Bones Omnibus (35 page)

Earlier in the year, three school-age kids from a smaller, barely rival gang stepped from Hanover Park onto the grounds of Black Windows. Whether it was on a dare, a show of bravado, or a disastrous error in judgment, the result was the same. The trio was chased five blocks before being gunned down on the lawn in front of a shebeen. Though the shebeen was closed at the time, three men leaving a mosque next door heard the attack and rushed over. They later told the SAPS that they hadn’t seen the boys’ killers, but Moqoma found that believable, as the mosque was surrounded by a wall too high to see over.

Moqoma had been on the grounds a few times, though only in his capacity as an undercover cop just after his “release” from Pollsmoor. But as very little changed within the buildings — the workers inside produced
tik
twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, utilizing pharmaceutical products smuggled in from China and India, — there was little reconnaissance that needed to be done. If one of the gang members was to be arrested, the SAPS typically waited until they were anywhere else than a spot surrounded by dozens of armed men, all high off their own product.

As Moqoma rolled up to the buildings behind the wheel of a workman’s truck he’d stolen in Llandudno, he found them eerily quiet. He saw that almost every door had been kicked in and several of the windows kicked out. There were a couple of recent pockmarks in the courtyard and alongside the windows suggesting a minor firefight, but nothing more. Everyone had been cleaned out and taken away earlier that day during the raids on Roogie and the Yankee Boys’ operations, but no SAPS appeared to have been left behind to guard the millions in drugs inside. But Moqoma knew it wasn’t the crime scene tape across the doors and official citations posted on the frames that were keeping onlookers away.

Everyone knew Roogie’s men would eventually be back.

Moqoma led the shepherd to the middle building on the eastern side. Ushering the dog inside, he ducked under the tape and entered, finding the place almost pitch-black. The windows on the first floor had survived the gun battle and continued doing their job of keeping out all light while disallowing outsiders a view in.

The detective momentarily wondered if the Yankee Boys had had the wherewithal to leave any traps behind. The chemicals used in the making of
tik
were volatile enough that it wouldn’t take much to rig them to explode. He then realized that, in their haste to clear out their prisoners, the SAPS might’ve left some product cooking on the proverbial stove without realizing the potential result. A trap by design or an accidental one would yield the same result.

Another reason why he was glad to have Bones along.

“This shouldn’t take long, boy,” he coaxed. “There is one man in this building. Only, he will smell like a rat. When your nostrils fill with the scent of rodent, take him in your jaws and drag him out to me.”

But even as Moqoma spoke, the harsh smells of the numerous chemicals were so heavy that the shepherd was having a hard time isolating any scents at all. He’d only been inside for a few seconds, and already his nose burned. He shook his head and pawed his tearing eyes, but the odor was overpowering.

“Come on, Bones,” Moqoma said quietly. “The sooner you get this guy, the sooner we can go after the snake-woman.”

For some reason, this bit of language seemed to resonate with the dog. He raised his head, turned toward the stairs, and ran straight for them.

Moqoma had chosen this building, as he’d been privy to its many renovations through the years. While the other five structures all fit the same model – the top floor was the
tik
factory, second floor was storage and supplies to keep the factory up and running, and the bottom floor was the barracks and kitchen – the sixth one was mostly for show. Sure, they mixed chemicals and ran a small production line on the third story, and there was some storage on the second, but very few gang members were allowed to stay on the first. Part of this was because there wasn’t anywhere near as much room as in the other buildings, even though, from the outside, it seemed to be the same size.

For years, the Yankee Boys had stockpiled weapons. For the most part, these were the kind of junk machine guns that filtered down from the conflicts in the Sudan, Uganda, Rwanda, the DRC, and elsewhere. But in recent years, they’d managed to get a hold of heavier firepower smuggled out of the Middle East. American-made, military-grade firepower. Not many pieces, certainly, but with European customs officials always on the lookout for stolen U.S. munitions, smugglers had an easier time moving them out through the Persian Gulf, into the Arabian Sea, around the Horn of Africa, and down to Durban. Though Jo’burg gangs took possession of many of these, enough trophies filtered over to the Western Cape to familiarize Moqoma with the various makes and aftermarket modifications done by the American armed forces’ own gunsmiths.

But rather than keep this cache hidden in different locations around the Flats, the Yankee Boys had decided to turn one of the buildings at Black Windows into an armory. There would be a constant twenty-four-hour presence by their guards. Everyone knew to keep away. And, as the elaborate armory was constructed by widening, deepening, and raising the walls, floors, and ceilings of the building, no one making a quick inspection, as the SAPS likely had that day, would be the wiser. Moqoma, however, had once chanced to see the rows and rows of gun racks that could be made to easily disappear behind panels in almost every room.

He marked it in his mind not so much to warn others off the Yankee Boys’ arsenal — he knew they didn’t have the right ammunition for about ninety percent of the guns — but because he figured the false panels would make for extraordinary hiding places in a pinch.

And his target was just the man to think to utilize them. Moqoma knew he’d had advanced warning of the raid anyway. It was just a matter of determining where he was hidden. Also, there was no fear that he’d already made a break for it. Not knowing whether even a token force had been left downstairs, the man would’ve stayed put until after dark.

The detective followed the German shepherd upstairs as the animal paused on the second floor. The smells were stronger there, likely from the numerous men and some women who had been working there earlier in the day. But Bones never alerted to anything for very long. He’d stop at a pallet filled with pharmaceutical-grade table salt, one of the many components of
tik
, but then he’d move on. After a few minutes, the dog returned to the stairs and moved to the third floor.

The top floor was a nightmare of overlapping scents: marijuana, sweat, leftover food, smoke, propane gas, and then the numerous bottles, both empties and ones still filled with chemicals of every stripe. The shepherd stuck his head in every closet and around the corners of every chest of drawers. But beyond the scents of rats doubtless inches away behind walls and under floors, he found not another living creature.

Until.

It began as if something scented from outside. Bones’s head jerked around, aimed at the upper corner of the room. Moqoma, right behind him, looked as well. There was a false panel there, too, high above the darkened fluorescent lights, just beside the ceiling.

“
Bones
,” Moqoma whispered.

Needing no further prodding, the shepherd launched himself toward the panel. There was a stack of boxes against the wall, empties that were filled with spent bottles before they were taken downstairs, loaded onto trucks, and burned off-site. Bones was up at the boxes in a flash, ending at the top of a stack of crowded wooden shelves alongside the panel. He barked and pawed at the panel with tremendous ferocity. Immediately, Moqoma heard movement from the other side of the wall, including the sound of a magazine being inserted into an assault rifle.

Moqoma raised the shotgun he’d picked up from the weapons locker he kept at his house two neighborhoods over, and jerked the slide to chamber a round. The cinematic
click-clack
echoed over the cacophony created by Bones.

“Thembi! You pull that trigger, and you’ll die in there,
chana
.”

There was silence. Then: “Moqoma?!”

“Damn right. Now, let me call off my dog and I’ll let you ease out of there alive.”

Another silence, but following this, the panel opened a couple of centimeters. Bones saw an opening and shot his snout into the gap, forcing it wider.

“Moqoma!” Thembi shouted, his voice filled with terror.

“Bones! Come back!”

The shepherd waited a couple of seconds, extending Thembi’s panic, but then broke away as quickly as he’d just ascended, rejoining Moqoma on the floor. The detective kept his shotgun aimed into the vague darkness as the target of the search emerged.

“You’re alone?!” Thembi asked, his grip tightening on the gun he was about to toss aside.

“That a chance you’re willing to take?” Moqoma replied, pointing the shotgun at Thembi’s face.

Thembi hesitated, then set the gun back in the crawlspace before climbing down.

“All right, you found me,
skollie cop
,” Thembi smirked. “What do you want?”

“This is from Roogie,” Moqoma said.

Then bashed Thembi in the face with the butt of the shotgun, breaking the man’s nose and sending him to the floor unconscious.

T
hembi woke up in a kitchen, his hands cuffed behind him. He vaguely recognized the location, knew it wasn’t in Black Windows, but didn’t think he’d been moved far. But when he heard the sound of MC Solaar wafting in from the other room, he shook his head.

A mistake, as the blinding pain that followed almost made him pass out again.

“Hey, what’s new, Thembi?”

Thembi angled his head around and saw Moqoma sitting near the door alongside the German shepherd who’d found him at Black Windows.

“This is Bones. He’s a badass, no?”

Thembi exhaled. He saw that his shirt was covered in drying blood.

“The fuck’s wrong with you, Moqoma? You’re a dead man for this.”

“You mean like your cousin Roogie? Who you sold out to Qin’s Triad? Or, should I say, the snake-woman’s gang?”

Thembi blanched. He had no clue how Moqoma knew all this, but he realized too late that his reaction confirmed all of it if the detective had merely been fishing.

“What did they promise you?” Moqoma scoffed. “Some kind of position in their new organization?”

“What’s it to you?”

“If it’s anything like what they offered to the woman who fronted one of their brothel’s out in Clifton, you’re not going to fare much better than Roogie. He’s dead, by the way. I watched her turn him inside out. Pretty sure she’ll be doing that to you, too.”

The old man, Nkopane, who ran the shebeen where Moqoma had taken Thembi, which had also been where the Yankee Boys had killed the three school kids a few months back, came in with a plate of food. Thembi’s eyes lit up. He was starving.

“You think that’s for you,
mompie
?” Moqoma laughed. “That’s Bones’s reward for finding your unwashed ass.”

“You want anything?” Nkopane asked the detective as he placed the food in front of the shepherd. He asked with such nonchalance that Thembi wondered if police brought beaten suspects into his kitchen on a daily basis. “Cokes?”

“No, but thanks, man.”

Nkopane nodded and exited. Moqoma turned back to Thembi. “Now, the reason we’re here. Who was your contact inside the organization?”

“How’d you know it was me?” Thembi countered.

Moqoma sighed. “The dog just got his meal. I can take it away from him and feed him your testicles.”

Thembi stared Moqoma down, then relented.

“His name’s Chan.”

“That’s original. Let’s have another.”

“That’s the name he gave me, you
dof kont
. You telling this story?”

Moqoma sank back into his chair, letting Thembi finish.

“Chan was in shipping. He’d buy every single part of a car we’d bring him, as long as it was completely dissembled. Didn’t matter the model or the condition. He’d take a look, offer a shitty price, then open his garage door.”

“Where’d these transactions take place?”

“He runs a shop at the Sable Square China Town. Custom rims, lights, radios, decals – the works. Cheap plastic junk he pulls in from South Korea. His real money comes from smuggling auto parts back to Asia. He’d send them all over. China, Malaysia, Korea, Indonesia, even Australia.”

“He told you that?”

“The little shits that worked for him would tell my guys.”

“And you never thought they were working you?”

“Fuck off.”

“What else about Chan?”

Thembi shrugged. “Nothing. He’d always meet us with a big roll of tape and a black marker. We’d tell him what each piece was, and he’d write it on the tape, tear it off, and place it on the part. If it was an exterior panel like a door, fender, or mirror cover, he’d freak out if one of his guys put the tape on the painted part. It had to go under, on the unpainted side.”

“And he approached you personally about selling out Roogie and the Yankee Boys?”

Moqoma expected a scowl, but Thembi was defiant. “My cousin had two feet out the door. He was done being a big-shot criminal. He’d bought all this land up and down the coast over the years, and was a few weeks away from selling it off to a single buyer. Word was, he planned to take the money and leave Cape Town for good. Maybe head to South America.”

Argentina
, Moqoma thought.

He remembered Roogie saying that if he ever cashed out, he wouldn’t head to Europe or the States, but somewhere on the Pacific Rim where he could still see the water. Though he’d never been to Argentina, a couple of travel documentaries he’d watched once convinced him that was the place to be.

“And you couldn’t just let him go? After all he’d done for you?”

“What about all I’d done for
him
?” Thembi erupted. “He treated me like gutter trash while he lived the high life.”

“If the shoe fits,” Moqoma spat.

Thembi lunged for him, but Bones was on his feet in a flash, teeth bared and hair stiffly raised. Thembi sank back down, his cuffed wrists no match for the angry shepherd.