by Andrew Brown
THREE
RICHARD WAITED IN the congested traffic, drumming his fingers on the steering wheel of the luxury car. The engine was overreactive and impatient, shuddering as it crawled along the highway, the rev counter jerking and dropping with every slight touch of the accelerator. He had been thrilled, like a young boy again, when he first took delivery of the sleek Mercedes SLK 280. The unlimited power and racing-level acceleration promised an end to the tedium of traffic, and the low-cut form and sporty two-door look suggested both youth and success. Before it had arrived, he had daydreamed about driving the German car, silver and gleaming, soaring like a bird past other commuters slumped in their threadbare sedans. The gauche salesman had spoken about kilowattage and torque and deceleration curves: V6 engine, 2996 cc, torque 221 at 2 500, zero to a hundred in 6.3 seconds. Richard had taken care to remember the statistics, so that he could rattle them off nonchalantly while suggesting to admirers that the car was just a ‘plaything’, simply a lowly means of transport in his already bedazzled world. And for the first few weeks his parking bay had garnered longing looks and low whistles. For a blessed while, he had felt satisfied. He had bought an expensive pair of Police sunglasses, some racier music CDs and, as a playful touch, a small green gecko that clung rakishly to the back window. The tyres had squealed pleasingly as he pulled into the parking garage. He had revved the engine a little more than necessary, announcing his morning arrival.
But a few weeks later his partner and friend David Keefer had bought the new Porsche Cayenne 4×4, with sparkling metallic paint and towering wheel hubs. Despite its massive solidity, it retained a sleek look, like a stalking predator. Everyone had wanted to sit on its smooth yellow-brown seats and listen to the surround-sound speakers that enveloped you in pitch-perfect notes. David chose some pretentious classical remix, with high-strung violins and a thudding bass beat, to show off the full range of the system. Richard had to confess that the effect was awe-inspiring. The seats were wide and embracing, with generous legroom.
‘Now this is the way to travel in Africa,’ David announced, as if the tall ginger-haired man planned to drive anywhere but from his sea-view home to the office and back. Richard’s SLK seemed a little tame next to the grand lines and chunky off-road tyres of the Cayenne. ‘Three-point-six-litre engine, you know,’ David added, and then nodded unintentionally towards Richard’s sports car parked alongside. ‘Quite good ground clearance, too,’ he mused. Richard had glared at him, but his friend’s bumbling personality nullified any hint of malice.
David had expressed his concern that if he put his wave-ski on the colossal car, it would scrape against the neon lighting rods of the parking garage. The worry was genuine, but it also exposed Richard’s low-slung vehicle, whose only problem was clearing the sunken kerbstone in his driveway without tearing the car’s belly open. David might just as easily have been querying whether a new brand of condom was not perhaps too small for his substantial girth. Richard was dismissive and suggested, unkindly, that a few broken lights seemed a small price to pay for the enjoyment of such a manly vehicle.
His irritation was further compounded when the firm’s new ‘partner of colour’ – as the senior partner Selwyn Mullins was inclined to refer to Igshaan Solomons – had arrived in a new two-door dark-blue sports Bentley. Richard had never seen anything quite like it: the paintwork was so rich it looked wet, as if you could sink your arm in up to your elbow. It was a long, sturdy vehicle with doors that stretched nearly all the way to the rear wheels and began way in front of the seats. The back window was tiny, the wheel hubs rising up to make way for the implausibly large wheels. The light leather was hand-stitched and the interior was finished off with real oak inlay. A large crest on the bonnet announced the car’s pedigree.
Richard asked him about the specs: ‘Oh, I don’t really know,’ Igshaan had responded blithely. ‘Us darkies don’t really go for data; we’re more into the styling. Doesn’t that colonial dashboard look hilarious?’ The man’s droll attitude towards the car infuriated Richard.
Carmen, the receptionist with big, silky eyes, was the first to slide into the passenger seat. Igshaan grinned as he held open the door for her, putting on a Cape Flats accent as if he were the doorman of a Bonteheuwel minibus taxi. ‘Net vir jou, my lekker lady.’
‘Oh, feel these seats,’ she crooned as she stretched out her legs in front of her. ‘And so much space. This is a car that you just must have sex in.’ She giggled, her tanned breasts wobbling beneath her stretched top, and rubbed her hands over the leatherwork. The car smacked of pretension, but Richard still found himself peeking at it out of the corner of his eye, even months later.
He sat now in his own cramped vehicle, feeling caged like a domestic pet. As he waited for the cheap Korean runabout in front of him to move, he felt none of the vigour that he had hoped for. Instead, sitting so low on the ground with his buttocks only inches from the tar now seemed ridiculous. He was trapped with this discharge of humanity that escaped the city like pus oozing from a wound. He was surrounded by their jam-packed cars, five, six people to a vehicle, all trying to make their way home. The functionality of their commuting choices jarred with the gaudiness of his, and he thought he saw some passengers smirk as they looked down at him from their elevated taxis and buses. They saw his ageing visage, he imagined, his hair thinning and eyes sagging, driving a young buck’s sports car.
In his side mirror he noticed the bright light of a motorcycle moving towards him in the gap between the lanes. A middle-aged man on a Vespa chugged past him, a stained beard protruding from beneath his helmet. His jersey and lunch box were strapped down on the back of the small seat with elasticised snakeys. He looked like an overgrown adolescent on a child’s toy, his legs splayed like bat’s wings. Some days Richard might have been amused, but his mood was peevish and he felt a wave of loathing as he watched the small machine whine its way through the traffic, wobbling through the heated air between the stacked-up cars. The man’s silly demeanour only highlighted Richard’s sense of his own rectitude, the suffocating self-consciousness that was his mantle and his prison. How free might you be, he thought, once you stopped noticing the eyes of the audience about you? Or stopped caring.
But when Richard saw the yellow-orange light of another motorbike approaching, he instinctively turned the wheel, just slightly, letting the nose of the car drift a few inches to the right, closing down the middle path by a critical fraction. It was almost an unconscious act, unwilled, he would have argued prissily. The driver braked sharply as he realised that the gap was too narrow. The bike drew level with Richard’s closed window. It was huge in comparison to the flimsy scooter that had gone before; its engine block was massive and the surrounding fairings shone fiercely orange. The expression of the driver was obscured by a full-face helmet and dark glasses, his riding jacket zipped tightly around his neck. He twisted the throttle, revving the bike into a guttural roar until Richard’s door hummed in protest. The rider’s thigh was close to the glass and his body towered over Richard in his bucket seat. The unspoken aggression was intimidating; Richard’s hands felt damp despite the air conditioning. Reluctantly, he turned the steering wheel back the other way, and the gap slowly opened as the traffic stumbled forward. With another low growl of the engine, the biker let out his clutch and the bike sprinted past, nimble despite its size. Richard thought he noticed the man shake his helmeted head, but he couldn’t be sure. The bike’s tail light was soon lost beyond the line of metal shapes baking in the afternoon heat.
The traffic crawled around the side of Devil’s Peak. The old English blockhouse stood on its promontory, watching over the bay. The lower slopes of the mountain were marked with pockets of dense pine trees, originally introduced for firewood and now clustered around the white stone blocks of Rhodes Memorial. Richard scanned the grass slope near the road for signs of wildlife. He could make out a small herd of wildebeest lying in the shade, and two Burchell’s zebras standing nose to nose, unmoving. The Park
s Board had shot all the fallow deer brought by Cecil John Rhodes, but the grey squirrels and starlings that had accompanied the colonial powers were still abundant throughout the city.
It would still take him over half an hour to get home, he realised, suddenly fatigued by the day and unenthused by the prospect of another evening at home. He had spent much of the day with Svritsky, trawling through documents looking for inconsistencies that could be used to their advantage. His client had been uninterested in the process, refusing to switch off his cellphone and repeatedly standing up and walking around Richard’s office while shouting in Russian into the receiver. Twice he had used Richard’s landline, barely asking before dialling, and had conducted lengthy and boisterous conversations on both occasions. Richard was sure that the calls were international and made a mental note to adjust the sundries entry in his bill.
Richard’s secretary, Nadine, nurtured a vicious dislike for Svritsky and refused to have anything to do with him. She was a wiry, hard-faced divorcee who smoked incessantly. Yet, despite being constantly away from her desk to feed her addiction, she managed to run Richard’s life with clinical efficiency. She expected others – Richard included – to conduct themselves with a similar degree of competence and was often curt. Lapses in memory, vagueness, confusion – these were all regarded by her as tantamount to full-scale dementia, and her withering ire was unforgiving. She was feared by all the other staff in the office, sometimes even by the partners themselves. Having worked for Richard for over a decade, she and he had reached a working arrangement that kept friction to a minimum. But Svritsky stretched this relationship, sometimes to breaking point. On one occasion, many years earlier, he had stood swaggering at the open door of Richard’s office and told him in a loud voice that he needed to get rid of the ‘bag’ and employ someone with ‘good tits and a wide mouth’. Nadine had hissed at him and promptly disappeared for the afternoon, leaving Richard scrabbling to find a free typist. At the next consultation, Svritsky’s silver-plated lighter went missing after he had left it on Richard’s desk. Richard had no doubt that Nadine had disposed of it in some energetic and terminal fashion.
Richard’s partners were no more enthusiastic about Svritsky. At a meeting a few weeks earlier, Igshaan Solomons had raised the possibility of bad publicity in the media. He had been solemn and patronising, treating Richard as if he were ill-versed in the subtleties of modern legal practice. It was particularly problematic at a time when the other partners were trying to attract a higher level of corporate clients, Igshaan had argued, looking to Selwyn Mullins for approval. Selwyn was the firm’s senior partner and a founding member; like an aged warhorse, he had the experience and scars of a lifetime of legal skirmishes. He typically sat at the head of the conference table at each board meeting while he listened to his children squabble. But Selwyn battled to appreciate the importance of new strategies and the ever-shifting nature of corporate priorities. Communications and PR, internet capability, empowerment imperatives, political correctness – these were concepts that he found difficult to take seriously, and he had Richard’s deepest empathy.
‘These days, all respectable businesses need a good criminal lawyer,’ Richard had quipped, raising his eyebrows at Candice Reeves, hoping for a smile. She stared back at him dubiously.
‘Just don’t let anyone from Quantal hear you say that, okay?’ Igshaan had shot back, looking across to David Keefer and Selwyn meaningfully, as if only he was sensitive to the black-empowerment issues at stake for the firm.
‘Perhaps we should have a back door for my second-class citizens so that they won’t rub shoulders with the elite like Quantal,’ Richard had responded hotly, in a less gracious allusion to the past. Igshaan had glowered, but let the comment go.
Quantal Investments (Proprietary) Limited was a private black-empowerment company. With a prominent struggle activist at the helm, the company had powerful trade union contacts and had established itself on a range of lucrative fronts, rapidly becoming one of the largest private conglomerates. It was now ready to be floated as a public company on the stock exchange. It would be a glittering move, resplendent with political backing and struggle credentials – a flagship of activism in the financial sector, the minister of finance had proclaimed in anticipation. For Richard’s firm, the publicity and sheer revenue from being the listing attorneys firm would be significant; the long-term possibilities for the firm should it secure Quantal’s patronage were immeasurable. It remained the firm’s single most important prospect. Igshaan supposedly had a connection to Quantal’s CEO, which had secured him his position at Richard’s firm in the first place. It was a tenuous contact, but one that he unfailingly brought up in conversation. Nevertheless, Igshaan and David had been tasked with securing the firm’s position with Quantal. The fact that Richard had not been asked was both a relief and a slight, an indication of the firm’s lack of faith in his contemporary sensitivities.
The attempt to woo Quantal had inevitably given rise to lengthy and uncomfortable discussions about whether the firm was black enough, with contorted references to Igshaan’s undefined racial categorisation. Ultimately, it had been decided to headhunt a black partner for the firm (‘A real black,’ Selwyn had blithely muttered in the debate), offering a generous package and immediate full-partner status. The post had been advertised and applications were trickling in. Igshaan advised the partners that Quantal’s CEO had himself acknowledged the wisdom of the move, indicating that, with the right partner, the firm would be viewed as a competitive bidder. He had almost salivated when telling the partners the good news.
But an association with a Russian mobster, if publicised, could discourage applicants and might even scare off Quantal. The dramatic corruption trials had left a pious aftertaste in the media, and a mere suggestion of unsavoury collusion could be enough to poison the public’s view. Yet, the financial benefits could not be ignored, even by Igshaan. Svritsky was a paying client who brought a significant income to the firm, both personally and through his myriad underworld contacts. He provided cash flow for the firm, and Richard’s monthly income targets were both high and paid up. With the closure of their conveyancing department and the birth of dedicated paralegal tax and labour firms, litigious clients who paid their bills were highly valuable.
So the partners endured Svritsky’s presence on their books. But the meeting had verbalised a long-held suspicion on Richard’s part, namely that his partners viewed his criminal practice with disdain and that it would be tolerated only for as long as it continued to generate adequate fees. There was an underlying sense that criminal law was not true law, that it was the poorer cousin to important legal disputes in the fields of commercial and administrative law. Real law played out in the halls of the High Court, before judges and counsel, bedecked in robes and bibs, while criminal law eked out a living in the sordid corridors of the district courts. His partners never asked him about his cases, never congratulated him on any successes and raised the subject of his side of the practice only when the firm’s name was mentioned in the newspapers in connection with some disreputable matter.
Richard had felt it all along, but in the beginning this disregard had not worried him. He had felt exhilarated by the seedy contest that marked a criminal trial. The stakes were always high; the public was interested in the sensational details; the mob often bayed for blood. He had felt like a warrior, an armour-clad gladiator stepping into the open ring, each time facing the monolithic state machinery. Victory had felt personal then. And easy. An astute lawyer facing an under-resourced investigation and uninterested prosecution could exploit the inevitable shortcomings in procedure and gaps in evidence. He had used phrases like ‘where the rubber meets the road’ and ‘the dirty work of justice’ when explaining his work to friends. He saw himself as performing the work that others were too scared to take on. It was he who had disdainfully dismissed commercial law as being manufactured and over-intellectualised.
More recently, though, he had started
to tire of the courtroom confrontation and the relentless, self-preserving versions offered up by his clients. The victories felt less grand and universal, and rather more hollow. One of his clients had come to him seeking advice on an employment dismissal, and Richard had impulsively decided on a foray into labour law. His appearance in the labour court had not been a triumph. He had omitted to make an essential procedural averment while preparing his papers. The application was postponed in order to give him time to remedy the defect, and he had been forced to ask Candice, the associate partner who headed their small labour unit, for her assistance. Sensing his humiliation, she did not raise the issue at any partners’ meetings and discreetly took over the file. Richard shuddered at the memory.
The traffic had started to move along more easily, as cars peeled off the side ramps that took them down residential roads. The road curved around onto the greener slopes bordering the southern suburbs, where the streets were lined with pines, pin oaks and plane trees. He picked up the pace, but still felt unsettled. After consulting with Svritsky, he had met with a juvenile client and his mother. The police had stopped the boy and his friends in a car. Under his seat, they had found a variety of drugs: some rolled dagga cigarettes, a straw of flavoured tik, a tight corner of hash and some low-grade Ecstasy tablets. ‘Hash!’ Richard had joked lightly at his first meeting with the boy: ‘What are you? A throwback from the seventies?’ He regretted his flippancy now; they had made representations to the prosecuting authority based on the age of the boy and the relatively small quantity of drugs, but they were turned down. Richard should not have been surprised, as the escalation of the drug problem in schools had forced the prosecuting authority to clamp down on young offenders.
‘Why can’t they catch the real criminals and just leave our children alone?’ the boy’s mother had whined, rubbing the Lexus badge on her key ring. ‘They were just having some fun.’
