Mark Wignall | The link between crime and a fortune is real

The immediate link between that is to ask the dead. It is they who say who know all. We know, of course, who the pretenders are. The real big hitters tend to make stuff, even though Elon Musk has had his odd moments.

And I have lived long enough to see one happen up front. This means I knew the players, the personalities, and the lives of many of them. Cindy would have been the star. I knew her from Grants Pen Road days. She was the prettiest barmaid working in the area. She was about 18 and sleeping with her boss. It was normal. Her boss was over 40 years her senior.

She took no backchat from anyone, including the boys buying the beer and helping to pay her personal rent.

She was feisty and highly ambitious, and he had few rules. She hustled, eventually bought the bar, and moved it to a more lucratively active community.

Each year, she did that and stepped up in life. She even provided me with a link to the victim in a most violent kidnapping in the Whitehall Avenue neighbourhood. The little girl found herself in a rape factory.

Such was part of the hell that Cindy lived through. By this time, Cindy was sure she was ready to start building her house. The man spoke softly through his bearded face and short stature, not how she had imagined him.

She had started to read and knew it was expected. The next time he smiled and allowed her the privilege of seeing her gun. “Mi did deh yah di day it happen,” said a witness. Suddenly she was dead.

“She did get the threat of a gunshot, but dem know seh mi have strength too.” Cindy thought that the guns in her lane could bark louder and bite hotter than the threat.

Those are now making money and they have expanded. They are to be commended. They are into towns and hot rural hamlets. One can see the opulence oozing from them. Cindy knew better than to tell me. She had a little son and, for the sake of her child, I would have told her to be calm.

Many people nearby know of it, but they remain quiet. Some are afraid. We tend to be used to stories of huge fortunes and brown skins, believing that when the brown planter class steal fortunes from the government or from each other, they tend to use the large building societies or the banks. And thick documents. They would be right. In life, Cindy did not have those options. She barely made it through primary school and, unlike those buying and selling lawyers, it was rough much of the time.

A certain popular item has been the subject of a very heavy advertising campaign. It is not that it was never a very heavy seller, but the physical space occupied by Cindy has expanded and the business branches have grown exponentially.

Someone tells me the product tastes good. I refuse to eat it out of the respect I have for my deceased friend. It is in all the hotspots, just as much as the commodity has expanded in range.

The very first time I had that most famous fast food, I was in my teens and none of my friends had grey hair. Now it is all over and Cindy’s space pushes another brand. Maybe this is how life ought to be. The big fish always eating up the small fish.

LIFE WELL LIVED, MR SPARROW

I took in the Mighty Sparrow in 1971 at the Holiday Inn Resort in the smoky, mysterious Montego Bay. I was 21 and Sparrow was the master of twisting serious things and bringing them into joke territory. He nearly took away my woman that night, even though she was ‘borrow’ goods. He and Lord Kitchener were two Trinidadian wits who were far ahead of their times among all the wits in the Caribbean.

There was nothing left to explore in the double entendre, as he had captured it all and then invented some. In Phillip, My Dear, he writes about an actual 1980s incident where an intruder entered the Queen’s bedroom. Sparrow suggests he was “big like you but younger”.

It doesn’t get more cheeky than that.

LUCKY WITH WATER

I must confess that these times one is excessively lucky to have a special water source. I can remember the first and only time, in 2009, that the owner of Catherine’s Peak invited me and Chupski on a tour of the facility, from the very unimpressive spring source to the innards of the factory where the scientific workings operated.

Lately, the National Water Commission (NWC )has provided me with a name and a phone number that delivers water at the most crucial times. I know the feeling of guilt, but the women, those crazy creatures, tell me to listen to myself at those times and forgo all else.

I confess that my heart rests with Matthew Samuda. He is saying just about all the right things and it is easy to see why he has the most difficult job in Jamaica. He cannot control the rain and direct it to fall on Hermitage, Hope, or the most needed parts of western Jamaica.

My sympathies are with Dr Horace Chang, who has a seemingly impossible job to complete. Jamaicans are naturally rebellious and look forward to a fight. Whenever there is a drop-off in the murder rate, it seems to me that the guns desire to go on leave. In all of my treks through the most impossible areas, I have yet to meet someone who says to me that they were forced by their gun to give up their bad ways. It spoke to them in bed one night. Not going to happen.

Mark Wignall is a political and public affairs analyst. Send feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com and mawigsr@gmail.com