Snake kaz-4

by James McClure

  “Jungle Jim?” queried Marais, deliberately needling him. That was another thing he couldn’t stand-the way they kept trying to be what they thought was South African.

  “Oh, my mistake! Jim Fish-that’s it, isn’t it? Now, you were saying…?”

  “I’m making certain inquiries concerning the Wigwam, as I told you on the phone, and I would like to have a statement from you.”

  “Public or private use? Ha-ha!”

  “Ha, bloody ha,” said Marais wearily, getting out his ballpoint.

  “Well, I was there with a party actually, but they all toddled off before Eve’s second performance because one of the ladies said it made her come all over peculiar.”

  “Or was it you?” Marais said in Afrikaans.

  “What? Oh, sorry, can’t understand a word of it yet; a jolly bad show, I know.”

  Just as Marais had supposed. Christ, even Mickey could speak it fluent, and English, too, for that matter, and he was only a wog. But he was on duty and would have to stop playing games and behave himself.

  “ Ach, my mistake, as you say. But can we get to the point, please? When did you see Stevenson?”

  “Ah. Seeing I was left alone at the table, the manager came over-Monty, that’s right-came across and sat with me. We saw the show, then quietly killed the rest of the wine together. Then he started making noises about licensing hours and, rather unnecessarily, I thought, saw me to the door. After all, we had stopped drinking, and I wasn’t going to ruin his carpet for him! Remember saying to him, ‘Steady on, old chap, only twenty past-you can’t throw a knight out on a dog like this!’ Picked that one up in Dar.”

  Marais, for his part, would have left it there.

  “Well, Sergeant, any good to you?”

  But Marais was so tired by then that this indication of Stevenson’s innocence hardly meant a thing. Except more problems.

  Kramer stopped the Chev for only three seconds before roaring off again, saving Zondi any problems in getting the passenger door slammed shut Then they laughed together as they often did when first meeting up.

  Zondi began by reassuring him that all was well at Blue Haze, and that the children were very pleased with it, and then related his discoveries from the time of seeing Yankee Boy Msomi at the railway station. That gave them a great deal to discuss.

  “Okay, so I’m biased,” Kramer said eventually, “but all this explains is why they didn’t go for big-money places. It wasn’t the till they were interested in-that was just a cover-up.”

  “It also explains why the people say they see nothing. If they hear that Chainpuller is listening, then we stand no chance.”

  “That’s the part that contradicts, Zondi. All these years I’ve been hearing how Chainpuller can knock the ding-dongs off a bloke at forty yards by just scratching on the wall-and now suddenly he needs gangsters, guns, cars. Why?”

  “I have another thought: maybe this gang is using Chain-puller, boss.”

  “Hey, just wait. Another part that contradicts is that at Lucky’s place you told me the minister was a good bugger. Would he believe all this crap about wizards, too?”

  Zondi shrugged as if religion and superstition had never been separate in his view.

  “But you were saying…?”

  “Yes, boss, it is the way the money’s paid. One of these skabengas could hide there in the grass and catch the tins that are thrown. That’s how I mean by using Chainpuller.”

  Kramer smiled and said, “I take my hat off to them, then- at least they can’t be so poop-scared of him!”

  Which was another point that Zondi had evidently not considered, and so they went back to the first theory again.

  Until Kramer brought the Chev to a halt, made a U-turn on the Kwela Village road, and started back the other way.

  “So we go to find the guy who came in the shop,” Zondi said with satisfaction. “Beebop will talk to you, boss-you know his type.”

  “I’m not sodding round when I can go to the top,” Kramer replied. “That bastard Chainpuller has had things his way for too bloody long.”

  And not without reason, suggested the silence at his side.

  The rain began again, softly. Freckling over the windshield and then making Marais switch on the wipers.

  He leaned forward to see better, cursing the sting of his eyes, and regretting having accepted that drink from Littlemore. Scotch gave him heartburn.

  The street was oily with colors from the shopwindows and illuminated signs on either side of it. Cars cruised slowly, looking for parking places, and sodding well getting in his way. The route he had chosen was the shortest between the garage and the CID building, but perhaps it might have been quicker to go a longer way round.

  One sign, he noted, was out. Nobody was being enticed up the alley to Wiggle at the Wigwam. Tonite.

  “ Ach, ja,” Marais said to himself. He had known there was method in his madness: he’d promised Gardiner to check by on the way back, mainly so they could have a drink together.

  Driving much more slowly, he passed the entrance to the alley and saw a group of people standing there. That was odd. Mrs. Stevenson had surely thought to cancel any reservations, and he himself had pinned up a CLOSED sign on the door.

  Ghouls! The boss had left strict instructions about how they were to be treated.

  Marais left his car double-parked with the flasher going, and sprinted across.

  “Okay, what’s going on here?” he demanded.

  Indians all dressed up in bow ties and mackintoshes turned in alarm at the sound of the familiar phrase, making him blink disbelief until he identified them as waiters. Then a short white man in a ginger beard and wearing a sheepskin jacket came from the back of them.

  “That’s what we want to know!”

  “Who are you?”

  “Could ask the same!”

  “Police, so watch it. What’s the problem?”

  “We turn up for work and sign says the joint’s closed. Nobody told us. Why and for how long? We’ve-”

  “Owner’s under arrest,” said Marais.

  The man grinned and said, “Hear that, boys? What did I tell you?”

  The Indians smiled.

  “You told them what?”

  “Monty definitely had a finger in that pie,” the man replied, smirking at his witticism.

  “You’d say-”

  “Man, what are you? Security Branch? I’m not giving away secrets-everyone knows what a two-faced bastard he is!”

  Everybody then decided to leave the pair of them alone.

  “Give my love to Minnehaha!” the man called after them, and this time got his laugh. From a safe distance.

  “Monty’s squaw,” the man explained. “Him we call Big Chief Running Guts-or Hiya Sexy! Depends.”

  “You’re the funny man in the show?”

  “Me? I’m the tickler. Pianist. Y’know. Drums and sax were here, but they’ve gone over the road to get pissed.”

  “Name?”

  “Bix Johnson. And you?”

  “Marais, CID.”

  “I’m BA.”

  “Hey?”

  The street, it seemed, was no place to hold an intelligent conversation.

  “Are you prepared to assist in some inquiries? If you’re not, then I’ll want to know why and I’ll-”

  “How much do you pay?”

  “Who?”

  “You know something? You’re terrific! Unreal! Oi, oi, oi. For you, I do dis for nuttin.”

  “What?”

  “You ask, I’ll tell. Easy as that. Where’s your motor? What do you say-can we make a move, Captain?”

  They made a move. And then they made surprisingly good friends. Bix Johnson had a way with him that gave Marais an entirely new lease of energy.

  He also gave him some information that had Marais on the radio, calling urgently for Lieutenant Kramer.

  But answer came there none.

  7

  They made a startling sound in the dead of
night. Within seconds the caretaker was out in the hall with a gun shaking in his hand.

  Then, when he saw the empty milk bottles rolling about, and who had knocked them over, he quickly lowered the revolver before there could be an accident.

  “Heaven’s sakes, laddie, but you gave me a terrible turn!” he said.

  Kramer admired the old bugger’s courage and alertness, but wondered if he hadn’t been drinking-then saw his teeth were missing.

  “ Ach, sorry, Mr. McKay. I was backing up and I didn’t notice them by the door.”

  “Your boy should have warned you,” McKay said, just to show there were no hard feelings. “Still at it, then? Thought you’d finished before lunch.”

  And he nodded at the burden Kramer and Zondi were carrying between them, peering short-sightedly in an effort to make out what was wrapped inside the car tarpaulin.

  “Some bits of carpet from upstairs that didn’t suit the new place, so she thought the new tenants might like to at least see if they wanted them They can always chuck them out.”

  “But they’re not moving in until the day after-”

  “I realize,” said Kramer, “but you know what womenfolk are like in this mood-they can’t stop till it’s all done.”

  McKay showed gum and sympathized. “I ken fine! I ruddy dread new arrivals-Mr. McKay this, Mr. McKay that. The worst are the ones who think your name’s Jock and that you’re responsible for the dirty books their bairns find left under the bath.”

  Zondi gave Kramer a pleading look.

  “We better be going, Mr. McKay. Mustn’t hold you up.”

  “A wee moment-the keys?”

  “Tomorrow?”

  “Aye, fine, no hurry, no hurry. Then I’ll be wishing you a good night.”

  He hobbled back into his flat and Zondi immediately pushed toward the lift, making Kramer nearly start the whole thing up again outside the door to number IB.

  That had been their worst moment. The actual abduction of Chainpuller Mabatso had run like clockwork, while observing to the letter a strict condition Zondi had placed upon it. All they had done was to sneak down the ridge behind the hut, arrange themselves with the tarpaulin on one side of the door, toss up a cocoa tin with some change in it, and wait. Chain-puller had meandered out, buttoning up his fly, and had been engulfed as he stooped to recover his dues.

  And the best moment had been when Chainpuller’s current rental, all straight-haired wig and white lipstick, had poked her head out to see the wizard of Peacevale being carried off by two demons without faces-a sleeve of cheesecloth, thoughtfully provided by Bokkie Howells for cleaning the car’s windows, had been easily divided into two masks that didn’t even need eyeholes. While the story she’d tell would be half the battle won already.

  Kramer groaned and took a grip on the heavy end again as the lift opened at the fifth floor. As lightweight as Chainpuller might prove on a set of scales, having to lug him all the way up the ridge and then down the other side, to where their car was hidden, had been enervating as well as time-consuming.

  “Last lap,” he said to Zondi, “and for Christ’s sake don’t step on that cat.”

  Strydom sat up in bed panting. His wife’s plump arm encircled his waist and tried to pull him down again as she muttered endearments. But he stayed where he was, tense and in a muck sweat.

  “What is it, Chris?” she finally asked, rousing herself to lie propped on one elbow.

  “I don’t know.”

  “You haven’t had a dream, hey? You never have dreams- since when did you have a dream? I’ve never known you to have dreams. Never.”

  “Hmmm?”

  “I mean, with your work you can’t afford to-at least, that’s what you’ve always said. Remember? That time on our honeymoon when I thought you were dreaming? Only it was me dreaming that you were dreaming and all the time you-”

  “It was terrible!”

  “Hey?”

  “No, I meant… it must have been a dream. So lifelike and real, though. Right in front of me. With smells, too.”

  “You get smells in dreams sometimes,” she replied reassuringly, taking his clenched hand and patting it. “And colors? Did you see colors as well?”

  “Ja, I did. Isn’t it supposed to be black and white, like the newsreels?”

  “Not always. Although last time mine was black and white and I was trying on new dresses and it nearly drove me mad. Maybe it was that book you were reading.”

  “No.”

  “ Ach, tell your little Anneline all about it, and then it’ll go away. Come on, Chrissy, lie down again beside me.”

  He lay back, hearing the mattress sigh with him, and moved his head over until he could feel her white curls against his cheek.

  “Man, it was terrible,” he said in a low whisper. “I was back in Pretoria Central on a morning of some hangings. Father William was there, and Koos and the commandant-all the usual crowd.”

  “Go on, my pet.”

  “Things were going just as normal, and I had this feeling I had been away but was pleased to see everyone again. Only I couldn’t see the hangman and I wanted to ask him how his racing pigeons were coming on. I kept looking for him although work had already piled up for me downstairs-”

  “They’d started with the Bantu?”

  “Ja, although that didn’t seem funny at the time. Six Bantu and a colored, two rapes and the rest murder-no, one house-breaking with aggravated circumstances. Anyway, I knew there were all those certificates to sign. So I thought maybe he is in the condemned cell in B2, the small one for Europeans. I went there and I could tell which one from the aromas of the steak and eggs the bloke had ordered. You remember? Nearly always steak and eggs and peaches for pudding-hell, I was the one who actually saw all that food go to waste. But here am I outside the cell, and I push the thing back and look in. You know what I see there? A big mirror on the wall and my eye looking back at me. That’s the first thing I see.”

  “And that’s what gave you such a big fright?”

  “ Ach, no-wait. When I take my head away, I’m not by the cell anymore, I’m back in the shed. Of course, I think, this is where he’ll be. But I’m just there by myself. Then they bring in the white prisoner and I see that it’s Tromp!”

  “Who?”

  “Tromp Kramer-and I know this even though he’s already got the black hood on. Everything’s quick so I can’t ask about the pigeons and they put him on the trap and Father William says the Amen and he’s hanging-hell, but the bugger kicked hard! And I see… you know how the chain comes over the beam to make different lengths for the rope? You know that chart I showed you, heights and weights and the slack in between? I look up to see if it’s holding because I don’t want him to suffer-that’s rubbish for you, the chain coming loose.”

  “Ja-”

  “And all of a sudden I see it’s a mamba, not a rope, and that it’s-”

  Anneline Strydom laughed fondly, replacing her arm and hugging her husband to her.

  “You’re so silly,” she said. “Anyone can see where this dream came from. You don’t need Joseph to tell you it would just break, do you? Trompie jumped, he was all right-and you know how that boy likes his big plates of steak and eggs. Remember that time? I’d made for four?”

  He laughed and snuggled up.

  Gardiner was doodling. Drawing cartoon faces on thumb-prints he had himself made on the back of an old calendar, and giving them legs. Then he gave them arms and different things to hold, and wrote funny captions beneath each one, like “I never laid a finger on her” and “My alibi is I was out hitchhiking.” He had always liked art, even the watercolors at junior school, which always ran into each other, and his considerable graphic skill had made his specialized branch of police work a wise and rewarding choice.

  Gardiner was also waiting. Marais had rung him in high excitement to ask if anything dramatic had been found in the dressing room, and when told it hadn’t, the clown promised to be over in a tick. He apparently had
something momentous to impart, once he’d finished writing it out neatly for the lieutenant.

  But the wait was getting beyond a joke. Both Gardiner’s dinner and his pretty wife would be stone cold by the time he got home, and he’d been hoping to broach the matter of a fishing trip up the North Coast instead of the visit to the game reserve.

  So he finally just locked up and went over to the CID building, noticing the time on the city hall clock and discovering that his watch had lost an hour. This very nearly made him pick up the car and go, but his curiosity, as always, got the better of him. His rank had been well earned.

  Marais was asleep, his head resting on folded arms on top of his typewriter. The snoring would have done justice to a bullfrog.

  Gardiner saw the sheet of paper in the machine had just been begun, so he picked up what looked like a first draft and found it was, in fact, a formal statement written in an almost illegible hand by one Benjamin “Bix” Harold Johnson. Marais would never learn.

  Yet once it was understood that the r’s were really m’s and that a dot served for a the, the thing flowed quite reasonably. Skipping the address, race, and age bit, Gardiner hooked a leg over the desk corner to read the rest.

  The gig ended at 12 A.M. sharp and the Club Manager, MONTY STEVENSON, was there to see the Customers didn’t dilly-dally. I observed Stevenson at a table with a person known to me as GILBERT, a Car Salesman. Us boys in the band had been bought drinks by one of the grateful, and so we were entitled to drink them as we had not had time before THEO HILL, who plays the tenor saxophone, and MAC TAYLOR, drums, share a pad and a Volksy.

  These two colleagues said good night to me at 12:10 or thereabouts, and went straight out through the front because of some nurses on nights having supper at one. I had promised some of the Staff a lift to the bottom end of town and was waiting for them to finish in the Kitchen. One of them approached me and asked if he could see the cassette Player he heard I had for sale. This Person was an Indian Male by the name of RAMCHUNDER who I call RAM because his first name is too hard to pronounce. The Boss was busy so he did not notice Ramchunder and me sneak into the passage to the dressing rooms. As a nonwhite, Ramchunder was out of bounds in this area, but I wanted to save myself the bother of going back and forward and the others thinking I had gone.