Ishmael Toffee (12 page)
Authors: Roger Smith
He looked up at the
intruder,
brown guy with gang tattoos coiling from under his clothes and a knife in his hand. Didn’t need any introductions to know who this was.
Angel brought the knife down, aiming for Ford’s belly. He rolled just far enough to take a deep cut to his left arm. There was only one way this was going to go. Ford got to his knees and punched up at Angel, catching him a glancing blow beneath the ribs, enough to send him backward.
Ford made it to his feet, the room tipping and whirling, and before he had time to think he tugged open the plastic that hung where the door used to be, revealing the deck that jutted out high above the boulders and the raging ocean. The wood of the deck was mostly intact, but singed by the fire and rotted to papier
-
mâché.
Ford had to guess where the steel support beams where, gambling that they would hold his weight. Edging backward toward the rail, expecting at any second to fall.
Angel tore open the plastic, coming after him into the rain, laughing.
“Where the fuck you think you going, white meat?”
As he lifted the knife and
rushed
Ford the timbers gave way and Angel disappeared like a hanged man falling through a trapdoor.
Ford looked down and saw Angel lying face down on one of the boulders far below. He was still alive, moving, trying to get up, one arm dangling, a leg dragging. His foot found a patch of black moss and as he slipped he danced a little dance that was almost comical, then he tumbled into the wild ocean, an arm coming up like a periscope. Before a wave hit, Ford thought he glimpsed a shouting face through the swell, then Angel was gone.
Trinity stood at the gap in the plastic, staring down at the water. She ducked back inside and Ford followed her, clutching his bleeding arm. He’d need to get to an emergency room.
Trinity lifted a meth pipe from the floor and got it going with a lighter, sucking till the glass glowed. She exhaled a billow of smoke and held the pipe out to Ford.
When he hesitated she said, “Fuck, just this one time. What’s it gonna hurt?”
Ford, his blood dripping to the floor in time with the rain, took the pipe, the familiar warmth of the glass on his fingers. He
hit
it hard and let the immediate rush
take
him someplace warm and safe.
She was right. What was it going to hurt?
THE END
Also by Roger Smith
"Smith’s take-no-prisoners tours through the underworld just keep getting stronger - like Dutch Leonard on the far end of a crank binge."
Barnes & Noble Favorite Novels 2011
"A master class in how to create a novel that speaks to the reader on multiple levels. Truly powerful writing."
Florida Times-Union
“Both horrific to read and impossible to put down."
NPR
"The Cape Town setting recaptures all the blood and menace that time and nostalgia have effaced from Raymond Chandler’s mean streets and redoubles them.”
Philadelphia Inquirer
“A bleak but magnificent portrait of a still-divided city.”
The Guardian
“Smith plays out that chilling sense of inevitability that is at the heart of the best noir. Like George Pelecanos, he captures lives trapped by poverty and prejudice without sentimentalizing those lives or downplaying the havoc they can produce.”
Booklist
About the author
Roger Smith was born in Johannesburg, South Africa, and now lives in Cape Town. His thrillers
Mixed Blood, Wake Up Dead
and
Dust Devils
are published in seven languages and two are in development as movies in the U.S. His books have won the
Deutscher Krimi Preis
(German Crime Fiction Award) and been nominated for
Spinetingler Magazine Best Novel
awards. His fourth novel,
Capture
, will be out in mid-2012. Visit his
website
Copyright
© 2012 by Roger Smith
All rights reserved
Cover photograph © Sumaya de Wet
Ishmael Toffee
&
Falling
are works of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means without the express written permission of the author or publisher except where permitted by law.
