by Frank Lamour
The House of the Vegetable
by
Frank Lamour
Chapter 1
As far as Don knew, Lesley Lam had been born in Hong Kong but had grown up in South Africa. He was in his fifties, over six foot, and—in contrast to Don, who was more on the diminutive side of things—considerably rotund.
Lesley sat barefoot on a dark leather couch, in a pair of shorts and “wife-beater” vest, facing a huge projector screen rolled down from the ceiling.
He was the type of guy that, if you had suggested he had a girl’s name, might box your nose in. Calling him “Les” was probably a worse idea. (Don Hornblower also didn’t feel in much of a position to start making fun of people’s names.)
On the coffee table in front of Les, were weapons—or at least weapon parts. Laid out on a cloth, were the disassembled pieces of a bronze, fifty-calibre Desert Eagle. Don didn’t know too much about guns, but the Desert Eagle he recognised— its ridiculously large size making it a popular choice for use in movies.
Around the pistol components were cleaning implements, and Lesley was busy rubbing at one of the parts with an earbud. Also on the table were a number of 500ml Dragon energy drink cans—several looking violently crushed—and a bowl of unshelled pumpkin seeds, seed shells littering much of the table surface and carpet.
“How’s business?” Lesley asked, focusing Don’s attention.
“Uh, good,” Don lied.
“Sit down. You’re making me nervous,” Lesley said, cracking a pumpkin seed with his teeth, the wet shell of which he flicked onto the carpet.
Don chose the armchair next to the couch and sat down on the edge. He declined the offer of an energy drink, not sure it would help his current state of mind, but was enthusiastically handed one anyway.
Lesley finished wiping at the pistol part with the earbud and now began to assemble the weapon.
The movie still loud, Don’s attention was drawn to it—the scene on the screen currently depicted a man being brutally beaten.
Lesley picked up the remote, still holding the partly assembled gun in one hand, and lowered the volume. He returned the remote to the table, and proceeded to finish putting together the pistol.
Then pulling back the slide to cock the big fifty-calibre, he let the butt of the gun casually rest on his knee, the cavernous barrel mouth now at about the level of Don’s increasingly soupy-feeling gut.
Don knew the gun was unloaded—at least he was fairly sure, he hadn’t remembered seeing any bullets visible amongst the components, but then he hadn’t been paying attention, having gotten caught up in what was going on the huge screen.
Mouth rapidly parching, Don swallowed. He tried to keep the action as discreet as possible, but the obvious bobbing up and down of his Adam’s apple surely betrayed him.
Lesley depressed the trigger and the huge Desert Eagle clacked dryly.
The fat man then laughed for a bit as though this had been the greatest gag ever before picking up a small chamois and beginning again to wipe at the pistol.
Don, instead of feeling relieved, now just experienced something more like intense annoyance.
It was a couple of months into the job that Don had first learned that the shop he was working at was not Lesley’s primary source of income, but simply one of the legitimate “side pies” that the man had his sausage-like fingers in—one of the many businesses that Lesley used to launder the money he generated at his real job—that of mid to, moderately high-level, lawbreaker.
Chapter 2
Les’s shop was a second hand bookshop on 7th. Apparently Lesley was a big reader. Don was not so sure.
Before Don knew who Les was, he’d spent a fair amount of time on 7th and at the bookshop.
After completing school, with days to fill, ostensibly looking for work, he’d kill a fair part of a day quietly browsing Lam’s Books and occasionally, with the few pennies from his allowance—and so as not to come across as a freeloader—he bought a couple of the paperbacks from the bargain bin.
There was a little old lady, Eunice, who manned the shop and Don would usually did little more than exchange a silent greeting with her, before heading in to browse.
Don had been born with the unfortunate affliction of a skull that was disproportionately small for the rest of his body. It was this peculiar appearance he often put down as the reason for his lack of wild social life.
Don’s given name was actually Adonis and he did sometimes wonder if his mother had a very dark sense of humour. Most likely she had just been trying to be kind, but the times other kids had found out about his name, well, events subsequent had not always gone wonderfully.
Don’s grandmother (his parents had really only been in their teens when he’d been conceived—his mother now living somewhere in Vietnam—it had been left to his widowed grandmom to step in and raise him), always told him it was on the inside that counted—and all of that. And she was probably right, but it still didn’t make getting out there any easier. He had had a good friend in school, someone of similar low-key temperament, but him now gone off to Onderstepoort had resulted in Don’s already not really existent social scene imploding.
It was the day that Don had (perhaps) made the mistake of initiating some small talk with Eunice, that she had offered Dean a job.
“I need someone to help out, day shift. Would you be interested? I just see you, um, don’t seem to be that busy.”
Unable to give a good enough reason why not, Dean had found himself employed.
Not long after sharing the news with his gran, to Don’s surprise, she had put the old house up for sale and begun making plans to move into the retirement village where she had for many years worked. And then in what felt like no time at all Don was left to his own devices.
◆◆◆
The salary from the bookshop was not much, but Don’d managed to find a cheap place, through his Grandmother’s contacts, near his old house. An old-school, unupgraded domestic worker’s quarters. So no hot water, or plaster on the walls, but at least in a good suburb (Don definitely on the side of choosing a bad place in good neighbourhood over a good place in bad neighbourhood—if given the option).
For transport, he’d been handed down his gran’s old Citi Golf. It was not too heavy on petrol and so by limiting its use to and from work, and fuelling himself on a simple diet of coarse sorghum and… well, mostly coarse sorghum, he’d managed to get by (although he had recently been a bit stressed out when he read about a link between excess sorghum consumption and neck goiters).
With not too much to do at the shop, it for the most part just being him in there (Eunice doing the evening shift), he’d spent the bulk of the days just perusing his new library, and for a while there, Don considered himself reasonably lucky.
It was a few months into the job that Don began to notice some (what his gran might have referred to as) unwholesome characters had begun to frequent and hang about at the bookshop. And it was at that point Don had finally been let into the true nature of the enterprise. He supposed he had thought the turnover had been pretty low.
Don was also filled in by Eunice on how the shop was not only maybe more of laundering front (“I mean who reads anymore?”) for a brisk drug trade, amongst other things, but also that (“although Lesley does like books”) the choice of business might have been helped along by a number of boxes of books falling off the back of a truck. Or something.
“I suppose I should have mentioned it,” Eunice’d said. “You needn’t have had to know. It’s just now that Les’s malefactors have decided to make this home… I hope you don’t have a problem with it.”
Eunice herself did not seem to have a problem with the setup, confiding to
Don that it enabled her to get her supply of cannabis oil for free.
Don, taking some time to think it over, supposed he didn’t have too much of an issue with it—all parties being consenting adults and all, and, I mean, what else was he going to do? And so deciding to just put his small head down and get on with it.
Over the next few months though more and more weird characters began to hang around longer and longer, as Lam’s became increasingly the spot where the Lesley’s dealers could meet up (and maintain good public relations) with their customers.
It made sense, Don supposed, it being warm and comfortable, giving the dealers a chance to get out of their cars and off the street.
◆◆◆
The new set had started coming in progressively, at various times, now joining Don behind the counter. Initially Don had done his best not to interact too much with the rum company—simply returning to his default of keeping himself to himself and locking in to whatever book he was reading. This though, had started to change as Don found himself increasingly baited into conversation.
There were two guys in particular, often in together, with which Don had, slowly and reluctantly, found himself engaged.
The one guy, Hamza, was one of Lesley’s busier dealers. Maybe in his mid-forties, but perhaps looking more like mid-to-late eighties. He had, because of years of drug use, for long enough neglected his teeth that, as a result of the amount of work required, had chosen to just get them all pulled—both top and bottom rows—and replaced with a set of dentures.
Hamza claimed he had some years ago traded his substance addiction for a gambling one—although very recently apparently returning to drugs to combine both vices. Don had heard the man had been consuming heroic doses of some kind of speed or something to influence his luck at the table (and reportedly with some success—but then the winnings also being quickly funnelled back into the experiment).
The other guy, Ricardo de la Roche—Ricky—wasn’t a dealer but instead a customer. He would come in to buy some kind of drugs and often just stick around for the rest of the day.
Despite his name, Ricky was of full-blooded South Asian descent, having been adopted. He’d never it seemed had a job—his adoptive parents being apparently very wealthy and happy enough to keep him in sufficient cash to pay rent and (surely unknowingly) sustain his habit.
Ricky didn’t though seem to get supplied with enough to afford a car—but he lived close enough to the bookshop and the main road to walk.
He said his real father had been a hitman or something. True or not, it hadn’t seemed to have come through in the genes as he—other than suffering the occasional bout of crippling paranoia—was reasonably chilled.
Ricky was closer to Don’s age, mid-twenties, and was perhaps somewhat striking physically. Ricky not only suffered from the kind of alopecia which prevented any hair from growing anywhere on his body, but was also the process of transforming into a snake.
Being into body modification, Ricky had tattoos, piercings and huge ear tunnels, the snake thing just being the latest obsession which primarily involved the slow splitting of his tongue at home with a razor blade.
Ricky, Don thought, acted the misanthrope, but then somehow seemed to know everyone in the neighbourhood. It seemed to Don when the guy wasn’t around, half the people walking in would just be asking where Ricky was.
◆◆◆
It had taken a while, but Don had finally been offered “half a gram.”
Don had looked at the grubby little baggie in Hamza’s hand. “What is it?”
“This? Cat. Methcathinone. They call it poor man’s coke—but it’s actually better than any of the cocaine you get in this country,” Hamza had helpfully informed him.
Don’s experience with mind altering substances had up until that point been limited alcohol and the Mugg & Bean’s bottomless coffee special and so he had been understandably hesitant—that, and because meth… cathinone was not catered for in his monthly budget.
“Nah. It’s okay.”
“Take, take.” Hamza had persisted. “Les says shop staff get as much credit as they want. Pay when you can,” he’d said, waving his hand as if money was the last thing on his mind.
“I’ll split it with you. It’s no big deal,” Ricky, who had also been in at the time, leaning on the counter, had added. “You want to be a writer. How can you tell stories when you haven’t lived?”
Don hadn’t remembered telling Ricky anything about that, but at that moment it had seemed like a good enough reason.
And so consenting, he had joined Ricky in the stockroom where the snake/man had proceeded to grind up some “lines” on a framed photograph of (what had been theorised to be of) Lesley’s mother.
For Don the drug had had the effect of lighting the conversation on fire. The discourse had become easy. But not just that, stimulating, addictive, important. He was able to communicate, be sociable, witty. He seemed to get new ideas, it was like his third eye was opening or something (although after telling Ricky this he was told it was “best not to talk about such spiritual things when snorting a drug of which the ingredients included stuff like battery acid and paint thinner”).
At any rate, the following evening when Ricky had offered to split another half gram, Don had found it difficult to refuse.
Over the next few short months Don’s line of credit had extended surprisingly rapidly. Ricky coming into the shop more and more and staying longer and the two of them making more and more frequent trips to the stockroom and the portrait of Lesley’s mother. Initially starting slow, the situation soon insidiously spiralled out of control.
Hamza had, after about a month, told Don he was cut off until he paid. The order had not come down from Lesley but on Hamza’s own initiative. (Despite being an evil drug peddler and all Don thought maybe the man still felt bad for having created the monster.) The other dealers however had no such qualms, and as long as the boss was happy to extend the credit, they were happy to dish out the bags.
Don’s debt had continued to rise. Eventually it rose to a level that some professionals or execs might have scoffed at (a night out for them, not even that), but that with his wages barely covering his bills the amount became overwhelming.
While in the grips of the fugue, Don had gotten the idea (which had also seemed like a good one at the time) that he was going to cover the debt by selling his car.
He had reasoned he didn’t use the vehicle other than to get to and from work and could save on petrol by swapping it for a cheap motorcycle. He’d then have enough to pay off the debt and maybe still even have some left over for a couple more nights with the portrait of Mrs Lam.
And it might’ve worked had Don unfortunately not had the bad luck of, one rainy night, after too much drugs, his co-ordination all shot to hell, skidding off a quiet street and ploughing the Golf through someone’s garden wall.
Don recalled stumbling from the vehicle. The owner of the house, a small, old guy emerging sleepily in his underwear. The house was across the road from a filling station and the two young guys who’d been putting in petrol at the time of the accident had (perhaps identifying with the plight of a fellow substance abuser) rushed across to Don’s defence, both swearing blind, that they’d seen him skid on a rock (although not offering up any further information as to the location of said obstacle).
In the end, the old guy hadn’t been too mad, and Don had been able to make good by just going back the next day, with a delivery of bricks and mortar, to fix the wall himself. The final colour of the redone section had not matched, and the brickwork had not been particularly straight, but luckily it had been good enough.
The Citi Golf however was written off and with no insurance, all Don had managed to get back was a pittance for scrap. Minus the towing costs and minus the cost of the bricks and paint and a new, second-hand, Raleigh bicycle, he was left with pennies.
The accident though had at least been enough of a wake-up call for Don to give up the cat.
It’d been tough, but not really as difficult as he’d expected. He’d only snorted after all (common wisdom, as far as he knew, suggesting smoking to be the far more addictive. Either that or he just didn’t have a long term, addictive personality).
Ricky had also, perhaps fortuitously, around that time moved house. Having been kicked out of his flat—Don wasn’t sure for what, probably just general degeneracy—and now at a new spot too far for him to walk to the shop. That meant, although he did miss the guy a bit, Don now longer had the additional external, if not pressure, at least encouragement to partake.
So clean for six months now, and trying to save what he could, but his bank balance just not ever seeming able to rise much higher than what he’d had left after the accident.
And through it all Don’s wages had been paid on time, and no word sent down—until that afternoon, of course, when he had been summoned over to see Les.
Chapter 3
Lesley fixed his mean eyes on Don. “Did you know there are currently about four-and-a-half thousand South Africans waiting for organ transplants?” he said.
Don shook his head—not sure how much he knew about organ transplants, but sure he did not feel good about the direction the meeting was taking.
“That’s a critical shortage of donors.” Lesley continued. “That, and all the bureaucratic red tape, means people are dying.” He shook his head sadly. “Where there is a want there is a business opportunity. People want to—generally—stay alive. Remember that, Dino.” (Les had at some point started calling Don, Dino, and not correcting him the first time, Don had just let the minor mistake snowball.)
“The secret to making money is providing the customer with what they want,” Les continued. Forget about what you want to give or think they want! Are you running a business or a fucking charity?” He met Don’s gaze. “I digress. Basically, what I’m proposing you giving up one of your kidneys in exchange for clearing the debt.”