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.”