Black River saying there was this man who was offering triple money for them to work without condom. Then when he was finished with them now, the man would just throw the thousand dollar on them belly and tell them to go get test for AIDS.
According to Drop, at least three of them come to him direct and tell him this personally. And when I say personally, just read between the lines and come to your own conclusion about what kinda relationship Drop as a police might be having with the prostitute them.
When Drop telling me about what the girls tell him, is like him start to laugh. When I ask him what was going on, him say that the idiot didn’t know that most of the woman doing their business in Black River learn how to use female condom, so even though he thought him was getting a bareback ride, the woman them was well saddled.
Then Drop face change. Him look off toward the square, then down at him loafers, then look at me again.
Two of the younger girls, well, they was careless Ethiopians, and they never had the protection, and him blood really boil when they came to him.
Officially, if one of the girls test positive, the man was going get a murder charge. But between the two of us, Drop knew why the supe had put him on the case. Before that man dead him was going know what it was like to live without a cock or balls while rotting in prison for life.
So I laugh and told him how the man’s wife hire me to find him because she was concerned about his health. I tell Drop that the way things look, maybe somebody was going to done the man before I could help him.
“Why you want to help a piece a shit like that?” Drop say.
“I work for pay. Woman hire me to save the man. So can’t be helped.”
And this is how you get police involve.
“Well, I going to find him before you, Brown,” Drop said.
I laughed.
So who was going find him first? My skills is something that Drop respect. Five thousand Jamaican and a Chinese dinner. Wasn’t no big bet.
The thing is, I knew I’d won already, because I knew where the fucker was, even how he was lying down, but Drop didn’t need to know that.
You see, the day I went down to meet with One Drop was not the first time I’d gone down. I’d gone down there the day before, not to Santa Cruz up in the hills there, but way down south, even more south than Black River, down in a place name Treasure Beach. Down there is what you call real country. It don’t even have a town. Is just red niggers, blue sea, and brown grass. The perfect place to get lost.
From what I had gathered through my intelligence, there was a routine to his days. Him would go out with the fishermen most mornings then spend the afternoons smoking weed on the beach till night. Then when night come now, him would catch a taxi down to Black River or even go as far as Montego Bay to do his work.
I ask a big-belly man with the smoothest skin you could ever see and some wild stick-up sea-salt rusty locks—fellow they call Boops, who used to be a serious fisherman but decide to use his boat for sightseeing for tourist and excursion up Black River from the sea—if he knew where the man was. He said the man was at the rocks this morning, but catch a ride with one of the tourist excursion up river and soon come back.
Well, I waited and when the boat come back the man was not in it, but the captain of the boat told me that he left the man by the shrimp dock a few miles up river. He said that the man sometimes just stay up there for the night because he had a woman there.
So I ask Boops to give me a run up the river, and I promise to pay for gas and a little something.
We move out as the sun dropping down behind the sea. We head out south like we going to Venezuela, then turn west and follow the coast until we come to the sweet-and-salt coolness of the river mouth. Boops push the boat toward the river mouth past where one of those flat-bottom tourist boat and a few fishing boat was dock.
A light mist take over