From Cape Town with Love

by Blair Underwood

  “I’m already there,” I said.

  “Trust me, you ain’t there. Not yet. You better weigh every choice you make today like gold. If the FBI locks you up, you don’t get another chance.”

  No wonder my father’s men used to call him Preach. My father had given me some powerful sermons in my life, but this was his first in a long while. My father knew about living in Hell. He’d always blamed himself for my mother’s death, as if he should have seen the cancer inside her. Maybe he’d been in Hell since Vietnam, one way or another.

  “I lost my chance,” I said. My voice broke.

  “Maybe so, son. But don’t try to be the FBI. Stick to what you know. You were there. Get out of their way, look where they won’t look. Or what good are you?”

  Dad sharpened my focus. He was right: I had to concentrate on last night.

  “The man with the knife,” I said.

  “What about him?”

  I told Dad about the knife-fighting style, and how dismissive Fanelli had been when I described it. Dad nodded, and some of the grimness left his lips. “Might be something.”

  Dad’s nod gave me hope. A growing hole in my gut was certain that Nandi was dead, or might as well be. But hope might keep me on my feet.

  My morning got its first sunshine when Dad’s lady friend, Marcela, stuck her head into the pantry. Marcela Ruiz was in her late forties, my father’s former nurse, and she was hinting about marrying Dad. She had undergone a makeover since I’d first met her, with sassy haircuts and highlights to complement her shrinking waistline. Dad was twenty-six years older than Marcela, but she had seen something special in my father when the rest of the world saw only a dying man. For two years, Marcela had been like a stepmother.

  That day, Marcela was answering my doorbell and telephone landline, shooing reporters away. I’d asked her not to interrupt me unless it was important.

  “Ten, you have a visitor!” Marcela said. I couldn’t understand her smile—until I saw who was standing behind Marcela’s shoulder.

  April Forrest was in my kitchen.

  April was wearing a dress, rare for her. Her dark office attire looked like grieving clothes.

  When we hugged, I rested my chin on her shoulder and let my eyes fall shut. We hadn’t kept in touch much at all since Cape Town, except when I answered her occasional polite emails—my choice, not hers. I knew people who stayed friends with their exes, like Jerry and Elaine on Seinfeld, but it hadn’t worked for me.

  That day, the past was a million miles behind us.

  “You okay?” April said. I bit my lip, shaking my head, just enough for her to see. When she lightly touched my cheek, it helped as much as anything could. “What can I do?” she said.

  “Are you here as a reporter, April?” Bluntness was all I had time for.

  “Ex-reporter,” April said, and I could give her only a confused look. “I got laid off two weeks ago. I’m a civilian now, just like you. I’m here for whatever you need.”

  We had catching up to do, but our reunion didn’t last long. My phone rang, and my heart jumped. WILDE LAW CENTER, it said.

  “Shit,” I said. “My lawyer’s a damn clock. She tries every thirty minutes.”

  “She knows you need to give a statement to the press. Someone should speak for you, Ten, even if it’s just to say you can’t discuss the case.”

  “I don’t have time for that, April!” We were arguing already.

  “Have you seen TV today?” April said.

  “She’s right, Ten!” Chela called from the stairs. “You worry about Nandi—we’ll worry about you.” That might have been the first time Chela and April agreed on anything.

  “Your lawyer will know what to say,” April said. “Silence doesn’t look right.”

  My brain was so tired of the subject, I wanted to break something. But I surrendered my ringing phone to April. “I need it back if you get a call. It might be Sofia.”

  I hadn’t heard from Maitlin since her call when I was in the men’s room. She might have been indoctrinated by the FBI by now, but I hoped she would call again. April couldn’t help the glow of wonder in the corner of her eye when I said Maitlin’s name, but she took Melanie’s call with snappy professionalism.

  My house felt like a machine revving up. As soon as April handed me my phone back, it rang again in my hand. The room stopped breathing.

  CLIFF SANDERS, it said. I would have smiled, if smiling had been possible.

  “My martial arts instructor,” I announced, and the others relaxed.

  “Put Cliff on speaker,” Dad said. He liked Cliff, who taught regularly at the police academy. He was on the short list of my friends who had Dad’s approval.

  I’d left a message for Cliff on the way home from the police station. My best hunch.

  I had my own team, just in time.

  Dad and I holed ourselves up in the panic room to talk to Cliff. I told him as much as he needed to know, a minute’s worth of bad memories to last a lifetime.

  “Greedy-ass motherfuckers,” Cliff said, awed by the magnitude. Almost in reverence.

  “The clock’s running for Nandi, man. All I’ve got is the knife style.”

  “Shit, that might be enough,” Cliff said, and Dad nodded. He thought so, too. “Like I told you, I don’t know the African styles. But there’s a South African brother you’ll want to talk to. He knows his arts. I’ve got a name, but can’t give it to you yet. These people are very private, and there is protocol to adhere to. But I should have permission to give it to you soon.”

  “I need him yesterday, Cliff.”

  “I’ll hit you back when I can tell you something.” Cliff knew the Los Angeles martial arts community better than anyone, so I trusted him to find what I needed faster than I could. We’d stumbled onto the battlefield I’d spent my life training for.

  “Your ears only, Guru,” I said.

  “Goes without saying, Ten. I’m just doing recon. You’ll make the contact.”

  After I hung up, I knew I had to get out of my house. I couldn’t stay at home just waiting.

  I went upstairs to glance down at the front yard from the protection of my curtains, the best view. There were two local news vans, a dozen video cameras, and thirty people trampling my pathetic strip of grass near the sidewalk. Up and down the street, my neighbors stared and shook their heads. Mrs. Katz, from across the street, was conducting a seminar on my vices, pointing out my house of the damned.

  I couldn’t look for Nandi with a circus on my tail. The paparazzi might follow me.

  “It’s crazy down there,” Chela said behind me.

  Thanks to my former profession, in part, I had experience dodging bottom-feeding photographers. But I would need at least two drivers to help me do it.

  “You ready to help me wade out into the sharks?” I asked Chela.

  I’d forgotten how beautifully feral her smile could be.

  SIXTEEN

  9:20 A.M.

  The crowd stirred with excitement and closed in on us when I opened the door and appeared with Dad, Marcela, and Chela, all of us wearing sunglasses and dressed for an outing. Dad was in his gray church suit, using his walker instead of his cane, shuffling with painstaking movement to exaggerate his condition. I held his elbow to pretend to steady him as he walked down my stone porch steps, but it wasn’t quite pretending.

  At least the helicopters were gone. Mrs. Katz had probably called the police.

  Men’s and women’s voices flew at us, shrill and desperate.

  “Tennyson! What can you tell us about the kidnappers?”

  “Why didn’t you call the police after Nandi disappeared?”

  “What’s your relationship with Sofia Maitlin?”

  “Tennyson—is it true you’re a male prostitute?”

  The last question, shouted by a man somewhere near Mrs. Katz’s rosebushes, almost made me turn around. My face and ears burned hot. Since my name had made the news, someone was talking—for all I knew, it might
be Nelson. Chela gave a start, glancing up at me, but she followed my example and kept her face stone. She squeezed my hand, feeling exposed. I was sorry I’d brought her outside.

  We waded toward the driveway at awkward angles, penned in, to avoid my prickly cactus garden. Marcela’s tiny white Rabbit waited alone. April was already gone.

  “Start the car,” I muttered to Marcela.

  While Marcela walked around to the driver’s seat, I opened the passenger-side door so Chela and Dad could climb in back. Chela hopped in, but it wasn’t easy to maneuver Dad into the backseat of a two-door car. I needed to sit up front in case we got a tail.

  I held the passenger seat forward for Dad as he tried to command his disobedient limbs. Someone bumped roughly against my half-open car door, and the impact jounced my father. He grabbed the headrest to keep from falling.

  “Hey!” I said, and a pock-faced man behind me snapped a photo of my angry glare. I had an epiphany about why cameras get broken and photographers get punched in the face. My mind mapped the logistics of a swift attack on the six strangers closest to me, men and women alike.

  A soft, compassionate smile beckoned me, snapping me out of my rage. A blond-haired newswoman, perfectly coiffed and powdered, thrust her microphone toward me, standing on her toes for height over the mob.

  “Mr. Hardwick?” she said with gentle respect. “What can you tell us about Nandi?”

  “I’m praying Nandi comes home soon,” I said. I spoke to the news-woman and her microphone as if she were alone. “That’s all I’m thinking about.”

  The mob exploded into sound, gathering behind our car in the driveway. I turned away, folded Dad’s walker, and slid it into the backseat after him, across the floor. Then I climbed into the car, slamming my door. Chela sat in a childlike ball in a corner of the backseat. Marcela honked the horn at the mob, angry.

  When Dad let his window down to lean out, the microphones and cameras closed in. “Please don’t bring our families any more pain today!” Dad shouted.

  The swarm shouted follow-up questions, but Dad put his window up again. Marcela floored the accelerator, and the car screeched backward. One photographer dove out of the way, cursing loudly. I hoped she clipped him.

  “Well?” Marcela said, checking her mirror once we were at the corner.

  Videographers were lowering their cameras, journalists and onlookers checking their watches or phoning in updates. The show was over.

  “We’ll see,” I said.

  As Marcela turned the corner, a black Kawasaki motorcycle and a small red car that looked like a rental weaved behind us, gaining speed. Paparazzi on the chase, probably guessing we were on our way to Maitlin’s house. Their wet dream.

  “I can’t believe these people are such total, complete ASSHOLES!” Chela said, and Dad cleared his throat loudly. He hated profanity from Chela.

  “This is what happened to Princess Diana,” Marcela said. “It’s . . . stalking!”

  “I planned for company,” I said. “Let’s head to Sunset.”

  My cell phone rang. Len, my agent, was calling. I could have used a conversation with a friend, but I had to let him go to voice mail. There was nothing he could say or do. The only two people I wanted to hear from were Cliff and Maitlin.

  I rifled through my leather bag, where I’d stashed my Glock, laptop, cell phone charger, and disguise: Chela’s oversize Lakers jersey and baseball cap, and a stage mustache and sideburns. The phony facial hair wouldn’t hold up under close scrutiny, but I could slap it on fast. I worked in my passenger visor mirror while Marcela careened around another corner.

  “Slow down, sugar,” Dad cautioned Marcela. “We’re tryin’ to get there in one piece.” Chela gave me an amused look in my mirror, mouthing: Sugar?

  Traffic on the Sunset Strip was predictably clogged during the Tuesday-morning rush hour. Bright sunlight sprayed across glass office buildings while power breakfasts geared up at Sunset’s roadside restaurants. A young girl with an Afro, laughing while she rode her father’s back, reminded me of Nandi.

  Chela turned backward in her seat, staring out the rear window. “The car got stuck at the last light, but the motorcycle’s right behind us!”

  She was right; the motorcycle was only three car lengths behind us, and gaining between lanes. I couldn’t ditch a tail if he was right on top of us.

  “Change of plans,” I said. “Don’t stop at the House of Blues. Pull into the Mondrian.”

  “The . . . Mondrian? Where’s that?” Marcela said.

  “Next door,” Chela and I said in unison.

  I didn’t ask how Chela knew where the luxury hotel was. I didn’t have to.

  The Mondrian is a stylish hotel with an exterior so understated that it’s easy to drive past. I coached Marcela through the sharp left turn that took us to the narrow motor lobby and I pulled cash out of my wallet. “Give the car to the valet. You guys go in and have breakfast. Take your time.”

  “Ten, I wanna go with you!” Chela whined, a vision of Nandi.

  I blinked. “Can’t do that, honey.” I glanced back at Dad. “I’ll call when I’ve got something.” He nodded. I’d nearly gotten Dad killed the last time I took him on a case.

  “Keep your head, Ten,” Dad said. “Don’t get rattled.”

  Too late. “Yessir.”

  I jumped out of the car in time to see the Kawasaki stop abruptly in a lane across from the lobby entrance, waiting for an opening for a left turn. I hid my new mustache behind my palm. Motorcycle Prick saw me get out of the car, but he couldn’t turn because of the heavy traffic flow. He revved his engine, impatient, as I vanished into the hotel.

  I emerged from the hotel exit ten minutes later in my Lakers ensemble, blending into a group that looked like a young singer or rapper and his entourage. My mustache and sideburns were so convincing that I’d barely recognized myself in the bathroom mirror. I made it a point to walk right past Motorcycle Prick, who was hovering in the motor lobby, waiting for us to pick up the car from valet parking. I recognized his pocked face. Adios, asshole.

  A quick hop took me to the House of Blues, and I spotted April’s cream-colored PT Cruiser right away. It was early, so the parking lot was nearly empty. She’d parked close to the driveway, ready for a quick exit. April’s windows were closed, but her radio was so loud that I could hear an irate female talk show host: “. . . Yeah, but do you REALLY think Sofia Maitlin wouldn’t have called the police PRONTO if that kid wasn’t adopted—”

  I knocked on the passenger window, and April jumped, startled. She unlocked the door, switching off her radio. I climbed in, glad for the AC and the shelter of tinted windows. April’s tropical air freshener, Wrigley’s gum, and stale Burger King fries were the scent of my old life.

  I couldn’t stomach the pity, and questions, in April’s eyes. I gazed out at Sunset. No sign of Motorcycle Prick.

  “Thanks,” I said.

  “Where to?” she said.

  “Anywhere but here.”

  April drove.

  April kept glancing at the hickey on my neck. Marsha’s mark had faded since Sunday, but it was a neon sign to April. April had joined the anonymous traffic flow, but she almost ran the light because she was staring. I didn’t want to talk about Marsha or the football stadium, so we sat in a long silence.

  “Sorry about your job,” I said finally, remembering my manners.

  “Thanks. Same story everywhere.” April shrugged, controlling her emotions. I knew she must be reeling, but I was drowning in my own pain. Agony can be selfish.

  “Let me know if you need to borrow money to tide you over,” I said.

  April looked embarrassed, as if I thought she’d come looking for a handout. “Thanks, but I got a job already—well, three months doing PR at a nonprofit. Who knows? Maybe I’ll go back to South Africa. Mrs. Kunene would love that.”

  South Africa was a sore subject for us.

  April sighed. “Ten, I hope it’s okay, but I had to come when I saw the
news this morning. I still can’t believe it. I feel . . . responsible.”

  “Why?” I said, surprised. Then I remembered: She was the one who’d given me Rachel Wentz’s business card, introducing me to Sofia Maitlin. And Nandi.

  “None of this has anything to do with you.” I sounded irritated without wanting to.

  “O . . . kay . . . ,” April said, choosing her words carefully. “I’m sorry, that’s all.”

  “Yeah, me, too,” I said. “I won’t be good company today, April.”

  “I didn’t expect you to be. I just want to help.”

  I made myself pause for a breath. No matter how horrible I felt about Nandi, I didn’t want to miss a chance to clean things up with April. She’d claimed she wasn’t mad about how I left her in South Africa, but I wanted to treat her with care. Maybe there was more to our story.

  “Thank you, baby,” I said. “If you weren’t here . . .” I wouldn’t have anyone, I finished silently. She smiled and patted my knee, a butterfly’s wings.

  “When’s the last time you ate, Ten?” April said. “Or slept?”

  The idea of food made me feel sick. I might have napped at Maitlin’s house, but never for more than a half hour. “Been a while,” I said.

  “Where do you need to be now?” April said.

  I blinked. I couldn’t go to Maitlin’s house. I couldn’t go home. The futility of trying to find Nandi dimmed the morning sun.

  “I don’t know,” I said, my voice hoarse. A confession to myself, at last.

  April’s hand touched my knee again. This time, it rested there. I hated how good it felt when she touched me. I didn’t want anything to feel good until Nandi was home.

  “Ten . . . ,” she said. “My roommate’s in Atlanta. There’s no paparazzi at my place. Just a bite of food in your stomach and an hour to close your eyes.”

  April was offering me an oasis, and I was ready to say yes.

  My cell phone rang. Cliff was calling, right on time.

  “His name is Xolo Nyathi.” He spelled it. I wrote the name down while Cliff spoke, every word a gemstone. “He isn’t a friend, but we move in the same circles. South African. He knows African martial arts like nobody’s business. Saki from northeast Africa, Senegalese wrestling, Zulu stick fighting of southern Africa, Gidigbo of Nigeria . . . he teaches them, and is respected by the entire community. Kalindi Iyi in Detroit is probably the best man in the whole country, and he sends West Coast students to Nyathi. That says a lot, trust me. My friends who’ve trained with him think he walks on water.”