by Roger Smith
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.
chapter 39
ROXY SAT ON A BOULDER, THE SURFACE DAMP AND SLIMY AGAINST her bare legs, the gentle breeze teasing the ends of her hair like a stylist looking for inspiration. Robbie slumped beside her, asleep, his head resting on her shoulder.
The hot night was rich with the smell of salt water and rotting kelp. And something else, something fetid, that wafted over from the homeless woman with the junk-encrusted cart. The woman who had stared right through her, those days on the oceanfront. Not staring now. Asleep in a stinking pile on the sand next to her cart. Roxy almost wanted to laugh at how she’d projected her fear onto that poor woman.
Now her fear had a name: Piper.
And she was the bait on the hook he dangled for Billy Afrika.
Piper stood at her side. Unmoving. His painted face ghostly in the moonlight as he watched Disco, who kicked at a bottle embedded in the sand close to where the gentle waves lapped. The unwavering gaze of an obsessive lover.
Roxy heard a laugh and looked up to see two men walking on the sidewalk above—just a shout away. One man was tall and fat, T-shirt riding high on the belly that jutted over his belt. He was licking an ice cream cone, listening to the short man at his side. The fat man laughed again, tonguing the cone. And the little bantam laughed, too.
If she screamed, how long would it take this Laurel and Hardy pair to react? Her fingers felt for the shard of glass, still wedged beneath the elastic of her panties. Roxy’s eyes were on the men. They were directly above her, still laughing.
“Shhhhh, now Blondie,” Piper hissed, reading her mind. Satin sighing as he folded down beside Robbie. She could see the hard gleam of Piper’s blade as he brought it close to the sleeping boy’s throat.
The men were walking away from her, leaving a trail of laughter that was drowned by the bray of a passing Harley. The bike woke Robbie, and he whimpered, disoriented.
Roxy put a hand to his hair. “It’s okay, Robbie. I’m here.”
His fingers clutched at her dress. “Are we gonna go to the Spur?”
“Yes, Robbie. I promise. I’m going to take you to the Spur.”
“And they’ll sing ‘Happy Birfday’?”
“We’ll all sing it.”
He leaned his head against her, and she put her arm around him, recoiling as her bare flesh brushed against Piper, who was pressed up close against the boy.
Piper laughed. Like a cat puking a hairball.
THE ORANGE LIGHTS that followed the snaking freeway blurred and multiplied into glowworms, exploding against the windshield.
Billy was sweating, his scar tissue alive with a million cigarette ends. He felt the wound in his shoulder throbbing, and he knew the bandage was wet with more than his sweat. The sling stinking of garbage. And blood. Not all of it his own. He was feverish, on the verge of delirium. Burning up.
Then he was sixteen again, Piper throwing the flaming cloth at him. His flesh bubbling on the bone as the boys rolled him into the grave. The sand in his eyes and his nose.
Blackness.
He passed out for a moment, felt Maggott’s Ford drifting away from him, until the blaring horn of a truck scared him awake. He forced his eyes open, fixed them on the road ahead. Trying to keep the broken white line in focus. But the segments were like squirming larvae, and a wave of dizziness hit him again. He fought it hard, pulled the car into the breakdown lane and then onto the shoulder, driving one-handed.
Hauled himself out of the car and gagged, buffeted by the wind of passing vehicles, another horn warning him that he was about to become roadkill. He staggered around to the passenger side and leaned against the car. Doubled over and spewed a hot stream of puke onto the scrappy grass. Felt the sweat dripping from his forehead.
He sagged to his haunches, vomited again. Gasped and wiped his mouth on the back of his hand. He looked up, straight at a white crucifix dangling in front of his eyes. Thought he was hallucinating again, then realized it was a wooden roadside cross, caught in the lights of a passing car. A wreath hung from the cross, flowers dried and dead as the victim. Then gone with the headlamps.
Billy gently tested his shoulder. Agonizing to touch. Bloated and suppurating. Remembered something from his medic’s course before Iraq, about gunshot wo
unds going septic: infection caused gas gangrene that could lead to septicemia and shock and death. Within hours, sometimes.
Saw Doc’s filthy scalpel lancing his flesh. Felt the ooze of the waste from the dump as he lay with the wound open and weeping.
Billy lifted himself to his feet. Slowly. He was still feverish but felt clearer after puking. The white lines lay still. The orange lights marched in twos toward the city. He got back into the car, waited for a gap, then allowed the Ford to drift into the flow of traffic.
His phone rang.
Roxy’s number, but Disco’s voice. “Where you?”
“Past Century City.”
“You know the ramp by Three Anchor Bay?”
“Ja.”
“We’s there. Piper say you come alone or we kill them. The blondie and the kid.”
“I’m alone.”
The line went dead.
Billy drove, suddenly cold, tremors dancing his hands on the steering wheel. He gripped the wheel tight. The shakes were okay. They’d keep him awake.
He saw Piper with Roxanne Palmer and Maggott’s boy. Piper sure that the woman and the kid would make Billy weak. They wouldn’t. This wasn’t about saving Roxanne and the child. It was about saving what was left of himself.
PIPER SAT WITH the stillness that is born of years of incarceration. The stillness of a man who has nothing but time. The child was asleep again. The woman was sitting with her arm around the kid. She was still, too, but awake. Tougher than she looked, that one. Needed watching.
The oceanfront had emptied. Maybe a walker every few minutes. The homeless darky down the other end of the sand was slumped next to her cart like a sack of shit. She wasn’t seeing nothing. Plenty of time now to finish the blonde and the kid. But he resisted the impulse. While they were alive they gave him power over Billy Afrika. Billy was soft that way. Weak as a woman.
It had been Piper’s intention to kill them as soon as they walked down the ramp that led to the small beach at Three Anchor Bay. He’d never been down here before, but this was where the Barbie Doll killings had happened, so Disco said. He was ready to finish the blonde. Looked forward to cutting the boy.
Jesus, he hated kids.
He’d had to sit with the little snot-head close by him in the Benz all the way over, to keep the woman in line. Piper had spent too much time in close proximity to death and other men’s foul bodies to be sensitive to smell, but there was something the kid gave off that disturbed him. Underneath his dirty clothes there was a sweet scent. A smell he couldn’t name. The smell of a young body. Of a child. Something that stirred memories of his brutal early years. Couldn’t call it a childhood. The family who had taken him in from the orphanage had done things to him that still woke him up in the night, in Pollsmoor, like obscene lullabies.
Things with lit cigarettes and barbed wire and broken bottles. And their bodies.
He’d erased most of these memories, but some of them still came to him, hot, fevered snapshots projected onto the air above his bunk. Of course he had grown up to do the same things himself. It was in his blood.
But he didn’t need these memories. Not now. Not on his honeymoon.
So he waited to kill Billy Afrika. Finish that shit once and for all.
Then he could kill the kid and the woman.
And take the blonde’s head and walk across the road to the cop shop and smack it down on the counter of the charge office. Say loud and proud that he and Disco were the Barbie Doll killers. He could already see the flashbulbs detonating, see him and Disco on the TV together. Piper giving the 28 salute, Disco looking like a model. Knew that the D section of Pollsmoor would go befuck when they saw them. Didn’t matter if the cops found the real killer, him and Disco would have done enough to be sent home.
Together. Forever.
Piper stood and walked away from the blonde and the kid, but keeping close enough to stop any trouble before it started.
“Disco.”
His wife stood looking out over the ocean, watching the little pockets of mist that drifted in. The mist had triggered the foghorn, and it was moaning low and deep, still building up to full voice. Disco didn’t hear Piper.
“Disco!” Louder this time. Rough. Like boots on gravel.
Disco turned and came over, face catching the light from the sidewalk above. Piper could see his beauty. Even under the makeup. Piper’s stone-killer heart was soft for this boy. He still didn’t know why, just knew it was so. Like he knew all this would be worth it when they got home to Pollsmoor.
He took Disco’s face in his hand, squeezed it hard enough to bring pain into the boy’s eyes. His idea of affection. Piper smiled at his wife and withdrew his hand. Disco rubbed his face, looked at him from under his hat. Terrified. Piper didn’t mind that. The thing you loved should be scared half to death of you. That’s the only way you kept it.
“I’m going to trust you. Understand?”
Disco nodded. Piper took Maggott’s Z88 from the pocket of his tailcoat and held out his gloved hand toward Disco, offering him the weapon. Disco looked at the gun. Looked up at him. Did nothing.
“Take it.”
“Why for?”
“Take it, I said.”
Disco took it. Letting the weight of the gun droop his hand to his side.
“I want you to sit by them.” Jerked his head toward the blonde and the kid. “You hold that gun on them while I deal with Billy Afrika. If they move, you shoot them. You got me?”
Disco nodded. The top hat almost falling, catching it with his free hand and setting it straight. Piper smacked the hat off Disco’s head, grabbed him by the throat, pulled him so close he could see the spidery cracks in the face paint.
“You do what I say, or I cut you. Understand?”
Disco nodded again. Piper released him, bent and picked up the hat off the sand, dusted it clean, and set it back on the boy’s head. Looked at it, then adjusted the angle a little to make Disco look prettier.
“Okay, go to them now.”
Watched as Disco sat next to the blonde, the gun black against his white glove.
Piper walked across the sand and found himself a spot beside the locked door of one of the boathouses, in deep shadow. From here he looked straight up to the parking lot. Hard streetlight hitting the ramp. He’d have a perfect view of Billy Afrika, who would be looking at the blonde and the kid on the rock as he came down toward the beach.
Wouldn’t see Piper in the dark.
TATIANA, STILL BAREFOOT, ran across the road toward the pay phone at the gas station’s twenty-four-hour store, carrying her slingback shoes. She was almost hood-mounted by a red Ferrari, gave the driver the finger, then hurried to the sidewalk.
She couldn’t figure out what was going on over at the beach. They were doing nothing, didn’t even seem to be talking to each other. She had stood for what seemed an hour now, up above the beach, in the shadows, watching and waiting for some action. Nothing. So she decided to take the gap to call Bertie. Tell him to come on over.
She slipped on her heels and walked into the brightly lit store, clacked over to the pay phone on the wall next to the corn chips. Tatiana saw that the phone was card operated, swore, and went across to the counter.
“Gimme a fucking card.”
The shokolad guy at the cash register, dressed in a stupid red outfit with a yellow cap, took his time. She tapped her peep-toe high heel, shooting anxious glances out the window toward the beach opposite. Not that she could see down to where the blonde and her friends in their bright costumes sat. What was it, this circus shit? She knew the American had been some kind of a fancy model. Maybe this was a shoot. Were they waiting for the cameras?
She needed to hurry, before more people arrived.
The shokolad man slid her the card, and she hobbled over to the phone.
BILLY AFRIKA LEFT the Ford. There were four other cars parked in the lot. In two of them he saw the telltale movements of lovers eating one another’s flesh. Or hookers wo
rking. A dented Fiat Uno, parked under a streetlight, was empty. The fourth car, a Benz 500 SLC, faced the ramp. Also unoccupied.
Billy heard the foghorn, a low bass rumble that got you in the gut, building into a higher-pitched moan like something dying. He crossed the parking lot and saw the concrete ramp falling away from him toward the sand below, contained on each side by stone walls. The ramp just wide enough for an SUV to drag a boat trailer down to the bay.
Near the bottom, under the narrow bridge formed by the sidewalk above, public bathrooms had been carved into the stone. Locked at this time of night. There was nowhere to hide. Once he walked down the ramp he would be backlit, a perfect target.
But he knew that Piper would want him close. Blade length.
So Billy started walking, the Taurus held at his side, shoulder throbbing beneath the sling. His legs still unsteady, the sweat rolling freely—from the heat and the fever and the fear. Not fear for his own life; he was long over that. Fear that he was close to Piper once more, and that he wouldn’t be able to finish him.
As he walked, his shadow stretched tall as a tree in front of him, far more solid and substantial than he was. He saw the sand, heard the soft hiss of the ocean, the water hardly moving in this protected little bay. When he reached the bottom of the ramp he saw a bundle of rags lying beside a supermarket cart that had its wheels planted in the sand. It took a moment for the bundle to take on human form: a black woman sagging up against the cart. Asleep.
Blonde hair caught his eye at the far end of the small beach. Roxy and Maggott’s kid sat on the rocks. Roxy had her arm around the boy. Billy blinked, fought off a moment of nausea and dizziness, sure he was hallucinating again. Opened his eyes. Saw he wasn’t. Roxy was being guarded by Uncle Sam.
Billy stepped forward, crossed beneath the walkway.
