“
W
HAT DO I SAY TO THEM?” ROXY ASKED, AS SHE PULLED OVER. Seeing Piper with Robbie held close, seeing the two cops coming, one on each side of the Mercedes.
Piper said, “Say what you like. Just better be good; otherwise, s’trues fuck, I kill him.”
The one cop was at her door. The other at Disco’s. Both had flashlights. She squinted up at the cop leaning into her open window, and he lowered the beam.
“What you doing out here, lady?”
She was on the verge of speaking—screaming—telling them she had been kidnapped, until she looked in the rearview mirror and saw Piper’s hand up near the child’s throat, the sleeve of the Uncle Sam outfit hanging long over his fingers.
Knew what was in the hand …
Roxy could save her own life. But Piper would kill the boy. Slit his throat before the cops could reach for their weapons.
She heard words. Took her a moment to realize she was speaking them. “These men work for my husband, and they’re late for the carnival. So I’m giving them a ride.”
The flashlights were raking the car. Disco. Piper. Robbie.
“You American?” The cop at her door asking as he peered into the Mercedes.
“Yes.”
“Show me some ID.”
It was in her purse. In the trunk of the dead cop’s car.
“I’m sorry, Officer, I left it at home. I was kinda in a rush.” She tried her best smile. Wondered if he could see the damage to her face. It was on the left side, away from the beam, and she tried to sit so her hair covered her cheek.
“Whose kid is that?” The cop on the passenger side speared Robbie with a flashlight beam. For the first time Roxy noticed she was a woman, androgynous beneath her bulky Kevlar vest.
Disco smiled up at her. “He’s my little brother.”
And Robbie said, “It’s my
birfday
.” The first words he had spoken in a long time. They saved his life.
The woman cop laughed. “Why you so dirty then? You must tell your brother to clean you up nice.”
The male cop looked at Roxy’s breasts, then up at her face. “You know I should give you a ticket for driving without your license on you?”
“I know, Officer. I’m sorry.”
He was giving her the eye. Another cappuccino-colored Cape Flats Romeo. “Where you live?”
“Sea Point,” she said. First place that came to mind.
“Well, you watch your head now.” He laughed. She dug up a girlish giggle from somewhere and even did that little thing with the eyes that always got the guys going.
The cops stepped back, and Roxy started the car, pulled away.
She had no idea where the men were taking her.
DISCO KNEW. THEY were going to the place Roxy had just spoken of: Sea Point.
He’d nearly kissed that kid when it came out with the
birfday
thing. Disco had to hold on to himself not to piss his pants as they drove away, the cops getting into their Opel and throwing a U-turn and heading back onto the Flats.
Jesus
.
Disco wished he had a straw to smoke. He’d just have to take it easy. Step by step. It was a crazy fucken stunt he was pulling here. Piper had been ready to cut the American blondie dead that afternoon, right there where she was handcuffed in the cop’s car.
Until Disco had spoken the four magic words:
“She know Billy Afrika.”
A desperate attempt to keep a lifeline dangling. After Billy’s visit to his
zozo,
Disco had remembered who the ex-cop was. Remembered Piper talking about him in the cell at Pollsmoor. Calling him Billy Fucken Afrika. The Missing Teardrop.
When Disco spoke the name at Maggott’s car, Piper had looked up at him, then he’d removed the blade, a thin trickle of blood tracing the blondie’s neck and disappearing between her tits. Piper had smiled his 28 smile as he stashed the Okapi knife and they took the woman and the boy to the
zozo.
For later,
Piper had said.
Disco needed to keep the blondie alive. Billy Afrika seemed to work for her. Protect her. He was a hard man. Not as hard as Piper—who wasn’t a man, more like a wild animal—but maybe tough enough to stand up to him. Disco had to get Billy Afrika and Piper together. It was the only chance he saw of coming out of this.
And for that he needed some good luck.
He’d had a shit life. Bad luck had been closer to him than his own shadow. But he’d always hoped his luck would change. The way the wind changed in Cape Town in April. All summer it blew in from the south, lifting off roofs and sending dust and crap into the air. Blowing in even more heat. Driving people crazy.
Then, at Easter time, it changed, came in off the sea from the north. It brought the rain, and the windswept sand was wet down like bloody sawdust after a car wreck. Even the Flats cooled and went green, grass coming up in clumps between the garbage dumps and the pit toilets and the rusted motorcar bodies and the shacks.
That was Disco’s favorite time. When he hung out in his
zozo,
lying on his bed getting
zooked
on tik, watching the rain flow down the glass of his window like tears, washing away all the mess and pain out there. Felt as if it was washing Disco’s heart.
Disco had done some bad shit in his day, was ashamed sometimes to look his mommy’s picture in the eye. He’d stolen. He’d lied. God knows he’d sucked the life out of more than his fair share of tik pipes.
But raping. Never.
And just when he thought that was the worst, Piper made him kill the girl. He could still feel the blade going into her heart, a sick wet sound when he pulled the knife out. The girl crying, begging him for mercy. And Piper standing over him, talking slow and steady. Making him stick her again and again and again. Till the girl was dead.
And fuck, he felt that something in him had died with her.
The fire that came had burned away all the evidence. But not his guilt or his fear. Anyway, there was still the fat woman and the dead cop. And the kidnap of this blondie and the kid. More than enough to get Disco’s bleeding ass back in Pollsmoor with Piper. Forever.
So Disco had cooked up a crazy plan, and it had taken a lot
for him to sell it to the wild thing with the knife, back there in the
zozo
. He’d said Piper should cut the blondie’s head off out Sea Point side. And then they go surrender to the cops, tell them they were the Barbie Doll killers.
Piper had stared at him like he was fucken insane. “But they know I was still in Pollsmoor when those two blondies was chopped.”
“Ja, but I say I did it. That you come out and did the third one with me.” Disco had nodded his head toward the blondie, who lay on the floor near the kid. Knew she couldn’t understand a fucken word they were saying.
Piper had thought for a long time; then he’d smiled. Knowing they’d get on the front pages of all the papers. Get on TV. Even better than taking out the cop’s family. Kill people on the Flats, nobody but the coloreds gave a shit. But nail some blondies on the white side of town, and the whole city went fucken crazy.
The two of them would go back to Pollsmoor as heroes.
So Piper had said, “Let’s do it.”
Then Disco heard the words that nearly made him cry and rush across and kiss the place where his mommy’s picture used to hang.
“And we can use those two”—Piper had looked over at the woman and the kid—“to get Billy Afrika to come that side, too. I want that fucker dead. Finished.” He’d pointed to his face. “Get me that missing teardrop.” Smiling his 28 smile.
If Billy Afrika was coming, Disco still had a chance. And so did the blonde and the boy. He rubbed the crucifix in his pocket as he watched Voortrekker Road, long and straight, leading toward Cape Town. The street lamps, just for a moment, looked like party lights. Yellow and happy.
THE STINK OF rotting garbage that hung over Paradise Park was overwhelming here at the source. Billy lay at the edge of the
landfill, staring out across the sprawl of junk that was almost pretty in the moonlight. Lying in something soft and wet, something with a stench beyond description. After what had happened to him that night, he neither noticed nor cared.
His useless left arm, still in the sling, was wedged beneath him. Shoulder bleeding again. Hot, red pain torching his nerve ends. His good arm was twisted behind his back, and Manson stood on his hand, pinning him, gun to the back of his head. The only weapon Billy had was Piper’s knife in his pocket, and he had no way of reaching it.
Manson was going to kill him. He was going to die before he’d had a chance to put things right. He was going to leave Piper alive. Again.
Billy wondered if there was a hell. And if he’d done enough bad things in his life to get sent there once Manson shot him. At least that meant he would meet up with Piper someday. Finish this thing.
Manson was speaking to him, the barrel of a .44 cold and hard at the base of Billy’s skull. “Barbie, reckon you gonna go to heaven?”
Like the fucker was reading his mind. Billy said nothing.
“Maybe see your old connection, Clyde? ’Cause Clyde’s definitely up there wearing a nice set of angel wings and a fucken halo, isn’t he, my brother?”
Nothing back from Billy, who was trying to figure out a way to get his hand to his side pocket. He couldn’t. Then he felt the gun barrel withdraw.
Manson squatted beside him. “Look at me.”
Billy kept on staring straight ahead, over the trash. Two of Manson’s crew sat on an old fridge, rising like an iceberg out of the sea of garbage. One of them lit a bottleneck, face glowing in the light of the match. They’d kicked the shit out of Billy when they hauled him from the wreck. Felt like his nose was broken, and he’d heard his ribs crack beneath a boot.
Not that it mattered.
Manson used the barrel of the .44 to lift Billy’s chin. The gun Manson’s daughter had shot him with. The gangster’s idea of a tribute to his dead child, Billy supposed. The thug was smiling at him, one side of his face orange from the spill of streetlight.
“How you feel about letting Piper walk? Still think you did good?”
Billy looked at him, couldn’t stop himself. Manson cunning enough to know how to send Billy to his grave with a dark question mark tattooed on his heart.
“Fuck you, Manson. Just get on with it.”
“Ja, I’m wasting my time.” He stood. “I gotta go sit vigil with my daughter. You fucker.” Manson kicked Billy in the face. Then he leaned down and applied the barrel to Billy’s head.
“You ready to go, Barbie?”
“Do it.”
“Say your prayers.”
Billy heard the shot. Waited to die.
B
ILLY DIDN’T DIE.
Instead he felt the barrel of the .44 lift from his skull. Heard more shots and turned to see Manson pumping blood from his abdomen, leaking life all over his brand names.
Manson’s crew scattered across the dump, firing at the men who came at them from the road. Shorty Andrews navigated the trash, 9mm Taurus still pointing at Manson. The big 28 stood over the American and emptied his pistol, Manson’s body jerking like a breakdancer. Then lying still.
Billy started to ease himself to his feet, got as far as his knees, when he heard another shot. Felt a concussion of air. One of Manson’s men firing over his shoulder as he fled into the mountains of garbage. Shorty coughed and sank to his knees like he was joining Billy in prayer.
“Fucken mess you started here, Barbie,” the giant said, around a mouthful of blood.
As he pitched facedown in the filth, Shorty stretched out his arm like he was offering Billy the Taurus.
Billy took the gun and ran.
THE WHORE, TATIANA, was no philosopher, but she had a theory about the difference between coincidence and destiny.
Coincidence was the small stuff, something that blipped across your radar screen for a moment and then was gone. Like walking into the hair salon and seeing some ugly bitch wearing the same dress as you. Or going on dates with two johns in one night who had silver bolts in their balls. Just things she could chat to Bertie about as they sipped samovars of lemon tea before falling asleep.
But destiny was different. That was life-changing stuff.
Like Chernobyl. Or the time she had her first date with Bert.
She was fresh from the Ukraine, brought out to Cape Town as a mail-order bride by some Greek bastard. He dropped her after he screwed her stupid for a month. Her English was as poor as her teeth—she’d made sure she’d smiled tight-lipped for the snapshot on her MySpace profile—and she didn’t have many skills. So she ended up escorting, working out of a massage parlor in Sea Point. When they’d billed her as Russian, she’d thrown a thick-accented shit fit. The Taiwanese owner, a man wrinkled as a shriveled penis, shrugged. Said Russian was exotic. Who the fuck knew where the Ukraine was?
Bert had been one of her first customers, back when he still had money and lived in the nice house in Newlands, with the Jaguar in the garage and the chauffeur to drive him around. She hadn’t known much about black men. Had seen only a handful before coming to Cape Town, and he was her first
shokolad
trick. She was terrified, but he’d been sweet and fast. And surprisingly small.
Best of all, he’d paid. No problem.
Soon she was seeing him a couple of times a week. It was easy being with him, and when Bert asked her to move in and give up her job she didn’t hesitate. For a while life had been a dream. Days spent at Cavendish Mall buying up every label she saw. Getting the breast enhancement she had always fantasized about. Ready to get her teeth fixed, when Bert’s money ran out and he lost the house. They had to move to the shithole in Sea Point. He explained to her—ashamed—that she would have to go back to work. At least for a while.
Tatiana was tough. Hell, she’d absorbed enough of Chernobyl to set radiation testers clicking like frenzied rattlesnakes. And she was still here, large as life. She was used to rolling with the blows, and she’d become fond of her
shokolad
teddy bear. So she dusted off her address book and got to work, sure that the good times would come back again.
Got seriously pissed off, though, when she found out about the money Bertie had given to the South African that night in Camps Bay. It could have kept them living high and happy for a year at least. And there was no way she could deal with the idea that the American bitch had those dollars. With her blonde hair and her teeth and her tits. All fucking real.
So when Tatiana stepped out of the luxury apartment block in Sea Point, where she’d just finished a two-hour date—nice guy, Swiss, clean—and saw that Benz drive past with the bitch at the wheel, that wasn’t coincidence.
That was destiny.
She sprinted in her high heels, almost spraining her ankle, to get to her Uno. It took a while to start, but the Benz was caught at a light, so Tatiana had time to get the smoking car cranked and take off after the blonde. She had nailed a couple of lines of blow in the Swiss’s bathroom, and her blood was running hot.
The blonde bitch drove for about another minute, past the lighthouse, then turned into the parking lot at Three Anchor
Bay, next to the miniature golf course. Tatiana was fumbling in her purse for her cell phone, digging past the K-Y Jelly and the condoms and the .32 Beretta Tomcat.
Desperate to call Bert and tell him to get over here. He’d have to walk—which he normally refused to do—but it was only a few minutes from their apartment. By the time she located her phone the American was out of the car with a little boy—light
shokolad
—and two guys in weird fancy dress.
Tatiana hid her Uno behind one of those massive SUVs people drove in Cape Town and tried to speed-dial Bert. Nothing. Squinted at the phone, catching the light of the colored globes that hung all gay and festive along the beachfront at this time of year.
Her phone battery was dead.
Shit
.
She knew there was a pay phone at the gas station across from the parking lot, but there was no time. The blonde and her companions were moving, walking toward Three Anchor Bay. Tatiana kicked off her heels and followed, barefoot, holding the shoes in her hand. Her feet hardy from the years growing up peasant-poor near Pripyat before Chernobyl sent her family fleeing to Kiev.
BILLY CUT ACROSS the fringes of the dump, oblivious to the decomposing matter that clung to his shoes and left his jeans and bandaged shoulder wet and reeking. Gunshots rolled across Paradise Park. Way more than usual for Friday night. Sirens serenaded the ghetto, and a chopper hovered like a mosquito over Dark City, a searchlight slicing the night sky. They would make a noise, the cops, but they knew well enough to stay back and let the blood flow.
Billy had ignited a gang war. It would rage until enough young brown men lay dead in the streets, in cramped rooms, and on the seats of chopped-down rides for new leaders to emerge
and call a truce. He cared fuck all for the gangbangers, but he felt for the innocent. The kids with bullet wounds—collateral damage of drive-bys. And the mothers cradling the broken bodies of their dead sons. Just another bad thing to add to his tab.
He was sweating, from more than the heat. He felt sick. Dizzy. The wound in his shoulder throbbing with a life that seemed separate from his own. Billy forced himself on, focused his mind, as he emerged from the dump at the bottom of Protea Street, heading up to Disco’s hut.
Passed the smoking ruin that had been Clyde and Barbara’s house. Saw a group of neighbors tracking through the wet, black mess, looking for anything of value to salvage. A kid in his early teens emerged carrying a singed microwave, warped but intact. The boy looked at Billy, then scuttled off with his prize.
Billy remembered that he held the Taurus in his good hand. The kid had probably thought he was about to be shot as a looter. Billy shoved the gun into his waistband and walked on up the street. Came to the Hyundai, still lying on its roof. All four wheels and the side mirrors were gone. The blind eyes of the empty headlamp sockets stared at him as he passed.
If the Cape Flats ever had a symbolic bird, it would be the vulture.
When he reached Disco’s place Billy drew the Taurus, checked the safety was off, and walked up the driveway. The main house was dark and still. He stepped into the yard. Nothing moved. No lights in the
zozo
hut.
His feet crunched on broken glass, and he saw that the window had been smashed. He tried the door. Locked.
Billy stepped back and kicked, high and hard. The plywood door slammed open, and he went in, Taurus ready. In the moonlight he saw a body on the floor, heard a frenzied buzzing.
Billy used his elbow to flick down the switch next to the door, and the naked bulb bloomed. Ernie Maggott lay with his guts spilling out in front of him, covered by a black shroud of
meat flies that whined and boiled in the light. Billy saw the coils of cord on the wooden floor, a bowl of water stained pink, and a twist of rag, dark with blood. He didn’t know how many people Piper had held in this hut.
Or how many of them had survived.
When Billy’s cell phone rang—forgotten in his back pocket—his first impulse was to ignore it. He’d given the number to only two people: Barbara and Roxanne. Barbara wasn’t making any calls, and he had enough of his own problems without hearing about Roxy’s.
Still, he answered. “Ja?”
“Billy Afrika.” A voice as cold and empty as death itself. Piper’s voice.