Jaz & Miguel (24 page)

"Miguel?"

Damn it
. He walked into the bedroom and
knelt beside her. "Hey," he said.

"Hey," she said, the smallest of smiles breaking on her face,
as if all the world's weight had lifted from her shoulders at seeing him. "You're
up and about. You OK?" Her eyes were barely open—like she was talking in
her sleep.

"Ja," he croaked. "I'm—I'm fine." Another wave
of sadness washed over him. He knew he wasn't OK. And he knew that he was lying
to her.

She moved her hand to his head (now it was clear she was dreaming)
and pulled him toward her lips, talking and acting out in her sleep—just like
that night at the camp when she'd told him she loved him and never realized it.
He never did tell her about that. The kiss now brought an unexpected sense of
self-loathing to Miguel—like what he was about to do would be the final nail in
the coffin of their tenuous relationship. He quickly pulled away, grabbing her palm
behind his neck and laying it on the bed gently. "Sleep. You need it,"
he said.

"M-hmm," she mumbled, dozing off again.

Miguel left the room and went past the study. He grabbed a page from
a nearby notepad and scribbled on it:
Sandile's brother wants Tsepho's
address to solve your problem. No charge. Money is a donation.

He left.

As if the call from the chief editor of the CCB SPOTLIGHT (Britain's
most widely distributed newspaper) to offer him a job as "Official South
African Foreign Correspondent" had not been enough, Jonathan Abbey damn
near peed in his pants when he heard the tracking alarm on his laptop go off.

He'd begun to think the bloody thing was broken: who doesn't leave
their house in
four
days?!

As the red light flickered on his computer screen—the path of Miguel
Pinto's Toyota being drawn on Google Maps as he moved—Abbey was utterly
flabbergasted at what could be done with technology these days. For a moment
his gaze was locked, as if watching a high-speed car chase being played back on
the news, but this one was live.

He shook his head in disbelief, reaching for the Johnnie Walker
bottle which was now empty.
Sod it!
He felt like a child learning
something for the first time. If only they had taught him these things in
Journalism School. If only they had taught him that the way to success was to
go
out and get it!

Alas, he'd had to learn this lesson for himself.

For this first time in his life, Abbey got the feeling that "luck"
had very little to do with it. He'd never believed those idiots who always
said,
You go out and make your own luck!
But, observing the fortunate
position he was in now, with a job offer from none other than the greatest newspaper
in Britain (if not the
world
, in his opinion) and a potential story
happening right underneath his nose, Abbey couldn't help but give credence to
the
Make your Own Luck
blokes.

If bad news was good business, business had never been better!

A chill of self-approval ran down Abbey's back. He was a blooming genius.
It was as if he'd locked in to some secret reserve of prescient knowledge, a
sixth
sense
of sorts, or simply what the Americans called "a hunch."
Now
he knew what they'd been talking about!

This was investigative journalism at its best, fueled by hunches and
prepared luck. Blooming brilliant!

The Miguel kid had made it onto the M2 (not the motorway in Britain,
the one in Johannesburg—the South Africans stole all the British names: Hyde
Park, Leicester Rd, Kensington. Twats!) At two in the morning, he certainly wouldn't
be headed to the campus in Braamfontein. What if this Miguel was going to
Hillbrow? Abbey didn't pray that he was (he never prayed) but he did clasp his
hands together for a moment and
wished it
very strongly.

And
that
excited Abbey more than the plumpy red-head who'd
screamed his name like he was the Lord Almighty himself all those years ago! What
power he had felt then. What power he felt now. It was an actual physical
sensation in his fingertips, electrifying, galvanizing, awakening …
arousing!

Abbey's internet connection would be murderous in the car (these blooming
South Africans were so bloody backwards) but if he didn't leave now, he'd not be
wherever Miguel was going to be, at the Right Time. He eyed the charge on his
laptop (it was full), unplugged it and ran out of his room. (He really did need
to get an iPad. That would've been easier. He was sure the CCB would get him
one. Ahh, the money, all that money!)

On his way down the hallway, Abbey thought of his Pulitzer-Prize-winning
speech. The thought was not one he'd been able to control lately. It just came
to him at the most random of moments—moments like these, when his olfactory
nerves were sharp like that of a bloodhound's, smelling a good story like a
dead rat roasting in the sun.

Ladies and Gentleman, Members of the Press,

It is my honor to accept this award tonight. It all began for me—

The elevator dinged and the doors opened. Laptop in hand, he rushed
to the garage where his rented Hyundai City Chic was standing. It was a nice
car, smelled new on the inside and handled well, but he'd really wanted something
much larger: maybe a Mercedes C250 Sport or, even, an E350 Cabriolet. But that
had been too far out of his price range. He was sure the CCB would cover him a
decent car for getting his news stories in the future. With such a knack for
being at the Right Place they'd surely invest in him, understanding his value. He
switched on the car and imagined its engine roaring and purring.

But it didn't.

Precariously, he placed the laptop on the passenger seat on his left
(at least the South African cars had the steering wheel on the right side).
Already, the flicking red dot which had been Miguel's car had begun to stagnate—but
maybe that was just because Abbey was underground. And Abbey knew the general
direction he would need to head into in the meantime. It was only when he got
there that he'd need to have a decent connection again.

South Africa: he had to confess, he was starting to like this place.
Maybe he would go on a safari after everything settled down. The blacks were
not so crazy in the bush as they were in the city.

Blacks, there was indeed something different about them here. And then
those Indians—eating with their hands and all that. Britain also had lots of
Indians—
curry-munchers
, some liked to call them.

But he never called them that aloud.

Never.

Like being dumped in a tub of ice cold water and then pulled up from
underneath it by her hair, Jaz awoke to a wash of wind hitting her from the
open window, and the strange sensation that something was very wrong.

Why the hell was she in … a bed? In ... Miguel's—?

She shot her head right, then left.
Shit. Oh, shit
.

"Miguel. Miguel!" She was shouting his name out and
lifting off the covers at the same time. Images and pictures of horrible things
started pummeling her mind but she pushed those thoughts out of her head.

She was sure he was fine. She just needed to find him.

"Miguel? Honey, where are you?"

She looked in his ensuite bathroom. Empty.

She got out into the hallway, suddenly aware that his father was sleeping
in the room next door, and lowered her voice. "Miguel?"

Like a battering ram, something started hitting up against her
mind—bang, bang, bang, knock, bang, knock, bang—that she didn't want to think
about. Bang. Bang. Knock.

Bang.

Bang.

"Miguel!" Now she screamed.

She went outside.

"Miguel!!" She heard her voice echo out into the street
and then bounce back.

She heard footsteps inside, racing down the stairs.

"Jaz, is everything OK?" It was Miguel's father.

Jaz was suddenly paralyzed. She felt like Miguel had felt in all
those previous days: there, but not there, her mind suddenly adrift like a
feather in a tornado.

Senhor Pinto's hands on her arms jolted her. "Jaz," he
said, and she was suddenly awake, brought back to earth, her muscles poised for
action by a shot of adrenaline that made her feel like she could stay awake
forever to look for Miguel.

"He's gone," she said to Senhor Pinto.

For a moment, he said nothing, but then Jaz saw an expression appear
on his face as if he'd suddenly looked death in the eye. He shot a glance at
the stairs.

"What? What is it?" she asked him.

His grip on her arms eased.

"What? Senhor Pinto, What—?"

He let her go and bolted up the stairs, one of his slippers falling
off as he scampered up.

Jaz ran behind him, her chest pounding, her arms weak with fear, and
that thought again: knock, knock, bang.

Bang.

When she got to Senhor Pinto's room, he was kneeling, his head in
his palm and his elbow on the side table. A drawer was open, all its contents strewn
around the floor: socks, handkerchiefs, a red passport.

"Ai meu Deus. Não Miguel.
Não
!" The
man was frantic.

"What—?"

He pulled the drawer out and it got stuck. It was clearly empty but
he tugged and pulled at it as if there'd been some secret compartment behind
it. His head was practically inside the thing by now—pulling, pulling, pulling.
It came out with a crash and his side lamp fell to the ground. The man's
emotions had gotten the better of him now.

"No! My God, No!" He threw the empty drawer against a wall,
smashing it. His chest heaved. Jaz flinched back, briefly afraid, but held
herself together.

"Senhor ... Pinto—"

"The gun, Jaz.
He took my gun!"

They own a fucking
gun
?! My God!

The commotion of a spinning room paused only briefly but Jaz noticed
that Senhor Pinto was getting dressed (ignoring that she was still in there
with him). She ran to Miguel's bedroom and put on her shoes—her clothes were already
on because she'd never changed to sleep for the night.

She saw a photo of Miguel and Sandile in his room, climbing some
sort of jungle gym, Miguel's arm around Sandile's neck, smiles so wide that
you'd think Santa himself had taken the photo.

She pushed the lump in her throat down. Now was not the time.

"Let's go, Jaz!" It was Senhor Pinto, already halfway down
the stairs.

When they got into his SUV, he asked her if she had any idea where
Miguel was.

Hopelessness and helplessness bathed her. She had no
fucking
clue where he was.

She prayed. She friggin prayed. And she wasn't even sure who she was
praying to because her family wasn't particularly religious. Her mother was an
atheist, her father a Methodist by baptism but never went to church. But she
just, kind of, asked whoever was out there, whoever was listening—
if
there was anyone—to please, help her find this boy.

Please.

Please, just, please. Whoever, or whatever is listening, please,
help me. I will do ...
anything
.

Miguel had gotten so used to keeping a fifty conveniently "hidden"
in his ID book that, when the cops stopped him for jumping a red (how could he
have been so stupid?!), he completely forgot to take it out. The cop lights had
been such a surprise to him that he'd slammed on the brakes, sending the
envelope (heavy with coins) flying to the floorboard on the passenger side.

He was less than two minutes from Clarendon Court on Claim Street, a
building in about the most disgusting place in all of existence, with hookers
(not the rugby kind) and dealers swarming around like horseflies on the
proverbial shit-dump which was Hillbrow, Johannesburg—the sickest cesspool of
human degradation in all of God's green earth, and home to everything that was
filthy in Body, Mind, and … (there is no Soul in Hillbrow).

Moments after he had handed the (rather large) female police officer
his ID book, he'd felt his hand twitch to grab it back, but she had already
begun to open it. It's not that he was afraid of bribing cops—that was par for
the course down here—it's that, tonight, he simply wanted to get his traffic
fine like a good little boy, attract as little attention as possible, and move
on. Miguel sat with both hands on the wheel, staring forward. He counted four
cars go past him in the silence that ensued as the woman opened and closed his
ID book, then she said something to the other cops behind her. He'd long since
put the gun in the glove compartment, so at least he was free to get out of the
car if they needed him to, but if they decided to search the car ....

The cop said some more things to the other cops. Then she laughed.
They always laughed, and then they got serious. The serious moment was coming,
like you've been a bad schoolboy and they're the friggin lords of the universe,
stopping people, accepting their bribes, sending you off on your way with a
spanking on the butt for being so fucking naughty.

"Here you go, sir. Please be more careful," she said. He
saw the green ID book under his nose, pressed together by her index and thumb.

He didn't need to ask. He didn't need to look inside. He knew the
fifty wasn't there anymore.

"Thank you, ma'am," he said, and swallowed. And just like
that, he knew he'd contributed to a more corrupt South Africa—just as bad as
the ones taking the money.
But
this was not his problem now. And by the end of the night, he would have done
something a lot worse than paying a cop fifty measly bucks.

Miguel had to admit that the rage and fury he'd felt earlier—the
adrenaline rush that had gotten his legs moving and his hand on the pistol—was
fading. Maybe it had been the drive, the scenery, the fresh air. Maybe it had
been the cop who'd just now stopped him, giving him a moment to think things
through.

He arrived on Claim Street. The place looked as horrid and
disgusting as the last time he and Sandile had been there—about two years before.
They'd always told everyone that it had only been zol
—they're
like the friggin Rastafarians down here, man. Smoking weed in South Africa is
like being weaned off the bottle—who
hasn't
done it? So that was the
story he and Sandile had stuck to all those years. Who needed to know? Except Thandie—that
friggin chick was as sharp as a machete, I mean,
nothing
got past her!