“Stetodengine,” Lester says, in a sudden burst of words.
“What?”
“Stetyoudengine,” he repeats.
“Start your engine,” Terry translates.
“Why?” I say.
“You cannot park here, mon,” Lester says. “The police book you if you stay here.”
In the mirror I see a policeman approaching our parked car. Lester has already spotted him, and that is why he is nervous. Good, I think. A policeman coming. We’ll be rid of this Lester in no time at all.
I sit back, do nothing.
“Well, for God’s sake, Michael,” Terry says. “Start the car.”
“No, I—”
“What are you going to do, just sit here?”
“I’m thinking.”
“About what? Let’s get going.”
“Terry, I’d like to have a word with you in private about this whole situation—”
“You wanted to go to the museum; that’s why we came here. Fine. Lester will take you to the museum.”
“Lester doesn’t seem to know where—”
“—I know where, I know where,” Lester says, suddenly very agitated. “Start your engine, go left at the next turning.”
“And where is the museum?” I say, still hesitating.
“Go left, and I will guide you. The museum is very near. Very near.”
I think, That’s right; according to the map, the museum must be very near here.
“Only two blocks,” Lester says.
Terry is looking at me, expectantly.
I think, The policeman can come over and I can get this convict Lester out of the car. But I still have my original problem, which is to find the museum—with Terry glaring at me all the time—and meanwhile Lester seems suddenly to have developed confidence about the location of the museum. What the hell. I’ll drive a couple of blocks.
I start the car, and we drive a short distance. Many streets in this area are blocked off, but Lester seems to know where he is going, directing me deftly. Whenever pedestrians block the street, he leans out the side window and shouts at them to get out of the way, and they look at him and then move quickly. Lester has a definite menace about him.
“Stop the engine. Stop the engine. Park here.”
I see we have made a loop, and have returned very near the courthouse. We’re on an odd side street, but I see no museum.
“Lester, where is the museum?” I ask suspiciously.
“There, mon,” Lester says, pointing across the street.
“Where?”
“There. Right there, mon, you see the door.”
And then I see a small sign that says “Museum” and the hours. As we watch, a sunburned Scandinavian family in sun clothes, socks, and sandals emerges and sits on the steps.
It’s the museum, all right.
“Thank God,” Terry says, getting out of the car. She looks at me accusingly. “I’d say Lester did very well, wouldn’t you?”
Her whole manner implies that I am a suspicious, prejudiced son of a bitch—and that I have furthermore failed to acknowledge properly that it is only through her efforts that we have finally found this damned museum.
And I am, in truth, a bit chagrined. I am relieved finally to be at the museum. And I may well have been mistaken about Lester.
But as I get out of the driver’s seat and move the seat so Lester can climb out from the back, as he stands up alongside me, I realize that I am not wrong at all. Lester is six feet four inches tall and powerfully built; he has another scar on the other side of his throat, and he has a strange tattoo on the back of his left hand, a box with an “X” in it. And although he is smiling and friendly at the moment, I have the distinct sense that Lester is mean.
We head toward the museum. There is a two-shilling entrance fee. “Well, Lester,” I say, “thanks for guiding us.” And I give him a ten-shilling note.
“No, no,” he says, holding up his hands.
“Yes, yes,” I say. “We appreciate your help, but now we’re at the museum, and—”
“No, no, I am coming with you. Inside.”
“No, thank you, Lester—”
“Yes, yes—”
Terry says, “Will you pay his two shillings and be done with it?”
So Lester comes inside with us.
Once we are inside, it is clear Lester is no guide. The first exhibit displays some horse-drawn coaches from the nineteenth century. I ask Lester, “What’re these?”
“Old carts,” he says. “Wooden carts.”
I shoot Terry a look; she shrugs and moves off. She thinks Lester is fine. I can tell by her face, her gestures. She is rejecting my point of view on this.
I would like to get Terry off alone, even for a few seconds, to whisper in her ear, but Lester has a way of positioning his body between me and Terry so I can never grab her by the arm and get her away alone. It’s all unspoken, but he’s very skillful. And this part of the museum is deserted; no one around, not even a guard.
We see several more exhibits, and Lester makes obvious, or incorrect, comments at each one. Terry still doesn’t appear to notice. Next we come to exhibits of ceramics and china. Terry is interested in these. “Lester, were these originally English china?”
“Old plates,” Lester says, pointing to the display.
“Yes, I know that, but are they English?”
“No. Not English. Jamaican. Found here.”
And he gives Terry an irritable glance, as if he is losing patience with her. This is not the thing to do to Terry. We come to another room, and there are some people there, other tourists. We are no longer alone. Terry says, “I don’t think Lester is a guide.”
“Really? I’ll tell you what he is, he’s a convict.”
“Oh, for God’s sake, Michael. You and your imagination.”
“Yes? You see his scars? And what was he doing there by the courthouse today? Did you ask yourself that?”
“He’s not a convict,” Terry says, “but he’s not a very good guide, and I think you should get rid of him.”
“Well, I tried to—”
“Let’s not argue about it; let’s just get rid of him, okay?”
We look over. Lester has been standing across the room, looking at a display case, but from the way his body is positioned I can tell he has overheard us.
Lester turns and smiles.
“Ready to go?”
“Yes,” Terry says.
As we move through the other exhibit rooms, there are always other people around, other tourists, and we feel better. But not much better.
“Jesus, aren’t there any guards in this place?” Terry says finally.
“No,” I say. We haven’t seen a guard since we entered.
“No money for guards,” Lester says. “Same as in prison.”
“In prison?” Terry says.
She’s spooked. Lester decides to talk to her, ignoring me; he moves directly between Terry and me. He focuses all his attention on her.
“Yes, in prison there is no money for guards, so they have no guards. Prison is very bad in Jamaica.”
“I see,” Terry says. She is pale. White.
I say, “Were you in prison, Lester?”
“Yes.”
“For a long time?”
“No. The last time, only six years.”
Six years seems like a long time to me. “What were you in for?” I say.
“For nothing,” Lester says.
“You were in prison for nothing?”
Terry glances at me. The legal investigator doesn’t think I should continue this line of questioning, whereas I think we might as well get the facts and find out what we’re dealing with.
“You were in prison for nothing?”
Lester spins on me and curls his lip, grips my elbow. “I tell you the truth,” he snarls. I feel spittle on my face. “I tell you, mon, the truth. I don’t kill no one!”
Six years, I think. Homicide.
Gr
eat.
I look at Terry. Her eyes are very wide. She understands the implications perfectly well.
But Lester is still talking, still defending himself. If anything, he is even more excited. “The last time, yes,” Lester says. “Last time, I kill him, yes! I admit it, yes! But this time, no!”
“I see,” I say. I am suddenly calm. I understand the problem, and I understand what I must do. I must get rid of Lester as soon as possible. In order to do that, I must find either a policeman or a crowd of some kind. I look at the other tourists in the print room. They are elderly, British, feeble.
“How did you kill this man, Lester?” I say, in as conversational a tone as I can manage. I am hoping he will say a gun, since I can see he doesn’t have a gun with him.
“With a knife,” he says, as we leave the print room.
“A knife?”
“Yes. Like this.” And he reaches in the waistband of his trousers in front of his crotch and pulls out a huge switchblade. He flicks it open, stabs the air. “Like so.”
Terry says, “Put that away, Lester.”
Lester puts the knife back in his crotch, leering at her.
I think, Just stay cool and get rid of him. But it is difficult to stay cool now that I have seen the knife. My heart is pounding. And now that I know the facts, of course there is not another person to be seen anywhere. The museum is suddenly entirely empty. We are in a garden now, with some artifacts from old sugar mills, some big stone wheels.
“Big stone wheel,” Lester says.
“I think it’s time to go, Lester,” I say. I remember there was a guard at the entrance, who sold us the tickets. He was elderly, but he was at least a guard. And there are likely to be other tourists at the entrance.
“Yes, we go. This way.”
“That’s not the way to the entrance,” I say.
“No, we go a different way now.”
“I would rather go the same way, Lester.”
“This way is better,” Lester says.
“No,” I say. “I want to go the way we came.”
There is a moment of frozen tension, neither of us moving, a silent standoff. I don’t think Lester will pull his knife in the middle of the museum. I think I can force the issue right now. I can break free of Lester right here in the garden, in the sunlight, beside the stone sugar-cane wheel.
“Oh, for God’s sake, Michael,” Terry says. “Let’s go the way Lester wants to go.”
Shit!
Doesn’t she realize what she’s doing?
“Terry—”
“Well, he’s led us so far—”
“Terry, do you mind if I handle this my—”
“I’m just trying to be helpful—”
I don’t want to argue with her in front of Lester. I can see she’s frightened, and I can see that her way of handling the fear is to be conciliatory, but I think that we could be out of the frying pan and into the fire with Lester; I think that if he gets us alone somewhere we could have a very difficult time with him and his big knife, and that we should therefore make a stand. Whereas her impulse is to play along.
“When we get back to the car,” she says, as we start walking, “you can give Lester a nice tip.” So her idea is to ditch him back at the car. But that may not be so easy.
We go through some back areas of the museum, and come out on a deserted street. Our car is at the end of the block; we walk back to it.
“Well, this has been great; thank you, Lester,” I say, getting out my wallet. I figure I will give him a pound. Maybe two pounds.
Terry gets in the car. “Thank you, Lester, very much,” she says.
Lester looks around nervously. “I will come with you,” he says.
“No, Lester—”
“Yes I will come—” He is pushing into the car.
“No, Lester—”
“Yes,” he says. “I will guide you to other things.”
“We’re going home now.”
“Then I will show you the road home,” he says.
“Lester, we can find the road ourselves. Get out of the car.”
And Terry says, very calmly, “I think we could use some help finding the road, Michael.”
After I get past wanting to kill her, I realize she doesn’t really believe our predicament. Somehow, in the tension of all this, Terry has decided in her own mind that Lester is not really dangerous, that nothing bad can really happen to us, that we are two happy tourists on vacation in Jamaica. She does not see us as two people in great jeopardy.
I assess my choices. I am on a deserted street with a convicted murderer who has a knife and my girlfriend in the car with him. It does not seem wise to pick a fight with Lester in this setting, and since Terry won’t get out of the car, since she seems intent on appeasing him, my next-best hope is to try to do something that does not depend on Terry’s help in any way—in other words, to start driving, to play for time, and to hope to find a policeman, a traffic accident, an event of some kind that will let us break free of Lester.
I get in the car, and start driving.
Lester, behind me, grins. He’s won. He sits to the side, far behind me, so I cannot see him in the mirror. We begin to drive through the crowded streets of Spanish Town.
This is a nightmare.
Terry is close to hysteria; she is chattering away to Lester about our life at home, about the supermarkets, the packing problems, saying anything that comes into her head. It is not like her at all.
I am driving, looking for a policeman, a traffic cop, a diversion of some sort, anything that will allow me to get rid of Lester in the back seat. I see nothing at all.
Lester says, “You have some drink?”
“No,” I say.
“No liquor?”
“No. You want liquor?”
“Yes. I want liquor now.” He is becoming demanding, more open in his control of the situation.
“We’ll have to stop at a liquor store,” I say.
“There is one on the left, up ahead.”
I pull up at the curb, and get out of the car. I leave the motor running, because I plan to let him out, then jump back in the car, slam the door shut, and race off.
As Lester climbs out from the back seat, he reaches forward and turns the ignition off.
“You left the motor running,” he says. He smiles innocently. He stands very close to me on the pavement beside the car.
I realize that it’s only in the movies that people jump back in the car, slam the door, give the guy the finger and race off. In real life—which is unfortunately where I am right now with this guy—in real life this would never work. I couldn’t get back in the car fast enough in real life. Anyway, he has turned the engine off.
Now, standing with him on the pavement, I see the knife handle protruding above his belt.
“I need money,” he says.
I give him two pounds.
“Oh, mon, liquor in Jamaica expensive, mon,” he says.
I give him five pounds. He nods, smiling.
I hate the way I feel; I hate the powerlessness and the fear. I am on the outskirts of a slum town in Jamaica, and some guy who may or may not be a convict, who may or may not have killed somebody, who may or may not intend to use that knife on me or on Terry, effectively holds us hostage on a corner in front of a liquor store at three in the afternoon while cars drive by on the busy street. And I can’t seem to think of anything to do.
“Go on in and get what you want,” I say, “and we’ll wait out here.”
Even as I say it, I feel like a fool. I don’t convince myself for an instant, and I certainly don’t convince Lester.
Lester starts to laugh, a high-pitched, unpleasant laugh.
“Oh, mon. I go in that place, you drive away, mon.”
“No, no. We’ll wait right here.”
Lester shakes his head pityingly. “Oh, mon. You think me stupid? You come with me inside.”
“No, Lester.”
“Yes. You come
with me.”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“I have to stay with the car.”
“Then you stay, your wife come inside with me.”
“No, Lester.”
“Yes,” he says, and his eyes narrow. He is getting angry. Powerful tension is building. Terry, in the passenger seat, is looking over at us, following the conversation.
Lester bunches his fists. I am wondering who is inside the liquor store and whether they will help me when the fight breaks out. Lester is looking at me in an appraising way, and I can feel the tension still building, and suddenly he says, “Nice watch.”
He is looking at my watch. The plastic Casio. I look at it, too.
“Very expensive, that watch, yes?”
“No, not really.”
“In Jamaica, that watch expensive.”
“Maybe. I don’t know about that.”
“Expensive watch in Jamaica,” Lester says. “Imported.”
“I see.”
Now the tension is dissipating, because we are talking about the watch, which is all right with me. I am suddenly very interested in the watch myself.
“You let me see your watch?”
He holds out his hand. It is perfectly clear what he intends. And as far as I am concerned, he can have it if he wants it.
I say, “You can’t have it, Lester.”
“No, no. Just to see.”
“Then you’ll give it back?”
“Oh yeah, mon.”
So in the end I let him convince me for a while, talk me into it, and I take the watch off, and Lester puts it on his own wrist, and during the moment he is trying to buckle the band on his wrist, I jump in the car, start the engine, and race away.
In the rearview mirror, I see him laughing and shaking his head. Then he goes into the liquor store. Then the car goes around a curve, and Lester is behind us.
And I think, The battery was almost dead anyway.
We are driving back over the mountains toward Ocho Rios. I’ve gotten past the sense of shock, past the period of shivering as if I have a fever, and now I’m angry. Really angry. Terry is trying to placate me. “I’ll buy you a new watch, Michael. Anyway, it was only a Casio.”
“That’s not the point!”
“Well, what’s the point? It was just a watch.”
“Terry. You said so yourself. You were scared.”
“I was a little scared, yes. Not really. I never thought he would hurt us.”