This collection is comprised of works of fiction. All names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the authors’ imaginations. Any resemblance to real events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Published by Akashic Books
©2012 Akashic Books
Series concept by Tim McLoughlin and Johnny Temple
Kingston map by Aaron Petrovich
eISBN-13: 978-1-61775-117-2
ISBN-13: 978-1-61775-074-8
Library of Congress Control Number: 2011960945
All rights reserved
First printing
Akashic Books
PO Box 1456
New York, NY 10009
[email protected]
www.akashicbooks.com
ALSO IN THE AKASHIC BOOKS NOIR SERIES
BALTIMORE NOIR, edited by LAURA LIPPMAN
BARCELONA NOIR (SPAIN), edited by ADRIANA V. LÓPEZ & CARMEN OSPINA
BOSTON NOIR, edited by DENNIS LEHANE
BOSTON NOIR 2: The Classics, edited by DENNIS LEHANE, JAIME CLARKE & MARY COTTON
BRONX NOIR, edited by S.J. ROZAN
BROOKLYN NOIR, edited by TIM MCLOUGHLIN
BROOKLYN NOIR 2: THE CLASSICS, edited by TIM MCLOUGHLIN
BROOKLYN NOIR 3: NOTHING BUT THE TRUTH, edited by TIM MCLOUGHLIN & THOMAS ADCOCK
CAPE COD NOIR, edited by DAVID L. ULIN
CHICAGO NOIR, edited by NEAL POLACK
COPENHAGEN NOIR (DENMARK), edited by BO TAO MICHAËLIS
D.C. NOIR, edited by GEORGE PELECANOS
D.C. NOIR 2: THE CLASSICS, edited by GEORGE PELECANOS
DELHI NOIR (INDIA), edited by HIRSH SAWHNEY
DETROIT NOIR, edited by E.J. OLSEN & JOHN C. HOCKING
DUBLIN NOIR (IRELAND), edited by KEN BRUEN
HAITI NOIR, edited by EDWIDGE DANTICAT
HAVANA NOIR (CUBA), edited by ACHY OBEJAS
INDIAN COUNTRY NOIR, edited by SARAH CORTEZ & LIZ MARTÍNEZ
ISTANBUL NOIR (TURKEY), edited by MUSTAFA ZIYALAN & AMY SPANGLER
KANSAS CITY NOIR, edited by STEVE PAUL
LAS VEGAS NOIR, edited by JARRET KEENE & TODD JAMES PIERCE
LONDON NOIR (ENGLAND), edited by CATHI UNSWORTH
LONE STAR NOIR, edited by BOBY BYRD & JOHNNY BYRD
LONG ISLAND NOIR, edited by KAYLIE JONES
LOS ANGELES NOIR, edited by DENISE HAMILTON
LOS ANGELES NOIR 2: THE CLASSICS, edited by DENISE HAMILTON
MANHATTAN NOIR, edited by LAWRENCE BLOCK
MANHATTAN NOIR 2: THE CLASSICS,edited by LAWRENCE BLOCK
MEXICO CITY NOIR (MEXICO), edited by PACO I. TAIBO II
MIAMI NOIR, edited by LES STANDIFORD
MOSCOW NOIR (RUSSIA), edited by NATALIA SMIRNOVA & JULIA GOUMEN
MUMBAI NOIR (INDIA), edited by ALTAF TYREWALA
NEW JERSEY NOIR, edited by JOYCE CAROL OATES
NEW ORLEANS NOIR, edited by JULIE SMITH
ORANGE COUNTY NOIR, edited by GARY PHILLIPS
PARIS NOIR (FRANCE), edited by AURÉLIEN MASSON
PHILADELPHIA NOIR, edited by CARLIN ROMANO
PHOENIX NOIR, edited by PATRICK MILLIKIN
PITTSBURGH NOIR, edited by KATHLEEN GEORGE
PORTLAND NOIR, edited by KEVIN SAMPSELL
QUEENS NOIR, edited by ROBERT KNIGHTLY
RICHMOND NOIR, edited by ANDREW BLOSSOM, BRIAN CASTLEBERRY & TOM DE HAVEN
ROME NOIR(ITALY), edited by CHIARA STANGALINO & MAXIM JAKUBOWSKI
ST. PETERSBURG NOIR (RUSSIA), edited by NATALIA SMIRNOVA & JULIA GOUMEN
SAN DIEGO NOIR, edited by MARYELIZABETH HART
SAN FRANCISCO NOIR, edited by PETER MARAVELIS
SAN FRANCISCO NOIR 2: THE CLASSICS, edited by PETER MARAVELIS
SEATTLE NOIR, edited by CURT COLBERT
STATEN ISLAND NOIR, edited by PATRICIA SMITH
TORONTO NOIR (CANADA), edited by JANINE ARMIN & NATHANIEL G. MORE
TRINIDAD NOIR(TRINIDAD & TOBAGO), edited by LISA ALEN-AGOSTINI & JEANNE MASON
TWIN CITIES NOIR, edited by JULIE SCHAPER & STEVEN HORWITZ
VENICE NOIR(ITALY), edited by MAXIM JAKUBOWSKI
WALL STREET NOIR, edited by PETER SPIEGELMAN
FORTHCOMING
BOGOTÁ NOIR (COLOMBIA), edited by ANDREA MONTEJO
BUFFALO NOIR, edited by BRIGID HUGHES & ED PARK
JERUSALEM NOIR, edited by SAYED KASHUA
LAGOS NOIR (NIGERIA), edited by CHRIS ABANI
MANILA NOIR(PHILIPPINES), edited by JESSICA HAGEDORN
SEOUL NOIR(KOREA), edited by BS PUBLISHING CO.
TEL AVIV NOIR(ISRAEL), edited by ETGAR KERET
For Addis and Makonnen, my daughter and son
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Title Page
Copyright Page
Introduction
PART I: HARD ROAD TO TRAVEL
KWAME DAWES
Portmore
My Lord
KEI MILLER
August Town
The White Gyal with the Camera
PATRICIA POWELL
New Kingston
Tomcat Beretta
IAN THOMSON
Downtown Kingston
A Grave Undertaking
PART II: IS THIS LOVE?
MARLON JAMES
Constant Spring
Immaculate
LEONE ROSS
Mona
Roll It
MARCIA DOUGLAS
Half Way Tree
One-Girl Half Way Tree Concert
THOMAS GLAVE
Norbrook
Leighton Leigh Anne Norbrook
PART III: PRESSURE DROP
CHRISTOPHER JOHN FARLEY
Trench Town
“54-46 (That’s My Number)”
CHRIS ABANI
Greenwich Town
Sunrise
COLIN CHANNER
Hughenden
Monkey Man
About the Contributors
INTRODUCTION
WHAT IF? WHY WOULD?
I lived in Kingston from 1963 to 1982. I was born there—at St. Joseph’s on Deanery Road, delivered by Dr. Parboosingh. I was christened there as well, by Reverend Campbell at Christ Church on Antrim Road. My hometown was also where I first had sex. This happened in the small room I shared with my brother in a hot prefabricated house in Hughenden. No—I’m not going to share her name.
One of the things I remember most about my years in Kingston, in addition to the fact that I’d faked my orgasm that first time so I could go back to reading a comic book, is that this metropolis of half a million in those days had no directional signs. As such, people would get lost all the time, even those who’d grown up there, but especially those who had not.
Which way to public horse-pit-all? Which part you turn fo’ reach the zoo? Carib theater—is where that is?
And the answer to these questions always seemed to go along the following (squiggly) line: “Okay … you going go down so where I pointing, then you going see a man with a coconut cart. When you see him now, you going turn, but not turn all the way, just part way, cause you going see a fence that kinda break down. But you not going stop there at the fence, y’know. You only going see it. You going see it, then you going pass. You going pass it till you reach the gully. But when you reach the gully now, what you going do is wheel round till you see the big tree. Listen me good here now. Cross the street when you see the big tree, because you have some man out there who will hold you up. Then after you cross the street now, go on and go on, and go on, then turn again, then turn again, then stay straight. Stay straight until you see where the road turn. But you mustn’t turn. You must stay straight … and then if you still can’t find where you going, just aks again.”
T
oday, the largest English-speaking city between Miami and Buenos Aires has lots of signs. Even so, if you’re not from there it’s still easy to get lost.
This is one of many ways in which Kingston reminds me of New Orleans. Like its cultural cousin on the Mississippi, Kingston is a liquor-loving, music-maddened, seafood-smitten, classaddicted place. Dangerous as a mutha, but also—especially when you feel a cool wind coming off the harbor, or see a cape of mist on the shoulders of the northern hills, or hear a bongo natty singing praises to the Father as some herb smoke warms his heart—a place of Benedictine peace.
Every story in this collection was written (and rewritten, and rewritten, and damn rewritten, Colin) by an author who knows and understands this charismatic, badass city very well. In addition to having this intimate knowledge, the eleven writers share something else—a fascination with the city’s turbulent dynamics, with the way its boundaries of color, class, race, gender, ideology, and sexual privilege crisscross like stormtangled power lines.
Still, each story is driven by its unique why would or what if.
Why would a man sleep with a woman knowing she has HIV? Why would anyone throw a school girl’s corpse beneath a bus? What if a European photographer takes it on herself to document a neighborhood controlled by gangs? What if an American actress wakes up to find herself gagged and bound in a stranger’s bed?
Speaking of questions. As editor there were a few big ones I had to ask. Perhaps the most important one was, How will I proceed?
Some editors think of anthologies as potluck dinners. They send out general invitations. Encourage everyone to bring a favorite dish.
I’ve been to that dinner party. I know how it goes. Some things are great. Some things are awful. But most things are so-so.
Now why would I want to do something like that? I thought. At the same time I thought, What if? What if I thought of Kingston Noir as a great LP? Ahhhhh …
As I did with Iron Balloons, my first anthology for Akashic, I began with a simple understanding: few writers would be called, and even fewer would be chosen. Because nothing less than a classic would do.
Colin Channer
May 2012
PART I
HARD ROAD TO TRAVEL
MY LORD
BY KWAME DAWES
Portmore
A lot of people say they want to leave this city to go somewhere else. Not me. I love this place for what it is. Ugly and pretty. Rough and tender. Chaotic and smooth. Loving and murderous. All of it.
I love it like I love things you maybe shouldn’t love.
When I was growing up off Red Hills Road, on Whitehall Avenue, I used to wake up in the morning, step into the yard, hear rooster crowing, smell the wood fire burning, hear Swap Shop on the radio, and just smile and say, “Yes, my people. Yes, my country.” But I didn’t really know love till around ’78 when I remove to where I live now at the bottom of Stony Hill. Yeah man. Long time.
This is a house with history. The first time I see this place was in the early ’70s. That time no house wasn’t even here. It was just a little spot after you cross over the bridge from Constant Spring Road, and before you start to properly climb the hill, where a man had a small shop where he used to fix bicycle.
Most people, myself included, thought is squat the man was squatting there. After all, who would buy a piece of narrow land right side of a wide concrete gully and surround by macka bush and bramble, right?
But the man had bought the land. And soon he built a small cottage like one of them you find on a country road in cool Mandeville—tidy, nice filigree woodwork, and a full covered veranda. He paint the whole thing yellow and green. And the man live in that house even when everywhere around him they was building those flat-roof bungalow on the lower parts of the hill and the fancy house on the upper slopes. The man wouldn’t sell a inch of the property. So, what you have in the middle of the area is like a piece of the country.
Well, the man dead and his people decide to go to foreign with every other brown-skin Jamaican who was absconding to Miami in those days. And is so I get to buy this place cheap-cheap.
This is where I brought Deloris. She was my wife.
Kingston is rough. My work is dirty work. And most night, when I am driving northward from the congested city by the sea, through the crazy traffic and smoke and noise (with the window down cause I like to hear and smell my city—and anyway, I waiting for the right time to fix the damned air conditioner in the car), I am just thinking about the way the whole place start to get greener with trees and more residential house as we climbing the hill toward Constant Spring. Past the stoosh Immaculate Conception High School for girls, past the horse farm on the left, past the stretch of the golf course, past the old market after the traffic light, then past the plaza where my office is, and then turn left to cross the bridge, and right there so, right at the foot of the mountain itself, my cottage, my castle, my refuge.
As I am driving I feel the sweet heaviness of heartbreak and desire, like a great Alton Ellis tune seeping out of a rum bar around six thirty, when the sun going down—the kinda tune that make you want to cry, and laugh, and screw, and hug-up, and pray at the same time. Yes, this city will break my heart every time, and the city come in like the women—tough, sweet, soft, dangerous, pragmatic, and fleshy. This city is my bread and wine, my bitters and gall, my honey and milk.
Deloris gone, Cynthia Alvaranga gone, and the place feeling sadder and sadder these days, but it is what I have, it is my comfort, it is my familiarity. I will dead here. That is the simple truth of the matter. Right here. Right here.
When Cynthia Alvaranga came to my office that first time, she wasn’t coming to see me. She wasn’t coming to hire me. She was coming to see Deloris. See, that was around the time when Deloris decide to start her dressmaking business.
It was Deloris idea to set up the place—what she call a “one-stop shop.” You know, dressmaking, wedding planning, detective agency—one-stop shop. She said that is how they doing it in America now. Well, I never hear of it, but it make sense to me. So it was her idea, not mine. She said to me that if I did that I could start to branch out to more things—handyman finder (“If you can find people, you must can find a man to fix anything quicker than most people”), rent-a-house finder, that kinda thing—and she wanted to start a dressmaking place near me, but wasn’t ready yet, but said it was a good way to start a business mentality, and when a couple go into business partnership and work together, she say, it strengthen their marriage. If you ask me, she just wanted to keep her eye on me. You know woman.
Be that as it may, our place was at the corner of the plaza and my glass door was nicely shaded by a big pretty flamboyant tree. The people who used to have the space before had what they call a gourmet Jamaican restaurant—a place name Nyame’s that some Dutch couple used to own. It never work out—the woman find a rastaman and run away to Portland, so the man pack up and go back to Europe with the children. I get it cheap-cheap. Tragedy can be a blessing.
The way my office set up, it is hard for me to not see who coming in even if they are not coming to me. You see, I work in a cubicle to one side of the office, which use to be the manager office for the restaurant, I think. But in fact is not really a cubicle, because cubicle make it sound like it small. My door is open most of the time, so I can see when people coming into the office; and when the front door open, a buzzer go off so I can be ready for anything.
Deloris has her working area around the back where the kitchen used to be. It is a big space and she have machine and two big cutting table and whole heap of mannequin and that kinda thing there. She keep bolt and bolt of cloth in there too, and she have a rusty fridge and restaurant-grade stove so she can cook for us sometimes.
Be that as it may, Cynthia Alvaranga came in around two o’clock, so the place still smelling of oxtail and butter beans from our lunch. I see her hesitate at the door, but maybe it was me who hesitate. Maybe it was my head that hesitate, because I still re
member that what I saw was a tall woman, a strong woman, a dark beautiful woman, who, I could tell, must have been some kinda athlete, because her body moved under what Deloris like to call a A-line frock, like a machine. Her face had that clean, fresh look. No makeup. Eyelash thick and long, lips full and pouting, and her eyes looked so tired, so sad, so broken down.
Normally for me, what I look for is a weakness in a woman, a flaw, a thing that can make me feel sorry for her. That is why fat woman was always my target when I was misbehaving.
And is not just because me fat too.
Most of the PI I know are fat like me, but they got fat recently, you know. I was always fat. And my fat is a fit kinda fat. I carry fat well. Them, is like they wear their clothes tight because they don’t know they are fat. For instance, they like wear their shirt tuck in. So their belly is always hanging over. And guess what? They feel they looking neat because they always used to wear their shirt in their pants from when they never had a belly.
Me, from I was in technical school, I was wearing my shirt out of my pants to hide my belly. So I know how to dress like a fat man.
Yes, I am a fat man, but don’t sorry for me. In Jamaica a woman like a big man. She can see he is prosperous, and that he can be in charge. People call you “boss” before they even know who you are. “Big man,” “Boss,” “Officer,” “King,” and my favorite, “My Lord.” When a woman call you “My Lord,” that is a sweetness.
Be that as it may, fat woman use to be my target. Though sometimes it is not just the fat, sometimes it might be something else. As I said, my secret is to find something in a woman, a limp, a sickness, something she ashamed of—a secret, you know, some nastiness in her life. When I can find that, maybe it makes me feel superior, but mostly it makes me feel that I can do something for her that she will appreciate, and that is how they come to love me, and that is how I can make a move.
I could see that Cynthia had a tiredness hanging off her. The expensive darkers on her forehead didn’t fool me. Yeah, she was wearing nice things. She even had a Prada bag in her hand. But the things had an oldness and a beat-up quality to them so I know she was a woman in distress. And I began to think: A wonder what she want from me.
Kingston Noir Page 1
