by Roger Smith
There were whispers about some darky, a tall man in a black suit, come all the way from Jo’burg to take Gatsby down. That the big guys up-country couldn’t trust the cops in the Cape to deal with him. Some people swore they saw this darky sitting in the back of a cop car as it made the rounds of the Flats, trying to get mouths to talk.
At first, few had.
Then one or two, brave, foolhardy, or greedy, had spoken a little of what they knew. The local cops, brown men, had asked the questions. The darky had just stood and listened, eyes hidden behind his shades, absorbing what was said like he was made of black blotting paper.
So, slowly, the unbelievable became the believable.
Gatsby was a marked man.
After they put her son in the ground, Berenice September’s neighbors gathered at her house. The women and the girls were inside, serving cake and tea.
Donovan September stood in the cramped backyard with the men and the boys. The group spoke in low tones, each man and boy swearing to Donovan that they would get their hands on the human filth that did this to his little brother. And they would send the fat boer to hell.
Berenice stood at the kitchen window, filling the kettle at the sink, looking out at her son standing with the men. Donovan caught her eye, and then he looked away from her.
Oh, God, please let this thing end.
CHAPTER 20
Another hotel room.
This one was in Retreat, the ass end of Cape Town. A run-down area Rudi Barnard was unfamiliar with, far away from his turf. The irony of the name wasn’t lost on him. He hated going into hiding. Not his way of doing things. Not at all. He lay on the bed, sweat running off his naked chest. There was no aircon in the room, just a desk fan that stirred the thick air, shifted it around, but didn’t make it any fucken cooler.
He reached for his cell phone and thumbed a number. Time to check up on the half-breed bitch and the boy. When he got the automated female voice telling him the number wasn’t available on the network, he nearly threw the phone at the flipping wall. The bitch hadn’t bought herself airtime, probably spent the money he gave her on tik.
Fuck.
He had to restrain himself from going down to the Ford and driving across to the bitch’s hovel, giving her a few smacks. No, that was just the kind of mistake that would screw up everything. They were out there, Zondi and his trained monkey Peterson, waiting for him to do something stupid. Tough as it was, he had to stay patient. At least until it got dark.
The promise of more money would keep the little whore from doing anything clever. Keep herin line until it was time to kill her.
And the kid.
He found a Gideon’s Bible next to the bed and opened it. Maybe if he read some Old Testament, he’d feel soothed. He was disgusted to see that most of the pages had been ripped out, probably used by some fucken heathens to roll joints.
He shoved the Bible back in the drawer, heaved himself from the bed, and walked to the window. The room overlooked a courtyard full of garbage cans and junk. A scrawny homeless woman in a torn dress and unlaced running shoes, a baby strapped to her back, was going through the garbage. A ragged man stood behind her, swaying on his feet as he watched her digging in the bins.
The man said something that Barnard couldn’t catch. The woman swung on him, hands still in the can. Her voice was shrill, hard from years of living on the street. “Your mother’s cunt!”
The man mumbled something. The woman found a couple of empties and turned to walk away. The man grabbed at the bottles. The woman evaded his flailing hands and swung one of the bottles, hard, smashing it against his head. The man slumped, blood flowing down his face.
The woman threw the broken neck of the bottle at him. “Now look what you make me do, you fucken rubbish!”
She walked away clutching the remaining bottle, still hurling abuse at him over her shoulder. She had the disjointed, crablike walk that came from years of frying your brain cells with cheap booze. The man was on his hands and knees, shaking his head, drops of blood landing vividly on the cement.
Barnard turned away and walked his gut directly in the path of the fan. It stirred the pelt of gingery fuzz that covered his belly like a worn carpet but didn’t cool him at all.
Ja, relationships. Marriage, whatever. It never fucken worked. Not if you were a homeless half-breed or whoever the fuck you were.
His had lasted a year.
He had met his wife at the Army of God Church, the run-down Pentecostal congregation in Goodwood led by Pastor Lombard. When the pastor was jailed as a pedophile, the congregation fell apart and Rudi Barnard had communed with God alone, in the privacy of his own home.
Well, not quite alone. He had met Sanmarie Botha at church. Amazingly, Sanmarie, though not blessed with a powerful intellect, was extremely good-looking in a blonde, corn-fed way. Even more amazingly, she took it upon herself to fall in love with Rudi Barnard. Barnard didn’t question why a pneumatic blonde would fall for an aging, stinking, obese wreck like him. He presumed he reminded her of her father. She cooked the cholesterol-intensive food he loved, she washed his clothes, and her sexual demands weren’t beyond his limited capacity.
They were engaged and then married. Barnard would spend his days terrorizing and murdering and then come home to a hot meal, a few hours in front of the TV with his wife, and then the dubious comfort of the marital bed. Happiness would be too strong a word to describe this period of his life, but he knew a kind of contentment.
But then Sanmarie joined the Living Joy of God Congregation in Monte Vista. A new church, with a young pastor, all teeth and blow-dried hair. She tried to persuade Barnard to worship with her, but the multiracial congregand the watered-down brand of Christianity peddled by Pastor Marius left Barnard cold.
As Sanmarie spent more time at church, he spent more time eating gatsbys from the Golden Spoon. Sanmarie’s sexual demands had ceased entirely. When she left him for Pastor Marius, Barnard had briefly considered some fitting form of biblical wrath to rain down on their heads, then had decided he couldn’t be bothered.
A man alone made the perfect soldier in God’s war.
He went back to the bed and got the dead woman’s phone out of his waist bag and switched it on. He thumbed through her contact list, then hit a number.
The American answered immediately. Eager, anxious. “Yes?”
“How’s it going with the money?” Barnard used the speakerphone, intentionally making his voice even harsher than it normally was. Dropping it a register.
“It will all be in place by lunchtime tomorrow.”
“Fine. And you’re keeping your trap shut?”
“Yes. As I promised. How is my son?”
“He’s fine.”
“I want to speak to him.”
“No. Not now.”
“Then how do I know if he’s still alive?” The American was trying to sound tough, in control. But Barnard could hear the panic just beneath the surface.
“Just take my word for it, he’s okay. And he’ll stay that way if you don’t screw up.” Barnard killed the call.
He sat on the bed, elbows on his knees, arms dangling, drops of sweat plopping onto the wooden floor. Then he decided he was hungry.
There was a Kentucky Fried across the way. A barrel of wings and a Colonel Burger.
It wasn’t a gatsby but it would have to do.
Benny Mongrel lay on the mattress in his shack, his shirt off, his right arm still in the sling. The bandage on his shoulder was spotted with blood. He stared at the tin roof and let the index finger of his left hand trace the crude lettering carved into his chest: I DIG MY GRAVE, I CRY FOR BLOOD.
The promise he had made to himself, the one about going straight, was forgotten. He was going to kill that fat cop. Finished. And he didn’t care what they did with him after. They could send him back to Pollsmoor and let him rot.
He didn’t give a fuck.
He had lost two things the night before: his dog and his knife.
He regretted having to leave the knife behind; it was a good one. But he had another almost as good. Bessie wasn’t something he could ever replace. When she died, so did the tiny voice of hope and faith that had unexpectedly spoken from his heart. Now his heart was cold. Now he was a Mongrel again.
He sat up and unslung his arm. As he moved the shoulder, he winced, but only slightly. Pain had been part of Benny Mongrel’s life since birth. He knew how to shut it out. He moved the arm some more; then he took the sling off and threw it on the dirt floor.
He’d keep the bandage on, unless it got in his way.
He reached under the mattress and found his other knife and the sandpaper. He opened the knife and began his ritual of honing the blade. With each swipe of the sandpaper, he visualized the innards of the fat cop spilling out like trash from a dumpster.
Barnard. The name carried on the wind when he had buzzed the American’s door.
Benny Mongrel didn’t know where to find him. But he knew men who would, the men he had deliberately avoided since he had come out of jail. The older men who wore the same tattoos he did, who hung out in taverns and cramped houses in Lotus River. They would tell him what he needed to know.
Then he would go back to Mountain Road, to the house of the American guy. Tell him what he saw the night the fat cop dumped the kid in the trunk of the car. Tell him that he would help to track the fat man down and find the boy. He had no interest in the child. Didn’t care if it lived or died. It was a means to an end. Nothing more.
The American would lead him to the fat cop. And if the American outlived his usefulness, Benny Mongrel would kill him too.
He knew how to kill Americans.
Burn eyed the bottle of Scotch. It was only lunchtime, but surely he could allow himself one drink, just to steady his nerves? Then he took the bottle from the counter in the kitchen, put it in a drawer, and shut it away.
He couldn’t trust himself to keep it at one drink.
He went and flopped down in front of the TV, cricket on the screen. The game made no sense to him. It seemed to be played over days, men in white endlessly bowling balls that were bumped back at them by helmeted batsmen.
He hated this passivity. Sitting and waiting, leaving the play in the hands of the kidnapper, was driving him crazy. All his training, those years in the marines, prompted him to action. Take the gun. Get out there. Find his son.
He played the man’s voice over again in his head. Harsh and guttural. He tried to recall the voice of the fat cop, Barnard. Was it him? It made sense, but Burn was no closer to being sure.
The buzzer dragged him to the screen of the intercom. Two uniformed cops stood at the gate, a man and a woman.
Here we go again.
Burn lifted the intercom phone, and within seconds the cops were standing in his living room. The man was white, the woman brown. They both wore blue uniforms, black boots, and Kevlar vests. Must be hell in this weather. They introduced themselves, local names that slid through Burn’s memory like water through a sieve.
A woman’s body had been found that morning, on the steps above High Level. The victim’s daughter had identified the body as that of her mother, Mrs. Adielah Dollie. The daughter said that her mother had left here the night before, walking to a taxi.
Adielah. Burn hadn’t known her by anything other than Mrs. Dollie.
Burn feigned shock, even had to sit down. It wasn’t hard, the way he felt. “My God, this is terrible. What happened to her?”
The man did most of the talking. “Her, ah, neck was broken. Either somebody did it, hit her, or she fell trying to get away. It was a mugging, we think. Those stairs are dangerous. There have been a lot of incidents.”
Burn nodded. “I feel so guilty. I should have insisted on taking her home.”
“Mr. Hill, could we see some ID, please?”
Burn went into the bedroom and returned with his John Hill passport. The cop looked at it, then wrote down the number before handing it back to Burn.
“Is there a problem?” he asked as he pocketed it.
“No, just routine. We’ll type up your statement. Maybe you can go down to Sea Point police station in the next day or so to sign it?”
Burn nodded. “Of course.”
Then they were gone. It had worked. Very little energy was going to be spent on finding Mrs. Dollie’s killer.
Llewellyn Hector caressed the racing pigeon sitting in his cupped hand. Hector gently set the bird on a perch in a wire cage. It was night, and a dangling lightbulb cast shadows across the cramped backyard of the Lotus River house. Hector engaged the latch on the cage and turned. That’s when he saw Benny Mongrel. Hector was too hard a man to let emotion reach his face, but Benny Mongrel saw in the moment of hesitation before he spoke that the gangster was surprised.
“Hey, brother. Where you come out of?” He walked across to Benny Mongrel. Hector was a squat man, almost as wide as he was tall. His large head balanced directly on his sloping shoulders, like a boulder on a hill, and his muscled arms, seething with tattoos, were unnaturally short. He extended his hand for the insider’s shake.
Benny Mongrel took the hand and shook it. “I been here and there.”
“But you haven’t come and see us?”
Benny Mongrel shook his head.
“Come inside, brother.”
Benny Mongrel followed Hector into the tavern that was home to the Mongrels. Hector was a few years older than Benny Mongrel. They had known each other since they were teenagers, had killed many men together, and had spent decades sharing a prison cell. Hector had been out a few years longer than Benny Mongrel, and he was a general, a middleman in the organization. He mobilized members in times of gang conflicts and ran gang-related business interests. Fencing stolen goods and selling drugs.
The tavern was not a place you ventured into unless you were a Mongrel or under their protection. It occupied the front room of a small house, crammed with tables and game machines. The room was full of youngsters, some still teenagers, the cannon fodder of the gang.
Hector led Benny Mongrel through to a private table, where a man in his late thirties sat. Rufus Jordaan. He was a middle-rank enforcer and bodyguardpulled up a chair and motioned Benny Mongrel to sit. “Look what the wind blew in.”
Benny Mongrel had no sooner sat down than a bottle of whiskey and three glasses were delivered by a teenage girl in tight jeans. Hector poured and lifted his glass. Benny Mongrel joined him. Rufus Jordaan didn’t.
Hector led the toast. “No excuses, no explanations, no apologies, not to anyone, not ever.”
Rufus muttered his assent. Benny Mongrel said nothing. Rufus pushed the whiskey aside and reached for a beer bottle. He made a show of knocking off the cap of the bottle with the sight of his. 38 Special. He left the gun lying on the table.
“So,” Rufus said, sucking on the beer, “why you been a stranger, brother? We not good enough?” He was a big man who wore his 28s tattoos with pride.
Benny Mongrel just gave him that flat look that he’d perfected in prison. The look that said: Here I am. I’m not going anywhere. Do what the fuck you like. Rufus hid behind a shit-eating grin like Benny Mongrel knew he would.
Rufus raised his bottle. “Anyways, welcome home, brother.”
Benny Mongrel spoke to Hector. “I need to know about a fat cop called Barnard.”
Rufus leaned forward. “Gatsby?” Benny Mongrel shrugged, fixed his good eye on Rufus. “Big fat boer with a mustache? Stinks like shit?” Benny Mongrel nodded. “What you want with him?”
“We got some business.”
Hector swallowed some whiskey, wiped the back of his mouth with his hand. “He mainly works Paradise Park. He’s in with the Americans there from back in apartheid days, early nineties.”
“Where’s he based?”
“Bellwood South. He’s a bad bastard. Killed more brown men than the HIV. They say he’s a reborn.”
Rufus laughed. “He do it for Jesus.”
Hector to
pped up Benny Mongrel’s glass. “I hear there’s a warrant out on Gatsby. Seems like he went too far this time, killed a kid.”
Benny Mongrel sat forward. “White kid?”
Hector shook his head. “No, colored. Over in Paradise. The cops is all over the Flats asking questions. You not the only one who want to find him. He’s a popular guy.”
This was making sense to Benny Mongrel. Why the fat cop was taking the chances he was taking. He had his back to the wall. Good. Benny Mongrel liked that.
Something changed on Llewellyn Hector’s face as he looked over Benny Mongrel’s shoulder. Benny Mongrel took a sip of whiskey, felt it burn its way down, and then he turned. And saw Fingers Morkel, the man he had operated on in the jail cell a year before.
Fingers stood in the doorway of the tavern, staring at Benny Mongrel. He looked as if he was reliving the agony of the amputation. Benny Mongrel showed nothing on his face, turned back to Hector and Rufus Jordaan.
Hector rolled the liquround on his tongue. “You need to watch yourself.”
“I can handle Barnard.”
Hector shook his head. “Not that fat fuck. Him. Fingers.”
Benny Mongrel allowed a smile to touch his mouth. “That piece of shit?”
“He’s got power out here. His drugs bring in a lot of bucks.”
Benny Mongrel shrugged. “He stole from me. He was punish.”
Rufus Jordaan chugged back some of his beer. “Says you didn’t go to the Men in the Clouds before you chop him.”
The Men in the Clouds, the old-timers, usually lifers, who made the law in prison. They mediated in disputes and decided on punishment.
“I didn’t need to waste their time.” Benny Mongrel looked back over his shoulder. Fingers was sitting at a table near the door, never taking his eyes off Benny Mongrel. He kept his hands on the table, the stumps of the fingers scarred from the hot plate, the thumbs moving nervously on the wood.
Benny Mongrel felt nothing. “Useless cunt is lucky I didn’t kill him.”