Killer Country

by Mike Nicol

  ‘So we order breakfast: eggs Florentine with the spinach garnish. You know it? Treasure’s best. She’s got a cappuccino, lots of froth. Everything’s humming. Out of the blue she says, we got to get the orphan child first before ours is born.

  ‘I’m what? That’s not how we planned it. A year later’s how we planned it. Let’s get over one baby before we take on the next. Because with the orphan she wants a baby. No pulling in a two- or three-year-old, definitely not anything older. Because Treasure’s theory is nurture beats nature. We disagree here, for me it’s in the genes. But for the sake of a happy home I go with nurture.

  ‘So now, starting Monday, we’re visiting the AIDS adoption centres. Or wherever the government’s hiding the kids. Except here’s a thing: Treasure doesn’t want a Zulu. They got Zulu babies stacked up five deep because that’s where the bug’s bitten hardest. Also there’re more Zulus than anyone else. But no we can’t have a Zulu. You’re going to tell me now about nurture and nature. The reason she doesn’t want a Zulu is that the males are bastards; the woman are like cows. Take any shit the men dish out. But no, hey, this is not racist. This is fact. Now, you tell me you can pick a Zulu from a Sotho when the kids lying there a week or two old? No ways.

  ‘We have some words here until Pumla kicks me under the table and I wise up. Okay, no Zulus. Next thing the breakfast doesn’t taste right, not the eggs, the spinach. It’s overcooked. I’m about to say, can’t be. You overcook spinach it disappears, when I catch Pumla’s eye. So we don’t go there. It’s not that there’s much spinach. The stuff’s a garnish, save me Jesus.’

  The drinks arrived, Pylon taking a quick pull through the straw deep into the mixture to get the whisky.

  Mace spooned up ice cream. ‘Pumla’s smart.’

  ‘It’s her mother. They’re born like razor blades.’

  ‘You hear about Pumla catching the druggie’s peg leg?’

  Pylon frowned.

  ‘Ex-druggie.’

  ‘What crap’s this?’

  ‘Fact. Down the line.’

  ‘Uhhuh.’

  Mace told the story, up to the green toenails.

  Pylon laughed. ‘She’s good that kid. Not too much in the world that scares her. Like her mama. Packaged dynamite. This’s what we’re talking.’ Pylon relaxed in his chair, then came forward again, lowering his sunglasses to stare at Mace over the top. ‘Never guesswho I saw this morning?’

  ‘The pope in shorts?’

  ‘Sheemina February.’

  Mace stirred ice cream into the Coke, sucking the rising head noisily through the straw. ‘I’ve seen her around. You mention it now, probably more than usual in the last two weeks. Before that I hadn’t seen her for a long stretch. Even wondered if she’d left town.’

  ‘You don’t think she’s tagging you again?’

  ‘What for?’

  ‘Old time’s sake.’

  Mace thought about it. Couldn’t see an angle. ‘Nah. It’s coincidence.’

  ‘Interesting, though. It’s at her place that Mrs Lindiwe Chocho rocked up.’

  ‘Her Bantry Bay place.’

  ‘A new place she has in town. University Estate.’

  ‘Still the property mogul.’

  Pylon tapped his finger on Mace’s hand. ‘You listening to me?’

  Mace nodded.

  ‘Good. It’s to her, Sheemina February, that Lindiwe went after shagging Popo Dlamini all night.’

  ‘You can see why Lindiwe needs a lawyer.’

  ‘Mace.’ Pylon, pushed his shades up his nose. ‘Sheemina February’s not mainstream. She’s coloured. There’re black lawyers would’ve creamed to handle the lovely Lindi, a name like that. So if she’s gone outside the tribe it’s because her husband said so.’

  He reached for his cellphone lying on the table. ‘Where we’re in the shit is on account of she got to Popo.’

  ‘Meaning?’ Mace glanced up from his Coke float, met Pylon’s gaze.

  ‘Meaning…’ Pylon gave some attention to his drink. ‘I like Popo, he’s sharp. Brought us – our consortium – a strong link into government. Even against Obed Chocho. With Popo’s contacts we were in the deal. Fighting. Especially you add Klett’s backing. That’s talking hard cash. Euros. Outside investment. Foreign investment. Not some local bank putting up the capital. You want to know who owns the country after these black empowerment deals? The banks. Brothers and sisters can’t trade in an AK for a seat on the board. Got to have something else. You know the president, that’s helpful. Some moola that’s better.’

  Pylon dialled, put the phone to his ear. Mace stretched, tipping back his chair. The square had movement. People stirring for a late breakfast or an early lunch. He heard Pylon say, ‘Popo, my friend, we’ve got to talk.’ One person he didn’t envy was Popo Dlamini being braced by Pylon. Sleeping with the enemy wasn’t something Pylon appreciated.

  The noon gun boomed across the town, and Mace checked his watch, thinking, every time he heard it he did that. Automatically, like he was conditioned. You heard the gun, you knew it was twelve, still you had to check your watch.

  Pylon closed his phone. ‘Bloody gun. It goes off I have to apologise, sorry, say again.’ He placed the phone on the table. ‘I’ve got him. Tomorrow. Twelve o’clock. At his golf estate. The one other side of Pollsmoor Prison. You ever been there?’

  ‘Come on,’ said Mace. ‘We’ve got clients staying there right now. Maybe you’re letting the land deal thing take up too much time.’

  ‘That a criticism?’

  ‘Hardly. I’m looking at it as a life raft.’

  Pylon squinted at him. ‘It can be.’

  ‘Except I’ve got no cash. Except for Cayman.’

  ‘How about this?’ said Pylon. ‘I’ll back you five hundred K.’

  ‘Against what security?’

  ‘Cayman.’

  Mace thought about it. ‘Why not? Or diamonds. I’ve still got diamonds.’ Two, three hundred thousands worth in a safe-deposit box stashed from the Angolan gun run.

  ‘Whatever.’

  ‘One catch: Oumou.’

  ‘No problem. You tell her I’m shifting it sideways to you, at ten per cent when the profit’s totalled. Save me Jesus, what could be easier?’

  Mace said, ‘I’ll run it past her.’

  ‘Why not? Hey’ – he leaned towards Mace – ‘this afternoon I’m seeing the Smits, you know, the whiteys holding out for a stake of the action. I come to a deal with them, some mutual arrangement and we’re home. Everything’s sweet. On Monday you fly in our man Klett and the scheme’s a done deal. Obed Chocho’s left weeping in the dust.’

  ‘We hope,’ said Mace. ‘Right now what we got to talk about is a judge called Telman Visser.’

  ‘I know that name,’ said Pylon.

  ‘Sure. What he wants is farm security for his parents.’

  ‘We don’t do that.’

  ‘I told him.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘So he wants an assessment.’

  ‘Where’s this?’

  ‘Hell knows. Out there.’ Mace waved behind his back. ‘Takes six, seven hours to drive. I told him, okay, normal fee I’d do it. He says best to fly in.’

  ‘At his cost.’

  ‘Of course. Rather I’m thinking of heading out next weekend with Christa. Give the kid a joyride.’

  ‘I got it.’ Pylon clicked his fingers. ‘He’s the judge sentenced Obed Chocho.’

  ‘Physically challenged guy in a zooty wheelchair?’

  ‘Don’t know that. I remember he handed down six years, knocked the breath out of comrade OC.’

  ‘What, knowing he’d only sit a tenth of that?’

  ‘Having to sit at all. Com Chocho couldn’t figure out why fraud was a problem. Com Chocho reckons he personally’s owed big time for the suffering of two centuries of colonialism and apartheid.’ Pylon finished his Dom Pedro. ‘A judge puts away such a nice man can’t be all bad.’

  14

  Spitz s
moked a menthol every forty-five minutes, crushed out the butt in the ashtray, took a drink from his bottle of mineral water. The mineral water in a holder over the air-con vent kept nice and cool. Tindersticks crooning their deadly anthems in his ears had chilled his anger at the long drive. The moment would come he could reclaim on this waste of his time.

  He relaxed, let the empty scrub roll by, wondering at the ruined homesteads scattered on the plains, the stone blockhouses at river crossings. Mostly the only living movement was sheep.

  For an hour he watched mountains come closer: turning from blue to brown. How people lived with this vastness he couldn’t imagine? By the look of them, the few they passed walking from nowhere to nowhere, the space had shrivelled them. Small and wrinkled people, had to be Bushmen he believed. Or their remnants.

  Manga drank Coke, the empty cans rolling about in the well behind his seat. He wasn’t freaked about the driving, actually enjoyed the easy speed of the G-string. A Subaru would’ve been better, more fun, but this was okay, he was happy on the road.

  He called a few friends, spent maybe an hour talking till the cellphone battery beeped its death throes. He plugged the phone into a recharger, turned his attention to the shimmering land.

  He’d driven this distance about five or six times, the last northwards from a heist in Cape Town. Four of them in the car hyped on adrenaline, dagga, pills, and quarts of beer. A million in the boot. Their driving all over the road. Amazing they’d not brought out every cop along the way. Amazing they even got home without an accident.

  He grinned to himself, stared down the long road. Once he thought about the old man in a dressing gown waving around the big rifle. Not scared at all. Had to be admired for not being scared at all. The sort of Afrikaner, Manga’d heard tell, inhabited the dry regions. Leftover types.

  He drove on for half an hour drumming a refrain against the steering wheel, something from Boom Shaka, regretting every moment he’d forgotten his player. Eventually Manga tapped Spitz on the shoulder. ‘Captain. Hey captain, we can both listen to that.’

  Spitz slipped back the headphones, said, ‘What is the matter?’

  ‘Your music.’ Manga pointed at the iPod lying in Spitz’s lap. ‘Plug it in, we can both hear it. Some kwaito, hey!’

  ‘My music is not kwaito.’

  Manga grinned. ‘Come’n, man, stop kidding me, get the tunes.’

  ‘There is nothing on here.’

  Manga glanced sideways. ‘No kwaito.’

  ‘No kwaito.’

  He shook his head. ‘Everybody listens to kwaito.’

  Spitz made to wire himself again. Manga reached out and stopped his arm.

  ‘Hey, hey. You move too fast. So tell me what’s the music. Lemme hear it.’

  Spitz stared at him. ‘This is not your scene.’

  ‘What’s my scene? Captain you don’t know what’s my scene. Let’s have it. Open up. Gimme some names.’

  Spitz reached for his mineral water, swallowed a mouthful. ‘You have heard of M Ward?’ He got a negative from Manga. ‘Steve Earle? Woven Hand? Jesse Sykes?’

  ‘Niks.’

  ‘Like I said to you, it is another scene.’

  ‘It’s music. Music’s music. Spin it DJ Trigger.’

  Spitz tensed, waved his finger. ‘Not that name, okay? Not that name.’

  Manga took both hands off the wheel, held them up in surrender. ‘No problem.’ Gripped the wheel again, the car arrow-straight on the road.

  Spitz replaced the water bottle in the holder. ‘Understand me?’

  ‘Hey, captain, leave it. Move on.’

  Spitz let kilometres go by, then moved on. Scanned his iPod, selected David Eugene Edwards with Sixteen Horsepower, got the leads plugged into the car’s sound system, bringing up the slow guitar thrum of ‘Hutterite Mile’ and Edwards’ ancient voice. Sat back, the swamp gospel filling him.

  A minute into it, Manga held up his thumb. ‘Okay, that’s sharp, captain.’

  Spitz pursed his lips. Gave a quick nod.

  Manga kept to it for two tracks. At the end of ‘Outlaw Song’ said, ‘Uh uh. Not my scene. Something else, captain.’ He made a fist, pumped his arm. ‘More vooma.’

  ‘I have no music with vooma,’ said Spitz. ‘I have badlands songs. Motel blues. Lamentations.’

  He tried Johnny Cash singing about a guy getting hot for a thirteen year old. Next Jim Kalin’s tale of a girl caught on a high mountain. Her screams under the driving chords and banjo pluck.

  Manga pulled the plug. ‘Stick with it, captain,’ he said. ‘I’m notthere. I’m nowhere in that country.’

  Spitz smiled. He pointed at the landscape. ‘What country do you think this is?’

  ‘For Boers,’ said Manga. He ran his tongue over his teeth, let a couple of kays run past before he tried a new line. ‘Tonight, we get some chicks?’ giving Spitz a sideways glance, seeing the man’s unmoving profile. ‘In the township I know a place, they have virgin specials. Little girls. Tight.’

  ‘No,’ said Spitz.

  ‘No! Captain, your mama’s so far away she doesn’t exist.’

  ‘I have no girlfriend.’

  ‘So what’s it, man? You don’t like girls?’

  ‘I like women.’

  ‘No problem. We get you a woman.’

  ‘Tonight a movie would be better.’

  ‘Hey, captain, captain. On the town. Okay, porno. Porno’s good.’

  ‘No, a movie. In a cinema. Big screen, Sensurround.’

  ‘Huh!’

  ‘In my collection I have three hundred DVDs.’

  Manga shook his head. ‘Three hundred! What for? You’ve seen it once, you’ve seen it.’

  ‘Some movies I have seen ten times.’

  Manga whistled.

  ‘Thelma and Louise, I have watched fifteen times.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘To see them die. In the end they die like heroes.’ He raised his right hand, floating it on an upward trajectory.

  ‘Captain,’ said Manga. ‘You’re crazy moegoe.’

  Two hours later, coming off the Karoo plateau into the vinelands of the Hex River Valley, Manga’s phone rang, the CLI reading: Sheemina February. He connected.

  She said, ‘Everything going smoothly?’

  ‘Except we don’t know what everything is.’ He lodged the cellphone between chin and shoulder, needing both hands on the wheel for the curves down the pass. ‘Unless you tell us.’

  ‘I’m about to, Manga. Here are the wishes of Mr Obed Chocho.’

  ‘I’m listening,’ said Manga.

  ‘First, where are you?’

  He told her.

  ‘Excellent. You’ve been driving hard.’ A tone in there that bristled Manga: a patronising bitch. She said, ‘That’s going to take you, what, another hour and a half?’

  ‘I expect,’ said Manga.

  ‘Good timing then. There’re rooms for you in the City Lodge, the one off the N2. You know the city?’

  ‘Enough.’

  ‘Not far from the Lodge’s a steakhouse. Have a shower, have a steak, relax. The job’s tonight at nine o’clock. Not earlier, not later. You with me, Manga?

  ‘Sure,’ he said, wondering who this bitch was Obed Chocho’d hired for his dirty work.

  ‘I’ll sms the address. It’s on a golf estate near Pollsmoor Prison. You probably know it, the prison.’

  Manga let it go, not rising to the sarcasm.

  Sheemina February pausing slightly then going on. ‘There’s two entrances, security at both. Electrified fence all round. The man you have to see is called Popo Dlamini. Tell Spitz no cock-ups.’ She disconnected.

  Manga told Spitz the gist of it, including the bit about no cock-ups.

  ‘She said those words?’

  ‘Exactly.’

  Spitz let it go without comment. ‘And that was her message? You know this Popo? You can recognise him?’

  ‘Nah, captain, never heard of him.’

  Spitz broke a new
pack of menthols. ‘So what am I supposed to do? Ask the brother for his ID first?’

  15

  ‘Non,’ said Oumou. ‘This is not a good idea. Borrowing money.’

  Mace, spruced from a swimming session at the gym, overnight bag packed for Berlin, selected a wine bottle from the rack, about to stick in the cork screw. ‘This’s a screw top!’

  ‘Oui.’ Oumou set out ciabatta and a dish of caprese on the table, the basil still pungent in the kitchen.

  ‘Supposed to be a cork.’

  ‘This is what the man gave me.’ She cut thick slices of bread. ‘I ask him for a good wine, this is his choice.’

  Mace looked at the label. Diemersfontein pinotage. In a screw top? One minute it has to be a cork so the wine can breathe. Lying on its side in a cool place. Next it’s in a screw top like cheap wine, standing upright.

  ‘At Woolies?’

  ‘Oui. Of course.’

  ‘The man actually recommended it?’

  Oumou put down the breadknife. ‘Non. He says if I want a bad wine, this is good. Tastes terrible of chocolate and coffee. The man hates it. He says they sell so much because everybody is a fool. No one can tell what is rubbish if he says it is nice.’

  Mace said, ‘I just asked.’ He cracked the seal and unscrewed the cap. Sniffed the nose, couldn’t smell coffee or chocolate. He poured the wine thick and dark into their glasses. ‘Nice colour.’

  ‘The man said if you tip the glass it is like bull’s blood.’

  ‘Bloody wonderful.’

  ‘I am telling you his words.’

  Mace took a swig, held it in his mouth as someone had told him you had to. He swallowed. ‘Guy’s right. First time I’ve ever tasted what somebody’s said. You listen to the experts they go on about pencil shavings, a hint of farmyard, you have no idea what that is when you drink it. This Woolies man I understand. I can taste coffee. Chocolate even.’ Mace refilled his glass. ‘What d’you think?’

  Oumou sipped. ‘Yes, there is chocolate.’ She sat and spooned caprese onto her plate, tilting the dish to fill the spoon with dressing, drizzling this over her portion. ‘Come. You must eat before you go.’