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the river when we motor past the white hanging roots of the mangrove that look like some gray dreadlocks. Long shadow and orange light everywhere you look. The ibises already crowd out the riverbank for the night.
    In a bend in the river, I could make out a jetty, a rough-up cement-floor gazebo, and a narrow brick bungalow with about three little storefronts where they cook and serve the shrimps. Most days about five or six people cook and sell shrimp and bake crab from there. Only a fat woman cleaning up the place for the night was left.
    And there he was—the man. Sitting under a almond tree smoking a cigarette and eating shrimp from some foil. Boops guide the boat against the jetty, and both of us climb up onto the concrete landing, and while I sat down on one of the wooden bench, Boops tie up the boat and walk behind the shop to piss.
    I was watching the man who barely look around when we slide in. He was short. Red-skinned. The most ordinary, pimpleface man you would ever see. His hair was low-low on his head, and you could see the balding start already. He wasn’t a fit man or anything. He was not the kinda man I did expect to see.
    Boops walk around from the side and come sit beside me. The man watch Boops moving past like he really in a different world. It is then that he look at me like he want to ask what I was doing in his kingdom, and right away I know why my spirit never take to this man. Disdain. Like the man have disdain for everything around him. This one is not pride, self-assurance—them is good things. This one is disdain, like him is better than everybody else. I don’t like those kinda people. And worse, when you red and disdainful, you have no basis but that you might a be a lucky sperm that make a move in a certain time in history. Nothing that you have done.
    “Mr. Alvaranga?”
    “Who asking?” He spit out a shrimp shell in his hand and throw it on the ground. “I say, who asking?”
    “No problem, sir. You have answered my question.”
    As I start to walk back to the boat, hear him, “Who the rass is you, anyway?”
    I turn my head sideways to talk behind me. “Nobody, bossman. Not a damn soul. You know what? Call me Duppy.”
    Boops laugh out.
    “Hey, Boops, who the rass is this man? Why you bring him out here for?”
    “Take it easy, Alva. Him say him have a message from your wife.” Boops look at me as if to say I must do what I said I was doing.
    “She just want to know you living and healthy,” I explained.
    “Fuck the bitch!” he shouted. “Boops, don’t do that again or I will fuck you up myself.”
    Boops laugh and start up the boat.
    While we were going back down river toward the sea, Boops tell me that sometimes Alvaranga sleep in one of the shacks on the landing.
    So, when I’d called One Drop to meet me in Santa Cruz, I was calling from Treasure Beach. Not Kingston. As I said, I already knew where the man was before I made the bet, even how he was lying down.
    I called Cynthia with the news two days later. I needed time to clear my head. I was in Kingston, driving out to the airport to meet a rep for an airline that wanted to know when a rival was going to change its fares. The harbor was gray and choppy on my right and the hills dusty on the far side of it and the city, spreading and rising up and up killing itself one person at a time every two or so hours.
    I didn’t tell her anything about anything when she picked up. Just small talk. I wanted to give her the news in person, more like in her person. I wanted to be saying, I did it for you, baby. I did it for you. Is you me done the fucker for , as she made me come.
    One Drop call me as I was waiting for my contact in a far end of the parking lot. Hear him: “You owe me five thousand and a lo mein.”
    “For what?”
    Him say, “How you mean?”
    I turn down the radio. “So you arrest him?”
    “Arrest him?”
    “Yeah. You say you find him.”
    “The man dead, My Lord. Dead. One shot in the head.”
    “You