Wednesday, May 9, 2007
Lance Bonner - Jessop Goes First
32, 5'10" 190 pounds. He is a
lightskinned black man, the child of a black Jamaican prostitute and a
German sailor who for some reason insisted that the child take his
name. He has, since childhood, been fascinated by tattoos and tattoo
art, in fact this fascination is what drove him to come to the US in
the first place. Both his arms and his upper body are covered with
drawings from Conan the Barbarian (Marvel comics version, circa 1983).
His mother had, while growing up in
a Catholic girls' home in Jamaica, become addicted to American true
crime tabloids and at the time of her death had a collection of more
than 30,000 issues of seedy pulp periodicals, the majority of which had
been read at one time or another by her young son. The first thing he
had ever read on his own had been an issue of Real PI in which, among
other things, a young black man had been kidnapped and raped to death
by a chapter of the female wing of the Ku Klux Klan.
Bonner had become accustomed to and
comfortable with violence at an early age, due both to the available
reading material, and to his mother's stories of her abusive clients.
At age thirteen he began accompanying his mother on her nightly rounds
in the wealthier neighorhoods of Kingston where she made housecalls.
Doreen Bonner serviced both male and female clients, some of whom were
alcoholic and/or of a violent disposition. His job was to protect his
mother.
Bonner's weapon of choice (but not
the only one) is a small razorblade which he keeps taped to the back of
his neck just below his hairline. With it has been known to cut throats
and inflict other mortal wounds. His slight, stooped frame and mild
disposition tend to make him blend into the background, forgotten until
the moment he chooses to strike. Bonner has been the prime suspect in 4
murder cases in Jamaica, ranging from 1989 to 2001. None of the victims
were ever found and Bonner was never charged.
In 2001, Bonner got a job on a
work-visa as a a favor from one of his mother's politically connected
clients. He was employed to pick watermelons and apples on Eagle
Jessup's farm in Craw County, Florida. He arrived in March of 2001, and
in June, got news that his mother, Doreen, had died. In December, when
his visa expired, he decided to stay in Florida and pursue his dream of
covering his upper body with tattoos. An acquaintance he had made
while tending both the legal aspects on Jessop's farm and those
more less above-ground ones, a man they called Scooby, was more than
willing to get him somewhere to live in exchange for services rendered.
In addition to working for Scooby,
Bonner operates as a freelance hit-man. His "agent" contacts him via
coded classified ads in the Gilvert community paper, The Lizard.
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