Of Cops & Robbers

by Nicol, Mike;

  The nurse goes back to her paperwork, Fish heads down the corridor towards the staircase.

  At the ground floor reception desk he pauses, says to the giggler, ‘Nice arrangement.’ The flowers now in a vase. ‘Much better they’re here. From what they tell me upstairs my young friend’s going to be pushing them up soon.’

  The receptionist claps a hand over her mouth, can’t help an explosion of laughter.

  Fish winks. ‘Got to laugh, haven’t we?’

  In his car he unfolds the admin sheet: the box marked private patient is ticked. The billing address is Beechcraft Street, Mitchell’s Plain.

  No joy. Nothing he doesn’t know already.

  Fish folds the page, slips it back into his jacket pocket. He’s about to fire the ignition, he notices a black GTI with tinted windows in the row behind him, two cars down.

  Nice coincidence.

  He gets out, checks the number plates. Same car. Thinks, Daro can help here. Daro’s got access to the car licensing system.

  Fish has that feeling he’s being watched, ignores it. Dude’s hardly going to be standing in plain view. On the way back to his car, he scopes the parking lot. Nonchalant, only taking in what he’d be looking at anyhow. Someone watching would be behind the hospital’s entrance doors with their reflective glass, you could stand there without being seen. Fish gets into the Perana, heads out with a low reverb in the tail pipes.

  48

  Cake Mullins decides doesn’t matter how much Jacob Mkezi has on his plate, he connected him to Tol Visagie. Straight business deal. Straight business commission. Finder’s fee. Whatever you want to call it. They should talk money.

  Might be midday but Cake’s in his dressing gown. Standing in his dressing gown at an upstairs window, Cake looks over the vineyard that abuts his property. Shiraz grapes. The wine that welcomes you like a woman with her legs wide open. Cake has this image of a naked woman sitting on a beach, leaning against a rock, one leg crooked, the other spread. Her hair’s wet, her arms are up to hold you, her boobs raised, nipples puckered, some curve to her belly, shaved crotch, the vertical smile. Cake Mullins gets a half-rise thinking about it.

  Shakes his head to clear the image. Time he phoned Midnight Girls again, ordered a Shiraz.

  Instead Cake phones Jacob Mkezi. ‘How’d it work out?’ he wants to know.

  Listens to Jacob Mkezi saying, ‘Interesting, Cake. Interesting, my friend.’

  ‘It worked out then?’ Cake wandering into his bathroom, checking himself out in the full-length mirror.

  ‘What you mean is what’s in it for you? Cake Mullins on his game.’

  Cake smiling at himself. ‘Something like that.’

  ‘No problem,’ says Jacob Mkezi. ‘How about one per cent?’

  Cake keeping up the smile. ‘What’re we talking, actual figures?’

  Again Jacob Mkezi laughing. ‘Cake on the bake.’

  ‘Ha, ha.’

  ‘Couple of hundred grand probably.’

  ‘Rands, dollars?’

  ‘Dollars.’

  ‘Two per cent.’

  ‘One point five. That’s it.’

  Cake Mullins happy enough with the outcome but not finished yet. ‘You could’ve phoned me yourself about getting Vicki Kahn into a card game. You could’ve asked me.’

  ‘I could’ve,’ says Jacob Mkezi. ‘I asked Mart to handle it. He tell you about Lord?’

  ‘What about Lord?’ Cake Mullins letting the dressing gown fall open: the way he does it for the Midnight Girls, giving half an ear to the story of Lord’s fuck-up. His father’s words, Lord’s fuck-up.

  Lord always was a wanker as far as Cake Mullins is concerned.

  Cake admiring himself in the mirror: the chest hair, the good-life stomach, the hairy thighs, the cock and balls.

  ‘Nasty one,’ he says to Jacob Mkezi. ‘See you tonight.’

  49

  Fish takes the drive down Main Road to Daro’s boutique car lot slowly, checking the rear-view mirror for a black GTI. Wondering why he should even be bothered to find out the owner. You’re off the case, dude, he tells himself. Drop it. Go surfing.

  But there’s the GTI, way back, five cars behind him. Not getting any closer, just hanging there.

  Problemo: let him know he’s spotted, or cruise on like who gives a toss?

  Options: slip left down a side road, stop in the park ’n ride at Heathfield station. Wait till the cracker passes then swing in behind him. See how he fancies it.

  But Fish’s not in the mood for high jinks. Fish’d rather stop in at Daro’s, drink some of his filter coffee while Daro pops the CA number into the system.

  Just for the hell of it.

  Just to know.

  Which is what Fish does. Listens to Jim, takes a sedate speed-limit shuffle through the traffic lights to Daro’s executive wheels. Because Fish plans to hit the beach when this’s done.

  Despite that, he keeps an eye on the black spot in his rear-view. Out of professional interest. Because the guy’s good. The guy knows how to do this. What puzzles Fish is why’s he bothering?

  He phones Vicki.

  ‘Sorry,’ she says, ‘I’m in a meeting. Hang on.’

  He hangs on. Hears her making excuses, a door clicking shut. Then, a bit hissy: ‘What’s it?’

  ‘What d’you mean what’s it?’

  ‘I’m in a meeting, with clients, please.’

  ‘Big deal. I’ve got a black VW GTI, tinted windows, hanging onto my every move.’

  ‘Following you?’

  ‘Rocked up first at the Appollis’s. Then at the hospital. Now he’s breathing my exhaust.’

  ‘I told you to let it go. I told you, Fish. The hospital was a bad idea. We were off the case. Specific instructions. Can’t you listen to anything I tell you?’

  ‘It was my own scene.’

  ‘Ah, Fish. Come’n.’

  ‘Anyhow, I didn’t get anything at the hospital. Not anything we didn’t know already.’

  ‘You’re sure? Sure it’s the same guy?’

  ‘Same registration.’

  ‘He knows you’ve seen him?’

  ‘I’d say so. He’s a pro.’

  ‘Go surfing, Fish. Show him you’re off it.’

  ‘That’s your advice?’

  ‘No one’s paying you. Leave it. That’s what I asked hours ago.’

  Fish lets this hang a while until Vicki says, ‘I’ve got to get back.’

  ‘Cool,’ he says. ‘See you later. What, six, six thirty?’

  Hears her hesitation. ‘Can’t,’ she says. ‘I’ve got this work thing that’s come up.’

  ‘You didn’t have this morning.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘So afterwards?’

  ‘It’s going to be late. Dinner with clients. I’ll be tired, Fish, you’re a long drive from the city that time of night.’

  ‘You want a lift, I’ll fetch you.’ Fish thinking as he says it, back off, you’re getting too intense.

  ‘You’re sweet,’ she says. ‘But no. I’ll call you tomorrow.’

  Before he can say bye, the connection’s cut.

  He flips the phone onto the passenger seat. You don’t want full-on commitment. You want your pad. She’s got her apartment. Nice situation, couldn’t be better.

  So what’s the big deal?

  Her tone’s the big deal. It’s a tone he’s heard before. When they first got it together and she was gambling. That kind of defensive note in her voice. Like, leave me, okay, there’s a part of my life that’s mine.

  The part she was ashamed of.

  Nah, thinks Fish. Can’t be. She wouldn’t. She’s on the programme, she’s been for, is going for, counselling. Most Monday nights she does Gamblers Anonymous. Eight, nine months she hasn’t placed a bet. Hasn’t sat down to a game of poker.

  At least that’s what she’s told him.

  Now he’s not so sure.

  Now he’s recalling those early heart-to-hearts, a year back, longer even
. The line he took with her: please, please, please, Vicki, get out of the gambling. Tears from her. How it made him hurt. Once, in the early weeks, he got so emotional about her gambling he headed up the west coast for three days to surf. Left her to face the debts. He came back, she was black and blue. Scared. Really scared. She wouldn’t tell him who’d done it, but she hit Gamblers Anonymous right afterwards. Got a loan to cover the thirty grand she was down, told Fish, ‘That’s the end. No more.’

  He whacks the steering wheel, redials. Call goes straight to voicemail.

  ‘Bloody women,’ Fish yells, ramping onto Daro’s forecourt faster than’s wise, skidding on the zooty tiles. Glimpses Daro’s face at the office window, alarmed.

  He dials again. Voicemail. This time he’s come off the boil, leaves the message, ‘Phone me, okay? Just phone me.’ He cuts the connection, stares up at Daro standing at his car door.

  ‘Skilful,’ says Daro. ‘To the centimetre.’

  Fish grimaces. ‘Sorry, hey’ – switches off the engine.

  ‘Nothing a hard scrub won’t clean off.’ Daro turns back to his office. ‘Coffee?’

  ‘Good idea,’ says Fish.

  Daro pours two mugs, gives one to Fish, handle outwards.

  ‘I’ve come for a favour,’ Fish says.

  ‘No?’ says Daro, drawing it out, sarcastic.

  Fish blows at the steam, looks at him over his mug. Daro’s not the sarky type.

  ‘You having a bad day?’

  ‘Two people across the floor this morning. One just looking, the other I don’t know what his case was. Maybe he’ll be back, maybe he won’t. Gut feel, he won’t. I need to sell another car.’

  ‘One sale last week’s not bad.’

  ‘Not good either.’

  The two men focus on their coffee. Fish says, ‘My job got canned. Lasted all of three hours.’ He goes into a recap. When he gets onto Fortune Appollis’s change of fortune, Daro stops him.

  ‘The kids drag racing now,’ says Daro, ‘use Subarus. Jettas. I’m talking the latest models, half a million bucks worth, they smack in oversized pistons, V66 cam shafts, interceptor carburettor kits, wind these things up to three hundred kays on the R303.’

  ‘They do?’ says Fish.

  ‘They’re out there one behind the other, that’s the thrill, maybe a metre, maybe even less between them. You’re travelling at that speed the front guy touches the brakes, you’re both history. Bang, flip, mangle. I saw one of those …’ Daro drank off a mouthful, swallowed. ‘The front car burnt out in a fireball. The car behind flew, I mean, flew, ended up over the island on the other side of the road. Even then it doesn’t stop. Heavens, man, on and on. The metal sparking, scraping for a hundred, two hundred metres, I don’t know. The driver disappeared. Poof. Vaporised. Not a trace of him left. Nothing. Might have been a ghost driving that car.’

  ‘Hectic,’ says Fish.

  ‘I heard it was a seventeen-year-old kid behind the wheel. His daddy was, is, a major businessman couldn’t see any reason not to fork out five hundred grand for his little boy. Even though his little boy was too young to have a licence.’

  ‘That right?’ says Fish.

  ‘It’s happening two, three times a week on the Flats. And these guys come from money. The new elite. Which is why …’

  ‘My Appollis gets the private upgrade. Why his mommy and daddy drop the case. Yeah, I got that. Only one thing I want to know, for the hell of it, who owns this car?’ Fish smoothes out a piece of paper with a CA registration on it. ‘Black VW GTI with tinted windows.’

  ‘Shouldn’t be a problem,’ says Daro. He taps into the system on his laptop, comes up with a try again message. ‘Licensing system’s down right now,’ he tells Fish, ‘I can find out tomorrow.’

  ‘No rush,’ says Fish. ‘I’m going surfing.’ He finishes the coffee in a swallow, says, ‘You still want me to speak to my friend? About the drugs talk?’

  ‘Why not,’ says Daro. ‘No harm in it.’

  ‘Great.’ Fish jiggles his keys. He’s tossing up: does he, does he not tell Daro about Seven’s hit list nonsense? Goes with: ‘D’you carry a gun?’

  Daro gives him a quick headshake, a frown, a jokey: ‘What? Where’s that come from?’

  ‘Nowhere.’ Fish backtracking. ‘Just you being on the forum, maybe it’s a good idea.’

  Daro keeps staring at him, nods. ‘I’ve thought about it. But why d’you say that?’

  Fish shrugs. ‘No particular reason. Just guns can be useful.’

  Outside it’s warm in the sun, the two men feeling it on their shoulders, gazing at the mountains cut out against the sky.

  ‘Close up,’ Fish says. ‘A surf’s what you need.’

  Daro snorts. ‘It’s half past three.’

  ‘There you go,’ says Fish, ‘almost a whole day wasted. We shoulda been at the beach.’

  Daro watches Fish drive off.

  ‘Guns can be useful.’

  Puzzles why Fish said that now. Decides it’s Fish’s way of saying be careful on the forum. Thing is that’s the least of it.

  Daro’s got the piece of paper with the registration number Fish gave him in his hand. He doesn’t need the system to know who owns the car.

  Mart Velaze.

  Understandable why Mart Velaze would need a quieter car if what Mart Velaze does is stake out people.

  Mart Velaze and his casually dropped reference to Ray Adler.

  Dries out Daro’s mouth.

  He goes back online, keys passwords through to the traffic department’s lists. Gets an address for Mart Velaze in Milnerton. It’s a block of flats on Marine Drive.

  Next he Googles Adler Solutions. No surprise there’s no website. No surprise it’s not in the phone book.

  Daro’s not sure how to handle this one.

  THE ICING UNIT, MAY 1995

  The Fisherman’s name is Dommiss Verberg. When Dom gets the bullet, he’s fishing off the concrete breakwater – the dolosse – outside Port Elizabeth one bright October morning. The sea’s flat, slipping, gurgling among the dolos concrete blocks piled to preserve the beach from washaways. Off in the distance the office blocks of the city stacked in the haze. Only souls nearby two men fishing down the break to his right. Dom sits on a dolos with his feet dangling over the edge. The water’s a murky soup, there might be cob passing through, even elf, but he’s not had a bite. Doesn’t matter. Dom is content to sit there, smoking, eating the cold meat sandwiches his wife made. The fishing’s an excuse, gets him out of the house on his off days.

  He reels in. The hook is bare. Something’s been nibbling the mud prawns. Something not inclined to snatch the bait in a passing gulp.

  Dom sighs. Fresh fish once a week would be nice. He hasn’t caught a fish in two weeks. His wife jokes that he must be having an affair. It’s a joke with teeth because once he had a scene with her sister until he got caught waving his bum in the air. Tears, tears, tears. Weeks of it. He had to make up with a seven-day break at Sun City. And give his wife a thousand to play the one-arm bandits. Which pulled her in eight grand on a straight-across four fruit. Ching. Ching. Did she give him five cents? Not a chance.

  ‘You see,’ she said. ‘God’s watching.’

  Dom wipes sandwich crumbs off his moustache, packs up, hurls the tin of mud prawns into the soup. Be a couple of days before he can get back, and one thing cob know it’s old bait. Might even be the Greek’d sold him stale bait this morning. Bloody Nico, and his ‘Fish don’t know the difference, my friend. Fish eat anything dead. Why you think there’s only skeletons under the sea?’

  Dom carefully hops across the dolosse, then the railway lines back to the car park.

  In the car park two fishermen lean against their bakkie, drinking coffee from a flask, two nice-sized cob on the van’s tailboard. Dom remembers they were fishing about a hundred metres down.

  ‘I didn’t get a bite,’ he says to the men.

  ‘You wanna buy one?’ asks the man holding the flask. ‘Twenn
y rand.’

  Dom considers this. Twenty rand’s a high price for a five-kilo fish. Bloody bushies always trying it on. Other hand he could say he caught it. Give his wife a thrill.

  ‘Alright,’ he says, pulling a ten-rand note from his pocket. He jiggles his small change. Says, ‘Not used to the five rand yet’ – picks out one from the coins in his palm. ‘Fifteen rand alright?’

  The men look at the remaining coins, mostly coppers.

  ‘What about that?’

  Cheeky. Dom squints at them. His cop squint from the old days that he’d follow up with a fist to the face, a nose cruncher. The thing with coloureds, always they’re cheeky.

  The fishermen shift, unhappy. Dom keeps up the hard eyes, swivelling his gaze from one to the other. He were a cop he’d start hassling these two gents. He holds out the money. ‘Fair deal.’

  The men shrug. The one takes the note and the coin. ‘Ja, okay.’

  ‘Any one?’

  ‘Any one.’

  Dom hefts the heavier one by the tail. ‘Thanks, hey.’

  He walks to his car, flops the fish into the boot onto sheets of newspaper he’s got there in anticipation, slams shut the lid. Pleased with the deal. Smiles to himself that they could tell he was a cop. Was once a cop. An attitude you can trade on.

  He clips the fishing rod into the brackets on his roof rack, aware of the men watching him. Pretending not to watch him. Stuff them. Fifteen rand was a good price. More’n they’d have got on a street corner.

  Inside the car, he smacks out a cigarette, smelling fish on his fingers. Comforting. He lights up, blows smoke against the windscreen. Which is when he sees the bullet taped there on the outside. A small round.

  Fuck! He stares at it. Sucks on the cigarette, exhales. Twists in his seat to look over at the men. They’re not watching him anymore. He gets out, shouts, ‘Hey, you see anyone round my car earlier?’

  The one shakes his head. The other says no.

  Dom tears the tape off the windscreen, pulls the cartridge free: a .22 with a cross-hatched nose.

  Dom’s first thought: it’s Ray playing silly buggers. He hasn’t heard from Ray in four years after the Tambo job was called off, it has to be Ray. The bullet was Ray’s thing from the beginning: send a bullet to the victim in advance. Dom’s second thought, it’s not bloody funny.