The Secret History of Las Vegas (23 page)

B
ehind them, the sun was burning a hole in Vegas with the magnifying glass of the MGM. Sunil's right hand was secured to the door handle with a zip tie.

Just in case you think about escaping, Eskia said.

He did it as soon as Sunil sat down, before he had a moment to realize that Sheila wasn't in the car. As they headed west, Sunil pulled at the door.

Where is Sheila?

I don't have her, Eskia said. She was just the lure.

Where are we going?

For a ride. Somewhere private where we can talk honestly.

You could have just walked up to me and shot me anytime, Sunil said.

And how would that have been any fun?

You stole the disk from my place, Sunil said. Do you plan on selling the contents? If so, good luck with that; it's password protected.

I don't need luck. I have you. I was trained to be like your friend Eugene. You will tell me everything.

Eugene wasn't my friend, Sunil said.

How could you work for him, harming your own people? Give up every last shred of dignity to serve those killers. But you were not alone in that particular weakness, and thanks to the humanity of our leaders like Madiba and Tutu we forgave scum like you. But I will never forgive you for Jan.

Do you think that's what Jan would want?

If you speak her name again I will shoot you right here, so help me God.

Something in his tone told Sunil he wasn't kidding. Fine, he said. But can you at least tell me where we are going?

To your reckoning. Now, shut up while I drive.

Behind them Salazar took swigs from the bottle of whiskey in his jacket pocket. He had to keep reminding himself that the coffee cup, though still warm, was not full of coffee.

Slowly Vegas slid behind them like a mirage and was soon swallowed up by desert and sand. The sun was tilting west.

S
heila stood by the slot machines as she waited in line for Starbucks. It had never bothered her before, but now the tackiness of Vegas felt like a layer of dirt she couldn't quite wash off.

Really, did there need to be gambling in the airport? But that was the way of Vegas. To wring you dry and then send you off poor and broken but still full of hope—enough so that you would come back to lose, or win, depending on the fates.

While she waited, she listened to Sunil's message again. Typically he waited a full day to return her calls and when he did he tried to make it sound like there was something other than his tardiness involved.

Double macchiato, she said to the overly cheerful barista.

What size?

Medium.

Grande it is.

Sheila smiled. Starbucks Italian—its own special language. She moved down to the other end of the coffee bar. In a few minutes she was shaking fake sugar into her cup.

She should call Sunil. He sounded so worried. But when she dialed, it rang and rang. No answer.

Typical, she thought. She was going to hang up without leaving a message, but at the last minute she changed her mind.

Hi, Sunil, it's Sheila. I'm at the airport. I decided to leave a day early for Cape Town. I met Asia. She seems nice. So, eh, unless there's something that needs my attention, I'm going to be boarding in a couple of hours. Okay, I'm going to stop rambling now. Call me. It'll be nice to hear your voice before I leave.

She hung up. In the corner by the vending machines a woman had just won on the penny slots. Sheila sighed. She'd never felt so alone.

Y
ou should let me answer my phone, Sunil said. If I don't, it will raise suspicions.

Eskia laughed.

You overestimate your own importance, he said. No one's looking for you. And in a couple of hours I'll be done with you, and by tomorrow the coyotes will have done with you too if you're lucky.

Will killing me change anything? Bring Jan back?

Don't try to work me, Sunil.

The things I did, you did, the people who died, that was a different time, Eskia. We were different people then. Hasn't there been enough unnecessary death? All of us from that time, we have so much to atone for, so much to forgive. Can you really handle any more?

Eskia laughed: You don't understand anything. It didn't stop for me. I still do what I did then. I still clean up the mess of spineless men like you. I am still fighting the war, Sunil. It didn't end just because Madiba was freed and the world congratulated itself. It's still going on; the Boer are still at war with us, and we with them. You will never know the depth of my sacrifice. What I have given up for the ideal of a free and equal South Africa. The sacrifices I made, I made not just for that ideal. I made them for love, for the love of a particular woman. Jan was that woman. And what you and your friends did in Vlakplaas took that away from me, demeaned everything I gave, made all the blood on my hands meaningless. When you took Jan, you took my grace. But your death will buy back my meaning. You should feel honored that you will be my Isaac and I your Abraham.

Listen to yourself, Sunil said, and there was something like pity in his voice.

I think we're being followed, Eskia said, abruptly changing the conversation. Yes, he said, we are. He pulled off onto the shoulder, the tires throwing up small pebbles.

Salazar smiled. That old trick, he thought, shooting by, pretending to go on. When Eskia pulled back onto the road, he could still see him in the rearview mirror. Cat and mouse, Salazar said. He liked that. I can still follow you from up here, he said.

Eskia, Sunil said. There is still time to stop.

Stop?

You can't believe all that juvenile shit about giving so much for South Africa's freedom just so you could be married to a white woman legally? That is the depth of self-delusion. You may have given up a lot for love, but it wasn't for romantic love. It wasn't. And don't you think the rest of us paid a huge price? What is it with all this one-upping of trauma? That's all the new South Africa seems to be about. Who suffered more, those who went to prison or those who stayed out, those who lost loved ones or those who didn't. On and on, tallying an impossible math.

Shut the fuck up, Eskia said. Try to die like a man, with some dignity, not this babbling that you think will save you. Do you think I have forgotten that once, a long time ago, we had a friendship? I never forgot that and yet here I am, resolved to kill you. No last-minute babbling will shake my resolve—you will die here today, alone, and I will bury you here. So please, if you must speak, make peace with your gods.

Sunil was silent. There was nothing to be said. He was going to die here. Alone. He wondered if there was something he was supposed to think about, if his entire life was meant to flash before his eyes. If it was, it wasn't happening to him. Instead all he felt was an overwhelming fatigue, and a curious empty detachment. As if he were watching all this in a movie. He felt only one niggling regret. That he had never let himself love again, not since Jan. What a waste that had been. All that guilt, all those years. What would it have felt like to let himself truly fall in love—with Asia, or Shelia? Would it have made this moment feel any different, because if there was any certainty here, it was the inevitability of today? Of this moment. In a strange, inexplicable way, it felt right. I'm going to die today, he thought, and it wasn't as scary as he had expected it to be.

Eskia turned off the freeway and onto a dirt road, headed for some disused buildings a few miles in the distance, in the shadow of a huge rock formation. Sunil was oddly impressed by it all—not only the eternity of the landscape but by the level of planning and effort and resolve Eskia had put into this.

Perhaps I should have kept my research in South Africa instead of coming here to Las Vegas, Sunil thought. There would be no end of damaged people like Eskia that he could have studied, not to mention the entire Boer nation. Maybe psychopathy wasn't born in the brain after all. Perhaps it wasn't a function of which gland was closer to or farther from another. Maybe psychopathy was born in the heart, by shame; shame and a broken, betrayed heart. He liked this new line of thought. It didn't lend itself to empirical exploration, but there was a beauty to it, he thought, something beyond the mechanistic. Perhaps it just means that I still have a heart, which in itself is no small miracle.

Eskia stopped the car and pulled him out. He threw Sunil to the dirt and quickly attached a new plastic tie to his wrists while he lay there, breathing in the dust, feeling it tickle the back of his throat. He looked over to see Eskia pulling a duffel bag from the trunk of the car. Struggling to his knees, he looked around. There was a clump of Joshua trees in the distance and what looked like a flash of blue.

Well, Eskia said. Here we are.

S
unil knelt there in the dirt while Eskia put his bag on the closed trunk and began to unpack it. Both of Sunil's hands were securely fastened with zip ties, which were cutting deeply into his skin; still he struggled against them, feeling the sticky warmth of blood on his wrists.

There's no point struggling, Sunil, Eskia said, back turned. No one can get out of a zip tie. Not even Houdini if he were still alive.

Sunil resisted every impulse to scream, to curse, to beg. Instead he mustered all his energy and got up on his feet. He fully intended to ram into Eskia from behind, then head off into the desert, take his chances there. But before he could gather momentum for his charge, Eskia turned and struck him across the face with a crowbar, dropping him to his knees again.

Come on, Sunil, really? Do you know how long I've been doing this? Worked over people like you? I am justice, Eskia said.

You sound like Eugene, Sunil gasped, licking at the blood from his cut lip.

Eskia shrugged. Angels and demons have a lot in common, he said. Except of course to what service they put their powers.

Sunil spat at Eskia, the spittle and blood landing short.

Come now, bruh, Eskia said. Have some dignity. Now, here's what I need from you. The password for the hard drive.

You're going to kill me anyway, so why should I tell you?

I didn't say how I was going to kill you. Sunil, you should know there are things worse than death.

Sunil said nothing, but he was beginning to sweat.

Did I ever tell you that I sent you the telegram announcing your mother's death, Eskia said.

What the fuck are you talking about?

I was with your mother when she died. Or rather, I should say, when she begged me to take her life.

You're lying!

Why would I lie? I have nothing to gain from that. Do you want to hear my story or not? Makes no difference to me.

Fuck you!

Your choice.

Eskia turned and paused before a series of items he had laid out on the trunk lid. The crowbar, a set of pliers, several scalpels, needles in varying sizes, a small blowtorch of the kind chefs use to caramelize a crème brûlée, a piece of rubber six inches long and about as wide, taken from the inner tube of a small tire—from the days when tires still had inner tubes—and a plain jute bag. Everything needed to break a man, to destroy body and soul, was available in most hardware stores or pharmacies.

Sunil glanced at the assemblage of materials and looked away, taking deep breaths, trying to brace himself. He knew only too well what was coming.

Eskia held up the bag.

In the old days, he said, the Afrikaner police would wet a bag like this, force you facedown, and squat on your back. Then they would pull the bag over your head until your lungs began to burn. Sometimes, depending on what they wanted, they would just let your lungs burn out, no questions asked. A fire made of air, or its lack. But I have something different planned for you.

Eskia put the bag down and picked up the piece of rubber.

Do you know what this is?

Sunil looked away.

The Afrikaner police called it the devil's ski mask. Remember how it works.

With a lot of effort, Eskia pulled the piece of rubber down over the struggling Sunil's head until his entire face was covered.

There, there. Now, how long should I leave it on?

Sunil was thrashing around on the ground, trying to use the friction of sand and pebbles to dislodge the mask. He couldn't breathe, or see, or hear, or swallow. He felt like his head was on fire. He heard himself yelling in his head but knew instinctively that he had made no sounds. Just as a warm blackness welcomed him, Eskia pulled the mask up over his mouth, exposing it. Sunil opened his mouth and swallowed air in big wheezing gulps until he began to choke.

Password, Eskia asked, voice casual.

Fuck—

That was all Sunil could say before the rubber covered his mouth again, forcing him to once more thrash around like the chickens he'd seen being killed in the shebeen. Again, just at the threshold of that welcome wet, black blanket, Eskia pulled the mask up a couple of inches. And although he didn't want to, although he wanted not to breathe, to end it now, his mouth and lungs overrode him, taking in deep gulps of air.

When I went to see your mother I worked for a unit of the ANC that was dedicated to killing informants. Killing those who betrayed the cause. To send a warning to others who might be tempted to turn us in. A kind of incentive, you could say. We came to the camp where your mother was being kept. In those days, the republic put black mental patients in camps, temporary shelters in the worst parts of the city, under flyovers or in former dump sites. In your mother's case, she was housed with others in an abandoned mine workers' barracks right in the heart of a township, one big ugly building that housed three hundred crazy people and thirty attendants who treated them worse than dogs. There was not a doctor in sight or a single dose of medication. It was little more than a prison. The worst part was that all those attendants, all thirty of them, were black, just like the patients. There were twenty names on that list. Your mother's was one of them. We knew about White Alice and the deaths of our men in Zimbabwe. There was a lot of debate about your mother, Sunil. Many felt she should be spared because she hadn't really been an informer. That she had paid enough when she sewed her mouth shut, and that even though those scars had long since healed over, she was locked in the hospital. But mercy was in short supply in those days and her name was added to the list. When I came into her room, she knew why I was there, but she said nothing. I'm not saying that it was easy to kill your mother. I stood there a fair while just looking at her. And then she let out this moan. Oh my God, it was awful. Like the sound a dying animal makes, a keening to freeze your blood. So I did the only humane thing I could, I did what I saw her eyes begging for. It was a mercy, you know, that bullet to her head. You should thank me for that. The thing is, Sunil, you and I know that you should have died, not her. It was you who betrayed your father. Johnny Ten-Ten told us everything when he joined. Instead your reward was a job at Vlakplaas. Maybe that was punishment enough.

The sound from Sunil was guttural and now he struggled to his feet, hands still tied behind him, and lunged for Eskia. A short blow from the crowbar brought him down.

I'm getting bored, Sunil, Eskia said.

With that, Eskia pulled the piece of rubber tubing back down over Sunil's mouth and watched him writhe.

In his head, Sunil begged for a quick death. Willed his body, and his mind, to stop fighting, to just give in. Please let me die, Sunil begged his body. Let me die. He couldn't even bring himself to think about his mother, to think about all the ways he had betrayed her. That was too much to contemplate, even now. Instead he forced himself to only think of death, of his dying, of speeding it up. And then there it was, a deep, wet darkness, and it was taking him, like a river of blood, a waterway of oblivion.

But then he was sputtering and his chest hurt and the sun burned his eyes. Words wouldn't come, but he was thinking, No, no, no. Fuck, no!

Slowly his eyes began to focus and he realized he wasn't dead and that there was a new wetness. Salazar was giving him mouth to mouth. Closing his eyes, Sunil bit down on Salazar's lip, forcing him to let go.

What the fuck, you asshole! Salazar screamed, jumping back.

Sunil coughed for a minute and then said: I'm sorry, man, but you were enjoying that a little too much.

Fuck you! I should have let you die.

Sunil struggled up, his hands still tied.

Can you cut me loose?

Salazar pulled a pocketknife and cut the plastic. Sunil rubbed his still-bleeding wrists.

Where is—

Over there, Salazar said, pointing.

Eskia lay a little distance from the rental, his body twisted, glasses in the dirt, one lens broken. But it was the gaping hole in the back of his head that held Sunil's attention.

Had no choice, Salazar said. I had to shoot the fucker.

Yeah, Sunil said, but his voice was sad.

Here, Salazar said, passing Sunil his flask. Drink some of this.

The whiskey burned Sunil's air-deprived throat, but its sting felt good. It was the sting of life. Thanks, he said, passing it back.

Welcome back, Salazar said. Now, wait here, I'm going to fetch my car, then radio the locals to come in. I think we're on reservation grounds so it will have to be the tribal police. But they're fair.

Was that you I saw by the Joshua trees? In a blue car?

Yeah, I borrowed the Bug from a rookie at the precinct.

Hey, Salazar, he called as Salazar began to walk away. There's your killer right there, he said, pointing to Eskia. He is the man who took the lives of all those homeless men.

Yeah, Salazar said. I guess we solved it, then.