Ghost Watch (28 page)

I’d seen the guy kill twice – with a pistol and with his bare hands, breaking a man’s neck, giving his head a twist like he was taking the lid off a jar of peanut butter. Yeah, I knew what he was saying. ‘Where’d you and Twenny meet?’

‘We wuz neighbors. His ol’ man worked corners selling drugs wit my ol’ man. But we didn’ like each other back then. Deryck, he wuz small and sick all the time with a real smart mout’, you know what I’m sayin’? So, his ol’ man pay me to protect him.’

‘You were his bodyguard when you were kids?’

‘That’s right.’

‘How’d he get to be . . .’ I wasn’t sure what Twenny was – icon, rock star, rapper, idealist, jerk. ‘How’d he get to be who he is?’

‘He won a competition at the mall when he wuz fifteen. A music exec was a judge. He gave Deryck a contract, and Deryck called hisself Twenny Fo, ’cause he love all the ghetto chic bullshit. Me, I stayed in the projects. Then, one day, Twenny, he got some death threats from a punk rival and a Hummer wit’ driver and half a dozen bitches turned up at my home. The driver, he tol’ me that the car and the girls were mine if I cared to sign on as Twenny’s head security man. I was nineteen, workin’ as some psycho drug boss’s lieutenant. Now I’m thirty. I own a block of apartments in Chicago, a cleaning bidness in San Francisco and a couple of bars in Miami.’ He turned to look at me again. ‘So, workin’ for Th’ Man like you do – what choo got?’

‘Job satisfaction,’ I said.

Boink shook his head with pity, put a snake rib in his mouth and sucked the meat off the bone.

‘There’s a story about Twenny braining his girlfriend with a Grammy,’ I said. ‘That true?’

The big man snorted. ‘The only thing I ever seen the boss hit is the bottle once or twice. That was some bitch who wanted her own music career. And Deryck’s manager and record company went along wit it ’cause they wanted him to be badass. The bitch got a record and Twenny got his reputation. Everyone got what they wanted.’

‘You didn’t approve.’

‘Don’t matter what I think. Is wad it is, yo. Suppose you wanna know ’bout the ’fair Leila said he had?’

I didn’t, but what the hell. ‘So what about it?’

‘Of course he did what she said he did, man. Choo seen that woman from Electric Girlfriend? Damn!’

I sure wasn’t in any position to throw stones.

‘It’s a law of nature.’

‘What is?’ I asked.

‘Like I say, behind every fine-looking woman is a man wanna get with some other piece o’ ass, you dig?’

‘I think it was Isaac Newton came up with that one.’

Boink grinned.

‘What about Peanut?’ I asked. ‘How does he fit into the picture?’

‘Peanut lived near Deryck in the projects, a couple doors down. Had no father, momma left him on his tenth birthday. Folks said she didn’t want no retard gettin’ in the way of things. He was living in the park, sleeping rough. Deryck took him in, like a brotha, you know what I’m sayin’? He takes care of him. Peanut, he’s autistic or somethin’. Goes to a special school ’n’ all.’

The more I knew about Twenny Fo, the more I felt I had him figured wrong.

‘Now, if y’all ’scuse me.’ Boink stood and went to the river to dispose of the bones while I stayed where I was, finished my ration and contemplated the halo Boink had just placed over Twenny Fo’s head. Just maybe the guy deserved better than he was going to get, strung up in a tree, waiting to die. And, of course, there was Peanut. He deserved the death coming his way even less.

Rutherford took breakfast to Cassidy and Ryder while West wrapped the leftovers in what looked like banana leaves and placed them in one of the packs. Job done, he walked over to the ravine to wash various items and came back a couple of minutes later.

‘’Scuse me, ma’am,’ he said, standing over Leila as she sat on a rock in her underwear. ‘Got something here for you, something to remember the Congo by when you get home.’ He rolled out a three-meter length of brown and green snakeskin on the rock beside her. ‘You’ll gonna get more than a handbag out of it. Maybe a skirt with matching shoes. I’ll keep it for you.’

The star wasn’t so sure, prodding the skin and wrinkling up her nose, but said thank you anyway. ‘You
really
think we’ll make it home?’

‘Yes, ma’am. No doubt in my mind.’ He rolled up the skin, tucked it under an arm and went off to douse the fire’s embers.

West sounded so convinced he almost convinced me. ‘So, feeling better now you’ve eaten the thing that ate you?’ I asked her.

‘Excuse me?’

‘Y’know, revenge is a dish best eaten grilled.’ I gestured at the steak on the leaf beside her.

She threw her head back either to get the sun on her face or to strike a pose, I wasn’t sure which, but I took a good long look anyway. Her red lace underwear was flashionably cut and expensive. Not too brief, but brief enough. There was a diamond in her belly button, and a couple of bars of music with notes and lyrics tattooed down her left side. ‘Give it to me.’ That was the song’s title. I knew that one. It was her breakout hit. Her breasts pushed into the cups with a perfection that suggested a surgeon’s handiwork. A pair of knee-high leather boots completed the package.

Ayesha arrived with a pile of clothes, all of which were wet. Leila gestured that she should just lay them on the rock beside her. Then, to me, she said, ‘We gonna be here long? Have I got time to dry these?’

‘They’ll dry quicker if you put them on,’ I said, barely able to believe what I was hearing myself say. I was sure no one else could believe it either. I could almost hear the booing from Rutherford and company.

She pushed her arms in the shirtsleeves. ‘I . . . I owe you an apology, don’t I? I’ve been a bitch from the get go, haven’t I?’

‘Nooo . . .’

‘Yes, I have. I know I have. Look, I want to thank you for what you did back there in the camp, when those men came for us. They were going to . . . you know.’

She examined her hands. They were badly cut all over from the elephant grass. One of them shook a little.

‘All part of the service,’ I said, repeating what I ’d told Boink, not knowing what else to say. ‘Ask Ryder to put something on those cuts.’

She flicked her hair to one side. ‘I’ve been looking back on everything that’s happened since we came down here and I know that if it wasn’t for you, I’d be dead. Or worse.’

I felt a blush coming on.

‘I also want to thank you for not taking me up on my . . . my offer the other night, when you brought Ayesha back.’ She rolled up the shirtsleeves. ‘On top of everything else, you’re also a gentleman.’

She might have taken the compliment back if she knew that I could recall at will the picture of her on her knees in front of me, pulling down the zipper on her jacket, the thrust of her breasts visible. As memories went, it was a good one, worth fling away for later retrieval, along with the one of her all wet and leaning back on this rock in her lace bra and panties and boots, stretched out like a poster on a teenager’s bedroom wall.

‘I wasn’t always like this,’ she continued.

I wondered what kind of ‘this’ she was referring to.

‘Life has become a little unreal for me over the last few years. People want a piece of me so bad they’ll do anything for me to get it. When you realize that you can manipulate people easily – that they
want
to be manipulated by you – it changes you. It changed me.’ She adjusted one of her bra straps. ‘I just wanted to say sorry for the way I been. I’m putting my faith in you, Cooper, to get us all out of here alive. I know you can do it.’

The dependent, trusting female. Was I getting softened up for something? She leaned forward and I felt the warmth of her lips on my cheek. Then she bent down to take her boots off so that she could put on her pants and, inside her open shirt, she threw a few glimpses of dark nipple my way. Lo and behold they were large, hard and erect. And before I knew it, there was a rush of blood to my own personal snake in the grass.

‘You’re not going to ask me about Twenny Fo, Peanut and Fournier?’ I asked, fighting back Little Coop’s desire to dive in headfirst.

She stood and put a hand on my shoulder to steady herself as she slipped a foot into the leg of her jeans.

‘I was talking to Duke. He said you lost someone close. That right?’

Hmm . . . Duke and I really were gonna have to share a few words.

‘When he told me, I felt I understood you.’

‘Uh-huh.’

‘You were lost long before we came down here in this place. That’s true, isn’t it?’

And, just like that, the mood evaporated. I wanted to move, but I was trapped – hemmed in on one side by the forest, by the ravine on the other, and by her honey-colored, semi-undressed, lingeried-up body blocking the remaining escape road.

‘I’ll pay you one million dollars to lead us out of here right now,’ she said.

‘What?’ I asked her. I shouldn’t have been surprised. And at least we were back to more familiar ground, the one I’d already charted with her: the land of the selfish and self-obsessed star.

‘One million dollars,’ she repeated.

I put my pinky against the corner of my lips. ‘That much?’

‘Then give me a figure. Those men back there, they were going to rape Ayesha and me.’

The way she said it suggested that Ayesha hadn’t brought her employer in on her experiences at the FARDC HQ. ‘And what about your former boyfriend and his buddy? Is that all they’re worth to you? A measly million bucks?’

She smiled. ‘I said give me a figure. I’m open to negotiation.’

I just looked at her.

A note of uncertainly crept in when I didn’t jump at the offer. ‘I’ve thought about this. We don’t know what’s happened to Deryck and Peanut, do we? They could be dead.’

‘They could be alive.’

The note went up an octave and a hand went to the hip.

‘You’re going to put us all at risk, aren’t you?’

Well, well, back to the Leila I knew. The only risk she was concerned about was the one to herself. I folded my arms.

‘You were right, Cooper. I can see that now. Like you said, we’re all gonna die if we stay here,’ she continued.

I said nothing. She tried a different angle.

‘You’ve lost someone because you made bad decisions. Don’t make the same mistakes again and get us all killed. This place is . . .’ She looked around, hunting for the right word but couldn’t find it. She clenched her fists in frustration and made a sound through gritted teeth.

‘Get ready to leave,’ I said. In fact, I wanted to leave her behind, staked out on the forest floor for the ants. I pictured doing exactly that, and it helped.

‘What’s there to smile about?’ she asked.

‘You don’t want to know.’

‘And my offer?’

The woman was a case. I turned my back on her, giving her my answer, and went to the ravine. I bent down, took off my gloves, and splashed water on my face. I could have used a long hot shower with a scrubbing brush. Standing up, I caught first Ryder’s eye and then Cas sidy’s. I signaled ‘on me’, and walked over to West, who was doing what he could to eradicate the signs of our presence. I put the conversation with Leila out of my mind, and decided not to say anything for the moment about the chat I’d had with LeDuc about Fournier. While I had a set of circumstances and a theory that seemed to fit, I had no hard evidence. Among our group there was a belief that bad luck had brought us all to our present circumstances. It would be counterproductive to exchange the fckle finger of fate for suspicion and the mistrust that would come with it.

I made a beeline for Rutherford, who was parked on a boulder, sharpening one of our acquired machetes with a river stone.

‘So what are we doing?’ Cassidy asked as he approached with Ryder. ‘Cyangugu’s that way,’ he said with a nod up the hill, ‘and Goma’s in the opposite direction.’

‘And unfinished business lies somewhere in between,’ West said.

‘Damn straight,’ said Cassidy.

‘We’ve picked up a few more guns since we last put this on the table, but otherwise not a lot has changed,’ I said. ‘ To even out the odds, we’d need something that makes plenty of noise and causes a lot of fright.’

‘The mortar operated by the rebels was a US infantry M224 lightweight company mortar system,’ said West. ‘And they were firing M49A4 high-explosive rounds – a good all-round anti-personnel, anti-material shell. You meaning something like that?’

‘That’d do it,’ I said, ‘but I think we’ve stirred the rebels up a little too much to get anywhere near their armory.’

‘Interesting bit of kit to have,’ Rutherford commented. ‘Wonder where they got it?’

I’d wondered as much myself, and filed it away with the questions I had about those M16s with their ground-off numbers.

‘If you’re a buyer, you’ll find a seller,’ observed Rutherford.

‘FARDC had RPGs – not a bad alternative,’ said Ryder.

They were, and it was a nice to see the guy paying attention to something other than Ayesha.

‘We penetrated their flanks once,’ said West. ‘Who’s to say we couldn’t do it again?’

‘Around a hundred and eighty guys with guns,’ I said. ‘We were lucky. And there’s still the problem of getting everyone out once we go loud. That’s where something that made big holes in the ground would come in handy.’