—’Cause me sure you never leave Jamaica talking so.
—What if me come from uptown?
—Maybe. You sound flat and dull like them uptown woman for true. But at least you don’t look like you live in you battyhole. No, you—
The monitor beeped and she jumped again.
—You want to hear that sound, I say. —Is when you hear one long beep that don’t stop that’s bad.
—Oh? Oh. Me never know. Nobody never tell me. Why you keep coming up here to look ’pon me husband?
—Me no have nothing to do with your husband.
—Trust me, me love, me never worried ’bout that.
I want to tell her both to fuck off and that I admire her quickness.
—You don’t get a lot of Jamaicans in this hospital. Only one old woman who died last year from a stroke. Then suddenly we have whole rash of them, all of them from gunshot wounds. And he is the last one still here. Of course I would be curious.
—Curious me r’ass. If you curious you come in and read the pad by him bed that all the other nurse read. But you come in and look. And if me late you always here, and if me early you quick to leave as soon as me come.
—People shoot people in Jamaica all the time, but me come to New York to see it up close.
—See it up close? You no see nothing. Wait till you see a boy get shot in the club.
—But why they bring it here? Why bring it to America? You’d think if you come here you could brush off all of this crap and start over.
—Is so you do it?
—I didn’t say that.
—But is true. You and you stoosh talk.
She gets up for a few seconds then and sits back down. I’m still near the door, wondering if I should back out slow or fast.
—For some man, for plenty man, is that same crap the send them here. Otherwise them wouldn’t have no way to come to America.
—I suppose.
—Fact, that. And you not in here just because you never see no Jamaican. You in here for something else. Lady, me is woman too, you know. Me know when a woman want something.
—I really should head back to the ER.
—Then go on. And the next time me can tell the doctor that like you how you just come in here all sort of time when you feel like.
—What you want to know?
—Me husband. Me ever going hear him talk again?
—You really should ask the doctor—
—Talk.
—You don’t want to hear it from me, I’m not a doctor.
—Talk, me say.
—Like a four-year-old, maybe. And that’s if he recovers. He going have to learn everything over and he still going sound like he’s retarded.
—Oh. Him going walk again?
—The way things look, he might not be able to hold a cup again. I hope you know I can be fired for what I just tell you.
—Fired because you is the first one tell the truth?
—Is not my job to tell you the truth. Is my job to tell you what we think you can handle. And nobody here can really predict what might happen to a patient, so nobody want to say something and it don’t go so. He could recover or he could—
—Dead.
—That too.
She looking at me as if she’s waiting for me to ask that question. Or maybe I’m just reading what I want into her face. The monitor beep but she doesn’t jump this time.
—Josey Wales shoot him?
And there I said it. All these years I never said his name once. Could never bring myself to even use it. I know that later I’ll start beating myself up over how I let my own mind run wild with me for years over my thinking this man hounding me, when me sure if I walk right past him he wouldn’t know me from anybody, even if he stopped to chat me up.
—Josey Wales?
—I don’t mean personally. I mean, his gang.
—You don’t know no Jamaicans in the Bronx?
—What this have to do with anything?
—Them don’t call gang, them call a posse. And Josey not going nowhere since him in prison now for long past two year.
—What?
—So you don’t even read one issue of Gleaner or watch no Jamaican news? Them going ship him to America for American court this month, me love. Is Josey Wales’ posse that shoot up the club. Everybody know Tatters is Ranking Dons’ night club. Them don’t own it or nothing, but them always in there. You know what funny? Me still remember what song was playing, ’cause me just ask somebody how come “Night Nurse” still sound so sweet. Don’t ask me why me didn’t see it coming. Josey Wales’ son get kill in Jamaica and whoever do it must be connected to Ranking Dons in some way or ’nother. You lucky you manage to run far away from Jamdown, but for the rest of we Jamdown follow right back o’ we.
—So your husband was just a bystander?
—No, lady, him was a Ranking Don.
Six
So Jesus Christ kill Tony Pavarotti?
—Jesus is right. Look ’pon the man hair. You woman make you leave the house like that? And here me did understand that all white man shave except the ones who in some cult a breed him sister.
—And is bell-bottom jeans that? To rahtid.
—Brethren, what me want know is, where me can send telegram to tell you that is 1991? You look like you ’bout to sing “Disco Duck.”
—Nah, man, Eubie, is “In the Navy.”
—The whole a unu can stay. Caw you no know say is this look a carry it now, you no watch the MTV? No, man, my boy just stick to him gun and wait it out till the look come back inna fashion.
—That is one hell of a wait. Then is what you waiting on for the near fourteen years? For one of we to come find you?
I got a hunch these are not the men you ask to get to the point. They’ve left me on the stool and now I’m in the middle of men circling me like any minute now they’re gonna put a dunce cap on my head. Or pounce or knock me over the head with a baseball bat. At first I thought they were circling like sharks but this is a fucking shitty time for a bad metaphor. Fucking idiot, I’m editing my life even as a bunch of big black men with guns take over my house. And we can rule out robbery, though for once I wish it fucking was. Haven’t heard the name Tony Pavarotti in years, maybe even seven years or so, and I only heard it once, from Tristan Phillips. I don’t think about that day at all. And neither had anybody else since nobody did anything. Even did some checking, as much as I could anyway through microfilm of Jamaican newspapers, and there was nothing. No police report of a murder, or even a body found dead at the hotel. Fuck you, Faulkner, the past really isn’t dead. It’s not even past. I didn’t even know the man’s name until I met Tristan Phillips.
—To the neck, I say.
Silk Suit and Pig Tails both look at me like I interrupted them. Ren-Dog, or at least I think that’s his name, puts the remain ing fruit in the fridge and takes the blender to the sink. I can hear it coming, me telling him not to use the dishwasher for just one blender. But Pig Tails and Silk Suit are still looking at me.
—To the neck’s how I did it.
—Did what? Silk Suit says.
I’m sure he said his name was Eubie, but I can’t seem to retain anything. Right now there could be seven men in total or six, but I just can’t remember.
—Killed him. I mean, stabbed him. I mean, I stabbed him in the neck, probably to the jugular.
—He mean in the neck, boss, Pig Tails says.
Eubie stares him down so hard he winces.
—Which one of we here go to Columbia University? Eh? Which one ah we? You think me don’t know where the jugular vein be? How long before him dead, two minutes?
—Almost five.
—Then you hit the wrong jugular, my youth.
—It’s not like I had expertise in the area.
—Really? With the questions you love ask and the stuff you like write maybe you should think ’bout that little bit. Especially from what I’ve been reading in The New Yorker.
<
br /> —Everyone’s a critic, I say.
I didn’t see the punch coming. Right in the temple. I blink, trying to get the shock out, and shout fuck.
—This look like a movie to you? I look like I have time for the wisecracking white guy?
—I guess you Jamaicans love to carry a grudge, huh?
—I don’t think I follow you, young man.
—This Tony Pavarotti dude? Your top man. You guys talk about him like he was the baddest motherfucker there was, and yet some fucking skinny journalist drops him with a fucking letter opener. And then you guys show up fifteen years later—
—Sixteen.
—Like I fucking care. Show up to do what, to finish the job? How Godfather Part II of you.
—Boss . . .
—Is cool, Ren-Dog. Brethren think nobody here watch movie.
I’m rubbing my temple and they’re still circling. He wait till he’s behind me to talk.
—How you think all them man, how Ren-Dog get to be in this room. You think him is here fi make juice?
—Dunno.
—Ren-Dog?
Ren-Dog looks at me and says,
—M60.
—M60. Every man in this posse have to pick a bus and pick a stop. First man or woman off the bus they shoot. Bonus if they dead.
—That supposed to scare me?
—Watch it, boss, look like somebody balls growing in them pants, Pig Tails says.
Me, I’m looking at a man with dreadlocks pig tails, a man in a wife beater making juice and a man in a silk suit that looks like fucking satin with a white handkerchief popping out of the pocket because Momma didn’t teach him how to fold a fucking pocket square and it just hits me how absurd this all is. No, not absurd, fucking ridiculous.
—You getting bold, boy, Ren-Dog says.
—No, I’m scared shitless.
—Look here—
—No, you look. I’m fucking sick and tired of you guys acting all big like you on some fucking sitcom. Fucking coming into my house and making juice and trying to have some conversation like you’re the intelligent criminal, all complicated and shit in some movie, when you’re just a bunch of fucking thugs who shoot women and children. I don’t fucking care that you fucking read. I don’t fucking care how smart you are. I don’t give a shit about your goddamn freshly blended juice. Or how I dropped the baddest gangster you fuckers could produce out of that fucking island. In fact why not just do it, huh? Just do it. The less of your shit I get to hear, the better off I’d be anyways. Just fucking do it, then get out’a my house so the neighbors can call the cops. And take your fucking fruits with you, I don’t even like juice.
—You right, Eubie says. —That wasn’t supposed to scare you. When I want to scare a man I don’t fucking talk. Ren-Dog, deal with this pussyhole.
Seven
So what did Peter Nasser want anyway?
Josey Wales is walking around his cell, without realizing he’s pacing I bet. But every time he goes off into the dark corner, I think he’s going to emerge with a nasty surprise. Maybe not a gun, but maybe a shank he can throw like a dagger straight for one of my eyes. And it happens every time. He walks past the cell bars slow, looking at me until he’s at the corner; turns to head to the back until the slanted shadow sucks him up. Then he goes silent too so you can’t follow even the sound of him in the dark. Not even footsteps. Sometimes he stops and you wonder, What is he doing in there? What is he preparing? And then when he comes out of shadow for a quick second your heart jumps. And it jumps every single time he does it. I can’t remember which one they said was more dangerous, the wounded lion or the caged one.
—A reason to stop shitting himself. Why you care ’bout Peter Nasser all of a sudden? No you just say you don’t see the boy in eleven years? And he’s just the sixth man to pay tribute to me this week. Now everybody want to know what am I going to do if I get send to American prison. Well, they should have done more to keep me out of prison in the first place. And funny how everybody seem to think American court going convict me. But check it—when Yankee justice come knocking first, everybody forget Josey and leave it to me to sort it out. And now when things didn’t sort out all of a sudden everybody trying to sort it out himself.
—Meaning?
—Meaning certain people still trying to find a good way to kill me. I mean, they tried once or twice. Or three times, no four. My men in here deal with the fourth last week and didn’t even tell me until guard find the pussyhole head in the toilet when one of them go in to piss. All now they can’t figure out what an inmate’s head doing in the guard’s toilet. As for the guards, bunch of fucking ’prentices, them boys. The first guard? Shitting through a tube now and by the time the second reach my cell and burst shots into an empty mattress, him already turn into a widower who find out two days later he would have been a father.
—Damn, hombre.
—Some people forget why they’re sitting on top and who the fuck put them up there.
—You say that like somebody owes you something.
—They do owe me. Everybody fucking owe me. I give the country to that fucking government.
—That government ain’t the government no more and nobody owes you shit, Josef. Nobody forced your hand, nobody stopped you from turning into fucking Tony Montana, and everybody was fine looking the other way until you decided to murder some fucking junkies who weren’t worth shit in a fucking crack house for no reason other than maybe somebody stepped on your new shoes, knowing you. You already got what you think you’re owed and more. You fucked this up, you hear me? You fucked this up.
He’s off in the dark again. I wait for him to come back, listening if his feet are shuffling now. Not Josey. He comes out of the shadow standing tall, almost too tall, like he’s bracing his chest for something.
—You want crackhead go to Dumfries Road in New Kingston and get anyone you like. Who to r’ass miss a bombocloth crackhead?
—Nobody. The pregnant girlfriend of a crackhead? Kinda different. There’s a whole story about her in The New Yorker. Some pattern of yours, Josef? Offing pregnant chicks?
—Fuck off.
—Real classy, don man. Your whole crew of Jamaicans and their whyshoot-one-hombre-when-you-can-liquidate-the-whole-block way of thinking. Storm of bullets, eh? Storm Posse. Real classy.
—You are the man who make them, boss, not me. Don’t make monster then bawl how them monstrous.
—Dude, when I was running with you some of these boys were still getting breastfed. Not me they’re taking after, Pops.
—You know how long it take for me to check my food?
—What? What are you—
—Twenty minutes, three times a day. Ask the rats. Every day me throw piece of the food down and see if they eat it. Every day me expect a rat to drop dead. Every day I have to take each banana and cut it up little, each clump of rice I squash it, each box of juice I suck it through my teeth just to stop any broken glass, or rusty nail or maybe even something with AIDS. You know how long it take before I swallow just a spoonful of food? And me already buy off everybody in the kitchen.
—But nobody would dare, Josey.
—Maybe not, but since everybody outside fucking scared of what they think my mouth going do is only a matter of time, brethren. Only a matter of time before they find a guard or inmate more scared of them than me.
—You’ve been behind bars too long.
—Maybe I should redecorate, put up a few curtains.
—Never pictured you for gallows humour, mijo.
—Not dead yet, Doctor Love.
He sits down on the bed and looks away as if he’s done talking for now. It’s the first time I’m looking away since I got here, and the first time I notice that the cell, and the entire corridor, is red brick, several of them already fallen out. Figures that Jamaica is where you’d find the exact prison you think of when somebody says prison. At least the floor is now concrete. Seriously it’s the kind of prison where you think that all yo
u need is a spoon and some of what these Americans call gumption, and you could dig your way to freedom in a few years.
—Peter Nasser, poor bitch, stumble in here and try to threaten me.
—Oh yeah? How did that go?
—Something like when an impotent man threaten to rape you. He suddenly worrying if the canary going sing. Exact words him say. I would never say such dumb shit.
—I know. But he’s not the only one, Josey.
—Which for the two hundredth time leads to why you come here.
—Maybe I’m paying a visit.
—You can visit me in America. Going be there in two days.
—It’s a shame they didn’t let you out to bury your boy.
—You is a fucking pussyhole, de las Casas. A fucking pussyhole.
—You know what I always found fascinating about you, Josey? Most people I know, man, they can turn it off and turn it back on, but you can keep both going the same time. You can barely bring yourself to talk about your dead son, but can talk about offing two pregnant chicks just like that. You’re like what they call a psychopath. What? What’s so funny?
He laughed. He laughed so long he started to hiccup, and even then he wouldn’t stop laughing. Long enough that I started to hate him a little, I really did, and I’ve never felt that way about him before.
—That whole sentence, you practice it before you come here?
—Fuck you, Josef.
—No, seriously. What them call the man, you know the man I’m talking about, him even have a show on TV one time. You know the man with the puppet in his lap, the puppet mouth moving but somebody else talking.
—Ventriloquist. You calling me a ventriloquist? For who, the CIA?
—No, I calling you the dummy. So who send you, brethren? Mr. Clarkjust-ditch-the-E? Serious now, them man still around?
—Haven’t thought about him in years either. I hear he’s in Kuwait.
—Your memory too spotty. On the other hand man like me remember everything. Like names. You know how most people forget names? Like Louis Johnson. Mr. Clark-just-ditch-the-E, Peter Nasser, Luis Hernán Rodrigo de las Casas. Sal Resnick? I don’t forget names. Certain things like Operation Werewolf? I don’t forget things. Even certain dates like October 16, 1968. June 15, 1976. December 6, 1976. May 20, 1980. October 14, 1980? I don’t forget dates. What you think? Sound like you run out of talk, muchacho.
A Brief History of Seven Killings Page 65
