Black Rain Falling

by Jacob Ross

  I slipped the latch of the rickety door, navigated past an old table and, with the light of my cellphone, side-stepped a few half-broken chairs. Stacks of sagging crocus bags and fishing tackle against the wall.

  I didn’t have to search for the bedroom, I followed the sound of Spider’s breathing. I entered and pulled the string that led to a light bulb directly over the pallet he used as a bed.

  He’d turned his face to the wall, his breathing deep and regular. I’d seen Spiderface napping on the job many times, always with his mouth open. Now it was closed, the trapezoid muscles along his back so tense they pushed against his flimsy vest. I slipped off my belt, stepped back and kicked the bed.

  He sprang up from the old mattress, sliding his hand in one slick motion under the pillow. It emerged with a viciouslooking machete. The buckle of my belt shot out and struck the blade just above his fingers. The weapon leapt from his hand and clattered to the floor.

  He staggered back, spun around to face me and blinked.

  ‘Is me, Spiderface. Sit down.’

  He dropped his hands, looked back at the bed. ‘Missa Digger, what I do? I-I didn do nothing . . . ’

  ‘That’s for me to decide, Spider-Man. I told you to sit down.’

  He perched on the edge of the bed.

  I looped the heavy leather around my wrist, lowered my shoulders and pushed my face close to his. ’How long I know you, Spiderface?’ I pushed a stiffened finger against his forehead. ‘Two years – give or take a coupla months? That’s how long we been rolling together, not so?’

  He brought his hands together. ‘Missa Digger . . . ’

  I looked around the room. His walls were covered with cut-out pictures of boats – all kinds and shapes – on the high seas and on shore.

  ‘I see you finish the boat,’ I said. ‘And you got a chance to test it!’

  He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and would not look at me.

  ‘Come,’ I said, dropping a hand in his shoulder. ‘Put on some clothes. We got to talk, so I taking you for a walk.’

  ‘The DS . . . erm, Missa Chilman . . . He know?’

  ‘Depending on what you tell me, he may never need to know.’

  68

  I stayed at home all day. When I returned from seeing Spiderface, I found Dessie on my sofa. She shed her clothing and slid into bed beside me. I let her have her way. At the end of it, she got up, dressed and told me she was done with me, she wanted to move on.

  ‘Fine,’ I said.

  ‘That’s all?’ she snapped.

  ‘No is not, but that will do for now. Anyway, your life sorted now!’

  ‘Meaning?’ She hung at the door, eyes sullen on my face.

  ‘You have your own house, big enough to live like Dessie wants to live. With your husband gone, is all yours.’

  ‘Digger, what’re you talking about?’

  ‘Go safe, Dessie. Look after yourself.’

  ‘Digger, why you talking to me like that?’

  ‘You tell me you want to move on. I accept. What’s wrong with that? If you expect me to crawl, I not going to!’

  She wasn’t looking at me now. She was rubbing the heel of her shoe against the sofa leg as if she were scraping something off it.

  Dessie straightened up and threw me a furious look. ‘Arrogant!’ she snapped.

  ‘Unreasonable!’ I threw back.

  As she was leaving, she kicked at the glass of my cabinet and told me I wasn’t the Digger she used to know, then slammed the door behind her.

  In the afternoon, Miss Stanislaus called and asked was I ready to take some breeze with her?

  I told her I had to go out later.

  She wanted to know when and where. I didn’t answer.

  ‘Jus checkin,’ she said and hung up.

  Late evening, I showered and dressed in a plain white cotton shirt and a pair of close-fitting jeans. I slipped on my pair of Convos, took my belt off its nail then mixed myself a Camaho cocktail. I put on some music – Nancy Sinatra’s ‘Bang Bang My Baby Shot Me Down’ – magical and dreamy and so full of wistfulness it brought a tightness to my throat.

  I shut down the player and took to the road.

  Through the fast-advancing night, I headed for the yacht marina in San Andrews. I slowed the car just before the roundabout in Canteen and looked over at the marina, bristling with masts. Camaho’s first capital, abandoned when the British realised they’d built it around the crater of a sleeping volcano that the sea had made into a lagoon. On the hill above the shivering water stood the carcass of a bombed-out house Camahoans called Dread House because a man the nation used to love ruled the island from up there. It was in the big hall of that crumbling mansion that his party comrades summoned him and made him know that if he did not do as he was told they would destroy him. Five days later he was dead.

  I pulled up on the grass verge facing a restaurant and bar that sat on the waters of the marina. I ducked into a narrow concrete alleyway, past small dim rooms lit up by giant flatscreen televisions and fridge freezers half the size of each room. The air about me was rattling with dub-step bass and soca music.

  Beaumont, Camaho’s underbelly: houses stacked ten rows deep with a mesh of shoulder-width alleyways between them. The inhabitants here were neither poor nor rich. They could get whatever took a person’s fancy. They supplied the best weed on the island, could pick out an agent of the law blindfolded. A special breed of Camahoans who thrived in the shadowy space just outside the law.

  I’d heard enough to know that women ruled this place, repulsing the aggression of their nomadic men with their own brand of tight-faced, don’t-fuck-with-me ferocity. Anybody who had no business here was an intruder or an enemy.

  Women sat on the walls of narrow concrete verandas staring me down with frank, assessing eyes. One of them, in a buttercup-yellow dress, hair flaring from her head, leaned over and curled a finger. ‘Ay, Sweetman, you want some sugar?’ She shifted a hip sideways and began bouncing on the wall.

  I opened my palms and smiled. ‘Thanks for the offer, Miss. I’d’ve really liked that, yunno, but I got diabetes.’ Their brassy laughter beat against my ears.

  I had no doubt that Malan liked it here, the way I liked Old Hope. I imagined him as a boy scrapping his way through all this shit with quick fists and a fast mouth until the dangerousness he carried now became as natural to him as breathing. He’d mentioned his mother once, told me that a tree would have done a better job of raising him. Then he’d laughed that hissing, dark-eyed laugh of his. I wondered where his wife and girlchild were now. I decided it was none of my business.

  I climbed the steps.

  Before I raised my hand to tap the door, his voice reached me. ‘Digger, come in.’

  Quick dark eyes scanned my body, halted at my waist then settled on my face.

  He was dressed in knee-length shorts, green khaki, a black T-shirt with a button opened at the front. Rubber slippers a size too large for his feet.

  His Sig Sauer was on the table in front of him, its muzzle aimed at the door.

  ‘Offer me a seat, Malan.’

  ‘Take one,’ he said. He was staring into my face with a look that I could not work out, but there was no challenge there. He lifted the gun and slipped it into his waistband.

  ‘Digger, what you want dis time o’ night?’

  ‘Offer me a drink, Malan. Is the polite thing to do.’

  He rose abruptly and strolled to the kitchen.

  I pulled a seat and sat down. Malan returned and placed an opened bottle of Malta and a glass in front of me.

  ‘What’s up?’ he said.

  ‘You mind sitting down?’

  ‘Digger, stop fuckin with my head. Else I throw you outta my place, right now, y’unnerstan?’

  I felt my heart quicken, my mouth go dry. I’d seen young men on the streets step away from him at the slightest frown. Bartenders grew nervous when he placed an elbow on their counter and leaned in close. I’d even seen a co
uple of them drop a brimming glass. I’d also observed how that same attitude attracted a certain kind of woman to him. The only person in the world I knew who would happily take the fight to Malan Greaves was Miss Stanislaus. Secretly, I envied her.

  I allowed my eyes to skim the walls – bare except for a picture of a bull fighter, thin and stiff as a matchstick, sidestepping a wounded beast.

  ‘You made a mistake,’ I said.

  ‘What you talkin bout, Digger?’

  ‘Only one person in the world I know could shoot like that. Remember I see you do it before – take out two Vincen Island fellas in a speeding boat from Top Hill on Kara Island after they robbed the bank in the Drylands. I saw you do it to make Sarona love you more – yunno, mix the love with the violence and the fear – when you shot that ramgoat on Dog Island. I even went to the storeroom to make sure I wasn’t guessing. You did your best to dry the SWS, but the canvas bag was still wet.

  ‘Digger, I don’ have no time for—’

  I pushed the drink aside and looked him in the eyes. ‘I prefer you shut your mouth and hear me out, rather than gimme a set of lies. I fed up of lies right now.’

  He pushed himself back abruptly, threw me a quick dry smile. ‘Go on – shoot your crap.’

  ‘I think it hit you when we ruled out Tamara from the investigation. And when them boat-fellas knew in advance that we were coming for them. And you no fool, Malan, you thought about what I told you in the marketplace. It strike you that the woman we been after had to be Sarona. Then when she told you that she was taking a trip – mebbe out of some kind of feelings for you because she could’ve up and leave. Mebbe she think that it hurt worse if she just break and disappear. Mebbe she—’

  Malan shot up from the chair. He’d pushed a finger in my face and was breathing hard. ‘Talk your talk, Digger. But don’t fuck with my head, y’unnerstan. I not takin that from you . . . ’

  I rose to face him. ‘Take your finger from my face, Malan.’

  ‘And if I don’t, what you goin do about it?’

  ‘If you don’t drop that fuckin finger from my face, right now – I break it, y’unnerstan? Then shoot me if you want to, like you shot your woman.’

  He dropped his hand, began circling the room, his eyes on me like a boxer.

  ‘What I saying is that the woman was a plant. Me and Miss Stanislaus been chasing after Tamara becuz of the description I got from lil Eric and his friends in Beau Séjour. Fool me too cuz if you pull off the braids, cut the hair and dye it black, you could confuse one of them for the other. Sarona’ job was to keep her finger on the pulse of the police. Coming to think of it, she might’ve had something to do with Shadowman killing Jana Ray too. She saw Jana Ray with us – the police – and she must’ve made the connection that he knew enough to blow the whole operation. I believe Sarona done this before. She’s too good at it.

  ‘You realise how she used you, and you wanted to hit back. So what you do? You make Spiderface risk his life and yours, middle of the night, and take you to Kara Island. You make him swear to keep it secret. You nearly got away with it, except for the one mistake you made. You shot Sarona first when you should’ve shot the driver. But you had to make sure you take her out for the arse she made of you. In other words, your feelings override your training.’

  He’d gone still. The black eyes on my mouth.

  ‘You shot the woman,’ I said. I pointed at my ear. ‘Through all that rain and ruction at Blackwater, believe it or not, Malan, I heard Sarona scream when your bullet hit her.’

  He’d rested his back against the glass window, his head tilted at the ceiling.

  I sat back, the sweat prickling my neck, the night suddenly suffocating.

  A tight, red-eyed smile tensed his face. ‘People can’t make no case against me. I not admittin to nothing. But let’s say people decide to point dem finger at me. In a court of law, the evidence will show that I do my job. De job was to stop the boat. Nobody could prove different. So I dunno what you come here for.’

  ‘To let you know I not your fool.’

  ‘You think I dunno that? Digger, you an De Woman, y’all the real thing. You fink I don’t envy y’all sometimes – watchin the way y’all does flex your brains togedder? You think it don’t upset me becuz me’n’you start off working good together and soon as she come, you give over yourself to ’er? Me! From de time I little so!’ He lowered a hand a couple of inches above the tabletop. ‘Me, Malan Greaves, I decide I come first. Everything else come after me. I follow the rules as far as I could, but Malan Greaves come first. Nothing I can do bout that.’

  He threw me a fierce sideways look. ‘You ever ask yourself why Chilman choose us?’

  ‘In the early days, yes—’

  ‘Not no more? You still don’t work it out? He’s not no talent spotter, he’s a fuckin demon-hunter becuz he’s a demon himself.’

  ‘I dunno where you goin with that, Malan.’

  He jabbed a finger at his head. ‘What me, you an De Woman got in common, Digger? Use your brain!’ He’d raised his voice, his face screwed up as if he were in pain. ‘De hole! Dat’s what we got. De hole inside we head – your mother gone, you dunno where she gone; you know you’ll never find ’er, but you still lookin for your mother. De Stanislaus Woman got ’er soul cut out by a fella and every man she kill is him.’

  ‘And you?’

  ‘You don want to know bout me.’

  ‘I want to know bout you.’

  ‘I not tellin you, Digger. Fuck outta my house and go do what you have to do.’

  He blinked, swung his head away from me, but not before I saw the tears.

  I left him staring past his reflection in the window into the night.

  Malan, hard-nut, badjohn. Crying! Malan Greaves – the little fella his mother left with the man she ran away from. The man didn’t go looking for another woman to replace his mother because little Malan Greaves would serve him just as well – that was, until Malan stuck a knife in the fella’s throat and walked.

  Malan Greaves, trying so hard to prove to himself that he wasn’t what that fella made of him. Still not sure if he was a man because of all that.

  And he thought I didn’t know. Pet did – Admin Pet who knew everything.

  Is hard to hate a pusson when you know that much about them. Because you’ve found the string to pull, to unravel the big hard ball they pretend to be. You either leave it alone or pull the string and run, and hope to God you get away. It was what I’d been trying to tell Sarona when I met her in the marketplace that one last time.

  Back on the road, I cleared my throat and spat at the dark, became aware of a woman-shape on the grass verge on my right, just outside the pool of brightness thrown by the streetlight. My heart flipped over. Miss Stanislaus, her hair held down by a black headwrap. Dark, loose-fitting trousers and a top to match. Dressed for the night and concealment.

  ‘What you doing here?’ I said.

  I heard the rattle of Chilman’s car just around the corner, driving off. ‘Same thing you doing here, Missa Digger.’ She raised a finger at Malan’s house. ‘I have to say I reach here a lil while before you.’ She sidled a glance at the restaurant over the water; answered the question I was about to ask. ‘Is only Malan does sour up your face like that. I see the way you keep looking at him. And twice in the office you open the drawer with them han’cuff and twice you close it back. I don’t even think you realise it. Besides you didn want to go nowhere with me no matter how I ask. So I figure! Besides, t’was not nice at all the way y’was lookin at him.’

  ‘I don’t see the logic, Miss Stanislaus.’

  ‘Well, I was right, not so? What I want to know is why you have to go to Malan house half-naked!’

  ‘I not half-naked.’

  ‘Might as well be. You don’t do it again, Missa Digger.’ Her eyes were fierce on my face, her voice sibilant with irritation. ‘Not with him. I keep tellin you, sometimes you behave stupid.’

  She swung her small ha
ndbag in front of her and dropped in her Ruger. ‘Come, Missa Digger, is hifalutin dining for us tonight. I done book a table.’ Miss Stanislaus planted a hand on my arm and steered me across the road.

  My phone buzzed. I picked up.

  ‘Digson, I never finish the story about the Englishman and de tiger-puppy. You want to hear the rest?’

  He’d stopped the car somewhere because I could no longer hear it.

  ‘I listening, Sir.’

  ‘Tiger feeding on Englishfella blood all de while, and he know that soon the tiger going want a lot more. He tell the servant to bring the pistol. Servant was out there long time looking for the gun. You could s’pose the servant hate the master who been running his life; or you could suppose the servant ’fraid to go back in that room. Anyway, servant bring the gun, and guess what happen?’

  ‘Tiger eat them both.’

  ‘Nuh, Englishman shoot de tiger. What you learn from that, Digson?’

  ‘Dunno! Sometimes to save yourself, you got to destroy the thing you love?’

  He said nothing for a while. ‘I never see it like that.’

  ‘How you see it?’

  ‘What born to kill will kill. One day it will try to kill you for sure. You might have to kill it first.’

  ‘You got your piece?’ I said.

  ‘Of course I got my piece.’ He coughed into the handset and cut off. Then I heard the clatter of his engine. Chilman hadn’t sounded drunk at all.

  Miss Stanislaus and I turned into the marina. Ahead of us a row of dining places. The air was thick with the smell of seafood – roasted, fried and stewed and god-knew-what-else.

  I followed Miss Stanislaus into Silvio’s, a restaurant that was all burnished wood and tinkling cutlery, constructed on a small jetty.

  At the table, Miss Stanislaus leaned into me, dropped her voice. ‘What happen between you and Malan?’

  ‘I had to make tiger-puppy know I got my eyes on him.’

  ‘You not tellin me?’

  ‘Another time. I hungry, let’s eat.’