A Brief History of Seven Killings (56 page)

—Duppy seal your mouth shut, little girl?

She don’t say a thing. Instead she walk over to me, still pulling at her panty, and stop right at my knee. My girl rubs her eyes again and look at me long as if she’s making sure it’s me. Still quiet she grab my pants and pull herself up, climb up my knees and gone off to sleep in my lap. Did she get all this liberty taking from her mother or from me?

How did bad man business get done before the phone? Even I already forget how news used to come and go. First call in three minutes. Another phone call pop up in my head. Of course I know why. It’s what Doctor Love call déjà vu. Right about when every sensible man get tired of this whole peace and love fuckery. About the time when Copper come down from the hill, as if people, meaning me, would forget what a pussyhole he was before the peace, raping woman after he killed their man. Even Papa-Lo, Mr. I-killany-man-that-rape-a-woman, let Copper slide and climb up Wareika Hills. Good times was bad times for somebody and the people about to experience bad times reach what the new American called critical mass. The critical mass realise what a woman whose man beat her also realise. Sure things bad, but don’t mess with it if it working for you. This type of bad we know. Good? Sure good is good, but good is something that nobody know. Good is a ghost. You can’t get pocket money from good. Jamaica better off bad, because that type of bad work. So when certain people find themselves going almost into panic from all this good vibes threatening the next election, especially when they seeing what was bound to come out of it, my phone start ringing. My woman took a message and it was only one word.

—Copper.

—Anything else? He said anything else?

—No, just Copper.

No problem for me, I hate the fat belly piece of fuckery from day one, but the peace didn’t turn Copper into an idiot. He was safe up the hill and safe in Copenhagen City, even in the Eight Lanes. But he wasn’t safe from the police. Copper didn’t play in any pen he didn’t know. So at the jam session in Rae Town one Sunday I say to him, You know, Copper, man like you who live in the hills, when last you taste fry fish?

—Woi, man, fi tell the I true, a long time me nuh nyam dem sinting deh.

—What? No, star, that not right. Tomorrow, tomorrow we going straight to the beach to get some fry fish and festival.

—Woi. Festival for true? Them fry it in the fish oil? What you is, di devil out fi tempt the I?

—Some roast yellow yam, roast corn with dry coconut, ten bammy, five steam with pepper, five frying in the same oil they frying the fish.

—Lawd, man.

—Have some of your man drive down to Fort Clarence.

—The stoosh beach? Ah wha you ah say?

—Me’ll leave you name with security. Go on, act like you don’t like it. Plenty fish and festival, you get to tramp down Babylon beach and no police nowhere.

—Man, if you was a woman me would drop down to me knee and married you. But brethren, me can’t do that shit. Soon as me hit causeway three police would dress down ’pon me. And them not saying put your hands up.

—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

N
ow 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 cleats 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 af
ternoon. 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.