—Barcode? I say. But barcode have whole heap of different number, and me sure me never see 666 yet.
—You saying you look?
—No, but—
—But is for ram goat, brethren. Check the reasoning. Nobody in Jamaica have the power of the beast. Them just nyam wha the beast feed. You no notice that all the time the number start with zero zero zero? That be some decimal science. Whole number and natural number and double number. That mean all the number on all the code in all the world add up to 666.
I walk away from the man because the worst part of all this was that it was starting to make some kind of sense. And nothing at this peace party was making any damn sense. Not the Twelve Tribes branch of Rastafari, who skin colour was getting lighter every month, not JLP and PNP palavering, Copenhagen City and the Eight Lanes playing domino and hugging and kissing and lovey-doving like I didn’t kill your brother, father and grandfather three years ago. What is peace? Peace is my blowing a little breeze on my daughter forehead when she sweat in her sleep. This don’t name peace, this name stalemate. I learn that word from Doctor Love.
Doctor Love just fly to Miami saying he has a president to get elected. Where I just send Weeper. Who know what those two up to since they both realise that they love book more than woman. Doctor Love say, Hermano them motherfuckers from Medellín are going to test you, yes test you again, what did you expect, muchacho? Last week they stole a dead baby from the morgue, gut it out like a fish, stuffed the little shit with cocaine and had some girl fly with it to Fort Lauderdale—just a day after her quinceañera. Hardcore like a porno, no? Me, I starting to get just a little tired of testing. They know and I know that December 3 was just a stupid test. I give them a message but they say they want a body. A dead body is a dead body, I don’t care. But I do care about some bombocloth Spanish-speaking pussyhole thinking that this is some little boy ’prentice that they can just test and re-test.
December 1976, the Singer just do the concert in the park and I wasting time at fucking Jamintel Communications because I need to make an international phone call only to hear Doctor Love and some idiot cursing out in Spanish, but not Cuban Spanish so I didn’t understand most of it, but I know he was mad. And I’m thinking who the fuck this pussyhole think he talking to, as if I don’t know what hijo de puta mean? What he think I was going to do, start cry and say I’m so sorry, bossman, next time I’ll do better I promise? Like some whore who need discipline from her pimp? Was about to tell this maricón about him bombocloth when Doctor Love say to me, Just finish the job, muchacho, just finish it. So the Jamaican Syrian, the Cuban and the Colombian all want a body yet none of them realise that I gave them something better than a body. Same week Peter Nasser call me with,
—What the bombocloth wrong with the whole of you fucking ghetto people?
—This is not the first time I hear you with “you people.”
—I didn’t say you people, I said you fucking ghetto people. What the bombocloth wrong with you? Nine man?
—Eight.
—Eight man storm into O.K. Corral with, what, fourteen gun? And yet not a single man can shoot straight?
—Man can shoot straight enough.
—How you manage being the first man in history to shoot somebody in the head and not kill them? Answer that, master.
—I don’t know who you mean by you. Or you so fucking fool you think phone can’t tap?
—What? This look like spy movie? Who the r’ass want to tap you?
—Even so I don’t know who you mean by you, but I’m sure him, whoever he is, didn’t aim for anybody head.
—He, whoever him is, didn’t aim for nothing but wall and sky, it look like. No busha, that kind of slackness and poppy-show only happen in comedy. Imagine hundreds of bullet and they couldn’t take out one fucking man. Is a fucking machine gun, how r’asscloth hard can it be to shoot? I thought Louis taught you people how to deal with these things.
—I don’t know no Louis and I sure don’t know no “you people.”
—Don’t draw me tongue, Josey Wales. I told him you know, don’t make sense trying to teach ghetto naiggers anything that will take any kinda intelligence, they bound to fuck it up. My blind grandmother could hit a target better than you. All eight of you. I don’t know why I even bother to call you.
—I don’t know either since none of those people you keep talking ’bout live here.
—Why me even running up me phone bill, eh? Tell me.
—I don’t know why either, busha.
—What? You know who you talking to? You know who you bombocloth talking to, you little—
—Little? You must did drop your pants and look again.
I hang up the phone. It’s a bitch of a thing when you realise that though you are the only one who didn’t go to a top-class school and foreign college, you is the only man in the room with any sense. I really wanted to educate this ignorant, bad-chatting, Syrian shithouse. That it’s bad enough that plenty man and woman have the Singer off as a prophet, but kill him and the man graduate to martyr. This way the whole world know that guess what, the prophet is just a man like any other man, he can get shot like any other man—and like any other man in this country, not even he safe. I shoot that man off the pedestal and he fall back down to man size. I didn’t tell Peter Nasser any of that. You have to look past a man, below the skin to the real skin to know that for all the whiteness (in the face of a man who don’t go to beach because even a tan looks black), Peter Nasser is just another ignorant as shit naigger. But at least he was calling me busha these days. I must ask my woman when exactly I change into a white man who drink at Mayfair Hotel. Cho bombocloth man, I hate when a man get me so mad that I start to cuss. Only ignorant man cuss.
I say to Doctor Love, who also call me that night, that I done deal with proving things to people from 1966 and if they really think this is prep school where they feel they must test and test, then Medellín can go right back to using those batty boys in Bahamas. But then, to use the Rasta own words, I get hit with another reasoning. If the Singer did turn into a martyr it would be a big problem, for sure, but it would be their problem, not mine. Peter Nasser would be so busy shitting himself trying to kill a legend that he won’t have time to bother me with his fuckery, because truth be told, both he and I know that I long past the days when politician say jump and I say how high. Now when politician say jump, my woman say he can’t come to the phone right now but I will take a message. Talk about fool, what do you think was going to happen once you give a man with a head a gun, that he was going to return it? Even Papa-Lo wasn’t so fool.
So I decide to let my mind work on this new reasoning. December 8, 1976, news just come that he and everybody survive. Too much Babylon at the hospital and besides, by that time I grab Tony Pavarotti, because Weeper was not the man for anything that need that kind of skill. But at the emergency room they already treat him and send him home. Only the manager was still in the hospital and there was not much use to finishing him off. So me and Pavarotti drive down to 56 Hope Road, expecting police. Police mean nothing when all you need is one shot. Besides, I make one phone call and they would disappear in sixty seconds. Except 56 was a ghost town. Empty driveway and darkness in every window. Not a single police. I laugh and Pavarotti look at me like he was about to ask a question. Meanwhile Peter Nasser getting so sloppy that it look like a TV show on how much mistake one man can make. The stupid piece of dog shit leave a message, a goddamn message with my woman that if the sage go onstage it going make the page and he’ll be the rage. One of the few times in my life I ever hear Tony Pavarotti laugh was when I read that note out loud. My woman didn’t know what the r’asscloth was going on about so she leave the two of us in the living room. With Tony Pavarotti in the room I wonder if I made a mistake picking Weeper, who I send to clean up what we just do. Instead of doing it himself he just call the Rastas like some girl who always afraid. Worse, he did it on my phone. I make a phone call.
—W
here the bird flying to?
—Brethren, weh you ah call me for?
—I don’t like repeating questions.
—He gone. They leave the manager at the hospital and take him up the white man hill.
—Police?
—One in the car with them, few more back at the place. Twelve Tribes on the watch all over the hill. And a white boy—
—A white boy?
—White boy with a camera. Nobody know where he come from, but him say him is with the film crew. Anyway, me done talk.
—No you no don’t done talk yet, Inspector.
—Me done sing this sankey.
—Done, canary you just ah start.
—Not even Jesus getting up that hill tonight.
—What about the concert?
—Full police escort to and from.
—The next day?
—I don’t know.
—Talk, pussyhole.
—The next day he supposed to fly out. Them have him on a private jet.
—When?
—Five-thirty or six.
—Morning or evening?
—What you think?
—To where?
—Nobody know.
—Jet going take off and nobody know where it going? Boss, you taking ghetto man for idiot again?
—Mister, me say nobody nuh know. Not even the commissioner know. He don’t even know that the Singer plan to fly out.
—Is a top secret?
—More secret than the colour of the queen panty. We only know because our man in the car with them pretend that he gone to sleep and listen to them talk. Him white manager tell him up the hill that as soon as he done with the concert—
—So it official. He going do the concert?
—No, nothing no official. Them just putting things in place just in case. Anyway, the manager say that as soon as the concert done him setting up a plane for him at the airport but early, before the airport even open.
—Norman Manley Airport or Tinson Pen?
—Manley.
—Overseas.
—You can radio the police up the hill.
—Yeah, man, but why would I want to—
—Radio your police up the hill. Right now.
Six in the morning and the airport looking like the first reel of a cowboy movie. Only thing missing was whistling wind and tumbleweed. Pink sky. Me and Tony Pavarotti waiting in the stairway leading up to the waving gallery. Somebody thought it was a good idea making this wall like some checker pattern with open space to stick a rifle through. Checker pattern shadow leave we in the dark. Pavarotti was shifting and moving, he wasn’t feeling for this angle at all. But the plane was already out on the runway, waiting. Pavarotti quiet, his right hand gripping the trigger and his left eye in the rifle lens.
Way at the end of the runway, two jeep hang back lazy, Jamaica Defence Force, with four or five soldier positioned behind them, two with binoculars. See them from the second I went out to the waving gallery. Seeing soldiers on the lookout made me think of the Singer coming down from the white man hill. The look on his face when he wake up and see no police. He probably send two or three Rasta brethren ahead to see if the road safe, which mean he and his right-hand man was coming down the hill all alone. With no soldier watching through binoculars. You can always assume one or two things about the police: (1) make a deposit to a bank account or a back pocket and anything can happen and (2) that they always come cheap. But with soldier you never know. They hang back, standing watch maybe, but just as likely that they just waiting. I wonder if the pilot expect them to come over.
—Make sure you take him out before the soldier them drive over.
Pavarotti nod.
6:02. Everybody but the sun waiting for the Singer. For a second it feels like I waiting for a parade, like that grainy newsreel that come on TV every November about Kennedy in Dallas. Everybody waiting on the Singer. Not just me, not just the soldiers, not just Tony Pavarotti or the plane, but Peter Nasser, Doctor Love, and a phone number for the Medellín cartel that I never use myself. But then I wonder. Everybody waiting to see his next move or mine? Who is the real dancing monkey in this episode? Who people watching to see the next move? And if people say jump and you manage to jump high, do they stop telling you to jump, or disrespect you forever because you didn’t act like a man and say, Fuck you, bad man don’t jump for nobody. The problem with proving something is that instead of leaving you alone people never stop giving new things to prove, harder things. Bullshit things until it become a TV comedy. Or just a joke.
Tony Pavarotti tap my shoulder. He is here. He and another Rasta walking to the plane. Nothing moving but the dust they kick up. The airport is still empty and not waking up till seven. They look around while walking, moving slow, stopping one second then moving again. The Singer look to the plane, scanning left and right, with the other Rasta walking backwards making sure nothing behind them. Both of them see the army jeep and stop. The Singer look at the jeep and look at the plane. Nobody move. Tony Pavarotti turning the gun to aim, following them. His finger slip around the trigger. The Singer looking at the soldiers and say something to the Rasta. They start moving again but slower, stopping right in front of the plane. Maybe they waiting for somebody to come out. I re member that Tony Pavarotti don’t need orders from me. I hear a click.
—Stop.
Pavarotti look at me, look at the two of them running to the plane now.
—No bother with it.
They run to the plane and have to close the door themselves.
When I get two phone call the next day I cut both short with the same line. You want him dead so much, you kill him.
Now I’m sitting down in my living room waiting for the phone to ring. This phone better ring soon. Soon as it start ringing I can stop thinking. Time for action, no time for thinking. I wonder if she pay the phone bill? The phone is supposed to ring three times before I go to bed. Not even tomorrow coming before my phone ring. Sitting down, waiting for the phone, the Singer enter my head again and I want to cuss. That man will never know how I come to near finish him twice. How I let him go because I knew that once he board that plane he will never come back. And yet in 1978, coming off the plane and even causing fuss in customs is he. In two years Peter Nasser know better than to come to me like a barking dog and to speak to me like a man. He even take to calling me busha all the time, which make me check if this carbolic soap was bleaching my skin. Me all stop using it, which made my woman very happy since she didn’t feel like she was sleeping in a hospital ward anymore. I don’t know what surprise him more, that the Singer was coming back to do yet another concert or that I know from before and tell him so.
—All this fucking peace treaty business, you have anything to do with this fuckery?
We’re at Lady Pink Go-Go Club, which he is liking just a little too much. None of the whores that Weeper used to deal with seem to be here anymore. Look like they lose interest in fucking Pepsi bottles onstage as soon as he lose interest in them. But the new lot include a light-skinned girl so of course the place packed. The head woman put the two of us in a room upstairs and ask if we want we cocky clean or batty wash. I said not tonight, but Peter Nasser wasn’t going to pass up the chance for a ghetto vacuum, as he himself call it, and look around as if it was going to catch on. He want to talk business even as the whore was sucking him juice out. I say, Brethren, two man can’t have cocky expose in the same room, is what you be? Last thing he want is man to call him battyman, so before he ask, I say I going outside. I said look for me in fifteen minutes but when I come back in eight she already walking out, spitting and cussing ’bout the bloodcloth white man who bust himself in her mouth.
—You know what me tired of? All this shit ’bout the peace treaty. Now Jacob Miller write a song about it? You hear it yet? Want me to sing it?
—No.
—Peace treaty to r’asscloth.
—Next time tell the soldiers don’t shoot.
�
��Soldiers? What you mean, Green Bay? All of this is because of Green Bay? You no hear the news, no saints were killed in Green Bay.
—Funny thing, eh? Don’t all of them come from your constituency? One of them even tell me that it was some man name Junior Soul who come to your lands telling them they can get free gun.
—I don’t know anything ’bout no Junior Soul.
—But everybody did seem to think I know. I ask people, Who from the ghetto would have a name like that? Sound like some singer out of Motown.
—Is what you know ’bout . . . never mind.
—Maybe he was something in the air.
—A natural mystic?
—You know that him coming back? Now because of all this peace treaty fuckery he of all people coming back.
—He was just here for this damn peace concert. Wasn’t that enough? Isn’t he a Londoner now? Maybe he want install all those ghetto toilet himself?
—So if you did give the ghetto toilets, he wouldn’t have a reason to come back then.
—Of course Josey Wales, because my party is in power. You seem—busha, what the fuck you finding funny?
“Ma Baker” was playing out on the floor. I could hear it even over the crowd yelling and joking and cussing and screaming for the woman to spread out di meat. I didn’t bother tell him why “Ma Baker” makes me laugh.
—Nothing, busha. You really think the Singer coming back again for a toilet?
—Well, not a toilet exactly but fixtures and fittings, or whatever you call it that ghetto people bawling that they need now. They can continue bawl, who tell them to vote for this bombocloth socialist government. Twice. You have to ask, How far can a cocky go up you battyhole before you realise a battyman is fucking you?
A Brief History of Seven Killings Page 42
