by Roger Smith
Roxy walked across to the window and looked out at the fat African moon dangling over the ocean. She could hear the slap of the waves far below, followed by the hiss and suck as the water retreated. The dream that had ambushed her was like a sump being tapped: dark and clogged and dirty.
Joe had been in the room with her, looming over her bed, hands reaching for her throat. Dressed in the suit he died in, black blood streaming down his face, turning his white shirt dark.
That was when she’d screamed.
Even now his smell hung in the air, a chemical mix of booze and cigarettes and stale sweat. Like he was there watching her.
Waiting for his revenge.
chapter 17
DETECTIVE ERNIE MAGGOTT STOOD OVER THE BODY LYING LIKE trash on the edge of the dump. Dawn came early to Cape Town in the summer, and it was bright and hot by seven in the morning. Godwynn MacIntosh was already bloating and starting to stink, his shattered skull so dense with flies that it looked as if he was wearing a black ski mask.
He had been shot in the back of the head, execution style. There was no exit wound, which meant there was a slug trapped inside that thick skull of his. After what Maggott had heard from the uniformed cop leaning against the van, waving away inquisitive kids, he wished he could get the bullet dug out of this bushman’s brain and sent to forensics. Christ knows, he’d be happy to stick his finger in and dig it out himself. But it would be a waste of time. Even for a high-profile crime, the waiting list at the labs was five months.
And Godwynn’s profile was lower than a smear of shit on a shoe.
Maggott didn’t give a fuck for Godwynn MacIntosh, but he was convinced this dark meat was connected to that hijacking and the blonde American. Screw his superintendent, Maggott still had a hard-on for that case. Knew it could be his ticket to bigger and better things.
He walked back to his Ford, toward the six-year-old boy who peered out at him from the open passenger window. His son, Roberto. Named after the Brazilian soccer star. It had been his wife’s idea to call him that. She thought the chunky defender was sexy. To Maggott he looked like just another bald fucker from the Flats.
His bitch wife, living away from him these last few months, had dumped the boy on him the night before, telling him her mother was sick and she had to go to the hospital. Like hell. She was going to get laid and didn’t want the kid pissing on her batteries.
So the kid had stayed the night with Maggott in the cramped room he rented on the Dark City side of Paradise Park. He’d fed him fish sticks and ice cream, and the boy had spent the early hours squirting out enough puke to get him cast in a remake of The Exorcist.
Maggott leaned into the window. “You okay, Robbie?”
“I wanna go to Mommy.” The kid was sniveling, and there were tears on the way.
“Ja, later. Okay?”
The bitch was probably dragging her dirty ass from some guy’s bed. Then she would be off to her job at the meatpacking factory in Maitland.
Maggott walked over to the uniformed cop, who was flirting with two schoolgirls in short tunics, making them giggle and squirm. He dragged the cop—thought he was a fucken Cape Flats Casanova—away from the jailbait. He was older than Maggott but still a constable. Lived off bribes and handouts.
“Tell me again,” Maggott said.
“About Barbie?”
“No, about your mother.” Staring the cop down. “Ja. Billy Afrika. Tell me again.”
“Like I say, he phone me yesterday. Wants to know who we pulled in on the Bantry Bay hijacking.”
“And you just told him?”
“Man, he could read it in the Sun. What’s the problem?”
The Sun: the daily tabloid—full of lurid tales of murder, rape, and incest—that reflected the Cape Flats like a funhouse mirror.
“How much he offer you?”
“Nothing, Detective. Honest.”
“Your mother’s honest,” Maggott said. “He ask you anything else?”
The useless bastard shook his head. Maggott didn’t believe him.
He shoved a finger into the cop’s chest. “Billy Afrika contact you again, I’m the first to know, okay?”
“Ja, Detective.” Smiling like they were buddies.
Maggott grabbed the asshole by his shirtfront, shook him. “I fucken mean it. You speak to me, or I put you on night patrol in the squatter camps for a week.”
The smile disappeared. Black cops died like bottle flies over in the darky shackland across the freeway. A colored cop wouldn’t last an hour. Maggott let the uniform loose and walked back to his car. About to slide in behind the wheel, he saw the kid had puked again, all over the driver’s seat.
As Maggott tried to clean up the mess with yesterday’s edition of the Sun, he saw a trail of blood leading away from that body lying in the trash.
Leading to Roxy Palmer.
And to Billy Afrika, the coward who had let his partner’s killer live.
IT WAS LIGHT when Roxy woke. She had a headache from where the squat man had whacked her with the gun. Nothing she couldn’t handle. No worse than a hangover. Fragments of the night drifted back to her. The dream. How she’d exposed herself to Billy Afrika. Not just her body, though Christ knows he must have seen enough of that. But she’d let him see her fear and her vulnerability, and that made her uncomfortable.
It was time she wised up. She was vulnerable. There was a man moved into her house holding her to ransom. She knew nothing about him, except he wasn’t like the two lowlifes who’d gunpointed her. He was way smarter. Far more in control. More dangerous.
What had he done with those two losers, anyway? Killed them? He had an air about him, an attitude, that made her believe it was possible. When he’d come into her bedroom with the gun, she’d seen the violence contained in his scarred body.
What Roxy would have liked to do was lay a little money on him, to keep him cool and make sure he didn’t go talking to his cop friends. But yesterday she’d done a phone check on the one bank account that Joe had allowed her access to.
Deeply in the red.
And her credit card was maxed out.
All she could do now was wait for the money from Dick Richardson. Roxy knew she should take the twenty thousand dollars and run. Go to Europe. Do what she always did: meet a rich man. She still had what it took.
But she didn’t want to get into one of those cycles again. She wanted her freedom. If she waited, she’d get enough from Joe’s estate to be independent for the first time in her life. That meant she needed to manage Billy Afrika. Keep him on her side. Make him like her.
Roxy fluffed her hair in the mirror, smiled sourly at her reflection. Hell, she’d never had a problem getting a man to like her. Had more problems keeping their hands off of her.
She replaced the twisted smile with the one that had kept the camera happy for all those years. Wholesome yet seductive. And just a little vulnerable.
Better.
As she pulled on a shirt and shorts, she could smell food cooking. Bacon and eggs. She ran her fingers through her hair one more time and went down to the kitchen.
Billy stood in front of the stove, turning eggs with a spatula. Dressed in a crisp white T-shirt and sweatpants. His feet in flip-flops. No sign of those scars.
“Morning,” she said. “I’m sorry about last night …”
He shrugged, eyes on the pan. “Forget it.” Flipping the eggs before he looked up at her. “I suppose you don’t want any of this?”
“Why not?”
“Dunno. You models don’t eat, do you?”
“I’m not a model anymore.” She opened a drawer and took out two plates, put them on the counter. “Anyway, I’ll just throw up afterward.”
He gave her a neutral look.
“That’s a joke,” she said.
Roxy grabbed knives and forks and took them to the table. She saw he had found the coffee grounds, which trickled and spat in the coffee maker. A man who knew his way around.
S
he poured a cup for him. “You’ll have to have this black. We’re out of milk.”
“Black’s fine.”
She took an Evian from the fridge and sat down. He came across with the two plates, placed one in front of her and sat at the far end of the table. She didn’t normally do bacon and eggs, but she wanted to relax him, find a way beneath that scarred shell of his. Get inside and soften him up a little.
“This is good,” she said, around a mouthful of food.
He nodded, concentrating on his plate.
They ate in silence. She sneaked glances his way. A neat eater, using both his knife and fork, wiping his mouth on a paper napkin after almost every bite. She felt like a slob eating with her fork, picking up bacon with her fingers, elbows on the table.
He finished before she did, took his plate across to the sink, and started washing up.
“Leave that; I’ll do it,” Roxy said.
“It’s okay.”
“So how does this work? You being here?” She carried her plate over to where he stood, his hands in the foamy water. Careful not to get too close to him. He didn’t seem to welcome that.
“You leave the house, I go with you. You home, I’m home.”
“Twenty-four seven?”
“Ja.”
“What if I want to go for a run? Down by the ocean?”
“I can run.” Rinsing a plate and putting it in the drying rack.
Roxy said, “So I’m your prisoner?”
“Lady, it’s this, or it’s real prison. You choose.”
He wiped his hands on a dishtowel and walked out.
WORD TRAVELS FAST on the Flats, carried on the wind and the dust.
An hour after Godwynn’s body was found, the bulk of the fat-assed landlady blocked Disco’s door, the black mongrel snarling at him from between her legs. Disco still lay in bed, dragged from his drugged sleep by the yapping of the dog.
“So they shot your short-ass buddy. The dark one,” the landlady said. Disco squinted up at her. “Some kids found him over by the dump.”
Disco thought he was going to hurl, fought back the bile.
Goddy was dead. Fucken knew it. Knew he’d be next.
Disco lifted himself out of the bed, fat slut staring at his ass as he pulled on a pair of jeans. He started shoving things into a plastic bag. He had no money and no idea of where to go, but he knew he had to run. Should’ve run last night after Billy Afrika caught up with him, but his nerves had been finished and he’d had to hit a white pipe to calm them. And then he’d passed out.
“Where you going?” the fat woman asked.
“On holiday.” Disco forced the last dirty clothes into the bag.
She laughed through her missing front teeth. “On holiday? The fuck where?”
“Saldanha.” The first thing that came into Disco’s head. Saldanha Bay, up the West Coast. He had never been out of Cape Town, but there was always a first time.
“So you can afford to go on holiday, but you don’t pay your fucken rent?”
“I have it for you before I go, Auntie. I promise.”
Now he had to pack his most treasured possession. As he headed across to his mommy’s picture, the fat slut blocked him. She reached for the photo, lifting it off the nail.
“Uh-uh, sonny. You think I’m fucked in my head? I keep this until you come with the money, okay?”
Disco grabbed at the frame, tried to wrestle it away from her. She smacked him across the side of his head. The bitch hit like a heavyweight, and he went down on one knee, ears ringing. The dog danced on its tiny paws, barking and snapping at Disco’s face, eyes bulging.
“Come, Zuma. Come my lovey.” The fat woman shook the zozo as she stomped to the door.
By the time Disco got to his feet, she was waddling across the yard, holding his mommy in her fat hand, the stinking little dog scuttling after her.
MAGGOTT DROVE ACROSS Paradise Park, heading back toward the dump. He had the windows open wide, even though the wind pumped in dust and grit, but the car still stank of Robbie’s puke. Fish sticks and ice cream coming back strong.
People called Detective Ernie Maggott a cunt, a bastard, a bad-luck motherfucker. But nobody called him crooked. He was an honest cop. A rare beast out on the Flats, where the pay was low, the job was dangerous, and the temptations were plentiful. It was easy to turn a blind eye for a couple of bucks. Or get in deeper: wear a badge but work for the gangs.
Christ knows, there were enough bad role models out there. The police commissioner, the country’s top cop—still head of Interpol when he was arrested—was in court for racketeering. Taking bribes from gangsters and hit men.
Maggott’s bitch wife had never understood. Why did they have to live in a crap rented house when the others cops’ wives wore new clothes and bragged about their custom kitchens? What the fuck was his problem? But Maggott refused to be bought. Thought himself better than the bent cops around him. Knew all he needed was one big case, something high profile that would get him in the papers and get him promoted.
That’s why he was all hot and sticky for this American blonde. And Billy Afrika, who was tied into this somehow. Problem was, he had no idea where to find Barbie’s burned ass.
He’d known Billy Afrika back when he was still a cop, as close to Clyde Adams as a butt boil. Maggott had respected Captain Clyde Adams. Hoped that the older man would recognize him as a kindred spirit, take him under his wing. But instead Clyde groomed Barbie, putting the right words in the right ears, fast-tracking Billy Afrika from uniform to detective branch in record time.
And what thanks had he got?
The person Maggot really wanted to talk to—no, fuck talking, wanted to shove his Z88 down his throat until he got the truth—was Manson. Find out if Billy Afrika was connected to the death of the 26, Godwynn MacIntosh, and where the American blonde fit into all of this.
But Manson was protected. You couldn’t touch him. He was part of a pipeline that pumped tik money straight into the pockets of police chiefs and local politicians.
So Maggott had to work with what was available to him.
He’d made a turn by Disco’s place. The piece of shit wasn’t in his zozo, and the fat landlady, who smelled like the fish sticks, said the tik head had been busy packing his things. Like he wanted to run.
Maggott looked through the grimy window of the zozo and saw a plastic bag lying on the floor, crammed with clothes. Told the fat bitch to call him when Disco came back.
“And what’s in it for me?” she asked.
“The usual. Fifty bucks,” he said.
“Make it a hundred, lovey. Airtime’s expensive.”
Maggott cursed under his breath as he handed over a banknote. There went his cigarette money for the week. He heard a laugh and looked across at Robbie, who sat in the dirt playing with the fat woman’s skinny little mongrel.
Maggott still hadn’t been able to get hold of his bitch wife. He couldn’t afford a babysitter. He was an orphan, and he’d cut all contact with the human wreckage his wife called family. So he had to keep the boy with him, sitting at his side as he drove down Main Road.
Maggot sneaked a look at the kid and wondered, as he always did, how he could have fathered something like this. Saw nothing of himself in the child. The way his wife put her plumbing around Paradise Park, this was probably some other fucker’s handiwork.
“I wanna doggy,” Robbie said.
“Ja? What kinda dog?”
“Like that one now.”
“That’s not a dog. That’s a rat.”
The boy was shaking his head vigorously. “No. It were a dog.”
“How you know?”
“I seen his balls.”
Maggott snorted. “And a rat don’t have no balls?”
“Not big ones.”
“I’ll tell your mommy, and she can get you a fucken dog.”
The boy looked at him suspiciously, used to promises that weren’t kept. “Ja?”
“Ja. You j
ust be good today. Okay?”
The kid nodded. They pulled up at Doc’s. The hovel looking as if it was being slowly claimed by the dump looming behind. The place stank worse than ten tik whores in a shithouse.
“Wait here, I won’t be long,” Maggott said as he left the car. The kid started to moan, but Maggott was already walking away.
He banged on the door, finally got the old boozer to open up.
“What’s wrong now?” Doc said, bloodshot eye peering through the crack.
Maggott walked him backward into the pigsty. As always, the big-screen TV flickered with images of men in white, endlessly smacking a red ball to nowhere.
“What did Billy Afrika want here yesterday?”
“He popped in to say hullo. What of it?”
“I’m asking again: what the fuck did he want?”
“Nothing. Just a visit, for old time sake, like. Watched some cricket.”
Doc’s gaze was drawn to the screen, where a bowler was jumping in the air, being hugged by his teammates. Then his eyes flicked across to Robbie, who came walking in the front door, staring around at the squalor with interest.
“What’s that?” Doc asked.
“My boy. Don’t worry with him.” He saw Doc’s questioning look. “His bitch mother dumped him on me. You wanna babysit?”
“Not me. Closest I ever got to one of those was with a coat hanger.” Doc laughed.
Maggott didn’t. “Barbie, he score a gun by you?”
Doc shook his head. “No ways.”
Maggott pointed a finger at Robbie. “You sit your ass down and watch the cricket, hear me?”
The kid nodded, and Maggott took off toward the kitchen, Doc limping after him.
“Where you going now?”
The kitchen was as filthy as the rest of the house. Stove full of dirty pans, sink overflowing with scummy dishes. The room was dominated by the huge box freezer Doc had bought cheap from a fishmonger who went bust. There was still a peeling sticker on the side: SOMETHING FISHY.
Described Maggott’s morning.