A Brief History of Seven Killings (4 page)

How do you construct an accident? Nobody in the Company is indispensable, but sometimes I wonder why don’t they just call somebody else. At least they didn’t have me groundworking Montevideo. What a goddamn mess that turned out to be. But I like having a job I can’t talk about. It makes keeping the other secrets easier. The wife finally came around to the fact that as long as we’re married there are just some things she will never know and she had to get used to what all our wives get used to. Knowing two out of every four facts. Five out of every ten trips. One out of every five deaths. I don’t think she knows exactly what I do. At least that’s the story I’m sticking to this week. I’m in Jamaica and almost everything is moving according to plan. Which is a boneheaded way of saying things are moving so textbook easy that it’s actually rather boring to work here. Not surprised at all, Jamaicans tend to react exactly as you think they would. Maybe that’s refreshing to some, or maybe just a relief.

So back when I mentioned the jerk chicken guy, that was in May and I wasn’t in that area because I suddenly wanted to experience the real Jamaica. I was following a man in a car four cars up. A person of keen interest that a driver picked up at the Constant Spring Hotel. At first I thought I was brought here to shadow him, only to find out that he was shadowing me. He used to work for the Company until he also caught a terminal case of the conscience. This is what happens when top brass still tries to recruit from Ivy League washouts, prep school faggots, American Kim Philbys waiting to come out of the closet if not the cold. By the time I found out that he was in Jamaica he had already found out I was here. I’m not exactly undercover—too late for that. That said, I couldn’t have this man talking up a mess that I would then have to clean up. Pity that I didn’t have clearance to proceed. It’s not even over and I miss the Cold War already.

Bill Adler checked out of the Company in 1969 a very bitter customer. Maybe he was just a disgruntled left-wing commie, but tons of those are still in the Company. Sometimes the good ones are the worst, the mediocre ones are just civil servants with wire-tapping skills. But the good ones either become him or me. And he was sometimes very good. After he was done with Ecuador, a four-year job done with, dare I say it,
brio
, all I had to do was clean up the stray debris. Of course I’d much rather remind him of that lovely mess in Tlatelolco. The boss called me an innovator but I was just following the Adler rulebook. Ceiling mics, like the one he used in Montevideo. Either way, he left the CIA in 1969 with a critical case of conscience and has been making trouble and endangering lives ever since.

Last year he dropped a book, not a very good one but there were explosions in it. We knew it was coming but let it go, thinking well, maybe a diversion with his out-of-date info would actually help us out there doing real work. Turns out his info was very nearly top-notch, and why wouldn’t it be, come to think of it. He named names too. Inside the Company. Top brass didn’t read it, but Miles Copeland did, another whiny faggot who used to run the Cairo office. He ordered the London office restructured from the ground up. Then Richard Welch got murdered in Athens by 17 November, a second-rate terrorist group that we wouldn’t have sent a candy striper to monitor. Killed with his wife and driver too.

But with all that, with knowing all that he was capable of, I still had no idea why Adler was here. He wasn’t an official guest of the government; that would have been an irredeemable faux pas on the Prime Minister’s behalf, especially after shooting the shit with Kissinger just a few months ago. But the Prime Minister was certainly happy he was here. Meanwhile I’m waiting for orders from head section to neutralize the threat of this man, or at least mute it. The Jamaica Council for Human Rights invited him, forcing me to open a brand-new file on my already crowded desk. Within days the guy was giving speeches, long speeches about all kinds of bullshit, like his name was Castro or something. Saying that people like me were in Latin America with him and he was disgusted by what he saw, especially in Chile when we allowed Pinochet to take power.

He didn’t name me, but I knew who he was talking about. Calling us the horsemen of apocalypse, destabilizing any country in our wake. He was dramatic all right, all the time pulling back on how much of this came out of his own rulebook. And that’s all this Prime Minister needed, a nice multisyllable word like destabilization to turn it into a fucking jingle. But he threw us on the defensive in a way that I’ll make sure never happens again. Of course the only people listening was
Penthouse
magazine. Goddamn, what does it mean when the conscience of America airbrushes pussy for a living? Guys like Adler, guys who suddenly develop this sense of mission to expose evil America when they’re just white guys with a guilty conscience who never know when to quit. And the Company couldn’t decide if I should just quit him.

At one point he claimed he had evidence that the Company was behind arson in some tenement they call it on Orange Street, murder of more than a few Cubans in Jamaica and industrial unrest on the wharf. He said he had evidence that the Company was giving the opposition party money, which was just preposterous considering what bad form it would have been, trusting anybody in the Third World with money. I don’t know why he didn’t just send an article to
Mother Jones
or
Rolling Stone
or something. Before the Company gave me a clear directive of what to do he was gone, my eyes and ears tell me, to Cuba. But the bastard did his damage. He gave the Jamaicans names. Fucking names. Not mine but eleven of the staff at the embassy, blowing the cover of at least seven of them. They had to be shipped back before any realized that they knew them by assumed names. Because of Adler I had to start from scratch. In the middle of September in a year that was doing nobody any favors. Everything from scratch, which already led to problems.

Passing his office I overheard Louis on the phone about a shipment at the wharf that went rogue. I did some checking. Nobody in this office has ordered any shipment of anything, and if they did they certainly wouldn’t have had it go through Jamaican customs for two-thirds of it to be stolen. Need-to-know basis serves him as much as it does me, but I don’t like when a fucking rogue agent somewhere in Cuba finds out something is gone
before I even knew I was supposed to miss it. Means his low-level snoops still have higher clearance than me, and I’m supposed to be running the fucking show. Louis didn’t sound too distressed when he was telling all this to God knows who, and I got tired of standing near his doorway like I was trying to get gossip.

The wife called not long ago to tell me she had run out of maraschino cherries again. I tell you, the Cold War isn’t even over and I miss it already.

Papa-Lo

L
isten to me now.
Me warn him y’know, my magnanimous gentlemens. Long time I drop warnings that other people close, friend and enemy was going get him in a whole heap o’ trouble. Every one of we know at least one, don’t it? Them kinda man who just stay a certain way? Always have a notion but never come up with a single idea. Always working plenty of scheme but never have a plan. That was certain people. Here is my friend the biggest superstar in the world and yet him have some of the smallest mind to come out of the ghetto as friend. Me not going name who but I warn the Singer. I say, You have some people right close to you who going do nothing but take you down, you hear me? Me tired to say that to him. Sick and tired. But him just laugh that laugh, that laugh that swallow the room. That laugh that sound like he already have a plan.

People think me understand everything to the fullness. That is not no lie, wondiferous gentlemens, but Jah know, sometimes I don’t learn till too late, and to know something too late? Well, is better you never know, as my mother used to say. Worse, you all present tense and have to deal with sudden past tense all around you. It’s like realizing somebody rob you a year late.

So look at me. See all this? From the old cemetery to the west, the harbour to the south and all of the south West Kingston? Me run that. The Eight Lanes is PNP so they watch them own affairs. Then you have the territory in the middle that we have to fight for and sometimes lose. He used to live in Trench Town so some people have him as stooge for the People’s National Party. But me will take a bullet for him and him would take one for me too.

But them new boys, them boys who never dance the rocksteady and don’t care ’bout niceing up the dance, them boys don’t work for nobody. Me
enforce for the Jamaica Labour Party in green, and Shotta Sherrif control for the People’s National Party in orange, but them new boys enforce for the party in them back pocket. Can’t even control them no more.

Earlier this year when he gone on tour, after begging me to come with him to see London town (of course me couldn’t go, me so much as sleep and is armagideon down the ghetto), he leave certain brethren at the house. Soon as him gone, them boys call ghetto boys from Jungle, because they have a grand scheme. This one boiciferous, like them big scheme you watch on TV where Hannibal Heyes and Kid Curry stick up a bank and still get the sexy girl who hand them over the money. We try to keep the peace, me and Shotta Sherrif, but whenever things get out of hand, somebody kill a school pickney for her lunch money or rape a woman on her way to church, is usually somebody from somewhere like Jungle, man who born with no light in them eye. Them is the people that get together with the Singer friend on him own premises and scheme.

One week before the Kings Sweepstakes, five man from Jungle drive all the way down to Caymanas Race Course on a training day and wait for the top jockey, who never lose a race, to come out to the parking lot. As soon as he step out, in him riding clothes, two man grab him and one cover him head with a crocus bag. They take him somewhere, I don’t know where, and do something, I don’t know what, but come that Saturday, he lose the three race he was in, three race he was supposed to win easy, including the sweepstakes. He board a flight to Miami the following Monday, then poof! Gone. Nobody know where he gone, not even him family. Horse fixing is as old as horse race, but a little people make a lot of money too fast. Too fast. The same week the jockey vanish, two man from Jungle also disappear, poof! like they never born in the first place, and certain brethren all of a sudden had to make pilgrimage to Ethiopia. Now me respect Rastafari to the max, and a man have to go to him homeland if that is where he think it be. But somehow all of a sudden when people holding out for money, the brethren with all of it just skip. Who knows what happen to the money.

That was the beginning. From then all sorts bad guzum come to the Singer own house. Con man with con-plan in the same house where music
need to vibe off pure spirit. I remember when that was the only place any man, no matter what side you on, could escape a bullet. The only place in Kingston where the only thing that hit you was music. But the fucking people soil it up with bad vibes, better if they did just go into the studio one morning and shit all over the console, me no going say who. By the time the Singer come back from tour, mob from Jungle was already waiting for him. Jamaican man head thick like brick. Never mind that the man was on tour and don’t know nothing ’bout no horse race, or that he never cheat no man ever. Jungle man say, The scheme launch ’pon your property so you responsible. Then they take him out to Hellshire Beach, saying he need to eat some fish.

He tell me all this himself. Now he is a man who could talk to God and the devil and make them work out they difference—as long as neither of them have a woman. But that morning they come for him at six o’clock, before he go off to run and exercise, and swim in the river like he do every morning. That was the first sign. Nobody mess up with the Singer’s morning, that is when the sun rise to send him message, when the holy spirit tell him what to sing next, when he closest to the most high. Still he go with them. They drive out to Fort Clarence Beach, twenty miles or so from West Kingston but just across the sea and so close that you can see it from across the water. He tell me all this himself. The whole time them was talking they look away, shift from side to side, staring at the ground because they didn’t want him to mark they face.

—Your brethren, him gone in a scheme with we, sight? Your brethren come ’round the Jungle ’cause him want bad man fi do him dirty work, sight? Your brethren bring we ’pon your base fi talk business, sight?

—Seen. But me no know ’bout that, my youth, he say to them.

—Oi! Me, me, me no bloodclaat care what you want say, business go down under your roof so is you responsible.

—Brethren, how you see that? After the man is not me, him not me brother, him not me son, how me responsible?

—Oi, you, you hear what we say? Me just say it . . . me mean, me say me just say it, you never hear? It happen under your roof and him gone like
some stinking bitch ’cause him get greedy, sight? After we show the jockey and say Yow, you better throw off them three race or we coming for you and the baby in you woman belly. We do we thing, the jockey do him thing, everybody do him thing, but your friend and him friend dash out with the money and leave poor man fi stay poor. How people can so fuck up?

—Me no know, star, him say to the man who was doing the most talking. Short, stubby, and smell like sawdust. I know who him talking ’bout. So they say to him, Yow, hear how it ah go go, sight? We want we money, sight? So every day we a go send a brother ’pon a bike fi pick up two shipment, one in the morning one in the evening, you see me?

Him never tell me how much money them ask for, but me still have eyes and ears. Them tell me say is forty thousand U.S. the scam pay off. And them never see none of it. Them must did demand at least ten thousand out of that, probably more. So now they want to pick up stash of cash every day till they feel they get enough. Him say No, boss, that is con man business, me nah pay that. And how you fi do the I so? Is three thousand of you me pay for every day, send you to school and feed you. Three thousand of you.