Absolute Money: Part I: An Oliver Holmes Caribbean Thriller

by C B Wilson

  The first driver wouldn’t take him to Trenchtown. He said, “You ain’t got no business in West Kingston at night.”

  The second guy didn’t want to go either. He showed Holmes the scar crease on the side of his head just visible through his short iron-grey hair. “They rob me down there one time. Pull me out of the car and shoot me for a few dollars,” he said.

  Oliver said, “That’s an old scar.”

  “There’s some scars that don’t heal.”

  “Interesting point,” said Oliver. “Let’s discuss it on the way,” and he got in the passenger seat of the taxi. The driver hesitated. He was old, his cab was dented all over, and he looked like he needed the money.

  A few blocks down the road, the old guy wanted to know why Oliver was going to the ghetto on a Saturday night. “You looking for some drugs, girls? I can take you a place a lot safer than Trenchtown.”

  Oliver told him he just wanted to go to the domino club.

  In the ghetto, small groups of people stared as the taxi passed. After the recent short, sharp rain, puddles filled the streets and juiced up the tang of untreated sewage leaking out of broken pipes. The faces of dead community Dons painted onto walls watched their progress past empty lots made whole with tarpaulin sheeting. Running shoes hung from overhead cables that once carried electricity. Weeds spilled out from every crack in walls and pavements. Nature was about the only force that hadn’t given up on West Kingston.

  After a couple more blocks, the driver pulled over and stopped. “Mon, I don’t want to know your business, but you got somebody following you and I don’t want no part of it.”

  Oliver was texting Nikki. Without taking his eyes from the screen of his phone, Oliver said, “Grey Toyota Corolla, two guys in the front?”

  The driver said that it was. Oliver told him it was the police. “They’ve been following me off and on for the last few months. Don’t worry about it.”

  The driver folded his arms and told Oliver to get out of his cab. Leaning forward, Oliver read the guy’s name off the taxi licence. “Marcus, here’s twenty US dollars. Just take me to this domino club.”

  “I not going nowhere,” said the driver, “and me name not Marcus. That’s the guy who drive this in the daytime.”

  Oliver took another ten US dollars out of his wallet and handed it over to the driver with his business card. “I’m investigating police shootings. That’s why they’re following me. I’ve got a witness to a case. They’re following me so they can find him first and stop him giving evidence.”

  The driver took the card, looked at the shiny gold logo, the Justice Unlimited, Washington DC address, and said, “I tell you for nothing, you investigate Babylon, them a Babylon gonna shoot you down.”

  Oliver said, “They don’t shoot white people, only poor black people.”

  “And how dat leave me?” said the taxi driver.

  ”Another half a mile and you’ve got nothing to worry about. The police won’t go into Trenchtown after dark without an army escort.”

  “Maybe, maybe not, but I ain’t going nowhere. Not for no money. You got a choice. Either you stay in my taxi and we go back uptown, or you get out.”

  Oliver said, “The witness I was telling you about? That’s who I’m here to see. He’s in the club.”

  “You getting out, or staying?”

  Oliver told him the story. The taxi driver’s sniff was not encouraging.

  Oliver said, “The policemen stuffed Cecil in the boot of their car. Then they saw he wasn’t dead and pulled him out and shot him again.”

  The taxi driver put the car into reverse and spoke over his shoulder as he turned. “Lotta gunmen in Jamaica. The police gotta be hard. It’s a fact of life.”

  “The kid the police shot wasn’t a gunman. His name was Cecil and he wanted to be a preacher. He was trying to talk his friend Omar into leaving the gangs and going to church.”

  The driver said, “That’s none of my business.”

  “You think it’s OK that they have a death squad who can just shoot innocent people?”

  The taxi driver had the car facing uptown. He said, “Why would I care if he was a preacher? Get out of my taxi. Me told you. Me no want no part of this.”

  * * *

  7

  All of Justice Unlimited’s field staff were required to complete a risk assessment when they were in the field, so, pinned to the wall in the kitchen of Oliver’s office was the “Danger Map of Kingston” put there by his obedient predecessor. The guy had shaded in red on the map all of the areas of the city which were considered unsafe to visit after dark. Oliver didn’t find the map to be of much use – everywhere in downtown Kingston was coloured red, even the parliament building.

  Underneath the map was a printout from the internet which suggested that outside of an actual war zone, West Kingston was one of the five most dangerous places on earth.

  Local opinion was divided on that. Some people agreed that the city was dangerous, others said that that a white man could walk anywhere in Kingston safely. But Oliver noted that the people who said that tended to be the ones sucking down cocktails in the city’s most exclusive, expensive hotels protected by security guards and high fences. None of them had ever ventured downtown after dark on foot and alone.

  He was about to find out who was right.

  Once the taxi had driven away, Oliver stepped into the shadows of one of the ruined buildings behind him and scanned the surroundings. He was standing next to what had once been a factory before a turf war between ghetto gangs had led to it getting burned down. He reckoned he was half a mile from the domino club. The streets were deserted, the air so hot and humid, you could cut it into slices.

  He had been working in and around areas of conflict for most of the last ten years, but he was still scared when he stepped into a danger zone. He assumed it was healthy to be afraid of dangerous situations. Those of his colleagues who had affected bravery were the ones who had been invalided out, or carried home in coffins.

  Fear was good, but it didn’t feel like it.

  Keeping to the edge of the street, Oliver walked confidently as though he knew what he was doing. But not so confident as to attract attention.

  Twenty metres in front of him he saw two men walking away from him at a cross junction. He ducked into an alleyway so they didn’t see him. As he waited for them to disappear, one of the shadows on the ground moved.

  It was a man, asleep or dead drunk, Oliver couldn’t tell. He tried to tiptoe away, but the man pulled himself upright quickly and eyed Oliver with the satisfaction of a trapdoor spider welcoming the pattering of a mouse. In the faintness of the moonlight, the man looked like a skinny junky type. His skin was patchy, and his face sprouted strange wisps of hair. Oliver could see the man’s rotten teeth, doing whatever the opposite of gleaming is.

  The man picked up a knife. It was one of the large bladed ones they called “bills” that street vendors used to slice open jelly coconuts.

  The man said something in a thick Jamaican patois. Oliver didn’t understand the actual words, but the guy’s general meaning was clear.

  Oliver’s phone buzzed loudly in his pocket. Probably Nikki. The man held out his left hand in a give-me gesture and smiled.

  “Down here, we got a little thing we call a tourist tax,” he said, moving towards Oliver. “Money. Phones. Jewellery. I tek it all.”

  After the financial crash, when donations to Justice Unlimited dropped off a cliff, Holmes’ employers decided that it was too expensive to have bodyguards for their investigators, so Oliver was sent on a couple of courses on how to survive in hostile environments. The self-defence instructor he remembered was a small red-haired man with muscles you could bounce rocks off. He had a background in special forces and occasionally hinted at mysterious involvement in unknown conflicts, along with a wistful fondness for bar fights. “Get inside the knife,” he had shouted at Oliver a hundred times, meaning, move towards the attacker’s swing so the knife
was useless. The training had burned into his brain from repetition.

  Oliver could visualise what he had to do. Step forward. A blocking move with the left forearm curling upwards, knocking the hand holding the knife up and away from him while his right fist clubbed into the attacker’s neck. Since Holmes had the build of a light heavyweight boxer, one clean punch would have done it against such a slender opponent. Then, his instructor had suggested, a little vigorous stamping and kicking to finish things off.

  But Oliver Holmes hated violence. “I’m a lawyer, not a fighter,” he used to say.

  Roger, the special forces guy, laughed at that. “You might hate violence, but what about when the other guy doesn’t?”

  It was too late. Before Holmes could take the initiative, the junky had the point of the bill sharp against his chest.

  The adrenaline jolted through him uselessly and made his hands shake and put a waver in his voice. “I’ve got some money. Not much and I’ll give it you right now. But I need my phone. I really need my phone.”

  “Dis not a negotiation. I tek it all.” The junky prodded Oliver with the blade. It felt like it cut the skin.

  A movement from behind Oliver distracted the junky.

  “Easy, mon,” came a voice from the street. Then, “Put the blade down.”

  Oliver looked round. Two young men moved in behind him, moving to outflank the junky. The junky backed off, laid the bill down on his cart and raised his hands to show he was unarmed.

  A third man appeared. He was an unlikely looking saviour. He was dressed in the whitest, silkiest shirt Holmes had ever seen. The outfit was topped and tailed with a red bandanna and tight leggings designed to look like tattoos. There was a roll to his shoulders as he walked that suggested he could be trouble if you wanted.

  He waved his hand and the junky disappeared down the alleyway. The man held his fist up so that Holmes could bump it and never mind the gold rings.

  “Whassup?”

  Oliver said, “Thank you.”

  “What you doing down here, mon?”

  Oliver started to breathe again. His heart rate fell to something like normal. He leaned onto the coconut vendor’s cart and explained to the three men about Justice Unlimited. He stressed how he was working on the side of the poor and oppressed against the police.

  “You should be more careful,” said Kenyon after the introductions were done. “A guy like that, he kill you for ya shoes. But you’re OK now. Nobody mess with you now you’re with me.”

  Holmes had seen this before. Once people realised that he was on their side, they would do everything they could to help him. He asked for an escort. Kenyon told the two young kids who were with him to walk Holmes to the club.

  Then he looked at Holmes quizzically. “You know Big Mike?”

  Holmes admitted that he didn’t know anyone by that name.

  Kenyon said, “You look exactly like him. Except he black, of course.”

  Holmes started to laugh, until he realised that no-one else thought it was in any way funny.

  8

  They played dominos in a three-sided corrugated shack on the edge of a patch of scrubby, derelict land. White-blue strip lighting spilled from the open side. Rubbish burned in a fire in the middle of the waste land and scrawny kids danced around poking at the flames. There weren’t many women but the ones Oliver could see shouted louder than the men and some of them were bigger too. Everyone was buzzing on rum and beer served from a makeshift bar behind a metal grille. The smell of ganja hung heavy on the air.

  Floyd was sitting in a car, a short way from the shack. The man was a car bore and normally drove an old Mercedes which he spent too much time waxing and fussing over. For a drive into West Kingston, Floyd had swapped his ride for a Datsun. Holmes tapped on the window, Floyd unlocked the door and Holmes waved away his escort before he sat in the passenger seat.

  “Where’s Omar?”

  Floyd said, “Not here no more.”

  Holmes said, “You dragged me all the way down here…”

  Holmes was suspicious. He wouldn’t have put it past Floyd to have made up a fake sighting of Omar just to jerk Oliver’s chain, freak him out with a late-night visit downtown and put some more billable hours on his invoice.

  “…Why didn’t you tell me he was gone?”

  “I texted you.”

  Holmes remembered the text that had buzzed in his pocket while he was being mugged. He looked at his phone.

  “That was only ten minutes ago.”

  Floyd shrugged. “You said you wanted to be involved.”

  “You were supposed to pick him up this morning. I waited all day…”

  “What do you want me to say? He was waiting for you, and then something spooked him.”

  Holmes opened the car window. The night was filled with the noise of domino players shouting and slamming down tiles on the scarred wooden tables like dominos was a contact sport.

  Oliver said, “So what next?

  Floyd was a relentlessly cheery, handsome man with perfect teeth, an athlete’s body and a certificate from the Florida City Institute of Private Detectives on his office wall. Oliver had been through Florida City and there was nothing in the city’s strip malls and run-down condominiums that suggested it nurtured the finest investigative minds and Floyd didn’t seem bothered about proving Oliver wrong.

  Floyd paid the bills by catching bail jumpers from the States. Since the second thing all bail jumpers do once they get back to Jamaica is to head for their mother’s house, it wasn’t much of a job to sit outside in a car and wait for the fugitive to show up. Even then Floyd sometimes got it wrong.

  Oliver didn’t like him much. He didn’t like the fact that Floyd was a space invader, always getting too close when he was talking to someone.

  Floyd said, “In the Bible it say a man cannot work all the week. He got to have some rest and relaxation. We’ll find him Monday.” Some of his spit and saliva landed on Oliver’s arm. Holmes leaned as far back as he could against the car door.

  “If the police find Omar before we do, you know what will happen to him.”

  “It’s late. No point trying to track him now,” Floyd said.

  “Holmes said, “I want him found.”

  “I’ve got Mikey on it.”

  Holmes said, “I thought he was in Montego Bay, helping out my friend?”

  Floyd said, “Yeh, mon.”

  “Don’t give me that ‘yeh, mon’. How can he be in Montego Bay and looking for Omar in Kingston at the same time?”

  Floyd said, “You need to relax,” as though being caught in a lie just didn’t matter.

  Holmes couldn’t think of a conversation between him and Floyd that had ended well. He got out of the car and slammed the door. He pointed his finger through the open window and shouted, “Find him! Now! That’s what we pay you for.”

  Floyd said, “Why do you have to be so angry all the time?”

  Oliver leaned on the open window and told Floyd that after they had pulled him out of Mexico, his bosses had sent him to see a psychiatrist. “I told her about the bodies piling up. I told her about Colombia, Kurdistan, Ivory Coast and she said to me that I should start worrying when I stop being angry.”

  Floyd said, “You told me that before.”

  “Just find the kid.”

  Floyd said, “I’ll find him and you can count on that.”

  Holmes opened the car door and got in again.

  Floyd said, “What are you doing?”

  Holmes said, “Taxi driver wouldn’t wait. I need you to take me home. Just don’t talk to me.”

  9

  Toussaint Louverture, Kingston, Sunday

  * * *

  Oliver’s boss in Washington was a tennis nut, and every time he visited head office, which was as rarely as he could, she tried to get him to play, even though she knew he hated the game. When she called him in the morning, she was at the courts. He could hear the thwock of balls in the background and she had that
irritatingly chirpy tone of someone who just loved their exercise.

  Shelly said, “What are you doing?”

  After Mexico, the directors in Justice Unlimited had agreed that Oliver Holmes should have an easy posting. They offered him a desk job in Miami but he wasn’t ready for that, so they sent him to Jamaica. It was a Category C country, according to their classification, which meant occasional human rights abuses but low risk to the investigator.

  Shelly had even managed to make sure he got special treatment in Jamaica. She blew the budget on his accommodation and rented him an uptown villa overlooking the city. Oliver hated it. When Shelly called, he was inside, blinds closed and a table full of investigative reports in front of him. He said, “I was swimming.”

  “You’re a liar. I know you’re working. I just got your expenses form. It’s not even late.”

  Oliver said, “And you’re calling me up to complain about that?”

  “It’s Sunday.”

  “Well, you know, don’t check your emails on a Sunday.”

  Shelly said, “I’m not the one with a flag in my personnel file saying I’m under severe stress and need to take all my holiday entitlement and generally relax more.”

  Oliver said, “I don’t believe there’s such a thing as stress.”

  “The next time we have that argument it will be like the twentieth time. But my question is, why don’t you just go over to Montego Bay, help your friend out?”

  “How do you know about that?”

  Shelly reminded him of the security protocols. Anyone calls up Justice Unlimited about an investigator in the field, it triggers a lot of systems designed to protect the investigators.

  “And that got through to you?”

  Shelly said, “I was notified. Then I spoke to Nikki this morning…She said you blew her off.”

  “I told her I would go up there once I have Omar’s testimony on tape.”