Killer Country (3 page)

They’d been on the road for two hours. Got through the mine dumps and the industrial belt and into farmlands, the road
opening
up, quieter, the sun sliding off the western rim hot and red right where they were heading. Cast an orange light over the maize fields. Manga driving, clicked on the headlights. He needed a burger and chips, tomato sauce, a beer to wash it down.

Spitz in the passenger seat listened to his iPod, eyes focused on the landscape. Every forty-five minutes he smoked a menthol. Manga noticed that. Forty-five minutes exactly, Spitz would light up. Like there was an alarm went off only he heard. After the cigarette he took a mouthful of sparkling mineral water. Replaced the bottle in a holder over an aircon vent on the dashboard. Not a word exchanged in two hours.

Manga thought, captain, you’re not making me laugh. He reached for the can of Coke in the holder next to Spitz’s water. Drained it. Dropped the can over his shoulder. Wasn’t for his cellphone, he’d have had no one to talk to. Worse, he’d brought no sounds himself. Bloody going anywhere without Zola was a mistake. And this cousin wasn’t going to share his tunes. Weird shit that it was by the vague sound leaking out. Not rap. Not R&B. Not kwaito. Some sort of pop shit.

He leaned across, touched Spitz on the arm. Spitz turned his head, eyes drowsy, hooded.

‘Something to eat, captain? Burger and chips? Five kays there’s a One Stop coming up.’

Spitz pulled off his headphones. ‘Say it again?’

‘A One Stop.’

‘A One Stop?’

Manga laughed. ‘Not Spur or Steers? Not even McDonalds. The One Stop.’

Spitz shook his head. ‘What is this?’

‘Hey, captain.’ Manga glanced at him amused. ‘You don’t know about One Stops?’

‘No.’

‘You don’t drive? Like this, long distance?’

‘I fly. When I work in another city, I fly to it.’

Manga thumped the steering wheel. ‘No shit. Not once, in all your life, you’ve driven across this country? Not even before?’

‘No. What for?’

‘What for? Captain, hey, captain. To see the place. You know, see where the ancestors hung out. On the grass plains. In the desert. Up in the mountains. The sort of country they knew. The sort of stuff that happens between the cities.’

Spitz shook out a menthol, pressed in the car lighter. ‘It does not bother me.’

‘Hey?’ Manga rolled his tongue round his teeth, considering a sudden realisation. ‘You don’t know where we’re going or what’s the job?’

‘That is your problem.’ Spitz lit his cigarette, blew out a short puff. ‘The way I operate is you have to get me to the place, and you tell me what is the target. I do it. Then you take me back home.’

‘Guess what, captain?’

Spitz didn’t respond.

‘Come’n guess what?’

‘I cannot see your mind.’

‘I don’t know bugger all. What I know is we’re booked in a motel another four hours drive away. That means midnight. Tomorrow they’re gonna phone us there. Give me directions.’

‘That is okay.’

‘Maybe for you captain. But me, I like a bit more information.’

Spitz pulled on the menthol. Some way down the road was a blaze of light in the dusk. Had to be Manga’s One Stop.

Manga saying, ‘This’s not my sort of work. I don’t chauffeur. I’m doing this as a personal favour to the people who hired us.’

‘And for the money.’

‘Come again.’

‘You are doing it for the money.’

Manga laughed. ‘Sure, captain, for the bucks.’

After the One Stop they drove for hours into the night, the burger heavy in Spitz’s stomach, a burnt taste in his mouth whenever he belched. He regretted it, should have had the pasta salad. And beer not wine. The wine had gone to acid. He stared into the dark, a darkness so intense he had no shape or size to the landscape they passed through. Occasionally on the curves, the headlights swept the verge revealing rocks and hard scrub and the gleam of litter. Sometimes the red of a creature’s eyes. On the horizon lightning danced. Spitz leaned forward to see the stars through the windscreen. The movement made him burp a taste of charcoal; the stars told him nothing.

‘This’s desert,’ said Manga. ‘You wanna see the stars?’

Spitz shook his head. ‘No. I can see them.’

Manga held a four-battery Maglite in his hand, from time to time playing the beam over the scrub to their right. He had the window down and the air was cool, but Spitz had no complaints. Nor to the smell it brought in, a pungent sharpness of vegetation as fresh as cat piss.

Eyes blazed in Manga’s torchlight and were gone.

‘Hey, wena, there we go, captain. Yes, yes.’ Manga gave a long   piercing whistle as he braked and spun the car into a u-turn, brought it to a stop facing the way they’d come.

Spitz braced against the dashboard, said, ‘What are you doing?’The words quiet, almost a whisper.

Manga ignored him. Thrust the Maglite into his hands. ‘Shine it there. Up ahead. Get the eyes.’ Slowly they drove along the gravel edge until the eyes shone up in the beam.

‘Yo,’ said Manga, pulling the car into the rough, stopping. ‘Donkeys, captain. What d’you say? Something to notch up.’ Before Spitz could reply, Manga was out rummaging in the boot. Spitz joined him, still carrying the Maglite, shone it on the CZs Manga held in either hand.

‘What I say, captain, is you never know. Two is better than one.’ He held a gun at Spitz. ‘Take it. Come’n. Come’n.’

Spitz did, the weight unfamiliar but easy in his hand.

‘Not a shitty .22. Some firepower captain. Nine mil parabellum. That’s what we want.’ He slammed shut the boot, wrenched the torch from Spitz’s grip.

Manga led through the scrub towards the donkeys, flicking the light about, picking up three of them grazing. The animals not moving off as the men approached. He gave the torch back to Spitz.

‘Shine it on the head. Behind the eye.’

Spitz held the torch beam on the head of the donkey nearest them. The animal shifted off and in that instant Manga fired, the donkey going down, its body trembling with after-nerves.

Spitz felt the percussion of the shot, the loudness swallowed quickly by the vast darkness. The other donkeys brayed, crashing off, their hooves clinking against the shale.

Manga swore. Shouting first in Zulu then English, ‘Follow them. Get them in the light.’ And when Spitz didn’t, grabbing the Maglite, sweeping the bush to catch an animal’s rump disappearing into a gully. 

Manga raced after it, stumbling and cursing, scrambling down the erosion. Spitz stood. Heard birds explode from the scrub and beat away. Heard two shots, close together. Waited. Watched the light returning, Manga out of breath.

‘I hit it somewhere. One of them.’ He shone the light on the dead donkey, a small hole behind the eye, the eye open, glistening. ‘Bastards, hey, not so easy to kill.’ He raised the light to Spitz’s face. ‘You didn’t fire.’

Spitz held up his hand to block the light. Said, ‘I do not shoot animals.’

An hour after they’d checked into the motel, Manga drove out alone, took the bypass round the town and came back down the main street. What occurred to him was the place was a heist job waiting to happen. You could drive a truck smack into one of the banks and no one would know till morning. You could load it and be away before the cops woke up.

He drove slowly, looking for the offices of Jan Niemand, Prokureur/Attorney. Passed another lawyer’s office wondering why there was enough work for two legals in a town this size before he found what he wanted. Small building with a gable, fronting on the pavement, middle of the block. Closed shutters at the windows. The lawyer’s name neatly scrolled above the door.

Middle of the block didn’t appeal to Manga. But he knew a town like this had to have a service lane behind the offices. Which was where he parked outside a gate that had Jan Niemand’s signage painted on it. Dogs barked but no lights came on.

He took a can of petrol from the boot and a screwdriver from the toolkit. The Maglite stuck in his belt with a nine mil.

The gate was unlocked. Manga entered a yard. Two garden chairs at a table, a sun umbrella stuck through a hole in the middle. Lawn underfoot. Flower beds down the sides. Someone cared to keep the garden pretty. 

Four paces to the back door. He used the screwdriver on the lock: standard single cylinder was like having no lock at all. Inside smelt of drain cleaner. Tea cups on dish cloth, a fridge, a microwave, a toaster. Floorboards creaked at his movement. He paused, listening.

Went through the kitchen into a passage, two rooms on the right, two rooms on the left. Checked each, shining the Maglite round the rooms: reception up front, opposite that an office, behind those back rooms for the paper work: metal filing cabinets against the walls. Manga started right: opened drawers, doused the contents with petrol. Same with the cabinets in the other room. Wooden ceiling, wooden floors under threadbare carpets. The place would blaze. He tossed matches left and right and backed away.

Coming out of the office was an old man in a dressing gown, a hunting rifle gripped in his hands.

Manga shone the light on him. Said, ‘Ah, shit man, captain, what’re you doing here? Don’t you have a home somewhere?’

The man pointed the rifle at him, said something in Afrikaans Manga didn’t understand.

Manga said, ‘What?’ – feeling the heat of the fire, the flames catching at the carpet.

The man said in English, ‘Put up your hands.’

‘What?’ Manga laughed. ‘You joking?’

‘Put up your hands.’ The old man gestured with his rifle. ‘I will shoot.’

‘Shit, captain.’ Before he could shoot, Manga whipped him with the Maglite, the old man collapsing in a whisper. Not only wearing a dressing gown, also had on slippers Manga saw. ‘Shit, captain,’ Manga said again, backing out quickly, taking the rifle, closing the kitchen door. Weren’t even dogs barking. The little town quiet as the desert around it.  

Mace popped a piece of croissant into his mouth, cracked open the newspaper to the story on page three: another four tourists robbed by the mountain mugger. All those rangers running around the mountain, they couldn’t catch this prick doing over the tourists. Unbelievable. Waves a knife at some Germans then disappears like he’s a spectre. Mace shook his head. One mugger getting away with it again and again. The sort of incompetence encouraged vigilantism. Wasn’t too far out of Mace’s mind to go up there, sort it out.

‘Papa,’ Christa said, ‘I’m trying to tell you something.’

Mace put the paper down on the breakfast table. ‘I’m listening.’

‘You’re not,’ said Christa. ‘Come on, Papa.’

‘I am,’ said Mace, wiped crumbs from his mouth with the back of his hand. ‘I heard you the first time. I think I know this person, came to your school. Tell me again.’

Oumou, wearing a blue kikoi, came out of the house with coffee to where they sat eating breakfast beside the pool. Below them the city, Saturday quiet; up on the mountain early tourists rode the cable car to the top pointing at the sights: the harbour, the Waterfront, Robben Island, the curve of the bay along the West Coast.

Oumou said, ‘That is a bad story, Christa.’ But she smiled as she said it.

‘You didn’t laugh?’ said Mace.

‘She did,’ said Christa.

‘Oui,’ said Oumou. ‘I have to say so.’

‘There you go,’ said Mace. ‘So let’s hear it again.’ Cat2 stirred on his lap and he rubbed at the scar-tissue where as a kitten she’d been nailed to a wall. The cat arched against his massage.

‘Okay,’ said Christa. ‘This woman came to tell us about drugs. How she used to shoot up stuff, inject it into her leg so many times that they had to cut it off. Her leg.’ She giggled.

‘Heavy,’ said Mace, leaving the cat and stretching for an almond croissant.

‘She’s got this cool chrome pole screwed into her knee with a Nike on it, matching the one on her real foot.’

Mace smiled. ‘Yellow trainers.’

‘How’d you know?’

‘I just do.’

Christa glanced at him suspiciously. ‘Like how?’

‘If it’s the same person, that’s what she wears. Get on with the story.’

‘Okay. So she’s telling us about spiking between her toes. She’s got this syringe filled with blood and stuff, that’s gross and she’s showing us.’

Oumou poured coffee from the Bialetti. Smacked at Mace’s hand running up her thigh under the kikoi.

‘Maman! Papa!’ said Christa. Mace winked at his wife, caught Christa watching them. ‘Tell it, C.’

‘You’re not listening.’

‘I am.’ Mace squeezed Oumou’s knee, returned his hands to breakfast. Smeared honey on the croissant, broke off a piece. He masticated, swilled it down with a mouthful of coffee.

‘So she unscrews it. Not unscrews. You know sort of pushes a button behind her knee, that pops off the pole.’

‘Prosthesis.’

‘That word,’ said Christa. ‘Pro-thesis.’

‘Pros,’ said Mace, feeding croissant to Cat2. ‘Prosthesis.’

‘Anyway,’ said Christa, ‘like she’s standing there on one foot, with her pros… whatever in her hand. Waving it like a wand. And we’re going, ah yuk, and she shouts “catch, hey”. Throwing  her artificial leg down to us. For real. Right at us. Near to me. Everybody’s pushing not to touch it.’

‘What’s she doing?’ said Mace. ‘The woman on her one leg?’

‘I told you,’ said Christa. ‘She’s laughing. It’s, like, a big joke.’

Mace helped himself to more coffee and topped Oumou’s cup. ‘And then Pumla grabbed hold of it?’

‘Her and some others,’ said Christa.

‘But not you?’

‘I touched it.’ Christa grimaced. ‘It was all warm at the knee part.’

‘So who took off the trainer?’

‘Pummie.’ Christa glanced at her father.

Mace grinned, Pylon would like that one: his step-daughter getting in on the act. ‘And?’

‘The wooden foot had green toenails. That’s so gross.’

‘It’s supposed to be.’

‘Mace!’ Oumou laughed. ‘You are being unkind. This woman is brave to talk about it.’

‘Of course,’ said Mace. ‘I agree she’s brave. It’s what she does, how she earns a living, being a motivational speaker. It’s what people do. You rob banks, you do your time, afterwards people pay big money to hear you speak. Or you get raped, your throat’s cut, you’re left for dead, you’ve got a new career.’

‘Mace.’ Oumou frowned at him.

‘What?’

‘That is not nice.’

‘That’s what happens. This chick was a druggie. She gets over it, she gets a new life. Goes to show how people move on. Turn stuff around.’ He pointed at Christa. ‘We got one right here. A couple of years ago she was paralysed for life.’ Mace flashing on the gunshot. Hearing Christa cry out. Seeing her collapse. The blood stain darkening at her stomach. He looked at his daughter looking back at him across the table: her Zen face, her Buddha  smile. Mace thought, this is why I’ve got to get out. Washed down the wish with coffee.

Heard Christa saying, ‘Papa! Papa, listen.’

Mace smiling at her.

‘Pummie wanted to know why she painted the toenails.’

‘What’d she say?’

‘She said to remind her of her foot. That she once had a real one.’

‘That is sad,’ said Oumou.

‘She’s tough,’ said Mace. ‘If it’s the woman I’m thinking of. Lives with an investigator, ex-cop, we used him once to track down stolen stuff. Chews a lot of mints. Nice guy. Him and his one-legged doll.

Mace’s cellphone rang. He reached for it lying on the table next to the basket of croissants and rolls. The screen displayed ‘Pylon’. He thumbed him on. Watched Christa push back her chair and stand. Beautiful, the black costume against her honey skin. The child’s body morphing into a young woman. He wasn’t sure how he felt about this: her childhood ending.

Said, ‘You’re interrupting my breakfast.’

Heard Oumou say to Christa, poised on the edge of the swimming pool, ‘I must buy clay, cherie: you will come with me?’ Saw Christa nod and flash a smile before she plunged into the water. Slipping in like a dolphin, hardly a splash.

Oumou turned from watching Christa gliding through the water, raised her eyebrows at him: who’re you talking to?

Mace said, ‘Pylon.’

Pylon said, ‘I’m driving now, passing Century City. Great view of the mountain opening up. I can tell you I’ve been sitting for four hours.’

‘Some particular reason you’re out there instead of at home?’

Mace walked to where he could see the city clearly through a break in the trees. The cascade of the garden suburb down the bowl of the mountain into the concrete centre. The buildings clustered tall and white there, the sea a flat blue beyond.

‘Driving behind this brand new black Yengeni. Nice car the ML 350’

‘You’re thinking of one?’

Pylon not into buying cars at all, happy to use the office Merc.

‘Too arriviste.’

Mace smiled, turning from the view to his house: the house Oumou’d wanted of concrete and glass and chrome. Something as far removed from the mud towns of her desert life as she could get.

‘I work with clay, Mace,’ she’d said. ‘In my pottery are my memories. We must live in something modern. Where no one has lived before.’

Once the house was built Mace couldn’t imagine living anywhere else. He glanced above the roof at Devil’s Peak, deep shadow still in the kloof.

‘So where’ve you been?’ Mace waved at Christa to keep swimming. To Pylon said, ‘Help me out, I’m pulling teeth here.’

Pylon laughed. ‘Outside Mr Chocho‘s.’

‘Doing what?’

‘A stakeout.’

‘We’ve registered as investigators? I didn’t notice.’

‘This’s private and confidential,’ said Pylon. ‘Got nothing to do with us, Complete Security. Got to do with us the property investors.’

‘The west coast thing?’

‘Precisely.’

‘I’ve been thinking,’ said Mace. ‘Maybe you lend me something against the Cayman account. An IOU.’

‘We can talk about it,’ said Pylon. ‘Another time. You have to listen to this first.’

‘Perhaps turn the music down,’ said Mace. The driving sound of the Cowboy Junkies in the background.

‘So what do I see?’

‘I couldn’t guess. Tell me.’ Mace watched Oumou clearing the table, Cat2 pawing at her for titbits.

‘I see my comrade and consortium partner Popo Dlamini coming out of Mr Chocho’s house.’

‘And this is interesting?’

‘At six in the morning. Very interesting. What I wonder is, does Obed Chocho know? What I also wonder is, how would that brother feel about this brother looking after his wife while he’s doing prison?’

‘It’s nine o’clock,’ said Mace. ‘Why’re you only on the highway now?’

‘I told you,’ said Pylon. ‘Staking out. Had to be sure Mrs Chocho’d been playing hostess. She’s driving the Merc I’m following. Must have a date in the city.’

Mace dipped his toe in the water; Pylon’s machinations on the empowerment deal were labyrinthine in their complexity. Thorough though.

‘Listen,’ he said, ‘after you’re finished playing Easy Rawlins, I’m meeting a prospective client. You got time to be in on that? A judge. Name of Telman Visser.’ He heard a blare of hooters and Pylon swear. ‘We could talk afterwards.’

Mace said, ‘Hey, talk to me. You going to make it or what?’

‘Can’t,’ said Pylon. ‘Consortium meeting. I told you, there’s major shit on this deal. The seller holding out ’cos he can see paydirt. Young white couple wanting in on the act or major compensation.’ A pause, Pylon muttering in Xhosa, ‘We’re coming off the highway. Check you later.’

Mace disconnected, thinking Pylon was taking strain on this one. Putting in a lot of effort to get them sorted, get them access to the Cayman stash. He flipped closed the cellphone. If only there wasn’t the court case. If only. He closed his eyes, shook his head as if to shake out the thought.

With an hour and a half till he met the judge, he could join  Christa in the pool for a dozen laps. Work down the two almond croissants. And the salami roll. He stripped off his T-shirt. Stood poised in his Speedo on the edge of the pool.

Oumou came up, rubbed a hand over his stomach. ‘A little bit round,’ she said.