A Brief History of Seven Killings (42 page)

And I’m looking at an office that I won’t have to ever see again, wondering how much I tell the wife. Umberto is going to hit her the most, she’s been calling their home for weeks now, convinced that they have either moved or she must have written down the wrong number. At one point she even asked me if they gave her a wrong number on purpose, and I really didn’t know what the hell to answer. The weirdest thing is that when she asks her other friends about him they have nothing to say. I mean, it’s so strange that none of them say anything. Not even the Figueroas, who live only five doors down. Even if they don’t know what specifically happened to him, they know something happened.

Politics shape policy. That’s been on my mind all week. That and Bill Adler. He called me again two days ago, funnily enough, both him and Louis. He was feeling particularly pissed off about being finally kicked out of the U.K.

—Come on, Bill. As small as America’s dick is, those limeys will stretch across the Atlantic to suck it.

—Good point. I knew I was biding time, but was kinda hoping, you know.

—Bad form, even for an ex-agent.

—Not ex. Fired.

—Tomato, tomahto. How’s Santiago?

—I hear it’s sunny in the summer. Really, Diflorio, Brzezinski won’t find this conversation half as interesting as Kissinger did.

—Maybe not, but didn’t you hear? We’re cutting costs all around. Anybody waiting for their phones to be debugged is shit out o’ luck. Speaking of cutting costs, how’s—

—How’s that broken record you can’t seem to fucking fix?

—Touchy.

—It’s one motherfucker of a February in case you haven’t been paying attention. Everybody’s touchy.

—What do you want, Adler?

—What makes you think I want something?

—Aw, honey, you called because you’re all lonely?

—Never met a guy in the field who wasn’t, Diflorio. Then again, you’re an—

—Accountant. You know, if we’re going to be friends, you really have to stop calling me—

—Accountant?

—No, Diflorio.

—Don’t be so smarmy, Diflorio, it doesn’t suit you.

—If you knew what suited me you’d call me Bar, or Barry, or Bernard, like my mother-in-law. Now for the second time, what can I do for you?

—Did you see all that stuff about Iran?

—Does disco suck?

—Just making chat.

—No, you’re making small talk. I heard John Barron’s writing a sequel to his KGB book.

—Might as well, Lord knows we have to ferret out those KGB sleeper agents.

—And the traitors who support them.

—Who would that be? The Bill in his book? I read that I’m an alcoholic skirt chaser who’s constantly broke.

—So you’ve read it?

—Of course I’ve read it. I’m surprised that you’re taking this wannabe agent so seriously.

—His book is at the very least as entertaining as yours.

—Fuck you. Have another book coming, by the way.

—Of course you do. You have at least a thousand more lives to fuck up. By the way, how’s your buddy Cheporov?

—Who?

—Nifty. Very skillful. But shit, Adler, even the
Daily Mail
knows you’ve been talking to Cheporov.

—Don’t know who—

—Edgar Anatolyevich Cheporov, Novosti News Agency in London. He’s KGB. Go ahead. I’ll just sit here while you act all aghast that you didn’t know. Mind you, aghast is hard to pull off without me seeing your face.

—Cheporov isn’t KGB.

—And I wear briefs, not boxers. You’ve been in contact with him since 1974 at least.

—I don’t know anybody at Novosti News.

—My dear Bill, you will simply have to do better. First you say you don’t know him, then you say he isn’t KGB. Should we pause while you get your thoughts together? If you didn’t know Cheporov was KGB, you’re either very stupid or very gullible, or maybe you just need some money. How much did Cuban intelligence pay you? A million?

—A million? You don’t know Cuba.

—Lord knows you do. What do you want, you fucker?

—Information.

—How much? A treasure trove? Wasn’t that your exact words to the KGB when you tried to whore yourself out?

—I’m not asking for information, prick, I’m giving it. Some of it might even concern you, fucking Yale boy.

—Hey, don’t shoot me because you swam out of Tacoma, Florida. Whatever you’re selling I’m sure as hell not buying. This conversation is being recorded.

—We’ve already established that.

—No worries, it’ll all be evidence for later.

—For when I turn myself in?

—For when we fucking catch you.

—You accountants can’t catch a breath.

—This from the case officer who got caught trying to bug an embassy at five a.m.

—Did you know you were in the
Horrors
book?

—What’s the
Horrors
book?

—Can’t confirm that’s what they’re calling it, if they’re calling it anything at all. My biggest regret in life, I swear, is to have put my book out before this shit broke.

—I don’t know what you’re talking about. And one day we’re gonna find your fucking leak.

—One day soon?

—Sooner than you think. This is an awfully long phone call. You sure you can afford it? I really have to close up shop, Bill.

—Oh yeah, all that packing and saying goodbye. Wonderful. Poor President Ford. He was on the fucking Warren Commission and didn’t know we didn’t tell him everything.

—What are you going on about now?

—The
Horrors
book. Who gave it that name? You gotta wonder.

—No I don’t. I swear sometimes, Adler, you’re not talking to me at all. It’s like we’re two girls and you’re talking about some boy just so the boy can overhear you. Few years out of the Company and you’re like those crackpots thinking aliens abducted you just to stick a dildo up your ass. Jeez.

—Maybe it’s not a book exactly. Maybe it’s a file.

—A file. In the CIA. The CIA has a file, and top secret to boot. How did you ever get this job?

—Don’t insult my intelligence, Diflorio.

—I don’t fucking have to.

—I’m telling you about a file Schlesinger compiled for Kissinger, the same report he presented to Ford on Christmas Day 1974.

—You’re talking to me about 1974. Dude, I hate to break it to you, but we’ve got a new President, and even he’s not going to be President much longer if today gets any worse. Iran’s blowing up all over the world press and poor William Adler, just now passing shit that everybody else shat in 1974.

—Kissinger presented a version that dressed up the really juicy stuff. Schlesinger’s original file is still floating out there and I hear it’s a doozy.

—Well, you’ve already had my opinion on your opinions, Adler. Running out of writing material, buddy?

—You’re a garbage man, Diflorio. The only reason you’re not interested is that you’re not high enough to be interested. Schlesinger’s little memo has it all: all the little things that the average American thinks some spy novelist cooked up. The breakdown of Tom Hayden’s last shit. Who Bill Cosby’s fucking. Mind control after LSD. Assassinations all over the place, Lumumba in the Congo, for example, lots of stuff on your buddy Mobutu—

—Correction: Frank’s buddy.

—Well, you, him and Larry Devlin are interchangeable, you Latin American African boys.

—The number of assassination attempts on Castro authorized by Bobby Kennedy himself.

—Did you know that Haviland’s being pushed to retire?

—Who?

—Haviland. The man who trained you and me. Sorry, I forgot you trained yourself.

—You realize if the American public or even Carter got hold of that book it would be the end of the Company? Your job would go down in fucking flames.

—I swear at times I don’t know if you’re a fucking idiot or if you’re just pretending to be one on TV. What kind of world do you think this is, Adler? You are the one agent who doesn’t seem to know what’s going on on this
fucking planet. You think your buddies in the KGB are on some humanitarian mission, is that what you think?

—Ex-agent, remember. And you don’t know what I think.

—Oh, I know exactly what you think. Originality is not one of the things you got going for you.

—I should have known you wouldn’t have given a shit about this
Horrors
book. You’re the worst of the lot. It’s one thing if you approved of what your government is doing, but you don’t even care. Just punch the clock and cash the check.

—I love how you assume you have me figured out. It’s one of your worst shortcomings, Adler, thinking you can read people when you can’t read shit.

—Oh really?

—Yes really. You know why? Because in all this talking about your
Horrors
book, in your breaking it to poor me that my government has been engaged in all sorts of fucked-up shit, in all your failure to spark my interest even once, it never occurred to you that maybe I’m not interested because I wrote the motherfucker.

—What? What did you say? Are you fucking shitting me?

—Do I sound like I’m remotely interested in shitting you? Yes, you fucker, this little bookkeeper wrote it. What, you think the secretary of defense wrote the damn thing himself? You know, at first I felt kinda slighted that I didn’t appear in your book even once. Then I realized you really don’t have a fucking clue what I do, do you? You have no fucking idea. Because if you did, you wouldn’t have wasted my time for the past six and a half minutes. Instead you’d have fallen out of your fucking hammock and while you’re on the floor, thank your commie God that I’m not the son of a bitch they sent after you. By the way, your Sunbeam Coffeemaster’s broke and the view from your new apartment fucking sucks. Tell Fidel you want an ocean view.

Of course the son of a bitch hung up. And he hasn’t called back. I suspect that he’ll never call me again.

Fuck this desk. Fuck this office. Fuck this country. Fuck this year already. I’m going home.

Papa-Lo

K
idnap Mick Jagger
and make two million. Me and Tony Pavarotti we out in a car, riding up and down a road that twist and turn like river, riding right up next to the windy wavy sea. Josey Wales didn’t come. Racing for the curb, the Ford Cortina. Swerve left then swerve right, a wave just burst on rock and froth splash and hit the windshield. This is how close to the road is the sea, how close we is to the sea and Pavarotti still driving, cooler than coolness’ mother.

Tony Pavarotti with his nose like a Pavarotti. Can’t remember him mother nor father, can’t remember him growing up or doing the things boys do when growing up or getting into crosses boys get into. It’s like he be the sidekick in the movie, the baaaaaaaaad
hombre
who just show up in the middle and start walk and talk like we was waiting for him all this time. Tony Pavarotti just is, and you think hard about what you need before you call him. And he will lie and wait in an old building window all day, or up in the tree on the hill all night, or in the wall of garbage in the Garbagelands or behind a door for as long as it take for him to become a complete shadow and take out your enemy from three hundred feet away. He do work for Josey Wales but not even Josey had whatever it take to keep Tony at him side permanent and plenty people side with Josey permanent these days. We don’t talk. When I stay home I stay inside, and when I go I leave the country. I don’t go to him doorstep. But Tony Pavarotti is man who serve every man and no man and today all day he in my employ, in the left seat driving and hugging the thin road, too narrow for such an angry sea.

Learn this: Jail is the ghetto man university. Slam clink slam. Babylon come for me two years ago—is it two years yet? I try to not forget any time Babylon encroach ’pon the I. In the truck to take me to jail a policeman spit
in me face (him new), and one, when I say, Pussyhole, you spit smell like bubblegum, gun-butt me between the head so hard that is when they throw water on me in the jail I wake up. Both police dead before 1978 thanks to the man beside me who carry them to me as soon as me come out. Learn this all nice and decent people, Mama-Lo didn’t raise no son who walk with he back straight to get spit on like mangy dog. And this here Papa-Lo never ever forget. Man, like we don’t forget, we collect. We take them to the end of Copenhagen City where only John Crow live and rich man shit drain into the sea and one start to wah wah wah ’bout how him wife not working and he have three pickney and me say all the worse for them now they have a dead pussyhole for a daddy.

But back to when them send me to jail. And even if you could jimscreechy, slip through the system you can’t slip through the iron. Iron is iron, and iron stronger than lion and steel don’t budge. The bars say, There’s no way out, just cease and settle and if you ever plan to travel you better tap inside your head and tell it to start traveling. This must be how man end up reading book they otherwise wouldn’t read, and write book too. But the bars also say, Nobody can come in and stop the learning, so maybe a learning is a visitation in your head and maybe a jail make you still in the spirit so that you ready to hear it, because, gentlemens, nobody—and I mean nobody—can learn nothing if them not ready to listen.

The car hit a bump but Tony Pavarotti don’t notice. I wish I didn’t jump like a man who can’t drive a car. He the only man I know who drive with glove, they cover him palm but show him finger with a cut-out for each knuckle and the back of him hand. Brown leather. The sun running away before we get to the bay. It don’t have what it take to witness when man get dark. The moon now, the moon is better company especially when it full and fat and deep like it just rise out of blood. You ever see a moonrise? I want to ask Tony Pavarotti but I don’t think he would answer. You don’t ask a man like this them kind o’ question.

I pull two cigarette out of my pocket and give him one. He stick it in him mouth and me light it. Palisadoes strip, past the airport, on the stretch to Port Royal where James Bond drive the man off the road in
Dr. No
. We
drive along until we reach a fort that build from before man like me come over on the slave ship. 1907 Earthquake—half of it sink into the sand but if you drive fast it look like the fort was just now rising out of it. You see cannon peeking out of sand and you wonder how tall and proud it must did look when Nelson hop on him hob-leg all around it. Nelson we learn about in high school along with Admiral Rodney who save Jamaica from the French. Who going save Jamaica now?