’m going to go around the right flank and try to surprise him. I need you to cover me. Aim at the roof. I don’t want to get shot.”

“What if I have a clear shot? Maybe I should take it.”

“Just shoot at the roof.”

“Right.”

“Ready, go!”

DB darted out from behind his box and I began to fire. Shots came back at me and I ducked behind a crate but continued to fire.

“You’ll never take me alive,” someone yelled.

It was then that I recognized the voice. It was the Captain.

“Captain, is that you?” I yelled.

“Yes, it is.”

“Well, stop shooting at me.”

I looked out over the crate I was hiding behind and saw the Captain slowly rising from behind his crate.

“Jesus, you almost killed us,” I said.

Slowly I worked my way to where the Captain was in the middle of the warehouse. On the floor were several bodies including Macho Man.

“You killed them all?” I asked.

“He works for the CIA too,” DB said.

“But he’s drunk most of the time,” I said.

“Drinking doesn’t seem to interfere with his ability to hunt bad guys,” DB said.

This was all too much. I grasped my head between my hands. “So, I accidentally shot the shorts off one of the guys you were observing?”

DB ran his hand through his spiked hair. “That’s right. He and Timball stole the plans to make a very sophisticated nuke. They were going to sell it to a contact in the Middle East. I don’t need to tell you what the consequences might have been had they succeeded.”

“We had a homing device sewn into Macho Man’s Euroshorts. He was easy to find until you shot his shorts off. Luckily you were able to get close to him and things worked out,” the Captain said.

I’d never heard the Captain string two sentences together and now he was speaking as if he really were with the CIA. Had his drunkenness all been an act to throw off the enemy? If so he’d been practicing all his adult life to be in the CIA.

“We could use a man like you,” DB said. “You’ve got a couple college degrees. I could get you in.”

“Thanks but I’m not built for this life.”

DB raised his gun. “Well, then we’re going to have to kill you.”

Unfortunately I had left my gun back at the crate I’d been hiding behind. I closed my eyes. “Go ahead shoot.”

“Jesus, I was just kidding,” DB said.

“I need a beer,” the Captain said.

“I need more than a beer to recover from this wedding trip. What does Summer think of you being in the CIA?”

“She doesn’t know. She thinks I work in a hospital.”

I turned to address the Captain but he was gone, off to drink away the day at the pool bar. I’d often wondered what he did when he said he worked for the state. He always seemed to be online and answered my E-mails in seconds during anytime of the day. I thought he’d just been goofing off but evidently he’d been hard at work capturing bad guys…

Jamaican Wedding Part VI

The sun was setting and it was a damn beautiful sight although I imagined DB would have rather been watching it with his sweetheart. At that very moment though the bride to be had other more romantic visions that needed attending to. She was in the resort lobby at the cyber café Googling Jamaican beach front properties.

DB tossed his plastic cup of rum on the beach. “God damn it, what where you thinking? Telling Summer I was going to buy a beach house down here.”

I lit up a cigarillo and blew the smoke over my head. “I thought you were doing well.”

“I am but a beach house down here would cost millions. I’m not doing that well.”

“Well, then maybe you shouldn’t go around making promises you can’t keep.”

“I didn’t make any promises. You’re the one making promises!”

“Right,” I said. “I may have dug a bit of a hole for you but my heart was in the right place.”

“Oh, my God, sometimes you just don’t make any sense.”

“I’m a hard man to get to know but we can talk about that later. Timball and his men are going to come here looking for us eventually. We have to come up with a plan.”

“We have to come up with a plan? No, you have to come up with a plan. This is supposed to be my wedding trip not some cat and mouse espionage game for amateurs.”

“This isn’t espionage for amateurs. This is the real deal.”

I heard someone’s feet in the sand and turned. It was Macho Man. He was wearing some sort of weird yellow and red handkerchief thing on his head. It made him look like a pro wrestler.

“The real deal?” DB said.

“It seems I have once again inadvertently walked into mayhem. It is of course my nature. I can do things no other way,”

“Ha,” DB cried, “Inadvertently? How come these sorts of things never happen to anybody else?”

“Luck? Alignment of the stars? Hell, I don’t know. These things happen to the Captain quite a bit too. It’s something with the way we’re built I suppose.”

“Bullshit, I’m going up to my room. This is all too much. I have a wedding to prepare for.”

“You should stay out of your room. Timball will find you,” Macho Man said.

“Whatever,” DB said and marched off towards the resort lobby.

“Does this captain guy have the disk?” Macho Man asked.

“Yeah, he said he hid it in a good place.”

“Where?”

“He didn’t tell me.”

“Oh, well okay, as long as it’s safe.”

It seemed as if Macho Man was acting strangely. Of course I was keenly aware that my paranoia might be the manifestation of deep rooted childhood fears and the lingering effects of the copious amounts of rum and marijuana in my system. And yet still I couldn’t quite control myself…

“Did you just laugh at me?” I asked.

Macho Man titled his head and looked into my eyes. “Laugh?”

His eyes were red around the edges and it wasn’t just from the mascara he was wearing irritating the liner of his eyes. He was as stoned as I was.

“How do I know I can trust you? Why wouldn’t you just take that disk and run? How can I trust anyone with a Macho Man tattoo?” I said.

Less than five feet away was a freshly lit tiki torch. I looked at Mach Man and he looked at me and at the same moment we dove for it. I guess we both thought it would make an excellent weapon or perhaps, for a reason only the tilted mind can comprehend, we both wanted that tiki torch, not to simply posses it but to deny the other of its fiery brilliance.

As I flew through the air time seemed to slow and I thought of the day’s events, how a wedding trip to Jamaica had turned into a surreal grind show and it hadn’t even been the Captain’s fault. An image of the Captain in his patriotic Speedos entered my head and I quickly purged it, replacing it with a hooker from the cavern. The last thing that went through my mind before our heads hit was what a shame it would be that I wouldn’t get to fully experience the good buzz I had at that moment.

* * *

I awoke to what I thought was sun’s bright light in my face. As my eyes adjusted I realized that the light in my eyes was of the artificial and overhead variety.

“I see you’re awake.”

I turned my head and there stood Timball and his goons. The Captain was tied to a chair next to him. Someone had fastened one of those hard hats with cup holders on it to his head and he was drinking Red Stripe through the straw. Macho Man was still unconscious on the floor next to me. From what I could make out we were in some sort of storage room surrounded by boxes.

“Why does he get beer?” I asked.

Timball picked at the carnation on the lapel of his white linen suit. “He’s been very cooperative.”

With all the might I could muster I tried to lunge to my feet. It was a feeble attempt and I only managed to get my head off the ground which then it slammed onto the cold hard cement. “You bastard.”

“That had to hurt,” Timball said.

I looked passed Timball to the Captain. He winked at me and I knew then that he hadn’t sold me out that he may have been a lot of things but he wasn’t a snitch. His loyalty to inebriation might have caused him to be creative and finagle the beer he was wearing on his hard hat but even in his darkest drunkest hour I knew he was still my friend. I silently scolded myself for even thinking that he might have given me up.

“I didn’t hurt half as much as I’m going to hurt you,” I said.

Timball’s goons took a step towards me but he stuck both his arms out and stopped them. With his thin arms spread out and spherical mid section he looked much like a cartoon pigeon in a suit. “You are in no position to threaten me.”

“No, but I am,” the Captain said.

For a moment Timball stood with his back to the Captain but then slowly turned towards him his face reddening. “I thought we had a deal.”

“You thought you had a deal but the rules are changing,” the Captain said. “You’ll get your disk but you’ll let my friend go.”

“I told you that he was going to die. No one steals from me. That part wasn’t negotiable,” Timball said. “I kept my part of the deal. I gave you the beer.”

The Captain slurped the last of the Red Stripe from his hard hat. “Well, I’m changing the rules. He doesn’t even know where the disk is hidden. I’m the only one that knows where it’s at.”

“How about I just kill you both?” Timball said.

“Fine and you’ll never get your disk,” the Captain said.

This didn’t sit well with Timball. His body began to quake and his face grew even redder. Without warning he turned on the heels of his shiny shoes and slugged one of his goons in the stomach. The goon barely flinched. Timball sighed. “Now, I feel better. And don’t even think that you’re both going to walk away from this little situation. One of you is going to die. I can’t let the competition think I’m getting weak.”

“Fine, my friend here walks,” the Captain said. “When I know he and my other friends are safe you’ll get your disk.”

It was obvious by the look on Timball’s face--which resembled a constipated warthog-- that he wasn’t used to negotiating that he simply brutalized and took what he wanted.

“Fine, fine fine! You’re friends walk. Untie him,” Timball ordered. “Now where is my disk?”

One of the goons untied me and I stood there for a moment. I couldn’t leave the Captain.

“What are you doing?” the Captain said. “Get out of here.”

I didn’t know what else to do so I headed towards the double doors and pushed them open. The door hit something. I looked around the open door and there was DB with his index finger over his mouth. “Shhhhhhhhhh.”

I let the door close behind me and a moment later three shots echoed inside the storage room.

Jamaican Wedding Part V

Macho Man’s woman, who I would later learn was named Karla, bopped DB over the head with her oversized purse when he tried to explain what had gone down in the cavern. DB eventually was able to subdue her by having the Captain sit on her oversized chest--a duty the Captain was more than willing to fulfill—and by plying her with a half dozen extra large souvenir cup size margaritas. In the meantime Macho Man and I made a hasty escape through the kitchen exit.

Our first line of business was to purchase Macho Man a new pair of swim trunks. So, we traveled up the road to the infamous Cigar and liquor emporium run by one slightly creepy Mr. Chin. The thin Jamaican followed us around his shop, never more than two or three inches away from us. I guessed he’d never heard of personal space or perhaps that the Jamaican equivalent was somewhat more intimate. Whatever the case, his close proximity amplified his rather poor choice of colognes and several times I was forced to held up T-shirts as if I were considering buying them to create a barrier between us.

* * *

As Macho Man looked at a rack of shorts I became curious as to how he’d gotten his own distasteful pair back. “So, how did you get those shorts back? I thought they’d been lost at sea.”

“Back ups. I have about eight pairs. Karla carries them in her purse.”

“Why do you need so many?” I said.

“Blowouts.”

“Right,” I said. “Did you ever just consider wearing something with a little bit more material?

“Why?”

“Never mind.”

We procured the swim trunks, a dozen Cuban cigars, 3 bottles of rum, four tins of margarita mix, and several other substances that weren’t technically legal. Mr. Chin was more than helpful in providing us with all things that make a good bender possible and through some creative labeling charged everything to my American Express card.

* * *

I knew that Mr. Timball and his goons would be waiting for us outside Margaritaville. This is where the taxis and buses gathered to cart tourists back and forth from the hotels and resorts. Taking this avenue would leave us too vulnerable. We would need to find an alternate route. And so for over an hour we searched and were finally able to find a local fisherman that was willing to take us back to the resort on his boat for a small fee. The catch was that he would have to check his traps on the way which would greatly lengthen the trip. We agreed and before we left Macho Man sneaked on Mr. Timball’s boat and disabled the engine. We didn’t need a surprise attack by sea.

As we headed out to sea, the outboard motor gurgling, the fisherman cut the tops of several water bottles with his knife. I noticed a good deal of fish scales accumulated on the blade of the rusty knife but figured the alcohol we were about to pour into the makeshift cups would kill any pathogens.

Macho Man had wanted to hoof it back to the resort but I changed his mind when I told him he could do pushups on his knuckles across the width of the boat. This appealed to the Dirty Harry center of his brain and as soon as we boarded the wooden vessel he began his workout.

“Why did you try to shoot me with the spear gun?” Macho Man asked, in between push-ups.

I sipped from my margarita, stalling, trying to think of a good excuse. “Uh, well, I the truth is I didn’t try to shoot you.”

“You mean it was an accident?”

“That’s right.”

The fisherman pushed the dreadlocks out of his eyes and then drank from his margarita. “You shot him, mon?”

“No, I shot his shorts off.”

“You shot his shorts off?”

“Yeah, with my spear gun.”

Macho Man collapsed on the boat. “Two-hundred and seventy.”

“Great, you win a fish.” I grabbed a recently caught fish and tossed it onto Macho Man. He screamed like a seven year old girl. “Wow, that really wasn’t very macho.”

Macho Man stood up in the boat. “You threw a dirty fish on me.”

In the distance I could see a boat fast approaching. The fisherman stood and using his hand as a visor looked in the direction of the boat. “The Lou Lou?”

Macho Man hunkered down in the boat. “That’s Timball’s boat. It’s impossible. I really fucked up that engine.”

“Well, obviously you didn’t fuck it up enough. We need to get lost. Follow me.” I slipped over the side of the boat and Macho Man followed. We kept our heads below the side of the boat. Timball was approaching from the east and so with any luck he wouldn’t see us on the west side of the boat. I know it sucked as a plan but we were out of options.

A minute or so later the engine of the Lou Lou became audible and then shortly thereafter I heard the voice of Timball. “Hi, there. How is the fishing today?”

“Not bad, mon,” the fisherman said.

“Good, I was wondering if you happened to see two men. One of them was dressed in a very tight pair of Euroshorts. The other one had a shave head. They’re friends of mine.”

“No, I didn’t see them.”

“Well, my associate here thought he saw them get on your boat.”

“You sure he’s not smoking some of the good stuff, mon?”

“Ha, ha, he just might have been. Well, if you see them around let them know that we’ve got DB, the Captain and Claude. They’re staying in my home until further notice.”

We waited until the fisherman gave us the signal to get back on the boat and then climbed back aboard. I could feel my skin starting to blister. My sunblock was wearing off and I was becoming dangerously dehydrated from all the liquor I’d consumed.

I dipped my towel in the water and wrapped it around my head like a turban. “We need to save my friends. DB is supposed to get married tomorrow. Summer will never forgive me if he doesn’t make it to his own wedding.”

“He’ll make it to his wedding,” Macho Man said. “Didn’t you say this Luch character had the DVD?”

“Well, I gave it to him. What he did with it I’m not sure.”

“Let’s hope he doesn’t have it on him because if Timball finds it on him he’ll kill them.”

“All this happened because I shot your shorts off. What if he doesn’t find the DVD on them?”

“He’ll kill them anyway.”

“Right,” I said.

I took us two hours to get back to the resort because the fisherman got drunk on margaritas with Macho Man and I and ran his boat up on a reef. It took us quite a while to work our way off. When we arrived at the resort I found Summer pacing frantically back and forth in the lobby.

“Hey, there,” I said.

“DB is gone. He said he was going to look at real estate with this weird guy. I think something is wrong.”

“Oh, no I know that guy. He’s a real estate developer. DB was thinking of purchasing a lot down here.”

“Really?”

“Oops, maybe I said too much. Maybe that was supposed to be a wedding gift.”

Summer hopped up in delight. “That would be awesome. I have to go tell my mom.”

“Right,” said.

She darted off up to her room.

Macho man sniggered. “Now you’ve really done it.”

“Why don’t you go do some push-ups or something,” I said. "I need to think of a plan to get those guys back."

Jamaican Wedding Part IV

The water slide rumbled again and I saw the flash of gold Euroshorts pass in front of my eyes.

"Fuck," I said, "it's Macho Man."

There was more rumbling from the water slide which sounded like a tone deaf kid trying to learn the steel drums. I took a step back but Macho Man didn’t move he was too busy staring me down. “I’m going to kick your--” Macho Man turned toward the water slide.

“Look out below.” DB burst from the end of the water slide head first and hit Macho Man directly in the temple with his fists.

“Who is that?” DB asked.

I grabbed Macho Man by the hair and pulled his head up out of the water. He groaned. “Good work, DB. This bastard was going to kill me.

“Kill you?” DB asked. “What the Hell is going on here?”

“I’ll explain it to you but first Captain, get me some rope. We’ll need to tie this one up.”

The Captain handed one of the women a twenty dollar bill and she emerged a few minutes later with a coil of rope. The rope looked as if it had been used heavily in some sort of ritualistic sacrifice, the red stains on it looking peculiarly like blood but I had no time to sort that little mess out. What I had on my hands was an angry man who was willing to kill and had to be tied down.

Wasting no time DB made his way to the bar and downed one of the coconut drinks. “And Captain how did you get detached from your patriotic underwear?”

“I took them off because I was coming down here.”

“Uh, I see,” DB said.

* * *

I sipped from my Red Stripe. “So, who are you and why did you want that disk so badly?”

Macho Man jerked at the rope that bound his hands behind the plastic palm we’d tied him to. “You’re in a lot of trouble. You’ll never make it out of here alive. Timball wants that disk.”

“He does does he? Well, he can’t have it. What if it’s the design plan to a nuclear bomb? I couldn’t have that on my conscience.”

“It’s not…”

That familiar rumbling started again and I looked up just in time to see someone else hit the cavern pool. Claude emerged a moment later. He thrust his hand out of the pool. “I was snorkeling out by the trampoline and found this gold disk at the bottom under a rock.”

The obvious question was to ask Claude what in the Hell possessed him to look under that rock but I knew he would only fill my ears with esoteric horseshit about vibes, intuition, and channeling through the spirits of his dead German ancestors. He always got on that kick when he was drunk and I could tell by the red rims around his eyes he’d been slamming drinks just moments before.

I snatched the disk away from him. “This here my friend WAS our leverage. It kept me alive. Now all this Timball character has to do is shoot me and take it away…Captain, hold this for me would you?”

The Captain reached over his shoulder and grabbed the disk while he tongue kissed his rented companion. I didn’t see where he put it next but I knew it would be safe for the time being.

Claude ran his hand through his hair plastering it to his head like some sort of straw welcome mat. “I’m sorry. I just thought it was just a bootleg of the Dead or maybe Jimmy Buffet.”

“How in the Hell did you come up with that?” I barked. Immediately I felt like a heel as Claude lowered his head and looked like he might cry. “Don’t feel bad. It’s my fault for not hiding the damn thing better.”

“I’m not I’m looking at the used condoms at the bottom of the pool.”

I jumped out of the fetid water landing on a bar stool. “You didn’t see any used syringes down there did you?”

Claude grinned which reminded me of a gargoyle that had come to life during a recent acid trip. “I was just joking.”

“Damn you,” I said, hopping back into the pool. “That guy at the top told me he wouldn’t let anyone else come down here.”

“He told me that you paid for everyone to come down here.”

I frowned and removed my waterproof neoprene cigar holder. I chose a Cuban Cohiba I’d purchased from a certain Mr. Chin at a local tobacco and booze emporium. According to Mr. Chin all fantasies of the flesh could be delivered up behind a false wall in his establishment. I declined having heard stories of such adventures going awry after some unwitting sex fiend drank from a laced shot of rum and then awoke to find one of his kidney’s gone and on its way via a jet to a sheik in Saudi Arabia.

“DB, we need a plan. The Captain is preoccupied and will only leave this place when his money runs out.”

I could hear the plastic palm tree shaking and I hoped that Macho Man wouldn’t rip it out of the ground and beat the Captain over the head with it. “You wait until I get out of here. I’ll kill all of you.”

The Captain picked an orange slice out of his drink and threw it, hitting Macho man on the forehead. He growled and turned a shade of red I didn’t think was in the human rainbow.

“Easy big man,” I said. “I’m sure we can come to some sort of arrangement.”

“The only arrangement is going to be the big flower arrangement at your funeral. You guys really don’t know what you’ve gotten yourselves into.”

“In fact we do know what we’ve gotten ourselves into. Do you think all this happened by chance? Did you think maybe that I was sent here to get that disk? That I in fact was contracted to kill you?”

I suppose that this scenario had never occurred to Macho Man and Hell it hadn’t even occurred to me until several moments before I said it.

Macho Man’s eyes grew and grew. “You mean you’re spies?”

“Something like that,” I said.

I handed the bartender a hundred dollar bill. I thought it wouldn’t hurt to align myself with the establishment since we had taken a prisoner and committed many felonies in his whore cavern. He parted his dreadlocks that revealed two disturbingly green eyes.

“How much to turn that damn entrance to our secret cavern off?” I asked.

“Five hundred, mon.”

I dug in my swim trunks and pulled out my last $500 and handed it the man. “Now, how do we get out of here?”

The Captain jumped from his barstool, his teeth gnashing like some sort of rabid road weasel with its foot snared in a trap. “I’m not ready to go. This is my vacation and I want to stay in this cavern.”

“This isn’t about you, knucklehead. This is DB’s wedding trip and our main concern is getting him back safely to the resort. The misses to be will set us out to sea tied to a raft smeared in honey with a thousand stinger ants gnawing at our bodies. Just think of that pain on your unit. It would be worse than that case of VD you got from that girl in Greece.”

The Captain paused, probably not because he cared or was concerned but if I had to guess it was because his setting had just sunk in. You see the Captain is terribly claustrophobic and on more than one occasion flipped out in small spaced drinking establishments causing mayhem of all types.

I leaned over and whispered into his rented companion’s ear. “If you don’t get him out of here soon he’s going to flip out. He can’t stay in closed in places for too long.”

She nodded, grabbed him by the arm and coaxed him from his barstool.

“Captain,” I called. “Don’t forget your patriotic underpants.”

DB picked up the ghastly red, white and blue swim trunks and tossed them to the Captain. He caught them and slipped them on. At least, I thought, he won’t get arrested for indecency.

“You all go up to the bar. I’ll take care of Macho Man,” I said.

While everyone else made their way out of the cavern I made my way over to Macho Man and knelt next to him. I blew a cloud of cigarillo smoke in his face.

“My friends don’t know what’s at stake here big guy. This wedding trip is an elaborate ruse. I was sent here to get that disk and my instructions were to kill if anyone got in my way. Do you think it’s a good day to die?”

For the first time I could see fear in Macho Man’s eyes. He was a small time player but big enough to know that when someone in this business made a threat he’d better be pretty damn scared.

What exactly the business was I hadn’t figured out yet but I was too deep into it now to back out. As I had done all my life I’d come to the party uninvited, drank all the booze, broke a few lamps and when the host asked me to leave I acted indignant as if he were attending my party. I figure you can’t go through life apologizing for being yourself even if most of the things you do are wrong and so I acted like I was right all the time. It is much easier to live with yourself when your belief system is flawed in your favor.

I took out my diving knife.

“You’re going to kill me,” Macho Man said.

He closed his eyes and I slashed frantically with the knife. The ropes fell from his hands.

“Here’s the deal big guy. We take the disk and make all the money that Mr. Timball was going to make.”

“He’ll kill us.”

“He’ll kill us anyway.”

I stuck out my hand as if to shake. Macho Man reached out and we shook.

“One thing,” I said.

“What?”

“Those gold Euroshorts.”

“What about them?”

“They need to go.”

Jamaican Wedding Part III

I watched as the Captain’s patriotic underpants floated on the surface of the water for a moment and then unceremoniously sank to the bottom. Damn him, I thought, now I’m going to have to save him at the very time my own life is in jeopardy. The idea of seeing him flaying around in the nude gave me a moment’s pause though, for if he really were in danger and required some sort of physical help then I might have to come in contact with him. It was a thought that made my gag reflex kick in but I quickly recovered for I knew that a time like this weakness could be deadly.

I pulled myself up onto the dock and grabbed someone’s towel so if needed I could swaddle the Captain in it and perhaps he could wear it like a diaper.

Just as I made for the stair case Macho Man, Mr. Timball and his two goons arrived. I was quick though and managed to make it to the staircase and scale it to the top floor and the entrance of the water slide without being detected.

An attendant sat next to the slide smoking a joint and leafing through a Playboy magazine. He smiled with giant white teeth, pushed the girlie magazine aside and thrust a plastic cup filled with money at me. “You give me good tip, you get good ride, mon.”

The emphasis was on the word ride and I knew then that the Captain had succumb to some strange pay as you go orgy, that he in fact was pecker deep in some sort of plastic third world whore house quaffing rum and feeling up native women. For the Captain there was no other option. His loins controlled his destiny.

“Pay as you go?” I asked.

The waterslide attendant lifted his mirrored sunglasses. “The more you pay the more you go.”

“Right, what if I pay so that someone else won’t go?”

“You mean the guys at the bottom of the staircase?”

I looked down just as Macho Man pointed at me and started up the staircase. “That’s right.”

“It cost you big money, mon.”

“How does two-hundred dollars sound?”

“It sounds very good. Why don’t climb aboard.” He lifted a T-shirt next to his side which was covering a red lever. Painted on the lever in yellow was the word: Underworld.

I reached into the pocket of my swim trunks and procured two one hundred dollar bills and handed them to the attendant. He grabbed them and stuffed them into his cup.

He motioned me towards the slide with an open hand. “Enjoy and make sure to cross your legs, fold your arms across your chest and pinch your nose.”

“Right,” I said and thrust myself into the gaping mouth of the water slide.

* * *

The water slide was constructed at such a steep angle that I built up incredible amounts of speed which were greatly enhanced by the copious amounts of SPF 75 sun block I had slathered on my hide at the onset of the day.

The g-force sucked my cheeks back and I thought surely I would rupture something vital, perhaps blow out an eyeball or break my leg. My fears worsened when in front of me the bottom of the water slide dropped open and I slid down into another chute. I glanced over my shoulder as the false bottom of the other water slide closed again.

“Look out below,” I cried.

A very intense light blinded me and my body shot into a pool of warm ocean water. I emerged spitting up the salty water and flailed there for some time like a naked chicken in an oil slick. When my eyesight cleared I realized I was in some sort of underground cavern light by torches and the glow of the plasma TV above the pool bar. The Captain was sitting naked on a cement bar stool slurping from a hollowed out coconut. A beautiful black woman, wearing only an orange bikini bottom, stood behind him rubbing his shoulders.

The Captain turned towards me. “What took you so long?”

“By God man put something decent on,” I said tossing the wet towel to him. “You look like some sort of before picture for a skin revitalizing center.”

I waded over towards the Captain and sat on the bar stool next to him. Immediately I was surrounded by four or five very beautiful women. A hand shot down the front of my swim trunks and all thoughts of Macho Man and Mr. Timball were purged from my head.

“Why the Hell didn’t you come up and get me?” I asked the Captain.

He motioned the bartender over. “Two more of these,”

“Thanks, I could use a drink.”

“No, they’re both for me. You get your own.”

“Right.”

I followed the hand in my swimming trunks up a slender arm and to the face of an even more beautiful “entertainer.” “You really have a future in this line of work. I see big things for you.”

“Ha ha, not as big as mine,” the Captain said.

“Must everything relate back to your diseased member?”

The woman rubbing the Captain’s shoulders took a step back.

“It’s not diseased it’s just blue,” the Captain said.

“Blue?” the woman asked.

A coconut drink was thrust in front of me and as I continued to receive a hand job I guzzled the sweet concoction finishing it off. “Damn, that was good.”

I thought about staying in the cavern for the rest of my life, perhaps renting a space under the pool bar, getting a job hocking trinkets or pulling tourists around in a rickshaw. I folded my arms behind my head and leaned back facing the pool and that is when I heard a horrible rumbling and in the next instant someone shot out of the water slide. I leaned forward and Macho Man surfaced. In his hand were the Captains patriotic underpants….