Of Cops & Robbers (30 page)

Fish phones Flip Nel. He needs a cop presence. The two of them side by side would block out the sun, be intimidating. Flip Nel tells him he’s doing paperwork on a drive-by.

Fish says, ‘Gangsters?’

Hears Flip Nel sigh, ‘Yup. Yesterday. Don’t you read the papers?’

Fish says now and then. Too depressing otherwise.

‘Tell me about it,’ says Flip Nel. ‘This’s also organised crime. One of the Russian mafia. Shot him up, his wife, his daughter. All in ICU. Their muscle and the driver died. Crap job, hey? Some guys shot the hell outta the car at a robot. Happens, doesn’t it? From time to time. Chances are we’ll never find out who did it.’ He hears Flip Nel light a cigarette. ‘So, you’re gonna tell me we’re going fishing?’

‘I need a favour,’ says Fish.

‘Such as a fishing partner?’

‘We’ll get there.’ Fish in his Perana, pulled to the side of the road to make the call.

‘Yeah, I heard that said before,’ says Flip Nel. ‘That boat’s been sitting in your yard a while since you got it.’

Fish thinking, Guy, guy you’ve been checking? Says, ‘I’ve got stuff happening.’

‘Haven’t we all?’ says Flip Nel. ‘Haven’t we all.’

Fish listening to a deep suck on the cigarette, imagining the pursed lips, Flip Nel probably holding the fag into the cup of his hand.

‘What’s the favour you want?’

‘About half an hour of your time. Probably not organised crime. But it’s Jacob Mkezi’s boy involved.’

‘Hey, ai-yai,’ says Flip Nel. ‘The man still pulls clout here.
Maybe this isn’t something I wanna hear about.’

‘It probably isn’t,’ says Fish. ‘The dude was in a hit ’n run. The one he hit died.’ Fish letting the information wait there for Flip Nel to soak it up.

‘Mkezi’s got a boy?’

‘He has.’

‘Ja, really, I didn’t know.’

‘It’s not much advertised.’

‘An accident like what: knocked a kid off a bicycle? Smacked into an old lady crossing the road?’

‘Late-night street race. As I said, not organised crime. But close enough. I thought …’

‘What?’

‘Not sure. That kind of stuff, street racing’s, got people gambling. Gambling means someone somewhere’s taking a cut. Somewhere there’s an organised crime link.’

‘This’s why you want me?’

‘Ah, not really. Scare tactics, mostly.’

‘One condition.’

‘Uh huh. And that’s?’

‘This weekend, we take the boat out.’

Fish pausing. Fish saying, ‘Okay,’ – drawing out the ‘o’.

‘Scout’s honour.’

‘Dib, dib, dib.’

‘That’s cubs,’ says Flip Nel. ‘So where, when?’

Fish gives him the address, suggests about twenty minutes. Twenty-three minutes later he and Flip Nel are riding the lift to the sixth floor. Standing side by side, shoulders touching the mirrored walls. A renovated building, still smells of cement and paint. Security on the desk didn’t even raise an eye from her Sudoku when they stepped in.

‘You know he’s here?’ says Flip Nel as the lift stops.

‘I checked.’

Fish knocks on the door of a corner flat. The door’s opened by a short, thin dude in dreads, his pupils pinpricks, he’s well
goofed. Wafts of sweet herb smell drifting past them.

‘Lord Mkezi?’ says Fish.

Lord stares at them.

Fish says, ‘Invite us in.’

Lord says, ‘Who’re you?’

Flip Nel pulls out his ID.

‘Oh, fuck,’ says Lord.

‘It’s not a big deal,’ says Fish. ‘Just about someone you killed.’ He pushes past Lord. ‘Best we do this in private.’

Lord’s sitting room has these floor-to-ceiling windows in the corner with a view over the corrugated roofs of Salt River. Mosque minarets, church steeples, in the distance the harbour derricks. Look left there’s the city’s tall buildings on the foreshore.

‘Great view,’ says Fish, gazing out.

‘That’s the morgue down there,’ says Flip Nel, pointing. ‘You ever seen them drop a body, Lord? It happens.’

Lord says, ‘I’m going to call my father.’ Fidgeting with his cellphone.

‘I’d wait,’ says Fish. ‘Listen to me first.’

‘My father was the commissioner of police.’

‘Sure. We know.’ Fish moving aside CDs to sit on a couch, the only couch in the room. Flip Nel leaning against the wall. ‘Take a seat, Lord.’ Pointing at some cushions stacked in a corner. Fish and Flip Nel watching Lord in his half-arse jeans, his blue NYPD T-shirt, that some New York cop must’ve given his dad. Lord a complete caricature.

‘Lord,’ says Fish, coming forward to rest his elbows on his knees. ‘Here’s the story: last Sunday night you flattened a young guy watching you street-race. You didn’t stop, you got the hell away. So did mostly everybody else. The young guy called
Fortune
Appollis died yesterday. Someone, probably your daddy, paid for his treatment in a private hospital but he died anyhow. Fortune’s got a mother and father. Nice people. Heartbroken people. Really aching for their dead son. Grieving,
grieving
, grieving. Mrs Appollis is spaced out. She can’t get her head around
it, Lord, that her son’s dead. Her only son. Snap’ – Fish clicks his fingers – ‘like that, gone. You wouldn’t want to see them, the pain they’re suffering. It’s terrible. Emotional. So, Lord, now I know you did this, only thing is I haven’t got the hard stuff, the evidence. And I reckon it’s unlikely I’m going to get it. I saw your car last night with the half-done spray job on the front but right now I reckon it’s being made like new. So no joy there. One witness is too scared to give a statement. Can you believe that? So no joy there either. This leaves only one thing, Lord: ubuntu. Okay, how’s it go? I’m a person through other people type of nonsense. My feeling here, Lord, is that your ubuntu wants you to do the right thing. You with me so far?’

Lord staring at him, frowning.

‘Maybe you’re going too fast,’ says Flip Nel.

‘I don’t think so,’ says Fish. ‘Lord’s got a private education. He’s a Bishops boy. Not so, Lord?’ Fish snapping his fingers again to get Lord’s focus.

‘See what I mean,’ says Flip Nel, ‘he’s not with us.’

‘Sure he is,’ says Fish, leans forward, taps Lord on the foot. ‘I’ll talk slowly, Lord. What I want you to do is go round to see Mr and Mrs Appollis. Here’s the address’ – taking a folded note from his shirt pocket – ‘first thing you do is apologise, then you come to a financial arrangement.’

‘A what?’ says Lord.

‘You agree to pay them some money, Lord. Your daddy’s rich, you’re rich, a couple of hundred K would help the people in their grief.’

‘I can’t.’

‘Course you can. Believe me, Lord, you’ll feel much better afterwards.’ Fish stands. Gives a light nudge to Lord’s foot. ‘Hang loose, bru.’

Lord stuttering, ‘I can’t. You don’t understand … My father …’

‘I understand,’ says Fish, dropping a business card in Lord’s lap. ‘Do the right thing. That’s where you can get me. A couple of days’ time I want to hear how you’ve done. Please don’t
disappoint
me, Lord. You mustn’t do that.’

He and Flip Nel leaving the speedster, their last sight of him staggering up from the cushions, gaping at them like a guppy fish.

In the lift, Flip Nel says, ‘What was that about?’

‘Appealing to his good nature.’

‘He’s not gonna do anything.’

‘He’ll tell his daddy.’

‘And his daddy will be onto you big-time.’

‘Exactly what I want.’

‘And why was I here?’

‘To aid communication. Cops scare people.’

Flip Nel shakes his head. ‘Keep me out of it when Mkezi calls. The man eats human beings.’

‘Of course, no problem.’

‘So this weekend then?’ Flip Nel grinning at him in the lift mirror. ‘Hope the cold front stays off a while longer.’

Fish thinking how much fun it would be with Flip Nel in the
Maryjane
two kays out on a heaving ocean. Surfing the swells would be better.

Clifford Manuel walks into Vicki Kahn’s office, says, ‘So, Jacob Mkezi’s after you?’

Vicki deeply into some research: away in another time and place. She looks up from her laptop, catches hair behind her ear. ‘I’m sorry?’ Trying to focus on the man in the pink-and-
white-striped
shirt standing in her doorway.

He comes in, sits opposite her. ‘Jacob Mkezi’s just been on the line.’ He smiles. That smarmy smile Vicki’s come to know means Clifford’s pleased with himself. ‘He told me he wants you.’

‘He …’ Vicki stops.

Clifford Manuel grinning at her. ‘He phoned you, yesterday. He told me.’

‘He did?’ Vicki feels heat in her cheeks. ‘I …’

‘Stop.’ Clifford Manuel holds up a hand. ‘It’s fine. We’re not losing you. That’s not the way I see it. I see it meaning we’ll get more work from him. This is win-win, Vicki.’

Vicki flicks her eyes to the screen, a new page opening. ‘He hasn’t made an offer to me. He phoned, but nothing’s definite.’

Clifford Manuel sits back, hands clasped behind his head. ‘He told me the figures. They’re impressive. It’ll get you out of your … your trouble.’

‘He told you what he’ll pay me?’

‘In confidence.’ Clifford Manuel does the smarm smile again. ‘Relax, Vicki. It’s useful knowing your value.’

Vicki staring at him. Aghast. Like she’s a barter cow, a kind of lobola payment. Like these two men are involved in some deal, some trade, using her as merchandise. ‘What’s going on?’ she says.

‘What do you mean what’s going on?’ Clifford Manuel letting go of the smile, creasing his brow.

‘It’s my private business.’

‘Absolutely,’ says Clifford Manuel. ‘Absolutely. And I’m not interfering. But with the former commissioner, well, with the former commissioner things are different. He has his own style.’

‘I don’t know, Clifford,’ she says. ‘I haven’t thought about it. I don’t think it’s where I want to be.’

Clifford Manuel stands. She has to look up at him: the neat trousers, the waist carrying no excess weight, the shirt not even creased yet. The clean-shaven face, the dark nostrils showing no hairs. His trim eyebrows. The eyes solid as mahogany.

‘He’ll phone you about a get-together. He told me he would. Hear him out, Vicki. This is an opportunity.’

Clifford Manuel leaving it there, walking out, pausing at the door to look back at her. He nods.

Vicki bows her head, closes her eyes: recalls the hotel drinks session with the vet guy, Tol somebody. Thinks, that’s when it started. Clifford trying to get her in with Jacob Mkezi.

Tol Visagie cannot stay away. In a sense it’s his stash of horn, he found it, he needs to see it one last time. One last time in situ. He wants to be alone in the cave with the stack. So he drives there in the afternoon after he’s finished treating some cows for heart water. How the hell is Jacob Mkezi gonna know anyhow?

He crosses the river, boys fishing in the shallows, otherwise no one around. No trucks, bakkies, beaten-up cars for the ten kays on the other side. As he approaches the turn-off, Tol Visagie takes a look in the rear-view mirror, no one even in the distance behind him when he swings right onto the dirt track. He drives two clicks towards the distant koppie, pulls up under a tree. Waits there ten minutes. No one’s following him.

He goes on around the koppie, stops where he stopped when he brought Jacob Mkezi and his woman. That was something worth watching in her jeans. Pretty face, though too much make-up perhaps. Nothing that a shower wouldn’t wash off. Tol Visagie shivers at the thought of stepping into a shower with Mellanie Munnik, soaping her down.

He takes the Remington, stands looking about, scanning the ridge line with the feeling he’s being watched. He knows he’s alone. Who would be out here? But the feeling persists. Makes the skin crawl at his neck. He breaks the rifle, checks the loads. There’re more in his backpack.

His eyes on the ridge, Tol Visagie walks towards the boulders. At the cutting, pauses, does a one-eighty of the bush, nothing’s moving. The vlei water’s a mirror. He slips between the boulders into the koppie. In the clearing, the bones lie as he found them. Inside the cave, the horns in their neat pile. Everything the way he found it two, almost three weeks back. No one’s been there. It’s quiet, as if this’s a sacred site. Which is the feeling he had
from the beginning. Always the silence in the cave. ‘Ag no, Tol,’ he says aloud. ‘It’s rhino horns. It’s a bloody bank.’

But he doesn’t linger. Doesn’t sit in the calm as he did when he found them. This time he gets out sharply. Strides across the clearing to the cut in the rock wall, heads back to his
double-cab
without checking for animals, humans, new tracks in the dust. Only in the Nissan, with the engine running, he looks over the bush, up at the skyline. Sees a movement there. Thinks he sees a movement there. Something passing into the shadow of the rocks. He unclips his binoculars, focuses slowly left to right along the koppie face. Nothing. A trick of the light. ‘You’re spooked,’ he says. ‘You’re seeing things.’ But his heart’s going, his adrenaline’s up.

‘Take it easy,’ he tells himself all the drive back. But the unease persists.

And there’s Vusi Bopape sitting on his stoep when he gets home. Sitting there with a six-pack of Windhoek cans on the table, one in his hand.

Tol Visagie parks his double-cab, thinking, this’s a bad scene.

Stands on the steps to his stoep, Remington in one hand, backpack in the other, says to Vusi Bopape, ‘What d’you want?’

‘A chat.’ Vusi Bopape holds up the six-pack. ‘I brought some beer.’

‘What’s to talk about?’ Tol Visagie unlocks his front door, pushes it open. He’s holding the rifle in his right hand. ‘We’ve got no business.’

‘No?’

‘No.

‘I think we do.’ Vusi Bopape breaks a can from the package. ‘One drink. Five minutes. Please.’ He eases up the ring-pull, there’s a fizz of foam and gas. ‘Come on.’ Holds up the can to Tol Visagie. ‘Take it.’

‘I’ve got frosties.’

‘Sure. We can drink those too, later.’

Tol Visagie shifts the Remington to his left hand, takes the
beer. ‘There isn’t gonna be a later.’

Vusi Bopape shrugs. ‘Cheers.’ Standing to tap cans. ‘Let’s go inside.’

‘We can talk out here.’

‘We can. But inside’s better. More private.’

‘Talk about what?’

‘Mr Jacob Mkezi.’

‘What about him?.’

‘Rhino horns.’

Vusi Bopape grins at Tol Visagie.

‘What? What rhino horns?’

‘Come on, my friend. I know everything.’ Vusi Bopape pushes open the front door, puts a gun in Tol Visagie back, ushers him inside. ‘Let me have the rifle rather’ – working the weapon from Tol Visagie’s grip.

It’s dark and cool in the house, smells faintly of antiseptic. Vusi Bopape sniffs. ‘You treat animals here too?’

‘There’s a room I use.’

‘Dedication. I like it.’

The front door opens straight into the lounge, a couple of chairs grouped around a glass-topped coffee table. No pictures on the walls. A TV set in the corner, piles of DVDs beside it on the floor.

‘Homely,’ says Vusi Bopape, prodding Tol Visagie towards a chair. The vet sits on it straight-backed, clutching his beer. ‘Relax,’ says Vusi Bopape. ‘Enjoy the drink.’ He sits opposite, places the Remington on the table.

‘What d’you want with me?’ Tol Visagie fighting the tremble in his legs.

‘Hey, buti, slowly. Piece by piece. Now listen, okay, hear my words.’ Vusi Bopape takes a long pull of beer, wipes the back of his hand across his mouth. ‘This is it, we know what you do, we know you are a good vet. We know you are a good man for the people. You should stay a vet, Dr Visagie, here where the people need you.’

‘So ja. What’re you saying?’

‘I’m saying, we know you found the cave with the rhino horns.’ Vusi Bopape taking another swig, his eyes on Tol Visagie.

Tol Visagie feels damp fear between his buttocks.

‘What rhino horns?’

‘Stop,’ says Vusi Bopape, waves his gun hand, ‘no, no, no, no more, please, accept this fact. We have been in the cave, the cave in the koppie near the waterhole. We have seen the horns. Accept this, Dr Visagie.’ Vusi Bopape finishes his beer, tears another one from the pack. ‘These horns are not your horns, Dr Visagie, they are not forgotten treasure for you to be Indiana Jones.’ Vusi Bopape laughs. ‘You look like Indiana Jones, my friend Ford Harrison, hey. You remember those films?’

Tol Visagie hearing Vusi Bopape saying something about not coming to a gun fight with a knife.

Then hearing him say, ‘You understand they are state property, Dr Visagie. Those horns. State property. South African Defence Force property from the border war. They are not for Mr Jacob Mkezi to sell. They are not his private business.’

‘They’re in Angola. They’re Angolan property.’

‘A technicality, Tol. Nothing to concern you.’

Tol Visagie watching Vusi Bopape lift the ring, pull it off the can. ‘They are not for you to sell. You understand?’

Tol Visagie staring at this man, Vusi Bopape, sitting in his lounge, drinking beer, holding a gun. Hears himself saying, ‘Get out of my house.’ Sees Vusi Bopape shake his head. Hears
himself
say, ‘Who are you? A government man?’ Sees Vusi Bopape raise the gun. Hears him saying something but there is too much noise in his head, too much rushing blood.