I listening and I talking; I listening and I listening. I just taking the time and making a effort.
Then I get the boys go give a hand ’round the place, so they doing something useful, unloading a delivery truck, reorganising a warehouse, repainting a shop. Something practical so people can see the benefit. Pretty soon I am giving advice, people asking me to sort out them little disputes, I putting injustice to right. I not just fixing things behind closed doors no more. My authority is out in the open. I step out from under Zhang shadow.
Then I start ask people if they buy gun from Samuels. And it turn out that they do it because Samuels work for me and they think is what I want. So I tell them no. And I say to them, ‘We going put the gunrunners outta business.’
I tell them I will buy back any gun they buy from Samuels for twice the price they pay him for it. All I ask of them is that they broadcast the price they get from me and say it the same as what they pay Samuels in the first place. So pretty soon news going reach DeFreitas that Samuels holding out on him, and him not going like that.
I tell Judge Finley to arrange a meeting with DeFreitas and I pack up all the guns in a old crocus bag. A couple days later we take a slow drive to West Kingston, me, Judge Finley and Hampton. All the way there I thinking ’bout what Zhang tell me ’bout Sun Tzu and the devious route and enticing the enemy with a bait.
DeFreitas operate outta a three-storey wooden house on the edge of Tivoli Gardens. It got one of them plastic multicoloured beaded curtain thing hanging in the doorway that lead from the street into this dark, dingy little bar where them playing ‘My Boy Lollipop’ on the jukebox. Then a couple of his men take us up some rickety stairs to his office that on the first floor. All the way up there we squeezing past the traffic of women who live up the top floor and service the customers from the bar downstairs.
When we get in the room it empty apart from one straight-back chair and a large mahogany desk that DeFreitas sitting behind. He look like him been sitting there all morning trying to strike the right pose. Him look pale and sick, and he got this thin line above him lip I guess him must think is a moustache. Him men stand up behind him with them feet apart and them arms folded, like they think they going scare somebody.
DeFreitas nod him head and tell me to sit. So I do it. The place stink of stale sweat and beer and tobacco. It almost like it oozing outta the wall. Hampton put the sack of guns on the desk.
I look straight at DeFreitas and I say to him in the meekest voice I can muster, ‘I am offering these guns back to you because I don’t want any trouble. You have them. Sell them again anywhere you like, just not in Chinatown.’
DeFreitas just smirk at me. ‘And who you think you are that you can come here and tell me where to do my business?’
Sun Tzu say, ‘ Pretend inferiority and encourage his arrogance .’ So I say, ‘I am just a small businessman and you is a big man with the whole of West Kingston at your feet. I hoping you accept these guns as a gift. A sign of my respect. After all West Kingston is big and Chinatown is small. Your power is great and mine modest. So all I want to ask yu is if you could leave the Chinese to me.’
DeFreitas scrutinise me, then him eyes pass over the sack of guns. I can tell him thinking ’bout how much money he going make again the second time ’round. He stand up and start pace the room. He got a walking stick with a handle like a silver fox head. He go over to the window and start look out. Him rubbing him neck. Him staring at the floor. Him taking so long over this, I start wonder if I read this thing all wrong.
When him come back, him rest the walking stick on the side of the desk and put both hands palm down on the surface. Him body rigid. And when him lean forward, the long nail on the little finger of him left hand scrape against the wood.
‘I want Samuels.’
‘Samuels? What you want with Samuels?’
DeFreitas don’t like that and him snap at me, ‘That between me and him.’
I wait. I know timing is everything. So I just sit there.
‘We got a very small family. Well, we all here, apart from Milton who is just a boy. How I going manage without Samuels?’
‘Him give you some trouble nuh? Over these guns.’
‘True, but we have come to an understanding now.’
‘Give me Samuels and I stay outta Chinatown.’ I sit for a minute and I just look at him. Then him say, ‘Take it or leave it. I not haggling with you.’
Sun Tzu say, ‘ One anxious to defend his reputation pays no regard to anything else .’
Driving back to Chinatown Hampton say to me, ‘What we going do ’bout Samuels’s chores?’
‘Kenneth Wong been pestering me this long time to give him something to do. Divvy up Samuels’s jobs and let Kenneth run some errands with Milton.’
‘You mean Miss Fay little brother?’
‘How many Kenneth Wong you know?’
‘She not going like that. Her little brother involve with you and your business.’
‘You worry ’bout your own business, and I will worry ’bout Fay. Anyway, is just for now, till we find someone else.’
I wind down the car window and stick my elbow on the sill. And then a funny feeling come over me so I tell Hampton to pull into a gas station and I go inside and buy a cigar, a big, fat Montecristo.
I get back in the car and I light it. And I take a satisfying puff. And I think to myself well that is the first big thing I manage to do without thinking in the back of my mind that Zhang was there to fix it if it all go wrong. The first big thing that I fully responsible for. It seem like I change today. I grow up. I am forty years old and I finally become a man.
It feel good to watch the smoke curl outta the window and drift away on the gentle afternoon breeze.
21
‘ Ground in which the army survives only if it fights with the courage of desperation is called “ death ”.’ Therefore, Sun Tzu say: ‘ In death ground, fight .’
Three month later Mrs Samuels come see me. Samuels dead. Shot in the back of the head. He been missing three weeks but the police just come tell her last week that they find his body shot and burned and left in a alley. She know who do it. But there no point going to the police over a thing like that. They not going move against a man like Louis DeFreitas. She even go see DeFreitas herself to plead with him, and beg him for some support. But all he say to her is for her to come see me. He tell her I will take care of everything.
She wait before she come because she didn’t want bother me. She know Samuels not work for me no more, that he working for DeFreitas at the time he die, so really is DeFreitas’s responsibility. But she dunno what to do because she got four children to feed, and she got to keep a roof over their head, and she got school fees, and she only earning a little money work part-time in Mr Chung shop. She fret so much she can’t think, she can’t eat, she can’t sleep. She dunno which way to turn. She dunno what she going to do. And she start cry.
So I tell her she right. Samuels really DeFreitas’s responsibility but, I say, in truth I feel partly responsible because if Samuels was still working for me there is no way DeFreitas would have lay a finger on him. DeFreitas know the rules, you can’t go rough up somebody else’s man. So in view of this, then I happy to help her.
I tell her to hush herself and blow her nose. I take care of everything. Rent, school fees, Blue Cross medical insurance, clothes for the children, a little extra every month, whatever she need to make ends meet and make a good home for her and the children. She don’t have to worry about a thing. And I just touch her light on the arm.