Marlon James - A Brief History of Seven Killings

Back at Bill Bilson’s office when I told him I ran into one of the men who escaped from Green Bay he suddenly got super interested in knowing who he was. Just a guy, I said. You know how it is, after a while they all look the same, I said. Bigoted bullshit, I know, but since Jamaicans believe deep down every white man is kinda racist anyway it was convincing enough to throw him off track. Anyway, so he showed me these pics he said some guy just left in his mail slot. Some guy? Now who’s being shifty, I almost said, but didn’t. Instead I looked at five dead bodies sprawled out in the sand. Two in one shot, two in another and all five in one shot with nothing but shadows of the soldiers looking over them, no actual soldier in any shot. Only one of the dead men wearing any shoes. Little blood, maybe it all just sunk in the sand, I don’t know. It’s not like it’s the first time I’m seeing a dead body in Jamaica.

— Hey, Bill, so what’s the deal with this? Does the JDF know that you’ve got them?

— Them must by now. Me can’t say for sure that is not them leak it in the first place.

— Oh yeah? So what’s the story?

— What is your story?

— Huh? No, brother, you first. Surely there had been an official statement. I mean, this was nearly a year ago.

— Statement? Soldier don’t release no statement. But your friend the major—

— Not my friend, buddy.

— You going want to tell certain gunman that. Anyway, the major didn’t release no statement but him did say that a group of assailants tried to attack a contingent of JDF officers at their target practice facility in Green Bay. The gunmen maybe was thinking that if is shooting range they call it, people must have gun somewhere.

— Who says they were gunmen?

— Every single man was from West Kingston.

— That line from him or you?

— Haha. You not easy at all, boy. Anyway, him say them just draw down on the premises in the middle of the day like them name cowboy. The JDF had no choice but to return fire.

— Don’t you need to be fired on to return fire?

— What you mean?

— Nothing, buddy. Just shooting the shit. So these guys attacked at noon, right? He said noon?

— Eehi.

— Huh. But…

I didn’t get it. I mean, come on, the shit was spread out in front of me like a fat stripper. Maybe he’s either that dumb or he’s doing that hear-no-evil-see-no-evil thing Jamaicans do when they find themselves smack dab in the middle of politricks. The major gives this statement saying the gang attacked them at noon and they returned fire. But I’m looking at the shot, looking at the shadows in the photo, and every single shadow is long and stretched out. There’re no long shadows at noon. This shit happened in the morning, any half-blind, senile, semi-retarded old fart could see that. But I looked at them too long, the pics. He noticed that I stared too long and he wasn’t about to forget that I cut my own question in half. Jamaicans have a way of looking at you when they finally dig that you’re the kind of white boy who catches on quick. They hold the look too, because then they’re wondering for just how long have you been catching on and have they been saying too much. If it’s one thing Jamaicans are still pretty proud of is their genius for keeping their guard, not letting anything slip. Not giving away anything even if they want to fuck you right here and can’t bear to wait.

Okay, don’t know how Aisha came into this. Maybe because I’m in bed. Maybe because I’m in a bed with a fucking man sitting on the side of it. I wish I still slept with my watch on. Brother, can’t you just steal something and fucking go? Who the fuck, in the midst of robbing a joint, takes a breather? Oh Jesus, don’t, don’t please don’t please don’t sit, Jesus, he’s gonna sit on my… he’s on my foot. The bastard has his bony ass on my foot. He’s turning, holy shit. Now it’s dark. Red darkness, the light forcing itself through my eyelids. Open slow… no, you fucking idiot. Do I want to see him shoot me quick? Maybe it’s better if he blows a fucking hole in the middle of my sentence. Maybe I should die thinking something smart. Is this the part where I think about heaven and shit like that? My Lutheran mom would be proud. Does he think I’m asleep? Where’s the second pillow? Is he going to cover my head with it and fire? I’m such a coward, I’m such a coward, such a motherfucking coward. Goddamn it. Open, motherfucking eyes. He’s not looking at me. He’s still looking at the ground. Shit, damn, motherfucker, what is he looking at? Some stain on the carpet that looks like Jesus? I thought only ceilings had that shit. Cum stains from the nasty fuckers who slept in this room before me? I really hope they cleaned the sheets before. You can never tell with a hotel off Half Way Tree Road.

If you go two blocks down and make a left on Chelsea, walk just up to the bend where there’s the Chelsea Hotel, there’s a sign right up front that says under no circumstances will two adult men be rented a room. I guess if you’re a pedophile, on the other hand, that’s cool city. I don’t know why I’m thinking that, I don’t know why all of a sudden I really wish these were well-laundered sheets. Sheets that make me want to use words like laundered. No, well-laundered. Jesus Christ, motherfucker, leave already. At least I won’t remember how I was a fucking coward in all of this, lying down in my bed, hoping shit doesn’t fall out of my bag or that my left foot would stop trembling, or maybe it’s just tingling from having fallen asleep, how am I supposed to make a mad dash for the bathroom if me leg is asleep? Me leg. Now I’m worrying in Jamaican. Brother, can’t you just be a pervert? Can’t you just grab my nuts then go?

So a soldier shooting some kids in Green Bay early 1978 leads to the birth of the peace treaty. A police shooting downtown less than a year later and people are already talking like it’s the end. Usually when a gunman is moving in neutral space and the police or the army is suddenly on the scene with guns, it’s a set-up, sometimes within the gunman’s own party. That’s what happened to a couple of PNP goons years ago (so Priest says) and what might have happened to this guy I tried to ask Papa-Lo about. This meeting Priest did set up, though God only knows what they thought of me, since I was there as some loser who knew Priest. I couldn’t even figure out this killing anyway, since Priest told me one of the terms of the peace treaty was that nobody gave anybody up to the police.

Hell, the minister himself kinda laughed when I brought up the whole thing to him. He said off the record before I started taping the whole thing, like he heard some jerk say it in a movie last week, but then just repeated what he already said in the press, that these men would be hunted down like dogs. Mind you, dogs are usually doing the hunting, not being the hunted, but I guess one gets similes wherever one can find them. He was smart enough to notice I was being a smartass and that was all she wrote with that interview. Minister was a piece of bullshit anyway, with his stupid nappy hair brushed back so hard it actually became straight.

I’m rambling. The point is that a big part of this peace treaty, according to Priest, was that nobody gave up names to people like the minister anymore. And yet here we had a dead man, a gunman, sorry, political activist, and having been smack dab in the middle of criminal intelligence, I knew there was just no fucking way Babylon found that man by themselves. Jamaican police wouldn’t find a billboard in the middle of Half Way Tree with a naked woman spread out fingering her pussy and saying look up here, Babylon, unless somebody told them where to look. Like Priest, this man could slip into JLP and PNP territories. Unlike Priest, this man had real clout, being Papa-Lo’s number two or three. It was something though, wasn’t it? That Kingston got to the point where such a top ranking could go get drunk with men whose friends he might have even killed. You talk to Bill Bilson, John Hearne, just about any journalist, intellectual, light-skinned person who lived above Crossroads and they all try to find new ways to ask how long will it last, not from concern though. That loud sigh and head nod is trying to say I’m so exasperated, but it’s really saying that not even this would make us give a fuck. Why am I going on about the fucking peace treaty? It wasn’t even a real document anyway. Except both Papa-Lo and Shotta Sherrif flew to London to meet with the Singer about it. Not like any of that is news, but how things go from hopeful to hopeless in just one year, who the fuck knows.