by Roger Smith
Burn held the gun steady, unwavering, pointed at the fat cop. “Where is my son?”
The cop sneered. “Fuck you.” Burn’s finger was tightening on the trigger. “Shoot me, and you can kiss his little ass good-bye.”
“Open the trunk of the car,” said Burn, the gun moving between Benny Mongrel and the cop. Benny could see that Burn knew how to use it.
Benny Mongrel popped the trunk. Burn leveled the gun at the fat cop.
“Get in.” When the cop tried to protest, Burn pointed the weapon at the cop’s leg. “I’ll shoot you. I mean it.”
The cop shook his head again. “Fuck you.”
And Burn shot him. The bullet took the cop above his left knee, in the meat of his thigh, passing through his flesh without doing serious damage. The cop bit back the pain and grabbed at his leg. The Chinese sailors were chattering like monkeys.
Burn waved the gun again. “Now get in the trunk.”
Blood was flowing down the cop’s leg, and he cursed as he hauled himself to his feet, keeping his weight on his right leg. With a series of actions that under any other circumstances would have been comical, he contrived to load his bulk into the trunk.
“Close it,” Burn said to Benny Mongrel.
When Benny brought the trunk lid down, it hit the cop’s massive belly and refused to close. He leaned his weight on it. He heard the cop grunt and curse. He had to lift himself off the ground, lie on the lid, before he heard it catch.
“Kick the guns over to me.”
Benny Mongrel did as he was told. He watched as Burn pocketed the weapons.
“Now you drive.” Burn gestured with the gun toward the car.
Benny Mongrel shook his head. “I don’t drive.”
Burn stared at him. “You’re kidding me?”
“I never learn.”
“Fuck.” Burn shook his head. “Okay, get into the passenger seat. Slowly.”
He got into the Ford, and Burn slid behind the wheel and started the car.
“Where we going?” asked Benny Mongrel.
“To my house. To get him to talk.” Burn was doing a juggling act, the wheel, the ignition key, the revolver.
“It’s okay.”
“What is?”
“I won’t try nothing.” Burn was looking at him. “You want your boy? You need to know where to get him?” Burn nodded. “I help you if you do one thing for me.”
“What?”
“You let me work on him.” He jerked his head back toward the trunk. “To make him talk. I wanna do that.”
Burn nodded. “Deal.” He started the car and sped off, the revolver shoved between his seat and the door.
Benny Mongrel thought that maybe things had turned out okay. Maybe the American had done him a favor. Cutting the fat cop’s throat was too easy, too quick. Now he had the chance to take his time, put to good use the torture practices he had mastered in prison.
He was looking forward to that.
Burn drove toward his house, battling with the gears on the right-hand-drive stick shift. He had driven only the automatic Jeep since coming to Cape Town. Then he started to get it, felt the mind-muscle coordination kick in.
As he threaded the anonymous brown Ford through the traffic on Greenpoint Main Road, he checked out his passenger. The watchman sat absolutely still, staring straight ahead. Maybe that is what prison taught you, to live in the moment. To conserve your energy for when it was needed, and to go into sleep mode when you faced that endless succession of days. Burn knew that he might well be learning those lessons himself soon.
Somehow he no longer cared. He felt detached from himself, from his own ego and desires, for the first time in his life. He understood how shallow, how immature and superficial most of his urges had been. Now all he cared about, all his very being was focused on, was saving his son. If he could achieve that, he would step quietly into whatever uncertain future awaited him.
Burn changed back to second gear as he turned up Glengariff. The car struggled, and he felt the exhaust scrape under the weight of the massive man in the trunk. Burn had to pump the clutch and shift back to first to get the car moving up the hill.
The watchman was laughing, with no sound escaping his lips.
Maybe that was another trick you learned in prison.
Barnard battled for breath. The exhaust of the Ford leaked, and noxious fumes found their way into the trunk, making him feel as if he was being gassed. His leg throbbed, and he could feel the blood pooling under him. He’d underestimated the American, hadn’t thought he’d have the balls to pull the trigger.
Barnard cursed himself for his stupidity. He had been too sure of himself. He was accustomed to dealing with people out on the Cape Flats, who were shit scared to act against him. But he swore to himself that he would tell the American and the half-breed nothing. They had formed an unholy alliance, but they would not break him.
The car hit a bump, and his forehead and nose smashed up against the lid of the trunk. He felt blood flow from his nose, back into his throat. He couldn’t move his head, wedged in like a meat loaf in a mold. The blood, combined with the fumes, convinced him that this was it. He was about to die. The irony was that he was trapped in the trunk with the duffel bag of money, his passport to a new life, squeezed painfully up against his ribs.
He tried to slow his breathing, offered a prayer to God. For some reason God felt very far away.
The Ford was parked in Burn’s garage. The fat cop was still in the trunk. The steel door was down, and the room was very quiet, cut off from the world outside. Not even the shouts of the men tossing bricks on the building site penetrated the garage.
Benny Mongrel was very precise in his requests. He needed a kitchen chair strong enough to hold the fat cop’s weight, a length of nylon rope, a few rags, some newspaper, garbage bags, and duct tape.
And he needed his knife back.
Burn hesitated a moment, considering the request. Then he reached into his pocket and brought out the folded knife. He handed it to Benny Mongrel. The two men went upstairs and gathered the items Benny Mongrel had asked for. Then they went back down to the garage.
Burn watched as Benny Mongrel spread the newspaper. The garage was large enough to hold two cars, so there was plenty of space next to the Ford. Benny Mongrel was methodical, making sure that the edges of the newspaper overlapped. Then he ripped the black garbage bags apart and placed them over the newspaper. Only then did he set the chair in place.
He looked at Burn and nodded. Burn pointed the. 38 at the trunk. Benny Mongrel popped the lid. The fat cop was gasping, his face bright red, blood crusted around his nose and in his mustache. He hauled himself upright.
“Fuck youse,” he said and vomited down the front of his T-shirt. He wiped the back of his hand across his mouth.
“Get out.”
Burn waved the gun toward the chair. It took a couple of tries for the fat man to lever his weight out of the trunk. At last he managed it, like a side of beef coming out of a freezer truck, and stood wheezing, blood from the leg wound flowing into his shoe.
“Sit down,” said Burn.
Barnard shook his head. Benny Mongrel kicked him in the right kidney, hard enough to make the cop piss blood for a week. The fat cop made a sound like a pig fucking and stumbled, fighting not to fall to his knees. He staggered across to the chair and lowered himself with a series of whining grunts. The wooden chair protested but held his weight.
While Burn held the gun on the cop, Benny Mongrel tied the fat man to the chair, quickly and efficiently immobilizing his arms and legs. Then he shoved a rag into Barnard’s mouth and taped it in place. He opened his knife and cut away the cop’s jeans above his left knee. He pressed a cloth against the wound and taped it up. He didn’t want the fat boer to die of blood loss before he had a chance to work on him.
Benny Mongrel laid the knife on the trunk of the Ford. He took a length of white mutton cloth and tore it with his teeth until he had the length he needed.
He very carefully wrapped the blade of the knife down from the haft, leaving only a few centimeters of the blade exposed.
In Pollsmoor Prison a new recruit to the gangs has to pass an initiation rite. He has to stab a warder. But the stabbing must never be fatal, only deep enough to injure. To ensure this, the gang “doctor,” the man who performs a similar function to a medic in a marine platoon, carefully prepares the knife by wrapping it in such a way that the length of the blade is set.
Benny Mongrel had never been a “doctor,” but he had stabbed warders and ordered countless terrified young men to do the same. He had supervised the preparation of the blade. His fingers knew precisely what they were doing.
Barnard watched him, his stench filling the room.
Satisfied, Benny Mongrel approached the fat cop. He showed him the knife.
“Where’s my son?” asked Burn, standing behind Benny Mongrel.
Barnard shook his head. Benny Mongrel inserted the knife into the flesh of the fat cop’s right thigh. It slid in like it was going into prison bully beef. The fat man screamed silently behind the gag.
And so it began.
Disaster Zondi drove the rental BMW up the slope of Signal Hill, the Cape Town map book open on the seat beside him. As he left Sea Point Main Road behind, he slid ever upward into a world of rarefied privilege, each block up the slope a leap into a higher tax bracket. A world of high walls, SUVs, and soccer moms with blonde bobs. A white world.
A phone call to Sea Point police station had resulted in a piece of interesting intelligence: there had been a shooting two nights before at the building site where the red BMW had been found. There might be no connection, but Zondi’s hunch was that it was too much of a coincidence.
He found himself at the corner of Mountain Road and brought the car to a stop at the building site. The view was spectacular. He could seankers lying off Robben Island, yachts catching the wind near Table Bay Harbor, the vista spreading to the Hottentots Holland Mountains in the distance. But Zondi wasn’t there for the view.
He shrugged on his jacket, despite the heat that enveloped him as he stepped out of the air-conditioned car. He adjusted his shades and headed toward two men building a wall. One of the men, black, stripped to the waist with the kind of body that no gym can give you, casually tossed bricks up to another man, who straddled the top of the wall, catching them expertly. All the while they were discussing soccer in Xhosa.
Zondi grew up speaking Zulu, a cousin language. That was how he greeted the men. They stared at him with suspicion, this well-dressed black man in his fancy car. He asked who was in charge, and one of them pointed into the site.
Zondi walked through a mess of cement, bricks, and builder’s sand. He was careful not to dirty his loafers. He came upon a young white man in shorts and work boots, shirtless, deeply tanned, with blond dreadlocks. A tool belt hung from his waist as he took the span of a doorway with a steel tape measure.
“Afternoon,” Zondi said as he approached.
“Hey, hi.” The guy gave him a smile. Zondi caught the pungent whiff of recently smoked weed. “You from the architects?”
“No. Special Investigator Zondi.” He showed his ID.
The young guy squinted, probably thinking of the nipped joint that was undoubtedly still in his pocket. “There some problem?”
“No. I hear there was a shooting here, the other night?”
The guy relaxed. “Fully. Watchman got plugged.” He wiped his hand and stuck it out. “Name’s Dave Judd. Site foreman.”
Zondi shook the hand. “Would you mind showing me where the shooting took place?”
“No problem.” Judd coiled the tape measure and slipped it into the pouch. He led Zondi into the interior of the house, across two planks, toward a stairway. Laborers in overalls were plastering the walls. Judd dodged the men and went nimbly up the stairs, his surfer’s balance on display.
He pointed to the stairs leading to the uncompleted top floor. “Happened right here. Guy’s pooch got taken out, shame.”
“His dog?”
“Ja. Absolutely. Right here. Can still see the bullet holes, hey.”
He pointed to the wall, and Zondi went closer. One of the slugs was embedded in the unplastered wall. “You mind if I borrow a screwdriver?”
“No prob.”
Judd freed a screwdriver from his tool belt and handed it over, handle first. Zondi dug into the hole and unearthed the slug. He removed an evidence bag from his pocket and eased the slug inside, then sealed it.
He handed the screwdriver back. “Thanks.”
“Sure thing.”
“All right if I wander around a bit?”
“Hey, whatever. I’ll be downstairs if you need me, okay?”
Zondi nodded and watched as the surfer boy bounced back down the stairs, probably counting the minutes until he could get into his wet-suit and go catch some waves. Zondi went up to the top floor, the roof open to the sky.
He was alone up there. He walked to the edge of an unfinished balcony, saw a small pile of cigarette butts. Roll-your-owns. He was prepared to bet that this was where the watchman and his dog had hung out. He wanted to talk to that watchman.
Zondi looked down onto the deck of the house next door. Another one of those high-walled boxes with big glass windows. A man stood on the deck, staring down over Cape Town, the breeze flicking his hair.
Zondi turned and walked back toward the stairs.
It had become too much for Burn. The watchman betrayed no emotion, focused on his task with single-minded determination. He applied the blade with precision to the body of the fat man, stabbing into the blubber, drawing blood that flowed down onto the garbage bags and the newspapers. He worked his way up the legs, then began on the massive torso.
Barnard, shirtless, his immense body streaked with blood, strained in the chair, the veins on his forehead popping out like cords. Sweat and blood coursed off him. He had pissed and shit himself, which, mixed with his fetid body odor and the smell of blood, made the room stink like a charnel house.
Every few minutes the watchman would remove the gag, and Burn would repeat the question. “Where is my son?”
And the fat cop would shake his head, his fringe wet and dangling, and spit two words through his bleeding lips. “Fuck youse.”
The watchman would shove the gag back in and tape it up. Then he would wipe the blade down and start his work again, inserting the knife into the body of the fat man deep enough to cause agony but not deep enough to cause death.
“I’m going upstairs. For some air,” Burn told the watchman, who merely nodded as he inserted the blade into Barnard’s shoulder. A keening noise rose from somewhere within the cop’s chest, and tears and sweat dripped from his face. His body bulged against the ropes.
Burn headed for the kitchen, where he splashed his face and drank a long draft of water. Was this fat bastard ever going to break? The longer this continued, the more remote the likelihood that he would ever see his son alive again.
Burn stepped out onto the deck and sucked air. Even the smoky breeze, still heavy with the charred smell of the fire, was sweet after the foul atmosphere of the torture chamber that was now his garage. It was hard to believe, looking out at this scene of quiet beauty, that the world went on, untroubled by the universe of pain and corruption that he had somehow stumbled into. Then he looked beyond the city and the ocean, out to where the land was flat, covered in a haze of smog and smoke.
Burn had taken Matt on a helicopter ride before Christmas. The chopper had done the usual tourist things, gone around Table Mountain, along the coast; then it had banked over the Cape Flats on its way to land, and Burn had looked down at the endless sprawl of box houses and ghett apartment blocks dumped on the scrubland like forgotten toys in a sandpit. As he stood on the deck, he had a memory of that sprawl. He knew his son was out there somewhere.
Burn had no idea how long he stood there, the wind cooling the sweat on his body, before he heard the voice calli
ng to him. He looked down to the street and saw a black man in a very well-cut dark suit, designer shades, staring up at him.
“Excuse me,” the man said for maybe the fifth time.
Burn stepped toward the railing of the deck. “Yes. Hi, sorry.”
“I’d like to have a word with you, if you don’t mind.” The man was holding something toward him.
Burn focused. It was some kind of official ID. He almost wanted to laugh. Not again. Not now.
CHAPTER 27
A voice inside Burn’s head told him to open the street door, to extend his wrists in supplication toward this black cop and ask for the handcuffs. Lead him toward the garage that now doubled as a DIY torture chamber. Beg him to find his boy.
But Burn opened the door and did something with his facial muscles that resembled a smile. “Afternoon. Can I help you?”
The black man, his shaven dome gleaming in the sunlight, offered the ID document for Burn to view. “Special Investigator Zondi. Ministry of Safety and Security.”
Burn nodded, making no move to open the door any wider.
“Can I have your name, please, sir?”
“Hill. John Hill.”
“You’re American?”
“Yes, I am.” Burn made a point of looking at his watch. “I’m in kind of a hurry…”
“My apologies. Do you know anything about a red BMW that was parked next door to your house a few nights ago? Outside the building site?”
Burn shook his head. “No.”
The black cop thought for a moment before he spoke. “Was there maybe another officer here, asking questions?”
Burn was tempted to lie. But what if there was some record of Barnard having been here? He told a version of the truth. “Yeah. There was. A few days back.”
“Is that a fact? This officer, was he by any chance Inspector Barnard?”
Burn made a show of looking uncertain, playing the dumb foreigner. “These South African names kinda confuse me. He was a big guy, pretty heavy.”
“Sounds like him. He asked you about the car?”