A Brief History of Seven Killings

But with all that, with knowing all that he was capable of, I still had no idea why Adler was here. He wasn’t an official guest of the government; that would have been an irredeemable faux pas on the Prime Minister’s behalf, especially after shooting the shit with Kissinger just a few months ago. But the Prime Minister was certainly happy he was here. Meanwhile I’m waiting for orders from head section to neutralize the threat of this man, or at least mute it. The Jamaica Council for Human Rights invited him, forcing me to open a brand-new file on my already crowded desk. Within days the guy was giving speeches, long speeches about all kinds of bullshit, like his name was Castro or something. Saying that people like me were in Latin America with him and he was disgusted by what he saw, especially in Chile when we allowed Pinochet to take power.

He didn’t name me, but I knew who he was talking about. Calling us the horsemen of apocalypse, destabilizing any country in our wake. He was dramatic all right, all the time pulling back on how much of this came out of his own rulebook. And that’s all this Prime Minister needed, a nice multisyllable word like destabilization to turn it into a fucking jingle. But he threw us on the defensive in a way that I’ll make sure never happens again. Of course the only people listening was Penthouse magazine. Goddamn, what does it mean when the conscience of America airbrushes pussy for a living? Guys like Adler, guys who suddenly develop this sense of mission to expose evil America when they’re just white guys with a guilty conscience who never know when to quit. And the Company couldn’t decide if I should just quit him.

At one point he claimed he had evidence that the Company was behind arson in some tenement they call it on Orange Street, murder of more than a few Cubans in Jamaica and industrial unrest on the wharf. He said he had evidence that the Company was giving the opposition party money, which was just preposterous considering what bad form it would have been, trusting anybody in the Third World with money. I don’t know why he didn’t just send an article to Mother Jones or Rolling Stone or something. Before the Company gave me a clear directive of what to do he was gone, my eyes and ears tell me, to Cuba. But the bastard did his damage. He gave the Jamaicans names. Fucking names. Not mine but eleven of the staff at the embassy, blowing the cover of at least seven of them. They had to be shipped back before any realized that they knew them by assumed names. Because of Adler I had to start from scratch. In the middle of September in a year that was doing nobody any favors. Everything from scratch, which already led to problems.

Passing his office I overheard Louis on the phone about a shipment at the wharf that went rogue. I did some checking. Nobody in this office has ordered any shipment of anything, and if they did they certainly wouldn’t have had it go through Jamaican customs for two-thirds of it to be stolen. Need-to-know basis serves him as much as it does me, but I don’t like when a fucking rogue agent somewhere in Cuba finds out something is gone before I even knew I was supposed to miss it. Means his low-level snoops still have higher clearance than me, and I’m supposed to be running the fucking show. Louis didn’t sound too distressed when he was telling all this to God knows who, and I got tired of standing near his doorway like I was trying to get gossip.

The wife called not long ago to tell me she had run out of maraschino cherries again. I tell you, the Cold War isn’t even over and I miss it already.

Papa-Lo

Listen to me now. Me warn him y’know, my magnanimous gentlemens. Long time I drop warnings that other people close, friend and enemy was going get him in a whole heap o’ trouble. Every one of we know at least one, don’t it? Them kinda man who just stay a certain way? Always have a notion but never come up with a single idea. Always working plenty of scheme but never have a plan. That was certain people. Here is my friend the biggest superstar in the world and yet him have some of the smallest mind to come out of the ghetto as friend. Me not going name who but I warn the Singer. I say, You have some people right close to you who going do nothing but take you down, you hear me? Me tired to say that to him. Sick and tired. But him just laugh that laugh, that laugh that swallow the room. That laugh that sound like he already have a plan.

People think me understand everything to the fullness. That is not no lie, wondiferous gentlemens, but Jah know, sometimes I don’t learn till too late, and to know something too late? Well, is better you never know, as my mother used to say. Worse, you all present tense and have to deal with sudden past tense all around you. It’s like realizing somebody rob you a year late.