Payback - A Cape Town thriller (18 page)

Pylon, at the wheel of the big Merc on De Waal Drive, said, ‘The reason I don’t have a fancy car, is because of the crap it gets you into. Maintenance plans. Garage bills.’

‘No car at all, you mean,’ said Mace.

‘Alright, no car at all. You want to go that route we could buy another company car, you could sell the Spider. That’d cover your house repayment.’

‘Sell the Spider?’

‘Why not? It’s an old car, Mace. Old-fashioned. I don’t get this thing with cars. Cars’re cars.’

Mace stared down into the Bowl, afternoon haze distancing the city. ‘Since I first saw that car,’ he said, ‘I wanted one. I was what? Fourteen. Something like that. A neighbour in the flats got this bluey-green number with a white hood, a white stripe down the side. I was standing there, in the parking area looking at it and he came down and asked if I wanted a ride. What’s his name?’ Mace clicked his fingers. ‘Sampson, Randal Sampson. Chelsea boots and tight trousers. Had chicks in and out of his flat like he ran a fashion house. Randy by name and nature I guess. I said sure. We hop in, spin to Llandudno, Hout Bay, over Chappies to Noordhoek. Noordhoek under the oaks he pulls out a zol and we tote this. My first Spider, my first grass. Heaven. The sweet smell, the sweet sound of the engine. That explain it?’

‘Save me Jesus,’ said Pylon, taking the inside lane past the
hospital
with the traffic picking up. ‘That’s bullshit. Sentimental pap.’

Mace grinned. ‘I drive a Duetto. You horde money. Same thing really.’

‘Invest. To invest isn’t to horde. What we’ve got in the Cayman’s a horde, in case you’d forgotten. But in our land of milk and honey I invest. Which is why I can get you out of the shit you’re in. And keep us squeaky clean.’

‘One month,’ said Mace. ‘That’s all.’

The traffic slowed bumper to bumper.

‘One month is five thousand bucks, if I heard you correctly.’ Pylon glanced at his watch. ‘What time’s your flight?’

‘Seven. It’s okay. No rush.’ Mace coughed. ‘The other way is I take it out of the business. Increase the bond on the Dunkley Square building.’

‘We don’t need that,’ said Pylon.

‘Write it off against tax.’

‘I don’t think so. I think the best is I lend it to you. Trouble is what happens after that?’

‘I’ve got three months,’ said Mace. ‘I told you. We make this payment and the bank extends. January, February there’s extra income from Oumou’s exhibition. We’re out of the brown stuff.’

Pylon took a gap to the right, accelerating into the taxi lane. ‘Face it,’ he said. ‘The house’s the problem. Too larney. Door handles like you’ve got, Italian door handles. Who needs Italian door handles to open a door? Travertine marble. What’s that about? Fancy French hob. And gas. What’s wrong with electricity? People in the township cook on gas.’

‘Our investment,’ said Mace. ‘Dave Cruikshank’s philosophy: buy high. Five years down the track you’re smiling.’

‘If you can make it five years down the track.’

‘Also it’s for Christa, remember.’

‘Right. Lifts for Christa. This’s the point, Mace. Somewhere on the flat would’ve been better for Christa.’

‘Comes back to an investment. The mountain’s where it’s at. So Dave says.’

‘Dave says. Right. Second-hand car dealer. Estate agent. Dave says.’

‘One month,’ said Mace. ‘It’s all I’m asking for. No big deal. The way the business is going it’s back in your pocket by the end of the year. Interest included.

‘Eight per cent’s the deal.’

‘Loan shark.’

‘Hey. You want it or you don’t want it?’

Mace leant back against the headrest, turned to Pylon. ‘Thanks, hey. Much appreciated. I can fly away relaxed.’ He blew out a sigh of relief.

‘To New York? Nobody can fly into New York with relief.’ Pylon switched lanes back to the left for the airport turn-off. ‘See this bridge?’ he said pointing at a pedestrian footbridge arching over the highway. ‘This’s the one you have to watch out for.’

‘I thought so,’ said Mace. ‘The woman died, you know, I heard it earlier on the news.’

‘A bloody block of concrete, they dropped. You get a block of concrete through the windscreen at one twenty, you’re lucky to live long enough to get to hospital. Even a brick’s bad news. Every time I drive under here I check for pedestrians. Someone who looks like they’re into a bit of gratuitous. Because most times it happens, it’s from this bridge. Why they don’t close it, build a subway I don’t know.’

‘Then people’ll be mugged. Women raped.’

‘This’s the problem.’

At the junction to the airport, Pylon slowed, edging into the traffic flow.

‘I’ve been meaning to tell you,’ said Mace. ‘I had a mail from Isabella.’

‘Just like that?’ Pylon frowned.

‘Just like that. No kidding.’

‘When?’

‘About a week ago.’

‘A week ago, and you keep it quiet!’

‘It’s business. The possibility of business.’

‘Which is why you should’ve mentioned it earlier.’

‘Not really. It was something I had to think about first. The implications.’

‘And having thought about the implications you’re going to meet her?’

‘I am. For lunch.’

‘For a friendly chat?’

‘About something she thinks we could handle.’

‘Yeah,’ said Pylon, giving a hooter blast to get a tourist operator out of the drop zone at international departures. ‘I bet.’

Mace took a cab to the restaurant. Told the cabby Cesca’s, 164 West 75th Street.

The table was reserved in the name of Isabella Medicis, a table at the window so he could watch her get out of the cab: the black calf-length boots emerging first, her skirt ridden up slightly to show knee and thigh in black tights as she moved through that awkward moment between sliding off the car seat and standing on the sidewalk. Once it was over, she was all grace. Wardrobe and make-up perfect. Choreography professional.

Mace appreciated it. Got just long enough to take this in before the action started and she headed for the door, long-legged, confident. The way he’d seen her move in jungle and desert.

Next she was beside the table, being helped off with her coat. Ten years had gone since they’d last seen each other. The thing about Isabella he realised was that you couldn’t take your eyes off her. Maybe her beauty was even more startling with the extra years. He watched a smile sneak across her lips.

‘Isn’t this cosy for a reunion?’

Mace shrugged. ‘Very nice.’

She picked up the wine list. ‘Who’s the client?’

‘A banker.’

She gave him a raised eyebrow. ‘You fly all the way over here to babysit a banker going on holiday.’

‘Part of the service.’

‘Who gives a shit what happens to a banker?’

‘She does. Her husband and kiddies too.’

Isabella shook her head. ‘The world’s paranoid. You want merlot? Or pinot noir?’

‘Merlot.’

She ordered pinot noir, giving him the wide smile that had worked him up in their arms-dealing jungle days.

Mace rolled with it.

‘Do you remember,’ she said, ‘the first words I ever said to you?’ - a glint in her eyes.

‘I hope you want to have sex.’

She smiled. ‘Quite a memory!’

‘Hardly the sort of opener you’re likely to forget.’

Isabella nodded. ‘That was a hopeless situation. How you walked right into it, not a care in the world. I’m watching you switch off the Jeep, start down the path towards me, wondering when’s he going to realise what’s going down?’

Mace shrugged. ‘You could’ve given me a clue.’

‘What? Like I hope you want to have sex isn’t a clue?’

‘I thought you’d been in the bush too long.’

‘Oh right. I was desperate for it.’

‘I even said it. Made a joke about you being bush-happy. Then you got all tight-lipped, said something about being serious and I wasn’t to run …’

‘Or do anything I was going to regret.’

‘Words to that effect.’

Mace thinking back to this stunning woman: hair short, ragged and self-cut against the dripping heat. A face out of some Italian renaissance painting: hooded brown eyes, smooth skin, roman nose, small lovely mouth, delicate cheek bones. This woman standing in the doorway of the hut. Unsmiling.

‘Then you got the general idea.’

‘I did.’

The waiter brought the wine, showing the label to Isabella.

She smiled up at him. ‘Let’s have it.’

The waiter cut the seal, twisted an old-fashioned corkscrew into the cork and pulled it with a grimace. Splashed an eighth into
Isabella’s
glass. She swirled it, tasted, nodded at the man to pour.

When he was done she raised her glass to Mace, toasted, ‘To getting out alive.’

They clinked glasses and drank, Mace taking a little more than a sip.

‘You approve?’

‘It’s not merlot,’ he said.

‘And you’ve become a wine connoisseur?’

‘Hardly.’

‘It doesn’t get any better than this.’

Mace shrugged. ‘I’ll take your word for it.’ Took another decent mouthful. ‘Where was that?’ he said. ‘Where were we? Uganda?’

‘Zaire, Mace. Outskirts of Kinshasa. On the edge of a rainforest. The way I remember it there was a hut on a track through fields of banana palms. A bit further off, a small village near the tree edge but not so far away you couldn’t hear voices now and then. Not sure when we’d made the arrangement or even how but I’d got the hardware for you: a stack of Czech assault rifles.’

‘The first time I’d sourced from you.’

‘The way it began I didn’t think we had a future. Walking straight into kiddie-bandits like that.’

‘Before I left the hotel, the dive we were staying at, I told Pylon, it’s a simple pick-up, only one of us needed to go. Told him to stay in case you called. He said, how’s that supposed to happen when the phone’s down? So I joked maybe there’d be a messenger with a letter in a forked stick.’

‘Pity about that. That he didn’t come with you.’

‘No harm done.’

‘Very nearly though. Remember the little boy, the frisker, patting you down, trying to undo your belt buckle and hold that Aksu at the same time?’

Mace laughed. ‘I thought about making a grab for it. But his finger was on the trigger. He touched that fifteen rounds were going to go off, or the whole clip, thirty. No telling who would’ve died.’

‘You for one.’

‘Probably.’

‘The thing about it I thought was how spooky they were. Like aliens. With no ideas about living and dying. Just there doing this thing. Shooting guns they could hardly lift. Killing, being killed. The leader was so cool. Giving me instructions with serious intent.’

‘About us getting naked!’ Mace, mimicking her accent: ‘They want us to screw. I have to tell you I have my period. Menstrual blood’s bad juice to them. They get their willies blooded they’re in line for serious malevolence from the spirits. They’d rather see this happen to you. Jesus! You sounded like anthropology 101. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing.’

‘You did as you were told.’

‘Anything for a screw.’

‘I’m sure.’

‘I had an alternative? I didn’t think so.’

‘Nice striptease. I enjoyed it. Until you’re standing there buck naked and the main kid says you look like a snail and he’s bigger than you. I could’ve burst out laughing at that.’

‘Thanks.’

‘Thing is, he was. Whipping out that great schlong. Something you have to admit, looked like a stunted leg on a kid that short.’

‘Awesome,’ said Mace, and Isabella spluttered.

The main kid had stood there with his hands on his hips, his crotch thrust out. Letting them get a good look at him. Then he’d zipped again, and got Isabella to lose the bra. She dropped it at her feet. The main kid whisking it up with the barrel of his rifle, pressed it to his nose, his eyes fastened on her tits. He touched the buckle of her webbing belt with his gun. Isabella unclipped the belt, the main kid studying her every move. Her eyes were on him, too. Her play slow, deliberate: the releasing of a button, opening the zip, letting the shorts fall down her legs, stepping out of them. She’d got the main kid hooked, the others standing around
open-mouthed
.

The main kid snagged the elastic of her underpants with the barrel of his gun. Dragged them down.

Isabella took the pants off, turned them inside out, held them for the main kid to see there was blood in the crotch. That made them step back.

Mace took a mouthful of wine. ‘When you took your knickers off, showed him the crotch, I couldn’t tell what he was going to do. He just kept staring at them, absorbed. The others went back a pace, he didn’t move. The last thing I expected was you’d throw them in his face.’

‘Didn’t you?’

‘Hell no. He was hypnotised. Me too.’

‘Broke the spell though. Got him going. Got them all going. Screaming. Running off faster than if they’d seen the evil spirits. Still can’t believe it was that easy.’

‘Me neither,’ said Mace. ‘I kept expecting them to open fire from the forest. Even when we drove out I expected it.’

‘We were lucky.’ Isabella looked at him. ‘What I wonder though is would you’ve done it?’

Mace shrugged. ‘Only to stay alive.’

‘Thank you.’

‘Pleasure. D’you remember what you said, back in Kinshasa when I dropped you at the Consulate?’

Isabella shook her head. ‘Tell me.’

‘Don’t think you can take up the offer anytime you want.’

‘You did though.’

Mace nodded, grinned.

For lunch they made their way through the pinot noir and most of a second bottle. Not a mention of the proposition. How it’d always been with Isabella. When she had something on her mind, it was the last thing she was going to talk about. Like flying out of N’Djamena on the morning of 16 February 1986 with Isabella talking about a short break in the Seychelles maybe to celebrate the deal and not talking about the French jets flying into N’Djamena to put down the rebel offensive. Rebels Mace had just the previous day tooled up with smart weaponry. Only in the hotel that night watching a clip on television it came to Mace that Isabella had known. And not said a thing. Not in the air. Not at any time. Simply smiled when he said she could’ve told him. Her current proposition equally as mysterious. Until, when the bill was paid, when they were getting their coats she said, ‘I want you to see my new apartment.’

Mace inclined his head in acceptance.

In the cab she held his hand. Simply took it in hers without looking at him, put it in her lap, stared out the window.

Mace wondered about this, wondered too about her husband, Paulo, a little creep that didn’t gel with her profile. ‘You still married?’

‘Sure.’ Said without looking at him. ‘Like you and the gorgeous Oumou.’

He let the barb go. When it’d come to the choice, Oumou or Isabella, there’d never been a choice.

The taxi stopped in a busy street, Upper West Side somewhere. Outside spoke of celebrity; inside spoke of money, not lavish money, comfortable money: plenty of artworks hanging wherever there was space, stacks of CDs, a row of artbooks. A number on African art. Some novels on a side table next to the telephone, half covered by a map. The name of a city caught his eye: Luanda. Strange map for her to have open, he thought, but then also not strange, if she was still in that line of business.

‘You like it?’ she asked.

Too many rugs everywhere, Mace reckoned. Too many African artefacts, spears, masks, pots, carved figures. Small tables covered with brass ornaments, souvenirs. Candles all over, like she’d turn the room into a grotto at night. A clutter that spoke of Isabella. Nothing here of her husband.

‘Nostalgic,’ he said.

‘Open this,’ she said, handing him a bottle of Maipo Valley cabernet, ‘I’ve got to take a pee.’

Mace sat down on a three-seater settee while he uncorked the wine. He poured, tasted.

‘You approve?’

‘It’s good,’ he said. ‘Come on, what do I know?’

‘Not as heavy as a Meerlust.’

Mace shrugged. ‘Wine is wine.’

They touched glasses. She sat along from him at the other end of the couch, swung her legs up, stretched until her feet pushed at his thigh. She moved her foot against him: she could be scratching an itch on the sole of her foot, she could be caressing. She’d had a thing about her toes, loved to have them massaged, he remembered. Remembered sitting out a fire-fight with her in a ruined church. The odd round thudding into the walls. Frelimo, Renamo off in the bush shooting the shit out of one another: he and Isabella on the edge of it waiting to make a break. A time he massaged her toes, and more. For two days until the shooting stopped. A craziness they’d both mainlined.

Mace took some more wine, relaxed into the cushions, ignored the pushing of her toes. The cab tasted of sun, began to lay lazily at the back of his head. They didn’t say anything, made no eye contact through this, kept sipping wine, lost in the silence: one of Isabella’s strategies of getting to the point.

‘How’s your daughter doing?’ she said.

Mace laughed. ‘What d’you mean?’

‘She’s how old now? Ten?’

‘Nine going ten.’ Mace wondered if he should tell her more. Decided not to.

‘The family man.’

‘Uh huh.’ He sat up at the sarcasm in her voice.

‘Relax. I got over us a long time ago.’ She laughed, her ice-cold laugh that didn’t show in her eyes. Their eyes met. ‘Now I like the thought of Mace the former arms-dealer. Husband. Father. Muscle to the rich and famous. Jesus Christ!’

‘Protection consultant.’

‘What?’ She kicked at his thigh. ‘A goon, Macey-boy. A bloody jumped-up goon, that’s what you are.’

Mace shrugged. ‘You need some protection?’

‘A trader,’ she said, ‘is what I need. Someone who knows.’ She made a gesture for more wine and Mace passed the bottle. Before she filled her glass, she said, ‘Real life, Mace. Not the pretend stuff.’ She poured, held out the bottle to him.

He took the rest, thinking the thing about a bottle of wine was it only held four glasses.

‘I need to buy a shipment.’

When Mace didn’t respond she said, ‘In your part of the world.’

‘Luanda’s not my part of the world.’

She pointed her glass at him. ‘Always the observant one.’

‘Go on.’

‘I’ve got this buyer, I’ve got the money in your currency. All I need’s the hardware.’

‘Which is?’

‘Full bag. Handguns, rifles, RPGs, grenades, mines, radios, boots, cam suits, medic kits.’

‘Sounds like stock for USAID.’

‘Very funny. So yes? So no?’ She nudged her foot against his thigh. ‘I need a tough guy. So yes? So no?’

Mace considered, useful to get the bank off his back, grimaced a maybe yes, maybe no. She swung her legs off the couch. ‘There’s someone you’ll need to meet.’

‘Now?’

‘Now’s a good time.’

The lift stopped at the seventh floor. Across a marble foyer were glass doors: Global Enterprises. This arching over an ellipse of the world, all the continents side by side. Isabella punched a code into the security lock, pushed the door open. She led him through reception to where he could hear a man talking, saying, ‘You do the arithmetic, you’d want to know how many virgins there are in heaven? Those virgins having to get from here to there first. Then you’d want to know why’re they virgins? Must be some sorry looking women nobody wanted to screw them in the first place.’

They entered the room. Francisco peering into a telescope, talking on his cellphone. He said to Isabella, ‘You’re late. I was about to call.’