Man Down

by Roger Smith

  The shacks were close enough now for Turner to catch the whiff of human dung that leaked into the stagnant black stream separating the squatters from their neighbors, the anxious and depressed suburbanites who had watched their property values tank as the shacks multiplied—their futile retort the fortifications and the handguns loaded with hollow point ammunition they kept under their pillows at night.

  Bekker turned the Toyota onto a narrow road so cratered it could have suffered a mortar attack, and drove for a few minutes until the shacks stuttered to an end on the sun bleached grass.

  He swung onto a dirt track flanked by an avenue of tired blue gums, the Toyota churning up a trail of red dust that had Turner cursing and winding up his window despite the heat.

  A house rose into view through the trees, a squat, ugly mélange—an old Transvaal stone homestead with a wide porch that had fallen victim to a series of artless renovations and extensions.

  The house was surrounded by a high chain-link fence topped with coils of silver razor wire, set alight by the low red sun.

  Bekker stopped the Toyota at a pair of gates held closed by a padlock. He stepped down from the idling van which shuddered and heaved and unlocked the gates, oxidized hinges shrieking like butchered pigs when he shoved them open.

  Back behind the wheel he sped toward the house, dodging an empty swimming pool, its dark mouth open to the sky in a silent scream.

  Bekker stopped the van near the front door and killed the engine.

  “What’s it look like to you?” he asked, gesturing with his cigarette at the doors and windows covered with rusting lengths of heavy gauge rebar.

  “A prison,” Turner said.

  The cop laughed.

  “Yeah. Fuckin beautiful, isn’t it?”

  He rummaged in the van’s door compartment and fished out two pairs of surgical gloves.

  Tossing one pair in Turner’s lap, he said, “Put those on,” while he rolled the other pair onto his hands, flexing his fingers like a concert pianist.

  Turner followed orders as Bekker jumped down from the Toyota, came around to the passenger side and rattled open the sliding door.

  Turner, who felt spaced and disassociated, sat staring out the windshield at the god-awful house, wondering if another joint would make him feel better or worse.

  “Fuck, Englishmen, you’re not on holiday. Gimme a fuckin hand here.”

  Turner climbed down and watched as Bekker hauled two military-style kitbags from the rear of the van and dumped them in the dust.

  The cop gestured to the mattress that lay on the corrugated floor of the Toyota.

  “Bring that inside.”

  Bekker hefted the two kitbags and humped them to the front of the house. He took a bunch of keys from his pocket and unlocked the steel gate and the heavy wooden door.

  Turner followed him into the empty living room, dragging the mattress, which was old and misshapen, its torn ticking a Rorschach of stale bodily fluids.

  When Turner dropped the mattress clouds of dust rose from the carpeted floor making Jesus rays of the shafts of hot sunlight that lanced in though the two barred windows.

  Bekker knelt, unzipping one of the duffel bags, removing two blankets and a gas lamp. Behind his head the plaster of the wall bore the unmistakable imprints of tightly grouped bullet holes.

  Looking more closely at the beige carpet Turner saw tracks of ominous, rust-colored stains.

  “What happened here?”

  Bekker lit a smoke.

  “A white family got taken out a year ago.”

  “Home invasion?”

  “Yeah, fuckin savages from the squatter camp.”

  “How’d they get in with all this . . ?”

  Turner gestured at the bars that cast black shadows across the bloodstained carpet.

  “Through the roof,” Bekker said, “like fuckin apes.”

  Bekker stood, walked down a short corridor and pushed open a door, revealing a small bedroom, the carpet still bearing the imprint of the base of the bed that had once almost filled the cramped space.

  He looked at Turner through the fumes of his cigarette.

  “This is where you’ll keep her.”

  The reality of what they were about to do—what he was about to do—struck Turner with the force of a blow and he dropped the mattress and leaned against the wall, feeling the coolness of the plaster against his skull.

  Bekker crossed the room to the single barred window that offered a view of the crumbling brickwork of the adjacent garage.

  “No way she can get out and she won’t be able to see fuck all.”

  He toed open the door of the windowless en-suite bathroom and a dank smell entered the room.

  “The water and power have been cut, but she can piss and shit in here.”

  “Jesus,” Turner said, “it’s foul.”

  “What do you want, Englishman? The fuckin Hilton?” Bekker said, exiting the room. “Come, gimme a hand.”

  Back in the living room he unloaded four packs of shrink-wrapped bottled water from a duffel bag.

  “Take two through to the bedroom. The other two are for you.”

  Turner stacked the water and humped it into the bedroom, dropping it on the floor beside the mattress.

  Bekker followed him carrying a blanket and a Checkers plastic bag.

  He tossed the blanket onto the mattress and emptied the contents of the bag onto the floor: potato chips, bars of chocolate, a hand of overripe bananas and two wrinkled red apples.

  “Aren’t I just the host with the fuckin most?” Bekker said.

  Turner didn’t answer, staring at the dirty carpet as if it would tell him something.

  “Hey, Englishman, don’t fuckin vague out on me now.”

  “No, I’m cool.”

  “You fuckin better be. Okay, come on, we’ve got a lot to discuss.”

  Bekker left the room and closed the door after them, pointing at the key in the lock.

  “You put her inside and you lock this door and you don’t fuckin open it again until you hear from me, right?”

  “Yes.”

  “No matter what?”

  “No matter what.”

  Bekker looked at him, then nodded and went through to the kitchen, snagging one of the kit bags on the way.

  The kitchen, the air thick with mold and rot, had been stripped of anything of value, all that remained were chipped tiles, empty shelves and a counter on which Bekker set down the duffel bag, unzipping it.

  The cop removed a photograph, a map and three cell phones.

  He held up the photograph. A black kid with short hair smiling shyly at the camera.

  “That’s her.”

  “What’s her name?”

  “What do you care? You’re kidnapping her, not dating her.”

  “I just want to know.”

  Bekker shook his head.

  “Don’t fuckin humanize her, Englishman. She’s a piece of meat. A commodity. Our passport to a monster payday.”

  Turner shrugged.

  Bekker said, “You’ll recognize her?”

  “I’ll recognize her.”

  Bekker folded the photograph and pocketed it.

  “This is where you’ll find her,” he said, tapping the map. “Her school’s here. During recess at noon sharp she climbs through a hole in the fence and goes down to the river and sits and listens to her iPod for half an hour.”

  “You’ve seen this?”

  “No, I’m fuckin psychic. Yes, I’ve seen it. I followed her for a fuckin week, trying to figure out a way to get at her. She’s chauffeured to school and back home. She has no close friends, just holes up in her house busy with fuck knows what. But she does this one thing. Goes down to the river every day and the beauty of it is that nobody except you and me knows she does it.” He smiled. “You be there tomorrow just before twelve and you take her.”

  Turner stared at him.

  “Tomorrow?”

  “Yes, Englishman, tomorrow.
Why, you got plans? Having your hair done? Having your balls waxed?”

  “It’s just sooner than I thought.”

  “Leaves no time for you to get cold feet.”

  Turner nodded.

  “So, tomorrow morning you go to the McDonalds. The van’ll be parked where I got you today. I’ve checked, you’ll be out of range of any security cameras. You drive to the river, park under the trees. Then you walk down to the water and you wait for her. She won’t hear or see you if you come from behind and drug her.”

  “Drug her with what?”

  “Jesus, you’re the fuckin chemical expert. Figure it out. Then you carry her to the van.” He saw Turner’s face. “Don’t worry, she’s small for fourteen. When you get her in the back of the van you blindfold and gag her, just in case, and tie her up.”

  He lifted one of the cellphones.

  “Then you shoot a picture of her and send it to this number.” He fiddled with the controls of the phone. “It’s the only number in the memory. Okay?”

  “Okay.”

  “Then you toss the phone in the river. Got that?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then you drive over here and you put her in that room and untie and ungag her and lock her inside and you sit your ass down and wait until you hear from me.” He held up the other phone. “On this. Okay?”

  “Okay.”

  “Now, if there are any problems—which I know there are not going to be—you call me on this phone.” Lifting the third instrument. “Again, there’s just one number in memory. But you use that only—and I fuckin mean only—in an emergency. Yes?”

  “Yes.”

  “Okay. Pocket the phones.”

  Turner obeyed.

  “Let’s get the fuck out of here, it’s getting dark.”

  Turner didn’t move.

  “What?” Bekker said.

  “Why do I have to take her alone?”

  Bekker sighed. “Jesus Christ, Englishman, are you brain damaged? I told you man, I have to be far from the whole thing with a rock solid alibi, stuck in a car somewhere with my dumb fuckin jungle bunny partner. There can never, fuckin ever, be any trail connecting the Lawn Jockey and me. Otherwise why the fuck would I need you? I’d just do it myself and make a whole whack more cash.”

  “I’m doing all the heavy lifting.”

  “Listen, dickbrain, you’re snatching a little girl and babysitting her for a night or two, tops. I’m the one who is orchestrating this whole motherfucking thing. Keeping the Lawn Jockey in line. Making sure we get the ransom money. Monitoring any law enforcement activity.”

  “How’re we going to let her go? The girl?” Turner said.

  “Night I get the money I’ll call you and then you mask up and you go into the room and you give her another shot or whatever and you dump her into the Toyota and then you drive her to a destination still to be decided.”

  Turner eyeballed the cop. “We are going to let her go?”

  “Fuck, of course we’re going to let her go,” Bekker said, zipping the bag. “Kidnapping’s one thing, but even in this fucked up excuse for a Third World shitpot killing a little black diamond is going to bring a whole lot of heat down on us.” He walked toward the front door. “Come, let’s move.”

  Turner followed Bekker out into the gathering gloom, smelling wood fires and human shit.

  8

  Bekker, still gagging Lucy with his glove, lifted her from the floor and wrestled her toward the kitchen, the child fighting like a dog in a sack.

  Turner made to follow but Bekker, his back to Bone and Tard, mouthed the word “no” through the hole in his ski mask.

  Turner, sick with all he had done, stood in the living room near the dead man, the stink of blood and voided waste thick in his nostrils, and watched as Bekker carried his daughter into the kitchen, battling panic that retreated slow as a mud tide.

  Using his shoe, Bekker shoved open the heavy wooden sliding door to the pantry and the light clicked on, revealing the small, windowless space, the floor-to-ceiling shelves lined with canned foods, bottled water and glass preserve jars filled with the whole grain cereals, pulses and fermented soy products that were the staple of Tanya’s masochistic diet.

  Bekker tossed Lucy inside, slammed the door shut and locked it, pocketing the key.

  The light was extinguished automatically and the child, plunged into darkness, pounded on the door, her screams muffled by the heavy wood.

  9

  Turner, feeling about as alien as he ever had in the years since he’d been in America, feeling adrift, stateless—a man who had lost his country twice—stood outside his office staring across the seared brown landscape.

  The apartheid South Africa of his childhood and youth (like a brutal Ionesco play) had changed, become something even more violent and savage while his attention was elsewhere.

  And then Tanya—spurred into action after they were carjacked in their Johannesburg driveway—had wangled the position at the Tucson college and within months of staring down the barrel of a gun Turner had seen his life uprooted from the plains of the highveld and transplanted to the ditch-dry landscape of Arizona.

  He’d never been to America before they relocated but he’d always felt he’d known it. South Africa, after the belated arrival of TV in the mid-70s, had shrugged off the stifling influence of its erstwhile colonial master, Britain, and the archaic civilities of BBC radio plays were swept away by Dallas, The A-Team, Charlie’s Angels and Magnum PI.

  Little shops serving tea and scones were trampled beneath the invading army of KFCs and McDonalds and strip malls sprouted from the provincial cities that were suddenly ringed by a tangle of freeways.

  Turner was weaned on a diet of American books, movies and music, and when he was barely old enough, had started ingesting American booze by the boatload, so he’d expected the move to be almost seamless, and at first it was.

  Superficially the U.S. was everything he’d expected and the first couple of months were easy. Then he’d realized that there was a lot he would never fathom. An American code he would never crack, no matter how long he lived there.

  After a year he had come to the reluctant realization that America had been a prize best viewed from afar, a loud, restless, relentless culture comprehensible to him only when it’d been strained through the muslin woven from the privations and absurdities of South Africa during the tragi-comic apartheid years and their disappointing and terrifying aftermath.

  Unlike Turner, his wife had no desire to assimilate.

  Tanya clung stubbornly to her foreignness.

  She scorned America and Americans, convinced of her superiority, angered by Lucy’s inevitable shapeshift into one of them, the child young enough for the accent to stick to her like the syrupy candy she’d developed a taste for, Tanya telling her that she’d end up obese, good for nothing but an appearance on Jerry Springer or The Biggest Loser.

  Turner, though he envied his daughter her ability to jettison her past like unwanted ballast and evolve into another person entirely, had long ago accepted that he would be never be settled, would always be homesick for a place that had never existed, but the appearance of Grace Worthington had disturbed him in a way he didn’t fully understand.

  “Mr. Turner?”

  Grace stood in the office doorway, golden and statuesque.

  “John,” Turner said.

  “John,” she said, her drawl transforming his curt, anonymous name—evidence of his parents’ lack of imagination—into something still exotic to his foreigner’s ear: Jaaaahn.

  She went quiet and did that thing again with her hair, brushing it away from her forehead, betraying her nerves.

  In the three days she’d worked in his office he’d had occasion to see it often enough to develop a healthy loathing for the about-to-be-ex-husband who, Turner guessed, had come close to beating the spark from this woman.

  Turner found a smile.

  “There’s something you want to tell me?”

/>   “Yes.”

  “You don’t sound too certain,” he said, working that smile.

  “Okay, this isn’t really part of my job description . . .” Her voice trailed off again and he feared she’d lose her nerve entirely.

  “Any input is welcome, believe me.”

  “Well, I couldn’t help but hear you on the phone earlier, talking to HomePro.”

  A home supply chain that could make him a lot of money.

  “Not my finest hour,” he said. “The buyers aren’t interested in meeting me to discuss stocking PoolShark.”

  “I know those people,” she said.

  “You know the buyers at HomePro?”

  She looked flustered. “Well, not personally, but I know who they are.”

  “Okay,” he said.

  “They’re a couple of brothers who came from nothing and built the chain.”

  “So I’ve heard.”

  “To people like that your British accent may be, well, intimidating.”

  “I’m South African,” he said.

  “Well, to us you sound British.”

  He nodded. This was not news to him. Occasionally, people with keener ears thought he was Australian. In the years he had been in the States no American had correctly identified his origins.

  “Okay, assuming you’re right, what can I do?”

  “Why don’t I give them a call, see if I can get you a meeting?”

  “Us.”

  “I’m sorry?”

  “Get us a meeting. You come along and let your all-American presence soothe them. Lull them into giving us a big fat order.” He smiled again. “There’ll be a nice chunk of commission for you if you get it right.”

  She nodded and went back inside.

  Standing by the pool, as he watched Grace on the telephone, Turner was ambushed by an absurd notion that only by leaving Tanya and making a life with this woman and losing himself in her American ampleness would he ever again find a home.

  Aware of the danger of these thoughts he was busy shutting them down when Grace walked out of the office and said, “Okay, we have a meeting with HomePro.”

  “When?”

  “Tomorrow.”