Premba drove the Ford Escort to Leta’s gate and parked it. He got out, followed by Joey. It was already dark and they could see the lights from the shaded lamp in the two bedroom room house that she and her two children occupied. Joey went up to the wooden gate.
“Hey, Leta,” he shouted.
“Who’s that out there calling me,” a female voice called out.
“Is that her?” Premba asked.
“Your friend, Joey.”
He nodded to Premba.
“Joey, where are you going, club in Ocho Rios?”
“Some of my friends and me. I’m just checking to see if you would come too. Can we come in?”
“Come inside, Joey.”
Joey pulled back the gate and he and Premba stepped up to the doorway.
They stood in the doorway of Leta’s small living room. She was sitting in a sofa, adding the finishing touches to her hair. The two men found chairs to sit on.
“Then what’s happening, Joey? Is your friend this? It’s a long time since I’ve seen you. How come you’re just checking me now, those other girls deserted you?”
“I know that you love to party and my friends wanted to go clubbing in Ocho Rios. I thought I would come by you to see if you would go with us.”
Leta laughed.
“Joey, I’m sorry to disappoint you, but I have a date with an American guy. We’re going to Ocho Rios, Tena and I and two of them.”
“What!” Joey exclaimed. “Americans, they must be rich.”
“They’re not rich, but they are generous with their money and they love to party.”
“Looks like we’re out of luck.”
He turned to Premba.
Premba moved closer to Leta.
“Leta, we want to know about those two guys, whom you’re having that date with.”
He dipped his hand into his pocket and came up with a wad of United States twenty-dollar bills. He peeled off ten and threw them down on the bed.
“That’s for you if you tell us what we want to know about those two guys.”
Leta looked at Joey, she was scared. She looked at the money on the bed. It was plenty more than she had received from Bucky on Friday night. She looked at Premba again.
She saw the vest the man was wearing, his expensive watch and chains, his shiny shoes and dark glasses. The gold tooth he was flashing, plus his rings, she looked away from him.
This man must be a Don, she thought.
“What do I have to do? I don’t know anything about them, because it was one of our friends, who introduced us to them.”
“What are their names?” Premba asked.
“Their names are Mose and Bucky. They are out here working for a man down in Ocho Rios.”
“That’s not much to earn you so much money, Leta,” Premba said. “But you have to find out more about them to fully earn it.”
The girl had stopped fixing up her hair.
“Tena will soon come to call me, you want to see her too?”
“She could be helpful to us too.”
“She’s supposed to be on the way here now.”
“Well, we aren’t going to wait until she comes, but give her this money and explain to her,” Premba said, giving her another two hundred dollars in twenty-dollar bills.
She took the money from him.
“Listen to me Leta, just go with those two guys and see what information you can get out of them. They’re two C.I.A men, who are fooling around our weed. Don’t bother telling them about us or try to double cross us.”
Lance appeared in the doorway as Premba finished speaking. Leta saw the two long marks, running down his face and she shivered.
“Lance, are you ready, come, Joey. Leta, when you’re ready to tell me about those two guys just come to where Joey lives,” Premba said as he, Lance and Joey departed to the waiting car.
***
They weren’t gone five minutes before Tena arrived.
“Leta, what’s happening? Big disappointment, I just saw
Errol. He said Mose said to tell us that he and Bucky can’t go tonight again.”
“Why they can’t go again?”
“Because their boss came out and is down there with them.”
“I’m really disappointed with those two guys because Joey and his friends wanted to take me to Ocho Rios with them and I had to turn them down.”
Tena looked at her; she was taller than her with a fuller figure. A year younger than her, the two women had been friends from high school.
“Who did you say, Joey, he’s around? Who and he came here?”
“He and about four of his friends.”
“They gave me this to give you,” Leta added, taking the money from under her mattress and counting it out loudly before handing it to her friend.
Tena took the money from her.
“What they gave it to you for, Leta? What am I supposed to do?”
“They were asking me about Mose and Bucky,” Leta replied.
“What they want to know about them?” Tena asked, now very curious.
“They said that they are C.I.A men and we’re to find out more about them.”
Tena looked at Leta, she was very worried.
“All I wanted from Mose and Bucky was some money to set
up myself. What these men want us to do looks dangerous, I’m not in it.”
“It’s the same thing I was thinking. They say nothing will
happen to us as long as we don’t tell Mose and Bucky about them. We’ll get more money too.”
“How much they gave you, Leta?”
“Same as you, the one who gave me the money name Premba, I’m wondering how Joey got mixed up with them.”
“Then what did you tell them about Mose and Bucky?”
“I didn’t know anything to tell them except their names and that they’re down here working for a man in Ocho Rios. It was Errol, who put us on to them. Premba isn’t going to give us any more money if we don’t find out more about them.”
Tena stood up; she went to the doorway and peered outside.
“That’s true what you say Leta, but who could have told them that we know Mose and Bucky, it must be Errol.”
“It could be Joey, he was at the dance too, and he must have seen us with them,” Leta replied.
***
A car was coming down the road. Tena could see the headlights as it came to a stop at Leta’s gate. She rushed back inside.
“It must be them returning. Leta, I’m going into the children’s room. I don’t want them to see me.”
“What are you hiding for, Tena? You must meet them one day.”
Premba and Joey were already in the doorway.
“I never expected to find you here, Leta? What happen,
your dates haven’t showed up? Wait is that, Tena?” Premba asked, admiring the curvaceous woman standing in the doorway of the children’s room.
“That’s her,” Joey replied.
“Hey, Tena, what’s happening? Come and meet my friends,” Joey appealed to her.
“What happen, Joey? It’s a long time since I’ve seen you, I heard that you’ve become a big party-goer now.”
“It’s in my blood, so it’s just the tradition I’m maintaining.”
“That’s true my friend, touch me,” Premba said in agreement with Joey and the two men touched fists.
“So, Tena, Leta told you what we want you to do? Plenty of money is in it for you if you help us out.”
Tena didn’t reply at once.
“Yes, she gave me the money, but we don’t know much about them as it’s only their names they told us.”
“That’s still okay, Tena, but now you know that you must get more information about them to give us.”
“It’s nothing dangerous and they don’t have to know that you’re passing information to us about them because we aren’t going to tell them,” Joey reassured them.
Leta wanted to ask them why they wanted the information, but she was scared.
Lance came up to the doorway.
“What are these women dealing with, Premba? Are they coming with us?”
“Where are you going?” Tena inquired.
“We’re going clubbing in Ocho Rios, you can come with us. We were inviting Leta, but she was telling us about the date you had with those two Americans,” Joey replied.
“You want us to go with them, Leta?”
“Yes, let’s go. We can’t let Mose and Bucky think that we can’t enjoy ourselves without them.”
“You’re right, Leta,” Premba remarked. “Those guys have no idea of how Jamaicans love to party.”
Leta looked at him, but didn’t reply.
“The car is going to be packed but it’ll hold,” Lance said.
“Wait, let me tie this scarf over my hair,” Leta said as the men stepped outside.
“Are you sure that Jacinth and Candy are sleeping?” Tena asked, looking into the room at the shapes under the blanket. The room was in total darkness.
“You’re brave to leave them alone in that room. If my mother wasn’t home, I would never leave Paula and Ann-Marie in the house alone,” she remarked.
“You know that it’s not something I like to do, but they have gotten big and can take care of themselves.”
“Hey, what’s happening, Leta and Tena, are you coming?” came Joey’s urgent voice.
“What’s wrong with Joey?” Tena asked Leta.
“We’re coming,” she shouted back.
The three men stood at the gate, in the car were Mercan and Mallards.
Leta blew out the lamp plunging the room into darkness and she and Tena stepped outside. She closed the door behind her and turned the key in the lock. She removed the key, tried the knob to make certain it was locked and then returned the key to her purse.
“All of you come,” she said as she reached them.
“But wait, how so many of us are going to hold in this little car?” she asked.
“It hold more than that already,” Premba assured her as they walked towards the car.
He got into the driver’s seat with Leta and Joey beside him. The other four were in the back of the car. Premba drove off the car and they were headed for Ocho Rios and a night of partying.
***
Gaskell Burke sat in his office and began to think. He could do plenty of that now that he was no longer practicing. The weed was worth thousands of Jamaican dollars. Ken and Wally were experts and it was they who had priced it. King had sold the first amount of weed they had poached and had pocketed the money. It would be enough to pay Mose and Bucky leaving the four of them, each with a big cut. As for Brad and Jack, they didn’t count. He could always buy off Dickson with a good chunk of money. Both Brad and Jack had their bail set at fifteen thousand dollars each, and as far as he knew there were no takers. It meant that the two men could come to trial without being bailed.
In a short while he would have enough money to buy another house. He would probably go into the real estate business in a bigger way or the hotel business. After all Mc Creed had a hotel which as far as he had heard came out of the marijuana business. There was no way if he played his cards right, he couldn’t own one too.
In the twenty years that he had practiced law, this cut was the most amount of money he would see at any one time. Damn it, nobody was going to stop him from gaining control of a sizeable portion of the Jamaican drug market.
Bucky and Mose were good and were worth their fees. Ken was really an expert. On Saturday they would collect the money for the weed. He could hear the banging of the typewriter as Elaine, his secretary for the past five years, typed the few correspondence, he now sent out.
There was a knock on his door. He opened it to reveal Wally Judge standing in the doorway, a twitch of irritation crossed his forehead.
“Wally, glad to see you, come in.”
The short, bald headed man entered the office and sat himself down in a chair.
“What’s going on, Wally? Didn’t I tell you not to come here, remember that I’m still a professional man.”
“I know what you mean boss, but I was down at the camp, and Mose and Bucky caught one of McCreed’s men spying on them and he doesn’t want to talk.”
“What did you say?”
“Mose and Bucky should have forced him to talk already. Who’s he? Does he know anything about McCreed’s organization?” Burke flung the questions at him like a machine gun.
“He’s just a grower, one of the fighters, Churchill, knows him because they used to plant weed together. Bucky and Mose want to kill him if he doesn’t talk.”
“If he’s just a grower then why is he spying on us? Tell Bucky and Mose not to do anything until I come down there on Thursday.”
“They won’t, unless he tries something. He tried to knock out Mose, but he knocked him out instead.”
“Tell them to step up their vigilance. They’re in McCreed’s territory, so more than likely he’ll have people all over the place.”
“Bucky and Mose said that the man was alone when they caught him, but he was definitely spying on the camp. They don’t think he had time to alert anyone else.”
Burke looked through the windows right down to the sea at Newport West. It was a good view and he enjoyed it.
“Calm down, Burke. This one grower can’t do us any harm. Neither McCreed nor the police knows about us.”
Burke got up and drew the curtains; he switched off the lights and the air conditioning unit.
“Come, Wally, I’ll take you Downtown so you can take a bus back to St. Ann. We’ll talk some more in the car.”
“Elaine, I’ll soon be back. If anybody calls me, tell them to leave a message.”
The two men then went downstairs to Burke’s car.
***
Mose and Bucky had drilled Jacob without getting anything out of him.
All day the big, bearded marijuana farmer had been subjected to all forms of torture and yet his resolve didn’t break.
When Wally returned early Monday afternoon, they had given up any hope of getting anything out of the tortured man. They had debated between themselves as to what to do with him. Now Wally had brought back a reply and Mose had cut down Jacob in cold blood. They buried the marijuana grower and returned to work.
***
From up in the hills where they were spying on the training camp, Premba’s group witnessed the killing of Jacob. Of the group only Mallards didn’t know the dead man, but that didn’t stop him from swearing along with the others to get his killers.
***
Meanwhile Pinchie and Evert had recovered from their injuries and were now going about their normal business; however the partnership had broken up. Pinchie had come to check Evert about the replanting of their field and heard his woman, complaining that somebody had stolen one of her white sheets off her clothes line last month. He did some investigations and realized that Juliet was now along with Evert after refusing to have anything further to do with him. Angered by her rejection and his friend’s betrayal, he had confronted Evert and the villagers had to intervene to prevent them chopping up each other. Evert had sold his motorcycle and bought a Lada motor car which he was now running as a taxi. Pinchie alone was planting his field.