Wake Up Dead: A Thriller (Cape Town Thrillers)

by Roger Smith

  Out on the Flats the straighter your hair, the paler your skin, and the lighter your eyes, the more desirable you are. Tonight Jodie had a social at the New Apostolic Church and refused to set foot out the door with a kink in her hair.

  That morning before school, when a few low clouds had drifted overhead—broken loose from the mass that produced the unseasonal rain far away in the southern suburbs—Jodie had stared up at the sky in anguish.

  “It’s gonna rain, and my hair’s gonna mince.” Meaning that the moisture in the air would cause her hair to tighten into corkscrew curls. Curls that would keep her away from the social.

  Barbara had told her the clouds would burn away. But her daughter wasn’t happy until she returned from school and the sun blazed, a layer of pollution replacing the clouds in the hot blue sky.

  Barbara hadn’t wanted Jodie to go to the social. Wanted her at home where she could watch her. But Billy Afrika’s words had calmed her a little, and she knew she couldn’t keep the girl locked up like a prisoner. Anyway, these church events were patrolled by the deacons, who stood for no nonsense.

  Still, she’d fret until the child was dropped home safe.

  Jodie, sitting on the bed, wore a robe after a shower. Her white blouse and jeans—the decent ones that didn’t look as if they were sprayed onto her body—were draped over a chair next to the vanity table.

  Barbara shook her head as a trio of orbiting flies tried to settle on her. She’d never known flies like this. There had always been flies in Paradise Park, drawn by the dump. But the last few days had been chronic. People said it was the slaughterhouse, across the veld. Or the squatter camp near the freeway, with holes in the ground for toilets.

  Flypaper strips hung throughout the small house, black with insects. But still more came. Flies made her think of disease. And death.

  The doorbell pierced the scream of the hair dryer.

  “Shawnie!” Barbara yelled for her son, slumped in front of the TV in the sitting room, playing a video game. Even though he was right by the front door, it would be an effort for him to get up and answer it.

  “Shawn!”

  “Ja?” Mumbling over the noise of the game.

  “See who’s there!”

  It was probably that bloody Mrs. Pool from next door, come to bum a tomato or some cooking oil. The woman came around at least twice a week on the scrounge, her little monkey eyes flicking around the house for anything she could trade as gossip with the other wives in the street.

  Mrs. Pool had witnessed Clyde’s murder, and it had turned her into a local celebrity for a couple of days. She’d even appeared on TV news, not bothering to remove her hair rollers before she went on camera to deliver her sensational report: “He did gut him like a fish, the Keptin! Oooooh, it was too terrible!”

  As Barbara smoothed the last wave from her daughter’s shining black hair, she closed her eyes a moment, trying to dissolve away the image of Clyde sinking to the sand.

  Shawn pushed the door open and stepped into the bedroom.

  Jodie, in a display of outraged modesty, pulled her robe closed. “Hey, don’t you even knock?”

  For a moment Barbara stood staring at Shawn, convinced that some trick of memory had caused her to project the image of her dying husband onto her son. It wasn’t possible that he could be clutching at the white T-shirt that was turning crimson, looking at her with the light fading from his eyes.

  Jodie screamed and jumped up from the bed as Shawn sagged to the floor.

  Piper filled the doorway, with his knotted muscles and his tattoos. The bloody knife in his hand. The stink of death reaching out from him.

  chapter 33

  BILLY AFRIKA KNEW HE’D CROSSED A LINE. HE’D KILLED A KID. A KID with a gun.

  But still a kid.

  He steered with his knees and stretched across his body with his right arm to get to the stick shift. His left arm hung bloody and useless. He checked his mirrors, expecting Manson’s Hummer to bear down on him or a white patrol van driven by crooked cops to block his path.

  But he saw no sign of pursuit. Just the shadows lengthening across the trash and the sand and the gang graffiti.

  Before he’d left the tik house he’d hammered Smiley one more time with the butt of the Glock. Not sure if it was snot or cerebrospinal fluid dripping from the man’s nose.

  He’d locked the front door of the house and pulled the security gate closed. Even if the neighbors had heard the shots, they knew better than to interfere. He had a gap until Charneze walked in on the carnage, her arms full of tik ingredients.

  Until Manson saw his daughter lying dead.

  Once Manson got Smiley to talk, he’d mobilize every last foot soldier to track Billy down. But the scarfaced fucker wouldn’t be talking for a while, and Manson’s first thought would be that Shorty Andrews and the 28s had broken the truce.

  Billy Afrika wasn’t a praying man but heard himself asking something, somewhere, to give him the time to get Barbara and her children to safety.

  Billy had been shot before. Knew what was ahead. The impact—like a heavy blow from a hammer—had been followed by a deep, burning sensation. The area around the wound was starting to heat up, and the pain wasn’t far away. And he was losing a lot of blood.

  He had a decision to make: Did he drive directly to Barbara’s house, with the bullet wound in his shoulder making him weak and vulnerable, and try to persuade her and the kids to run with him? Or did he get medical attention before he went to them?

  He was worried that blood loss would leave him unconscious at the wheel of the car, Clyde’s family stranded. Helpless. He headed for the dump.

  Billy draped his leather jacket over his bad shoulder, stuck the Glock in his waistband, took the bag of money, and went up to Doc’s door.

  He banged, hearing the mutter of the TV in the sitting room.

  Eventually the door inched open, and the familiar wet eye blinked at him.

  “Doc.” Billy stepped inside, and the door closed after him.

  He shrugged off his jacket, and Doc stared at the bleeding shoulder.

  “Fucken mess,” Doc said.

  “I’ll pay.”

  Doc found a rusted pair of scissors lying next to a fly-infested plate of food. He cut away Billy’s shirt, exposing the wound.

  Doc shook his head, slow as a tortoise. “Ja. You’ll pay, okay. Come, sit your ass down.”

  Billy sat on the arm of a tired sofa.

  Doc prodded the wound with a yellow finger. “I’m gonna have to knock you out.”

  Billy shook his head. “No ways. I got things to attend to. Can’t you give me a local anesthetic?”

  The old alky lifted a half-empty bottle of brandy from the floor and held it out to Billy. “This is local. And it takes my pain away.”

  Billy hesitated, then took a swig. Grimaced. Rotgut.

  The drunk man lurched into the kitchen and came back with a scalpel that looked as if it’d been used to skin animals. Or detach body parts.

  Doc fished a filthy handkerchief from his pocket. “Bite hard on the hankie,” he said, palsied hand getting closer to Billy’s flesh with the blade of the scalpel. “This is gonna hurt like a motherfucker.”

  It did.

  IT WAS THE first time Disco had raped a girl.

  He’d never needed to. His pretty face had always been a magnet for women. He was irresistible. And he’d never craved the power so many men on the Flats felt when they took a female by force.

  After Piper killed the mother, slit her throat, and sliced her from the belly up like he always did, he turned to the daughter. Disco expected him to put his blade to work, but instead he punched the girl in the face, sending her sprawling across the bed, her robe riding up on her thighs.

  “Dip her,” Piper told him.

  Disco stared at him.

  “You heard me. Rape her.”

  There was no arguing with Piper. Even though Disco knew why Piper wanted him to do it: to leave something of hi
mself inside her, absolute proof that he’d been part of this slaughter.

  Piper would love Disco as long as he obeyed him. He obeyed, or he joined the bodies on the floor. Simple.

  Disco tried, and failed, to hold on to some fragile sense of reality. His world had been blown apart since Piper sailed back into it on a wave of blood. Even the madness of tik withdrawal seemed mild compared to where he’d been taken in the last few hours.

  Left bloody and torn after Piper rid himself of his lust.

  Watching Piper kill the cop.

  Just managing to stop him from killing the blondie and the kid.

  And when Piper told him his plan, Disco knew the nightmare would never end. Piper saying how he’d figured out a way for them to be together back in Pollsmoor. Forever.

  And forever started now.

  “Do it, Disco.” Piper shoved him toward the girl, who was panting, eyes wide, trying to crawl away from him up the wall. Mute with hysteria. Sobbing soundlessly.

  He didn’t think he could. Didn’t think his body would respond. But he saw Piper’s eyes, and he pushed himself down on the writhing girl.

  Disco did it.

  MANSON CROUCHED ON the floor beside his daughter’s body. Instinctively he kept his white Pumas out of the way of the blood. He looked down at Bianca, something sallow and gray—like dirty drain water—already washing the bronze color from her skin. Manson couldn’t put a number to the corpses he’d seen over the years. Or how many people he’d killed.

  But this hurt like fuck. This was his flesh. His blood.

  Bianca’s eyes were wide, staring up at him. Her lips twisted in what looked like a smile, like she was going to say something naughty. She’d had a mouth on her, this kid. Girls on the Flats grow up giving dialogue, lightning fast. Ready to cut a man down to size or make another woman feel cheap and beaten. And Bianca had the gift. Make you laugh your ass off and feel like shit at the same time.

  But there wouldn’t be no more dialogue.

  He wished she could say just one more thing, then he’d let her go. Whisper the name of the fucker who did this to her.

  He heard his sister, Charneze, sobbing behind him. She reached down and touched him on the shoulder.

  “Sorry, boy.” She was older than him, thought she could play big sister.

  He slapped her hand away and stood. Wiped the weakness from his face.

  Manson pushed past her and went into the sitting room. His guys, Arafat and Boogie, waited, standing over the prone form of Smiley. Arafat was big and slow, couldn’t meet his eye. But Boogie, skinny and wired on more than tik, pressed up on the balls of his feet, like a greyhound straining to chase a rabbit.

  Manson nudged Smiley with his shoe. “Get him to Doc. Tell him to do whatever to make him talk.”

  Arafat reached down and dragged Smiley to his feet. Boogie stepped in, took some of the weight, Smiley dangling from their shoulders like snot between two sticks.

  “And then, boss?” Boogie asked, little rat nose sniffing for blood.

  “And then you tell me. Got it?”

  Manson watched them haul Smiley out to the car. Then he sagged down onto a chair.

  Charneze stood over him. “What you want me to do, boy?”

  “I want you to clean her. Dress her up in her nice clothes. Put her makeup on.”

  “What about the undertakers?”

  He looked up at her. “You fucken crazy? You know what those bastards do to the girls? They fuck them. That what you want? Some dirty cunt to get his jollies on her?” She just stared at him. “My daughter died a virgin, and she’ll go into the ground a virgin. Now get in there, close the door, and do what I tole you.”

  She left him.

  He was alone with the bodies of Popeye and the cooker. But he didn’t cry. He didn’t dare. Not yet. Not until this was over.

  SHE’D FREED THE boy’s hands. It had taken forever, her fingernails breaking as she tried to work the cord loose from Robbie’s wrists. The wire had been pulled tight, and Roxy had to claw at it to win each millimeter. The blood that ran down her fingers from the torn nails making it harder.

  She’d had to stop every few seconds to wipe her hands on her dress, then start again. The muscles in her shoulders were in spasm and throbbed, sending burning pain down her arms.

  But Robbie’s hands were loose, and he pushed himself into a sitting position, his bound legs thrust out in front of him, crying as his chubby fingers rubbed his wrists, purple bracelets cut deep into the skin by the cord.

  The boy’s face was a collage of tears and mucus. And his father’s blood.

  She had to get him to remove the tape from her mouth. She grunted through the rancid underwear. At last he understood and grabbed the tape and pulled. His fingers slipped. He pulled again. It felt like her skin was tearing, but the tape was off.

  She spat out the briefs. Drank air. Got too much of the dead cop with it and had to fight back the bile.

  “Robbie.” Roxy rolled herself away from the dead man, so that she faced the boy.

  The child stared at his father, body shaking, rattling teeth scaring away the flies that buzzed near him.

  “Robbie, look at me.” The boy looked at her with eyes that had seen too much. “I want you to untie my feet. Do you hear me?”

  He nodded but made no move toward her.

  “Robbie, if you untie my feet, then I can go out the window and get help. Do you understand?”

  “They kill my daddy.”

  Roxy was sliding herself away from the dead cop, so Robbie had to turn his back on the body of his father to look at her.

  Roxy said, “You don’t want those men to hurt us, do you?”

  He shook his head.

  “Then come and untie my feet, Robbie. Please.”

  He scooted across to her, pushing his bound ankles in front of him. Took hold of the cord that wrapped her legs, trying to find purchase with his small fingers.

  It was going to take time. Time they didn’t have.

  PIPER STOOD AT the window of the bedroom watching the sun choke itself dead on the smog. Night was coming, like an animal stalking the day. Piper was a man of the night. A 28. A soldier in the army of Nongoloza. A descendant of the legendary black bandit who, a hundred years before, had formed the number gangs to fight the oppression of the white man’s prison system.

  Piper had spent many hours in the Pollsmoor laundry with Moonlight, listening to the old man spin tales of how the gangs had come to be. Telling him that the 28s worked by the light of the moon.

  The moon that even now faded up out of the evening, yellow as a dog’s eye.

  It was time. Time for the ritual.

  He turned and saw Disco sitting on the bed, finished with the girl, who lay sobbing, her head buried in a pillow. Piper crossed to the dead woman, sprawled on the frayed carpet beside the bed. He bent and dipped two fingers into the thick blood that pooled beneath her, oblivious to the flies that were drawn to his hand.

  He knelt before the white wall of the bedroom. Using his fingers as a brush, he traced a crude hand cocked in the 28 salute. Piper stood and admired his artwork; then he turned to Disco and threw him the Okapi knife. He was about to show the depth of his love for Disco. Show him the greatest respect. Elevate him beyond the ranks of a sex-boy, a mere wife.

  Let him do the work of a man. A soldier.

  “Up bayonet.” The command of a 28 general sending a soldier into battle.

  Disco stared at him, bewildered.

  “Finish the girl.”

  Disco looked at him, then down at the knife, blade folded into the handle. Disco’s fingers shook as he opened the blade, still sticky with the blood of the boy and his mother. Disco’s eyes on Piper. Pleading.

  “Do it,” Piper said.

  And, again, Disco did it. Closed his eyes and plunged the knife into the girl’s heart. Piper felt a rush of affection for his soldier wife. The girl groaned and thrashed on the bed.

  Piper said, “Another time.”<
br />
  Disco stabbed once more.

  “Last time.”

  The blade sank into flesh.

  Piper pushed Disco aside and took the fresh blood from the girl onto his fingertips and wrote on the wall above her head: The blood has saluted.

  Then he let the love he felt for Disco guide him, and he found his fingers tracing a shape on the wall. Dipping back into the palette of blood when his fingertips ran dry, finishing his work with a flourish. He stood back, satisfied, wiping his bloody hands on his jeans. The ritual was complete.

  Piper knew that what he had done in this room would assume the proportions of myth by the time many mouths had carried the story back to prison. Ensuring him prestige and even more power when he and his wife returned to Pollsmoor.

  chapter 34

  DOC WALKED INTO HIS FETID KITCHEN, CARRYING THE BRANDY bottle like it was a pacifier. He took a long pull, wiped his mouth on the back of his hand. Removing the slug from Billy Afrika and stitching him up had leeched Doc’s energy.

  You had to concentrate when you worked with the living. He preferred the dead.

  But Billy had left him a thousand bucks, good money for what he’d done. Doc had told him to come back in a couple of days, and he’d remove the sutures. Billy had smiled like a man who wasn’t sure he was going to be around in a couple of days.

  Easy come, easy go.

  Doc set the bottle down on the kitchen table, shifting a few dirty dishes out of the way. If the squadrons of flies that swarmed over the greasy plates bothered him, he gave no sign.

  He crossed to the old box freezer. The black garbage bag Maggott had fished out the day before lay on the closed lid. He’d put it back on ice after the cop and his brat had left. Taken it out an hour ago, in the mood to work. But Billy Afrika had interrupted him, and he’d forgotten to make the trip back to the kitchen and return the bag to the freezer. Doc prodded at the plastic with a nicotine-stained finger and found that the contents hadn’t thawed much.