Marlon James - A Brief History of Seven Killings

— What the bombocloth wrong with the whole of you fucking ghetto people?

— This is not the first time I hear you with “you people.”

— I didn’t say you people, I said you fucking ghetto people. What the bombocloth wrong with you? Nine man?

— Eight.

— Eight man storm into O.K. Corral with, what, fourteen gun? And yet not a single man can shoot straight?

— Man can shoot straight enough.

— How you manage being the first man in history to shoot somebody in the head and not kill them? Answer that, master.

— I don’t know who you mean by you. Or you so fucking fool you think phone can’t tap?

— What? This look like spy movie? Who the r’ass want to tap you?

— Even so I don’t know who you mean by you, but I’m sure him, whoever he is, didn’t aim for anybody head.

— He, whoever him is, didn’t aim for nothing but wall and sky, it look like. No busha, that kind of slackness and poppy-show only happen in comedy. Imagine hundreds of bullet and they couldn’t take out one fucking man. Is a fucking machine gun, how r’asscloth hard can it be to shoot? I thought Louis taught you people how to deal with these things.

— I don’t know no Louis and I sure don’t know no “you people.”

— Don’t draw me tongue, Josey Wales. I told him you know, don’t make sense trying to teach ghetto naiggers anything that will take any kinda intelligence, they bound to fuck it up. My blind grandmother could hit a target better than you. All eight of you. I don’t know why I even bother to call you.

— I don’t know either since none of those people you keep talking ’bout live here.

— Why me even running up me phone bill, eh? Tell me.

— I don’t know why either, busha.

— What? You know who you talking to? You know who you bombocloth talking to, you little—

— Little? You must did drop your pants and look again.

I hang up the phone. It’s a bitch of a thing when you realise that though you are the only one who didn’t go to a top-class school and foreign college, you is the only man in the room with any sense. I really wanted to educate this ignorant, bad-chatting, Syrian shithouse. That it’s bad enough that plenty man and woman have the Singer off as a prophet, but kill him and the man graduate to martyr. This way the whole world know that guess what, the prophet is just a man like any other man, he can get shot like any other man — and like any other man in this country, not even he safe. I shoot that man off the pedestal and he fall back down to man size. I didn’t tell Peter Nasser any of that. You have to look past a man, below the skin to the real skin to know that for all the whiteness (in the face of a man who don’t go to beach because even a tan looks black), Peter Nasser is just another ignorant as shit naigger. But at least he was calling me busha these days. I must ask my woman when exactly I change into a white man who drink at Mayfair Hotel. Cho bombocloth man, I hate when a man get me so mad that I start to cuss. Only ignorant man cuss.

I say to Doctor Love, who also call me that night, that I done deal with proving things to people from 1966 and if they really think this is prep school where they feel they must test and test, then Medellín can go right back to using those batty boys in Bahamas. But then, to use the Rasta own words, I get hit with another reasoning. If the Singer did turn into a martyr it would be a big problem, for sure, but it would be their problem, not mine. Peter Nasser would be so busy shitting himself trying to kill a legend that he won’t have time to bother me with his fuckery, because truth be told, both he and I know that I long past the days when politician say jump and I say how high. Now when politician say jump, my woman say he can’t come to the phone right now but I will take a message. Talk about fool, what do you think was going to happen once you give a man with a head a gun, that he was going to return it? Even Papa-Lo wasn’t so fool.

So I decide to let my mind work on this new reasoning. December 8, 1976, news just come that he and everybody survive. Too much Babylon at the hospital and besides, by that time I grab Tony Pavarotti, because Weeper was not the man for anything that need that kind of skill. But at the emergency room they already treat him and send him home. Only the manager was still in the hospital and there was not much use to finishing him off. So me and Pavarotti drive down to 56 Hope Road, expecting police. Police mean nothing when all you need is one shot. Besides, I make one phone call and they would disappear in sixty seconds. Except 56 was a ghost town. Empty driveway and darkness in every window. Not a single police. I laugh and Pavarotti look at me like he was about to ask a question. Meanwhile Peter Nasser getting so sloppy that it look like a TV show on how much mistake one man can make. The stupid piece of dog shit leave a message, a goddamn message with my woman that if the sage go onstage it going make the page and he’ll be the rage . One of the few times in my life I ever hear Tony Pavarotti laugh was when I read that note out loud. My woman didn’t know what the r’asscloth was going on about so she leave the two of us in the living room. With Tony Pavarotti in the room I wonder if I made a mistake picking Weeper, who I send to clean up what we just do. Instead of doing it himself he just call the Rastas like some girl who always afraid. Worse, he did it on my phone. I make a phone call.

— Where the bird flying to?

— Brethren, weh you ah call me for?

— I don’t like repeating questions.

— He gone. They leave the manager at the hospital and take him up the white man hill.

— Police?

— One in the car with them, few more back at the place. Twelve Tribes on the watch all over the hill. And a white boy—

— A white boy?

— White boy with a camera. Nobody know where he come from, but him say him is with the film crew. Anyway, me done talk.

— No you no don’t done talk yet, Inspector.

— Me done sing this sankey.

— Done, canary you just ah start.

— Not even Jesus getting up that hill tonight.

— What about the concert?

— Full police escort to and from.

— The next day?

— I don’t know.

— Talk, pussyhole.

— The next day he supposed to fly out. Them have him on a private jet.

— When?

— Five-thirty or six.

— Morning or evening?

— What you think?

— To where?

— Nobody know.

— Jet going take off and nobody know where it going? Boss, you taking ghetto man for idiot again?

— Mister, me say nobody nuh know. Not even the commissioner know. He don’t even know that the Singer plan to fly out.

— Is a top secret?

— More secret than the colour of the queen panty. We only know because our man in the car with them pretend that he gone to sleep and listen to them talk. Him white manager tell him up the hill that as soon as he done with the concert—

— So it official. He going do the concert?

— No, nothing no official. Them just putting things in place just in case. Anyway, the manager say that as soon as the concert done him setting up a plane for him at the airport but early, before the airport even open.

— Norman Manley Airport or Tinson Pen?

— Manley.

— Overseas.

— You can radio the police up the hill.

— Yeah, man, but why would I want to—

— Radio your police up the hill. Right now.

Six in the morning and the airport looking like the first reel of a cowboy movie. Only thing missing was whistling wind and tumbleweed. Pink sky. Me and Tony Pavarotti waiting in the stairway leading up to the waving gallery. Somebody thought it was a good idea making this wall like some checker pattern with open space to stick a rifle through. Checker pattern shadow leave we in the dark. Pavarotti was shifting and moving, he wasn’t feeling for this angle at all. But the plane was already out on the runway, waiting. Pavarotti quiet, his right hand gripping the trigger and his left eye in the rifle lens.