From Cape Town with Love

by Blair Underwood

  She looked at her phone display, wide eyed. I peeked, too. CALL ENDED, it said.

  As Maitlin wailed, the phone jittered in her unsteady fingers. “Oh G-God, they’re going to hurt her! They’re going to . . . to . . .” Her bones seemed to be dissolving. Alec and Rachel Wentz stroked her, trying to comfort her, but she was sinking out of the room.

  I knelt down to meet Maitlin at eye level. I took her hand and squeezed it, almost hard enough to pinch. “No. They’re not going to hurt her,” I said. “All they want is their money. They don’t get anything out of hurting her except feeling like monsters.” I hoped I was right. I was rusty on my kidnapping statistics, but plenty of kids don’t make it home.

  I saw a film leave Maitlin’s eyes, but the worry remained. “I told her to be good, but what if she doesn’t listen? What if she makes them mad?”

  “She’s a baby, Sofia,” Alec said. “They won’t hurt a baby.”

  “Nandi is fine!” Wentz said. “She thinks she’s on vacation. She’s eating pizza.”

  Despite herself, Maitlin let out a strangled laugh.

  “That’s right, Sophie,” said Roman. “It’s all gonna be fine.”

  But if Maitlin had seen the look Roman gave me, she would have wailed again.

  The household staff had been sent home except for the security team, so the house was eerily quiet. The only voices downstairs were ours.

  “Moment of truth time,” Roman said as we rushed down the staircase. “No bullshit.”

  “Works for me.”

  Roman glanced at me with red eyes, and his voice shook. “I didn’t want to bring you in on this. When all hell breaks loose, you look at the new people first. Or, you could have been a dickhead who’d say, ‘No police necessary, leave it all up to me,’ charge a shitload of money, and shrug your shoulders when Nandi comes back in a body bag. I’ve put all that aside now.”

  I had done something to impress him, apparently. I hoped he would listen to my advice: “We need the cops, Roman,” I said.

  Roman nodded. “No fucking kidding. These pricks are pros. Snatched her in plain sight. But it’s Sophie’s call, just like it was her call to bring you in. She says no police.”

  “Sometimes you gotta make the right call, man. Not what the boss wants.”

  We stopped in a foyer so large that it felt like a Spanish courtyard. Ten-foot potted palm trees lined the walls, beneath a massive skylight glowing only faintly in the dark. Hidden crickets chirped from the trees’ large ceramic planters.

  “I think we got a fifty-fifty chance with this thing,” Roman said, his glassy eyes on mine. “These motherfuckers might take the money and run. Nandi’s old enough to say too much.”

  I wanted to argue with him, but I couldn’t. Anything was possible.

  “Another vote for the FBI,” I said.

  “Fuck it, you’re probably right. But we’re gonna agree on one thing right here, right now: We’re doing it her way. Period. It’s her kid, so she calls it. If Alec and Sophie can live with their decision, so can we.”

  I didn’t know what we could live with, but I shook Roman’s hand on it. His palm felt clammy, ice cold.

  “The drop’s tomorrow night at eleven, and that means me. You, too, if you want in,” Roman went on. “No way Sophie’s going out there, or Alec. If we don’t walk away with Nandi, we go to the feds.”

  Let’s hope any of us walks away, I thought. Let’s hope Nandi will get a second chance.

  “How’d they play us?” Roman said, pacing. When he looked at me, his eyes went straight through me, watching something distant and unspeakable unfold. “Fuck, fuck, FUCK. This shit . . . ,” he said.

  “What?”

  “I thought I’d never have to deal with this again.”

  “Deal with what?”

  “Not a what. A when.” He wasn’t making sense. “April 2004. Al Anbar Province, Iraq. A bad month for Marines. A very bad month. FUBAR. Fucked Up Beyond All Recognition. IEDs. All battle-dressed up and nobody to kill in retaliation.” He slapped the banister hard enough to echo. “Not again. Not here. Not a child placed under my protection!”

  Roman was losing it. I should have called the police right then.

  I tried to bring Roman back into the room with me. “Someone could’ve been waiting for her in the bouncy house—maybe where I found the ribbon,” I said, and Roman’s eyes focused back on home soil. “Maybe they rendered her unconscious. Maybe nitrous oxide. Dental supply store . . . hell, even a catering supply: They use it for whipped cream. She’s small, so she wouldn’t be tough to conceal or carry. A man, woman, or older child could have made the initial grab. They got her to the broken fence—maybe a bag, maybe a cart. Handed her off. Then . . .”

  The scenario was getting blurry, but I pressed on. “They loaded her up and drove off,” I went on. “But not in a service truck. I’d say it was a private car, or a limo. Five minutes, they’re out.”

  Pain seared Roman’s face. “Shit.” We had argued about searching the guests’ cars, but in the end it hadn’t mattered a damn.

  “Nandi could have been out on Mulholland before Zukisa knew she was missing,” I said.

  “And I sent you to the fucking kitchen,” Roman said, his eyes flinching.

  “Hindsight’s a bitch.”

  I wanted to know more about South African Sun on Melrose. Roman might have sent me on a fool’s errand, but the restaurant could have orchestrated it. And I wanted to know more about Roman, too. He wasn’t a full-blown suspect yet, but I hadn’t crossed him off the list.

  Roman studied me. “I’m head of security, I send you away from the scene right before the grab . . . ,” he said. “That doesn’t knot up your balls?”

  We thought just alike. Roman was pulling himself together.

  “Like I said before, it’s easy to paint a suspect,” I said.

  “Like the guy I found with Nandi’s ribbon in his hand?”

  “Just like that.”

  Roman nodded, and we pounded fists. “Until Nandi’s back home, you live here. If you don’t have a piece, I’ll lend you one of mine. We’re gonna work the office phone and computer to stick a microscope up the ass of anybody who was here today—and that’s a long fucking list. You’re gonna come up with ideas I don’t. If we’re lucky, it works both ways.”

  “So far, so good. Partner.” I didn’t want him to think he was my boss.

  Roman’s eyes bored into mine. “Right, partner: And if evidence convinces you that I had something to do with this, fuck the FBI. Shoot me in the head.”

  I remembered Nandi’s laughter as she rolled down the slide, a happy angel. “I could handle that.”

  “Same here, Hardwick,” Roman said. His eyes reminded me of Hannibal Lecter’s death stare from Silence of the Lambs, unblinking intensity. “Not a doubt in my fucking mind.”

  If we didn’t kill each other first, I had a partner. It was a start.

  Roman led me toward his security room, which was a small, virtually windowless room off the front foyer. Inside, he had two desks, a swivel chair in front of a bank of small video screens, a console, and a computer and monitor. One security man I’d met only since the kidnapping—a thin-faced man in his forties with active eyes—was scanning the footage, cycling between cameras. With at least ten cameras on the grounds, that was a lot of footage for one man. But we were spread thin. Too bad we weren’t the FBI.

  One camera had captured Zukisa frantically running out of the bouncy house, looking right and left. The man paused the tape, which was marked 3:55 P.M. “That’s when she’s thinking, ‘Oh, shit,’” the video man mumbled.

  I saw movement in the dark shrubbery from one of the upper video screens marked LIVE FEED. My heart did a war dance when a flashlight’s beam flared like the sun. But it was only our security patrol. Levitt. Roman had spread the rest of the team throughout the grounds.

  “Talk to me, Skeeter,” Roman said to the video man.

  “I don’t have shit,” Skeeter said. “
Damn clowns.”

  “What about the clowns?” Roman said, anxious.

  Skeeter shrugged. “I just fucking hate clowns.”

  My cell phone vibrated, and I checked the caller ID: SEXUAL HEALING, it read.

  That could only be Marsha. I slid my phone back into my pocket, but Roman waved to say Go on. Still, I almost didn’t pick up. I could barely remember what Marsha looked like.

  “Mmmmm . . . ,” Marsha purred when she heard my voice. “What are you doing tonight?”

  “Tonight’s no good.” The ice in my throat made my voice curt. I glanced over at Roman, who was listening to his video man’s soft-spoken update—but Roman was as interested in my conversation as I was in his. I would have been curious about his phone call, too.

  “Everything okay?” Marsha said.

  “Just busy,” I said. “Call you in a couple days.”

  “Relax, Ten,” Marsha said, her voice smiling. “Tomorrow, you’ll die just fine.”

  An ice pick jabbed the base of my spine, and the floor dropped from beneath my feet. First Marsha shows up, then Nandi’s gone. Do the math! my Evil Voice screamed.

  Now my mouth felt frozen, too. “What?”

  “Bang—you’re dead?” Marsha said, laughing. “Your movie shoot’s tomorrow, right?”

  Lenox Avenue, I realized dimly. My set call was first thing Monday morning. I’d told Marsha all about it.

  So much for my film debut.

  TWELVE

  SUNDAY NIGHT WAS interminable. The office was claustrophobic with so many men in and out, so I walked the grounds and visited the kitchen coffeemaker when I needed fresh air. We kept busy because we didn’t want to admit the truth: Someone had stolen Nandi, and there was nothing we could do.

  Every half hour, I almost called the police. Or my father. To this day, I wish I had.

  I liked Roman, but he was a stranger. And there’s no such thing as truly knowing someone; we’re lucky if we know ourselves. If Roman was smart, he’d give his own men closer scrutiny, too. I had already collected their names, running cursory searches to see if anything caught my eye. I’d been searching the companies involved in Maitlin’s party, too. Aside from a zoning problem with South African Sun on Melrose and a consumer complaint about high prices for the bouncy houses, I had zilch.

  We didn’t have much luck reaching any of the vendors on a Sunday night, so we left a lot of phone messages. Nothing specific, but we said it was an urgent matter regarding Sofia Maitlin. The limo company never called us back, but callbacks trickled in; first came South African Sun on Melrose. The owner’s demeanor was cool after we told him we’d had a theft, but he answered our questions. Are there any new employees at your company? Did you notice any unusual activity before or after the event? Do any of your employees have a criminal record? The answer was always no. The owner was annoyed when we asked him to fax us the names of every employee, whether or not they had attended the party.

  “Call the blacks first, is that it?” the man said. He was the Afrikaner I’d met earlier, and he definitely wasn’t black. He read my silence. “Oh go on, you know what I mean,” he went on, annoyed. “My cooks are black. Wasn’t it enough that you had to escort them? We’re not thieves. We’ve cooked for the mayor.” His indignation sounded real enough, but it’s easy to fake.

  Most of the people we reached weren’t as testy, but no one was happy about being asked to name their employees. Especially since we couldn’t tell them the real reasons. The sleepy vendor from Big Tent Carnival Services meekly asked about a warrant, but he backed down when I warned him that his next call would be from Sofia Maitlin’s lawyers. Warrant enough.

  Still, we were a long way from anywhere. From time to time, Alec and his son, or Rachel Wentz, came down to hover; but they stopped asking for news. Maitlin, we were told, had taken a Valium and fallen asleep. I bet she’d washed it down with wine.

  On my two A.M. coffee run to the kitchen, I found Zukisa sitting alone at a table in the breakfast nook, staring out toward the pool. She was still dressed from the day. The skin beneath her eyes was puffy and dark from hours of crying, as if she’d just gone three rounds.

  “Sofia’s gonna need you alert tomorrow, darlin’,” I said.

  The flirtation in my voice was so mild that she might not hear it consciously. After Roman’s grilling on her last minutes with Nandi, Zukisa was eager for a friendly voice. That’s why good cop–bad cop works so well. People who feel trapped crave friends.

  Zukisa had an impeccable background check: Before she worked for Maitlin, she’d spent nine months as a nanny for a high-ranking politico in Pretoria. Maitlin hired her away. She’d been thoroughly vetted in South Africa.

  I didn’t think Zukisa was a suspect, but I could understand why Roman did. Those crucial minutes Zukisa had waited helped the kidnappers succeed with their grab.

  “He’s never liked me, from the start,” Zukisa said. “He is so overprotective of Sofia.”

  “Just doing his job. To prevent a situation just like this one.”

  “I must resign,” she said.

  “Not so fast. Unless you’ve been asked to resign, there’s no need for that right now. You have no more reason to resign than Roman does. Don’t try to make this about you.”

  “He will have me fired,” she said, tight lipped. “He said I waited too long.”

  “About how long?”

  I’d already heard her recounting of events, but I wanted to listen for inconsistencies.

  “Maybe only five minutes, or six!” she said. “It seemed like only a moment to me. I went back and forth from those ships. There were so many children—so many places to look. And all the while . . . I wanted it so badly—to see her face. I wanted it so much that I believed she was there. I believed I would find her. I expected that any moment, she would be there.”

  Zukisa still sounded amazed that Nandi had never turned up. She’d been in denial. And she didn’t have to say the rest: Going to Roman—who already disliked her, in her mind—would have been her last resort.

  More tears filled her eyes. “I don’t know how I will ever sleep again. I see Nandi every time I close my eyes. Roman treats me like I am nothing to Nandi, but that girl spends three times as much time with me.” Her voice shook.

  All the more reason you might want to snatch her to take her back home, I thought. But if Zukisa was faking the grief that wrenched her face, she was in the wrong business.

  “Nandi will be fine,” I said. “We’ll bring her back.”

  “Yes,” Zukisa said, nodding eagerly. “You must bring her back. God is with you.”

  “What do you think of Paki?”

  Zukisa clicked her teeth, shaking her head, snapped from grief. “What do I think of a man who only steps forward when a wealthy woman chooses his child? What should I think of him? I think he is despicable. Half a thief! I can’t stand the sight of him.”

  With a sigh, she went on. “But a kidnapper? I do not think so. He is a very simple man, still wide eyed and confused, like a child, about everything in America. Whoever did this . . .” Her eyes sharpened with icy rage at the thought of the kidnappers. “These are awful people, but they are not simple. They are sophisticated. They are not wide eyed. They know all about how things work. They know all about Sofia.”

  She had good instincts, or she was good at deflecting suspicion. That assessment could potentially eliminate her as a suspect, too, except for the inside knowledge of Maitlin’s life.

  I toured the sitting rooms until I found Paki watching soccer on TV, a six-pack of Newcastle Ales ready on the coffee table. I had sat in while Roman questioned him, too—Do you know of anyone who would want to kidnap Nandi?—and I still wasn’t sure how to read him. His worry seemed genuine, but he also rubbed his armpit in uncomfortable moments, which made me wonder if he was hiding something.

  Was it a cultural quirk, or what poker players call a “tell”?

  “Mind if I join you?” I said.

  Paki
nodded and gestured at the empty half of the sofa, but he didn’t look eager. He rubbed his armpit. It might be too late for the good cop–bad cop approach, but I tried.

  “Real hard-ass, that Roman. Huh, brother?” I said, reaching for one of the bottles. “Bet you’re used to that back home.”

  Paki glanced at me, as if to be sure of my meaning. I winked. Roman and his Nordic features probably reminded Paki of every bad experience he’d had before the end of apartheid—and every story his father and grandfather had told him about police interrogations.

  “His job is to find Nandi,” Paki said, shrugging. His speech seemed self-conscious as he enunciated carefully over his accent. “He should ask as many questions as he chooses, all night long, if he thinks that that will bring her back. I only hate to waste his time.” Paki wasn’t taking my race bait.

  “Yeah, well, he was riding you and the sistah pretty hard,” I said.

  “Zukisa?” Paki said, surprised. “That lovely woman adores Nandi! How could anyone think she would do this terrible thing? Zukisa has nothing to do with this awful business.”

  I wasn’t surprised by the way Paki flew to Zukisa’s defense. He had seemed smitten with Zukisa from the first time I saw him looking at her, despite Zukisa’s obvious disdain for him. He seemed very certain she couldn’t be at fault, considering that she was the last person with Nandi. But he wasn’t rubbing his armpit.

  “So how’d it happen, Paki? You and Nandi?”

  Paki sighed, flipping through the channels. The volume of the television was too low to hear, as if he didn’t want to disturb the household. He flipped at random, never stopping long. “Ah . . . you want to know about the princess I did not deserve?”

  I took a swig of beer, making a mental note not to drink more. I just wanted Paki to feel at ease. He followed my example, twisting off the cap from another bottle.

  “The price of lust. What did I know? I met a girl at a nightclub.” Paki flicked his hand at his face as if the memory were a bug biting at him. “She gave me a ‘club name,’ not her real name. We went to the back of her car, both of us drunk. That was the last I saw of her until I heard from some friends that she was pregnant. I could not find her, or even learn her real name. I went to the club every night. I found a girl who knew her, but she said she had moved away. What should I have done?”