—Brethren, use your head. Police think them smart. You think them don’t know say bad man would try trick them by going by the back road.
—Well—
—Well nothing. Best way to hide is in plain sight.
—That sound like one fuckery idea.
—Me look like me ever come up with a fuckery idea my entire life? You want police to find you, take the dyke. Take Trench Town, take Maxfield Park Avenue. You want get to the beach in peace, drive on the very same road you ’fraid to drive on. Check this, after all these years you don’t know how police think? Never in a million years they expect you to drive down Harbour Street in broad daylight. That’s why they not going patrol it.
A glutton in one thing always turn out to be a glutton in everything. I tell Copper to ask for Miss Jeanie, a coolie woman with her own fish shack on the beach. She have two ripe half-coolie daughters named Betsy and Patsy. Take either of them back to your car and she will give you dessert. That same night I wake up the inspector with a phone call. Copper never reach the beach.
One minute.
Forty-five seconds.
Twenty seconds.
Five.
I grab the phone on the first ring. Too eager.
—Yeah?
—You mother never teach you manners? Decent people say hello.
—And?
—It is finished.
—Jesus know that you thiefing his words?
—Lord God, Josey Wales, don’t tell me you’re a God-fearing man.
—No, me only like Luke. Where?
—Causeway.
—Fifty-six time?
—What the bombocloth me look like, boss, the Count ’pon Sesame Street?
—Make sure somebody leak to the newspaper that it was fifty-six bullets. You hear me?
—Me hear you, sah.
—Fifty-six.
—Fifty-six. One more thing, I—
I hang up. Damn call was taking up all of the four minutes. He’s not going to call back tonight.
Forty-three seconds.
Thirty-five seconds.
Twelve.
One.
Minus five.
Minus ten.
Minus a minute.
—You late.
—Sorry, boss.
—And.
—Boss. Boy, me no know how fi tell you.
—The best way would be to tell me.
—The man vanish, boss.
—Man don’t vanish. Man don’t disappear unless you disappear them.
—Him gone, boss.
—What the fuck you talking ’bout, idiot? How him just gone? Him have visa?
—Me don’t know, boss, but we check everywhere. Home, him woman home, him second woman home, the Rae Town Community Center where him work some day, even the Singer house where he have office for the council. We lay-waiting him on every road since yesterday.
—And?
—Nothing. When we check back his house, everything there but one chest of drawers that totally clean out. Clean clean clean, not even cobweb.
—You telling me that one idiot Rasta manage to slip away from ten bad man? Just like that? What, you send word that you was coming for him?
—No, boss.
—Well, you better find him.
—Yes, boss.
—One more thing.
—Boss?
—Find out who leak this to him and kill him. And brethren: If you don’t find him in three days, I will kill you.
I wait for him to hang up.
Bombo r’asscloth.
Shit.
I don’t know if I say it or think it. But she still sleeping, my right knee soaking with drool. Tristan Phillips, the Rasta who was actually drawing up peace map and chairing the Unity council, just disappear. Just like that. Add him to man like Heckle. Dead or not dead, the man clearly gone. And given how dumb he is already, Peter Nasser not going to be none the wiser. I just realise that I miss a call that didn’t come. From a man who is never late. Never ever.
Five minutes late.
Seven minutes.
Ten minutes late.
Fifteen.
Twenty.
Tony Pavarotti. I pick up the phone and hear tone, but I put it down and it rings.
—Tony?
—No, is me, Weeper.
—What you want, Weeper?
—Yow is which ants in your panty tonight?
—How you know I would be awake?
—Everybody know that you don’t sleep. You at the level now.
—What? You know what, it’s too late to ask what that mean. Anyway, come off the line, I expecting a call.
—From who?
—Pavarotti.
—When him supposed to call?
—Eleven o’clock.
—Him nah call you, star. If it was eleven the bredda woulda call you at eleven. You know how him stay.
—I was thinking the same thing.
—Why you have him calling you so late?
—Sent him to clean up some business at the Four Seasons.
—Minor matter like that and him don’t call you back yet? Me surprised you don’t send two man to check him—
—Don’t tell me what to do, Weeper.
—Man, you really itching in your panty.
—I don’t like when the one dependable man in Copenhagen City, I can’t depend on.
—Ouch.
—Ouch? You pick up that from your new American friends?
—Maybe. Look. Maybe something happen and he have to lay low. You know him, he not going call you until the job done good. Not before.
—I don’t know.
—I do. Anyway, how come everybody seem to know plans was changing but me? Me almost look like an idiot in front of that Colombian bitch.
—Brethren, how much me must tell you don’t discuss them things over me phone?
—Cho r’asscloth man, Josey. We deal with the bush. You tell me when you send me here that we must deal with the bush, you never tell me nothing ’bout the white wife.
—Brethren, I tell you this four time already. Bush is too much trouble and take up too much damn space. Besides, Yankee growing their own bush now and don’t needs ours. The white wife take up less space and make seven times more money.
—Me no know, man. Me just don’t like them Cubans, man. The communists was bad enough, but them in American worse to r’ass. And none of them can drive.
—Cubans or Colombians? Weeper, me really can’t deal with you and them right now.
—Especially that woman, you know she mad, right? She who running the whole thing. She mad no r’ass. Brethren, she lick pussy all night then kill the girl the next day.
—Who tell you that?
—Me know that.
—Weeper, I’ll call you tomorrow from Jamintel. Night like this, one phone can have two ears. In the meantime go somewhere and enjoy yourself. Plenty enjoyment for men like you.
—Oy, what that mean?
—It mean what me bombocloth say it mean. And nothing like that shit you do in Miramar last week.
—Yow what you expect me fi do? The man grab me—
—What you think I should do about Pavarotti?
—Give him till morning. If you don’t hear from him, you’ll hear about him soon enough.
—Good night, Weeper. And don’t trust that Colombian bitch. Only last week I realise that she’s only a pit stop to where we really going.
—Ah. So where that is, my youth?
—New York.
Sir Arthur George Jennings
Now something new is blowing through the air, an ill wind. A malaria. Still more will have to suffer, and many more will have to die, two, three, a hundred, eight hundred and eighty-nine. Meanwhile I see you whirling like a dervish, under the rhythm and above it, jumping up and down the stage, always landing on your Brutus toe. Years before on the football field, a player wearing running spikes—who plays football in running spikes?—stomped on your cl
eats and slashed the toe. When you were still a boy you nearly sliced it in two with a hoe. A cancer is a rebellion, a cell gone rogue against the body with turncoats turning the other way and seducing parts of you to do the same. I will divide your parts and conquer. I will shut down your limbs one by one, and spill poison in your bones because look, there is nothing in me but blackness. No matter how many times your mother wrapped it in gauze and sprinkled it with Gold Bond medicated powder, your toe was never going to heal.
And now something new is blowing. Three white men have knocked on your door. Five years before the first warned you not to leave. Deep into 1978, the third—they always knew where to find you—warned you not to come back. The second came bearing gifts. You can’t even remember him now, but he came like one of the three Wise Men, with a box wrapped like Christmas. You opened it and jumped—somebody knew that every man in the ghetto wished he was The Man That Shot Liberty Valance. Brown boots, snakeskin, flirting with red; somebody knew you loved boots almost as much as you loved brown leather pants. You pulled on the right boot and screamed like that boy who chopped his foot trying to split a coconut. You pulled off the boot, flung it aside and watched your big toe spurt blood with every pump of your pulse. Gilly and Georgie, they had knives handy. An incision in the stitch, flaying the skin of the boot, and there it was, a thin pointed copper wire, a straight and perfect needle that made you think of Sleeping Beauty.
Something new is blowing. At the foot of Wareika Hills, the man called Copper leaves the house and closes the gate. Navy blue night is running and passing, passing and running. He makes two steps and doesn’t make a third. The man called Copper drops and spits the little blood that doesn’t rush out of his chest and belly. The gunman drops the M1, changes his mind, picks it up, then runs to the car already on the move.
You are in the studio with the band making a new tune. Clocks tick by in Jamaica time. Watchers take two hits of the collieweed and pass on the left. Two guitar leads wrap around each other coiling tight like a snake fight. The new guitarist with shorter dreads, the rocker who loves Hendrix plugs out. You shoot him a quick look with eyes wide open.
—Don’ leave! Me don’t have much time.
Something new is blowing. The don called Papa-Lo rides home from the races in a taxi cruising down the causeway with the windows rolled down. Somebody makes a joke and the sea salt wind snatches his wide laugh. The road does not bend, just curves into a bridge rising up then leading down into three police cars blocking the road. He knows they know who he is even before his driver stops. They know he knows they know, even before they shout ROUTINE SPOT CHECK. He knows before they arrive, that there will be more cars creeping up behind him. Police number one says remove from the vicinity of the cyar so that we can search the cyar. Move h’over to the left and keep walking till you is in front of the wild bush by the side of the road. Police number two finds his .38. Police number 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15 and 16 fire. Some will say forty-four, some will say fifty-six bullets, the exact number of shells found at 56 Hope Road that week in December 1976.
You’re playing football in Paris, in the green field below the Eiffel Tower. You play with anyone up for a game. Starstruck white boys and that man from the French national team. Your crew, even after years of touring, never get used to it, cities that never sleep. They are sluggish, even though it’s afternoon. The French do not play like the British. None of this single player peacock business. These boys move like a unit even though most have not even met before. One of them makes a bad play, steps hard on your right toe and tears the nail off.
Something new is blowing. The man who had me killed pays the Wang Gang sixty dollars a day to shoot up on two of the Eight Lanes. The two lanes nearest the sea. Lanes run wild with rusting zinc fences and corrosive shit water. The gang drives up at random lulls in the day, opening fire with all guns in a total sweep. A torrent of bullets. A shower.
You are in London. Cut off that toe, cut it off right now, the doctor says without looking you in the face. Stuff those boots with tissue, with cotton, with putty and mum’s the word. The room smells of antiseptic thrown on shit to mask it. And of iron, as if somebody in the next ward is scouring steel pots. But Rasta already think a lame toe is a curse from God, what do you think they’ll make of an amputated one? You are in Miami. The doctor cuts out the spot and grafts skin from the left foot. It’s a success, he says, but not with those words, you can’t remember the words exactly. But he says your cancer is gone, you have no cancer. And every night that you stomp down Babylon from the stage, your right boot fills near the brim with blood.
Something new is blowing. Tony McFerson, the PNP member of Parliament, and his bodyguard are trapped in August Town. Gunmen from the hills but allied with Copenhagen City descend on the two and open fire. They fire back. Gunmen blast holes in the car door, the window, and bullets bounce off the windshield. The gunmen shell heavy, but stay far back behind fence and bush reined in with barbwire. Sirens, police, the gunmen’s footsteps in a mad retreat that fades with each step. Car wheels whip up gravel and spin until they grip the road. Sirens cut off, boots hit the ground, the police are getting closer, louder. Tony McFerson stands up first with a wide smile on his face, a heave and a sigh of relief one could see from four hundred feet away. The third bullet goes through his neck sideways, explodes the medulla and kills everything below the neck before his brain realizes he’s dead.
You are in New York. It’s September 21. Everybody knows you were always the first to wake and the last to go to sleep, especially in the studio. Nobody notices you haven’t done either in a year. You wake up burning, the mattress has sucked two pounds of water from your skin but you can hear the air conditioner humming somewhere near you. You think of the pain on the right side of your head and it’s there. Now you wonder if the pain was just a thought until you thought about it. Or maybe the pain was in you for so long that it became an unseen part of the body, a mole hidden between toes. Or maybe you did speak a curse into being, like the old women up in the hills would say. You do not know it’s September 21, you have no memory of the second show the night before, you have no idea where you are or who is here with you, but at least you know this is New York.
Something new is blowing. Icylda says to Christopher make sure you eat up all your food, you think chicken back cheap? Her boy swallows three bites in one gulp and makes a dash for the door. He halts and grabs the vinyl on the counter, a hot dub pressed that day. You just remember you have work tomorrow, Icylda says, but laughs and shoos him out the door. The cha-cha boys on Gold Street are dressed to impress in gabardine pants and polyester shirts and the sexy gals them hot and ready in tight jeans, halter top and ting. The sound system done playing Tamlins and just drop brand-new wax, the new Michigan & Smiley, but Christopher has something new from Black Uhuru that goin’ murda di dance. Boys and girls press tight, winding up on each other while the bass jumps on the chest and sits there. But who bring firecrackers to the party? Not firecrackers but heavy rain bang bang banging on the zinc. But nobody getting wet, Jacqueline says out loud just as two bullets blow a hole in her right breast. Her scream vanishes in the middle of everybody. She looks back once, shadows coming from the sea, the five-point blast of light when a machine gun fires. The Selecter takes one through the neck and falls. People are running and screaming, and stampeding over fallen girls. Dropping one two three. More men come from the sea but wearing night colours and lights. They fan out and sweep. Jacqueline jumps over the zinc fences slicing behind her knees, she runs down Ladd Lane with screams still following her. She forgets that blood is shooting from her breast, falls in the middle of the lane. Two hands pick her up and drag her away.
Gunfire raining on zinc, Gold Street men have only two guns. More men arrive from the sea, some by land, all three exits closed off. Gunfire like rain wake up the sleeping policemen a few hundred feet away who grab their guns and run to a padlocked door. The Rastafarian has nowhere to run and the men are coming
. Behind people fall down in a slow wave. Fat Earl on the ground just bubbling blood. The Rastafarian throws himself on Fat Earl, not yet dead, and rolls all over him to pick up the blood. By the time the gunmen get to him, they think he’s the one really dead and shoot Fat Earl. The gunmen retreat to the sea.
You are jogging around a pond at Central Park South. Different country, same crew, and for a second you feel as if you’re back in Bull Bay before sunrise. A run on the black sand beach, a dip in the waterfalls, maybe some football, working up a healthy appetite for breakfast all cooked by Gilly and waiting for you to get back. But you’re still in New York and humidity is already sweeping in. You lift your left leg high, widening your stride before it hits the dirt but your right leg refuses to move. Your hip swings—is wah kinda fuckery this?—but your right leg just won’t move. Lift it without thinking. That doesn’t work. Lift it with thinking. That doesn’t work either. And now your left won’t move. Both legs stall even after you’ve commanded them to with three bombocloths. Your friend is coming up behind and you turn to call out, but your neck twists about a half inch and locks. No nodding yes, no nodding no. A scream vanishes on the way from your throat to your lips. Your body is leaning and you can’t stop it. No it’s not leaning but toppling and you cannot stretch your arms to break the fall. The ground slams into you, face first.
You wake up in the Essex House. Hands and feet recover but the fear lingers. Too weak to leave the bed, you don’t know they lied to your wife only minutes before and turned her away. You wake up and smell sex, smoke and whiskey. You see and wait but nobody listens, nobody looks, nobody comes. Your ears wake up to friends running up charges to the room, friends snorting foot after foot of white, friends fucking groupies, friends fucking whores, friends fucking friends, Rastaman on freebase raping the sacred chillum pipe. Men in suits, men on the make, businessmen drinking your wine; your room a temple waiting for Jesus to scour. Or some prophet. Or any prophet. But you sink in the bed thankful that at least you can move your neck. Brooklyn boys pass by with guns, Brooklyn boys with dicks, Rasta fire all doused out. You have no strength to stand, no lips to curse so you whisper please close the door. But nobody hears and when Essex House bloats and bursts, the friends spill into 7th Avenue.
A Brief History of Seven Killings Page 45
