“This lawyer. He and Joe were tight?”
She shrugged. “I guess. They were in the army together, way back.”
“Look, Joe had cash stashed away. Guys like that always do. For when they need to run. Bet your ass the lawyer will know how to access it, in case he needed to bail Joe out of trouble. You just need to ask nice, okay?”
She nodded. “Sure. I’ll call him in the morning and schedule a meeting.”
Thinking about the twenty thousand dollars Dick Richardson had promised her. No way she would give it to this man. That was her emergency fund. So
she
could run.
“Lady, I want you to understand something. I don’t give a shit if you killed your husband. Knowing Joe, he had it coming. But I need that money. And if I don’t get it, no guarantee I’ll keep my mouth shut.”
“You’re blackmailing me?”
“No, lady, I’m incentivizing you.”
Nerves made her laugh. “What’s it going take for you to stop calling me ‘lady’?” He shrugged, set his bag down on the tiles. Her eyes followed it. “And that?”
“I’m moving in.”
“The hell you are!”
“Till I get my money, I’m going to take care of my asset. You.”
“And what if I don’t want you here?”
“Way I see it, you got no choice.”
Roxy took a few moments to adjust to this change in her circumstances, wondering what the hell kind of deal she was getting into now.
Then she smiled, shrugged, laying a veneer of cool over her fear. “Do you want a mountain or an ocean view?”
“Gimme a room overlooking the gates.”
“That’ll be mountain.”
THE BLONDE WALKED ahead of him up the stairs toward the bedrooms, giving him the benefit of another view. She was about the best-looking woman he had ever seen. Not that he’d ever let her know that. She left him alone in an antiseptic white room, the window framing Lion’s Head in the moonlight. Billy shut the drapes.
As he unpacked his toothbrush and shorts from the duffel bag, Billy wondered about people who were shit magnets. Some were born like that: the Discos and Godwynns of the world. Others became that way through circumstance. Like Roxy. People called it bad luck. He didn’t believe in bad luck. He believed in bad choices.
Roxanne Palmer had opened a door when she killed Joe, stepped into a world of shit. When you took a life, you lost some form of protection you didn’t even know you had until it was gone. Left you in a place where bad people started tuning in to your frequency.
For sure, Roxy’s shit wasn’t over. And it wasn’t shit that he wanted to be part of. But she needed to be managed until he got his money. Then she could take up sewage farming for all he cared.
HER SCREAMS WOKE him. The kind of screams that cut right through you, like a blade through bone. His reflexes kicked in, and the Glock was in his hand, and he was running before he was fully awake.
B
ILLY SMASHED OPEN THE BEDROOM DOOR, HIT THE LIGHT SWITCH, and went in rolling, raking the room with the Glock.
Roxy was alone, cowering in the corner where the closet met the drapes. Naked. Her eyes unfocused, her chest heaving, hair dark with sweat. Another scream was building. Then she choked it off, staring across at him.
He got to his feet, aware that he was wearing only shorts. Felt her eyes on his scars.
Billy killed the light and put the Glock down on the bedside table. The drapes were open, and enough moonlight shafted into the room for him to see Roxy as he stood over her.
“You okay?”
“Bad dream. I’m sorry.” Her voice heavy with fear and broken sleep.
He could see the outline of a printed cloth, the kind of thing she would wear to the beach, lying on a chair. He lifted it and let it float down toward her. She wrapped it around herself.
When Roxy stood, he could feel the heat of her body. He retreated. She went across to the bed and sat down.
“I’m going now,” he said, heading for the door.
“Sure. Thank you.”
He picked up the gun and went out. The door clicked shut after him.
ROXY REACHED ACROSS and switched on the lamp beside the bed, the terror receding now, beyond the range of the light at least.
She had woken as if fighting her way from a depth, felt a presence in the room trying to suffocate her. The screams were dragged from her lungs, and she found herself on the floor. Hiding. Only came fully to consciousness when Billy Afrika burst in. He’d left the light on just long enough for her to glimpse the puckered, dead-white scar tissue that marbled his brown body.
Roxy walked across to the window and looked out at the fat African moon dangling over the ocean. She could hear the slap of the waves far below, followed by the hiss and suck as the water retreated. The dream that had ambushed her was like a sump being tapped: dark and clogged and dirty.
Joe had been in the room with her, looming over her bed, hands reaching for her throat. Dressed in the suit he died in, black blood streaming down his face, turning his white shirt dark.
That was when she’d screamed.
Even now his smell hung in the air, a chemical mix of booze and cigarettes and stale sweat. Like he was there watching her.
Waiting for his revenge.
D
ETECTIVE ERNIE MAGGOTT STOOD OVER THE BODY LYING LIKE trash on the edge of the dump. Dawn came early to Cape Town in the summer, and it was bright and hot by seven in the morning. Godwynn MacIntosh was already bloating and starting to stink, his shattered skull so dense with flies that it looked as if he was wearing a black ski mask.
He had been shot in the back of the head, execution style. There was no exit wound, which meant there was a slug trapped inside that thick skull of his. After what Maggott had heard from the uniformed cop leaning against the van, waving away inquisitive kids, he wished he could get the bullet dug out of this bushman’s brain and sent to forensics. Christ knows, he’d be happy to stick his finger in and dig it out himself. But it would be a waste of time. Even for a high-profile crime, the waiting list at the labs was five months.
And Godwynn’s profile was lower than a smear of shit on a shoe.
Maggott didn’t give a fuck for Godwynn MacIntosh, but he was convinced this dark meat was connected to that hijacking and the blonde American. Screw his superintendent, Maggott still had a hard-on for that case. Knew it could be his ticket to bigger and better things.
He walked back to his Ford, toward the six-year-old boy who peered out at him from the open passenger window. His son, Roberto. Named after the Brazilian soccer star. It had been his wife’s idea to call him that. She thought the chunky defender was sexy. To Maggott he looked like just another bald fucker from the Flats.
His bitch wife, living away from him these last few months, had dumped the boy on him the night before, telling him her mother was sick and she had to go to the hospital. Like hell. She was going to get laid and didn’t want the kid pissing on her batteries.
So the kid had stayed the night with Maggott in the cramped room he rented on the Dark City side of Paradise Park. He’d fed him fish sticks and ice cream, and the boy had spent the early hours squirting out enough puke to get him cast in a remake of
The Exorcist
.
Maggott leaned into the window. “You okay, Robbie?”
“I wanna go to Mommy.” The kid was sniveling, and there were tears on the way.
“Ja, later. Okay?”
The bitch was probably dragging her dirty ass from some guy’s bed. Then she would be off to her job at the meatpacking factory in Maitland.
Maggott walked over to the uniformed cop, who was flirting with two schoolgirls in short tunics, making them giggle and squirm. He dragged the cop—thought he was a fucken Cape Flats Casanova—away from the jailbait. He was older than Maggott but still a constable. Lived off bribes and handouts.
“Tell me again,” Maggott said.
“About Barbie?”
“No, about your mother.” Staring the cop down. “Ja. Billy Afrika. Tell me again.”
“Like I say, he phone me yesterday. Wants to know who we pulled in on the Bantry Bay hijacking.”
“And you just told him?”
“Man, he could read it in the
Sun
. What’s the problem?”
The
Sun
: the daily tabloid—full of lurid tales of murder, rape, and incest—that reflected the Cape Flats like a funhouse mirror.
“How much he offer you?”
“Nothing, Detective. Honest.”
“Your mother’s honest,” Maggott said. “He ask you anything else?”
The useless bastard shook his head. Maggott didn’t believe him.
He shoved a finger into the cop’s chest. “Billy Afrika contact you again, I’m the first to know, okay?”
“Ja, Detective.” Smiling like they were buddies.
Maggott grabbed the asshole by his shirtfront, shook him. “I fucken mean it. You speak to me, or I put you on night patrol in the squatter camps for a week.”
The smile disappeared. Black cops died like bottle flies over in the darky shackland across the freeway. A colored cop wouldn’t last an hour. Maggott let the uniform loose and walked back to his car. About to slide in behind the wheel, he saw the kid had puked again, all over the driver’s seat.
As Maggott tried to clean up the mess with yesterday’s edition of the
Sun,
he saw a trail of blood leading away from that body lying in the trash.
Leading to Roxy Palmer.
And to Billy Afrika, the coward who had let his partner’s killer live.
IT WAS LIGHT when Roxy woke. She had a headache from where the squat man had whacked her with the gun. Nothing she couldn’t handle. No worse than a hangover. Fragments of the night drifted back to her. The dream. How she’d exposed herself to Billy Afrika. Not just her body, though Christ knows he must have seen enough of that. But she’d let him see her fear and her vulnerability, and that made her uncomfortable.
It was time she wised up. She
was
vulnerable. There was a man moved into her house holding her to ransom. She knew nothing about him, except he wasn’t like the two lowlifes who’d gunpointed her. He was way smarter. Far more in control. More dangerous.
What had he done with those two losers, anyway? Killed them? He had an air about him, an attitude, that made her believe it was possible. When he’d come into her bedroom with the gun, she’d seen the violence contained in his scarred body.
What Roxy would have liked to do was lay a little money on him, to keep him cool and make sure he didn’t go talking to his cop friends. But yesterday she’d done a phone check on the one bank account that Joe had allowed her access to.
Deeply in the red.
And her credit card was maxed out.
All she could do now was wait for the money from Dick Richardson. Roxy knew she should take the twenty thousand dollars and run. Go to Europe. Do what she always did: meet a rich man. She still had what it took.
But she didn’t want to get into one of those cycles again. She wanted her freedom. If she waited, she’d get enough from Joe’s estate to be independent for the first time in her life. That meant she needed to manage Billy Afrika. Keep him on her side. Make him like her.
Roxy fluffed her hair in the mirror, smiled sourly at her reflection. Hell, she’d never had a problem getting a man to like her. Had more problems keeping their hands off of her.
She replaced the twisted smile with the one that had kept the camera happy for all those years. Wholesome yet seductive. And just a little vulnerable.
Better.
As she pulled on a shirt and shorts, she could smell food cooking. Bacon and eggs. She ran her fingers through her hair one more time and went down to the kitchen.
Billy stood in front of the stove, turning eggs with a spatula. Dressed in a crisp white T-shirt and sweatpants. His feet in flip-flops. No sign of those scars.
“Morning,” she said. “I’m sorry about last night …”
He shrugged, eyes on the pan. “Forget it.” Flipping the eggs before he looked up at her. “I suppose you don’t want any of this?”
“Why not?”
“Dunno. You models don’t eat, do you?”
“I’m not a model anymore.” She opened a drawer and took out two plates, put them on the counter. “Anyway, I’ll just throw up afterward.”
He gave her a neutral look.
“That’s a joke,” she said.
Roxy grabbed knives and forks and took them to the table. She saw he had found the coffee grounds, which trickled and spat in the coffee maker. A man who knew his way around.
She poured a cup for him. “You’ll have to have this black. We’re out of milk.”
“Black’s fine.”
She took an Evian from the fridge and sat down. He came across with the two plates, placed one in front of her and sat at the far end of the table. She didn’t normally do bacon and eggs, but she wanted to relax him, find a way beneath that scarred shell of his. Get inside and soften him up a little.
“This is good,” she said, around a mouthful of food.
He nodded, concentrating on his plate.
They ate in silence. She sneaked glances his way. A neat
eater, using both his knife and fork, wiping his mouth on a paper napkin after almost every bite. She felt like a slob eating with her fork, picking up bacon with her fingers, elbows on the table.
He finished before she did, took his plate across to the sink, and started washing up.
“Leave that; I’ll do it,” Roxy said.
“It’s okay.”
“So how does this work? You being here?” She carried her plate over to where he stood, his hands in the foamy water. Careful not to get too close to him. He didn’t seem to welcome that.
“You leave the house, I go with you. You home, I’m home.”
“Twenty-four seven?”
“Ja.”
“What if I want to go for a run? Down by the ocean?”
“I can run.” Rinsing a plate and putting it in the drying rack.
Roxy said, “So I’m your prisoner?”
“Lady, it’s this, or it’s real prison. You choose.”
He wiped his hands on a dishtowel and walked out.
WORD TRAVELS FAST on the Flats, carried on the wind and the dust.
An hour after Godwynn’s body was found, the bulk of the fat-assed landlady blocked Disco’s door, the black mongrel snarling at him from between her legs. Disco still lay in bed, dragged from his drugged sleep by the yapping of the dog.
“So they shot your short-ass buddy. The dark one,” the landlady said. Disco squinted up at her. “Some kids found him over by the dump.”
Disco thought he was going to hurl, fought back the bile.
Goddy was dead. Fucken knew it. Knew he’d be next.
Disco lifted himself out of the bed, fat slut staring at his ass as he pulled on a pair of jeans. He started shoving things into a plastic bag. He had no money and no idea of where to go, but he
knew he had to run. Should’ve run last night after Billy Afrika caught up with him, but his nerves had been finished and he’d had to hit a white pipe to calm them. And then he’d passed out.
“Where you going?” the fat woman asked.
“On holiday.” Disco forced the last dirty clothes into the bag.
She laughed through her missing front teeth. “On holiday? The fuck where?”
“Saldanha.” The first thing that came into Disco’s head. Saldanha Bay, up the West Coast. He had never been out of Cape Town, but there was always a first time.
“So you can afford to go on holiday, but you don’t pay your fucken rent?”
“I have it for you before I go, Auntie. I promise.”
Now he had to pack his most treasured possession. As he headed across to his mommy’s picture, the fat slut blocked him. She reached for the photo, lifting it off the nail.
“Uh-uh, sonny. You think I’m fucked in my head? I keep this until you come with the money, okay?”
Disco grabbed at the frame, tried to wrestle it away from her. She smacked him across the side of his head. The bitch hit like a heavyweight, and he went down on one knee, ears ringing. The dog danced on its tiny paws, barking and snapping at Disco’s face, eyes bulging.
“Come, Zuma. Come my lovey.” The fat woman shook the
zozo
as she stomped to the door.
By the time Disco got to his feet, she was waddling across the yard, holding his mommy in her fat hand, the stinking little dog scuttling after her.
MAGGOTT DROVE ACROSS Paradise Park, heading back toward the dump. He had the windows open wide, even though the wind pumped in dust and grit, but the car still stank of Robbie’s puke. Fish sticks and ice cream coming back strong.
People called Detective Ernie Maggott a cunt, a bastard, a bad-luck motherfucker. But nobody called him crooked. He was an honest cop. A rare beast out on the Flats, where the pay was low, the job was dangerous, and the temptations were plentiful. It was easy to turn a blind eye for a couple of bucks. Or get in deeper: wear a badge but work for the gangs.
Christ knows, there were enough bad role models out there. The police commissioner, the country’s top cop—still head of Interpol when he was arrested—was in court for racketeering. Taking bribes from gangsters and hit men.
Maggott’s bitch wife had never understood. Why did they have to live in a crap rented house when the others cops’ wives wore new clothes and bragged about their custom kitchens? What the fuck was his problem? But Maggott refused to be bought. Thought himself better than the bent cops around him. Knew all he needed was one big case, something high profile that would get him in the papers and get him promoted.
That’s why he was all hot and sticky for this American blonde. And Billy Afrika, who was tied into this somehow. Problem was, he had no idea where to find Barbie’s burned ass.