B
ILLY CROSSED MAIN ROAD, DRIVING INTO WHITE CITY, FIGHTING the wheel and the stick shift. His left arm was in a sling fashioned from a dirty T-shirt. It stank of Doc: booze-sweat and tallow from corner-store fries. And something stale that Billy didn’t want to identify. But at least the alcoholic had dug the bullet from Billy’s shoulder and stitched him up, sweating from the effort that it took to force his shaking hands to obey him.
Billy never drank—couldn’t afford to be out of control—but he’d sipped at the brandy bottle, feeling its warmth burn deep into his gut. Dug his teeth into the handkerchief and welcomed the pain. Billy had learned about pain young. Learned that it was pointless to try and wish it away. Better to stare it down.
Say you were ready. Tell it to do its fucken worst.
And having a slug dug out by a drunk was a minor annoyance compared to the months of agony after Piper had made him into barbecue boy. That was hell.
Billy found his way to Barbara’s street. Nobody had followed him, but he stopped a block from the house, parked the car between the widely spaced streetlights. He stuck the Glock into his belt and left the Hyundai, carrying the bag of money. No way he was going to leave it in the trunk and let it disappear when some tik head decided to boost the car.
It was fully dark now, a killer moon swelling over the grim houses and ghetto blocks, and Paradise Park was starting to make good its Friday-night promise. A car screamed by on the next street, hip hop and testosterone-rich laughter washing over to where Billy walked. He heard the moan of a siren in the distance. And gunshots, coming from Dark City side, enough for a twenty-one-gun salute.
The first notes of the symphony that was to come.
The streetlight outside Barbara’s house flickered and buzzed like a dying moth. Sent flashes of orange into the dusty night, then shrank back into darkness. Billy stood awhile, taking in the snapshots of the house the strobing light allowed him. A lamp burned behind the drapes in the bedroom nearest to the street. Barbara’s room. A TV set pulsed blue in the sitting room.
Nothing moved in the house.
Billy went through the rusted gate and walked up to the front door. He was about to knock when he saw that the security gate was unlocked, and the door was open a crack. He set the bag of money down and reached for the Glock. Used his foot to edge the door open, swept the sitting room with the gun barrel. Empty.
A half-eaten plate of chicken and rice, seething with black flies, sat in front of the TV. An animated action figure was stuck in a violent loop on the screen—blood spraying from its decapitated head. Grindhouse graphics with thrash metal on the soundtrack.
Billy nudged the bag inside with his foot and elbowed the
door closed. Stood in the sitting room. Sniffed. A smell came to him, fighting the rendered fats and spices on the greasy plate. It was a stink he knew too well. The stink of death.
Looked down at the worn carpet, saw a spoor of footmarks leading from the closed bedroom toward the front door. Tracks that on a wet winter’s day might have been mud. But it hadn’t rained on the Flats in months. Whoever had walked out of the room had tracked blood.
Billy walked toward the bedroom, stood by the closed door, steeling himself. He pushed the door open. It stopped against the body of the boy, legs in jeans and feet in Nikes. He could see Barbara’s face as she lay on the floor. She seemed to be staring up at him. Her mouth was closed, yet her tongue protruded. It took him a moment to understand: her throat had been slit and her tongue yanked out through the gash in her neck, hanging long enough to lick her clavicle.
He shoved hard against the door, shifted the dead boy, and saw the girl on her back on the bed, her white robe sodden with blood, her thighs spread and sticky.
Manson,
he thought for a crazy moment.
Manson has been here already and taken these lives in payment for his dead daughter.
Then Billy saw the Okapi knife lying on the vanity table beside the hair dryer and the brush. Blade open and wet. Left there deliberately. Posed like a still life. Saw the graffiti on the wall. The red hand pointing like a gun. The scribbled words. And lastly, a bloody valentine, a crudely rendered heart framing two names: Disco and Piper.
The room rocked beneath his feet, and Billy had to grab on to the door to stop himself from falling.
He felt a long-ago blade pierce his flesh before the flames took him.
Saw Clyde sinking to his knees, trying to contain his guts with his fingers.
Saw Piper smiling.
Billy Afrika knew in that instant what he was dealing with. And who.
Piper was out. Out to renew his wedding vows in blood, ready to take his bride back to Pollsmoor. What had been staged here would ensure that. There was no way Billy could allow it. Allow prison to keep Piper safe and alive again. This time he wouldn’t hesitate.
He stepped over Barbara, hearing the soles of his church shoes suck on blood thick as pudding. Reached for the knife, folded the blade back into the handle, and pocketed it.
Then he moved fast.
Through the kitchen to a small garage, an oil stain on the cement floor where Clyde Adams had once parked his car. The neat shelves still held paint, tools, and the jerrican of gasoline Clyde had used to power his lawnmower. A joke between them:
Where was the lawn to mow, out here on the sand of the Flats? Like a bald man asking for a haircut,
Billy had said, mocking his friend.
He grabbed the jerrican with his good hand and shook it. Still full.
He left with the can, pocketed a box of matches from the kitchen on his way through, and went back into the bedroom. Closed his eyes for a moment and tried to find a prayer. Couldn’t. So he forced himself to do the dead the honor of looking at them as he soaked their bodies in gasoline.
Then he swung the jerrican at the walls, splashing the graffiti. Finally, he took Doc’s handkerchief from his pocket, still moist from his own sweat and saliva, and emptied the last of the gasoline onto it. He stepped back through the bedroom door and lit the handkerchief, seeing it flame blue and orange as he threw it into the room.
Closed the door on the explosion of heat he remembered too well.
Billy took the drug money and left the house. He stood a moment beneath the strobing street lamp, watched the flames already climbing the bedroom drapes. He felt his hand on the knife in his pocket. He’d promised the dying Clyde that he’d take care of his family. He’d failed. Now he made one more promise: he’d use this knife on Piper.
Finish it once and for all.
DOC EASED THE saw across the arm, just above the wrist, the blade screaming. He kept his head back, but a fine mince of bone and flesh patterned his face and glasses. He killed the saw and heard a moan. The 26 was moving, trying to get up from the dirty tiles. Groaning.
After the others left, Doc had dragged the scarred man into the kitchen and shot him full of adrenaline. Risky stuff. Knew it would either kill the fucker or shock him awake. Doc crossed to the man and lowered himself into a crouch, his arthritic bones clicking out a Cape Flats flamenco.
The scarred man’s eyes were fluttering. Then they opened. And opened wider. Doc realized he still held the severed hand. He reached up and put it on the table. The man was blinking, looking around, like he was trying to decide what kind of afterlife he’d checked into.
“Who hit you?” Doc asked.
The man tried to focus his eyes. “It were Barbie.”
Doc stood up in stages, using the table for support. He reached for the Eriksson in his back pocket and speed-dialed 26 for Manson. He lived by the good graces of these gangsters, and it always paid to keep building credits in the game. Especially when a war was coming.
He’d get points for passing on the news.
And a few more for telling Manson that Billy Afrika was wounded.
HER EYES OPENED. A yellow lightbulb, dangling naked from the ceiling, smeared and lagged as she turned her head. Pain. A fire behind her eyes.
Pain was her friend. It meant she was alive. Barely conscious, struggling to stop herself from sliding back into darkness. But alive.
Roxy lay on the floor of the wooden hut again, on her right side, her hands still cuffed in front of her, her legs splayed where she had been thrown. At the extreme of her vision she saw a blur that was Disco slumped on the mattress, Piper standing over him. A shape, like a bundle of discarded clothes, lay near her. Robbie. Unmoving. She had no way of knowing if he had survived his birthday.
She tasted blood in her mouth. And bile. The neckline of her dress was wet with vomit and blood. She sent her tongue exploring her teeth. None missing. Her lip was swollen, and stung when her tongue found a gash.
Piper had punched her under the streetlight. Smashed his gloved hand into her mouth with enough force to whiplash her neck and send her flying, her skull hitting the curb. Then he took his foot back and kicked her in the head. Darkness was already closing in, like a black shroud enfolding her, when she had felt him lift her slack body and sling it over his shoulder. As she passed out she’d drawn his stench into her lungs.
The stink of death and decay.
Now Roxy felt a cough rising in her lungs, fought to stifle it. As she lay there—the lightbulb multiplying, blurring, then resolving into focus—she heard his voice, low and guttural. Insistent. Hammering at Disco, whose halting replies were crushed by the force of Piper’s words. She turned her head an inch, saw Piper’s shadow move against the wall. Quickly shut her eyes. But he’d caught the movement.
She heard him coming, felt the wooden floor sagging under his weight, her body bouncing slightly as he loomed over her. From the whisper of fabric, she knew he had squatted at her side.
“Blondie.” Like a dog growling low in its throat. She didn’t move. “
Blon—dee
.” His hand on her neck. She willed herself to be still.
Something clicked beside her ear, the sound of a catch locking home.
As she understood what she was hearing she felt the pain, a searing burn as the tip of the blade pierced the flesh of her left thigh. Her eyes opened wide and with them her mouth, ready to scream. His hand clamped down on her face, squeezing the scream away. She sucked air through her nose, panted into the gloved hand that imprisoned her jaw like a vise.
Saw the painted face close to hers, felt his breath like the stagnant fumes of an exhumation as it touched her cheek. He worked the knife into her flesh, twisting with delicately calibrated movements of his wrist, playing her wailing nerves like a minstrel’s banjo. She felt a hot stream of piss rush down her thighs, and she writhed and brought up her legs and tried to kick out at him. He laughed, easily evading her limbs, never once taking those eyes from hers. Eyes so dead they needed coins laid on them.
Then he withdrew the knife. Slowly.
She gasped, her screams still choked back into her lungs by his hand. Piper held the knife up for Roxy to see. A stream of her blood traveled down the blade, flowed into the groove, and then dammed against the guard, before a drop fell onto the white glove. He moved the blade away from her face, and she felt it cool and sticky against her thighs, the tip of the knife sliding the fabric of her dress high up on her hip.
He ran the blade softly over her flesh. Caressing her. Teasing her.
She waited. Steeled herself for the agony that was coming.
“Fucken Jesus, Piper.” Disco’s voice, urgent, spooked. “Come check this out.”
PIPER, IN HIS Stars and Stripes outfit—top hat cocked at a jaunty angle—walked from the
zozo
to the street, already smelling the smoke. The minstrel costumes had hung above the dead woman’s sewing machine like they were waiting for him and Disco. The moment he saw them, Piper knew the disguises would buy them time, keep them—especially him—hidden in plain view.
To surrender before the tabloids got hold of the story would be suicidal. Piper had no gang protection outside prison. The cops would kill the men who had slaughtered the family of one of their own. He had no intention of joining the dead just yet. No, let the scandal sheets be his insurance policy. Lie low until the bodies were discovered. Wait until the
Sun
screamed out the headlines in nice fat letters across the front page, the story rolling across the Flats, picking up momentum.
Then take Disco, go to Bellwood South, and surrender. Smiling for the cameras, the glare of publicity shining too bright for the cops and the courts to do anything but send them back to Pollsmoor.
For life. Until death did them part.
But now, as Piper saw the blaze consume the dead cop’s house, he knew his plan had changed. Seeing the inhabitants of Protea Street running like headless chickens, the people in the neighboring houses wetting down their roofs with hoses to stop the fire leaping through the tinderbox air.