Marlon James - A Brief History of Seven Killings

Minutes pass. The garbage dunes go on forever, and the trail of people stuff junk into their black bags. The green car has disappeared. I stop the car, not quite knowing what to do. Two boys with bags run across the road right in front of me and my right hand reaches for the dashboard. Maybe I should take the gun out, at least keep it in my lap. My heart should stop pounding in a few. What the fuck am I doing here? Then two more boys pass, then a woman, then several women, then a trail of men and women and boys and girls passing in front and behind the car, the men and women shuffling, the boys and girls skipping and jumping, everybody carrying black bags to the other side. Someone bumps the car and I jump, punching the glove compartment so that the lid drops open and I can grab the gun.

God knows how many minutes had passed before I hit the gas again. The road is still clear, but it’s the highway, with nothing but rocks to one side of the road and sea to the other. Only one car passes, a white Datsun with a driver who sticks his head out when he sees me, a black man with Chinese-looking eyes. I could have sworn he scowled, which is weird since I don’t know the man from Adam. I don’t get past a turn on the left before the green car shoots out of nowhere and rams straight into me. My forehead hits the steering wheel and my neck whiplashes into the headrest. The Cuban is out first, at least I think it’s the Cuban. He races over to my car, his gun drawn, and shoves it right under my jaw.

— Wait, I know him. He’s one of yours, he says.

— Who the fuck? Diflorio? What the fuck? Diflorio, what’s the big idea following me?

They insist on taking me to the hospital even though there is nothing wrong with me. At Kingston Public Hospital, the doctor stitches up my forehead as I try to ignore the crowd of people inside and the streaks of blood and whatever else on the floor. The doctor didn’t bother to take his surgical mask off. I really want to leave, but I have no memory of how I got there, not even after I see Louis Johnson out by reception sitting beside an old black woman and reading the paper.

— Where’s my car?

— Sweetie all stitched up? Baby all better?

— My car, Johnson.

— Dunno, back in the ghetto somewhere. They probably scrapped it totally by now.

— Funny, Johnson. Real funny.

— Las Casas drove behind me, took it to the embassy. It’s fine. You’ll have some explaining to do to the wife, but it’s not totaled or anything.

— What the fuck, Johnson.

— What can I say, sweetie, I see I’m being followed, I decide that I don’t dig that kind of shit. And next time, should you decide on this course of action again, at least do a better fucking job of it. Not a lot of Volvos come charging through the ghetto. Did you even know where you were? Let’s go.

We’re heading back to the embassy on roads I don’t recognize. At least I think we’re heading back to the embassy. I wish I had my gun.

— You told some black guy to look out for me? I say.

— No, but Luis probably did. White Datsun?

— Yeah.

— Same one.

— Who is he?

— You know, Diflorio, I respect what you do.

— Really now.

— Yeah, that shit Adler and you pulled off in Ecuador was pretty neat. Slow as shitting molasses, but neat all the same.

— You don’t know shit about what I did in Ecuador.

— Not only do I know what shit got down in Quito, I also know this is not fucking Quito.

— Meaning?

— Your silly little letter-writing campaign doesn’t count for jack shit in a country where most people can’t fucking spell communist.

By letter writing he means the letters that I fed the press warning people about the communist threat in Ecuador. And the ones from the “communist party” endorsing the Rector of Quito Central University, to scare people away from voting for him, a success. By letter writing he means the flyers I created for the Young People Liberation Front, a communist organization I created by simply taking out a half-page ad in the newspaper, and having two youngish-looking agents who spoke Spanish set up as leftist exiles from Bolivia, in case anybody wanted to meet. We eventually demoralized the Student Communist movement by tipping the military police every time they met. By letter writing he means the Anti-Communist Front that I created and the 340 people I recruited for training back home on how to recognize and defuse the communist menace, because I’ve been to Hungary and it is a fucking communist menace. By letter writing he’s talking about what it took to get Arosemana elected as well as thrown out once he became the inevitable nuisance Latin Americans become when you give them just a hint of power. All the while keeping this shit out of the New York Times when men like Johnson and Carlucci were fucking up the Congo. He has some fucking nerve.

— Don’t think I don’t respect your soft tactics, Diflorio, or you for that matter. But this ain’t Ecuador. Not even close.

— Soft tactics. Could’ve used some softness in the Congo.

— Congo is fine.

— Congo’s a mess. It’s not even the Congo.

— It’s not communist.

— Of course.

— You a patriot, Diflorio?

— What? Of course. What a fucking question.

— Well. That makes one of us. I just get the job done.

— Is this the part where you tell me that it’s for the thrill of it? That you would do it for free?

— No, the pay’s pretty good too. Patriot. Shit. Your problem is that you believe the bullshit from your own government.

— You think you have me all figured out, don’t you? Every single letter that comes to Jamaica from Cuba, China or the Soviet Union, and every letter from here that goes out there hits my desk first. I’ve got a man in every leftist organization in this fucking country that even fucking Bill Adler couldn’t fish out. You’re no different from the twelve fucking idiots he called out.

— How so?

— All you do is fuck up. If guys like you didn’t fuck up, guys like me wouldn’t be needed in the first place. Right now I just compiled a Subversive Control Watch List that just made Bush very happy. How’s your report card, Johnson? I see you got the fucking-around-with-terrorists part down pat.

— Haha, Doctor Love told me about you.

— Oh, that’s what he’s calling himself these days? He and his dumb-asshit Cuban rich boys who thought they could start some counter-revolution just because their papas could buy them little guns. Had they left Cuba to people like me instead of people like him, there’d be a McDonald’s in Havana by now.

— Bravo. Except for one thing, Diflorio. You’re under the impression that you can do this alone. You and your kind, the fucking accountants. Motherfuckers like you don’t know shit about what happens at ground level. And that’s fine. Just stop kidding yourself that you don’t need men like me.

— Remarkable.

— And what’s your last big project, Diflorio? A fucking coloring book, that’s what. A fucking coloring book that—

— Gotta start them young, asshole.

— Page six: My daddy says we’re in democracy and not totalitarian state, now color the letters CCCP.

— Fuck you.

— Hey, I for one think anti-communist coloring books are the bee’s knees. Just perfect for a country where most of the population can’t read.

— That was a fucking stoplight, Johnson.

— Scared?

— Annoyed. Tired too. Where are you going?

— Figured you’d want to go home.

— Take me back to the office.

He looks at me and laughs.

— Maybe you should go home. I still can’t figure you guys out, Diflorio. You’re just like Carlucci. You and him, the Kissinger boys.