Dust Devils

by Roger Smith

  DUST DEVILS

  By

  Roger Smith

  ALSO BY ROGER SMITH

  Mixed Blood

  Wake Up Dead

  PRAISE FOR DUST DEVILS

  "Topping my list of favorite thrillers of all time. Absolutely breathtaking."

  DAVE ZELTSERMAN – KILLER & THE CARETAKER OF LORNE FIELD

  "Noir at its most brutal and honest. Not so much about the dark and the shadows as it is about the stark light of the noonday sun."

  A. N. SMITH – HOT DOGGIN' & YELLOW MEDICINE

  "Roger Smith's best work. Shocking, unsparing and very satisfying."

  MACK LUNDY – MACK CAPTURES CRIME

  "An amped-up, page-turning noir sure to leave the reader blistered and bruised with satisfaction."

  FRANK BILL – CRIMES IN SOUTHERN INDIANA

  PRAISE FOR MIXED BLOOD

  "Smith does an outstanding job of bringing Cape Town to life, taking us through the confusing labyrinth of racial identity in post-apartheid South Africa."

  KIRKUS REVIEWS

  "A bleak but magnificent portrait of a still-divided city."

  JOHN O' CONNELL – THE GUARDIAN (UK)

  "Like a punch in the gut. You'll struggle to find a more forceful voice in current crime writing."

  PETER HENNING – DIE ZEIT (GERMANY)

  "A thriller for sure. Authetic and violent."

  ALIBI MAGAZINE (FRANCE)

  PRAISE FOR WAKE UP DEAD

  "Horrific to read and impossible to put down."

  MARTHA WOODROOF – U.S. NATIONAL PUBLIC RADIO

  "The Cape Town setting recaptures all the blood and menace that time and nostalgia have effaced from Raymond Chandler's mean streets – and redoubles them."

  PETER ROZOVSKY – PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER

  "A top-notch thriller. Violent and funny."

  MARCEL BERLINS – THE TIMES (LONDON)

  "Brutal. A milestone in noir thrillers."

  ANDREAS AMMER – GERMAN RADIO

  DUST DEVILS

  Roger Smith

  Copyright © 2011 by Roger Smith.

  This novel is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination, or, if real, used fictitiously. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the express written permission of the author or publisher, except where permitted by law.

  All Rights Reserved.

  Table Of Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Chapter 59

  Chapter 60

  Chapter 61

  Chapter 62

  Chapter 63

  Chapter 64

  Chapter 65

  Chapter 66

  Chapter 67

  Chapter 68

  Chapter 69

  Chapter 70

  Chapter 71

  Chapter 72

  Chapter 73

  Chapter 74

  Chapter 75

  Chapter 76

  Chapter 77

  Chapter 78

  Chapter 79

  Chapter 80

  Chapter 81

  Chapter 82

  About The Author

  Rosie Dell had come to end it. For keeps, this time. She let herself in the back way, like she always did. Walked up to his ground level apartment from Clifton beach, the sun fizzling out in the Atlantic like a cigarette in a gutter. Glimpsed her reflection – a blur of brown skin and tangled black curls – as she unlocked and rolled open the concertina steel gates that covered the glass doors to the bedroom. That's how they lived in Cape Town, these rich whities. Behind bars.

  He was waiting for her. Lying on the bed in his suit pants and Italian shoes, silk shirt unbuttoned at the collar. Face featureless in the gloom. Rosie threw his keys onto the sheet beside him.

  "I can't do this, Baker," she said. "Not any more." When they were alone he was always Baker. Never Ben.

  He said nothing, stood and came toward her. Used his bulk to press her up against the wall, the kiss sucking away her words of protest and her resolve. Baker's hands were under her skirt, lifting the cloth above her waist, sliding her panties down her legs. He shed his shirt and she could feel the hot weight of his flesh. She thought of Kobe beef fattened on beer.

  When they were done it was night. Rosie sat down on the bed, still dressed. Baker stood over her, silhouetted against the light from the corridor. She heard the teeth of his zipper meshing.

  "Pick up the keys," he said. She felt the cool brass beneath her fingers. "Put them in your pocket."

  She did as he said, her wedding band clinking on the metal. Thought she caught the flash of his smile in the dark.

  Rosie watched him walk down the corridor into the brightly lit sitting room, shirtless, the pale skin of his back streaked red from her fingernails. His naked torso was hard with fat, like a seal. Not even my fucken type, she thought, as she always did. Whatever that meant. But when he was near, some kind of fever took her. Something beyond reason. It wasn't his money. That she would have understood. Worst thing was, she knew she'd be back for more.

  Baker was standing beside the Picasso sketch of a bull, pouring Scotch from a decanter, when the two men came in from the direction of the front door. Black men, dressed in blue overalls. There had been no sound, so they must have had a key. One man was big, young and nervous-looking. The other small and older. Calm. Both held guns.

  Baker set the decanter down on the polished chiffonier and raised his hands level with his shoulders. Spoke in the assured tones she'd heard him use many times at boardroom tables. "Okay. Let's keep this cool. Whatever you want. No problem."

  The small man shot Baker in the chest, the gun coughing through a silencer. Baker dropped his hands and went down on one knee. He was turning to look at her when the next bullet entered his right eye and sent part of his skull onto the wall behind him. The man shot Baker once more as he lay on the carpet and his body jerked.

  All this took maybe five seconds. Rosie sat in the dark. Frozen. Then the older man looked into the bedroom and saw her. She pushed herself up from the bed and slammed the door, turned the key in the lock. Heard a pop
and the wood splintered beside her hand as a bullet bored through and buried itself in the mattress.

  She jabbed the panic button on the wall. No sound in the apartment but it would be ringing in a control room somewhere, bringing men with guns. Bringing paramedics. Too late for Baker. She ran out onto the patio, into the night. The security gates were locked in the sitting room, holding the men.

  She heard them kicking down the bedroom door as she crossed the tiles. Heard the thin wood tearing. Hurdled a flowerbed and hit the pathway to the beach at a sprint. Leaving her sandals behind as she ran, the paving rough on her bare feet. Feeling for the keys in her jacket.

  Heard that coughing sound and something spat next to her foot. The pathway twisted round shrubbery and she was at the gate. High wall. Humming strands of an electric fence. A motion-sensitive spotlight kicked in, pinning her. Battled to get the key into the lock, fingers shaking like a Friday night boozer. Heard the drumming of footsteps.

  Fok, fok, fok. Her tongue finding the Afrikaans of her childhood. Fingers finding the slot.

  Opened the gate and she was through. Slammed it locked as the men came into view. The older one lifted his pistol and a bullet sang past her head. She chased her shadow into the darkness of the beach, felt the sand gripping her feet. Fought on toward the water's edge where she could run more freely, her breath coming in rasps, louder than the surf. Sprinted from Second Beach to First.

  Rosie saw a group of teenagers in baggies and hoodies on their way up to Victoria Road, bodyboards under their arms. She fell in with them as they climbed the stairs, zigzagging between beach bungalows that sold for millions in dollars and euros. The boys were sharing a joint, a firefly dancing from one face to another. She was older than them by fifteen years but they looked at her with interest.

  One of them said, "Hey."

  She said "Hey" back and he held the joint out to her.

  Rosie took it, sucked on it, felt the familiar heat in her lungs. She released the smoke and handed the joint on. They were up at the road now and she scanned the area. Dog walkers and night joggers. No men with guns.

  She left the kids at a rusted minibus and crossed to where the silver Volvo was parked under a light. A car guard in a cap and a day-glo green bib gave her a wave. He was an engineer, a refugee from somewhere in Africa. She always tipped him. Not tonight.

  Rosie sat behind the wheel of the car. Numb. No shoes. No panties. Felt the stickiness between her legs as she started the engine and drove home to her husband and her children.

  "I busted Nelson Mandela's black ass. You're looking at the reason he got sent to prison. I changed the course of history and that is no word of a goddam lie."

  Robert Dell, head thick with lunch wine, slumped in the passenger seat of the Volvo – not asleep but not fully awake either – haunted by the memory of his father's voice from deep in his childhood: loud, overbearing, marinated in Jack and Coke and unfiltered cigarettes. Defiantly West Texas, like Tommy Lee Jones in a lesser role. He hadn't seen his father in twenty-five years but his voice was right there in the car, unwanted fragments of Dell's past circling him like bats.

  He sat up. Glanced at his wife concentrating on the road as she steered into a sharp bend, heard his children laughing in the rear. Dell looked out at the sun. Let the bright light burn the bad shit away.

  They were driving over a narrow mountain pass, road switchbacking its way down to a far valley, a sheer drop falling away to Dell's left, the small town where they'd eaten lunch lost behind them. Franschhoek, an hour out of Cape Town, always reminded Dell of a movie set: vineyards encircled by mountains, gabled white houses built by Huguenot settlers god-knew when, gift shops and pretentious restaurants with French names. Over lunch Dell had flattened a bottle of red wine, trying to blur the edges of a fucked-up couple of days. Not surprising that his father had spoken to him, after yesterday's news.

  "You okay?" Rosie asked, eyes on the road.

  "Ja. Too much vino."

  "Hell, you were really hammering that bottle." Shot him a smile. Smart schools and college had smoothed out the guttural accent of Rosie's childhood, but he could still pick it up on the roll of the 'r' – the slight bray of the Cape Flats that was almost Spanish. Rrreeely. Hammerrring.

  "Sorry," he said.

  "Don't be. It's your birthday. Relax."

  His birthday. Jesus, how the hell had he ended up being forty-eight anyway? Dell ran his fingers through his long sandy hair, streaked with gray. Two weeks' beard itching on his face. Mostly silver. Time to thin it out. His wife said his stubble was sexy. Or she used to.

  Dell turned to look at the twins in the rear, strapped into kid's car seats, side by side. Mary and Thomas, five years old, sucking fruit juice through bent straws. Tommy saying that Ben 10 was way cooler than Pokemon. Mary disagreeing. Tommy emphatic.

  Mary said, "Tommy, you're a complete and total idiot." Sounding middle-aged.

  The sun haloed their wild hair, halfway down their backs in dark corkscrews. Their mother's hair. They had her skin, too. Exactly the color of caramel.

  Dell put a hand on his wife's leg, feeling her warmth through the denim. "And you, Rosebud? How're you holding up?"

  Rosie worked on another smile but it didn't take. She was doing her best to give him a treat on his birthday but her heart wasn't in it. She'd been in a dark, interior place since he'd walked in on her two days ago, huddled on the sofa, hugging her knees, watching the early morning news on TV.

  Saying, "Ben Baker's dead," as Dell saw images of cops around a luxury apartment on Clifton and heard the TV anchor announce that Baker had been killed in a home invasion the night before. A robbery gone bad. All too common in Cape Town. Only made the news was because Ben Baker had been one of the richest men in the country. His loot had endowed the arts foundation Rosie headed. He was the reason they were driving in this shiny new Volvo.

  "I found myself looking in my pocket for a smoke just now," Rosie said. She'd quit when she fell pregnant with the twins. "What does that mean?"

  "Means you're stressing."

  Ben Baker dying meant that she'd be out of a job soon. Leaving them both unemployed. "It'll all work out," he said. His words hollow.

  He touched her hand on the wheel. Elegant fingers ending in long nails. Manicured, these days. When he'd first met her, the nails had been kept short, her fingers stained by the oil pigments she'd used to make her giant abstracts. But she'd stopped painting when she became a bureaucrat. He missed the smell around the house. Turpentine and linseed oil.

  Dell looked away from his beautiful wife. Today he was feeling the age difference more sharply than he ever had. He watched the road. The cultivated land had fallen away. Gone were the fruit farms and the vineyards. In the last week a fire had attacked the mountains and torched the fringe of indigenous bush, leaving a post-apocalyptic landscape of rock and gray ash, some of it still smoking. Dell stared over the edge, down to where a dry river bed lay in a narrow gash of a valley. He felt a rush of vertigo and closed his eyes. Too much wine.

  Dell opened his eyes and spoke before he could stop himself. "He's out, Rosie."

  "Who?"

  "My father. He's been released."

  His wife's hands tightened on the wheel. She looked away from the road long enough for him to see distress in those big, dark eyes. "You're kidding me, right?"

  He shook his head. "I got a call from a talk radio station up in Jo'burg yesterday. Bloody ambushed me. Wanted a comment."

  "Why didn't you tell me?"

  "Jesus, Rosie. You've had the whole Ben Baker thing to deal with."

  Her eyes flicked across to him, then back onto the road. "When did they release him?"

  "A few weeks ago, apparently. Let him out the back door, which is why we didn't hear."

  "I thought life meant life?"

  He shrugged. "In this case it meant sixteen years."

  "Think he'll contact you?"

  "No way, Rosie. Don't worry."

  "He's thei
r grandfather." She glanced at the twins in the rearview, still caught up in their TV debate.

  "He knows better than to come near me. And even if he did, you think I'd let him within a fucking mile of them?"

  Mary's radar ears caught this. "Daddy said a bad word."

  Dell turned in his seat. "Yes, Daddy said a very bad word. And Daddy's sorry. Okay?"

  "Where is he?" Rosie's voice edgy.

  "Dunno. I imagine his Right Wing buddies have taken him in."

  "Jesus, Rob . . ."

  "I know, I know. It was rough when he did what he did, being his son. Now it's all going to start up again, isn't it?"

  "You're not your father, Rob." Rosie's eyes were on the road but she reached out a hand and touched his face.

  "No, I'm not."

  He'd taken his mother's surname. Spoke with her South African accent. Practiced a leftist brand of politics that had made him his father's enemy. Sired mixed-race children. But sometimes, when a mirror caught him unawares, he glimpsed the older man staring back at him.

  There was a commotion in the rear. Tommy trying to get Mary's drink, spilling juice over her. Mary shouting, Tommy shouting back.

  Dell turned, yelling, "For Chrissakes, you two, can't you bloody behave!"

  His outburst left a vacuum that was quickly filled by Mary's bawling.

  "Okay, okay, okay. Take it easy," Dell said, fumbling in the glove box for a container of wet wipes. He unclipped his seatbelt and turned around to face his daughter, kneeling on his seat, reaching into the rear to dab at her damp T-shirt. "Relax, Mary, it's only juice."

  "Daddy shouted."

  "I'm sorry, baby. I didn't mean to."

  The girl clung to Dell and he buried his nose in her hair. She smelled of coconut shampoo. He could feel her ribs beneath his hands, small bones shaking as she sobbed. Heart pumping. There was little physical sign of Dell in the twins, but he believed Mary had his nature. Pensive. Sometimes sad. Tom was more volatile, like his mother.