City of Blood

by Martie de Villiers

  At the next crossroad the black BMW was two cars behind them. He pulled his pistol out. William kept his between the seats. He could shoot with his left hand, William. He’d seen him do it, firing out of the window while driving. Multitask, that was what Lucille called it. A rare thing, she always said, a man who could multitask.

  ‘Can you lose them?’ he asked.

  The smell of burning tyres was still heavy in the car five blocks on.

  ‘What kind of a man wears a pink shirt? Eh? No man I know will dress like that.’ He looked over his shoulder. No sign of the BMW. He hated running away from a fight, and that tall man . . . there was something familiar about him. He had a good memory for faces. He clenched his fists, flexed his fingers, clenched again. Relaxation techniques. Lucille had taught him. To help him deal with stress, she’d said. A man in his position had to know how to keep his cool. Those were her words. He had bought her a house from where she ran her business. Lucille’s Beauty Parlour. He was good to his women. Everybody knew that.

  His thoughts returned to the scene they’d left behind. It’s always been like that in Jozy. Parts of the city belonged to the Nigerians. There were many of them – too many – but there was one in particular he was after: Sylvester Abaju. The man who would have killed him three years ago, but the bullets went wide, and then Abaju had set him up with the police, arranged for him to be arrested, only this plan also failed. Abaju got what he wanted anyway. Letswe had to leave Johannesburg. Two dead cops had ensured that. Abaju must have believed that he’d won, that he, Letswe, was out of the picture. The thought of revenge made him smile.

  ‘These Nigerians, they think they own this city.’

  ‘They own some of it,’ said William, who, when he decided to talk, usually talked sense. ‘And what’s theirs, they look after. You could see it back there – we weren’t there long, but they were on to us.’ He snapped his fingers. ‘Just like that. Their eyes are everywhere.’

  ‘That is true, but now we’re back things will change.’

  Alfred greeted him like a brother and shouted at his wife to bring the beer while they laughed and talked about old times. Alfred called a young man over to the table and introduced him – his nephew. Letswe didn’t catch the name.

  ‘It is an honour to meet you, Mr Letswe,’ Alfred’s nephew said. He had an educated accent. Letswe looked at him again. Open, boyish face, but the eyes were that of a hard man.

  ‘He’s looking for a job,’ Alfred said. ‘He knows the streets. People talk to him.’

  ‘You have a gun?’ Letswe asked.

  The nephew nodded.

  ‘Show me.’ When he did, Letswe laughed. ‘A .38. That’s not a man’s gun. Do you want to work for me?’

  The boy’s face lit up.

  Alfred grinned. ‘He’s good with cars, this one. Stole two yesterday. He’s clever.’

  ‘I want someone who is familiar with the streets,’ Letswe said. ‘Someone who can come and go and find things out for me. That is what I’m after. Information.’

  ‘I am your man, Mr Letswe,’ the boy said.

  They left Alfred’s an hour later. Alfred’s nephew walked to the car with them. He was keen, Letswe could see that.

  ‘I’ll get in touch,’ he told the boy.

  ‘Time for a BMW,’ Letswe said to William, who was driving. He always let William drive – a man of his status had to have a driver.

  ‘Eh?’ William asked.

  ‘This car’s no good.’

  ‘It is good. It’s fast.’

  ‘Yes, but the air con is not working properly. Look, it’s not working.’ He fiddled with the buttons. ‘Out of order.’

  ‘You want a BMW?’

  ‘Yebo.’

  ‘What colour?’

  ‘I’m not fussy.’

  William had a laugh like a horse.

  They turned into Kotze Street, William driving slowly.

  ‘There,’ William said.

  ‘Too small, and I don’t like red.’

  William laughed again.

  They found what they were looking for in the parking lot at Bruma Lake. White BMW, 5 Series. Nice car. They waited forty minutes before the driver showed up. Two men, both black, wearing suits. Letswe watched them approach. He and William got out of the Opel without him having to say go. They had done this many times before. That was how he’d got started in business – hijackings. He’d moved on to bigger things since those days, but he still enjoyed the adrenalin rush he got from this and today there was an added edge to it: just looking at these two put him in a bad mood. They were carrying guns – he picked up on that straight away. He thought about the black BMW and the man in the pink shirt he had encountered earlier. The anger returned.

  ‘Nigerians,’ he said to William.

  ‘Maybe.’

  They looked foreign. Tall, muscular men. Confident. Untouchable. His pulse quickened. It wasn’t just about the car. They needed to be taught a lesson. He had been away from this city for too long. He’d been cheated already today – in the old days no one would have dared to cheat him. And now these two small-timers were walking around his city as if they owned it. He went left, William right.

  The men hadn’t spotted them yet. They split up, one going for the driver’s door – William had him covered. Letswe took the passenger. The driver saw William, but didn’t seem to know what to make of him. Big mistake. If he’d gone for his weapon straight away he’d have stood a chance.

  Letswe slipped the pistol out from under his shirt and checked the parking lot for cops. All clear. He crouched behind a Toyota three cars away, then rushed forward, keeping low. William walked up to the car and pointed the gun and pulled the driver, who was halfway into the car, out.

  ‘Gimme your fucking keys,’ William shouted.

  William had a deep voice, like an eighteen-wheel truck starting next to you. The second man went for the pistol tucked into his belt but froze when he saw Letswe’s Beretta pointing at his face.

  ‘You don’t know who you’re dealing with,’ the man said. ‘You’re fucking dead.’

  ‘Stand away from the car.’

  ‘You’re a dead man! Do you hear me?’

  ‘My name is McCarthy Letswe.’

  ‘You’re a dead man.’ The man’s voice faltered. Still no fear, just the uncertainty of a man placed in an unfamiliar situation.

  ‘My name means nothing to you?’

  The man blinked.

  ‘Step away from the car.’ He didn’t want blood on the car, but the man didn’t respond. Letswe shot him twice in the chest.

  William had punched the other one and was trying to strangle him, but he put up a fight.

  ‘Just shoot him, William,’ Letswe said.

  William threw the man across the BMW’s bonnet. He slid onto the ground and William shot him in the chest.

  ‘Waste of a good bullet that,’ he said as he got into the car.

  ‘We have to go to the car wash,’ Letswe said.

  When they pulled out of the parking lot they heard sirens in the distance and William put his foot down.

  ‘Pigs are getting quicker by the day,’ William said.

  ‘They’re still useless.’ Letswe turned the air con on. ‘This is much better.’

  ‘Remember Abaju?’ he asked William that night over fried chicken and chips.

  William grunted while he started on the other half of the chicken. He’d once seen William eat two whole chickens and two platefuls of chips. He had once seen him drink eight bottles of beer and not get drunk, and once a man had shot him in the leg and William hadn’t realised it until someone asked him about the blood on his trousers.

  ‘I don’t want him to know that I’m back.’

  ‘He’ll hear about it,’ William said, wiping his mouth with his sleeve.

  ‘Not before I know where to find him.’

  William grunted again.

  ‘And when I know . . . That day he will see that I don’t forget. Now look at that one
over there. Look at her move, eh?’

  William looked over his shoulder. ‘Too skinny.’

  Letswe smiled. ‘You finish your chicken, my friend. I shall see you tomorrow.’

  ‘Lucille?’ He had called her name several times. He had knocked on the door and the window and still received no reply. He didn’t bother to keep his voice down and now the dogs were barking up and down the street.

  ‘Lucille, open this door.’ She was home. She was always home.

  ‘My lover? You are back?’

  She stood there in the doorway, the light spilling over her, tall, all woman, her breasts pressing against her red silk gown. He forced his way past her into the house that smelled of cinnamon.

  ‘If there’s another man in this house, I’ll kill him.’ He grabbed her shoulders.

  ‘There’s no one.’ She tried to pull away from him.

  ‘I’ll kill you both.’

  He dragged her through the house, checking every room. With the exception of the old woman asleep in the third bedroom, there was no one.

  ‘Do I look like a fool to you, McCarthy? Eh? Do I look like a fool?’

  She rubbed her arm when he let her go.

  ‘I missed you, my baby.’ He cupped her breasts in his hands.

  ‘It’s three in the morning.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘You should have told me you were on your way,’ she said and smoothed back her hair.

  ‘I am a man who likes surprises. Who’s that old woman?’

  ‘My mother. She lives with me now.’

  He’d only met her mother once before. He couldn’t even remember her name. ‘I’ll buy her her own house,’ he said.

  Lucille leaned forward and kissed him. ‘What a generous man you are,’ she said. ‘In so many ways.’ She undid his belt and smiled as he reached for her.

  He woke up at nine when Lucille brought him breakfast.

  ‘Your man is here,’ she said.

  ‘Give him something to eat.’

  ‘I do not have enough food in my house to feed that man.’

  He rolled out of bed and dropped the sheets at his feet. Her gaze rested on him, on his body. She traced the scar on his chest with her finger.

  ‘So many scars,’ she murmured.

  He kissed her, then stretched his arms above his head.

  ‘Give William some breakfast and tell him to go and pick up Alfred’s nephew. I want to talk to him.’

  3

  I’M NOT A dog. I’m a man. That was what I should have said to the Nigerian. I should have stood up for myself. I was not a boy any more. My twentieth birthday would be on 27 April. Freedom Day. My ribs still hurt where the Nigerian had kicked me. My eye was still swollen. Msizi had told everyone at the shelter how the Nigerian had hit me and how I’d hit him back and made him run away.

  Grace heard this, tutted and shook her head, then said, ‘Nonsense, my Siphiwe wouldn’t hurt a fly.’ She often called me that: her Siphiwe. Msizi too was hers, because she had found him on the doorstep, although, in truth, it was me who’d found him. I had been at the shelter for over a year when Msizi arrived. I was awoken by a dream. It was always the same dream. I dreamt of staring eyes and pointing fingers, of shuffling feet and grabbing hands. And I dreamt of trains.

  The night Msizi arrived I got out of bed and walked barefoot to the kitchen, the tiles cold under my feet. I drank water from the tap. That was when I heard a sound at the door. I thought it was an animal. I pushed the curtains aside to peep through the window. A boy sat on the steps. He wore a pair of tattered black shorts and nothing else. He was shivering and made mewing noises like a hungry cat. I let him in and went to fetch Grace, whose room was at the back of the house. Grace gave him a blanket, a slice of bread with butter and jam and hot milk. She gave me some as well, as if I too had come in from the cold.

  Like me, Msizi had stayed, and like me he had never told anyone what had happened to him and how he’d ended up sitting on the shelter’s doorstep on a freezing night in autumn with hardly any clothes on. The shelter was a good place for a boy like Msizi. He was a clever boy. Grace said he was too clever for his own good.

  ‘He will get into trouble, that boy,’ she’d say. ‘He talks too much and does not listen to what he’s told. Not like you, Siphiwe, you watch and listen and never speak.’

  ‘But I do, Grace, I talk to you.’

  She laughed. ‘You are smart, Siphiwe. We shall find you a good job.’

  I knew then that, some time in the future, some time soon, I would have to leave the shelter. The thought sent my stomach tumbling. There were so many people living on the streets, living badly. Living with hunger and cold and crime. I never had much money, but I had a room to sleep in which was warm in winter and cool in summer, and I received three meals a day: porridge every morning, bread with strawberry jam from a large glass jar in Grace’s kitchen for lunch and meat stew with vegetables in the evening. It was a good place to live and I needed nothing more.

  It was a week after the Nigerian had hit me. I’d seen him twice in the street and been lucky he’d not seen me. Still, I had to keep my eyes wide open. I didn’t want to walk into him again.

  Every Tuesday I went to collect old fruit and vegetables from Pick n Pay for Grace, and this Tuesday, the first week of September, it was clear that spring was on its way. Even in the city you could see it in the fresh leaves of the trees lining the streets. When I reached the supermarket, I went round to the back where a man named Joel handed out boxes of old fruit and veg. These were still good – not rotten – but some were bruised and some had passed the sell-by date. I asked to see the manager. Joel gave me a suspicious look.

  ‘I want to apply for a job,’ I said. I’d been thinking about it. The sooner I got a job the better. If I made some money, I could pay rent and perhaps I could stay at the shelter a little longer.

  ‘There are no jobs,’ Joel said, but he was only a packer. He knew nothing. A young woman directed me to a side door. I was to ask for HR. Another woman opened the door, a white woman. She was friendly, but didn’t want to let me in. She said I must bring my CV to her and she’d give it to HR. They would keep it and let me know when there was an opening. I went away pleased with myself for making a start. Lungile would help me with the CV. She’d know what to say. I was so excited I almost forgot to collect the fruit and vegetables.

  I took my time walking back to the shelter. Early morning was the only time I liked the city, the only time when you saw people as they were. Just people, trying to make a living. Black, white, Indian, Chinese, all the colours of the rainbow nation thrown together in a giant cooking pot, stirred by an old sangoma who would add his own bits of dark magic to the pot that was Johannesburg.

  There was a muti shop in Diagonal Street and many of the stalls at the Mai-Mai market also sold muti. Would my life be any different if I could afford muti from a good sangoma to protect me? Grace said no, and she said I should stay away from places like that. Grace was a good Christian woman and she claimed to be a modern woman, and said these things were from the past. But not all traditional healers were bad. Even Grace had to agree. Some knew important things about trees and birds and animals. Things you never saw in the city.

  I listened to a sangoma speak once, an old man surrounded by other grey heads. He’d said that men had roots, like trees. We should be proud, he’d said. We should respect our roots and we should not let foreigners come and take our jobs from us. I stood outside the circle, but nodded with the old men. It was the Nigerians he’d referred to of course, and the Zimbabweans.

  When I reached the shelter, a police car was parked in front of the gate. I wanted to hide, but Grace had seen me and she called my name. Someone must have told them where to find me. Two cops stood at the front door. One of them was the pale white man with the big hands.

  Grace said that they just wanted to talk to me and she held on to my arm, as if she could tell that I wanted to run away. The white cop offered me a cigaret
te. I took it. Grace tutted. We were not allowed to smoke in the house.

  ‘You remember that woman who was stabbed, Siphiwe?’

  I nodded, but made sure to keep my gaze on their shoes.

  ‘You remember who did it?’

  My eyes met his for a second. ‘I saw nothing.’

  ‘You were there, Siphiwe. You saw everything.’

  Why could they not go and ask someone else these questions? There were many people there that day, the other traders, the shopkeepers. All I did was try to help.

  ‘You must do the right thing,’ the other policeman said. ‘Don’t be afraid. We can protect you.’

  The right thing? To tell the police? And then? Would they catch that man and take him off to prison? No, they would let him go and he would come back to the city and kill me. I couldn’t see how getting killed by a Nigerian was the right thing to do. I kept my eyes on their shoes and stayed silent. They left soon after. Grace turned her back on me and went to her kitchen.

  ‘Grace?’

  She didn’t look at me. ‘Don’t just stand there, Siphiwe. Peel these carrots.’

  ‘OK.’

  She sucked in her breath. ‘No, it’s not OK, Siphiwe. It’s not OK to say nothing, to look down to the ground and pretend that you are safe.’

  Hurt choked me and the words struggled to get out. ‘He will kill me, Grace.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘The man who stabbed the woman.’

  ‘Who is he, Siphiwe?’

  ‘A Nigerian.’

  Her hands went to her hips. ‘Haw, drugs! You stay away from drugs, eh, Siphiwe.’

  ‘Grace, you know I do.’

  Her eyes softened. ‘It’s not right, Siphiwe. These people coming to our country, killing us, stealing from us.’ She shook her head and clicked her tongue. ‘Where will it end? And the police? They do nothing. They sit around and they do nothing.’

  While I peeled the carrots my head was busy with Grace’s words. She was right. The police did nothing. They would arrest someone and the next week that man would be back doing what he’d been doing before. Stealing, killing, selling drugs. I thought of the day the woman was stabbed. There were so many people standing around, not getting involved. It wasn’t just the police. It was everyone. Why? I washed my hands at the sink and left without a word. I went outside to water the vegetables. Working in the garden always made me feel better.