Dead Fast

by A. J. Stewart

  “What is it we are having?” she asked the young woman who had handed her the plate.

  “Ackee and saltfish, wit rice and beans,” she beamed, in a way that suggested she had made the dish.

  Danielle nodded a thank you and we both took a bite. The ackee and saltfish was an acquired taste, and the rice and beans were a touch spicy but delicious.

  “What is ackee?” I asked the young woman.

  She smiled again, the kind of grin that could have been harnessed by a power company.

  “Ackee is a fruit, comin’ from Jamaica. It is poison, if you don know what you is doin’ wit it.” I hesitated to put another forkful in my mouth, but the woman’s smile grew even deeper.

  “No problems, suh. I know what I is doin’.”

  Everyone around me was eating without fear or hesitation, so I figured her word was good. I ate in silence, watching the group grow to twenty or more people, most of whom inquired after Markus. Many of the men came away from him and gathered together at the end of the concrete slab, away from the house. There were frowns and as much gesticulating as one could muster while holding a plate of food. Clearly folks were not happy about what had happened to Markus, and I couldn’t blame them for that, but this was more than discontent with the safety of the streets in their town.

  “You got try dis, brudda,” said a young guy, thrusting a bowl of whatever had been cooking on Mrs. Swan’s stovetop. He was smiling, which seemed to be a pretty common condition in these parts, and he had hair shaved the consistency of Berber carpet. He handed me the bowl, took my plate and then sat on a plastic chair beside me. He jinked his head at me, urging me to try what was in the bowl. I decided not to bother about its toxicity level as it smelled fantastic. I took a spoonful and chewed on it. It was a meaty stew, spicy but not overly so, but full of flavor.

  “What is it?” I asked.

  “Mannish wata, mon.”

  “Mannish water? Tastes like spicy stew.”

  “You got it, mon. Goat stew.”

  “Goat?” I said, chewing. I’d never eaten goat, but it was like gamey lamb. The young guy leaned across me and looked at Danielle.

  “Missus?” he said, nodding at my bowl.

  “Yes, please,” said Danielle. The guy jumped up, danced his way over to the pot and returned with a steaming bowl for Danielle. She dove in with the gusto I generally reserved for mirages in the Sahara. She was the fittest person I knew, beat me in pretty much every physical endeavor short of throwing a fastball, and she didn’t eat a lot. But she ate well, and I guess that made all the difference. In the past few months we had made an effort to get in better shape, and I looked as good in my board shorts as I had when I was playing A-ball in my early twenties. Danielle looked like Danielle, which in my eye was something like if Nike had commissioned Leonardo da Vinci to paint an ad for women’s sportswear. I watched her eat for a moment, and then I turned to my new friend.

  “I’m Miami,” I said, offering my hand.

  He took it and we shook. His hands were supple and his grip was like a velvet glove.

  “Markus’s cousin, Garfield,” he smiled.

  “Like the cat,” I said.

  He half frowned, and then laughed, slapping his hand on his thigh.

  “Nah, mon. After da cricketer.”

  “Okay,” I said. I didn’t know much about cricket, other than the players wore croquet uniforms and games went for three weeks. I had no idea who Garfield the cricketer was.

  “You play cricket?” I asked.

  “E’body heah plays da cricket, mon. You?”

  I shook my head and ate. “Uh uh. Baseball.”

  “That cool, mon. That cool.”

  I glanced at the group of men that formed and saw the mood hadn’t eased any. I turned back to Garfield.

  “Those boys don’t look happy about what happened to Markus.”

  “Nah, mon. No brudda ‘appy ‘bout dot. But dots MoBay.”

  “This sort of thing happens a lot?”

  Garfield shrugged.

  “Seems a lot of people are banking on Markus.”

  “Can say dot. A boy show some talent, no matter a’ what, cricket, runnin’, footboll, den folks a set demselves on him. Hopin’ he make it big, and some o’dot rob off on dem.”

  “Coattails,” I said.

  “You got it, brudda.”

  “And is Markus that good at running?”

  “Dead fast.”

  “So his competitors might want to hurt him?”

  “Nah, no competitors, mon. The benefactors. At steppas.”

  “Hot steppers?”

  “Yah, mon. De bod man. Gangstas. Dey rich, and dey wanna piece a da action.”

  I noticed that Danielle had stopped chewing and was listening to us.

  “So let me get this straight,” I said. “There are bad guys backing each athlete, supplying their equipment.”

  “No e’body a bod man, but e’body want sumting for hisself.”

  “Right. So they help the athletes with shoes or whatever, then maybe they get a cut of future earnings.”

  Garfield nodded, his movements fluid like a puppet with no strings.

  “Or maybe these guys want athletes to run bad in a certain race, or throw a cricket game?”

  “Maybe, mon.” Garfield had lost his smile, and he looked older for it.

  “But they need their guy to get to the top before they hit pay dirt,” I said.

  “Yo gettin’ it.”

  I nodded. I was getting it. I looked around the space, the one finished wall, the half house. These were happy people with very few possessions, who, like most of us, were laboring under the assumption that more stuff was going to make them happy. I lived in a county that held some of the richest people on the planet, and there weren’t too many smiles driving down Worth Avenue when I cared to look.

  “You like living in Jamaica, Garfield?”

  “Yah, mon. Is paradise.”

  I couldn’t argue with that. “But you want to get out?”

  “Nah, mon. I jes wanna fass car.”

  “A fast car?” I smiled. “A fast car won’t necessarily make you happy.”

  “But yo have a fass car.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “Only a brudda wi’ a fass car tell a brudda he don need a fass car.”

  There was no getting around his logic. It was easy to preach when you lived in a fully finished house.

  “So the Swans, they don’t have the money to finish off their home?”

  Garfield glanced around like he’d just been teleported in. “Dots a Jamaican yard.”

  “Yard?”

  “Yah, mon. We don got dem big banks like you Americans. We make some coil, we built a lil’ bit more yard. Den we gotta wait, make so’ mo’ coil.”

  “You just build the house a piece at a time?”

  “Dots it, mon.”

  “That’s one way to do it.”

  “In Jamaica, dots de only way.”

  “So I guess Markus is under pressure to make that happen?”

  “True ‘nuff.”

  “From those guys?” I said, nodding at the group of men.

  “Yah, mon.”

  “And his mom and dad?”

  “His fadda long gon, but his mudda, sho’ she wan ‘im be big-time.”

  “His dad’s not around?”

  “Nah, mon. Him was cricketer, yah. Good one. Lotta people wan’ a piece a him. Him no take it good, and do a runna.”

  I nodded and took that in. It made sense that a kid could fall in with a bad crowd if he was searching for a father figure. If I had turned a different corner and not met my friend and mentor Lenny Cox while I was in college, I might have gone the wrong way after my dad died.

  “Those guys,” I said, looking at the men, “are they going to cause trouble?”

  “Nah, mon. Dem angry, but dey not gonna do nutin’ against Mista Winston.”

  “That’s the second time I’ve heard that name
. Is he behind what happened?”

  “Markus no tellin’ it, but e’body know it.”

  “I need to meet this guy.”

  “Mista Miami, me take ya to da trainin’ di morrows. You see Mista Winston alright.”

  Chapter Six

  IT WAS STILL dark when we arrived at the Swan home to take Markus to training the next morning. Another overpriced taxi ride back to our resort had given us a few hours of sleep, and I woke to the sound of gentle waves lapping on the beach, which for me was the sound of home. They do massive meals at all-inclusive resorts, as if the guests didn’t get to eat at home and needed to load up for the winter. The breakfast buffet we had seen on our first morning could have fed a marching army, but only if the army rose at a decent hour, because the other thing about resorts is they are not designed around early risers. So Danielle and I dressed, her in shorts and a tank top, me in cargo shorts and a shirt, the blue one with palm tree prints on it, and we crept like cat burglars through the open-air foyer of the resort, past the darkened restaurant to the hotel entrance. It turned out we were even too early for the taxis, so the doorman made a call on his desk phone and in fifteen minutes we were in another rusted-out minivan bouncing into town.

  Garfield, he named after a cricket player, was standing outside the house, waiting.

  “Gud mawnin’.” He smiled, handing us each a warm paper bag. Inside was something that was halfway between toast and an English muffin.

  “Is called bammy,” said Garfield, anticipating Danielle’s question. “Is made from cassava.”

  I bit into it. It was crunchy on the outside but soft and buttery inside. I nodded my approval to Garfield, and he led us into the house. Markus was sitting in the kitchen, putting on a pair of runners that looked to have worn out two owners previous.

  “You train in those?” I said.

  “At steppa gut me udder good shoes,” he said, raising his eyebrows and lacing up his runners.

  “At steppa means a bod mon,” translated Garfield. I knew I was going to be in trouble when the translations required translation of their own, but I took the reference to mean bad guys.

  We walked across town in the dark, Markus and Garfield laughing and chatting, oblivious to any danger, but Danielle and I each took a side and kept our eyes open. It occurred to me that there was no danger, that with his good running shoes gone, Markus was no threat. But I wasn’t getting paid to assume the world was golden, and I knew that out there somewhere, in the sleeping town, was a big guy with a busted knee who was probably in a great deal of discomfort. And if there was one universal rule in life, it was that big guys rarely came in sets of one.

  The sun was hiding behind the mountains when we got to the training facility, which was a pretty fancy description of what I saw. It was an oval of patchy grass, some parts bare, other parts in desperate need of a mow. Around the outside of the oval was a ring where the grass had been shaved so close as to be almost non-existent. Running lanes had been painted along one side, but they petered out around the bend. There were a couple of canvas pop-up shelters, under which men were sitting in lawn chairs, watching youngsters stretch and jog and generally warm up.

  Garfield led Danielle and me over to the chain-link fence that surrounded the oval, and we leaned on it as Markus took the field and joined a group warming up. The mood seemed light and carefree, joking and laughing, just some kids out for a jog, a bit of fun. Then a stocky guy with a whistle took the field and the smiles disappeared, and the group came to a laconic form of attention. The coach blew the whistle and the runners took off slowly around the perimeter of the oval. I glanced over at the men under the pop-up shelters, passing around coffee and what looked like some kind of cake.

  “Who are those guys?” I asked Garfield.

  “Yo might call dem interested parties.” He gave a knowing smile.

  “Interested parties? Interested in what?”

  “Interested in de form of dare horses.” He nodded out to the track. I had a vision of old men in hats, standing by the fence in the cool morning dew at Gulfstream Park, watching jockeys and thoroughbreds going through their paces, taking notes and trading tales about previous wins at the distance.

  “They bet on the races?”

  “No,” said Garfield. He smiled his conspiratorial grin. “Dat wodn’t be legal.”

  “Who are they?”

  “Some dem family, distant family most. Some dem business mon, of a sort. You know?”

  I knew. Wherever there was a chance to lay a bet, there were always businessmen, of a sort. We watched the athletes finish their warm-up, and then they spent some time working on their starts, exploding out of the holes they had dug in the ground to simulate blocks, again and again.

  “Are all the facilities this sparse?” I asked Garfield, looking around at the sad grass and the lack of any kind of change rooms.

  “No, mon. It depend on yar school. De good school, dey got da asphalt track, electronic timing, all dat jazz. Our school, we got dis,” he said, looking around.

  “So the kids compete for their school?”

  “Dat’s right. Summa da good school, dey recruit de good runners from the bad school, so de rich always run good.”

  Danielle leaned toward Garfield. “If Markus is a good runner, why isn’t he at a school with better facilities?” she said.

  “Dat’s ‘is mudda. She don’t allow it.”

  Markus and his teammates gathered at the end of the straight and took some instruction from their coach, and then the coach ambled down the straight and stood on the inside of the track where I assumed the finish line for one hundred meters would be. A man wandered out from under the pop-up canopy and stood at the chain-link fence, opposite the coach, and pulled out a stopwatch the size of a donut, the kind that I remembered coaches using in my own high school days. Six boys lined up at the start line. There were no starting blocks, just the holes, so the boys each crouched in their own preferred style, and then there was a pause where the whole island seemed to go quiet. Then the blast of an air horn, the coach holding the canister high above his head. The boys kicked away from the start and ran. They looked to be moving in slow motion, arms pumping, legs lifting, the first few paces still in a semi-crouch, then gradually standing tall and running hard. They were all long and lithe, wearing the onset of musculature that would fill out in the coming years, leaving them strong and explosive. As they charged down the track they seemed to get faster the closer they got to us, and by the time they hit the finish they weren’t much more than a blur. The sound was thunderous, feet on grass and heaving breathing sounding more like charging bison than I would have thought possible from a half dozen kids. As they flew by both the coach and the guy by the fence hit their stop watches. The coach made a mark on his clipboard, and the other guy turned to the pop-up canopy.

  “Tenay,” he called.

  I turned to Garfield.

  “What was that?”

  “He’s timing the winner. Ten point eight second.”

  I didn’t know much about track, but that seemed pretty quick. I recalled somewhere under ten being some kind of record, so under eleven on grass, with no starting blocks, had to be some kind of effort. The herd came to a stop by the fence at the end of the straight, and then wandered onto the infield to walk back to the start. They were breathing about as hard as I do bending over to pick up a penny.

  Everyone’s focus turned back to the start line, and the second group of runners. Markus was among them, jumping up and down in an inside lane, loosening up. The coach called out, they all got into their crouch and the air horn pierced the air once more. The slow-motion start was repeated, and a couple of the outer lanes pulled out fast, gaining yards in but a few steps. Then it seemed as if Markus wound up. He stood tall, his long, thin legs reaching out and dragging the earth beneath him. By the halfway mark he had caught the early leaders, and then in a flash of color and cacao-colored limbs, Markus hit the finish with daylight to second. I snapped my visi
on to the guy by the fence. He was looking at his big stopwatch, and then he turned.

  “Tenfo,” he called.

  I turned back to Garfield, and noticed Danielle was waiting on Garfield also. Garfield just nodded.

  “Ten point four second. No bod.”

  The coach yelled something at the runners, and they turned and headed back to the start. As Markus walked past the coach he barked something more, but he didn’t sound impressed by 10.40. Coaches were coaches. They were never happy. I guess that was part of the job. As the boys headed back toward the start, all heads on our side of the fence turned as one at the sound of a deep rumbling across the gravel. A gray Rolls Royce crawled into the park, moving slow like a lion across the savannah. The car looked massive, as only a Rolls can do, and it edged to a stop back from the pop-up canopy. A driver in a pressed shirt and trousers jumped out and ran around the back of the car, and then opened the rear door. The rear doors of a Rolls open nice and wide, in case you wanted to carry an armoire back there. But there was no furniture inside, just an old man. The man wore salt and pepper hair and a goatee, and his dark skin was a couple shades lighter in skin tone than most of the other people around him. But he had the unmistakable fluid gait of a Jamaican. He slipped out of the car and stood, surveying the scene and smoothing the lapels on his cream-colored suit. As if he were some kind of deity, the sun broke the peak of the mountains behind us and spread golden light across the man and his car. His driver slammed the door home and took up station by the car as the man ambled over the pop-up canopy that was now offering some value to those under it.

  The man was clearly known, but known was not the same as liked, and the men under the canopy parted as the cream suit wandered by. The old guy wore a big smile and nodded a lot, the way politicians do.

  “Who is that?” I asked Garfield.

  “Mista Jones, you ask to see Mista Winston. Dat be ‘im.”

  “What is he doing here?”