by Roger Smith
Rufus Jordaan looked on as if the whole thing amused the hell out of him.
Benny Mongrel stood. So did Hector. “His guys won’t touch you in here, but outside is another story. He want your blood.”
Hector called a boy over, a pimply kid with a desperate attempt at a mustache. Handed him a set of car keys. “Ashraf, take Benny Mongrel where he want to go.”
Benny Mongrel shook his head. “I make my own way.”
“Just take the ride, okay? I don’t want no mess out on my street. It’s been nice and quiet lately.”
Benny Mongrel shrugged, and the kid went off to get the car. Hector put out his hand, and they exchanged the shake. “Good luck, brother.”
Benny Mongrel headed for the door, the young punks getting out of his way. People still knew who he was. He passed Fingers, didn’t even look the way of the useless piece of shit. As he reached the door he felt the nudge of a thumb in his ribs.
He turned to look Fingers in the eye. “You know I can’t do anything to you here, you cunt.” Benny Mongrel stared him down. “But I’ll see you again, soon. And I’ll fucken kill you.” Fingers nudged him again with his thumb.
Benny Mongrel grabbed the thumb and bent it back, saw the pain in the amputee’s eyes. “Bring your mother. Save me the trouble of sending you to her.”
CHAPTER 21
It was past 2:00 a.m. and Barnard couldn’t sleep. He had tried the half-breed bitch every hour, and he still couldn’t reach her. Number not available. It was stressing him big time. What if she had sold him out? What if every second that ticked by brought him closer to a trap?
He sat up, wearing only his brief. He wheezed into the hotel bathroom, drilled a stream of piss into the toilet bowl, and washed his face at the stained basin. The water was tepid, and when he made the mistake of drinking some out of his cupped hand, he spit it right out.
He went back into the airless bedroom and stood by the window, trying to catch a breeze. Nothing. The hotel made its money out of a hookers’ bar on the ground level, and darky music beat up through the floorboards.
To calm himself, Barnard thought of the million that would be his tomorrow and the new life it was going to bring him. He was going to leave Cape Town and its seething, Godless hordes and head up the east coast, with a new name and a new identity. One of his old connections from the Security Police days, the only one he stayed in touch with, ran a sport fishing boat out of St. Lucia, north of Durban. There was an open invitation for Barnard to come up and join him. It was time. Now all he needed to do was get his hands on the money.
He grabbed his phone from next to the bed and thumbed the bitch’s number. Not available. Fuck that.
In minutes he was dressed, packing his armaments in the kit bag and getting the hell out of there. He knew it was a risk, crossing the Flats to Paradise Park. But it was late at night, and he had to find out what was going on.
He shoved the. 38 into its holster and headed for the door.
Carmen watched as Leroy brought the match to the bottom of the globe. The tik started to cook, and smoke swirled inside the glass, turning the globe opaque.
She put her mouth to the empty neck of the globe and sucked the tik deep into her chest. The rush hit her, that feeling that was better than anything she’d ever known, and she lay back on her bed, head pumping like it was gonna burst. But in a good way. She felt bright and shiny, all the shit in her life blown away by the smoke.
Leroy grabbed the globe from her and took a hit. A slow smile glazed his face as he exhaled a plume up to the ceiling. “Ja. This is the thing, huh?” He was a real Cape Flats’ Romeo, with his designer labels, his gelled hair, and his muscular arms covered in 28s tattoos. He thought he was God’s gift to massage parlors.
Carmen closed her eyes. She was wearing a halter top and a short skirt. The way she lay left her thighs exposed, and she opened her eyes to see Leroy admiring the view. She brought her legs together and sat up, slapping him on the shoulder. “Hey. I’m a married woman.”
Leroy handed her the globe to finish. “Where is he anyway? Rikki.”
She exhaled, shrugging. “Up the coast. Who the fuck knows?”
“He catch me here, and I’m dead.” Leroy reached across and grabbed her leg above the knee.
She swiped his hand away. “Hey, stop it.” She stood up. “Don’t worry, he’s not coming back in a hurry.”
The only reason she could have Leroy here was because she knew that Rikki had been burned crispier than a McNugget. Leroy was a Mongrel, a 28, the sworn enemy of Rikki and the Americans. But, hey, he scored some sweet tik. And he was prepared to play Mr. Delivery. She knew as only because he wanted to screw her, but so what? Let him dream on.
She went to the window, her head still spinning from the rush. She looked out over night on the Flats. It came to her that she had never been farther from here than into downtown Cape Town once, when she was a small child, to see the Christmas lights. She had lived within a couple of blocks of here her whole life, and she would die here, probably.
She made an effort to shake these thoughts and turned to Leroy. He was heading into the bathroom, and before she could stop him he opened the door. Enough light spilled in from the bedroom for him to see the American kid sleeping on a blanket on the bathroom floor.
The kid had been a pain in the ass the whole day. Weeping and snotty, wanting his mommy. By the time night came, Carmen was sick of it. She’d slipped him half a downer in a glass of warm milk, and he’d gone to sleep almost immediately.
Leroy was staring down at the blond hair. “Who the fuck’s kid is this?”
Carmen pushed his hand away from the door and closed it. “I’m babysitting.”
“I need to take a piss.”
“Then piss in the kitchen sink.”
He stared at her. “That’s a white kid, hey?”
She shook her head. “No ways. He belongs to my girlfriend.”
“Bullshit.”
“True. The father was something off a boat.”
“Looks white to me.”
“Ja and what? Are you suddenly some fucken expert?” She gave him a shove toward the front door. She’d had enough of his nonsense. “Time for you to go.”
“I want something first.”
He slipped a hand under her skirt and grabbed her between the legs. Cape Flats foreplay. Carmen didn’t slap; she punched. She punched hard for a girl, putting her weight behind the blow, so when her fist caught Leroy in the ribs he felt it. And he definitely felt her knee in his balls. He grabbed himself, sucking air. She had taken that shit from Rikki because he was the father of her child, but no other man was going to put his hands on her.
“Come. Move.” She pushed him toward the living room.
Leroy wasn’t about to make a scene here in the middle of Americans territory. He slunk to the door like a wounded dog, past Uncle Fatty snoring and farting on the sofa. She opened the door and Leroy went out.
“I wouldn’t put my dick in that dirty thing of yours anyways.”
“Ja, rather go put it in your mother.”
With the pleasantries over, she slammed the door. What had happened pissed her off. Not the crude attempt at sex, but the fact that she’d got rid of him before she could buy another globe off him.
Fuck it. She’d be okay till morning.
Leroy sat slumped in his pimped Honda, staring out at the dark ghetto block. Fucken bitch. He had a good mind to go back and teach her a lesson. What the fuck was going on in there, anyways? With that white kid?
While he pondered these confusing elements, his fingers were busy preparing another globe. A car’s headlights raked the front of the block, illuminating the words thug life daubed in white paint. Leroy ducked down even lower when he saw the Ford come to a halt. He knew Rikki drove that red BMW, but still. He was in enemy territory.
He saw a big guy get out of the car. He was wearing a jacket and had a peaked cap pulled over his face, carried a kit bag. The guy walked across to th
e stairs Leroy had just come down. One light still burned on the stairs, and Leroy realized he was watching Gatsby walking up to the landing.
Leroy laughed to himself. The moment he saw that white kid, he reckoned something was up. Now he knew. Fucken Gatsby. Leroy had heard there was a warrant out on the fat boer, but there was no way he was going to share his news with the cops.
He also knew that some old-school gangster, Benny Mongrel, had been in Lotus River asking around about Gatsby. And that Fingers Morkel was hot to find Benny Mongrel, wanting revenge. If Gatsby was here, maybe Benny Mongrel would follow.
Leroy was only too happy to score points with the man with no fingers. In the Byzantine world of Cape Flats gangster politics, he was a powerful ally. Leroy reached for his cell phone and dialed. He got voice mail and left a brief, not altogether lucid message, telling Fingers what he had seen.
Then he made the mistake of striking a match and bringing it to the globe.
Barnard was on the landing, catching his breath, when he saw the match flare in the Honda. Instinct took over, and he ducked into the shadows, moved across to the fire escape, and humped his bulk back down to ground level. He stayed in the shadows, coming up behind the car.
He saw the driver slouched behind the wheel, and from the glow he knew he was smoking tik. Barnard couldn’t run the risk that the man had seen him. He knew that shooting him would be too noisy. Even on the Flats a gunshot wouldn’t go unremarked. Barnard was walking across uneven, broken pavement. He set the kit bag down, bent and grabbed a chunk of cement, and headed for the Honda.
The half-breed heard him, dropped the globe, and looked up with a stupid expression on his face, smoke escaping from his open mouth. Barnard reached in through the open window and smashed the cement down on the half-breed’s head, stunning him. Barnard opened the car door and hauled him out onto the street. Then he finished the job, pulping the half-breed’s head with the cement, till it looked like roadkill on the blacktop.
Then he pulled the keys from the car’s ignition and went to the rear and popped the trunk. He hauled the half-breed around the back of the car and dumped him into the trunk. He threw the car keys in after him, slammed the lid, and made sure it was locked. He looked around. All was quiet.
Time to go and check on the bitch and the American kid.
CHAPTER 22
When the half-breed finally opened the door, Barnard grabbed her by the throat and walked her backward into the room. He kicked the door shut behind him as he pushed her into a kneeling position on the floor. In the same motion he produced the. 38 from its holster and shoved it into her mouth, grabbing a fistful of her kinky hair with his left hand. By tilting the gun barrel, he forced her to look up into his eyes.
“Okay. Listen to me and listen careful. When I take this gun out your mouth, I’m gonna ask you a question. And you not gonna lie. Understood?”
She nodded, choking on the gun. He slid the barrel from her mouth and she coughed.
“Who was that fucker who was here now?”
She shook her head. “There was nobody here.”
He took his arm back and hit her with the barrel. The sight dug deep into her cheekbone, and blood sprang, a red ribbon against her sallow face. She moaned and brought a hand to her cheek, trying to stem the blood that flowed between her fingers.
“There was one light on in the building when he came out. Yours. I’m only gonna ask you one more time. Who was he?”
“My dealer.”
“Did he see the kid?”
She was about to lie. He knew it and took his gun hand back, ready to hit her again. He saw the truth come into her eyes. “Ja. He seen him.”
“What did you tell him?”
“That it’s my friend’s kid.”
“A white kid?”
“I tole him that the daddy was a sailor.”
“He buy that?”
“Ja. I think so.”
“Anybody else see him?”
She shook her head. He believed her. He lowered the gun. “Where’s the kid?”
“In the bathroom.”
He banged past the old alkie, who snored on the sofa, dead to the world, and opened the bathroom door. The kid lay next to the filthy shit pot, so still he looked dead. Barnard lowered himself down and prodded a sausagelike finger into the kid’s neck. He could feel a pulse. The kid didn’t stir.
Barnard went back through to the other room and found the half-breed at the kitchen sink, holding a wet cloth against her face. The cloth was already turning pink.
“You give him something to make him sleep?”
She nodded. “Half a Mogadon.”
“And what if you’d fucken killed him?”
She stared at him, the blood seeping through the cloth. “You gonna kill him anyways, aren’t you?”
“What makes you say that?”
She shrugged. Blood dripped through the ook/p›
Then he came at her. She shrunk back against the sink, but he surprised her by putting his thumb against the cloth where the cut was, applying pressure. He held it there for nearly a minute, staring at her, his rotten breath rolling over her like the fumes from a septic tank.
“I’m gonna stay here tonight.”
“You can’t sleep with me!”
“You’d be so fucken lucky.” He laughed and released the grip on her face. The pressure had slowed the flow of blood.
Barnard turned and walked over to a threadbare chair, dragged it so that its back was to the wall and it faced the front door. He sat, his fat overflowing the arms of the chair, and unzipped the kit bag. He unwrapped the towel and rested the Mossberg 500 on his lap.
He looked at the door, not at her, when he spoke. “I won’t be sleeping. I’ll be sitting here waiting for somebody to come through that fucken door.”
The helicopters woke Burn again. This time he knew exactly where he was. And where he was made Desert Storm look easy. There had been rules of a sort in that war, if you were an American, that is. You took orders, you moved forward, and you killed people. At night you pissed into your ration pack to get the heater going and ate a turkey dinner while the smoke from the blazing oil fields wrapped you like a blanket.
But now, in Cape Town, the rule book had been lost. Or maybe never written.
Burn looked at his watch, just gone six a.m. His head was thick from the Scotch that had sent him to sleep. Reaching for his phone, he thumbed Mrs. Dollie’s number. He heard her voice, self-conscious, uncomfortable with technology, saying that he should leave a message. He killed the call, fighting his guilt at her death. And the terror that the kidnapper had already killed Matt.
Mrs. Dollie’s daughter, Leila, had called him again the night before. Her voice had been thick with grief, but she was composed and polite. She accepted his condolences gracefully, then asked him to come to the funeral. Mrs. Dollie was Muslim, and according to Muslim rites she had to be buried as soon as possible. The police had completed an autopsy and released the body to the family for burial. Burn had heard himself saying that of course he would be there.
That was today, later in the afternoon.
He dragged himself from the bed and into the shower, alternating hot and cold to smash himself into some form of alertness. He shaved and combed his hair, dressed in the casually expensive clothes appropriate to the morning’s banking.
He looked at his face in the mirror and remembered that he was going to be a father again that day.
Barnard woke to the sound of somebody at the door. Fuck it, he hadn’t meant to sleep. He battled his way out of the chair, leveling the shotgun, then realized that he’d heard voices of men in the corridor, early morning workers on their way to the taxi stand. It was light already. He’d meant to get away in the dark.
He looked across at the old drk, who lay on his back, his mouth gaping, dentures slipped off his gums. The blanket had fallen from the sofa and showed his emaciated body, naked except for the filthy underpants. Barnard saw that the old alky had a
hard-on, bulging out the front of his briefs like a tent pole. At his fucken age.
Barnard lifted the blanket with his foot and dumped it over the old man’s balls; then he walked across to the window. The glass was cracked and taped up. Barnard eased back the greasy lace curtain and peered down into the street. His Ford was there, and so was the Honda. From where he stood he couldn’t see the blood of the fucker whose brains he’d pulped, but he knew that sooner or later it would be noticed. He had to get out of there.
He bent over the sink and splashed his face, resting the Mossberg 500 on a pile of dirty plates. He wiped his face with his hand, not trusting one of the soiled dish towels. Grabbing the shotgun, he lumbered into the bedroom.
The half-breed bitch was asleep, covered by a gray sheet. He could see her naked shoulders, the swell of a breast, the kinky hair squashed against the pillow. He stood over her, looking down at her face. Her left cheek was swollen, the gash from the gun barrel crusted with blood. A vivid purple bruise was already spreading across the cheek toward her eye. Cape Flats mascara, he’d heard a colored cop call it one night during a domestic disturbance call.
These fucken people, they made a joke of everything in that lingo they spoke, a complex sublanguage of Afrikaans, prison slang, and street talk. Barnard understood it, after all the years out on the Flats. Though he would never bring himself to admit it, he felt more at home among these brown people he loathed than the white world he was supposedly part of.
The half-breed turned in her sleep, the sheet falling away, and he could see her tits. Aside from the stretch marks, they weren’t bad. Ja, you knew it was time to leave Cape Town when you started finding a tik whore attractive. He brought the shotgun up from his side and placed the barrel against the side of her head. She didn’t move, soft snores escaping her gummed-up lips. Maybe he should finish her now, one less witness, one less drug-fucked mouth to worry about. Finish the kid too, and the old rubbish on the sofa, and get the ransom and drive away from this long-drop of a city.
His fat finger tightened on the trigger. Then it relaxed. No, maybe it was too soon. He might need her and the kid. He could clean up this mess later.