by Roger Smith
“What they say?”
“What you think they say? They gonna kill your fucken ass dead.”
She bent down and picked up the dog, clutched it to her, almost losing it in her breasts, kissing its head. “Come, come, little Zuma boy. Let Mommy give you some nice fish cakes.” She waddled off into the house.
Disco scrubbed like crazy.
chapter 26
THEY LEFT THE SUN BEHIND AS THEY ROUNDED HOSPITAL BEND, driving into a low cloud draped like damp cotton wool over the mountain and the heavily treed suburbs. Leaving behind what remained of Roxy’s good mood, too.
A perfect day for a funeral.
Roxy sat beside Billy in the Hyundai, traveling deeper into the cloud. Billy drove fast but well, seemed to sense gaps in the traffic before they opened, avoiding the minibus taxis that hurtled like scuds toward the Flats. He wore a pair of dark jeans and a white shirt under a black leather jacket. No tie. Wearing shoes, too, a pair of black lace-ups that looked freshly polished.
Light rain splattered the windshield of the car, and Billy flicked the wipers into a slow moan. The rhythm of a funeral dirge. After five years the mysteries of Cape Town weather were no clearer to Roxy. The locals said, being on a peninsula, you got four seasons in a day. Not only the weather changed on this side of the mountain, away from the ocean. Her part of town, still marinating in rich sunlight, had something Mediterranean about it, the feel of the Riviera. But this looked more like England. Houses that wouldn’t be out of place in a prosperous London suburb, sheltering behind oaks.
Roxy dropped the visor on the passenger side and looked at herself in the mirror. No makeup, except for a smear of lipstick. She decided that should go and dabbed at her lips with a Kleenex until they were bare.
She wore a simple black dress. No jewelry except for the crucifix and her wedding band. She’d nearly left the house without the ring, having removed it the day after Joe died. An unconscious act of self-liberation.
She’d felt strangely upbeat over breakfast. After her clumsy attempt at seduction the night before, she’d expected Billy to retreat into silence. But he’d seemed eager to talk, even if it was that macabre conversation about the Sea Point killer. Conversations with Billy Afrika were the weirdest she’d ever heard. Fascinating, though. Sometimes the best stories were the back stories.
Then that cop with the skin like last week’s pizza had arrived with his kid. The interlude with the boy had left her feeling off course and depressed.
Roxy saw a row of cars and a black hearse, parked outside a small Catholic chapel in a quiet, tree-lined street. Had Joe ever been a practicing Catholic? She’d never known. They’d married at a registry office before flying off to Mauritius for their honeymoon. She knew, though, that Joe had wanted to be cremated, so at least she wouldn’t have to endure the graveside rituals.
Billy parked, came around to her side, and opened the door.
“I’ll catch you afterward, okay?” Closing the door after her.
“You’re not coming in?”
“I am. But I’ll hang near the back.”
She nodded and walked toward the chapel. The Hyundai chirped behind her as Billy used the clicker to lock it.
People were drifting into the church. Men in suits, women wrestling down the waistlines of dark dresses they hadn’t worn in a while. They sized Roxy up and held tighter to their men. She scanned the faces, mostly white, mostly middle-aged. Nobody she knew.
An undertaker, a gaunt man in a shiny black suit, materialized from around the side of the chapel, cigarette smoke seeping from his nostrils like his head was on fire. She felt his eyes on her butt as she walked up the stairs. “Abide With Me” warbled out of speakers inside the church, the high notes distorted. She paused at the top of the stairs and looked back. Billy was standing on the sidewalk, watching. He nodded at her. She turned and went inside.
Joe’s coffin, covered in wreaths, rested on a silver bier.
The reality of what she had done hit Roxy and nailed her to the aisle, like the nails in the hands and feet of the wooden Christ that hung over the pulpit, staring down at her in anguish. She felt as if the crucifix dangling from her neck was burning into her flesh.
She forced herself forward.
Jane and her mother sat in the prime mourner’s seats, in the front-row pew. Roxy had never met Joe’s first wife, but she’d glimpsed the woman once at the Waterfront, battling heels too high and too young for her, face fixed in the permanently startled smile that comes with cosmetic surgery. Or maybe she was still shocked that all the nipping and tucking hadn’t stopped Joe from trading up.
Roxy found a seat on the aisle, halfway down. She slid a hymnbook out of the rack in front of her. Flipped though it to distract herself. People around her were standing, and a man wearing vestments and a dog collar took to the pulpit. He had a comb-over, and layers of flesh sagged from his chin, like the bellows of a church organ.
He’d worked hard to achieve what he reckoned was an informal manner, as if that would make the words he spoke about a man he’d never met seem more sincere. It didn’t. He waffled on fulsomely about a man Roxy never knew either: a dutiful husband and father. A businessman.
Off-key hymns were sung. Roxy went into a quiet place within herself, like she was in a floatation tank. Not awake exactly, but not asleep. Blank.
Until she heard the unmistakable moan of Bob Dylan singing “Death Is Not the End.” Jane’s idea of a send-off for her father. It sounded like a threat to Roxy, and she remembered the dream of the undead Joe that had left her screaming. Jane came to stand next to the coffin, mulish jaw raised as if to defy the tears that streamed down her face, pink knees showing under a badly hemmed dress.
Dylan came to an abrupt halt, left standing at the crossroads he could not comprehend.
Jane was sniffing, talking through the tears, about Joe. Was Roxy imagining it, or were the girl’s eyes fixed on her?
Roxy needed air. She left the pew and walked toward the door. Told herself not to run.
It was still drizzling outside, but Roxy was out in the open, breathing gratefully, smelling the ozone. As she walked toward the road, a thin wire of lightning strobed on the horizon.
PIPER LEFT THE taxi at the Mowbray stop, near the station. He was on his way to catch a train through to Paradise Park—it would be emptier and more anonymous than another taxi at this time of day. But first he needed to do a bit of shopping.
As Piper approached Ebrahim’s Superette, a dingy corner store in a sagging Edwardian building, two Muslim men in knitted kufi caps stepped out. One was young, in jeans and Nikes, a patchy beard like a fungus straggling across his face. The other was much older, in a pantsuit and sandals, his full white beard touching his chest.
The young man took off down the sidewalk. The old one was busy closing the door, hanging the hand-lettered sign that said the store was shut for Friday lunchtime prayers.
He barely looked at Piper when he approached. “We closed.”
Piper held out the fifty-buck note. “I just need me some soap.”
The Muslim was about to lock the security gate; then he squinted at the money.
“Okay, but you have to make quick.”
He opened the door and went inside. Piper followed and closed the door, heard the click of the lock as it engaged. The store was typical of those found in the low-rent neighborhoods of the inner city and out on the Flats. Everything from bicycles to clothes, candles, primus stoves and grocery items. Incense and the rich smell of curried meat hung in the air. The small windows were jammed with faded shirts and bolts of fabric, the glass dirty enough to keep out prying eyes.
Piper saw what he was looking for, in a finger-smeared display cabinet beneath the cash register: a range of Okapi knives. This ring-lock folding pocket knife, with a four-inch carbon steel blade, curved wooden handle inlaid with metal crescents and stars, had sent generations of brown men to their graves. Or the emergency room if they were lucky and the knifeman was shoddy in his work.
>
Piper had first held one of these knives in his hand when he was ten years old. And had killed his first man with one a year later. That was one thing he missed in prison: the curve of that wooden handle in his palm. He’d killed men with sharpened spoons or slivers of plastic torn from buckets, but there was nothing like flicking the Okapi open on the seam of his trousers, seeing the gleam on the blade, and putting it to work.
“Gimme one of those.” He pointed into the cabinet, to his preferred model.
The man looked hard at Piper and didn’t seem to like what he saw. “That going to set you back more than a soap.”
“Don’t worry, old man. I got it.”
The Muslim wheezed and coughed as he unlocked the cabinet. He lifted out the knife and handed it to Piper, who weighed it in his palm and smiled his 28 smile. Perfect.
He opened the blade and tested a finger against it. It needed to be honed, but it would do. The next part was pure instinct. He reached across the counter with his left hand and grabbed a handful of the Muslim’s shirt, pulling the man toward him. At the same time he raised the blade so that it hung for a moment at ninety degrees to his body; then he brought his arm down and felt the knife pierce the old man’s chest. Pulled the knife out and plunged it down three more times.
He let go of the Muslim, who slumped across the cabinet, then slid back and fell behind the counter, a smear of blood on the glass top.
Piper wiped the blade clean on a dishtowel that hung on display and slid the Okapi into the pocket of his jeans. He reached over and took the twin of the knife he’d just used and pocketed it, too.
He opened the cash register and grabbed the notes inside. Probably not more than five hundred rand, but enough for his needs. He didn’t intend to be out for long.
Piper helped himself to a pair of dusty sunglasses from the rack on the counter. Cheap plastic knockoffs, chunky black things from the Super Fly days of the seventies. They would cover at least part of his tattooed face. Then he pocketed a bar of Caress bath soap. A gift.
Piper left the store. Now he was going to do what any man getting out of prison does: he was going to see his wife.
chapter 27
ROXY WAS STARTING TO FEEL MORE COMPOSED, WANDERING ALONG A lane of oaks that cut through the old graveyard facing the chapel. Crumbling headstones, dismembered angels reaching up to heaven through long grass.
She heard the tap of high heels behind her and turned to see the African cannibal and the Ukrainian whore approaching through the drizzle. It took Roxy a moment to place them. Not that they weren’t memorable, but a lot had happened since that dinner in Camps Bay, the night it all began.
The whore held an umbrella over her man, keeping his silk suit dry, the rain turning her yellow hair to string. The hair was no longer braided but hung loose, split ends brushing the dandruff on her dark coat.
The cannibal reached out and enfolded Roxy’s hand in both of his.
“Mrs. Palmer. So tragic.” Tragique. The limpid eyes brimmed with sympathy. “All my condolences.”
His hands felt like a cane toad Roxy had found nestling near a scummy swimming pool in Hialeah when she was a kid. She’d made the mistake of picking it up, and it had squirted a toxic goo on her hands, leaving the skin inflamed for days.
She took her hand back.
“Thank you for being here.”
“And to think that we were together. For the last supper.” A shake of the noble head.
Roxy was feeling out of whack anyway, and the last-supper reference nearly had her giggling. But she bit back the laughter. “Yes. Who would have thought?”
The bottle blonde T-boned the conversation. “Your dress, it is a Nina Ricci?”
Roxy nodded. “Yes, it is.”
The whore looked like she was about to rip the dress off Roxy’s back and make a run for the main road. The African elbowed her aside.
“Mrs. Palmer, of course it is difficult to discuss these matters at such a time. But …”
Roxy was staring at him, shaking her head, confused. She looked over his shoulder and saw Billy Afrika standing on the sidewalk outside the church, watching them.
The cannibal pressed on. “That night, I left Mr. Palmer with an attaché case. You remember, perhaps?”
Roxy nodded. She did vaguely recall Joe carrying a case as they walked back to the car. Saw him sling it into the trunk of the Mercedes after opening the door for her.
“It was a deposit on some equipment your husband was going to supply. Equipment my country very desperately needs, Mrs. Palmer.”
Billy was walking toward them. Roxy looked at the African. “I’m not sure I get what you’re saying here …”
“That money, that down payment, was a substantial amount of dollars.” Dollairs. “Money, Mrs. Palmer, that is like the blood of my people. You understand?”
“No. I don’t.”
“I, we, our country needs it back, Mrs. Palmer. At all costs.”
She laughed. Understood why they were here. “Get in line, buddy. And speak to my husband’s lawyer.”
She tried to walk past him, but he put out a hand to stop her. Billy was there, and very suddenly the African had pulled his hand away and was rubbing his arm. She hadn’t seen what Billy did; he’d moved too fast. But it had hurt.
The cannibal was breathing heavily, saying something in French that she was sure wasn’t another expression of sympathy.
Billy took Roxy gently by the arm and walked her away.
“What did they want?”
“Same as you.” He looked at her. “Blood money.”
She stepped away from his hand and headed toward the car, wanting to get out of there before the mourners left the chapel.
MANSON SAT IN the rear of the Hummer, parked outside the high school in Paradise Park. A grim-looking place with more razor wire surrounding it than Pollsmoor. He was waiting for his daughter, Bianca.
Manson had offspring littered across the Flats. But he had a soft spot for this kid, always had. She’d been born a tiger. Just like him. Bianca’s mother had been a good-time girl, who was all sex at sixteen, a used-up tik head at eighteen, and a corpse at twenty.
He’d put the child with his sister, Charneze, over by the tik house. Had Bianca at his place sometimes, on the weekends.
The girl was in the shit again. His sister phoned him and told him to go get her at school. Charneze was too busy cooking—big weekend coming up. So Manson got Arafat and Boogie to drive him over. Didn’t have time for this mess, he had a business to run, but what could a father do?
While he waited, he thought about sorting out that little rabbit, Disco, who was hiding his punk ass away. Couldn’t hide forever. Didn’t think he’d kill him, just carve his initials in Disco’s pretty face, let him walk around reminding everybody not to fuck with Manson.
He looked out the window, saw Clyde’s kid. Jodie. In her netball outfit, close by the fence. Tight little ass in that tiny pleated skirt, didn’t cover none of her goods. She saw him and waved—fucken begging for it—then skipped up to take a shot at the hoop, skirt lifting to show her panties.
He could get any girl he wanted, by choice or force. And he didn’t need the money her mommy was giving him. But it was all about power. Power over the dead cop’s family.
Captain Clyde Adams had been a hard-assed bastard. Proud that he couldn’t be bought. Spat in your face when you tried to bribe him. Made life tough for the Paradise Park gangsters. There had been a number of attempts on his life before Piper got it right.
He wasn’t missed.
And the wife, Barbara, refused to greet Manson on Sundays over at the New Apostolic Church. She always held herself better than everybody else. As if the holy light shone right out her crack.
Manson remembered laughing when some little piece of ass he was screwing—worked at Standard Bank near Bellwood South—came and told him about the dollars going into Barbara Adams’s account every month. All it had taken was a visit or two, Protea Street side
, to persuade Barbara to hand that cash over to him.
Manson had enjoyed making her squirm and beg. And fuck his promise to Billy Afrika; he was going to enjoy this little Jodie, too.
Manson’s eyes moved from the girl playing netball to his daughter crossing the dusty yard toward the Hummer, hips swaying under her short school skirt, tits pushing at her blouse. Way too developed for her age. She had grown up wild and beautiful. So much like her mother he had to squint sometimes to see who he was looking at.
Bianca slid into the car next to him, blowing a pink bubble of gum the size of a balloon. She popped it with a wet smack and started chewing again as Arafat got the Hummer rumbling down the street.
“The fuck’s up with you, Bianca?” Manson asked, trying for a parental tone. Failing.
“Nothing’s up with me.”
“It true about you pulling a blade on some girly?”
“Of course, yes. Any bitch gimme shit, I gonna cut her.”
“What happened?”
“She say my mommy were a bushman. That’s why my hair is like so.” She fingered her wild tangle of curls.
“Okay, that’s a lie, first. And it’s a shit thing to say, second. But you can’t go round killing people, understand?
“Why? You do.”
“That’s different,” Manson said, sensing thin ice ahead.
“Why so?”
“’Cause, it’s my fucken job is why.”
“Okay. But you had to start somewheres.”
“Bianca, you fucken thirteen.”
“So?”
“So, these things can wait a few years.”
“You saying I can only kill some bitch when I’m a grown-up?”
“Ja. That’s what I’m saying.”
“Fuck that. I want me a gun. Shoot the cunts.” She popped the gum. Smacked like a gunshot.
Manson shook his head, saw himself when he was her age. Didn’t understand life sometimes. Why the hell couldn’t she have been born a boy?
BY THE TIME they passed the Waterfront they were back in the sun, and the air had turned thick and hot. The other side of the mountain like a foreign country.
