Kingston Noir (5 page)

“You know what it is?” This time her voice deep in her chest like she was shy. “No man ever kill for me yet, My Lord, no man. Oh Jesus!” Same time she grab me and start to tremble.

That was the seed. Plant like that. Simple, quiet. She never mention it again. But it take root inside me. Deep inside me.

Deloris till the soil and Cynthia do the planting. That’s the truth. I’ve gone over this moment many times in my head and I understand it clear-clear now.

Be that as it may, fucking Cynthia didn’t make me stop sleeping with Deloris. And a part of me feels like when she came back from Miami she must did know something happened because I was a different man. I picked her up at the airport and give it to her three times. And so it became every day after that, even in the office sometimes—just lock the front door and bend her over the sewing machine. I was really hungry for Cynthia but I couldn’t have her. She kept telling me to wait. So Deloris got her share.

One morning as I was making love with Deloris in this same little cottage right here, she asked me if I find the man for Cynthia yet. And is like that question give me more strength. And it come in like she realize it or something, because after that, whenever she wanted me to put it on a certain way, she would mention Cynthia in my ears … like tell me that Cynthia call her to talk about the dress … or Cynthia call to ask her if she know anything about how the search for the husband going.

Did Deloris actually know? Like
know
? I don’t really think so. The way I work it out is that she saw Cynthia as something damaged, and because I knew what that damage was, she was off limits to me. So thinking of Cynthia as damaged gave Deloris power over her. And if she have power over her, then it mean where Cynthia was concerned, she, Deloris, have power over me. And how she feel powerful now she start to get more confidence in herself and start to get out of order, even try one and two acrobatics in the bed. And when she start act like she want to rise up to me like this now, I felt I had to overpower her, break her down right back to where she was lower than me. And to do that I just had to imagine she was Cynthia. And this would get me murderous. And every push I push into Deloris was like I was giving her a stab.

One night, about a week of carrying on like this, I felt I had to tell Deloris I was in love. I just rolled over in the bed one morning and said it quiet and plain. No, it wasn’t a week. It was more than that. About, say, nine days, because in truth I’d found out where the man was a few days before that.

Deloris get vex, of course, but what surprise me is when she never fight to keep me or nothing like that. No, sir. She just pack her things and leave. No, is lie. As she was closing her grip she say, “The woman out of your class, you know, Brownie? You is the biggest fool I know.”

Yeah, that was kinda true.

Maybe, but I couldn’t see that then cause here was my thinking. Cynthia living with her daughter in that small dingy place in Portmore, and I know she made for better than that. I could see her comfortable in Constant Spring. Come uptown, live comfortable, me and she, put the girl in Immaculate, beautiful. Well Deloris had to leave for that to happen. And even though I never ask her to, well, to my mind she react perfect.

I wait to hear from Cynthia that Deloris call her or go by to fight her. But nothing like that happen.

So after a few days—a Thursday—I decide that it is time for me to seal the deal, as them say. I call Cynthia from the office and tell her I was going to find her husband over the weekend. I tell her I would come look for her Monday with all the information about him, and if she want I would take her to look for him on Tuesday. Then I tell her what I told Deloris. I was about to tell her that Deloris move out, but her reaction stop me. First I couldn’t hear anything. Then she talk to me soft-soft.

“Why you do something like that, My Lord?”

“You know why.”

“You shouldn’t do that, My Lord.”

“I had to …”

“You shouldn’t do that,” she say again. “No, you really shouldn’t do that.”

After that she never say a whole lot, so I promise her that she will understand and we will be all right. It wasn’t the time to tell her how Deloris leave and how I already work out when she and the girl were going to move in. That would look too callous—like Deloris was disposable or something. I am not that kinda man at all. Now, if Deloris had started some foolishness, I would have to tell the woman, but Deloris, God bless her, deal with this thing with dignity, and the few times when I see her, is not vexation I see in her, but pity, a terrible kinda pity for me that was a new kinda punishment.

Be that as it may, at the time, I was in a zone. Love, man. Love. I hang up and start make plans.

Well, how did I find the man? Come on, that man wasn’t difficult to find. Cynthia had done told me that he had family in St. Elizabeth. So all I had to do was to get to Santa Cruz, where she said his people was from, and the rest was easy.

I had some old police friends in the area. And when you’re doing certain kinds of things you have to figure in the police. So I called my good squaddy One Drop one night and ask him to meet me at five the next morning in Santa. One Drop’s name is really Wilson, but he’s the kinda police that each time he has to draw his Glock, a man is going to fall.

So Drop met me outside a patty shop, in plainclothes as usual. Everything was closed. The place was still dark. But is country, so one or two goat and cow was loitering. We talked in the parking lot. Turns out he was looking for the husband too. It was one of the first things he said when the subject came up.

Some complaints had been coming in from prostitutes in Black River saying there was this man who was offering triple money for them to work without condom. Then when he was finished with them now, the man would just throw the thousand dollar on them belly and tell them to go get test for AIDS.

According to Drop, at least three of them come to him direct and tell him this personally. And when I say
personally,
just read between the lines and come to your own conclusion about what kinda relationship Drop as a police might be having with the prostitute them.

When Drop telling me about what the girls tell him, is like him start to laugh. When I ask him what was going on, him say that the idiot didn’t know that most of the woman doing their business in Black River learn how to use female condom, so even though he thought him was getting a bareback ride, the woman them was well saddled.

Then Drop face change. Him look off toward the square, then down at him loafers, then look at me again.

Two of the younger girls, well, they was careless Ethiopians, and they never had the protection, and him blood really boil when they came to him.

Officially, if one of the girls test positive, the man was going get a murder charge. But between the two of us, Drop knew why the supe had put him on the case. Before that man dead him was going know what it was like to live without a cock or balls while rotting in prison for life.

So I laugh and told him how the man’s wife hire me to find him because she was concerned about his health. I tell Drop that the way things look, maybe somebody was going to done the man before I could help him.

“Why you want to help a piece a shit like that?” Drop say.

“I work for pay. Woman hire me to save the man. So can’t be helped.”

And this is how you get police involve.

“Well, I going to find him before you, Brown,” Drop said.

I laughed.

So who was going find him first? My skills is something that Drop respect. Five thousand Jamaican and a Chinese dinner. Wasn’t no big bet.

The thing is, I knew I’d won already, because I knew where the fucker was, even how he was lying down, but Drop didn’t need to know that.

You see, the day I went down to meet with One Drop was not the first time I’d gone down. I’d gone down there the day before, not to Santa Cruz up in the hills there, but way down south, even more south than Black River, down in a place name Treasure Beach. Down there is what you call real country. It don’t even have a town. Is just red niggers, blue sea, and brown grass. The perfect place to get lost.

From what I had gathered through my intelligence, there was a routine to his days. Him would go out with the fishermen most mornings then spend the afternoons smoking weed on the beach till night. Then when night come now, him would catch a taxi down to Black River or even go as far as Montego Bay to do his work.

I ask a big-belly man with the smoothest skin you could ever see and some wild stick-up sea-salt rusty locks—fellow they call Boops, who used to be a serious fisherman but decide to use his boat for sightseeing for tourist and excursion up Black River from the sea—if he knew where the man was. He said the man was at the rocks this morning, but catch a ride with one of the tourist excursion up river and soon come back.

Well, I waited and when the boat come back the man was not in it, but the captain of the boat told me that he left the man by the shrimp dock a few miles up river. He said that the man sometimes just stay up there for the night because he had a woman there.

So I ask Boops to give me a run up the river, and I promise to pay for gas and a little something.

We move out as the sun dropping down behind the sea. We head out south like we going to Venezuela, then turn west and follow the coast until we come to the sweet-and-salt coolness of the river mouth. Boops push the boat toward the river mouth past where one of those flat-bottom tourist boat and a few fishing boat was dock.

A light mist take over the river when we motor past the white hanging roots of the mangrove that look like some gray dreadlocks. Long shadow and orange light everywhere you look. The ibises already crowd out the riverbank for the night.

In a bend in the river, I could make out a jetty, a rough-up cement-floor gazebo, and a narrow brick bungalow with about three little storefronts where they cook and serve the shrimps. Most days about five or six people cook and sell shrimp and bake crab from there. Only a fat woman cleaning up the place for the night was left.

And there he was—the man. Sitting under a almond tree smoking a cigarette and eating shrimp from some foil. Boops guide the boat against the jetty, and both of us climb up onto the concrete landing, and while I sat down on one of the wooden bench, Boops tie up the boat and walk behind the shop to piss.

I was watching the man who barely look around when we slide in. He was short. Red-skinned. The most ordinary, pimpleface man you would ever see. His hair was low-low on his head, and you could see the balding start already. He wasn’t a fit man or anything. He was not the kinda man I did expect to see.

Boops walk around from the side and come sit beside me. The man watch Boops moving past like he really in a different world. It is then that he look at me like he want to ask what I was doing in his kingdom, and right away I know why my spirit never take to this man. Disdain. Like the man have disdain for everything around him. This one is not pride, self-assurance—them is good things. This one is disdain, like him is better than everybody else. I don’t like those kinda people. And worse, when you red and disdainful, you have no basis but that you might a be a lucky sperm that make a move in a certain time in history. Nothing that you have done.

“Mr. Alvaranga?”

“Who asking?” He spit out a shrimp shell in his hand and throw it on the ground. “I say, who asking?”

“No problem, sir. You have answered my question.”

As I start to walk back to the boat, hear him, “Who the rass is you, anyway?”

I turn my head sideways to talk behind me. “Nobody, bossman. Not a damn soul. You know what? Call me Duppy.”

Boops laugh out.

“Hey, Boops, who the rass is this man? Why you bring him out here for?”

“Take it easy, Alva. Him say him have a message from your wife.” Boops look at me as if to say I must do what I said I was doing.

“She just want to know you living and healthy,” I explained.

“Fuck the bitch!” he shouted. “Boops, don’t do that again or I will fuck you up myself.”

Boops laugh and start up the boat.

While we were going back down river toward the sea, Boops tell me that sometimes Alvaranga sleep in one of the shacks on the landing.

So, when I’d called One Drop to meet me in Santa Cruz, I was calling from Treasure Beach. Not Kingston. As I said, I already knew where the man was before I made the bet, even how he was lying down.

I called Cynthia with the news two days later. I needed time to clear my head. I was in Kingston, driving out to the airport to meet a rep for an airline that wanted to know when a rival was going to change its fares. The harbor was gray and choppy on my right and the hills dusty on the far side of it and the city, spreading and rising up and up killing itself one person at a time every two or so hours.

I didn’t tell her anything about anything when she picked up. Just small talk. I wanted to give her the news in person, more like in her person. I wanted to be saying,
I did it for you, baby. I did it for you. Is you me done the fucker for
, as she made me come.

One Drop call me as I was waiting for my contact in a far end of the parking lot. Hear him: “You owe me five thousand and a lo mein.”

“For what?”

Him say, “How you mean?”

I turn down the radio. “So you arrest him?”

“Arrest him?”

“Yeah. You say you find him.”

“The man dead, My Lord. Dead. One shot in the head.”

“You too rass lie. So what you think, the AIDS fly up in him head or him conscience bite him and him commit suicide?”

“It don’t look so—”

“So is you supposed to find that out or them bringing in a sense man from town?”

“Fuck you. Me know more than most of them little guys who call themself investigator. All them do is go on a little three-month course to England and come back like them is anything. Me learn more than them from
CSI
to bloodclaat.”

And we laugh for bout two minute.

“So you feel is kill himself?”