by Huss, JA
“Hold on,” I say. And when the blast of machine-gun fire dies down long enough for someone to replace a clip, I seize the opportunity to shout, “Fok is your problem, man? How the fok did this get so cocked up?”
My American counterpart, Wallace, shouts back at me in his thick American accent, “Fuck you, you cracker-ass motherfucker! Racist piece a’ shit! Trying to cheat me out of my ice, cocksucker? Who the fuck you think you dealing with? Dirty-ass blood-diamond-dealing son of a bitch!”
Does Wallace not see the irony in impugning my integrity for selling this particular type of diamond when he is, in fact, the one buying this particular type of diamond? Apparently not. “Racist? Bru, I’m coloured!”
“Colored? That’s some racist shit right there, motherfucker!”
“No! That’s what I am! There’s white, Zulu, Swazi, coloured… The list goes on, boet! My great-grandad was a Zulu oke! Technically, I’m mixed-race, bru! Coloured!” This is an odd time to be offering someone a lesson in South African ethnology, but…
“I ain’t give a fuck what you call it! You look white to me, motherfucker! And you still a racist, cheating, blood-diamond-dealing motherfucker! Motherfucker!”
I can’t help but ruminate, Bru, you knew the diamonds had conflict when you agreed to buy them. That’s why you wanted them. Quality, purity, and at a portion of the cost of lesser diamonds mined more… legitimately.
But, I suppose, the racist accusation isn’t completely without some rationale. Illogical though it may be. Wallace heard one of my guys call him a kaffir last month when we were all in New York putting this deal together on paper. Which is not OK. And I get why he might still be upset. I mean, I beat the living fokken daylights out of a schoolmate once when he used that word in reference to me when he found out I had mixed blood.
But, I mean, fok, man… That particular employee of mine who said it is now dead. Quite dead. I’m certain. I killed him myself. And I did that as a show of good faith and as an apology for his unconscionable behavior.
Jesus, Wallace.
Some people harbor their negative feelings far too close to their hearts. And that is simply terrible business.
“Wallace, my china, you didn’t come to Cape Town for this! You came for product! Let’s—”
“Product you’re fuckin’ light on!”
“Hey! I’m a lot of things but I’m not a cheat, man! Maybe it’s just your scale! Do you have it set to ounces and not grams, by chance?”
“Suck my dick!”
“C’mon, bru! Honestly! Let’s just lay down guns and talk for a tick!”
“Fuck you, bitch!” And the machine gun commences again.
Yes. Fuck me, indeed.
“Lars? You’ll have to yell! What happened?”
“Christine took a tumble,” is what I hear in reply.
And then I hear nothing else. Not the sound of Lars on the phone. Not the machine-gun fire. Not the screaming and yelling. Nothing.
I’ve known people to describe a sensation like getting cold chills up and down their spines when they are confronted with situations or information that might give them worry. I don’t. Get cold chills, I mean.
No, when confronted with information that taxes my nervous system, I get something akin to a throbbing headache but that pulses in my limbs instead. It feels like my body is swelling to twice its normal size. I imagine it’s what that oke Bruce Banner feels like when he turns into that Hulk fucker.
“Fok do you mean, ‘she took a tumble,’ bru?”
“Details still coming in. Seems she wasn’t exactly where she was supposed to be.”
“What do you mean? Where the fok was she?”
“She took care of the thing she was supposed to but then she told Reggie and Lex there was something else she had to handle.”
I can’t process everything he’s saying to me. Because it’s confusing. And because of the fire fight. And because Hulk is taking over. I cut to the chase.
“Is Christine all right, man?”
“Yes and no.”
“Fok does that mean?”
I don’t like losing control in front of anyone. But right now, with the chaos swirling all around, I don’t think anyone will notice.
“It means that… we’re not totally sure! Somebody…”
“Somebody what, bru?”
The laaitie has his head poked from round the SUV. There’s a red dot in the center of his forehead. In an act of impulse, I spin round from my metal barrier and immediately spy the oke holding the pistol with the laser sight attached. I have no laser sight attached to my pistol. Because it’s foolish and serves largely to just give away your position. Also, it has always suggested to me that it signals that you don’t know how to aim terribly well.
I do know how to aim terribly well.
I pop a single shot into the head of the oke who don’t know how to shoot, look at the laaitie again to make sure he’s still there, see that he is and is looking mightily and rightly grateful, and I duck back behind my improvised safety wall.
“Somebody fokken WHAT?” I ask again.
“It seems like somebody might have thrown her off a roof.”
If I really was that Hulk fucker, this would be the point where the buttons would begin popping off my shirt and the seams of my lekker suit jacket would start to rip.
“Fokken say that again.” I realize that my voice may be too quiet for Lars to hear over the noise in the warehouse, but I can’t seem to make my vocal cords vibrate above a whisper.
“Reggie and Lex was out front of this other building, keeping watch while she was handling whatever she was handling, and they heard something up above, like a gun going off—”
“Her?”
“Not her. Someone else. Like from a pistol, they said. And they looked up and saw what they say looked like a struggle. Reggie says he was about to run up and see what the fok, but then suddenly a body came spilling over the side.”
This is where my feet would be swelling and smashing through my shoes, and my pants splitting down the sides. It feels like that’s what’s happening anyway.
Lars goes on, “Lex says he could tell it was Christine right away, so he stepped to try to catch her. Figured she was only four stories up, maybe he could break her fall.”
“And?” I shout with what I hope sounds like impatience rather than fear. Which is actually what it is.
“He mostly did. Broke his arm in the process.”
“No offense to Lex, but I don’t give a fok. What happened to Christine?”
“She hit her head. Hard.”
I close my eyes and take two breaths. Suddenly what I’m going to have to do in a matter of moments is becoming very clear. And I need to focus.
“Is she alive?” I ask.
“She is,” he says.
Thank Christ.
“Where is she now?”
“Reggie and Lex took her to doctor.”
“One of ours?”
“Of course.”
I breathe in again through my nose and say, “Aces.”
“And I have her in apartment thirty-six.”
“What? Why?”
“Because she’ll be safe there.”
“Fok, man! I can think of twenty places she’d be safer and I’m not in a position to be problem-solving right now!” A bullet wings past. “Are you with her?” I ask.
“Not at the moment.”
“Fokken hell, Lars!”
“I can go back.”
“No! No! God damn it, no.”
“Well then, who do you want me to have stay with her?”
“No one.”
“No one? What—”
“Fokken no one, bru! She has weapons?”
“Yeah. Course.”
“Fine. I’ll have someone check in on her straight away.”
“Who?”
I press ‘end’ on the call and slip my mobile back into my lekker suit pocket. Then I give Wallace and his men the only chance they�
�re going to get.
“Wallace!” I shout. And maybe the Hulk has crept his way into my throat, because suddenly everything stops. It’s almost like I’m imagining it. “Wallace, I’m fokken sorry that that pielkop who worked for me insulted you and I’m sorry that you think we’re trying to fokken cheat you, man. But he’s proper dead and we are not cheating you. If there’s a mix-up, I promise you, bru, on my mother’s soul, that we will make it right. But I’m gatvol with this shit. Something’s come up and I have to go. So, unless you and everyone standing within twenty feet of you want to die in the next ten seconds, I recommend you put your fokken guns down and let’s sort this later.”
There’s a beat wherein it sounds like Wallace is maybe mulling it over. My men, including the laaitie whose name I need to learn, are all staring at me like I’ve gone round the bend. Then, after about eight or so seconds, Wallace shouts, “Fuck you and your mama, motherfucker!”
I close my eyes, take one last breath, and think, Don’t you die on me, Christine. I’ll be there as soon as I can. In the meantime, I’ll be sending the only person I know I can trust, one hundred percent, to watch over you. Maybe it’s an insane idea, but simply, I love you more than I hate him.
And I don’t know if my father’s advice was actually right or if it’s just that when the Hulk shows up, everything changes. But the absence of fear I feel as I march toward Wallace and his men, their bullets whizzing by me, is authentic.
And the fear in their eyes as I place a single bullet into every. One. Of. Their. Brains. Is very, very real indeed.
CHAPTER THREE - DANNY
“Sure,” I say. “Sure. Alec. Right.” And all that comes out low. It comes out angry. It comes out dangerous. I breathe through the next few moments, my eyes on hers, doing my best to keep it all under control.
She’s staring at me with those wide hazel eyes of hers. Looking at me like I’ve got something she needs. Looking at me like I’ve got answers.
I’ve waited a long time for that look. Long time. Three years? Four, maybe?
And now here it is.
Fake.
She doesn’t even know who I am.
She closes her eyes, my intense glare becoming too much for her, and then her hand drifts up. Her fingertips absently swipe at the soft fluttering of hair just behind her ear. She turns her head, sighs like… I dunno. Like she’s sad, maybe. That’s probably just me projecting. And then I see the moment when her fingers find the gash on the back of her head.
Because she winces. Even with her eyes closed.
“Are you OK?” I ask, the old me back.
“I don’t know.”
“Come on. Get your shit. We’re outta here.”
“But. But something happened…”
I hear what she doesn’t say. Those ellipses at the end of her sentence tell me more than I want to know right now.
“Danny,” I say, filling in her blanks. “I’m Danny. And yeah, something happened. You’ve got Alec to thank for that. Now get your shit and let’s go.”
Fucking asshole Alec. Who the fuck does he think he is walking back into our lives after all these years? After all that bullshit. I’m gonna make him pay for this. For all of it. Every fucking thing he ever did is coming due for that motherfucker.
“No,” she says, stepping backwards. “I’m not going anywhere with you. I don’t even know you.”
“I know you,” I say, poking my finger into her chest. She hates that. But instead of slapping me in the face or punching me in the gut, she just says…
“Not good enough.”
“What he said, Christine, whatever he promised you—it’s a lie. That’s all that motherfucker does. Don’t let the dreamy accent fool you. He’s one hundred percent evil. And the whole reason you’re here in this shit hole is because he asked you for a favor and you said yes. I told you a long time ago. That motherfucker ever comes asking, your answer is always no. But do you ever listen?”
“What favor?”
“What do ya fuckin’ think, Christine? What do ya fuckin’ do?”
Her eyes dart three places in quick succession.
A blood-stained pillow on the couch.
The floorboards in front of the couch.
The closet.
So she’s got three guns in here. Probably the ones she used for that job. Which means we’ve gotta get rid of them. And that pisses me off. “We’ll ditch the guns along the way.”
“No,” she says. “I’m not leaving here. Not with you.”
“You don’t have a choice. I’m not askin’ you. I’m taking you.”
“You can try to take me.” It comes out like old Christine. Little sixteen-year-old badass Christine.
And goddammit, that hurts. Fuckin’ hurts every time I get those little glimpses of how things used to be.
“Look,” I growl. “I don’t have time for this shit. I just spent the last two hours thinking you were dead. That your fucking luck finally ran out. That your skills just aren’t what they used to be. That your past came back, or some enemy got you for some long-ago hit that you forgot all about but he still remembers like it was goddamned yesterday. And,” I say, putting my hands up on either side of my head, fingers outstretched like I want to grab her neck and strangle the stupid out of her, “and that you left me. For him. That the two of you have been on some fucking yacht off the coast of the Cook Islands counting your goddamned diamonds, yucking it up on how you pulled one over on that dumbass Danny.”
I stare at her. I’m breathing hard. Like a fucking bull staring down a matador. Ready to charge.
“Or,” I say, barely a whisper now, “that he had you. Because you fell for his shit again. His lies. And he got you into something new. Something bad. Something worse than all the other motherfucking somethings he’s already gotten you into.”
I stop. Swallow.
She just stares back at me.
“You being dead would, of course, be the worst-case scenario. But that last one was a very close second. Because Christine, if he’s gotten you tangled up in his web of lies again you might as well be dead. It’s only a matter of time before that payment comes due. And I know you don’t fear death. You’ve said it so many times I can hear you screaming it at me now, even in your silence. But this won’t be death. You have no idea what kind of shit he’s gotten himself into these days. They won’t kill you, Christine. They’ll rape you first. Torture you until you’re begging for death. So save your I’m-all-good bullshit for someone who doesn’t know better. You’re not all good. You don’t even know who you are. Or what you did to earn this day. And you’re not staying here. So get your fucking shit together and let’s fucking go.”
She turns her head. It’s almost a no. Almost.
But then she bites her lip and exhales.
There’s a vulnerability in her expression that’s not usually there. And last week if she’d given me that expression I’d have fucking melted like a piece of chocolate in the glove box on a hot summer day. My heart would’ve exploded with satisfaction.
But today it scares me.
Something happened to her.
Something bad.
But what else is new?
Bad things happened to all of us.
LONG TIME AGO
“Just do it,” Alec is telling Christine. “He’s drunk. He won’t even see you.”
“What the fuck do you mean, he’s drunk? You said he wasn’t gonna be there.”
“Relax, bru,” Alec says. “He partied hard last night, it couldn’t be helped. Only way to get the information, yeah? So just go in there, do it the way I showed you, and all is good. Life is good.”
Christine’s hazel eyes find mine. She’s not asking me to save her. God fucking forbid she asks someone to save her. She’s asking for backup.
My grin back says everything she needs to know. I’ll be there for you, that grin says. I got you.
I love her. It’s dumb because she’s almost like my little sister. I’ve been ta
king care of her since she was ten years old. The minute I turned eighteen I busted her out of that last foster home and she never looked back once.
Almost like my little sister. But almost doesn’t count in biology.
Right now she’s my number-one partner in crime. She’s the main reason I get up in the mornings. Maybe the only reason.
We live together now. With Alec. It’s actually one of his dad’s places, but that guy is never here. Always flying somewhere. I swear to God, Alec talks about taking planes the way most people talk about taking buses.
But there’s a price to pay if we want to stay with Alec. And that’s why we’re standing here in this alley looking over at the house across Race Street.
“You’re sure about the safe?” she asks him.
“I’m sure,” Alec says, petting her hair like she’s his favorite pet. It makes me angry when he does that. Like he’s got a claim on her. Like she’s his when she’s mine. “And don’t worry. I’ll distract him.”
His South African accent is thick. His t’s come out like a machine gun. His skin is still tanned from the rays of some faraway sun. Everything about him is exotic compared to the cold, gray day in this upper-class city neighborhood.
“Just get the diamond,” he says. And then he does something that will change her life forever. It might be the most formative moment she’s had in all fourteen years of formative moments.
He lifts up her dirty t-shirt and tucks a pistol into the waist of her pants.
TODAY
“There,” I say, pointing to the floorboards. “Get the sniper rifle. I’ll get the shotgun in the closet, and you stuff that pistol under the pillow into your pants like old times, and let’s get the fuck out of here.”
I pull my jacket aside so she can see I’m carrying too. Her eyes don’t move, but she sees it. I’m sure of that.
“Christine,” I say. “You need to trust me. Don’t keep making the same mistake over and over again. You just know his name right now, but pretty soon all the other things you know about him will come crashing back. And then you’re gonna thank me.”
CHAPTER FOUR - CHRISTINE