by Roger Smith
The endless procession of strip malls, used-car lots, junk-food joints, and low-rent apartments festering under the blowtorch sun reminded her of her childhood in South Florida. Except for the cars driving on the wrong side of the road, she could be back home, living with her alcoholic mother and an endless procession of daddies. The last of those daddies had been a wannabe photographer, and by the time she was fourteen he’d taken her picture. And her virginity.
Her mother had found the photographs, slapped Roxy sideways, then smelled out a financial opportunity. She showed some of the less pornographic shots to a connection of hers at the Miami International Merchandise Mart and landed Roxy a modeling gig. At fourteen she was already five-nine, with thick blonde hair and legs that went on forever, and a local agency took her onto its books.
Roxy’s first legitimate photo shoot was for a burger chain—Miss Double Cheese—but things got better in a hurry. Within months she’d been signed by Eileen Ford in New York, and then it was Milan and Paris and Chanel and Versace.
She never went home or spoke to her mother again.
Roxy sneaked a look at the woman cop who drove her. A constable. Young, mixed race—what they called colored out here in Cape Town—wearing a blue-gray uniform and black boots. A peaked cap obscured most of the woman’s wiry hair, scraped back into a bun, but Roxy detected a hint of blusher on the high cheekbones. Roxy had tried conversation, but the woman was either intimidated or bored. Or maybe she battled with the American accent.
Roxy supposed it was a sign of sensitivity that the police had offered to send a car for her, and one driven by a woman. The phone call had rattled her. She had imagined that the two brown hijackers would just fade away into the ghettos, unaware of how they had changed her life. Then she calmed herself. The cops were in the spotlight, taking the heat for the war zone that was Cape Town.
This was a face-saving exercise for the police. A couple of random guys would have been dragged in from the Cape Flats. She’d look at them, shake her head, and the cops would make noises of regret. But there would have been a demonstration of police machinery at work. The politicians would be satisfied.
The constable turned the white Volkswagen into the yard of an ugly brick building, surrounded by palisade fencing and razor wire. Roxy opened the door, letting the cop lead her into the station house. Roxy was wearing a simple black Prada cut to the knee, low-heel sandals, and no makeup. Her widow-at-a-lineup look.
As she followed the cop through the chaos that was the charge office—men in cuffs, women in tears, hookers giving her the once-over—Roxy felt dizzy. She saw her tanned arms extended, handcuffs closing on her wrists, one of those guttural voices grinding out her rights. The woman led her into a quieter corridor, and Roxy stopped, wiped her forehead with a Kleenex. Composed herself.
The cop was looking up at her. “Are you okay, Mrs. Palmer?”
“I’m fine. Sorry.”
“They won’t be able to see you. It will be through a one-way.”
“Sure, of course.”
The constable held a door open for Roxy, tried a comforting smile. “I’ll get you some water.”
Roxy entered the room, and a group of men in plainclothes, standing in front of a window, turned to stare at her. Strip-searching her with their eyes. Right now it was almost reassuring. At least they weren’t arresting her.
One man didn’t turn, a skinny man in jeans and a creased check shirt. He stared through the glass at the empty room beyond, the wall horizontally striped, familiar from countless cop shows on TV. She caught her reflection in the glass and knew the guy in jeans was watching her.
A middle-aged man in a cheap suit introduced himself, his accent brutal to her ear. Superintendent somebody? She nodded. It was okay if she looked spaced out. That was to be expected.
Roxy took her place at the glass and sneaked a glance at the man in jeans. His face looked like a cheese grater, pitted with acne scars. A flaming outbreak of fresh pimples swelled from his collar. The guy in the suit issued instructions, and ten men filed into the room beyond the glass, standing with their backs to the wall.
They were all young and brown. And the man third from the left was the one who had pulled her from the car the night before.
The beautiful one.
chapter 8
THE SUITS WATCHED THE AMERICAN BITCH LEAVE THE ROOM, LIKE they all wanted to gangbang her right there. Detective Ernie Maggott stood staring at their reflections in the glass, his back to the room, fingers probing the eruption on his neck. The pimples seethed and burned, aggravating his already frayed temper.
The superintendent was at his side. “Release them, okay?”
“She knew Disco.” Maggott watched the pretty boy and his bushman buddy shuffling out with the rest of the lineup.
“Why you say that?”
“Because she looked at all the others but not at him.”
“Ja?”
“Ja.”
“And you know that how?”
“I watched her eyes.”
The superintendent laughed. “Come on, Maggott. Why would she lie?”
“Why don’t you ask her?”
The stupid bastard shook his head. “Let them go, okay?”
“His landlady tell me she seen him and his buddy in a Benz.”
“She’ll say she saw her mother in a Benz if it put twenty bucks in her pocket.”
“Gimme the rest of the day with De Lilly. I can break him.”
“Jesus, I already got these human rights people halfway up my ass. Now you release those two, Detective. You hear me?”
Maggott shrugged. “You the boss, Boss.”
Fucker.
BARBARA ADAMS FED cloth into the sewing machine, fingers deft, foot riding the peddle expertly. A church dress for a neighbor. Some income to keep a roof over her family’s head. And work helped to calm her mind; her nerves were playing up something terrible.
Seeing Billy Afrika had opened a door she’d battled to keep closed these past two years. It’d been hard to sit with the living man and not remember the dead one. The two men inseparable. Billy like another member of the family.
But the wrong man had died.
Shawn came past the dining room table, bouncing a tennis ball.
Barbara spoke above the rattle of the machine. “You finish your homework?”
“Ja. I done it.”
“Did it.”
“Whatever.” He slouched out of the front door, a boy who needed a father’s firm hand.
She leaned back and rubbed her eyes, felt the beginning of a headache. She sat for a while, eyes closed, until she heard the percussive thump of hip hop coming from the street. Insistent. Primitive. Barbara had banned this music from her house. She didn’t understand why words like motherfucker and bitch had replaced the words of love and tenderness in the songs Clyde had courted her to.
The music banged on. She went across to the window and moved the lace curtains aside.
A big black car with tinted glass, almost like a military vehicle, straddled the sidewalk, music thumping from inside. The rear passenger window was open, and she could see Manson, head of the Paradise Park Americans, slouched in the seat. This she was expecting. Knew he’d be back, demanding the money she didn’t have.
Then she saw that her daughter sat beside him.
Barbara ran to the front door, her fingers fumbling the locks open. She sprinted down the pathway.
“Jodie!” The girl looked down at her like she was an irritation. “Get out of there.”
Barbara pulled at the heavy car door.
Jodie, dressed in a tiny halter top and shorts that accentuated rather than hid her maturing body—clothes she was forbidden to wear out of the house—sat close to Manson, almost in his lap.
“What you doing with her?” Barbara’s voice was strained, starved of breath.
Manson smiled, a good set of teeth in his light brown face. He didn’t look like a gangster, more like a retired athlete in his ex
pensive sweats. Until you saw his eyes, dark and dead as a pool of stagnant water.
“I was just giving her a lift from the store. These streets is dangerous.”
One of his hands rested above Jodie’s knee, slender fingers gently teasing the skin of her bare leg.
“Get out of there, Jodie.” Her daughter pouted, expression shifting from woman to girl in a moment. “You heard me. Get out!”
Moving in slow motion, the girl unfolded herself from the seat and slid out of the car, all too aware of Manson’s eyes on her body. She tossed him a smile over her shoulder.
Barbara grabbed Jodie by the shoulders, shook her. “What you doing with them?”
Jodie shrugged, fighting a smirk. Barbara swung her arm back and slapped the girl across the face. Hard. The first time she had ever lifted a hand to her daughter. Jodie put fingers to her cheek, tears welling in her eyes.
“Get inside,” Barbara said. “Go!”
Jodie, sobbing, ran into the house, and the front door slammed. Manson watched all of this with a smile on his face.
“Nicely built girl.”
“She’s a child, you filthy bastard!”
Manson held his hands up in supplication. “Easy now, sister Barbara.”
“You told me you and your kind would stay away from her.”
“As long as you were paying me every month. That was the deal.”
“The money isn’t coming no more.” She stood, arms folded across her chest.
“I know, I know. I been keeping an eye on the account, don’t worry. Relax a bit. Sit.” She stayed standing. “I said sit.” His voice sharp.
Barbara obeyed, climbing up into the high car, sitting beside him. Stiff. Hands on her knees. Two men slumped low in the front seats, jerking in time to the music. The big man behind the wheel ignored her, but the small one turned and gave her a gap-toothed grin.
Manson was watching her. “I hear he was here this morning?”
“Who?”
“Billy Afrika.” She nodded. “What you tell him? About where all the cash went?”
“I said Clyde made debt.”
“He won’t believe that.”
She stared straight ahead. Silent.
“He say why the money’s not coming no more?”
She shook her head.
“I want that money.” He grabbed her face and turned her to look at him. The mask of geniality had slipped. “You fucken hear me?”
“Yes. I hear.”
“Find out why it stopped. And when it will start again. Understand?”
“Yes.”
“Get out.”
She did, and he closed the door. Leaning to talk to her through the open window: “Your girlie, she’s ripe, sister Barbara. Get me that money, or I’m gonna pluck her.” Manson grinned.
She tried to reach in and get her nails to his face, but he laughed and pressed a button and the window slid up. The car rumbled off. Barbara turned and saw two of her neighbors, Mrs. Pool and another woman, gossiping at the fence, staring at her.
She met their eyes. “Go look at your mothers.”
They shook their heads, watched her walk into the house and lock the door. Then their heads came together again, whispers like nails on cloth.
She went to the bedroom her children shared. Knocked. No reply. The door was locked. Called her daughter’s name. Heard muffled sobs. Barbara went into her bedroom and found the paper that Billy Afrika had left.
Fingers shaking, she dialed his number.
“IT WAS THE white bitch what done it.” Goddy prowled the zozo hut, puffing on a Lucky, his ugly face furrowed in concentration.
“Talk shit, Goddy.” Disco sat on the bed, preparing a tik pipe, his tongue probing the gap in his gums. He was freaking out. The hours without meth. The questions and the beatings.
“Then did you shoot the fat fuck?” Godwynn was looming over him.
Disco looked up, confused. “You know I never done that.”
“And I only shot him once. In the leg. So who the fuck plugged him the second time? In his fucken head?” Goddy flicked away his smoke, and it spun to the floor, still burning.
Disco fired up the pipe and sucked on it. He sat for a moment, eyes closed, feeling the rush smack him between the eyes like a slaughterhouse hammer. Then his ears stopped ringing, and his muscles started to relax from his shoulders down. He felt that tingle around his balls, and up his butt, almost like he was gonna come.
Mother of god, that was good.
He slowly exhaled a cloud of fumes and opened his eyes. Godwynn was still staring down at him. Disco held out the pipe.
Godwynn took a hit, coughing smoke as he spoke. “Answer me, my brother. If we never done it, then who did?”
Disco, now that the spiders had scuttled off his skin and hidden back in their holes, had to admit that Goddy had a point.
“And why she say nothing, that blondie?” Goddy asked. It hadn’t taken much to bribe a cop at Bellwood to tell them what had happened on the other side of the one-way glass.
Disco shrugged.
Goddy said, “Because she don’t want no trouble, is why. She ID us, then there’s a trial and questions and the whole fucken thing. Uh-uh. Too dangerous for her.”
Disco had another hit. “Or maybe she don’t recognize us.”
Goddy laughed. “You stupid in your head? Me, maybe. But you? With that fucken face of yours?”
Disco stared at himself in the broken mirror. Goddy was right. There was no forgetting this face. Why couldn’t he have been born looking like everybody else, taken after his father rather than his mother? Look where being beautiful had got her. He opened his mouth, saw the gap in his teeth. Like somebody from the farms. But still gorgeous, though.
Goddy was off again, pacing. “There’s something in this for us, my brother.”
“Ja? What?” Disco asked, mouth to the pipe.
“Think, you dumb fuck. Think where that blonde bitch lives. There’s big bucks up there, my friend.”
Disco didn’t like where this was heading. “Let it go, Goddy. It’s too dangerous.”
“Your mother’s cunt’s dangerous.”
Disco saw his mother watching them from the wall. “Ah, ah, ah! Don’t talk like that, man.”
“We gonna go right now up to that fancy fucken house on the mountain and tell that blonde bitch how it gonna be. You hear?”
Disco nodded, but he couldn’t take his eyes from his mother’s face. Heard her voice: You going straight to hell, my boy.
No, Mommy, I’m there already. Honest to god.
chapter 9
ROXY RAN.
She sprinted down toward the ocean, the crucifix bouncing lightly on her collarbones. As she jogged on the spot down near Saunders Rocks, waiting for a luxury bus to pass—a tour guide mouthing mute as a goldfish behind the bulging windshield—her fingers felt for the silver cross. The bus rumbled on, leaving a trail of diesel that Roxy outran as her Reeboks hit the Sea Point beachfront, a strip of luxury apartment blocks facing the Atlantic.
Roxy wasn’t a Catholic, and it said a lot about her state of mind that she’d dug the cross, tarnished after all these years, out of her closet and strung it around her neck in the primitive hope that it would protect her. But she feared it wouldn’t be enough to stand up to the dark shit that she’d let into her life when she’d shot Joe.
Well, what did she want, a fetish of human bones and dried body parts skewered on rusted barbed wire? Available, she was sure, somewhere in the endless maze of shacks growing like a rash on the dunes next to the airport freeway. This was Cape Town, but it was still Africa.
The crucifix had been given to her when she was fourteen by a neighbor in Miami, a woman named Mama Esmeralda, a Marielito refugee from Cuba who read everything from tea leaves to tarot cards. Mama had told Roxy—at the time when porno stepdaddy was doing his daily shoots—that her life was about to change. That she would leave Florida and never come back.
All true.
Had it worked? She’d asked for a life away from the catwalk. A life without financial care. She’d come to Cape Town and met Joe. Answered prayers.
So, here she was, reaching for superstition again. She sure as hell needed some help.
Roxy had been in shock since she’d seen the man who gunpointed her. There was no mistaking that face. He stood in the lineup, wrapped in the aura those who are born beautiful carry with them, like he was expecting a makeup artist to appear and touch up the shine on his nose.
She’d sensed the eyes of the ugly cop, the one with the plague of zits, as she recognized the hijacker. Had she shown anything? She didn’t know. She’d dragged her eyes away from Mr. Handsome, concentrated on the other men. If the one who had shot Joe was there, she didn’t recognize him. At least she didn’t have to lie about that.
She’d studied all the men, carefully avoiding the beautiful one, and shaken her head. The senior cop in the suit stood beside her. Was she sure? She nodded. Apologized. Wished she could help. She’d walked back to the car with the woman cop, anxious to escape.
Roxy told herself that the hijackers would take their lucky break and fade into the vastness of the Flats. Within a few days nobody would remember her and Joe, their story buried under a pile of newer, bloodier, more sensational crimes.
But the fear remained.
She lengthened her stride, driven by the Nirvana pumping from the pink iPod velcroed to her bicep. Music that took her back to her first year modeling in Europe, when the world felt new and anything seemed possible.
Roxy followed the walkway, the stone buffer against which the Atlantic beat itself to death, sending up plumes of spray that cooled her in the evening heat. Sea Point’s small, rocky beaches were hidden below the seawall, but the stench of kelp rotting in the sun clogged the air. She dodged other runners, roller bladers, dark domestic workers and the pale kids they minded, and the homeless people—unwanted humanity washed up on the shores of Africa’s most expensive real estate.