“Gotta run, D. Talk to Germaine and Hillary. Show them the numbers and remind them what a bargain I’ve been for the last year.”

Avery hustled to the starting line, got into her ready position, and took off toward the rope wall. She grabbed the knotted line and started her ascent.

“Shit,” Dwight said as he pulled his phone from the breast pocket of his unwrinkled suit.

CHAPTER 6 - Negril, Jamaica Tuesday, June 15, 2021

CHAPTER 6

Negril, Jamaica Tuesday, June 15, 2021

WALT JENKINS RENTED A LONELY HOUSE IN THE FORESTED REGION between Negril and West End. A ten-minute drive to the east took him into the heart of Negril and the inlands of Jamaica, far from the white sand beaches that encircled the island and the mythical resorts that decorated their shores. The interior of Jamaica was less glamorous. The blue and pink and yellow homes shed their paint, dogs wandered through the streets, and a population worked to survive. But it was a kind populace, one that welcomed the American who had moved to their land to get away from some unspoken problem back home. The locals never asked Walt what he was running from. Love or the law, his Jamaican friends liked to say, were man’s only two problems in this world. But Walt had come to the right place, they told him. On this island there were “no problems, mon.” For three years Walt had tried to buy into that philosophy. The rum helped.

A thirty-minute drive to the west took him to the cliffs of West End, and to more tourists than he cared to see in a lifetime. But there was an establishment there called Rick’s Café and it was the only place Walt could find Hampden Estate rum—other than visiting the distillery itself, a massive compound located in Trelawny where the rum was distilled in giant pot stills. Walt had visited the distillery several times and had become close friends with the owner. His fondness for the rum made him trek to Rick’s Café a couple of times each week when he had a taste for the good stuff.

The ice rattled in his glass as Walt walked to the front porch of his house. He sat in the rocker and stared out at the horizon. It had been his nightly ritual for as long as he’d been here in Jamaica. Situated deep in the forests of Negril, the sunsets from his front porch were not as spectacular as when he ventured to the coast, but they were still worthy of thirty minutes of quiet solitude. Instead of sinking into the Atlantic, here on his porch the sun simply dipped beneath the branches of palm trees and mangroves, silhouetting them black against the cherry-stained sky.