A
S MAGGOTT DROVE THROUGH PARADISE PARK HE SAW GODWYNN MacIntosh’s pulped skull. Saw Billy Afrika with a Glock 17. Had to be a connection. Cursed not having access to forensics.
Fucken banana republic run by jungle bunnies.
Meant Maggott had to go primitive himself, grab on to trees and shake the hell out of them. See what fell out. He stopped at a house on Hippo Street, Dark City side. Nothing flashy, but set apart from its neighbors by the new Beemer parked in the driveway and the satellite dish on the roof. The paintwork on the house was fresh, and the wire fence didn’t sag like an old pair of tits.
Manson was protected from the law, but his 28 enemy, Shorty Andrews, wasn’t. His senior, a Muslim with a sprawling house in Constantia—vineyards and horses and money so old that it stank—had finally been sold out by an ambitious underling. The Muslim sat in Pollsmoor awaiting trial, and a new protection deal hadn’t yet been struck with his successor. So Maggott had a gap.
He cracked the car door and shoved a finger into Robbie’s face. “You wait here. And I fucken mean it.”
Robbie nodded, but he was watching a kid his age wearing yellow swimming trunks, jumping around in a small inflatable pool in the cramped front yard. Maggott went through the gate and walked up to the front door. The door opened before he had a chance to knock. Got the eyeball from a punk in his early twenties, wearing a tank top and a pair of baggy jeans held up by the swell of his balls. His scrawny arms boasted fresh 28 tattoos. Street, not prison. He hadn’t graduated yet.
They called him Teeth. Because he didn’t have none.
Teeth knew who Maggott was, slid tik-glazed eyes over him. “Ja?”
“Tell Shorty I’m here.”
“Says who?”
Maggott was one of those skinny guys who punched above their weight. You learned that young on the Flats. So when he sank his fist into Teeth’s abdomen, he did it with conviction. The punk sagged, and Maggott shoved him aside and stepped into the house.
Shorty Andrews and two other guys were slouched in front of an LCD TV the size of a billboard, watching reruns of English soccer. A cloud of smoke hung over the room. Shorty sat with a toddler on his lap, tamping a bottleneck of weed and Mandrax. The toddler held a pretend pipe in his closed little fist, mimicking his father.
Shorty looked up from his prep. “The fuck you want, Maggott?”
“Step out and talk to me.”
Maggott went back outside. He saw that the passenger door of his Ford stood open, and the car was empty. He looked across at the pool, and it took him a moment before he started running. The kid in the trunks had hold of Robbie’s head, pushing him under the water, Robbie’s feet kicking like crazy.
Maggott shoved the kid aside and hauled his boy out of the pool. Robbie was coughing and spluttering, fighting for air. Maggott raised his hand to give the little fucker in the trunks a clip across the ear hole.
“You touch my kid, and I kill you.” Shorty was coming across the yard, all six-foot plus of him.
Maggott dropped his hand. He gave Robbie a shove. “Go wait in the car.” Coughing and crying, the boy dripped his way across the patchy lawn.
Shorty picked up his son, held him in one arm. Gave the little thug a kiss on the forehead. “Talk quick, Maggott, then get your ass off my yard.”
“You seen Billy Afrika since yesterday?”
Shorty shook his head. “The fuck would I?”
Maggott said, “He was round White City with a Glock, looking for a 26 and the wife of your man Piper.”
“Piper’s not my man. And what do I care about a 26?”
“You don’t need to. He’s dead meat.”
“And the wife?”
“Hiding his stretched ass.”
Shorty shrugged.
Maggott looked up at the big man. “The ceasefire you got with Manson …”
“Ja?”
“Think, Shorty. How long’s it going to last with a 26 wearing his brains on the outside and fucken Barbie running around with a gun, stirring up shit from the past?”
Shorty was looking at him, impassive as a buddha. But taking it in. Maggott used his thumb and pinky to mime “call me” and went across to the car. Robbie sat in the passenger seat, sobbing, snot drooping from his nose like stalactites.
Maggott started the car. “Ah, shut the fuck up. It was just a bit of water.”
As he drove away he saw Shorty in the rearview, holding his bastard son, staring after the Ford.
Maggott was stirring things up. Him and the wind in the dust.
PIPER WORE CUFFS and leg irons, the chains trailing after him and whispering against the concrete like a legion of the dead.
Two guards in brown uniforms flanked him; another walked behind. The guards’ heavy shoes drummed as they moved Piper through the massive prison, built to house four thousand inmates, home to twice that number. Each time they came to a gate, the man on his left would unlock it with one of the keys on his ring, let the procession pass through, then lock it again.
It was after 4:00 p.m., past lockdown, so the corridors were empty. But sound and stink seeped from beneath the solid steel doors of the communal cells. Rap. East Coast if they were in 28 territory. West Coast if they were passing by the cells of the 26s. Cries and moans and laughter. TVs tuned to Oprah. The stench of bad food and unwashed bodies. The sweet-sour smell of Mandrax and tik and weed. These guards didn’t worry with men smoking drugs. By the time they unlocked the cells, the drugs would be stashed. Under mattresses, in rolled-up clothes. Inside the bodies of the men themselves.
They left the maximum security wing behind and entered a corridor of offices. One of the guards knocked on a door and opened it, gestured for Piper to enter.
A man sat behind a desk in the faceless room, empty of decoration except for a calendar showing a variety of Cape wild flowers. The man wore the same uniform as the men who had escorted Piper. But he was older and had some seniority.
He looked up at Piper. “Johnson.”
Rashied Johnson. Piper’s almost forgotten name. Piper said
nothing, stared at the dung-colored man in his dung-colored uniform.
“It is my duty to inform you that you have been subpoenaed to appear in court tomorrow. To testify in the Bruinders case.”
Bruinders: a trainee guard who got stabbed dead in the exercise yard. Piper had played no direct role, but he’d acted in a supervisory capacity. A youngster was being blooded into the 28s, and Piper ordered him to stab the guard. It wasn’t meant to be fatal, just a wound to draw the blood needed to initiate the soldier. But the youth had lost control, and he’d killed the guard. Now he was up for murder.
“I seen nothing,” Piper said.
“Tell that to the court.”
“I tell them nothing.”
The senior guard shrugged and waved Piper away, and the other men opened the door and he started the long walk back. Back along the dim, echoing corridors, high windows like gun turrets offering slices of the mountain beyond, brilliant in the hot sun.
Piper knew these men felt fuck all if the cops dragged him, chained like an animal, to the court in Cape Town only to have him stand mute in the dock. It had happened before. Only this time he wouldn’t get as far as the courtroom.
Piper had just been given his ticket out.
R
OXY STOOD OUT ON THE DECK, THE HOT WIND CATCHING THE ENDS of her hair. Bantry Bay was sheltered, but the southeaster still came through in gusts. She stared down at the pool, which had turned swamp-green, the line between the water and the blue sky no longer ambiguous. All it needed was a couple of gators sunning themselves on the steps. The pool man who usually came in once a week hadn’t shown up, and there was no more Joe to walk his gut around in the evenings, tossing chemicals into the water.
Roxy looked up to see Billy appear through the sliding doors.
“There’s a Dick here to see you,” he said. Deadpan.
Billy turned and went back into the house. Roxy followed him and found Dick Richardson standing in the sitting room, looking at the mess that Roxy hadn’t got around to cleaning up.
“Redecorating?” He flashed a smile, but his face looked drawn. There was a food stain on his Armani tie.
Roxy had called him earlier, putting pressure on him about
the money. He’d assured her it was his number one priority, sounding distracted as he said it. But here he was.
“This is a surprise, Dick,” she said, giving him her best smile. If he was bringing her money, he deserved it.
Billy was on the stairs, walking up toward his room. Dick’s eyes followed him.
“Who’s that guy?”
“One of Joe’s people. A bodyguard. He’s staying here.”
“Good idea.” He shot a cuff and looked at his Rolex. “Want to grab a bite down in Camps Bay?” Same old Dick, never stopped trying. But his heart wasn’t in it.
“Thanks, but I’m tired,” Roxy said.
“Sure.” He hesitated, tugged at his collar. “Rox, wanted to ask you something …”
“What?”
“Joe’s laptop … Think I could have it for a day or two? There’s some info relating to the estate that I need to capture.”
Roxy shook her head. “Sorry. It was stolen.”
That jolted him. “When?”
She gave him an edited version of the home invasion. He stared at her.
“Jesus, Roxanne. What a couple of days.”
“Hey, what do they say about keep on keeping on?” She put a little folksy twist on this, some trash in her drawl. She took his arm and edged him toward the front door, got a whiff of the killer aftershave.
When they were outside, walking over to his Range Rover, she leaned in close to him, keeping her voice soft. “Dick, how are we doing with the money?”
“I haven’t forgotten, Rox. Give me a day or two, okay?” He smiled. A smile that didn’t touch his eyes. She had a bad feeling.
“I’ve got to run.” Jangling loose change in his pocket. “So I’ll catch you at the funeral tomorrow?” He saw her face. “You didn’t know?”
She shook her head. “Nobody told me.”
Dick looked embarrassed. “Well, it’s at Claremont Catholic Church. Three bells.”
“Thanks.”
He looked like he was about to duck in and kiss her cheek, so she stepped back. Dick climbed up into the car and drove away. She waited until the gates finally rolled closed, after a few false starts, and went through the house, back out to the deck. She heard Billy behind her.
“Know anything about pools?” she asked, turning, trying a smile.
“Lady, I grew up out on the Flats. Our idea of a pool was a hole in the ground filled with ditchwater.”
It was “lady” again.
“Stop calling me ‘lady,’ for Chrissakes. Makes me feel like a dog. Call me Roxy.”
“Okay.” A pause. “But I like Roxanne better.”
“Whatever grinds your crankshaft.” Irritated as the wind blew her hair into her eyes, reaching up to smooth it away. “What’s wrong with Roxy, anyway?”
“It sounds … I dunno. Cheap.”
“Thanks.” Despite herself she was amused. “Well, since we’re getting all formal here, maybe I’ll call you William.”
“You can call me that. But it’s not my name.”
“Billy’s not short for William?”
He shook his head. “Not on my birth certificate, anyways. It says Billy Afrika. End of story.”
She shrugged, turning away. His voice stopped her.
“That suit, he say anything about the money?”
“Joe may have had some cash stashed away. I’ll know in a day or two.”
He was watching her carefully. “I wouldn’t like to think you’re bullshitting me, Roxanne.”
“I’m not. Okay?” Walking away from him, so those green
eyes couldn’t X-ray her. “Dick told me that it’s Joe’s funeral tomorrow. I don’t know that I can go. Given the circumstances.”
“You’re going.” Following Roxy, staring her down. “When a man dies, his wife goes to the funeral. She doesn’t go, people start asking questions. We don’t need no questions. Understand?”
“Yes. I understand.”
Billy turned and walked back into the house.
The wind died suddenly, and in the lull Roxy heard the fading rumble of jet engines. She saw a vapor trail drawn on the darkening sky, slowly starting to smudge and blur as the plane disappeared north. Roxy wished she was on it.
DISCO WAS STRESSING big-time. He was so freaked out that feeding the meth into the pipe was turning into a major mission. His hands shook, not only from a craving for the drug, but from mind-fucking fear. He was in his
zozo,
in the dark, door locked, lights out. He crouched on the floor, under the empty spot where his mommy’s picture used to hang, and forced his fingers to obey him, trying to feed the powder into the pipe, working blind.
He’d been out on the streets, managed to scrounge thirty bucks to buy a straw from the tik dealer down on Sunflower Street. The dealer, Popeye, operated from a rusted trailer lying on its axles in the dust of a vacant lot. Peeling paintwork scarred by gang graffiti, like tattoos on an old man’s skin.
Popeye had a taste for his own product, and he was as scrawny as a Brazilian supermodel, his cheekbones sunken in on smacking gums, his teeth long ago lost to tik. A radio inside the trailer was tuned to a hip-hop station, and Popeye moved his skinny ass as he took Disco’s money and handed him the meth-filled drinking straw, plastic melted closed at both ends.
“I hear Manson looking for you, my brother.” Popeye, like so many people this side of Paradise Park, had sold his soul to the Americans.
“Ja? He know where to find me.” Disco trying for attitude and coming up short.
Popeye laughed. “My advice, you don’t wait for him to come to you. Otherwise he kiss you bye, bye like he kiss your buddy Godwynn.” Popeye made a wet smacking sound with his toothless mouth. He laughed again, then coughed up a greenie and spat it next to Disco’s Chuck Taylors. “Show respect. Go talk to the man.”
Disco had taken his straw and hurried home in the dusk, grateful that most of the streetlights in White City were dead, the innards of the lampposts gutted for copper wire. The lights of each passing car like gun sights on his back.
But he was safe now, in his
zozo.
Once he’d had a smoke
,
his mind would be nice and sharp and he’d know how to deal with this Manson situation. And figure out how to get back his mommy’s photo. At last he fed the meth into the pipe. Had to risk a quick match, guiding the flame toward the powder, already feeling the rush that was to come.
When the door smashed open, Disco dropped the pipe and the match died. He saw a shape coming in at him, and a heavy shoe caught him in the abdomen. He was down flat, face squeezed against the rough wooden floor, bile in his mouth. The naked bulb hanging from the ceiling flared into life, and he saw the shoe that had kicked him: a scuffed black wingtip. Not what Manson or his crew would be sporting.
Disco lifted his head, a tendril of drool connecting his mouth to the floor. The cop, the ugly one with the zits, swam into view. He was holding up the pipe.
“The fuck’s this?” Out on the Flats this was definitely a rhetorical question.
Disco felt his hands being pulled roughly behind his back and then the cold steel on his wrists as the cuffs were locked.