Kingston Noir

by Colin Channer

  When the waiter came to take our order, Nigel asked for Pepsis. He leaned back in his polo shirt, crossed his legs, and looked toward the diving board, fingering his smooth blond beard.

  By this time I’d learned that everyone had been in a panic. The police had gone to search my room. They’d found what they’d found, which was bad, very bad; but the good news was that the BBC had worked it out for me to leave the following day without getting locked up. For use and distribution.

  “Distribution?”

  “Oh Arielle, shut up. And another thing”—he looked at me directly for the first time—“we’ll have to sacrifice somebody’s head.”

  “So, you’re asking me to come up with a list?”

  “Oh Arielle, go fuck yourself.”

  I am the first to say that what I did after this defies all logic. But the truth is that I felt a deep urge to return to that house to find out what had occurred. I also felt I needed to thank the brute who’d come to my assistance. And determined to discover the details of the whispered conversation I’d overheard.

  Wayne? He could not be trusted. This was certain. But the person with the deep voice? I wasn’t sure.

  I returned to the neighborhood at about five thirty. I was too unsettled to go to the house directly and I didn’t remember exactly where it was, so I asked the cabby to just drive me around.

  All the houses had been built alike, I saw; but many of them had front rooms and enclosed verandas added on. There were lots of trees here, and kids. On every other block I saw boys playing soccer in the road. It was close to dinnertime. The smell of beef and chicken leaped over the hibiscus hedge of almost every fence.

  It was about six or so when we found the place. The sky was turning orange. The sun was edging down. I asked the driver to wait as I got out. I used a stone to rap on the red mailbox, and the front door swung out.

  No one could be seen.

  “Oh, it’s you, miss. You’re back again. Please come.”

  “Can you come out here, please?”

  “You have nothing to fear, m’love. I am relaxing. If you want to come, you can come.”

  I opened the gate and went in slowly in the long white dress in which I’d lost my job. The louvers were all shut. A dog began to bark next door. An okra tree in the front yard was in lavender bloom. A few houses down, a boy was on his flat roof launching a kite. I stood on the uncovered patio three or so feet from the redwood door.

  “So can you tell me what happened?”

  “What you want to know?”

  I’d have to step inside to see for sure where the voice was coming from, but it was clear that the speaker was seated near a corner to my right.

  “Well, I came home this morning at around eleven o’clock, and saw Wayne like he was in panic, and I asked him what happened, and he told me that he came here with a woman last night, that woman being you of course, and further, that while he was making love to her she get paranoid and start to talk all kinds of things about the CIA and how they mash up her life, and as he was trying to calm her down she start to fight him. Every time he try and calm her down she would settle for a while, then get enrage again. So I asked him where the woman was and he took me into the room and I saw you sleeping and then I got a little panic because all the time I been thinking it was a local girl. For if you fuck with a tourist in this country you will hang. At least that is how I see it. So I say to him, maybe you should take her back to her place, but then he started to say that he couldn’t do that. And he wasn’t giving me any sensible reason. But I know is a fellow like the drugs, so I ask him if you was that type too and he said yes and that he was afraid that you might dead on him and that he might get the blame, so maybe we should just kill you and dump your body. And I said, well, that might not be the best thing, that maybe what we should do is just tie you down to the bed so that whatever was in your system could wear off.”

  “So I was just acting crazy?”

  “That is what he said to me. I never see it myself.”

  “But you believed him?”

  “I saw how you scratch him up, miss. His face was scratch up bad-bad. Look under your fingernails. If you don’t bathe yet you might still see some skin.”

  I looked; the evidence was there. The cab driver called out to me, and I told him things were okay.

  “So if you weren’t here last night then how did Wayne get in?”

  “He has a key. I let him use the place sometimes, if you know what I mean.”

  “So are you related to the woman who lives here then?”

  “That is a long story, m’love.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I am the only one who lives here. Wayne is my nephew. His father Clive is my half-brother. I am half-sister to him.”

  I thought I’d misheard because of the accent.

  “Who’s your sister?” I asked.

  “I don’t have any sister, m’love.”

  “So who is the record producer? Does a record producer even live here? Wayne said that.”

  “That is me, m’love.”

  “And what is your name then?”

  “They call me Monkey Man.”

  “So who’s the—”

  I heard a body shifting in a chair. A skid. A squeak. I removed my shades.

  “Wayne told me you were someone of substance”—long pause—“and that I should let you interview me.” Another long pause. “You don’t sound like you have much sense.”

  It began to occur to me that the woman Wayne had spoken of and the man who had rescued me might be one and the same.

  I went to the gate and cupped my mouth and spoke to the cabbie at a low volume: “Pay attention. I am going to go in.”

  I stopped at the doorway though. Afraid. It took some time for my vision to adjust to the low gray light. There was a figure with a rowdy head of white hair sitting on a small blue couch. In front of it there was a low table. At one short end of the table was a Danish chair with wooden arms. Off to the side against a wall there was some sort of credenza. Figurines and a creeping plant in a shallow bowl stood on top of it. A turntable as well.

  There were pictures of Jesus, Martin Luther King Jr., Fidel Castro, and the prime minister on the walls.

  “Come. Sit.”

  “Is it okay if I stand?”

  “Suit yourself.”

  “So what happened between you and Wayne?”

  “Nothing happened between me and Wayne.”

  “You beat him. Quite badly.”

  “Well, Wayne is a child to me.”

  “But you can’t just beat people like that.”

  “So I shoulda just let him kill you and dump you.”

  “Was he really going to do that? I mean—really?”

  “He was going to do something worse.”

  “What could be worse than that?”

  “How old are you?”

  “Doesn’t matter. What’s the point?”

  “The point is that I saved you from something really bad and something in your heart made you come back. You know within yourself that you owe me something. How we going to work this out?”

  A bad feeling came over me. I had gone too far. “I have to go,” I said.

  “So go on. Nobody not stopping you.”

  “But can I ask you something?”

  “This is a free country, m’dear.”

  “What were you and Wayne talking about before you came into the room? I wasn’t sleeping. I was only pretending. I heard you. But not really. What was going on?”

  “How you going to pay me back for saving your life?”

  “I dunno. I mean … what?”

  “You tell me.”

  “Tell you what?”

  “That is my point exactly. You tell me what. You tell me how you going pay me back.”

  “I can’t. Honestly, I’m broke.”

  “I don’t need money, m’love. I need time.”

  “What were you and Wayne fucking talking about before
you came into the room? Please tell me. I have to go.”

  “I don’t take bad words from women, sweetheart.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “As they say, teeth and tongue will meet. But okay, let me tell you something. Wayne was planning to rape you, miss. He was going to rape you, then kill you, then dump you. This is what he said to me. I said to him that no raping not going to go on in my house. We can kill you, yes, but we not raping you. No raping not going on in here. And he said okay. So when we came in to seriously see if we should kill you now, I saw the look in his face. But I couldn’t believe it, because we had talked about it already say that no raping was going to go on. But then him sit down on the bed and reach out and I saw the intention and I remember what they do to me and I just … well, I just … is like I just lose my mind. My nephew. My own nephew. His father and me is blood. Is not like he didn’t know what they do to me. Cause one day I told him. And for him to come now and want to do that in front my face, well, that was a disrespect, and certain kind of disrespect can’t stand.”

  My arms began to shake. Although it was hot in there I began to feel cold. The smell of curry mixed with bananas made me want to throw up.

  “I have to go,” I said. “Really. I must.”

  “Not before you pay your dues.”

  Then I saw the gun.

  I got instructions. I obeyed. I shouted to the cabbie that I’d need another twenty minutes. I stepped inside and locked the door.

  My purse fell from my grasp. I closed my eyes and braced for the fury of the shot. I heard movement. Shuffling. Cloth on cloth. Cloth on floor. Piling. Flop. Flop.

  When I opened my eyes I saw a woman reborn. All her hairs were gray. Her chin was strong but her eyebrows arched like they’d been plucked. You could see that she and Clive were relatives but she was lighter in color than him.

  “Don’t shoot me, please,” I said. “I’m a good person in my heart.”

  She used one hand to cover her almost nonexistent breasts. Her skin was slack on her bones.

  “So why you didn’t come and talk to me?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Everybody come and talk to everybody all the time, but nobody ever come and talk to me. Is like they forget about me.”

  “Please,” I said. “I’ll do anything you ask. Don’t shoot, please. Don’t shoot. I have had a very, very, very, very bad last few days.”

  “You’re a journalist, right?”

  “Yes.”

  “Come sit next to me.” She kept her free hand to her chest and gestured with the gun. “I not going hurt you. Don’t make this thing here throw you off.” There was a tin of butter cookies on the table. She used her chin to point to it. “Make yourself at home, m’love. Eat one. Them nice.”

  She picked through the pile of clothes on the floor and put on some boxers and a tank top. She seemed comfy, as if this was the way she dressed around the house.

  “What do you want from me?” I asked.

  “I just want you to pay your dues like how I paid my dues,” she said, her voice breaking up into a rougher kind of patois now. “I paid my dues for this music, but nobody remembers me. Nobody talks to me. Is like I don’t exist. And Wayne told me around a month ago that some people were coming down here to do a reggae flim and that he was going to make sure they talk to me. And every day I check him is pure tomorrow business, and more tomorrow business, and sometimes—I don’t know if you know, but is a fellow that like to put on airs and get french fried so sometimes you not getting tomorrow-tomorrow. Instead you getting dummay-dummay. You know how many times I put on a suit and sit down here waiting for you? You think I like wear suit? So honestly, I did really give up on the thing. When I talk to my friend them like Keith Hudson and Errol T and people like that and they tell me how you interview them and how you nice and all that, I just feel like say my time will never come.”

  “But what do you want from me?” I asked.

  “I want you to interview me.”

  “But I am not here with the cameramen …”

  “Well, a man can’t get everything every time. You can come tomorrow?”

  “I’m leaving.”

  “How you mean?”

  “They fired me today. It’s a long story. While I was gone they searched my room and found things that shouldn’t be there in the eyes of the police.”

  “Taste the cookie. Don’t just play with it. It nice.”

  “It’s okay.”

  “Pass one for me.”

  We fell into silence.

  “So why do they call you Monkey Man?” I asked

  “That is what I wanted to tell you on the camera, miss. You see, I might look healthy. But doctor told me that I sick. Said I can die any time.”

  She reached under the table for a photo album, opened it, flipped through some pages, and gave it to me.

  “Look at me,” she said. “Look at me now how I meager, and look at me just three years ago how I used to stout. They said it reach the liver. Can be any time now.”

  I began to sniffle as I looked at the photos. She’d lost nearly fifty pounds. As a man she’d been compact. Strong in the arms. In some images her hair was slicked and parted like a movie gangster. In a few she wore a penciled-in mustache. There she was in London with Jimmy Cliff. At a bar looking chummy with Johnny Cash. Always styled in well-made suits. Yeah, she used to be someone.

  “Can I have one of these?” I asked.

  “You’d really want one?”

  “Yes.”

  “For what?”

  “Just to keep. I like to keep beautiful things.”

  Her cheeks tightened. But her lips said, softly, “The taxi man waiting. Go on.”

  At this point, I needed no convincing that I owed her. Even though she’d been fully prepared to kill me earlier that morning, she had also, in one day, twice spared my life. But I was in danger. She was holding a gun. I stood up. I looked around the room. Lots was going through my mind. Just a mess of things. How many people knew her secret? Who would remember her as her at the end of her life? And I found myself reflecting on why I had become an actor—to preserve for all eternity the essences of evanescent lives.

  My hands reached out and I held her face. She held my arms. We stood. She inched around the table and we drew each other close. And with all the deep affection that rose up in my heart, I said, “Tell me your story, in your voice, sweet love. I promise you I’ll tell it one day for all the world to hear. Tell me your story, sweet love.”

  After a short pause, she began: “From I was little I knew I was a boy. I wasn’t born here, y’know. I was born in Costa Rica, a place name Port Limón, a place by the seaside with lots of houses on stilts. People there speak English and are more like West Indians than say Spanish.

  “I came here to Jamaica in 1957. But I had run away from my mother long before that because she used to beat me to wear girl clothes. So I run away from her when I was around twelve and just moving round and moving round ended up in Colón in Panama, just hustling and doing odd jobs, but mostly street fighting, and from there I came to Jamaica to work.

  “By that time I had found out that Abe Haddad was my father, and he had a big electronics store downtown on King Street. Same kinda setup like he used to have in Limón. So I turned up there one day and lay in wait for him and when he got inside his fishtail Chevrolet I got in there with him and acted like I had a gun and told him to turn down a lane and I showed him a picture of me and my mother and my brother and pointed at my brother and said to Mr. Abe that I was his son. I could tell he didn’t really remember us so well, so I bluff him, and he took my word. So that’s why I get away with saying my name was Joe. So he asked what I wanted him to do for me and I said nothing more really than a job. And in his own way Mr. Abe was responsible, so he forgive me for the gun thing and blood thicker than water and all that, so that is how I got my start.

  “So yes, that is how I establish myself in this country as a man. I never had a
ny hard time catching on because how we used to talk in Limón and how they were talking here was the same thing. Call it like a Canadian going to America then. You just fit in.

  “So I am a man who can learn anything. My head is good. When I started working at Mr. Abe’s store now I learned how to fix all electrical and electronic things. And gradually I start to experiment with building PA systems and amplifiers and all those things with tubes, the good old vacuum tubes.

  “When this whole music business started later in the ’60s now, most producers used to buy their amps from me. Go to anybody who know the business and they will tell you that I was the one who establish how this music sound. I was the one who go to Mr. Abe and say he should go into this music thing. I was the one who built everything in that studio at 4 Chancery Lane, right round the corner from the Ward Theater. Mr. Abe might have owned it, but I was the one who used to run everything, even the board. In fact, I build that four-track board. I never had any music training but I had the ears. I knew a hit song. You know how much hits I make for Prince Buster? Derrick Morgan? Bob Marley? Jimmy Cliff?

  “Suffice it to say, there was a lot of jealousy, and one day I came to the studio and everything was destroyed. Two whole shelves of equipment gone. What was left was mashed up. Just mashed up. My Ampex. My Scully. Three Shure microphone. Like somebody beat them with an iron pipe. I knew who it was. I won’t call no name.

  “Look, by that time I had killed about three people. People used to hire me to collect money for them and all that, because I was rough. So I knew it wasn’t a coward who did it. There was only one other producer who was bad enough to try and do such a thing, and the only reason he was so bad was because he a former light-heavyweight boxer, and on top of that, an ex-police.

  “So one night I waylaid him when he was going home. His business was over on Darling Street near Coronation Market and the railway. Rain was falling. Downtown lock up. Not even ghost outside. What they call a dark and stormy night. I had a gun in my waist. A little pistol named Ernie. I trail him, watching him move under the shop piazzas with him hat and umbrella. I was wearing black from head to toe, moving mystically right against the curb, but in the street. Then, just as I was about to grab him, I slide in some gutter water and fall down and he turn around and jump on me. The gun flew outta my hand and he drew his own. And what I could do but put up my hands and beg for me life?