Marlon James - A Brief History of Seven Killings

Of course I’m not going to mention the grapefruit, only that this don seems to have a really intimate knowledge of the ins and outs of this assassination attempt, which by the way I’m not allowed to call it. The last time I asked the Singer who tried to kill him, he looked at me, smiled and said that is a top secret. I didn’t bring this up with Josey Wales either because I dunno, last time I checked I didn’t have FUCKING PANSY tattooed on my forehead.

Shit, I can’t keep my thoughts straight. This is not what happened. I mean, this hadn’t happened yet, I’m still at the edge of the Eight Lanes looking for Shotta Sherrif, not Josey Wales. Why the fuck am I thinking about Josey Wales? He’s not even the kind of guy that anybody’s mind runs on and I’ll bet anything he prefers it that way. Josey Wales is Copenhagen City. That was afterward, Alex Pierce. What you learned in the Eight Lanes sent you to Copenhagen City just to clear shit up. But first I was in the Eight Lanes. And if I was in the Eight Lanes I was there to see Shotta Sherrif. I wanted to know if the peace treaty was still on, given the outburst of killings on Orange Street and Pechon Street last week, where a JLP youth shot a PNP youth over his girlfriend. And that last showdown with the police where the boys in black and red recovered a stash of guns and ammo the likes of which you can’t even find in the U.S. National Guard.

Of course I could never ask a question like that. After passing the welcoming committee that gave me the skinny on Priest, I found him sitting under a street lamp waiting for me. In fact, that’s what he said, Brethren, me did a wait ’pon the I long time. The I meaning you, meaning me. Ghetto communiqué, more backward and more forward than the phone. He was just sitting there on a steel barstool from an actual bar, thirty feet from the corner where I came in, smoking a cigarette, drinking a Heineken and watching the domino game play itself out. He looked like the kind of man you go up to and ask, Hey, you seen this dude named Shotta Sherrif?

— You know that’s not the place one expects to see a shiny barstool.

— Or the second coming of Jesus. With a tape recorder.

— I get that a lot.

— You get what?

— Never mind.

He also knew I came to talk about the peace treaty. Turns out he and Papa-Lo ended up in the slammer the same time, right about when goons tried to take out the Singer, and like any group of reasonable men who happen to be thrown together they started to reason. Next thing you know, there’s a peace treaty with even singer Jacob Miller writing a song about it — okay, not great — and the Singer coming back to seal the deal with another concert. I wanted to know what really kicked off the treaty and if the future of it’s already gone to shit. I asked him about the night before the army killed those boys at Green Bay, the thing that kicked off this peace treaty in the first place. Had he heard of Junior Soul? You can’t trust that a gunman with a name like a doo-wop singer actually exists, but surely if he did, Shotta Sherrif must have heard about him. I mean, he’s crucial to the birth of this peace treaty too, well, in a fucked-up kinda way.

— No, star, me no know a who that? And that nuh JLP business?

— They said Junior Soul was a PNP goon.

— Goon?

— Shady character.

— Shady?

— Never mind. So he wasn’t from around here?

— Nobody from here ever name so, Jesus boy.

That was pretty much all she wrote with Shotta Sherrif. Before I asked him if I could speak to anybody else he grabbed me, looked around to see if anybody was watching and said, This yah treaty have fi work, my youth. It have to. He was almost pleading. I asked his men some silly questions about if they knew that the “More More More” singer was actually a porn star and left.

Priest found me somebody even more useful days before. He took me down some really scummy, shit-leaking lane in the JLP half of Kingston to meet one of the men who got away from Green Bay, my first time meeting a guy from the actual Wang Gang. He took me to a bar less than twenty feet away and just started talking. Word was this Junior Soul guy had slipped himself into Southside, a JLP area, making pals with the Wang Gang, letting slip that the army was short on men to guard a work site out in Green Bay. Junior Soul linked them up with a Mata-Hari from the Kingston hotel who told the boys they would get guns soon, along with three hundred U.S. bucks each, then fucked three or four of them to seal the deal. Priest told me about Junior Soul but the survivor told me about Sally Q, such an un-Jamaican handle. Poor kid, probably not even seventeen yet, but kinda old for a Jamdown kid to be first tasting pussy.

So this Junior Soul guy shows up January 14, he remembers, well, he remembered after I gave him my pack of Marlboros, seventy bucks and the Gerry Rafferty cassette I didn’t even remember I had in my knapsack. He showed up with two ambulances it did look kinda suspicious the kid says, but to tell a young shotta that there’re guns for the taking if you only come and get it, it’s like telling a junkie there’s some horse in a dumpster down the alley with nobody’s name on it. He said something and it was crucial motherfucking info and I can’t remember what. Have to check my notes. Most of we was Rastas, you know, not labourites . That’s it. We never did inna the politics and the politricks, seen? Not in nobody pocket so we work for either side, seen? But it was January, right after Christmas, and everybody knew that nobody in the ghetto would have any money, worse, the Wang Gang had burned all bridges with the other gangs in Kingston.

So new housing site go up and them looking for yardie to guard it, but them not giving you no gun so you have to find you own gun. Me know it never sound too right, but when baby mother up north tell a man she need baby feed’n and baby mother down south say you pickney need school uniform, you just don’t think certain things. Anyway, this man with gun did link with the soldier and me no know, soldier not so Quick Draw McGraw with them trigger, you understand. If it was police me would a tell Junior Soul ’bout him bombocloth and beat him up too. But we never have no need to worry ’bout soldier as long as we stay out of them way. As me say, we never did inna the politics thing. But me no know, from the soldier say that all of we should stand up over there, by the target, I just, I just drop like me faint, drop, even right before they start to fire. Me crawl through macka bush, and me did barefoot too. Don’t think me breathe till me get ’way from that army land and into the cane piece. The man them did all have helicopter to search for we. Is a wonder how them no find we since all that macka cut up me foot so bad that me leave a trail of bloody footprint all the way to safety. But me did know Green Bay. Is me save four man by leading them out of the bush, into the cane piece, thank Jesus that the cane did grow tall enough to hide we from the helicopter, and all the way to downtown to Sister Benedict school. One of we manage to make out the other way to the sea and two fisherman pull him out of the water. For once we call police. More time them would be only glad to kill we, but if is one thing that make them blood run cold is when soldier get to do it first, since the only thing police hate worse than gunman is soldier. You believe it, me brethren? Police is who come and protect we!

The more I gave the man booze, the more he kept talking, and the more clear he got, the more things didn’t add up. The Jamaica Defence Force haven’t exactly been tight-lipped about the whole thing. In fact I met the army officer in charge who seems like a nice enough man, if not a little too rough around the edges. The men were all Wang Gang or ex — Wang Gang members and associates who infiltrated the Green Bay JDF training range where they opened fire on the few soldiers who were there that morning for target practice. Maybe they had planned revenge to get back at them for patrolling their community with too much heavy manners. Or maybe they heard there was a lightly guarded arsenal of new weapons for the taking. Either way they got what they deserved coming down in high noon, like they was cowboy . Except… except, you can’t come guns blazing if you don’t have any guns, hell, if you were coming to pick guns up.