by Roger Smith
Burn stood next to the plunge pool, watching as a helicopter hovered over the ocean, scooping water into the basket suspended beneath its fuselage. The chopper lifted, battling the weight of the water and the force of the wind, and passed almost directly over him. He watched as it banked over the fire that ate its way down Lion’s Head and released its load of water. Then, lighter, it flew down toward the ocean again.
Dark orange smoke blotted the setting sun, obscuring the top floor of the buildings in Sea Point.
Burn felt trapped.
The house on the mountain was like a magnet for Rudi Barnard. He couldn’t explain rationally why he was parked up the street from the American’s house, but he didn’t question the impulse. His hunches were usually right.
Barnard sat in his car watching the helicopter clatter over, so low that drops from the basket splattered his windshield. He finished the last drag of a cigarette and flicked the still smoking butt out into the street. Fuck it, he couldn’t give a shit if the whole bloody place burned to the ground.
His hemorrhoids were killing him, but his mind was on that monkey in a suit. Disaster Zondi. What a fucken name.
The face-to-face with Zondi had gone as Barnard’s intuition had warned. The darky had sat there and looked at Barnard like he was shit under his expensive shoe, tapping his fingers on the thick file that lay in front of him. The file that had Barnard’s name on it.
Zondi hadn’t confronted Barnard with anything, just said that he was under investigation. Called this a preliminary meeting. Said they would have some more face time. Used those words, face time. His voice, a kind of semi-American drawl, had grated on Barnard’s nerves like a hangnail on a blackboard.
He knew men like Zondi. Hell, he had spent a whole chunk of his life hunting, torturing, and killing them. Some had screamed like women, begged for their lives, but others had stared him down until death glassed their eyes over.
Zondi had that look. Like he wanted to take Rudi Barnard down and nothing would stop him. Least of all Barnard’s so-called superior officer.
Superintendent Peters was everything that Rudi Barnard hated. A half-breed who had benefited from affirmative action to pole-vault over the careers of more qualified white cops. A minor politician who wore a policeman’s uniform but wasn’t fit to direct traffic. A PR man whose tongue had grown permanently attached to the asses of his masters.
After the confrontation with Zondi, Barnard had gone straight to Peterson’s office. Barnard knew that his commanding officer was terrified of him. Barnard was a law unto himself, who kept his badge through cunning and manipulation. Those who could be bribed he bribed. Those who refused his bribes he intimidated. Over the years Barnard had built up a massive database of information about his fellow cops and his superiors. He knew who was crooked; he knew who had falsified arrests; he knew who was never booked for driving drunk; he knew who took favors from hookers; he knew who screwed brother officers’ wives.
As Barnard sat facing Peterson in the superintendent’s office at Bellwood South HQ, he was aware of the half-breed’s fear. The man had splashed himself with tons of aftershave, but he stank. Barnard, unaware or uncaring when it came to his own stench, was acutely attuned to others’.
Peterson, a happily married, churchgoing paragon of New South African virtue, had become involved with a much younger woman a few years back. Her husband was a scrap merchant who dabbled in stolen cars. Barnard knew for a fact that Peterson had planted stolen parts at the scrap yard and had used his influence to make sure that the man was sent away for a couple of years. The unfortunate bastard had died in prison, the victim of gang discipline.
Peterson knew that Barnard knew. Simple as that.
So Barnard wrote his own ticket, seldom bothering to come into headquarters. But today he was here for a purpose. He leaned in close to Peterson.
“I want this darky off my back.”
Peterson shook his head. “I have no jurisdiction here, Inspector.”
“You’re not hearing me, Peterson. Make the fucker go away.”
Peterson fidgeted with an expensive pen on his desk. “You have to believe that all of us are being kept out of this loop. It is being run by the ministry directly.”
“So, you’re saying it’s okay if he hangs me by my balls?”
Peterson shrugged. “I’m sorry. My hands are tied.”
Barnard nodded. He even tried a smile, which was terrifying to behold. “How’s your girlfriend?”
The smell of fear washed across the desk. “Rudi, please. I’ve put all that behind me. I am not your enemy in this, please understand. There is nothing I can do to change the situation with this man from Jo’burg. I’m powerless.”
Barnard had stood and loomed over Peterson like a wall of stinking fat. “Just remember. I go down, I take people with me.”
Sitting in his car, Barnard lit another smoke, eyes fixed on the American’s house. Lights were on in the gathering gloom.
Barnard needed to throw money at this Zondi thing. A lot of it. And if he couldn’t buy his wayem" wide situation, he’d have to do what he did best. Zondi wasn’t some crack whore on the Flats; he was a darky with a fancy badge, but that didn’t make him bulletproof.
He would die like all the others.
Barnard found himself smiling at the thought. His smile evaporated when he became aware of headlights in his rearview mirror. A car was creeping down the road toward him. An armed response vehicle.
Barnard loathed rent-a-cops, who fed off the paranoia of the wealthy. They looked down on the real cops, smug as they cruised around these privileged areas. Normally, he would have relished a face-to-face with the cowboy driving the car, just for the pleasure of it, knowing his badge always trumped a rent-a-cop’s ID.
But not tonight.
He didn’t want to be placed near this house. Barnard started his car and drove away before the rent-a-cop could reach him.
Burn went into the house and saw that Susan lay on the sofa, asleep or pretending to be. Matt was in front of the TV. Usually, Burn would get the boy away from the screen, fighting the kid’s desire to lose himself in the numbing banality of the tube.
But right now it was almost a relief to see Matt occupied, distracted from the rupture in his parents’ relationship.
Burn had come home and found Susan reading a fashion magazine, sitting with her feet in the plunge pool, taking the edge off the heat. Matt was splashing in the pool, wearing flippers. Mrs. Dollie was inside, wielding the vacuum cleaner like a weapon, the high-pitched whine making her deaf to anything Burn was saying.
Burn told Susan he had found an apartment. It was right on the ocean, overlooking Clifton Beach, and, most important, it was unoccupied. The agents asked him for a day to send a crew in to clean it, and then his family could move in.
Susan had stared at him, shrugged, and went back to her magazine.
The chopper clattered overhead once again, and Susan opened her eyes to find him staring down at her. She closed her eyes.
“Susan?” He had to pitch his voice above the noise of the helicopter.
“Yes?” Her eyes stayed closed. A cartoon man was squashed flat by a rock, and Matt laughed.
“I’m going out.”
Her eyes flicked open. “Sure.”
“Come if you want. I just need to get out of here for a while.”
She shook her head. “No. We’ll stay.”
“Are you going to be okay?”
“We’ll be fine, Jack.” She wasn’t even trying to mask her irritation.
“If you want me to stay, I will.”
“No. Go. It’s better if you do.” She closed her eyes again, dismissing him.
“Keep the doors locked. Okay?” ght="0em"›ht="0em" width="1em"›She didn’t reply.
He grabbed the car keys and headed for the garage.
As he reversed the Jeep out, he saw the blaze was leaping lower on the mountain. Now two choppers were fighting it.
Disaster Zondi
sat in a coffee shop on the ocean, not far from the Waterfront, drinking a poor excuse for a cappuccino. Too much foam, not enough kick.
He spooned some excess foam into his saucer, but when he lifted the cup to his lips some of the froth came dangerously close to dripping onto his silk shirt. He replaced the cup in its saucer and pushed it away.
It was dark now, and he was the only customer left in the coffee shop. The staff were circling like vultures, eager to get rid of him.
After the interview with Barnard, Zondi had suppressed the urge to rush back to his hotel and take a shower. The man’s stink had nearly taken his breath away. No mere body odor, it was something far more toxic, fetid. Sulfurous. From nowhere a memory came to him, from his Anglican mission school upbringing, that the Devil had a foul stench, like sulfur. Of course Zondi no longer believed in the Devil. Or God.
But still.
He hadn’t expected to be as disturbed by the encounter as he was. He had kept it deliberately short, just fired a shot across the fat man’s bows. Let him know that Zondi was on to him. The proximity to Barnard had come close to thawing Zondi’s cool, the layer of permafrost he kept between himself and the world. He told himself he was letting this get personal. He needed to slow down. Detach himself. Keep his focus.
He had escaped Bellwood South HQ and driven his rental BMW back toward the city as the sun set over the ocean, the last rays painting Table Mountain gold. Cape Town putting on its show. Even the pall of smoke from the blaze on Lion’s Head couldn’t mute the splendor.
Cape Town offended Zondi. Its languid slowness and devotion to sun worship, wine tasting, and the deification of its natural beauty struck him as decadent and fatuous. Like a woman obsessed with nothing but her appearance. This place didn’t even look like Africa. It was like a bit of Europe transplanted onto a mountainous peninsula that stuck out toward the South Pole like it was giving it the finger. Even the climate was Mediterranean.
And it was the only sub-Saharan city where a black man was in the minority.
Zondi had no wish to go to his hotel, so on impulse he had stopped for the coffee. The undrinkable cappuccino.
The colored waitress whipped the cup away from him. On her way back to the kitchen she paused to chat with another brown-skinned woman, who was mopping a table and setting salt and pepper shakers straight.
They spoke softly, in the local patois, but Zondi could hear them. And understand.
“Can’t he see we want to go?”
“Typical darky behavior. I’m sorry, but it is.”
“They behave as if they own the place.”
“But they do. Now.
“I know. It makes me sick.”
“I mean, did you hear on the radio this morning, they even saying that God is black.”
“No!”
“I’m telling you.”
“I’m sorry. I can deal with God being white. But not black. I can still work for a white boss!”
They laughed and walked to the back of the shop.
Zondi allowed himself a tight smile. His cell phone chirped. Bellwood South HQ.
Carmen Fortune put her lips to the globe and sucked hungrily. The glass burned her lips, but she didn’t feel the pain, too anxious to get the smoke into her lungs, desperate for the rush that followed like a train hurtling from a tunnel.
Sweet Jesus, her head felt like it was going to fragment into a million shards of bone and brain matter. She saw the tattooed hand, nails black with dirt, take the globe from her before she collapsed back onto the stinking mattress and closed her eyes. The rush passed, and she was left with the glow, the euphoria, the feeling of owning the whole fucken world.
She opened her eyes and smiled. Conway Paulsen squatted, watching her, a mushroom cloud of tik smoke exploding from his mouth. He returned the smile, exposing teeth blackened by years of abuse.
Carmen sat up, light-headed. She was in Conway’s zozo, a wooden hut built in the yard of his parents’ house. Conway, still in his teens, was a connection of Rikki’s, an American wannabe who was used as an errand boy but was never allowed the full initiation he dreamed of. He was simpleminded, the butt of endless mean-spirited jokes.
“So, you gonna tune Rikki. About me? That I wanna sell for him?”
“Ja. Soon as he get back from the west coast.”
“What he doing up there anyways? I hear some abalone deal with the Chinks?”
“Fuck, I dunno. Maybe.”
“Or, is it tik? Is he, like, supplying towns right up to Namibia?”
She shrugged. “You know Rikki.”
Conway laughed. “Ja, he’s big time.”
“Ja. He’s fucken big time, okay.”
Using the wall for support, Carmen pulled herself to her feet. She thanked Conway and went out into the night.
Carmen walked down Tulip Street, passing the rows of identical houses, stepping around potholes, heading toward her ghetto block. The heat was oppressive, and she felt as if she were being suffocated under a blanket of stale air. Snatches of Cape Flat’s life wafted out to her as she walked: shouts, curses, the low keening of a crying woman, a drunken man laughing.
A chopped-down Honda Civic, tuned loud, bumped down the road toward her, forcing her to give way. She saw the four boys inside, slumped low in the car, their eyes sliding across er as they passed, gangsta rap thudding in their wake.
Little fuckers.
Carmen walked faster. She passed three housewives gossiping on a corner, under a streetlight. Two of them had their hair in curlers; all three sucked on cigarettes like they were life support systems. Their eyes locked onto her.
Carmen pretended to ignore them, their whispers echoing after her like sticks dragged along a wooden fence. She heard tik whore and slut before she was out of range.
When she heard her name being called, she ignored it. More insults. Then she felt a tugging at her sleeve and found her hands in fists, ready to lash out. She turned and saw the wife of her useless brother.
“What you want?”
Carol was a runt of a girl who caught a fright at her own shadow. She let go of Carmen’s sleeve and stepped back. “It’s your father, Carmie.”
“I don’t got no father.”
“He’s very sick.”
Carmen stared at the girl. “Good. I hope that rotten thing dies.”
Carmen walked on. That was enough good news for one night.
Burn couldn’t lose.
No matter what he did, he kept on beating the dealer. He sat drinking Scotch at the blackjack table out at Grand West Casino, Cape Town’s answer to Vegas.
The dealer, who was sitting with a queen, dealt Burn a ten and a six.
Burn tapped his cards. “Hit me.”
There were mutters of disapproval from the others at the table. Fuck them. The dealer was looking at Burn inquiringly. “You heard what I said. Hit me.”
The dealer dealt him a five, then pulled a six for himself and then a ten. Too many.
The dealer shoved a stack of chips Burn’s way. Burn flicked a couple of chips back toward the dealer, who tapped them, then dropped them into a slot in the table.
Burn finished his drink and held up the empty glass to a passing waitress. What the hell, he could have one more.
He knew it was crazy to be here. Stupid. Reckless. Gambling had caused all the pain in his life. Got him running from a cop dead in the snow. His pregnant wife and his kid were about to be lost to him forever, and he was gambling again. Blotting out reality.
But he felt some of that old excitement, the thrill that gambling had always given him, like a shot of adrenaline straight into the heart. He loved it.
Even now.
The dealer dealt him a ten and a seven and pulled a king for himself.
The man next to Burn, a dark man with gold teeth, made his feelings clear. “Just, stick, okay?”
Burn ignored him, tapped his cards. “Hit me.”
The dealer gave him a bland look and dealt him a four. Twenty-one
. Then the dealer went bust by pulling two picture cards.
Burn laughed out loud and reached for the Scotch that had appeared at his elbow.
He couldn’t lose.
CHAPTER 13
Disaster Zondi stared down at the charred bodies. The howling wind rattled the portable klieg lamps that beamed down a merciless glare, threatening to topple them even though they were weighted with sandbags. The yellow crime scene tape sang and flapped in the wind, and the technicians battled the dust as they worked.
The wind flung snatches of conversation Zondi’s way. The crime techs were wondering why the hell they had been called out for just another Cape Flats mess. Glances were shot in his direction, as if this had to be his doing.
Zondi tuned all this out, impassive, communing with the dead.
The small figure was definitely a child, and the mother swore blind that it was her son. In the morning they would run dental records, but Zondi didn’t doubt she was right. Mothers weren’t wrong about things like that.
Zondi was aware that he had stepped outside his brief by being here. Call it research, the man from Johannesburg steeping himself in the crime that gripped the Flats by the throat. This hardly seemed typical, though. The bodies of two men would have indicated a gang killing. The body of the child alone would have been just another victim of the homicidal pedophiles the Flats produced with terrifying regularity.
But the three bodies together? This hinted at an altogether different beast at work.
Superintendent Peterson, station commander of Bellwood South, was on the scene. Zondi had no doubt this was for his benefit. Peterson had the well-fed look of a man who left the dirty work up to others.
A uniformed sergeant came up to Peterson. “Superintendent, we have Constable Galant.” He pointed at a patrol car.
Peterson followed the uniform. Zondi caught up with him.
“Okay if I tag along, Superintendent?”
If Peterson objected, he wasn’t about to say so. “Of course.”