A Brief History of Seven Killings (14 page)

—So where are you?

—You’re not going to ask how I got your number?

—Nope.

—Don’t pretend it doesn’t bother you.

—Buddy, I’ve got a bedtime story to read to my kids. This date of ours going somewhere good?

—What’s your favorite seat at the circus?

—Know what I hate, Bill? People who answer a question with a question. The Jamaicans do it all the fucking time.

—Then put a trace on the call. I’ll wait.

—No need. You might be overestimating your pull.

—Nah, I think I estimated my pull just about right.

—You’re killing me, man. What do you want, Bill? Fetching some shit for Fidel?

—Maybe. But why would I call you? You haven’t had access to good info since Montevideo.

—You seem to have nothing but good info these days.

—I guess. Pity about those seven guys you had to send back. I mean, the company was always sloppy as wet shit, but Jesus.

—You endangered lives, son of a bitch.

—I endangered a ten-million budget. An awful lot of money for a little country like Jamaica.

—How’re book sales going?

—Can’t complain.

—Made the fiction best-sellers list yet? I’ve been watching.

—Nope, racing up the How-to Advice list though.

—Nice. Listen, Bill, as much as I like this Bogie ’n’ Bacall thing we got going here, I’m actually really tired, so what do you want?

—A few things. One, either call off the dipshits you’ve got tracking me or get better people to do it.

—Nobody is following you far as I know. Besides had I, wouldn’t I know where you are?

—Call them off. Or stop insulting me by being so obvious. By the way, you might want to send some manpower out to Guantanamo to pick them up before the Cubans do. I’ll leave you to guess where they are. Two, you might want to reconsider putting all that ten million behind the JLP to deliver us from communism. Most of that is going to go into guns, the rest in—

—Want me to deliver peace in the Middle East while we’re at it?

—Oh, stick to your limited range of talents, Barry. Three. If you think
those gunmen that you have Louis teaching to shoot are too stupid to shoot you, you’re kidding yourself. Figured that’d be the only reason Louis Johnson would be in Jamaica. Blowback can be a motherfucker, buddy.

—Are you kidding? They were like little kids with Fisher-Price: My first real gun.

—So you are out there training boys? I wasn’t quite sure. Sloppy, Barry, even for a by-the-book hack like you.

—I don’t know what you’re talking about. As for Louis, he’s his own man so you’ll have to take up that business with him. What you got cooked up this time? I’m surprised you aren’t somewhere where people are always on the up-and-up, like East Germany. What secret war do you have us hatching? Angola? Maybe we’re starting something in Nicaragua. I hear Papua New Guinea is ripe for a socialist takeover any second now.

—You don’t even know what socialism is. You’re a trained monkey set for point and shoot. That said, I’m wondering. What’s Richard Lansing’s son doing there? Trying to help you spite Daddy?

—I don’t know what you’re talking about.

—This is a secure line, Barry, cut the bullshit. A Prime Minister that gives Kissinger the shits because he’s on Castro’s dick is about to be reelected.

—You sure about that?

—As sure as I know which school you send your kids to.

—Bill, don’t fuck—

—Shut the fuck up, Barry. As I was saying, a Prime Minister who seems a little too ignorant that he’s about to enter the Cold War, is about to be reelected. Puts on a concert where the biggest star in the world, who just happens to be Jamaican, is performing. And of all the people in the world who should come down to film the whole thing, Richard Lansing’s own son. I’m no fan of either guy, but you gotta admit how neat it all seems.

—Nice little conspiracy theory you’ve got cooking there. And just who was on the grassy knoll? You’re forgetting something, aren’t you?

—What’s that?

—That Lansing resigned. In many ways, he’s just a classier version of you. Both of you having a sudden attack of the liberal schoolboy conscience.

—I thought I was serving my country.

—No, you thought you were serving an idea. You wouldn’t know how a real country works, even with written instructions.

—You trying to turn this into a class debate, Barry? How socialist of you.

—I’m not trying to start anything. I just want to go to bed. Instead I’m stuck on the phone with either a man without a country or a man without a point.

—I just don’t get how you guys think. Socialism is not fucking communism.

—It’s an ism though, that’s for sure. Your problem, and it has always been your problem, Bill, is that you think you’re hired to think. Or that anybody gives a shit what you think.

—Lots of Jamaicans did.

—Yeah, I was here for your two-week residency back in June, remember? Jamaicans don’t give a shit about CIA policy, they don’t even know the difference between the CIA and the FBI. No, lots of Jamaicans went batshit for a white man who let them off the hook, because
Roots
just came on and surely nothing is ever their fault, with evil whiteys running around. Give me a fucking break. Spoke to Nancy Welch lately?

—Why would I speak to Nancy Welch?

—Can’t blame you. I mean, whaddya say? Gee, Nancy, awful business me getting your brother and his wife offed in Greece.

—Hold the fucking line, you think I got the Welches killed?

—You and your little exposé, your little trashy novel.

—He’s not in the fucking book, you idiot.

—Not like I’m ever gonna read it.

—Really? You think I’m to be blamed for Welch? I overestimated you, Barry. I thought the company trusted you with more info than you’ve clearly got. I must be talking to the wrong man.

—Really? You’re not the only one who’s estimating just right.

—Louis Johnson is in West Kingston teaching young terrorists how to use automatic weapons. Same weapons that never arrived at the Kingston wharf so they were never stolen afterwards.

—You have no proof of that.

—The only man who ever had use for Louis was me in Chile. He wouldn’t have been in the country for any other reason. Or Brian Harris, or whatever Oliver Patton is calling himself these days. You guys never smell blowback until it hits you in the face. Fucking Ivy Leaguers who never had to deal with people. My question is why the fuck is the Singer on your radar? What could he possibly do?

—Good night, Bill. Or
hasta mañana
or
luego
or whatever.

—I mean, really, what can he fucking d—

—Don’t call me again, son of a bitch.

—Who’s the son of a bitch calling you? my wife says. I didn’t hear her come back in and don’t know how long she’s been there. She sits down on the couch that I’m standing behind, not looking at me or saying anything, but expecting an answer. I plug out the phone and go over to the bar where a half-empty Smirnoff and a bottle of tonic are waiting.

—You wanna drink?

—Just brushed my teeth.

—That’s a no, then.

—Sounds like you wanna continue that little fight with me.

She rubs her neck and takes off the necklace. If Jamaica wasn’t so hot she would never have cut her hair above her neck. Haven’t seen her neck in years and I miss kissing it. It’s funny that she would hate being here so much, because until Jamaica I was so fucking afraid that she had become that woman I can’t fucking stand, the one who doesn’t feel any need to look attractive anymore. It’s not that she was ever unattractive, or that I’ve ever been sorry, or that I’ve ever cheated on the woman, not even in Brazil, but not long ago I toyed with leaving her, just to see if it would get her to wear lipstick again. She bitches about the country every day, every minute, more than likely in a minute or two, but she’s wearing mini shirts and cut her hair
like a pageboy and is tanned like a Florida heiress. Maybe she’s fucking somebody. I heard that Singer gets around.

—Kids asleep?

—Pretending at least.

—Haha.

I sit down beside her. This is the thing about redheads, isn’t it? No matter how long you’ve lived with them, you’re always surprised when they turn and look straight at you.

—You’ve cut your hair.

—The heat here is unbearable.

—It’s nice.

—It’s growing back. I cut it two weeks ago, Barry.

—Should I go upstairs and tuck them in?

—It’s ninety degrees, Barry.

—Good point.

—And it’s December.

—I know.

—Nineteen seventy-six, Barry.

—That I know too.

—You said we’d only be here for a year, if not less, Barry.

—Baby, please, I cannot have two fights in the space of two minutes.

—I’m not fighting you. I’m barely talking to you as it is.

—If we leave—

—
If
we leave? What the hell, Barry, when did that change from a when?

—I’m sorry. When we leave, are you going to be happy anywhere else but Vermont? Maybe I should retire and live on your salary.

—Funny. I’m not having a fight with you. I’m just reminding you that a year is twelve months and this is month twelve.

—The kids will miss their friends.

—The kids don’t have any friends. Barry?

—Yes, sweetheart.

—Don’t overestimate how many choices you think you have.

—You have no idea how fucking tired I am of that goddamn word.

She’s not going to ask what I mean, preferring to let her sentence hang like that. Work? Marriage? She’s not being specific because if she were, it would reduce the threat. I could ask what she means and then she’ll (1) explain it to me like I’m some retard, slow on the uptake, and (2) use it as a way to start a fight. I don’t know how she thought her life was going to turn out, but I’m sick and tired of explaining it to her like I’m on some fucking TV show that has to bring the audience up to speed every week. In the preceding stooooooory, our erstwhile hero, Barry Diflorio, the intrepid, dashing, charming and hung hero, took his wife to the concrete Jungle of Jamaica, on a mission of sun, sea, sex and secrets. Barry Diflorio was on the job but his wife—

—Stop that.

—Stop what?

—Humming the words that you’re thinking. You don’t even realize when you do it.

—What am I thinking now?

—Oh for Pete’s sake. It was bad enough raising three children in Vermont.

Takes a while for me to realize she said three. —You’re so pretty when you’re angry, I say, anticipating the look before I get it. Except I don’t get it. She doesn’t even look at me, right beside her, trying to grab her hand. I think about repeating it, but don’t.

Nina Burgess

B
us 42 drove past
and didn’t even stop, trying to get home before turning back into a pumpkin, I suppose. Except it was six o’clock. The curfew started at seven, but this was uptown so there wasn’t any police around to enforce it. Can’t imagine them stopping a Mercedes-Benz, the man might turn out to be in the Prime Minister’s Cabinet. The last bus was a minibus with Irie Ites painted on the side in blue, not red, green and gold. Bigger buses passed too, the green public JOS bus run by the government, small buses that I have to crouch to get into (and stay crouched the whole ride), most of them on their way to Bull Bay or Buff Bay or some other bay, meaning coastline, meaning country. Irie Ites left me behind at six p.m. I heard the last bass note at ten forty-five. It’s now eleven-fifteen.

The buses kept passing and I kept not taking them. Two cars pulled up too. Illegal taxis both of them, both with two in the front seat and four in the back, including a man with dollar bills between his fingers shouting, You want reach Spanish Town, baby? At first I thought it was the same car. I stepped back and looked away, long enough for the car to drive off, then did it again.

I have finally gone mad. Must be, waiting outside the gate in the hope that some man will remember having sex with me and hoping I was most memorable out of all the women he has had sex with, maybe even having sex with this minute. And if he remembered the sex maybe he would pull some strings and get me and my family out of this country and hopefully pay for it too. It made so much more sense at seven in the morning after I saw my father trying to act like younger men didn’t just make him feel like the oldest man in the world. Maybe they didn’t rape my mother, maybe they just hit her, or use something to mess with her pussy and then have him
watch them do it. Maybe they said no bitch you too old fi fuck, that deh pussy for Jesus now. Or maybe this is just me at near midnight, standing here in stupid high heels, my feet killing me because I spent all day killing my feet. And all I can do is listen to my mind go crazy. The son of a bitch didn’t come out once. Not even once. Maybe I have it wrong. Maybe I was memorable, too memorable, and he saw me from a window and sent a message not to let that girl in. Maybe I was a lousy lay or too good a lay, something about me that said to him, Boy, you better stay inside and don’t get involved with that one, that Nina Burgess. Maybe he even remembered my name. Or maybe not. My heels and my feet are covered in dust.

By around two or three the pain in my feet moved up to my shins then my knees, which felt better only because the ache was being shared. At some point you lose all ache until you realize, maybe an hour later, that you didn’t lose the ache at all. It had just spread all over until your whole body becomes ache. Maybe I’m not a madwoman, but I am something. The two women who passed me an hour ago knew something. I saw them from who knows, a mile up the road, when they were moving white dots, until they were barely twenty feet from me, two dark women in white church dresses and hats.

—But that is what me telling you, Mavis. No weapon formed against almighty Jesus shall prosper, the one on the left said.

They both looked at me at the same time and went quiet. They didn’t even wait until they were past me before one whispered to the other. It’s ten p.m. I know what they were whispering.