Payback - A Cape Town thriller

by Mike Nicol

  ‘Shouldn’t be a problem,’ said AC. ‘The man has apologised. He gives you any trouble let me know.’ AC going back into the house even before Pylon had the car in gear.

  The boy said nothing on the way out. Neither did Mace and Pylon, Pylon driving the N2 without hurry, the traffic dense past the cooling towers, easing after the airport. Mace sat at an angle in the passenger seat staring at the shacklands teetering on the dunes down to the concrete fence that bordered the highway. Here and there the palisades were smashed through for herders to drive their goats and cattle onto the good grazing along the road verge. The boy was wired into a Discman, a tinny rap audible to Mace and Pylon.

  Pylon took the Khayelitsha exit ramp, deciding what he’d do for the boy was give him a tour: breezeblock houses, pot-holed roads, electricity wires sandbagged across the streets, filth and dead dogs everywhere. Down to the market, trolleys of tripe, stalls of goats’ heads. The boy wasn’t listening to his rap anymore.

  Pylon switched off the air conditioner, slid down all the windows to a heavy smell of fried onions and meat. The throughways were narrow here, more lanes than streets, people having to back up against the stalls as the Merc crawled along.

  Pylon stopped at a woman braaiing chicken bits on a brazier, ordered a mixed KFC short tub of wings and feet. The boy said, no thanks, but Pylon kept the tub held over the seat until the boy took a wing. In Xhosa he said, you’re going to insult her if you don’t take one but the boy didn’t seem to understand. To the woman Pylon said, city boys only eat from Woolworths, and the woman laughed uproariously. Pylon bit into a foot, tearing at the toughness. When the boy asked what he should do with the bone, Pylon said throw it out the window.

  The house was a double storey in a street of government twenty-by-twenties: metal window frames, walls needing plaster. A bright patch of green lawn with a child’s swing on it, a sprinkler going. Major gangster, said Pylon. Drugs, cars, protection, pirate videos and CDs, even a bit of small-arms trading. Major taxi owner too. Mace noticed two men standing in the yard of the house opposite. Three down the street; two others back a bit making snazzy moves with a soccer ball.

  Pylon stopped behind a van with tinted windows, the word Sanctus writ large across the back. He cut the engine. In the silence Mace heard what sounded like church singing. Choirs. The music was turned down, a tall guy with a six-pack stomach, wearing only shorts, a flap of jackal skin hanging in the front, appeared in the house’s doorway.

  Pylon pressed the window down. ‘Heita.’

  ‘Chief,’ the man said, not moving from the front door.

  Pylon gave him some lip in Xhosa about buggering up big time in hijacking the boykie of such a main man brother.

  The man grinned, said, You’re about to fill an order, you’re not too bothered about the supplier.

  Pylon laughed. Turned to the boy. ‘You catch any of that?’

  The boy shook his head.

  ‘Too bad.’ Pylon opened his door. ‘Okay, let’s get this over.’ He and Mace got out but the boy stayed put. Pylon ducked back in. ‘Out, boetie. Showtime.’ The boy looked terrified, all the same did as he was told.

  ‘Where’s the car?’ Pylon asked.

  The man indicated a garage across the street, said, ‘Who’s the mlungu, chief? Cop or what?’

  ‘My partner,’ said Pylon.

  Mace caught the mlungu bit, but kept zipped. The young men with the football had edged closer, ditto the three down the street, ditto the two opposite, now lounging at the street gate.

  ‘Hey, chief,’ the man said in English, pointing at Mace. ‘You guys fucked up hey!’ He displayed a mouth studded with gold teeth.

  Mace said, ‘How’s that?’

  ‘Letting the girl take out the homosexuals.’

  Mace said to Pylon, ‘What’s he on about?’

  Pylon shrugged. ‘Who’s this, Oupa?’

  The man switched back to Xhosa told Pylon they were stupids, moegoes, like the cops. This woman that killed the Italians was living it up in the city, swinging through the nightclubs. He’d seen her. Her and her boyfriend. Yankee doodles. He laughed. Hell, what sort of bodyguards were they. Bloody useless. Just like the cops.

  ‘Which clubs?’ asked Pylon.

  The man waved his arms, told him to go hamba, fuck off and do his own work. Followed this with a stream of invective about the state of the world.

  Pylon let him finish. ‘Where the car keys Oupa?’

  Oupa K threw them into the street.

  Mace said to the boy. ‘Go pick them up. Get the car out the garage. Stick behind us.’

  The boy glanced at the groups of men, closer now.

  Mace said, ‘Come, china, let’s move it.’

  The boy went round the Merc into the street and picked up the keys. He stood hesitant, the ball players jogging, flicking the ball between them. One called to him, lined up a shot and kicked, the ball catching the boy hard in the stomach. He bent double, staggered, the men laughing as the ball rolled towards Mace. He trapped it under his foot.

  Pylon said, ‘Don’t do this.’

  ‘Come, come,’ the guy who’d kicked shouted, ‘kick, man.’

  And Mace did, lifting the ball over their heads.

  ‘David Beckham,’ they joked, one running to retrieve it.

  Pylon got into the car, fired the engine. Mace waited while the boy opened the garage doors, reversed the TT into the street. He stalled it, swung the engine again with the accelerator floored, the revs howling. The young men all stood next to the van now, none of them smiling. Pylon gave a beep on the hooter and Mace eased into the passenger seat, said, ‘Let’s go.’

  On the highway the boy took off without a wave of thank you and Pylon let him go, clucking his disapproval. ‘Bloody rich kids.’

  Mace said, ‘Who’s the fella back there?’

  ‘Oupa K,’ said Pylon. ‘Started off as a car-guard. He reckons he’s seen the chick, Vittoria what’s her name?’

  ‘Sure he does.’

  ‘No, I’d believe him,’ said Pylon. ‘On the club scene, Oupa K’s the operator. He’s the merchant. Es from Amsterdam. Coke from Columbia. Oupa K has it all.’

  ‘Attractive man.’

  ‘Embittered man. Thought when he came back from the bush war, the powers would set him up. They did. With a chauffeuring job. Not exactly what Oupa K had in mind.’

  Pylon took the off-ramp into the airport. ‘Probably what I’ll do while you’re away is hang out in the clubs for a while.’

  ‘Exciting,’ said Mace.

  18

  Two nights later Pylon hit Club Catastrophe a little after midnight. The building pumped, the street was jumping. On the corner Oupa K’s van issued a low requiem. He imagined the man inside watching him pass, knowing his reason for being there, probably smiling to himself. For a moment wondered if he shouldn’t knock on the tinted windows but didn’t. What for? Let the guy chill to his weird music in peace.

  At the club door Pylon had to shout at the bouncers, ‘Ducky Donald around by any chance?’

  The doorman looked over his head at the kids dancing in the street. ‘Who’s asking?’

  Pylon told him.

  The man spoke into the mic clipped to his lapel, kept his eyes on Pylon moving aside to let a couple of white boys stagger out, both wiggers, their hip-hop gear falling off their bums, their Nike laces whipping about like snakes. White kids, black kids, street cool was ridiculous.

  The bouncer tapped Pylon on the shoulder, indicating with his thumb that he could go inside. ‘At the bar,’ he shouted. ‘Wait there.’

  Pylon nodded, headed into the thundering drone of the club’s dark interior. Nothing seemed changed since he’d last been there, had to be almost three years back in ‘99: the same gothic style on the walls, the images of hanged cats.

  At the bar Matthew shouted at him to go upstairs where Pylon found Ducky Donald sprawled on the not-so-white leather couch watching a movie of a bare-torsoed Ben Kingsley mouthing off at him
self in a mirror.

  ‘Grab a beer, take a pew,’ said Ducky, flapping a hand towards a drinks counter that ran the length of the wall. Ducky sitting there in green tracksuit bottoms, a red T-shirt, bare feet. No sign of any female company. The room a pit of old newspapers, magazines, stacks of videos. A polystyrene box from the Hot Wok takeaway perched on a tower of discs. Ashtrays of butts on the bar and coffee table, the air heavy with cigarette smoke and not a window open on this hot night.

  Pylon got a Becks from the bar fridge, uncapped it with a waiter’s friend. One thing he had to give Ducky, the noise insulation was good, only a dim boom audible from below.

  ‘Cheers,’ said Ducky, patting the white leather. ‘Siddown, watch this. Sexy Beast it’s called. I got a pirate. Bloody best movie Kingsley ever made.’

  Pylon scooped newspapers off the couch, dumped them on the coffee table and sat.

  ‘Check this.’ Ducky Donald rewound to Kingsley aka Don Logan dissing Ray Winstone aka Gal.

  The two guys facing off, Logan going: ‘Look at you, fuckin’ suntan, like leather! Like a leather man, your skin, you could make a fuckin’ suitcase out of you, holdall! Look like a crocodile, fat crocodile, fat bastard, you look like fuckin’ Idi Amin, know what I mean?’

  Ducky slapped at his thighs. ‘Isn’t that great. Bloody wonderful. Wouldn’t you say?’ - and spun back for a replay.

  Pylon sipped his beer, thinking fat Ducky Donald with his sunbed tan was only a shade or two off Idi Amin himself.

  When the scene came to an end, Ducky paused the movie, an image of the bald psychopath in a tight white shirt with a face like a demon filling the screen. He tossed the remote onto a woven grass plate, gave Pylon a toothy smile. ‘So what you want, boykie?’

  Pylon said, ‘I’m looking for a girl looks like this’ - he handed Ducky two newspaper clippings: one the cop’s identikit, the other of a passport mug shot. ‘She’s been around the clubs, I heard.’

  ‘Hundreds of broads look like this,’ said Ducky, giving Pylon back the cuttings. He took a cigarette from a pack, fired it with a Bic. Said, ‘Let me show you something’ - blowing smoke from the corner of his mouth as he picked out a remote from the four lying in the bowl, aimed it at a black box standing on the floor below the screen. Logan disappeared; the club’s dance floor popped up, a packed mob swaying with their hands snaking above their heads. ‘I can sit here, keep on eye on the ravers.’

  Ducky zoomed in on a couple, ecstasy written over their faces. ‘How about that? Truly bombed, hey!’

  He switched cameras: the doormen having words with a kid waving a knife in their faces. The one bouncer took the knife away like the kid had given it to him. Ducky Donald laughed. ‘Got sound too.’ He powered up the volume, the kid shrieking about how they were racists, not letting blacks in. Ducky Donald sighed out a stream of smoke. ‘We get that all the time.’

  The bouncer sneered. ‘What, you an MK? The bloody spear of the rainbow nation. Piss off arsehole.’

  Ducky Donald jumped to a camera in the chill room, no one there. ‘In here’s where the shit happens,’ he said. ‘The things I’ve seen you wouldn’t believe people’d do in public.’

  ‘This cover the loos too?’ said Pylon.

  The screen filled with dancers, the speakers blasted an amplified sound. Ducky shut down the volume, zooming on and off faces. ‘We’re thinking of that.’

  Pylon thought, yeah, sure, like that wasn’t the first place they installed the system. He watched the play of the camera, had to be on some track across the ceiling.

  ‘Goddamned wonderful piece of hi-tech,’ said Ducky, dollying slowly over the crowd.

  Pylon caught an upturned face, said, ‘Stop. Go back.’ Ducky Donald opened the angle. ‘There. That one. With the black hair.’ The camera came tight on her: eyes closed, sweat glistening on her forehead, mouth slightly open to show the tips of her teeth. It could be. An outside chance, something about the shape of her face. He leant forward. ‘What d’you think?’

  Ducky Donald pulled at his cigarette. ‘You’re gonna tell me that’s her?’

  ‘I reckon.’

  Ducky squinted at the screen. ‘Nah. Not a chance.’

  ‘It is,’ said Pylon. ‘Except last time I saw her she was blonde.’ He took a long swallow at his beer, watching the young woman dancing, not a care in the world. Seemed to be dancing all by herself. Attractive babe.

  ‘And why’s she of note?’

  ‘Cops’re after her.’

  ‘I gathered. Question is, why are you?’

  ‘Long story,’ said Pylon. He drained the bottle of beer, stood the empty at the foot of the couch. ‘Thanks for the help.’

  Ducky Donald shrugged. ‘Just don’t cause any shit on the premises.’

  ‘Wouldn’t dream of it,’ said Pylon.

  Two hours later he watched the woman leave the club with a man that had a decade on her at least. The two of them walking hand-in-hand casually through the dark streets to an Audi Quattro parked a block away. He followed them across the city, up and over the Nek, along the coastal stretch to Llandudno, down into the suburb. Not another car about this time of the morning. At a fork he lost them, then saw headlights sweep into a street below. He made it down in time to see an automatic gate rolling closed. Lights came on in the house. Pylon went back to his car, tapped an SMS through to Mace in New York.

  19

  ‘Trust me. I’m a dealer.’ Isabella ran a finger down Mace Bishop’s cheek. Opened the door to her apartment, going in ahead of him.

  ‘You’re not the problem.’

  ‘So what is?’

  ‘Mo’s the problem.’

  ‘Schmooze him.’

  In the lounge Mace took off his coat, draped it over the back of an armchair. ‘All I want to know are two things: when, and that the deposit’s secure.’

  ‘You can’t believe me?’ Isabella collapsed on the couch, eased off her shoes. ‘It’s going to work out, Macey. I’ve got my little husband on the case.’

  That, Mace thought, was the real problem. The little husband didn’t have a great track record from what he could gather.

  ‘I’m not going to leave you out in the blue exhaust, am I now? There’s lots riding on this, Mace. A cool fortune.’ She patted the seat of the couch, enticing.

  He sat in the armchair. ‘Exactly. So when?’

  She ignored him, kept patting the couch leather. ‘Come and keep me company.’

  ‘Not a good idea,’ said Mace.

  ‘You wouldn’t have said that once.’

  ‘Once was once. Times change.’

  ‘I forgot. The family man.’

  Mace nodded. ‘So when, exactly?’

  ‘That last time in the Meurice,’ she said, getting up, kneeling down beside him, ‘wasn’t good. Not the sort of memory I like for what we had. What d’you say?’ Reached up to take his hands.

  ‘You said you’d got over it.’

  She nibbled at his fingers. ‘I lied.’

  ‘Bella,’ he said, ‘don’t do this.’

  ‘No? Then why’re you here, Mace? Tell me? I didn’t ask you. You came up. Or is this my Macey-boy the smuggler, daring all, suddenly getting cold feet?’ She sat astride him, lap-dancer style, her skirt riding up, and took his face in her hands.

  Mace said, ‘No.’

  Isabella grinned at him, her hand pressed into his crotch. ‘No? I’d have thought, yes, by the feel of it.’ Her lips came down to his, pushing hard against his teeth.

  Mace thought, don’t. Felt his hand on her thigh. Her hand covering his, taking it higher. The touch of her on his fingers brought a rasp to his breath.

  Afterwards he had to leave. Right away. Isabella lying on the couch beneath a throw, amused at his hurry. His searching for shoes under the furniture, mismatching his button holes.

  ‘You can stay the night,’ she said. ‘We could do it again, in bed.’

  ‘I don’t think so.’ Mace shrugged into his coat.

  ‘Oumou on y
our conscience. How cute. Not like you, Mace, to have a conscience.’

  ‘What we haven’t settled,’ said Mace, ‘is the date.’

  ‘Ever the Pitbull.’ She sighed. ‘Never lets go’ - watching him flip open a small diary, scanning a calendar. ‘For heaven’s sake, Mace, it was just a screw. Something we used to do before you met Oumou. It’s not like I’m a new lay.’

  ‘When in January?’

  ‘You tell me.’

  ‘Saturday 18th?’

  ‘That’s good, if it’s good for you.’ Isabella put her head coquettishly at an angle. ‘It was good for you, I could tell.’

  She was right, Mace admitted back at his hotel, sex with Isabella smelt of guns. Always had done. A brush of linseed when her body heat came up. You could taste it if you licked her skin. That excitement that possessed you.

  He stared at himself in the bathroom mirror: the lines at the corners of his eyes that hardened his gaze. The curve of his lips, tightening. A redness at the flanges of his nostrils. ‘Why’d you do it?’ he said aloud. ‘You weak bastard.’

  Oumou’d know. Sense it somehow. Just know. Truth was he felt like shit. Really bad. Sick in his gut.

  ‘You think you can get away with it?’ He searched in his eyes for a remorse that frightened him. In their marriage he hadn’t betrayed her, always respected her. Until now. He spat in the basin. Rinsed his mouth and spat again, the taste of bile still on his tongue.

  He went through to the bedroom and from the minibar poured a whisky. This took away the taste and the lurking edge of unease. He chased it with another, drinking without pleasure. The second down, he stripped off and showered, over the jet of water could hear his cellphone beeping. Five minutes he let the water drum against his skull, thinking, how was this going to end?

  The message was from Christa: What r u dng?

  A towel wrapped round his waist, he sat on the bed to respond: Why are you awake?

  He knew she went through spells of waking in the night. At first she’d called out to them and they’d rushed through to her. Lay with her, held her while she sobbed with terror. But over the last year she’d moved out of that, reached some accommodation with her fate, become accepting. If she woke, she read. In a household of no books, Christa took to reading. Some mornings he’d find her asleep with the bedside light on, a book fallen on the floor, Cat2 and Cupcake entangled at the bottom of the bed. Her thing with books he couldn’t understand. Stories had no fascination for him. Unless they were real.