by Roger Smith
“It’s what you want. Or rather who.”
“Christ, these riddles. That some Bushman thing?”
“All I can tell you is to speak to Tshepang Moshweng’s brother, Frans. Ask him about Kruger,” Assegaai said.
“Ja?”
“Ja. And Zondi?”
“Ja?”
“Ask him firmly.”
- - -
Zondi entered the hotel bar from the street and stood framed in the doorway. Alwyn Van Staaden and his pack were watching the news on the TV above the bar. Joe Louw being shot and his killer committing suicide.
When Van Staaden looked his way Zondi jerked his head toward the street and stepped out into the hot night, climbing up into the cab of the Nissan.
The massive Afrikaner emerged from the bar and slid in beside Zondi, the pickup’s suspension protesting.
“So?” Van Staaden said.
“You hear about Leon Louw?”
“Leon?”
Zondi held up a hand. “Ja, I know. His truck got taken out by a train.”
“So that’s what all that racket is?”
“Yes.”
“That all you have to tell me?”
“No.” Zondi looked out at the street then back at Van Staaden. “I spoke to Amanda Maritz.”
“And?”
“Okay, this is what I think went down. I have no proof. Yet. Witsand is dying from lack of water. Magnus Kruger wanted to buy Soetwater but George Maritz wouldn’t sell. Kruger, with the help of Leon, had him killed and now he’s buying the farm from Amanda for peanuts.”
“Fuckin bastard,” Van Staaden said, cracking his door.
“Wait,” Zondi said.
“For what?” the Afrikaner said, half his bearded face washed by the dome light.
“Where are you going?”
“I’m going after Kruger.”
“Close the door.” The big man stared at him. “Close the door.” Van Staaden shut the door and Zondi could smell booze and sweat and tobacco and ill temper.
“I think there’s a way to get Kruger,” Zondi said.
“How?”
“I’m pretty sure he paid people from Rosetown to kill George Maritz.”
“Tshepang Moshweng is dead.”
“But his brother Frans is not.”
“So let’s go and see him.”
Zondi started the truck.
“But not in this,” Van Staaden said. “Drive down to my workshop.”
- - -
The steel door rattled up and Van Staaden switched on a fluorescent that buzzed and flickered and then glared down on the cars on the lifts and in various stages of repair.
Van Staaden crossed to a board of hooks and lifted off a car key. He went to an old blue BMW 3 series, heavily pimped out.
A black man’s car.
Van Staaden laughed and threw Zondi the key. “Isn’t this what you guys drive?”
Zondi shook his head. “Not me. Whose is it?”
“Guy who owns a shebeen in the township. I always service it for him. Wait here.”
Zondi sat behind the wheel and tapped the Orlando Pirates football team flag—a white skull and bones on a black background—that dangled from the rearview, watching as Van Staaden went into his cubicle office and switched on the light.
After a minute the light went out and the big man returned carrying a shotgun and two pistols.
“You packing?” he said to Zondi through the driver’s window.
“No.”
“Jesus, what kind of cop are you?” Zondi said nothing. The Afrikaner held up a Glock. “Know how to use this?”
“Ja.” Zondi took the weapon and shoved it into the glove box.
Van Staaden flung the shotgun and the other pistol onto the passenger seat and waited until Zondi drove the noisy BMW out of the workshop then he rolled down the door that clanged when it struck the concrete. The big man grunted as he battled himself down into the low car.
Zondi set off down the main street, coming to terms with the power of the Bimmer that bucked and surged like an unruly horse while Van Staaden fed shells into the Remington and for the second time in less than an hour Zondi heard the glottal cough of a shotgun being racked.
SEVEN
Frans Moshweng made it easy for them. He tried to run, in that custom Honda Civic of his. If he’d just stayed on top of his girlfriend in her Rosetown hovel, screwing and smoking tik, they would never have found him, Zondi and Van Staaden driving blindly through the maze of shacks, the huge Afrikaner trying—and failing miserably—to stay out of sight, his mountain of flesh overflowing the cramped cabin of the BMW like a filling in a pie mold while Zondi asked questions of the locals that were met with blank faces and fleeing backs.
The wind was up again and the people moving between the shanties staggered like drunks, vague shapes caught in the headlights of the BMW. The windows of the Bimmer were wound shut, the air heavy with Van Staaden’s sweat.
The Afrikaner held up the dregs of a half-jack of brandy. Zondi shook his head. Van Staaden finished the bottle and threw it to the floor where it clanked against the shotgun.
The wind must’ve carried the news that Frans Moshweng was a wanted man, for Zondi heard the roar of an engine and the red Honda Civic came bombing out between the shacks ahead of them, throwing a cloud of mustard-colored dust.
“That’s him,” Van Staaden said.
“You sure?”
“I know that fuckin car, man.”
Zondi floored the BMW and felt it slide like an eel in the sand. Moshweng saw them following and he dodged between the shanties, taillights burning red through the haze of dust as he tried to get away, speeding deeper into the warren of shacks, fighting to hold the Honda steady on the powdery sand.
Zondi swerved into an alley between two rows of hovels, the BMW bucking through ditches, headlight beams skidding across rusted metal, cardboard and plastic sheeting. A hard gust of wind hurtled between the shelters and buffeted them, shaking the Bimmer on its springs, clearing the dust long enough for Zondi to glimpse the Honda, low to the ground and somehow feral, the deep rumble of its engine and a blast of Kwaito (South Africa’s homegrown mix of hip hop and house) swelling in the sudden quiet as the wind died for a moment.
Zondi sped on, sliding into a turn, his headlights finding a woman with baby tied to her back, right in their path. He flung the BMW to the side, felt the trunk slide out and collect the side of a shack, just missing the woman who turned and ran into the dust, the baby bouncing like it was on a trampoline.
Zondi was moving again, swerving and rattling up the rutted track.
“You’ve lost the cunt,” Van Staaden said.
But Zondi saw the Civic hang a left, Moshweng fighting through a slide, the ass of the car skidding on the sand before the tires gripped and it jolted up a narrow road that took it beyond Rosetown, out onto the flat plain.
The Honda was too low for the powdery sand and as they closed in the BMW’s headlights spiked the car stalled in a cloud of dust, Moshweng leaping from the behind the wheel, naked except for his skivvies, his wiry body the color of old rope, trying to outrun them.
The BMW still found purchase on the sand and Zondi bore down on the running man, slowing as he drew abreast of him and Van Staaden flung open and door and leapt out, felling Moshweng the way he must’ve felled rugby foes thirty years before, pushing him face down into the sand.
Zondi stepped out of the BMW feeling the wind on him like grabbing fingers.
Moshweng lifted his head and said, “I done fokoll, man.”
Van Staaden hauled him to his feet and slapped him through the face, setting him on his ass in the sand.
Zondi stood over Moshweng, hearing the rasp of his breath above the Kwaito still pumping from the stalled car.
“Tell me about Kruger,” Zondi said, in Tswana.
“All I know is that Boer bastard killed my brother,” Moshweng said.
Zondi started to translate and Van Staaden said,
“I speak the fuckin lingo, buddy. Keep going.”
“Kruger paid you to kill George Maritz,” Zondi said.
“Bullshit.”
“Tell us and we go easy on you. Testify against Kruger and you’ll get a plea bargain. You’ll be out in five years. Be stupid and you’ll sit for twenty-five.”
“I know fokoll.”
Van Staaden reached down and lifted Moshweng to his feet, as easily as if he were handling a toddler. He maneuvered the smaller man toward the gaping passenger door of the Bimmer and shoved him into the seat.
“You right or left handed?” Van Staaden said. When Moshweng stayed mute the Afrikaner throttled him and the black man coughed and said, “Right handed.”
Van Staaden grabbed Moshweng’s left hand and held it against the metal frame of the car, exposed by the open door.
“We’ll leave your right hand so you can still pull your wire,” Van Staaden said. He looked at Zondi. “Ask him again. About Kruger.”
Zondi did and the black man just shook his head.
Van Staaden said, “Close the door, Zondi.”
Zondi looked at Moshweng then he stepped forward and grabbed the door handle. Moshweng’s face twitched in the dome light, the stink of terror cloaking him.
Zondi threw his weight behind the door and slammed it shut. He heard the snapping of bones, a dry splintering sound. Moshweng fell with his face against the glass, puke leaking from his mouth, tips of his fingers sticking out the closed door like a lost glove. He sucked air and whimpered.
Van Staaden wrenched the door open and Moshweng looked at his maimed hand as if it belonged to somebody else.
He sobbed, mouth hanging open. The dust darkened his tears, like mascara run on the face of a slattern on a bad night.
“Ask him again,” Van Staaden said.
“Tell us what you did for Kruger,” Zondi said, but Moshweng just sat, sobbing, gripping the mangled left hand in his right.
Van Staaden reached across and freed the right hand and placed it against the frame of the car.
“This fuckin boy don’t learn. Again, Zondi.”
Zondi had his hand on the door when Moshweng spoke through his clenched teeth. “Okay. Okay.”
And so the story came tumbling out.
An old, old story of poverty and greed and stupidity.
Leon Louw, on the orders of Magnus Kruger, paid Frans Moshweng to kill George Maritz on a weekend when the farmer’s wife and child were visiting friends in Upington. Frans drafted his little brother, Tshepang, as his accomplice. After the murder his brother suffered remorse and started threatening to go to the police.
Moshweng fell silent, sobbing.
“Did you ever meet Kruger?” Zondi asked.
“Yes, once. Before we go to Soetwater. Behind the hotel, in his truck. Leon bring me there and Kruger burn me with his cigarette. Here.” Pointing with his right index finger at a mark the size of a small coin on the underside of his left forearm. “Tell me if I fuck up he kill me.”
Zondi and Van Staaden exchanged looks, a flash of a smile in the Afrikaner’s beard.
“What did you do, then, with your brother?” Zondi said.
Moshweng shook his head. “Nothing.”
“Nothing?”
“Ja. I just call Leon and tell him.”
“And Leon killed him?”
Moshweng nodded.
“Like you knew he would?” Zondi said.
Moshweng looked down at his hand, whimpering.
“Fuckin piece of shit,” Van Staaden said.
He reached into the car and grabbed hold of the man and carried him around to the rear and threw him into the trunk, slamming it closed.
When Moshweng started banging and kicking Van Staaden shouted, “Stop that fuckin noise or I’ll shoot you through the lid.”
The banging stopped.
“What we gonna do with him?” Van Staaden said. “I wouldn’t trust him with those baboons at the cop shop.”
Zondi shook his head. “No, we’ll take him down to Kimberley. To the prosecutor.”
“But first I’m going after Kruger,” Van Staaden said.
“I’m coming with you.”
“You sure?”
“Yes.”
“Okay,” the giant said, smacking a hand on the roof of the BMW. “But we’re not taking these black man’s wheels. Let’s go get my truck.”
They climbed into the BMW and drove away, leaving the Honda standing with its door gaping and headlights tracing the dust, Kwaito still blaring, some gravel voiced guy insisting that he was the hit man.
Yeah.
EIGHT
Zondi sat across from Van Staaden at the chipped wooden desk in the office of the garage. The huge man prodded at his old Nokia, dialing, and then he activated the speaker and set the phone down on the scuffed surface of the desk, the tinny ring tone echoing in the room.
Zondi looked around the cramped office. A girlie calendar with the months in Afrikaans hung askew on the wall beside unframed, yellowing photographs of Van Staaden standing over a variety of dead animals. A few snaps had come adrift, revealing blobs of adhesive on the peeling plaster, and lay forgotten on the dusty linoleum floor. A steel shelf held a few scruffy ring binders and a row of plastic Castrol engine oil containers. A framed photograph of a younger Van Staaden crouching beside a small blond boy in a wheelchair was wedged beside the containers.
Zondi’s gaze drifted through the smeared window to where the red Honda was parked in the workshop, Frans Moshweng still locked in the trunk.
He’d keep.
At last the ringing stopped and that deep, ham actor’s voice said, “Generaal Kreer.”
The big Afrikaner looked at Zondi, scratched his beard and cleared his voice and said, “General, it’s Alwyn Van Staaden.”
“Good evening, Alwyn.”
“I’ve heard about the tragedy,” Van Staaden said. “My condolences.”
“Indeed, one of our youngest and finest men struck down.”
“I need to talk to you, General.”
“Then talk.”
“This isn’t talk for the telephone. Can we meet, perhaps? In town?”
“I have to be here, with my people. If you wanted to come and pay your respects you’d be welcome.”
Kruger was gone.
Van Staaden bounced the phone in his hand before dropping it into his shirt pocket. He stood, his head almost brushing the strip light that bathed the room in a fish tank glare.
“Looks like we’re going visiting, Zondi.”
- - -
Zondi and Van Staaden were in the Afrikaner’s double cab Toyota pickup on their way to Witsand. Zondi listened to the thrum of the fat tires on the blacktop and tried not to hear the alcoholic wife beater on the radio yodeling on about a mythic leader who would come to take the Boers to salvation.
Van Staaden clicked off the radio. “Fuck, that guy’s a wanker. Good at smacking women but put him up against a man and he’ll shit in his pants.”
He reached into the glove box and came out with a half-jack of brandy, uncapped it and took a swig, offering the bottle to Zondi who again shook his head.
“You don’t drink?” Van Staaden said.
“I drink. But not brandy. And not now.”
“Me, I need a bit of this.”
“Dutch courage?”
Van Staaden laughed. “I call brandy baklei wyn. Know what that means?”
“Fighting wine.”
“Ja. And I think we’re in for a bit of a fight.”
“Got a plan?”
“Get in and get Kruger alone and gunpoint him and get him out.”
“Sounds simple.”
“Simple as in stupid?” Van Staaden said.
“Maybe. The guy at the gate is always armed.”
“We won’t leave through the gate.”
“No?”
“No. What do you think those fuckin bullbars are for Zondi?” Van Staaden said, waving toward the armored grille of
the truck. “To impress the girls? We’ll just ram through the fence, buddy. We won’t take any shit.”
“Okay.”
Van Staaden emptied the bottle and threw it to the floor at Zondi’s feet.
“Why you doing this, Zondi?”
“It has to be done.”
“I mean, why aren’t you calling in bloody reinforcements? Choppers and armored cars?”
“I’m no longer on this case. Officially.”
“No?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Let’s just say the outcome I want and the outcome my bosses want are no longer aligned.”
“Whatever the fuck that means,” Van Staaden said.
“It means it’s just you and me.”
They drove on in silence for a while and then Van Staaden slowed and pulled over onto the shoulder. “About two klicks to Witsand. You better get in the back, buddy.”
Zondi stepped out and climbed into the rear, hunkering down as Van Staaden bumped back onto the road. Zondi stared out the window, watching shadowy clouds scud past a gibbous moon and thought about the laws of probability and thought about the odds stacked against them.
So why was he doing this?
That was a very good question and one that he could not answer. You may as well ask a moth about flame.
- - -
Zondi, still hunched down in the rear of the Toyota, heard Van Staaden in conversation with the guy at the gate who told him that Kruger was “talking to the heroes.”
Van Staaden thanked him and pulled away and waited a while before he said, “You hear that, Zondi?”
“Yes. What does it mean?”
“Kruger likes to walk around his statues and talk to them.”
“You serious?”
“Ja. He says he draws strength from them.”
“Jesus.”
“But it means we’ve got lucky. The fucker always does it alone.”
So they’d got lucky for the second time that night. First Frans Moshweng doing a runner right into their path and now Magnus Kruger in solitary communion with the Boer heroes of the past.
Of course Zondi knew that there was no scientific basis in the belief that a run of good luck would automatically be followed by a run of bad, that such a belief was just the burden of owning a brain hardwired to reject the sway that randomness holds over our lives, that the brain’s hunger for pattern gave rise to superstition and magical thinking.