Payback - A Cape Town thriller

by Mike Nicol

  The fat man was a brand name type, labels all over him. Gold wrist watch. Gold cufflinks. Open-necked shirt under a leather jacket. A short haircut giving a black fuzz to his skull. His cheeks pitted from acne, his front teeth filed to points. Mace recognised the face: Abdul Abdul, on bail facing two murder charges. Assassinations: bullet in the back of the head style.

  The goon wore de rigueur snakeskin lace-ups and a black suit. Mace watched him take up a position beside the door, the way goons did it in the movies. The oddity about him was he was white.

  ‘Matthew?’ queried the woman, frowning at Mace as if she recognised him, shifting her gaze from him to Matthew.

  ‘Mr Matthew Hartnell to you,’ Mace said.

  She swung at him: ‘And you are?’ Some aggression in her face.

  ‘Doesn’t matter. Just accept I’m here.’

  ‘He’s my ad-visor,’ said Matthew.

  ‘A lawyer?’

  ‘Something like that.’

  She extended a hand to Matthew. After he’d shaken she held it at Mace. ‘Mr Advisor.’

  He ignored the sarcasm and took her outstretched hand: cold, firm. ‘Who’s he?’ pointing at the goon.

  ‘A friend,’ said Abdul. ‘Mikey. Say hello, Mikey.’

  ‘Hi,’ said Mikey, his voice flat and nasal.

  Sheemina February and Abdul sat down on the two chairs other side of Matthew’s desk. They placed their cellphones on the table. Mace’s cell was already there, so was Matthew’s. Sheemina February put her attaché case on the floor and looked at Matthew and said, ‘There’s drugs being sold in your club and we don’t like that.’

  Matthew shook his head. ‘Na-na-no way. There’s no shit g-going down. Out of the qu-question.’

  Sheemina February shrugged. ‘Well, maybe that’s what you think, but that’s not what’s happening.’

  ‘I don’t allow d-drugs,’ said Matthew. ‘Not e-even weed.’

  Mace marvelled the kid could say it barefaced. Shades of daddy.

  Abdul Abdul laughed. Sheemina February bent down and took out of her briefcase a plastic bank packet filled with a mix of sticks and pips, flipped it onto the desk. Very casual. Very neat.

  ‘Ganja,’ Abdul said and laughed again, harsh and ugly. ‘Top dagga,’ he said. ‘Bloody first-class weed.’

  Mace raised his eyebrows, but let the bankie lie where it lay.

  ‘Sold to one of our people on the floor last night,’ said Sheemina February.

  ‘I-I’ve only got your w-word for it,’ came back Matthew.

  ‘Of course.’ Sheemina February tapped the bankie. ‘But we’ve no reason to lie.’ They made eye contact: Matthew looked away first. ‘You say you don’t allow this stuff. Then we’re on the same side, Matthew. We’re both against the drugs and the gangsters.’

  ‘Who’re you paying protection to?’ interjected Abdul Abdul, reeling off some names: ‘Twenty-eights? Americans? Pretty Boys?’

  ‘No wh-one,’ said Matthew.

  Abdul gave an imitation of a laugh. ‘Americans,’ he said. ‘Don’t give me any shit. I know.’

  ‘It’s not only the grass,’ said Sheemina February. ‘They’re selling hard stuff too.’

  ‘Im-im-impossible,’ said Matthew.

  Sheemina February took another bank packet out of her briefcase, flipped it on to the table. ‘Heroin,’ she said.

  ‘Could be talcum,’ said Mace. ‘For all we know.’

  ‘Try it.’ Abdul pushed the bankie towards Matthew. ‘Take a taste, my friend, this’s your scene.’

  ‘Believe me,’ said Sheemina February, placing her hand over the packet.

  ‘You have all this,’ Mace said, ‘take it to the cops.’

  Abdul Abdul snorted. Sheemina February smiled vaguely then quickly turned to Matthew.

  ‘This is killing our children.’ She held up the packet of heroin.

  ‘You have the evidence. Call the cops,’ Mace said. ‘The man says he knows nothing about this stuff.’

  Abdul Abdul frowned at Mace and dismissed him with a flip of his hand.

  The vague smile returned to Sheemina February’s purple lips. ‘Mr Advisor, the cops will close down your client’s business.’ She held his eyes. ‘Do you want that?’

  ‘No,’ Matthew broke in. ‘No. The-there’s a way to w-work this out.’

  ‘Good. The simple thing here Matthew is the drugs have to stop.’

  The ‘or’ left hanging. She dropped the packet onto the desk. ‘Right. Here’s how we can help you.’

  ‘You don’t g-get to,’ Matthew replied. ‘Th-the way we work this out is you f-f-fuck off.’

  A quiet, a sudden quiet that went on so long Mace could hear the rumble of the city. He let his glance slide from face to face: Sheemina February amused, Matthew staring at his hands, Abdul with a tic working below his right eye.

  Abdul Abdul broke first, reached for his cellphone and shook it at Matthew. ‘We are telling you,’ he shouted. ‘We are telling you this must stop.’

  Sheemina February put her hand on Abdul’s arm. He flicked her off. Said,‘You think this is fun and games, my friend? You think this is fun and games to have all these drugs? You want Ecstasy? I can push so much Ecstasy down your throat you have a straight trip to hell. You are cheap shit. You are small shit, my friend.’

  Matthew stood up. The goon moved away from the door closer to his boss, flipping his jacket to show a thirty-eight tucked into his belt.

  ‘Wh-what’re you g-going to do?’ Matthew hurled back. ‘Th-throw a pipe bomb in my club? K-kill a whole lot of in-in-innocent p-people like you did at those res-restaurants? B-blow off some kid’s feet just to t-teach me a lesson? Wh-who’s the cheap shit?’

  ‘Be careful.’ Abdul Abdul was standing now, spit catching at the corner of his mouth.

  Sheemina said quietly, ‘Shut up.’ Said louder, but not shouting, looking at Mace throughout. ‘Shut up. Both of you, shut up.’ Mace held her stare, not interfering, holding her eyes until she took them off him. Wondering, had they met before? Like what was her case? Her face seemed familiar. But how? From when? From the old days when there’d been women by the night? As easy as the flow of beers.

  Matthew the drug dealer and Abdul Abdul the assassin shut up.

  ‘Sit down, Matthew,’ she said, ‘sit down and listen to me.’ He did, so did Abdul. ‘Here’s the deal. You lose the security. Centurion and the Americans both. You close down for a week. You speak nicely to Abdul and then we get you back up and running. Nothing different to before, just being done by other means.’

  Matthew gagged, suddenly off the boil, getting only the first part of the words out. ‘Ca-ca-ca,’ he went.

  Sheemina February waited. ‘You were saying?’

  ‘Ca-ca-ca.’

  She turned to Mace. ‘Perhaps you should advise him, Mr Advisor.’

  Mace uncrossed his legs, tipped back the plastic chair. The thing about Sheemina February, he reckoned, was her calm blue eyes in her olive face. Eyes from a Nordic ice land. Untroubled eyes. The sort of eyes you’d remember. Eyes that mocked. Like her smile. The purple of her lipstick against white teeth. Easy to be suckered, to believe she was the voice of reason.

  ‘So?’

  He let the chair drop forward. ‘What’s your percentage?’

  She exposed the tips of her teeth. ‘Mr Advisor, please. Matthew pays for our services. Nothing different to what he’s been doing except we’re cheaper. And we keep him clean. A major advantage.’ Mace got a full smile before she turned to Matthew Hartnell. ‘So, Matthew, what do you say?’

  Matthew said, ‘Ca-ca-Christ!’

  ‘Consider it,’ said Sheemina February, standing. ‘Talk about it with your advisor.’ She slid a card onto the desk. ‘Let me know this afternoon. Before close of business.’ A smile. ‘No call, I’ll take it you’ve declined the offer. Your choice. It’s a free country.’

  She snapped shut her briefcase, picked up her cellphone. The goon reached over and put the dope packets in his
pocket.

  ‘Think hard about it, my friends,’ said Abdul Abdul, pressing his fangs into the flesh of his lower lip. ‘We are worried about you.’

  ‘Goodbye,’ said Sheemina February, and the goon squeezed past her and opened the door. He stepped into the corridor and she followed him. Abdul flicked his wrist to rattle his gold watch strap. He pointed the cellphone at Matthew, raised it to his lips, pretending to blow smoke from a barrel, then was gone without closing the door. Mace listened to the strike of Sheemina February’s heels along the corridor and down the stairs. He stood, shoved back the plastic chair and headed for the door. On his way out, paused. ‘My deal with Donald is to give you protection for two weeks. Let me know what you’re planning.’

  ‘Wha-what d’you think?’ Matthew said. His voice back now, the tremor still in his hands though. ‘You th-think I’m just gonna close up like she wa-wants? Fuck her. Ca-Christ, man, f-fuck her.’

  Mace shrugged. ‘You’re a drug dealer, Matthew. You run a club where it’s easier to score coke than Coca-Cola. More especially, you’re making my life difficult.’

  ‘So f-fuck off too.’

  ‘I would, except this is an obligation.’

  ‘Not to m-me.’

  Mace shook his head. ‘It’s an honour debt Matthew. Something you wouldn’t understand.’

  Matthew pulled a joint from deep in the bags of his jeans and held it to a Bic, drawing long on the smoke. After the exhale he coughed, said, ‘I-I-I don’t wa-want you, ch-china. I g-got pro-protection. Experienced people. El-electronic s-s-surveillance. Metal detectors. The-they’re not g-gonna drop a bomb on me.’

  ‘Dream on.’ Mace’s cellphone rang: Pylon’s name on the screen. While he thumbed him on, he kept at Matthew. ‘Another thing, if I don’t hear from you, your club four-fifteen is when we meet.’ With that was gone.

  ‘Let’s hear it,’ said Pylon in his ear. ‘We got a fabulous new client?’

  ‘A freebie.’

  Pylon groaned. ‘What’re you saying?’

  Mace told him right down to the purple lipstick, saving the best for last: Cayman and Techipa.

  A long silence from Pylon. Then: ‘Save me Jesus.’ Then: ‘You think he knows or he’s guessing?’

  ‘Cayman, it’s possible. Those bankers say they’re like the gnomes but stuff gets out. If someone’s looking.’

  ‘We’ve given no clue. No flash living. So-so business.’

  Mace said, ‘He starts putting this around we’re buggered. Big time.’

  Pylon coming in, ‘What I don’t get is Techipa. Everyone was dead.’

  ‘Someone wasn’t.’

  ‘He started this with the guns? Return of a favour?’

  ‘Yup.’

  ‘I’d forgotten the guns.’

  ‘Was a long time ago in another country. Hadn’t been him it would’ve been someone else. We’d have got them in the end.’

  Except in the end it was Ducky Donald who saved them from what might have been The End with slit throats. As Mace recalled it the Arab wasn’t pleased that his suppliers had hit a shortfall on the consignment. No matter who the partners contacted there was nothing in that corner of the Sahel at that time that would appease their irate buyer. Until a desperate call to Ducky Donald siphoned off the requisite from a cache stockpiled in a Jo’burg mineshaft. Where the RPGs came from Mace never asked. Suffice to say he suspected Ducky Donald was also trading for the SA army. For him business was business. For Mace and Pylon at the time business was revolution. Which came to seem a quaint perspective. Which now seemed positively idealistic, Mace thought.

  ‘We could say no,’ said Pylon. ‘Call his bluff.’

  Mace took the last concrete step into the piss-stink of the foyer. ‘We could, except Ducky isn’t. Bluffing. He’d put it out and that’d be bye bye Cape Town.’

  ‘Nice.’

  ‘Exactly. So much for old comrades. My thoughts: better to bite the bullet for two weeks, what happens afterwards is we come to an arrangement.’

  ‘We can do this?’

  ‘Egg-dancing. What we were so good at. The Pylon and Mace routine.’

  Dar-es-Salaam, 1984: a house up the coast north of the city. Old colonial beach place: shuttered windows, covered veranda round three sides with French doors onto the bedrooms. A short walk off the veranda across the sand scrub onto the beach into a sea, tepid and salty.

  A month they spent there, waiting, playing backgammon, waiting for the buyer to collect. No one around day after day after day. Occasionally a dhow sailing along the horizon. The light pouring down. Only fish and coconuts for food. Back in the house anti-personnel mines, assorted assault rifles, Canadian Sterlings, Mats, Madsens, a few Chinese 79s, sweating in the heat. Sufficient hardware to depose an African dictator. All of it packed neatly into rooms where once the colonials frolicked their white mischief.

  Mace and Pylon were extended, their credit zippo because their middleman wanted bucks on the table. If the deal went bad they could ship the stuff elsewhere, over time. Over time was the problem. Each day increased the risk of bad guys lifting the merchandise without payment. The ordinance sweated. They sweated: at night the egg-dance. Until the deal went solid, and they carried payment away in three suitcases. He who sits it out sits it out. The first time they skimmed a commission.

  Freetown, 1986. On the runway the weaponry being unpacked from a Hercules transport into three UN trucks destined for a warlord in the hills. When a better offer came in. Actually came steaming out of the cane fields in a Land Rover: three soldiers, one driving, two in the back toting Brazilian Urus, a man wearing a DJ in the passenger seat. DJ put down his offer in cash, US dollars, on the bonnet of the Land Rover. Mace counted it. Said to Pylon, ‘Let him have it.’ Happy to fly out on the Hercules toot sweet. Pylon unsure. They confabbed. Pylon arguing, the warlord was a source they’d supplied before. Someone who, if he stayed alive, would want guns again. Mace countered, with a call to their new arms contact Isabella they could make good in two days, three max. Both of them keeping an eye on DJ, standing apart, staring into the middle distance, patiently, while they weighed the pros and cons. Decided in the end to take the cash. DJ headed off, the trucks following. Hadn’t smiled once through the whole exchange.

  In the air, Mace radioed the warlord that the consignment had been hijacked, they’d get back to him with new stock in two days. In two days the warlord was dead. Mace and Pylon egg-danced, diverted the new consignment whistled up by Isabella to Sierra Leone. The Mace and Pylon routine. A large wad wired to their Cayman account.

  ‘You guys!’ Isabella had said. ‘If it wasn’t for me you’d be dead. Or worse.’ More truth in it than Mace had ever wanted to admit, fancy footwork notwithstanding.

  ‘Stay flexible,’ he said to Pylon. ‘Especially where Ducky Donald’s concerned. Be cool. Don’t think too much about what he’s holding.’

  ‘We could move the account.’

  ‘We could. Best option for now is to play it his way.’

  Pylon agreeing, wanting to know, ‘Are you going to come in at all today?’ - as Mace crossed Harrington into the car park, Cuito angling towards him, a grin breaking ear to ear.

  ‘Got to collect Oumou to see a house. Pick up Christa from school. Maybe later this afternoon. If not, Club Catastrophe four-fifteen. Could turn out to be somewhere you can take Treasure clubbing.’

  ‘That being high on Treasure’s list of to-dos.’

  ‘Chicks want these jives.’

  ‘This’s a mama with a daughter the same age as your’s we’re talking about.’

  ‘Still a chick.’

  ‘Treasure wasn’t a chick. Ever.’

  They disconnected. Cuito stood grinning as Mace jiggled the Alfa’s keys from the pocket of his jacket.

  ‘Those people you come to see are the Muslims?’ he said.

  Mace shifted down his sunglasses to squint at the Angolan over the frames.

  ‘They come here yesterday. Drive around. The fat one he goes
up the stairs.’

  Mace juggled his keys from hand to hand. ‘What makes you think I want to know that?’

  Cuito laughed. ‘I have my eyes.’

  ‘You know the thin guy who’s got an office up there?’

  Cuito nodded.

  ‘Tell you what, you see those people again, you call me.’

  ‘For how much?’ he said.

  ‘It’ll be worth it.’ Mace took out his wallet.

  ‘Also at the club?’

  Mace laughed. ‘Cuito you know things.’

  ‘Many things, Mr Mace,’ he said, his fingers closing another ten into the palm of his hand.

  3

  Mikey, in the passenger seat of the white Toyota said, ‘In the Yellow Pages there’s a place called DAWG, that has cats. In Hout Bay.’

  The coloured guy driving said, ‘DAWG, has cats?’

  Mikey kept his finger on the advert. ‘Why not? It’s a pseudonym, Val. Like PAGAD.’

  ‘An acronym.’

  ‘A what?’

  ‘That’s what it is. DAWG stands for something. An acronym. Pseudonym’s something else. Like Madonna.’

  ‘Madonna with the pointy tits?’

  ‘She’s not doing that anymore.’

  ‘No? Shame, hey.’ He glanced at the advert. ‘Says it’s got kennels. People bring their pets they don’t want. Same as the SPCA.’

  ‘Sounds okay, long as it’s got cats. You heard Abdul. Cats. Has to be kittens.’

  Val took the Constantia off-ramp, the signs pointing to Hout Bay over the Nek, a drive he liked taking on a Sunday afternoon with a new cherry. Drive around the peninsula: sea one side, mountain the other. A1 impressive. Romantic to any chickie. Under the oaks, up the hill all the larney mansions left and right down the narrow curvy road into Hout Bay. Only thing that spoilt it, Val reckoned, was the squatter camp, Imizamo whatnot, some tongue twister like that perched right there on the mountain at the entrance, a weeping pit of human stink, their raw shit washing down every time it rained. You could understand whiteys in the valley getting upset.