The Three (22 page)

MARCH–APRIL

The last time Lenny came to see me, he was spitting mad. Second he got to the motel he drank a double bourbon straight down, then another. Took him a while to calm down enough to tell me what was going on.

Turned out that Lenny had found out Dr Lund had organised a rally for Mitch Reynard in Fort Worth. Some sort of pro-Israel, ‘Believers Unite’ convention, and it burned Lenny bad that he hadn’t been invited to speak at it. And that wasn’t all of it. After he did that radio show–the one where that New York DJ ripped him a new one–Dr Lund had sent a publicist down to see Lenny. The publicist (who Lenny described as a ‘jumped-up two-bit lackey in a suit’) told him that he wasn’t to draw too much attention to himself, and to let Dr Lund and Flexible Sandy spread the news about Pamela’s message their way. Lenny was also pissed that Dr Lund didn’t want him involved in searching for that fourth child.

‘I’ve got to find a way to convince him that he needs me, Lo,’ he said. ‘Pamela chose me,
me,
to spread the word. He has to see that.’

I wouldn’t say I felt sorry for Lenny, but Dr Lund cutting him off, hijacking his message, you could see it made him feel like the unpopular kid at school. And I don’t think it had anything to do with money. Lenny said his website was bringing in donations from all over the world. You ask me, it was pride more than anything.

Dr Lund may have cooled towards him, but Lenny’s message was catching on like wildfire. People I never thought of as religious were going and getting themselves saved. Couple of my johns even went and did it. Some of them, sure, you could see they were just doing it as insurance–in case it did turn out to be the truth. Didn’t matter that the Episcopalians and even those
Muslim leaders were saying there was no reason to panic, people really started believing it, you know? There were just all these signs happening all over the world–signs of plague, famine, war and whatever. That puke virus and the foot and mouth disease were getting worse, and then came that drought in Africa and the big scare when the North Koreans threatened to test their nuclear weapons. That was just the start. Then there were all those rumours about Bobby’s grandfather and that robot stuff that was going down with the Japanese kid. It was almost as if every time Lenny’s theories were shot down by someone, up would come another sign that backed them up. If you’d asked me back when I first met Lenny if he could have caused such a stir, I wouldn’t have credited it.

‘I need a stronger platform, Lo,’ he kept saying. ‘Dr Lund’s taking everything. He’s acting like it was all his idea.’

‘Isn’t this all about saving souls though, honey?’ I asked.

‘Yeah, course it’s about saving people.’ He got real mad about that, went on about how time might be running out and how he and Dr Lund should be working together. He didn’t even want to do his usual that day. Too wound up, couldn’t… you know. Said he had to go meet with that Monty fellow anyhow, start planning on how he was going to get back into the big boys’ good graces. He told me that there were quite a few ‘messengers’ like Monty already staying at his ranch, and I guess he was thinking about how it would be a good thing to invite more.

After he left, I was getting all my stuff together, ready to head on back to my apartment and my next client, when there was a knock on the door. I figured maybe it was Lenny again, regretting that he’d wasted our hour together just talking. I opened it, saw a woman standing there. I knew who she was straight away. I’d have known her just by the dog, that Snookie. She looked even thinner than when she appeared on Dr Lund’s show. Skinny–too skinny, like one of those anorexics. But her expression was different. She didn’t look as lost as she did back then. She didn’t come across as angry or anything like that, but there was a look in her eyes that said, ‘Don’t mess with me.’

She looked me up and down and I could tell she was trying to figure out what Lenny saw in me. ‘How long have you and him been doing this?’ she asked straight off.

I told her the truth. She nodded, and then pushed past me into the room. ‘You love him?’ she asked.

I almost laughed. I said that all Lenny was to me was one of my regulars. I wasn’t his girlfriend or mistress or anything like that. I know quite a few of my clients are married; that’s their business.

This seemed to give her some comfort. She sat down on the bed, asked me to fix her a drink. I handed her the same drink Lenny always has. She sniffed it, then drank it in one gulp. It ran down her chin and made her gag, but it didn’t seem to bother her. She waved her hand around the room and said, ‘All this, what you been doing with him. I paid for it. I paid for everything.’

I didn’t know how to answer that. I knew Lenny depended on her for money, didn’t know the extent of it though. She put the dog down on the bed next to her. It sniffed the sheets, then slumped on its side as if it was fixing to curl up and die. I knew they didn’t allow animals in the motel, but I wasn’t about to tell her that.

She asked me what Lenny liked, and I told her the truth. She said that at least he hadn’t been hiding some weird sexual fetish from her all those years.

Then she asked me if I believed in what he was saying, about the children being the horsemen. I said I wasn’t sure what to believe. She nodded, stood up to leave. Didn’t say anything else to me. There was a deep sadness inside her. I could see that straight off. It had to have been her who told the
Inquirer
about me and Lenny. It was only a day or so afterwards that this reporter called me up, pretending he was a regular john. Luckily I had my wits about me that day, but it didn’t stop the photographers trying their luck for days afterwards.

I came clean to Denisha after that, told her that Lenny was one of my clients. It didn’t surprise her. You can’t shock Denisha. She’s seen it all. Probably you’re wondering how I feel about Lenny now. Like I say, people are always trying to get me to say he was a
monster. But he wasn’t. He was just a man. I guess when I decide to do that book those publishers are always after me to write, then I might talk about it more, but that’s all I’ve got to say on the subject for now.

It’s the day before the Dalu Air crash memorial is to be unveiled in Khayelitsha, and the press photographers are already circling. Teams of council workers have been bussed in to cordon off the area around the hastily constructed memorial sculpture–a sinister black glass pyramid that looks like it would be more at home on the set of a science-fiction B-movie. Why a pyramid? It’s a good question, but despite the number of editorials damning the peculiar choice of design, no one I’ve spoken to, including Ravi Moodley, the Cape Town city councillor who commissioned it, and the sculptor herself, artist Morna van der Merwe, seems to be prepared to give me (or anyone else) a straight answer.

The site is also swarming with conspicuously fit security men and women, all wearing stereotypical black suits and ear pieces, who eye me and the other press representatives with a mixture of contempt and distrust. Among the great and the good lined up to attend tomorrow’s ceremony are Andiswa Luso, who’s pipped to be the new head of the ANC Youth League, and John Diobi, a Nigerian high level preacher-cum-business-mogul who reportedly has ties with several US mega-churches, including those under the sway of Dr Theodore Lund, who hit the headlines worldwide with his theory that The Three are the harbingers of the apocalypse. It’s rumoured that Diobi and his associates are putting up the reward money for the discovery of Kenneth Oduah, the Dalu Air passenger deemed most likely to be the fourth
horseman. Although the South African Civil Aviation Authority and the National Transportation Safety Board have insisted that no one on board Dalu Air Flight 467 could have survived, the reward has already ignited a hysterical man-hunt, with locals and tourists alike eager to get in on the action. And the fact that Kenneth’s name is etched on the memorial, despite the absence of his remains or DNA being discovered in the wreckage, has angered several Nigerian evangelical Christian groups–another reason for the high security presence.

But I’m not here to antagonise the security staff or petition the VIPs for an interview. Today, it’s not their stories I’m interested in.

Levi Bandah (21), who hails from Blantyre, Malawi, meets me at the entrance to the Mew Way community hall. Three weeks ago, he travelled to Cape Town in order to search for the remains of his brother Elias, who he believes is one of the casualties killed on the ground when the fuselage cut a deadly swathe through the township. Elias was working as a gardener in Cape Town in order to support his extended family back in Malawi, and Levi suspected something was wrong when Elias did not contact the family for over a week.

‘He sent us a text every day, and money came to us every week. My only choice was to travel here and see if I could find him.’

Elias is not listed among the deceased, but with so many unidentified remains–most believed to belong to illegal immigrants–still awaiting DNA matches for formal identification purposes, this isn’t a guarantee of anything.

In many African cultures, including that of my own–Xhosa–it is vital that the bodies of the deceased be returned to their ancestral homeland to be reunited with the spirits of the ancestors. If this is not done, it is believed that the spirit of the deceased will be restless and will cause grief to the living. And bringing home the body can be an expensive business. It can cost up to 14,000 rand to transport a body back to Malawi or Zimbabwe by air freight; without help, a sum way beyond the reach of the average citizen. For the families of refugees, transporting a body over two thousand kilometres by road is a daunting
and gruesome prospect. I’ve heard stories of funeral directors colluding with families to disguise bodies as dried goods in order to cut the air-freight costs.

In the days following the crash, Khayelitsha rang with the sound of loudspeakers, as families of the victims petitioned the community to donate whatever they could so that bodies could be returned to their homelands. It is not unusual for the bereaved to receive double the amount they need; with many people from the Eastern Cape migrating to Cape Town for work, no one knows when they will be the one in need of help. And the refugee communities and societies are no different.

‘The community here has been generous,’ says David Amai (52), a soft-spoken and dapper Zimbabwean from Chipinge, who has also agreed to talk to me. Like Levi, he is in Cape Town waiting for the authorities to give him the go-ahead to bring the remains of his cousin, Lovemore–also a victim of the crash devastation–home. But before he left Zimbabwe, David had something Levi’s family didn’t have–the certainty that their loved one was dead. And they didn’t hear it from the pathologists working the scene. ‘When we did not hear from Lovemore, at first we did not know for sure if he had died,’ David told me. ‘My family consulted with a herbalist (sangoma) who performed the ritual and spoke to my cousin’s ancestors. They confirmed that he had connected with them and we knew then that he was gone.’ Lovemore’s body was eventually identified by DNA and David is hopeful that he can soon bring his remains back home.

But what if there is no body to be buried?

With no remains to bring back to his family, Levi’s only option was to collect some of the ashes and earth at the site, which would be immediately buried when he returned home. This is where his story veers into the stuff of nightmares (or farce). As he attempted to gather a small bag of earth, an over-zealous cop swooped down on him, accusing him of stealing souvenirs to sell to unscrupulous tourists and ‘Kenneth Oduah hunters’. Despite his protestations, Levi was arrested and thrown in a holding cell, where he languished, in fear of his life, for the weekend. Thankfully, hearing
of his plight, several NGOs and the Malawian Embassy stepped in, and Levi was released relatively unscathed. His DNA has been taken and he’s waiting for confirmation that Elias is among the victims. ‘They say it won’t take long,’ he says. ‘And the people here have been good to me. But I cannot return home without some part of my brother to restore to my family.’

As I leave the site, I receive a text from my editor saying that Veronica Oduah, the aunt of the elusive Kenneth, has landed in Cape Town for tomorrow’s ceremony, but has refused to speak to the press. I can’t help wondering how she must be feeling. Like Levi, she is living in a cruel limbo of uncertainty, hoping against hope that somehow, her nephew hasn’t joined the ranks of the dead.

Fourth horseman, my arse. Every bloody day we’d get a new ‘Kenneth Oduah’ being brought into the station. Usually it was just some street kid who’d been bribed with a couple of bucks to say he was Kenneth. And it wasn’t just us. They were rocking up at every station in the Cape. Those US arseholes didn’t know what they’d started. Two hundred K USD? That’s nearly two million rand, which is more than what most South Africans will see in a lifetime. We had a photograph of the boy, but we couldn’t see the point of comparing it with the chancers that came in. Most of my guys, they’d been there that day, seen the wreckage. No ways anyone on that plane made it out alive, even if they were a
bliksem
rider of the apocalypse.

At first it was just the locals who were trying their luck but then the foreigners started arriving. There weren’t that many at first, but the next thing you know, they were rolling in. It didn’t take long for our local crooks to get in on the action. Some of the sharper ones even offered their services online. Soon there were syndicates organising these tours in just about all of the townships. None of them had accreditation permits. But that didn’t stop the punters falling for the scams.
Jis
, man, some of them even paid up front. It was like shooting fish in a barrel, and I can tell you off the record, I wouldn’t be surprised if some of the cops were in on the action.

I can’t tell you how many punters got stranded at the airport waiting for their ‘all inclusive package’ to come and pick them up. We got professional bounty hunters coming out here, ex-cops, even a few of those blerrie big game hunters! Some of them were after the cash and didn’t give a shit if it was true or not, but quite a few who came really believed the kak that preacher was saying. But Cape Town is a complex place. You don’t just waltz into Gugs
or the Cape Flats or Khayelitsha in your fancy hire car and start asking questions, no matter how many lions or cheetahs you’ve shot in the bush. Quite a few of them found that out the hard way when they were relieved of their valuables one way or another.

I’ll never forget these two big American guys who came into the station one evening. Shaven heads, muscles on their muscles. Both of them were ex US Marshals, used to be marines. Thought they were tough, told us afterwards they’d been instrumental in bringing some of America’s Most Wanted to justice. But when I first met them they were shaking like little girls. They’d hooked up with their so-called ‘guide’ at the airport and he’d taken them where they wanted to go–into the middle of Khayelitsha. When they arrived at their destination, their guide relieved them of their Glocks, cash, credit cards, passports, shoes and clothes, leaving them with nothing but their boxers. Toyed with them as well. Made them walk barefoot into an old outhouse that stank to high heaven, tied them up and told them that if they shouted for help, he’d shoot them. When they finally got free it was dark, they reeked of shit and the
skelm
was long gone. Couple of locals took pity on them and brought them to the station. My guys laughed for days about those two. Had to drop them off at the US embassy in just their undies. None of the spare clothes we had at the station fitted them.

Fact is, people here are tough, most of them fight just to get by every day, and they’ll take a chance if they can. Not everyone, of course–but it’s hard here. You got to be streetwise. You got to respect the people or they’ll
naai
you big time. What, you think I’m going to breeze into downtown LA or wherever, act like I own the place? I swear, these
moegoes
who came here might just as well have handed over their valuables to the guys at immigration, cut out the middle man. Eventually we had to put up signs at the airport to warn people. Reminded me of that movie,
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
. The hunt for that golden ticket with everyone going
befok
.

I mean, it was a major headache for us guys, the police and that, but it was
lekker
for the tourism industry. Hotels were full,
tour buses were packed, everyone from the street kids to the hoteliers were coining it. Especially the street kids. See, at one stage, the rumour spread that Kenneth was living on the streets somewhere. People will believe anything given half a chance.

It was Kenneth’s aunt I felt sorry for. She seemed like a nice lady. My cousin Jamie was on the security detail for her when they unveiled the Dalu Air memorial statue and she flew down from Lagos. He said she was bewildered, kept saying that as those other kids had survived miraculously, why shouldn’t Kenneth be alive?

Those fundamentalist fuckers gave her unrealistic expectations. Ja, that’s what it was. False hope.

Didn’t even stop to think that what they was doing was cruel.