by Jacob Ross
They went through the motions of polite refusal before they grabbed it off me. I was worried that they would move off and find some quiet place to eat.
‘I heard a fella got kill round here?’ I said.
A babble of grumbled assent. One offered to show me the spot.
‘I’ll look later. I heard he was a saga boy? Lotsa girlfren? Mebbe one of the girlfriends done it – jealous, yunno?’
They didn’t think so. Merle, Lazar’s baby-mother, was too softy-softy and she ’fraid of him. Linda hardly ever came down to the road. Paula had another fella and she was making baby for him. The new one he got, well she jus nice.
‘The new one from round here?’ I said.
‘Nuh. We never see her before. Is only week-before-last she come. Best gyul Lazar ever had. She real nice.’
‘Not nice like mine,’ I laughed.
Four pairs of very interested eyes settled on my face. ‘What yours look like?’
‘Tik, yunno! Hair puff-up nice. Big brown eyes. Not tall but smooth like a star-apple. And smart.’
They paused over their food.
‘Lazar’ new woman was kinda tall. You say yours solid? Well, Lazar’ own slim. Not thin, though. She got braids too and she pants does fit her tight. She does laugh real nice! And – and she brown-skin.’
The boy said the last words as if that – above everything else – confirmed the sweetness of the woman. He was the shortest of the four with bald patches on his scalp. He ate noisily, holding the food just under his chin and dipping his head to bite. A long scar, still healing, ran from his shoulder to his elbow.
‘What’s your name?’ I said.
‘Eric,’ he mumbled.
‘What happen to you there, Eric?’ I pointed at his arm. The boy jumped as if I’d struck him. He raised round, startled eyes at me.
‘He fall, always fallin. We call him Tumbledown.’ The tallest nudged him with an elbow.
‘They call you Tumbledown too?’ I pointed at the black scar that ran from his calf to his ankle.
‘Nuh, is them rock across dere.’ He swung an arm at the beach. ‘I went looking for whelks, and . . . yunno . . . ’ Shifting eyes. Big teeth in a loose mouth. ‘Lazar gone now. You want to take over the new girlfren?’
‘I’ll have to see her first,’ I said. They laughed and turned to chatting among themselves.
Eric had gone quiet, his hand poised above the Styrofoam container, taking in every word that passed between his friends. From time to time he’d raise his head, and his eyes would flit across my face, then past my shoulders, his head switching abruptly towards the occasional upswell of voices and laughter. He must have sensed me observing him. Eric swivelled his eyes at me. I offered him a smile. He held my gaze a while, his lips twitching slightly. Then he turned his attention to his friends. This youngfella reminded me of a boy I’d known at school who saw everything, heard everything and never forgot. We’d nicknamed him Radar.
Now I had no doubt that Miss Stanislaus was right. A woman was tied up in all of this. And this youngfella had just given me a picture of her.
‘Okay, show me where they kill the fella,’ I said.
It was then that I spotted the youth a little way behind us. Tall, and so slim he looked streamlined. A perfectly round head. Good-looking. It was the stillness with which he stood, his head angled in our direction, that caught my attention. I pretended not to notice him.
I followed the boys along the edge of the crowd. In my peripheral vision, I observed the tall youth threading his way through the press of bodies.
I took out my phone. The boys were interested in the make and model, then immediately lost interest when they saw that it was an ‘ole-time ting’ from last year.
‘Gimme a minute,’ I said.
I messaged Miss Stanislaus: c u by d car. 20mins. Keys on top back tyre, right side.
K, she texted back. That made me smile.
‘I got to go now, fellas, girlfriend want me urgent.’
They looked disappointed. I stuffed a five-dollar note in Eric’s hand. ‘More food if y’all want. I gone!’
I swung round to face the youth and made a deliberate move towards him. He started, began fighting his way through the crowd. I pulled out my LED torch and switched it on.
He lunged out of the crush ahead of me, his body erupting in a sprint down the stretch of road leading to the bridge.
I kept the beam on his back.
He was fast – fast and light – the flash of his canvas shoes a white rhythmic blur ahead of me. They barely made a whisper on the road. Even as I pounded after him I admired his stride and coordination. Halfway along I began gaining on the youth. I was sure he heard me closing in, but the youngfella did not look back. Then came the jagged workings of his shoulders as he began to burn out. It was then that he threw himself into the roadside bushes. I followed the thrashing until it stopped. And there he was, in a small clearing, walled in by high tufts of elephant grass, crouched and panting.
I directed the light at his face. He brought up a defensive arm and swung his head sideways.
I reached down and took hold of a handful of his shirt. ‘Why you running?’
He gulped, shook his head. I gave him a couple of minutes to catch his breath.
‘You part of what happen to Lazar Wilkinson?’
He shook his head – a limp, exhausted movement.
‘Then why you running? This killing is over drugs, not so?’
He heaved his shoulders and looked away.
‘Listen, youngfella, if you don’t know it yet, the only thing that stand between you and jail is me. I been watching you watch me and I want to know why.’
He was shivering with fear. I lowered myself in front of him.
‘What’s your name.’
A murmur came out of him.
‘Didn hear that.’
‘Jah-Ray.’
‘You joking! You turn Rastaman God? I want your real name.’
‘Jana Ray.’
‘Try again.’
‘Jonathon Rayburn.’
‘Thanks! What you know about the killing, Jana Ray?’
‘Nothing. When I come out this morning, first thing I hear is Lazar dead. I-I . . . ’ He passed the back of his hand across his face and looked away.
‘You upset. Why?’
‘I like Lazar. He help me out. I get lil money from him for food and things.’
‘What things?’
‘Clothes, things like dat.’
‘What he pay you for?’
‘I help pack de bricks.’
‘Bricks of?’
‘I never see inside dem.’
‘What’s in the bricks, Jah-Ray?’
‘Weed, I fink.’
‘Think or know?’
He didn’t answer.
‘Anybody beside Lazar running you?’
‘Nuh.’
‘You lie! Don’t lie for me. Lazar dead, so is not Lazar you going be reporting to tonight. Who running you besides Lazar?’
‘I got a message to check what going on when police come.’
‘From who?’
‘Number didn show up.’
‘So how you going to give report if you don’t have a number?’
‘They say a fella goin check me. They didn say who, and they didn say when.’
‘How they got your number?’
‘Lazar had my number. He got everybody’ number. He must’ve given it to dem.’
‘Who is “dem”?’
He lowered his head. His chest was still heaving from the run.
I shook him hard. ‘Who is “dem”?’
‘Dunno. Is Kara Island people Lazar deal with.’
‘How you know is Kara Island people?’
‘Coupla words he say.’
‘How often they make the ganja run?’
‘Ain got no special time. Is always night.’
‘From here?’
‘S’far as I know.’
‘
To where?’
‘Down south – Trinidad.’
That checked out with what I knew about the trade. The fellas in the coast guard called it the HSJ – the hop, skip and jump: a short hop from Vincen Island to Kara Island, the skip over to Camaho to refurbish and refuel then the big jump south to Trinidad in one of those go-fast boats they called a cigarette.
‘So! Everybody round here running drugs?’
He shook his head. ‘Is not drugs, is weed.’
‘What you call weed then?’
It was the first time he looked me in the eye. ‘Things hard, people have to live.’
‘You sound like my boss. Why they kill Lazar?’
‘Mebbe somefing he done or didn do? I dunno.’
‘What he done?’
Jana Ray shook his head. ‘I tell you already, I dunno.’
I dimmed the torch and sat in front of him. ‘Something round here change, Jah-Ray. Not so?’ I was remembering Miss Stanislaus’s words on Kara Island.
He raised his head as if he were listening to the night. He nodded. ‘Is different.’
‘Since when?’
‘Now. This time.’
‘Different how?
‘Different packaging. Didn look like no Vincen Island packing.’
‘In what way?’
‘Just different. Heavier, better packing. Everyting.’
‘And what they done with it?’
‘It went San Andrews direction. Lil truck. Dunno.’
‘Lazar organise it?’
He hesitated, then nodded.
‘You don’t look sure. Lazar and who?’
‘Only Lazar.’ That darting look again.
‘When was that?’
He bunched his brows, made small movements with his lips. ‘Last Tuesday, five days befo, befo—’
‘Before they killed him,’ I cut in. I gave him the grimmest look that I could muster. ‘What you know about the woman?’
‘I dunno nothing bout no woman.’ He sounded irritated. ‘Is only the lil fellas I hear talkin to you about woman.’
I ran my torch down the length of him. Faded grey T-shirt, a couple of holes in it but clean; loose trousers, mismatched buttons clumsily sewn on at the front. The broken zip that the buttons had replaced were showing. A pair of canvas shoes, threadbare at the toes. I brought the light back to his face. ‘You still in school, not so?’
He nodded. ‘Sixth form.’
‘If I arrest and charge you for your involvement in this business, is the end of school for you. Which school?’
‘San Andrews Secondary.’
‘What House you in?’
He mumbled, ‘Hume.’
‘My House,’ I said. ‘You sprint for Hume?’
He shook his head.
‘Well, run for Hume House. Record for the two hundred metres still mine. If you train lil bit, you’ll break it. Why you doing this? They got something on you?’
‘Lazar see things tough with me. He give me lil job sometimes.’
‘Is the only way you make your money?’
Again the hesitation.
‘Go on, I listening.’
‘I sell a lil weed sometimes.’
‘Where you get the weed?’
‘Wherever. Place full of weed. I sell mostly in school.’
‘Listen, fella, get out of this right now. You see what happened to Lazar? Same or worse going to happen to you.’
I stood up and gestured for him to stand. Jana Ray sprang to his feet, stood there facing me, hands dangling at his sides.
‘You live on your own, not so?’
He nodded.
‘Right now, Jana Ray, I dunno if I believe you because I want to. But I letting you go. I could lose my job for this, y’unnerstan? I got a lot more questions for you, so tell me where you live.’
I took his coordinates, left him there and stepped out onto the road.
Miss Stanislaus was sitting on the back seat, the gun in her lap. She joined me at the front.
‘You take long, Missa Digger. What you find?’
‘Sorry, Miss Stanislaus. You right! Lazar Wilkinson had a new girlfriend. I even have a good idea of what she looks like.’
I found myself shaking my head, searching for words. ‘Funny thing is, Miss Stanislaus, I actually met a woman at The Flare who fit them lil fellas’ description: slim, tallish, brown-skin, braids, tight-fitting jeans . . . She was with two foreign fellas. We almost had an accident.’
I told her about my encounter at The Flare with the two men and the young woman that they had been distressing.
She listened with her hands on the Glock in her lap, her eyes fixed somewhere beyond the windscreen. ‘So, Missa Digger, you sayin you might ha’ meet the people who kill Missa Laza Wilkins?’
‘Dunno what I saying, Miss Stanislaus. It don’t make sense – too much of a coincidence.’
‘What coincident about it? Lemme tell you what you jus tell me, Missa Digger. You meet a woman with two fellas who you say you see maltreatin her. One man might’ve stab you an kill you if Missa Malan didn come in time.’
‘Well . . . ’
‘Is so or is not so?’
‘More or less.’
‘Which part ov what I say you don like? That Malan save you?’
I said nothing.
‘You jus done tell me about two foreign man who didn have no problem killin you. You tell me it had to be more than one fella to push Laza Wilkins’ jeep down in the drain. Not so?’
‘Uh-huh.’
‘And then you tell me the woman in The Flare look eggzackly like the one the lil fella describe?’
‘Uh-huh.’
‘So, why is coincident?’
I lifted my shoulders and dropped them.
Miss Stanislaus swivelled bright chastising eyes at me. ‘Besides, you not the one who tell me if somefing walk like a duck an talk like a duck, then is a duck?’
‘Miss Stanislaus! What mood you in tonight?’
‘I not in no mood, Missa Digger. De woman with the whitefellas – you say you believe she from Camaho?’
‘Uh-huh.’
‘You fink she in trouble, Missa Digger?’
‘Look to me like sh’was – how I should put it? A, er, lady of the night.’
‘Dat’s a flower, Missa Digger.’
‘She no flower, Miss Stanislaus.’
‘Den what she is?’
‘Well, I kin tell you what Malan called her.’
‘What?’
‘A whore.’
‘Okay.’ She sniffed. ‘An how you call ’er, Missa Digger?’
‘A survivor, Miss Stanislaus. Like the rest of us. I also butt up on a youngfella name Jana Ray.’
‘What about im?’
On the way back, I told her about the youth and what I learned from him.
‘An’ you didn arres’ im?’
‘Nuh. I seeing him again.’
‘You sure?’
‘I sure.’
‘Malan would’ve arres’ im. And he would’ve been right.’
‘I not Malan.’
‘I would’ve arres’ im too and you not me either. He the only lead we got.’
‘Mebbe I wrong, Miss Stanislaus, but is how I feel.’
We said nothing more. At her gate she sat in the car a while, then turned to face me. ‘So, Missa Digger, is three people we got to find – one woman, two foreign fellas . . . ’ She sat back, her words directed straight ahead. ‘You fink we goin have time to finish de case befo – befo—’
‘Before what, Miss Stanislaus? You and I know you shoot Juba to protect both of us. And with your help, I going find a way to straighten this. Not even you kin stop me.’
She tapped her bag and stepped out of the car, then poked her head in through the window. ‘Missa Digger, sometimes your feelins make you stupid. Mebbe is why I like you so much. Most times.’
I waited till the patter of her footsteps stopped. Then came the thud of her front door.
&
nbsp; ‘Thank you!’ I muttered and pushed off.
19
I sat on the railing of my veranda, my feet over the edge. I thought of the faces of the roadside crowd in Beau Séjour, caught up in that silence I learned to recognise from my early days in San Andrews CID while searching for the policeman who murdered my mother. By the time I tracked him down, Alzheimer’s disease had stolen his memory.
I told myself that Camahoans are like living graveyards. We bury our dead inside ourselves, then we try to keep them alive in there. Maybe that’s what people meant by being haunted. I dunno.
Earlier in the evening, I’d gone through all the allegations against Juba Hurst – his drug runnings which, like Chilman said, meant nothing. Accusing a Kara Island man of smuggling was like blaming water for being wet. It was, in the old man’s view, the only way that the twelve square miles of sun-scorched rock on which he and Miss Stanislaus were born remained afloat in those awful waters north of Camaho. I ruled that out. The reported assaults against women and minors were the last thing I would turn to. There were the murders, or rather allegations, that had come through to us from time to time – no more than rumours. They could all be untrue.
I reviewed my conversation with Miss Stanislaus at Kathy’s Kitchen when she’d left the table and walked off on me. She believed that Juba might have disappeared her great-uncle when he took over the old man’s land. I should have listened. Things might have turned out differently. I’d never known Miss Stanislaus’s convictions to be wrong.
Tonight, death sat heavily on my mind. Every murder case did this to me. I could not erase the image of Lazar Wilkinson lying with a slit throat on the roadside. And the memory of my mother was strong in me. She was a heaviness in my chest, a coldness in my groin. I was held hostage by the image of a woman, so shot-up by police in the Rape Riots of ’99 that they didn’t dare deliver what was left of her to my grandmother. Instead they disappeared her.
My mind threw up fragments of a voice, the trace-memory of my childhood name, ‘Sugar Boy’, a hand at the nape of my neck, her breath on my face. I couldn’t sleep until I put her back to rest.
I got in my car, drove to the far north of the island to the high place above the ocean they called Iron Pot. There, a finger of rock pushed out into the boiling Atlantic. It was the exact width of my car.
An hour later, I turned into the dirt road that took me through an old wind-whipped coconut plantation.