The Score

by HJ Golakai

  “I … ummm …” Chlöe frowned, glancing around the floor space, craning her neck.

  “I’m sorry ma’am, you look a bit confused. If you explain, perhaps I –”

  “No, I’m sorry, it’s –” Chlöe broke off with a waving of hands, as if warding off a horrid memory. “I hate to make a fuss, but customer service is so important to me.”

  “As it is to all our staff. What –”

  “Is it? Is it really? Because I came here a few days ago, Tuesday, was it the Tuesday when we …?” She snapped her fingers repeatedly, eyeing Vee.

  “Mmm-hhmmmm,” Vee nodded slowly, in the weeds. “Tuesday. When it all went down.”

  “I was here. I don’t remember you.” Cynthia squinted. “Monday I wasn’t.”

  “Monday then. Yes, Monday! Didn’t I take my time off work to come here, based on all the incredible things I’ve heard about African Bank, to get treated like rubbish? I wanted information about a loan for my friend here,” Chlöe squeezed Vee’s arm, “who’s like a sister to me, a sister. Even though all we can obsess over in this country is race, we can’t move on. I can’t tell you how many black friends I have. We can’t afford to be racist.”

  “No!” Cynthia’s eyes nearly popped free of her expertly made-up face. “No, never.”

  “But the way I was treated, yoh! Her mother Mavis was our maid and she grew up with me, the same way as me,” Chlöe thumped her chest with pride, “so when she needed a loan to open her hair salon in Khayelitsha, I offered to help. She didn’t finish school, her reading isn’t the best, so of course I did. But when I came on Tuesday –”

  “Monday,” Vee whispered.

  “Yes, Monday. The woman I dealt with, or should I say who thoroughly dealt with me. She barely gave me advice, she wouldn’t even look at the application, she said I must bring the person, bring valid ID, bring what-what, I mustn’t waste her time.”

  “Hhayi, who did that? Who?” Exorcised of forced professional civility, Cynthia’s squaring of shoulders all but punctured her crisp sleeves. Armed with a name, she marched off like an army general and disappeared behind a wall partition briefly, emerging at a stomp with a flustered employee at heel.

  “This is Xoliswa Gaba, one of our loan consultants. You said she’s the one? Did you refuse to serve this lady?” Cynthia’s scowl looked ready to pulverise. “Did you not give her a proper consultation about her application?”

  Mouth ajar, Gaba stared around the clutch of faces.

  “That’s her. Sorry, I just … when I see her and remember our encounter,” Chlöe released a laboured breath, pressed her hand over her mouth. “This is the new South Africa, okay!” she jabbed an accusatory finger at the still-bemused consultant. “I can’t do this right now. It’s …”

  She whirled for the door and Cynthia quickly laid a hand on her arm, pleading for a second chance with a different consultant. Vee grabbed the moment to eyeball Gaba, held her gaze in iron grip and twisted, watched with satisfaction as she finally caught on, her facial muscles slackening then tensing as realisation sunk in.

  “Let me take care of them,” Gaba blurted. “Please, I can handle it.”

  “Handle it. Handle it very well,” Cynthia snapped, moving off with crisp steps.

  “Let’s get some air, shall we,” Chlöe said brightly, pushing outside before any objections arose.

  “Hairdresser in Khayelitsha?” Vee hissed out of the side of her mouth.

  “It’s working, isn’t it?”

  “What the fuck?” Gaba spat before the door properly shut.

  Not breaking swagger, Vee and Chlöe walked over to the alcove round the bend, mere steps away from the entrance, forcing her to follow.

  “You think you can mess around where I work?”

  “That’s rich coming from you, to be honest,” Chlöe arched.

  “Exactly. You came to my house, so.” Vee looked to the ceiling, fingers snapping. “No, wait. You broke into my house.” She folded her arms.

  Xoliswa Gaba had the countenance of one well familiar with the art of lying and had been for a long time. Not lies of necessity or even self-preservation, but the cruel variety. The kind that slapped out of nowhere, or ducked and dove till the bewildered opponent was left holding the short straw. Twin indents curved on either side of her mouth, deep commas that twitched ever so slightly as she ran the gamut of whatever mental calculation she had going on. The rest of her face was implacable.

  “You’re talking nonsense.”

  She clearly knew how to be quick, the lightning aggressor, so Vee was quicker. She nudged Chlöe aside, grabbed Gaba’s upper arm, squeezed, surged with sweet revenge at her wince, gasp, yelp of ‘ahhhhh!’

  “Jissis, Vee! Don’t –”

  “Whassat, hehn? You think I’m stupid?” Vee leaned into Chlöe’s restraining grasp, just enough to convey a threat but no more. “Don’t take me for fool. Hot day like this, you wearing a cardigan, for what? To cover your damn bruises, that’s what. The only reason I didn’t report you to the police is ’cause I can’t prove nothing.”

  Gaba flicked up her middle finger, drawing a derisive click across her palate. “Bitch. Otherwise what –” She lunged. Vee sidestepped and smacked her hand away.

  “Stop!” Chlöe ducked and shouldered between them. Like a panicked referee she shot out her arms, damming potential disaster. Every warning she had was written in her terrified eyes, her heaving chest. Vee felt the wind leave her sails.

  “Look, my friend. This,” she flicked a finger back and forth between Chlöe and herself, “we’re it. Your fifteen minutes, all of it. For now. And it won’t last long, trust me. You think it was tough to find you? We know the cops have run their questions by you. Then wait till the real tabloid cockroaches descend, then you’ll really be grateful we got to you first.” She picked up no flashes on Gaba’s register. Her eyes dropped to a squint. “Hey. You comprehending what I’m telling you?”

  “Fuuuuuuccck,” Gaba slowly, almost elegantly, raised her middle finger again, “yooouuuu.”

  “Holy Moses. The creature speaks, but not sense.”

  “Oi!” Chlöe said. Arms still up and out like a goalie in the post, she crooked her shoulders and stretched her eyes at Vee in a ‘what the hell?’ gesture. “Xoliswa, it’s in your favour if you give us an exclusive of your side of this, because let’s face it, there’s no running away from it.” Carefully she dropped her arms, winded as if from a marathon. “We know the full B&M saga. We interviewed Moloi. She told us a lot.”

  “A lot of lies.” Gaba glared them both up and down, cheeks puckered, mouth commas aquiver until Vee felt sure she was gathering reserves from the very back of her throat to gob at their feet. “Did she mention how …”

  Vee leaned closer, as did Chlöe. The simultaneous adjustment was subtle. Vee barely noticed any more how they both jerked alert at incoming intel, like towers homing in on a distant radio station, but she caught the barest facial twitch as Xoliswa noticed. Noted the smug tilt of her chin and the flicker of her eyelids as she did so. Girl’s got game, Vee thought.

  “So she told you about my time there. How I did the best work I’ve ever done in my career for them and they fired me. For no reason.”

  “She tells a different version,” Vee replied.

  Gaba waved her away. “They came up with some nonsense charge to smear my name so I would leave on my own. They kept undermining me to my team so no-one would trust me or work with me. I busted my ass for them. They were ungrateful.”

  “According to Akhona, you were far from a model employee. According to her you were very good, true –”

  “I was exceptional.”

  “Fine, for argument’s sake. But far from reliable and wonderful in every respect. You were a polarising influence, instead of holding the team together. You dropped the ball with major accounts.” Vee shrugged. “You got on drugs and lost it. You slept with your boss.”

  Gaba flinched like she’d been slapped. “She shouldn’t
have told you that. That was private. She promised –”

  She shook her head violently, muttering in Xhosa, submerged under subtle facial flickers and twitches as she did another internal readjustment. After a moment she fixed them with the same glare, resolute this time. “She told me to stop harassing them. All I did was ask for my due, and she made out like I was a stalker. She told me we would all discuss it, amicably, and come to a fair conclusion. In the meantime my private record, my past history with them, wouldn’t be open to anybody nosing around for gossip.”

  “Come on. You gotta admit, this goes way beyond gossip. The police are hunting for a murderer.”

  “What has that got to do with me?”

  “You were at The Grotto. Don’t lie. You were seen. So don’t deny that you didn’t go there to –”

  “To what? Murder Gavin?” Gaba snorted. “Don’t be bloody stupid, man. Why would I? For what reason? You think it’s easy to kill a human being, it’s just nje? You think real life is a movie?” Her already full eyes got comically wide, sending her features into comic contrast, milky saucers against cocoa. “Gavin wanted to help me. He made Moloi sit down, listen to me, realise they had mistreated me. He helped. What would I gain with him out of the picture? If anyone needs to go, it’s that bitch Moloi.”

  “Therefore? He’s dead, so who killed him? Moloi?”

  Xoliswa Gaba threw her head back and hooted long and hard. “Please,” she snorted, “don’t waste my time. I’ve laughed enough for today.” Square manicured nails brushed lint off her cardigan’s sleeve with a dismissiveness that suggested she had Moloi in mind while she did it. “She’s soft. Fuckin’ town mouse. She wanted me to go away, and it was simple to make me happy. No-one had to die over it.”

  Vee sighed. “Look. Let’s examine what you’re trying to get us to believe, which doesn’t gel. I don’t care how fantastic you were, you were still an employee. Not a business partner. If they fired you, they fired you. Why would they give a damn about setting things right now?”

  “Oh, they weren’t doing it out of the goodness of their hearts. I forced them to hear me out.”

  “Forced them? Like how you forced me? Or Gavin?”

  “Hhayi wena, don’t twist my words! Made them stop brushing me off!” Abruptly her focus shrank away like a frightened puppy’s from a shoe. She seemed to be tunnelling away in her mind, dark eyes distant as she brushed a hand over her scrape-back of locks. Nimble fingers twiddled and adjusted woven lengths of hair. “Listen.” She looked at each of them in turn. “What … what’s this worth to me?”

  “Worth?” Chlöe interjected. She spread her arms. “Are you mad? It’s worth clearing your name. It’s worth knowing the real story gets out there. That’s about what the truth is worth.”

  Gaba fired a round of irritated clicks. “Be serious. Who gives a shit about the truth?” She took her time winding a curled tendril back into the fold of her bun to her satisfaction. Then she drew her thighs together and clasped her hands in front of her, reminiscent of her manager’s stance. Vee imagined those thighs crushing her spine into ice-cold linoleum. The small of her back twanged at the memory.

  “You want a story? Let me give you a juicy one. You guys are here chasing me, but I’m not your story. You think you know my background because Akhona told you some lies, but,” Gaba flipped a shrug, mouth downturned, “Gavin, Akhona herself, a lot of businesses around here, those are your gangsters, the fraudsters. You know how much dirt is behind them?”

  “Business is always dirty. Welcome to reality,” Chlöe quipped.

  “Absolutely.” For the first time, she awarded Chlöe a nod that showed she acknowledged her presence and input. “Let me tell you what I had on them to make them listen.” Her fingers unclasped, re-twined. “They were fake. Both of them, their set-up, all the empowerment bullshit, it was all fake. They had a lot to say that they weren’t living up to and when I found out, it pissed me off. I guess … in their defence it’s impossible to make a profit and still live up to all this hype floating around, not completely anyway. Everyone plays the game, puts up their fronts and it all keeps spinning.

  “I was talking to a friend – no, no names,” her raised finger quelled them both, “and we were going on about how easy it is to get away with so much in this country. She told me the horror stories, the underhand companies that issue ‘certificates’ for businesses. Real cut-and-paste specials, awarding points on compliance elements that just made the final scorecard look damn fishy. Now B&M is getting up there and Gavin was a well-connected guy. But it still got me thinking …”

  Vee narrowed her eyes. “Wait. Are you saying B&M is a total fraud? Their accreditation, the whole model company, it’s fake, they’re fronting?” She ran a hand over her forehead. “It can’t be. That’s huge. The whole tender thing … they scammed their way in … but how? Why would –”

  “Someone would’ve known,” Chlöe muttered, also to herself. “Unless it was an internal thing. They bribed somebody. That’s a lot of somebodys. How –”

  “How come Gavin wound up dead?” Vee shook her head to clear it. “It doesn’t make sense.”

  Up flew Gaba’s hands like a schoolteacher restoring order. “Slow down, my sweethearts. Don’t get ahead of me.” She smirked again as she picked flecks off her cardigan’s sleeve, clearly in her element. Vee gritted her teeth, stomping down the urge to lunge at her again, this time rip her wounded arm clean off and thump her smug face in with it. Chlöe must have read her mind because she shot her razor darts that poured cold water all over her coals.

  “Gavin wasn’t stupid. He just did what a lot of small companies do. You don’t have a lot of start-up capital to play around with, you cut some corners, don’t be too obvious, it’s small fry, who even cares. Maybe he was sloppy in the beginning. It was long before my time, but there was enough to pick up on by the time I got there. I mean, please, hiring Akhona! She barely had a degree in anything when they really took off, and I can tell you it wasn’t no B&M, it was Berman Financials, period. He needed a black face as a co-director and major shareholder and she was it. If that’s not the oldest front in the book I don’t know what is.” She eyed them like she wanted to be sure they were keeping up. “But Gavin wanted to play with the bigger boys, and you can’t mess about if that’s your lookout. Akhona’s got more degrees, managerial course this and financial economics that certificates than you can fit up your rectum. Like I said, I wasn’t there in the early days, but I bet you she could barely cut it and now she can walk the walk. Sjoe, what, now she’s chairman, director, CFO, all wrapped in one!” Gaba pattered her hands together, smile acrid over the empty applause. “I can’t begrudge her all that. She played the game well.”

  “Get to the point,” Vee spat.

  “The point is, he knew the game too,” Gaba spat back. “You think he’d have reached this level with a rubbish certificate, no self-assessments, poor track record, so everything could blow up in his face when he most needed the returns? Never. He was all about the prize, the gold medal. And if he had to sacrifice something big for something huge, he wouldn’t hesitate. He bought himself the image, wormed his way in with the right political friends and got their contracts, kept his ear to the ground. Guess that was his problem … greed. Greedy people make mistakes, mistakes they forget to clean up before they start chasing the next thing.”

  “He cocked up somewhere. And you caught it,” Chlöe breathed.

  “You must be the one with the brains,” Gaba trilled. Vee managed only one threatening step before Chlöe headed her off with a shoulder and an arm around her waist. “I’ve got two words for you: consultant scam. Since Ms Moloi wants to tell tall tales about me, ask her about that. Let her tell you what kind of business they were running. If not for my loyalty they wouldn’t be all zhooshed up now.”

  Vee blew an impatient breath. “You haven’t answered anything. That still doesn’t tell me why he wound up strangled, with my scarf mind you, landing me in a mess. You had
something on him, you needed him. So why’s he the one dead?”

  “Yoh.” Eyes shut, Gaba tapped her fingers up and down the crease between her brows. “For a journalist, you really don’t know how to ask the right question.” She lowered her hand, crossed it over the other under her breasts. “You still haven’t asked me what you’re dying to know.”

  “What the hell you were looking for in my house?”

  “Viva!” Gaba pattered her hands again like a delighted child. “Now we’re getting somewhere.” Her mouth commas twitched like crazy as her jaw muscles shifted and hardened, petrifying her face to a mask. The whites of her eyes absorbed and reflected the ceiling’s artificial lighting till they seemed to pulse fluorescent, alien orbs against the backdrop of her dark skin. Vee and Chlöe scuttled a few steps back, like frightened cockroaches from a very big shoe.

  “One,” Gaba lifted the index finger of one hand, “plus one,” she lifted the other and brought them together, “will never make five.” She smiled. “Good luck, ladies. I hope you find what you’re after. Word of warning – you have no fucking idea what you’ve just gotten yourselves into.”

  “Wow.” Chlöe looked from Gaba’s retreating back to Vee’s face, then back again just as the bank door suctioned shut after her. “Never mind what the technical term is. That chick is flipping bats.”

  Chapter Twenty-four

  It was the kind of morning that earned Cape Town’s weather its schizoid reputation. Seat reclined, Vee inhaled spoonfuls of tepid, dense, briny soup into her lungs as the fog bombarded, a mass of wispy invaders that swallowed the parking lot. Beaten at last, she rolled up the window, propped open the print-out of Richard Fish’s report – could she even call it that? – against the steering and found her spot again with a finger.

  From what I could salvage after I overrode the encryption, this disk contains fragments of code, pieces of a software program written some time ago. It looks pretty elegant, not exactly genius or mind-blowingly original –