I pulled into the weed-choked parking lot, followed closely by the two Jamaicans in their Ford. While they sat in their car watching me, I went to the chain-link fence, pulled shut the gates and locked them with a padlock I’d fished from the glove compartment of my Audi. For all I knew, the café-au-lait dude wasn’t as honorable as he made out, and had called in backup on the drive over. I didn’t want to find myself surrounded by his pals without some kind of warning. Neither the fence or the padlocked gate would keep them out for long, but it would give me a half-minute breathing space while they were negotiated.
The two men got out of the Ford as I walked across the lot.
“We didn’t set terms,” said Dreadlocks.
I halted, stared him down.
“The terms are simple. We sort this between us. I win, that’s it. You win, that’s it. No more trouble between your friends or mine.”
“Where’s the profit in it for me?”
“You win, you get to live,” I said. “But that’s it. There’ll be no more talk of lost profits.”
“What’s to stop me killing you, then taking up where I left off?”
“Me.”
“You sound very sure of yourself.”
“Yet you don’t seem too worried.”
“I’m not.”
For the first time the baldy chipped in. He laughed at my expense, while nodding grandiosely at his pal. “Im dandimite, mon. Im put Obeah pon ya. Im vank you, mon.”
“Yeah, right,” I said, having no clear idea what he’d said.
“Im be Jancro,” the baldy went on. “Im kyaan be killed.”
At mention of Jancro the dreadlocked guy squinted at his friend. He wasn’t happy with the term. I wondered what it meant.
“Jancro?” I gave him a lazy smile.
“John Crow,” Dreadlocks translated. “An expression of hatred. Also the name given to a mythological albino vulture.”
“A nickname I guess you’re not too happy with?”
He shrugged. “It serves a purpose.”
I indicated the industrial unit. “Let’s do this inside. It’s too hot to be out in the sun.”
Dreadlocks returned my lazy smile. “You have friends waiting for us inside?”
“Just me an’ you, buddy.”
“What about him?” He indicated his friend.
“He can watch. We’ll need someone to take word of our agreement back to your bosses in Miami.”
“My bosses? Don’t you know who I am?”
“Didn’t take you for the top honcho,” I admitted.
“Why not? Because I don’t look like a full-blood Rasta man? That my Rastafarian bruddas wouldn’t accept me, a white nyega?” He straightened his shoulders. “They call me John Crow, but I’m Nyabinghi. I’m more than the hired muscle you assumed, eh?”
Nyabinghi. I’d heard the term before. It was something to do with the Rastafarian movement of black supremacy.
“I wasn’t counting on it,” I said. “You seemed like a man with some clout behind you. Plus a man whose word I could trust. But, yeah, I did believe that you had come after me on someone else’s orders.”
“You think I’m unlike the Rude Bwoys you killed in Jamdown?”
“They were punks,” I said. “We’ll find out if you’re any different in a minute or two.”
He took no offense. In fact he laughed. “I like you, Babylon.”
“Won’t stop me killing you.”
“Or me from killing you,” he said.
“Let’s do it then.”
It was apparent soon enough why John Crow came after me and it had little to do with any monetary loss he’d suffered from losing his hostages.
He was a man who had to show his strength and ferocity in order that he held those under him in control. His lighter skin marked him out as a white nyega—his words not mine — and he’d possibly suffered some of the inherent racism found in the Rastafarian movement on his rise to the top. His nickname, an expression of hatred, confirmed that point. Possibly he felt that he had to lead by example, and in doing so he had to be more brutal than men who were happy chopping off the fingers of rich white kids. He had to show he wasn’t a man to be crossed, not if he intended holding on to the respect he’d earned.
But as potentially dangerous as he was, he also proved honorable in a way many other criminals weren’t.
He told his baldy friend to stand by and do nothing but watch. He said that if I beat him in fair combat then our beef was done with. Or at least that’s what I translated from the patois that flew between them.
The baldy wasn’t happy, but fuck him. He was about as trustworthy as Hector Wallace, who I’d pinned to a door frame with a machete weeks earlier. He looked as if he wouldn’t be content until the same had happened to me, and given the opportunity he’d try to stick me with a blade the second my back was turned. To show him the folly of such an idea, I pulled out my SIG from my waistband and laid it on an upturned oil drum across the room from him. He noted the gun, but he also seemed more concerned with the long finger that John Crow wagged at him. Earlier I’d heard him use the term Obeah. It was something that I knew translated as a curse — the magic kind — and it seemed he believed his own boast that John Crow was some kind of wizard or voodoo man.
He stood down, slouching against the wall nearest the door we’d come in. He folded his lean arms across his chest, and I could see them twitching as if they longed to wield a machete instead of lying idle.
John Crow came forward, pulling off his shirt.
He was tall and slim, but his frame was built from tight bands of lean muscle. On his chest were three livid scars. It looked as if the talons of some large bird had clawed him. They’d healed, but the scar tissue was red against his mocha skin. From the angle of the cuts, they could have been self-inflicted: perhaps they had something to do with his Obeah beliefs, or with his nickname, or even some kind of atonement punishment, but I couldn’t be sure. I didn’t ask. John Crow shook out his shoulders.
I didn’t bother with any fancy stuff, no loosening up exercises. But I did pull off my shirt.
John Crow checked out my tattoo.
“Exactly as described to me,” he said.
“Your man down in Jamaica must have an eidetic memory.”
John Crow frowned.
“See, he only briefly illuminated me with his flashlight, and even then he was already beginning to run away.”
“The man who described your tattoo to me didn’t run away,” John Crow said.
I didn’t think so. But now Crow had confirmed a suspicion I’d had since earlier. I shelved the thought for later. First I’d a task to complete, and if I lived through it, then it would be time to end things fully.
The abandoned building was little more than an open space with four walls and a flat roof, and bare linoleum on the ground. At one end a false wall had formed a small office space and adjoining bathroom, but the wall had been torn down at one time. The office furniture had been stolen, as had the john. A small porcelain sink hung at an angle, but the copper piping and taps had been stripped from it for their scrap value. The windows had been boarded over, but there was enough light streaming through cracked skylights to fight by.
I walked to the center of the room, and John Crow also came forward. I kept my back toward where I’d left my gun.
Crow rocked from side to side, loosening the muscles at his hips.
I stood, nonchalant.
“Ready?”