“Got it.”
“You need backup?”
“Not yet.”
“One word, and I’m there,” Cliff said, to be sure.
“I know it, man,” I said. “Thanks.”
There was a pause, and Cliff and I probably were sharing an identical thought: If I’d had Cliff with me instead of Roman, Nandi would be home now.
“Okay, he’s expecting you. Write down this address . . . ,” Cliff said. Finally, there was something I could do.
On weekday mornings, Xolo Nyathi worked at a boutique supermarket called World Feast in Little Ethiopia. I had the phone number, but wanted to go in person. Dad was right; we might have blown earlier leads by calling instead of showing up. Good cops don’t just phone it in.
“Do you think this guy knows something about the kidnapping?” April said after I hung up and briefed her on Cliff’s call. We were stopped at a red light.
“Probably not,” I said. “But it’s a start.”
April’s eyes flashed, intrigued; laid off or not, she was still a journalist at heart.
“I need to rent a car,” I said.
“You just got your lead, and you want to rent a car? Use mine! I’ll go with you.”
“Bad idea,” I said. We’d worked a case together in Palm Springs after Serena died, pretending we were a married couple—but only for a morning. That day, both April and Chela had brushed too close to the bad cops who nearly killed me. “I can’t involve you in this.”
But April had already turned south on La Cienega so she could make her way to World Feast. We were less than ten minutes away. “I know that place. It’s on Fairfax. I eat at Nyala’s, Merkato’s, and Rosalind’s all the time, Ten! There’s nothing dangerous about Little Ethiopia. You’re in a hurry, right? I’m just your chauffeur.”
I sighed, leaning back against the headrest. Fine, let April come. She’s a big girl. Nandi’s waiting. “Okay. Let’s go.”
I must have dozed for a minute or two, because when I opened my eyes, a church loomed above me through my window, silhouetted by a bright sun. The foreign symbols on the wall confused me. Korean, I remembered dimly.
Bleary eyed, I saw April at the steering wheel, in her mourning dress, and Nandi’s teary face came back afresh. Despair and weariness stirred in me so deeply that I moaned myself awake. April is the only woman who has heard such a wounded sound from me.
April rubbed my knee. “Shhhhh,” she said. “I know, baby. God will work it out.”
I wasn’t in the mood for God talk. I’d tried to bargain with God when Nandi was in my arms, and God had left me hanging. God could kiss my black ass.
Little Ethiopia in western Los Angeles is marked with official blue street signs, but it’s a small block. The strip of Fairfax between Whitworth Drive and Olympic Boulevard is a self-contained village, a patchwork quilt of Ethiopian restaurants, thrift shops, and clothing stores, most of them alive with the green, yellow, and red Ethiopian flag.
“Park here,” I told April as soon as we drove past Whitworth. “We’ll walk the rest of the way, just in case no one should see your car.”
April pulled into the nearest empty spot with a waiting meter. From habit, I reached for the stash of quarters she kept in her passenger-side drinks compartment. She gave me a small smile, and we both felt at home again.
Most of the restaurants weren’t open so early, so the tourists, hipsters, and first dates weren’t crowding the streets yet. Several stores were locked for the night. Still, the spicy scent of incense was strong as we walked in the shade of the storefronts on the street’s west side. A sole man sat outside Rosalind’s with his laptop, enjoying his morning coffee and a newspaper written in Amharic. Merkato’s sat near the center of the block. I peeked inside the empty restaurant’s picture window as we passed. The ceiling was a rainbow of colorful Ethiopian umbrellas hanging upside down. Baskets, artwork, and carvings bespoke another land.
World Feast was on the other side of Fairfax, closer to Olympic than Whitworth. We dodged cars instead of using the pedestrian crossing. GRAND OPENING, read a banner in the window. Other signs proclaimed bargains on mangoes, kosher meats, and fresh injera, the traditional spongy Ethiopian bread. The market was the length of three or four of the closest stores, a wall of large windows and bright fluorescent lighting.
“Whoa,” April said. “This is definitely new.”
I’d never seen the store before either. Little Ethiopia had grown.
Inside, the store reminded me of a Whole Foods market, designed for shoppers with very specific tastes. The store had three checkout lines, all empty.
Gentle Bob Marley played from the ceiling sound system. At the front of the store, fruits and vegetables were displayed in large, quaint replicas of traditional Ethiopian baskets. One basket held bound sage. The aisle closest to the entrance was lined with Ethiopian flags, hats, jewelry, CDs, DVDs, books, and T-shirts. In a concession to the marketplace, the large basket full of South African flags and beadwork jewelry was relegated to the far corner. At World Feast, Ethiopia reigned supreme.
At the end of the first aisle, ten yards from me, a full-size male lion made my heart drop.
The lion, on a platform, stuffed and preserved at its height of regality, guarded the wall. The eyes shimmered as if they were still living, staring me down. In the land of PETA, the lion surprised me. I gazed into the lion’s dead, golden eyes and wondered who had killed him, and how. “This place will get picketed on a regular basis,” April muttered, shaking her head.
A young brown-skinned woman wearing a bright scarf and a loosefitting white dress emerged from one of the aisles, her face as lovely as morning. Her face was Ethiopian: smooth, rounded, and distinctive. “Hello, do you need something?” she said. She wondered why we were hovering near the lion, but her smile never failed.
I asked to see Xolo Nyathi.
Her smile twitched. “But he is the boss,” she said. She eyed my rumpled Lakers jersey. “Do you have business with him?”
“Tell him Cliff Sanders sent me,” I said.
She repeated the name to herself and went toward the back, where an iron-reinforced door led to the store’s offices. She didn’t invite us to follow her, so we waited.
“We should split up,” I said. If we were together, we would need a mutual cover story, and we hadn’t worked one out. Lies don’t work well in bunches.
April nodded. “I’ll get some Ethiopian coffee while I’m here.”
April vanished into the aisles, where I was sure she would eavesdrop.
Xolo Nyathi came out right away, walking briskly. Unlike his employee, he wasn’t smiling. He was wiry and tall, about six-four, with a long, thin face and nose. He had April’s ginger complexion, was about my age, and wore scholarly round, gold wire-rimmed glasses with his beige linen suit and leather sandals. He walked with the slight stoop of tall men accustomed to being forced into small places.
He was too tall to have been on the football field. Most of the men I’d faced had been wiry, but none had been taller than me.
“Yes?” Nyathi said.
“Sorry to just barge in on you, Mr. Nyathi,” I said. “My martial arts instructor, Cliff—”
“Ah, yes, Cliff Sanders,” he said, recognition loosening his face. “I’m sorry, but my sister-in-law heard the name wrong. Warrior arts. Of course I know Cliff Sanders. An extraordinary man.” He spoke rapidly, with a South African accent like Paki’s. But Xolo Nyathi was an educated man; like Zukisa’s, his speech was more casually elegant.
“Well, he was impressed with you, too,” I said, relieved that Cliff had broken the ice. “I’m one of his students. My name is Tennyson Hardwick. I wanted to ask you about a knife-fighting style I ran across in South Africa.”
“I know a bit about knives, yes,” he said matter-of-factly. “Come.”
He waved me to the rear of the store, past the lion.
“Did you take that lion down?” I said. I had to ask.
“Not me,�
� he said. “My father. He grew up in a small village, and one day a lion came. You see the rest of the story. A taxidermy student did a good job, don’t you think?”
I nodded, noticing how the lion’s hungry eyes seemed to follow me. “Too good,” I said.
He laughed. “That’s what my sister-in-law says. But it has sentimental value! I flew it all the way here from Jo’burg. You have no idea of the cost, and all I hear is complaints.”
The store was scented with incense, too. Some of the store aisles were labeled by region. Ethiopian. Korean. Mexican. Jewish. West African. The store carried matzoh, cornmeal, curries, and tortillas. World Feast, indeed.
“How’s business?” I said.
He shrugged. “This economy! It’s terrible. This is my second store—my first is in Pasadena—so between them, I don’t embarrass myself too badly. We laugh about it, me and my neighbors. But all of us have lived through many storms, so we’ll survive this one, too.”
We stopped just shy of the office door, where there was a small area just big enough for sparring, out of sight of many customers or any passersby from the window. April’s head peeked out from an aisle behind us. She was keeping an eye on me.
He took off his glasses and quickly wiped them with his shirt before replacing them. He searched for and found a plastic picnic knife on the rear deli counter.
“This knife style . . . show me,” he said.
I didn’t want to go back to the football stadium, but I had to.
I gripped the knife the way the stranger had, ice-pick style. Rather than trying to remember his movements, I closed my eyes and tried to become the masked knife fighter. I imagined Roman squaring off in front of him. I lunged, hacking at the air. My motion wasn’t as fast, but I tried. I kept thinking of a sewing machine.
Xolo watched soberly.
“Wait, wait . . . go back,” Nyathi said, mimicking my wrist’s motion. His fluidity was unearthly, his timing chaotic. He was a casually deadly man. “Again?”
I re-created the move again. The knife man had used triangular footwork, what the Indonesians called Tiga. I borrowed Silat footwork, grafting it to the hand technique.
“Enough,” Nyathi said. He took off his glasses again, but this time he slid them into his shirt pocket. His brown face might have paled.
“Do you recognize that style?” I said.
He hesitated before he nodded. “Where did you see that?” he said soberly.
“Like I said, I was working. I can’t say more than that.”
April made a quick dart to get closer to us by one aisle, still out of Nyathi’s sight.
“There is no honor in that art,” Nyathi said. “It’s only for killing.”
“Is it from South Africa?” I said, a guess. I had seen it in Langa, after all.
“Yes, it began there,” Nyathi said. “I first heard of it a few years ago, from the prisons. In any nation, you see, there is the criminal element . . .” He stopped, uncomfortable.
My heart knocked against my chest. I have something.
“Go on, Mr. Nyathi,” I said.
“It’s from prison yards. They say it is related to Zulu spear work. Short spear, the assagai. The knife’s motion is impossible to mistake. You say you encountered it? In a fight?”
I nodded.
“And you survived by . . . ?”
“The knife fighter went after the other guy,” I said.
“Your friend Cliff?” Something sparkled in his eyes. He might never admit it, but he would love to see that confrontation.
“No. Someone I worked with.” Past tense.
“I’m sorry to hear,” Nyathi said.
We waited a moment, both of us feeling sorry. I pressed on, trying to keep my voice casual. “Do you know anyone who practices this style?”
“You would like to find the person who hurt your friend,” Nyathi said, not fooled.
“Killed, Mr. Nyathi.”
Nyathi took a step closer to me. Something rattled to the floor from April’s aisle, and I heard her whisper curses. Her head peeked out, then pulled back again.
“These people are not the sort anyone with a sound mind seeks to find,” Nyathi said.
“My mind is sound enough.”
For the first time, I heard a muffled television on behind the office’s closed door. A newscaster’s voice was talking about Nandi.
“Mr. Hardwick, you seem a decent man . . . ,” Nyathi began.
“I try to be.”
“Then I feel obligated to warn you not to look for these people.” His eyes, meeting mine, beseeched me. “This knife form is popular in the criminal class. It is a killing art called Ummese Izulu. The Knife of Heaven.”
Nyathi reached into his pants pocket and brought out a handkerchief to wipe his brow, perspiring despite the cold air clutching us from the fresh meat and fish counter. Nyathi’s sister-in-law was hovering in the aisle beside April’s; he waved his handkerchief to her, impatient. “The register!” he said.
She scurried away to her post.
Satisfied that we were alone, Nyathi told me his story.
“The night in question was three years ago. Understand, the African immigrant community is small and scattered here, and our little family of African martial artists is smaller still. We all know each other. So we had a barbecue at a grandfather’s house, a special night. All of us shared our favorite dishes from home, a couple of drummers brought their drums. We displayed our martial arts skills with sparring and demonstrations. No matter what you know, there is more to see, more to learn.
“Late in the evening, a drummer introduced himself as Spider. A young man, hair shaved off. No one knew him—everyone assumed he had come with someone else. But he had sought us out on his own. Spider begged our forgiveness for coming uninvited, but said he had brought food and wine for us, and he wanted permission to present himself to the elders in our community of warriors. Spider displayed skills in the shadow dance, the solitary play we use to demonstrate our skills.
“This is a major part of our gatherings: the introduction of young warriors to the spiritual elders. And we were very impressed!” He leaned forward, his eyes full of the memory. “Very impressed. The old men were reminded of themselves in their youth, and they shared stories of old matches, something that they rarely do before newcomers. He might have found harbor with us, if not for what happened next.
“He was drinking beer, and his personality changed as he grew puffed up from our praises. He became careless, rude. Several women were there, and he insulted a young woman in a very coarse way, the way someone might talk to a woman who was isifebe . . . a prostitute. Her young man challenged him, and they agreed to fight a practice match, using dulled knives. The young man was one of our best.
“And what did Spider do? He destroyed that young man, mentally—and almost physically. Even with a practice knife, Spider punctured him in the side”—Nyathi indicated a spot on his side dangerously close to the kidney—“and in the thigh, very close to his manhood. He did it laughing and taunting, so amused to give pain to another man. It was a sickening display.
“His venom repelled us. What this man knew, he knew from killing, not from practice. We are warriors, not killers. We tried to speak with him, would still have found a place for him had he humbled himself. Instead he cursed us, and fled.”
Sounded like the right man to me.
“Do you know anyone he’s affiliated with?” I said.
Nyathi looked at his hands, inspecting those impeccable fingernails. When Nyathi turned his attention back to me, he looked as weary as I felt. “From time to time, I hear talk,” he said. His voice hushed. “Do you know of Umbuso Izulu? The Kingdom of Heaven?”
I cursed myself for not bringing a pad with me. I pulled my pen out of my pocket, ready to write on my open palm. “Who is that?” I said. “How do you spell it?”
“Not a who—it’s a criminal enterprise here in L.A., but it originated in South Africa. Very organized, and growing.
” I remembered Zukisa’s words when we discussed the kidnappers at Maitlin’s house: These are awful people, but they are not simple. They are sophisticated. They are not wide eyed. They know all about how things work. I might have it. I might.
My heart was pounding. “What do you know about them?”
“I just told you,” he said. “That’s all I know, or want to know. I’m a businessman. No one worthy of respect would associate with Umbuso Izulu. I’ve only heard about the knives because they fight with this style you saw. Ummese Izulu—the Knife of Heaven. They say once you see the Zulu blade, you are a dead man. No one walks away.”
Almost no one, I thought.
The television set’s volume climbed, and the newscaster’s words were suddenly audible through the door: “. . . from FBI sources, Sofia Maitlin’s longtime bodyguard, Roman Ferguson, died on the scene from multiple knife wounds. A second man, actor Tennyson Hardwick, was treated and released after being rendered unconscious by the kidnappers. While it is currently unknown what his role in these events might have been . . .”
He gazed at me closely, studying my mustache. “Are you a bodyguard? Like Cliff?”
“Now and then.”
Xolo Nyathi’s jaw went to stone. Maybe he’d known from the start.
April and I had once talked about the magical moment when an interview subject decides to share, to say the thing that loyalty or fear made them hold on to. Nyathi had reached his moment. The look in his eyes made my heart thunder.
“This man,” he said, speaking slowly. He rubbed the sole of his sandal across the floor, as if he were wiping clean an invisible mess. “Spider. He plays drums with a combo from time to time. I believe the art he showed us was Ummese Izulu.”
From Cape Town with Love Page 19