Killer Country

by Mike Nicol

  He took it, feeling the oily fleece under his thumb, strands coming away. ‘It wasn’t nice.’

  ‘And you didn’t know your mom at all?’

  ‘The story is she threw me away. Someone found me in a rubbish bin.’ Mace saw Christa’s eyes water. ‘I’m joking. That’s what they used to tell me but it probably wasn’t like that at all.’

  ‘It happens in stories.’

  ‘Not all stories.’

  They walked back to the car and Mace put up the hood.

  ‘Sometimes,’ said Christa, ‘I pretend you’re not my papa. That there’s another man in Maman’s village that’s my real dad.’

  ‘Why?’ said Mace. ‘Why’d you want to think that?’

  ‘So I’m like Pumla.’

  ‘Really?’ said Mace.

  ‘No,’ said Christa coming up to him, holding her arm against his. ‘We’re different colours.’

  ‘Pumla’s black like Treasure.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘So you’re not dark, not the same colour as your ma. Has to prove something, doesn’t it?’

  Christa thought about it, grinning at him. ‘One girl calls me latte.’

  ‘And you do what?’

  ‘I don’t freak out about it. I call her vanilla ice.’

  Mace laughed. ‘Yeah, well. Nothing wrong with latte. It’s all the rage.’

  They drove off, Christa plugging herself into her iPod and Mace thinking he might do the same to the tunes of killer country in the iPod that Pylon had thrust on him. But before he settled in for the ride, his phone rang: Judge Telman Visser.

  ‘You checking on me, judge?’ said Mace.

  ‘Yes, if you put it that bluntly,’ said the judge, a laugh in his voice. ‘No, to put it politely, but so that I can advise my father.’

  Mace nodded to himself, not amused. ‘All as we agreed. Right now I’m staring at the Karoo.’

  ‘With your daughter?’

  ‘You got it.’

  ‘I wish you hadn’t, Mr Bishop. I wish you’d listened to me.’

  ‘Why, judge? What’s the big deal?’

  ‘Unnecessary exposure, I think is the term.’

  ‘You don’t mind risking my life.’

  ‘Security’s your business, Mr Bishop. And you know how to take care of yourself.’

  Mace thought, bugger you china, said, ‘Meaning I don’t know how to take care of my daughter.’

  ‘I didn’t say that.’ He paused but Mace didn’t come in. ‘Nevertheless, enjoy your stay.’

  ‘We will,’ said Mace, and disconnected.

  He was about to wind up the first of the Killer songs, Johnny Cash with ‘The Man Comes Around’, when his phone rang again: Pylon.

  ‘Listen to this,’ Pylon said, ‘two guys in a white BM have just gone into the tunnel. Drove out of Obed Chocho’s place forty minutes ago.’

  ‘Where PI Buso was on a stakeout.’

  ‘It just so happens. I’m going to sms the registration. Belonged to a scrapped Toyota. I got pictures too.’

  ‘Tell the cops.’

  ‘I have, for what it’s worth.’

  ‘There’s a law-abiding citizen.’

  ‘Don’t take the piss,’ said Pylon. ‘You never know what’s going to come in useful. And just so’s you’re on the nail, the short dreads brother’s the one from the hospital.’

  ‘Why’d I guess that,’ said Mace.

  ‘Captain,’ said Manga. ‘There’s a Merc behind us, big black job, black dude at the steering.’

  Spitz lowered his sun visor to check in the vanity mirror, the mirror and the back of the visor sprayed with dried blood. ‘Aah, this is shit.’ He shouted it, staring at his own face behind the blood.

  ‘What?’ said Manga. ‘What the…?’ – looking up at the stains on the visor.

  ‘I told him,’ said Spitz, ‘there must be no blood in the car.’ Spitz thumping the dashboard with his fist. ‘No blood.’

  ‘Okay, captain, okay,’ said Manga. ‘I’ll pull in at a garage, we can clean that mess, okay. Relax.’ Leaning over and flipping the visor up, glancing in the rearview to see the black Merc one car back. ‘What we gonna do about this guy? In the Merc?’

  ‘I told him,’ said Spitz, ‘there must be no blood.’

  ‘Right, that’s right,’ said Manga. ‘We’ll get it cleaned.’

  Couple of blocks later at a suburban shopping mall, Manga pulled into a petrol station. Spitz was out, cracking a menthol from a packet before Manga had switched off. Manga waved away the petrol attendants, tearing a length of paper towel from a dispenser. To Spitz he said, ‘Just cool it. Okay, captain, be together.’ The Merc he noticed cruised past, the driver not giving them a moment’s attention.

  When the visor was clean, Manga said, ‘That suit you, captain?’

  Spitz looked in, still unhappy. ‘He said he would lick it clean. That is what he should have done.’

  ‘Come on,’ said Manga, ‘we’ve gotta go.’

  They got into the car and Manga took off gently, Spitz striking up another menthol. ‘Blood in a car is no good.’

  Manga kept shut-up.

  They turned out of the suburb and headed for the highway in steady traffic. At the on-ramp, Manga moved into the fast lane, nodded at the car’s response. One thing about a Beemer, it had guts in its early life. He put foot. Five kilometres later, he glanced in the rearview mirror to see a black Merc locked in behind them. The black Merc with the black dude in his dark glasses.

  Manga said, ‘What’s this, captain? What’s this brother’s problem?’ He pointed at the rearview mirror. ‘Behind us. That guy again.’

  Spitz lowered the sun visor using the tips of his fingers, angled it to get the car in the vanity mirror.

  ‘What’s he want? What’s he following for?’

  Spitz turned to get a better look, and the Merc driver made a gun of his hand, pointed it at them. Spitz thought, the second time in an hour someone had done that. Then he recognised their follower.

  ‘He was at the hospital. He was probably a security.’

  ‘So what’s he doing here?’

  Spitz shrugged, straightened himself in the seat. ‘Maybe he is the sheriff to see us out of town. Like in the Western movies.’

  ‘Funny, captain.’ Manga pulled his thirty-eight from the holder in the door, laid it in his lap. ‘Security guards don’t drive big Mercs. They don’t follow people.’

  Spitz crushed his cigarette, flicked the butt out the window. Ahead were the mountains. ‘Go through the tunnel,’ he said. ‘Then we will see.’

  When the Merc turned off at the approach to the tollgate, Manga whooped. ‘Maybe we’re ritzed, captain. Maybe it was nothing.’

  ‘It was the security,’ said Spitz. ‘Do not get too happy.’

  Mace listened through the song list: Don’t Let Me Go, I’ll Follow You Down, The Wound That Never Heals. Watched the road slipping under the bonnet of the Spider as they crossed the brown unfolding landscape, and thought about Rudi Klett. About the hit job in Berlin, about the shooter taking out the German not twenty hours later. A case of what goes round, comes round. Like some sort of justice. Some sort of moral universe.

  Some sort of bullshit story more likely, he reckoned, giving Emmylou Harris’s Snake Song a couple of repeats for the sake of her voice and the melancholy. If this was a hitman’s iPod then he was a shooter with a taste in music Mace appreciated.

  The thing about Rudi Klett was about who’d known he was on the flight. Also about how they’d got to know. If it wasn’t one of Klett’s spook enemies, had to be something to do with Pylon’s golf estate scheme. Which meant the office was wired again. Because he and Pylon’d got casual about getting in the sweepers regularly. Which meant not a moment went by when someone wasn’t working out an angle to wire the office just on the off-chance.

  You had to consider the connections though: a hitman taking out Lindiwe Chocho and a main player on Pylon’s syndicate, popping their German backer, then turning u
p on the road heading north. Somewhere behind them. And what to be done about it? Bloody nothing. Time was in the camps he and Pylon might’ve, would’ve reacted differently. Pulped the man’s hand to find out what was happening. But Pylon’d let this one slip, was sniffing at the dirt, not even talking about getting involved. Why? Because maybe it was too much effort. The way Mace felt too.

  Mace felt Christa tapping him on the arm, unplugged an earphone from his ear.

  She said, ‘What was it like being an orphan?’

  He laughed. ‘You’ve been thinking about that all this time?’

  ‘Not all the time.’

  ‘You’re sweet.’ He reached over to caress her cheek with the backs of his fingers.

  ‘So, tell me.’

  ‘Lonely. Sometimes I wanted to hurt people. Sometimes I did.’

  ‘Like how?’

  ‘Like hitting them. When I was little. Once I tried to stab a priest.’

  ‘Papa!’

  ‘With a pencil. Not something I’m proud of.’

  Christa said nothing. Mace could hear Johnny Cash singing in the earphone over his shoulder a story about shooting a man for no reason, just aiming at him from the cover of some rocks and squeezing off a shot. Taking him down. Going on the run, getting caught, now heading for the electric chair. Killer country music.

  Christa said, ‘Papa, have you killed someone?’

  Mace heard Johnny Cash say, ‘I hung my head, I hung my head.’ He took his eyes off the road, turned to his daughter. She wasn’t looking at him, didn’t turn to meet his glance, kept her gaze straight on.

  ‘I’ve had to,’ he said. ‘Ja, when we were fighting a war.’

  She thought about this. ‘With a gun?’

  ‘Sure. With a gun.’

  ‘The one you’ve got?’

  ‘No, not with that one. I haven’t shot anyone with that.’ Not that he hadn’t wanted to. The two Yanks that had killed Isabella he could’ve shot with no blow-back. No hanging his head in shame.

  ‘Why, papa?’

  ‘Why what?’

  ‘Why did you have to?’

  ‘Because otherwise they would’ve shot me. Simple as that. Shot me and Pylon, actually. In a war it’s what happens, you shoot people. In this case it didn’t have to be but that’s how it turned out. If they’d played it straight it wouldn’t have happened. They would’ve paid, we would’ve given them what they wanted. We would all have gone away happy. But no. They got greedy. Wanted to keep their money. And they reckoned there’s just two of us, there’s five of them so what the hell they can take us down easily. So while I’m counting the money and not looking at what’s going on, one of the five thinks now’s the time to do it, and shoots at me. Bam. Bam. Twice. From I don’t know, maybe four, five metres away. Missed by a mile. Then there’s this moment’s silence, this silence where you can’t hear anything, absolutely nothing, no insects, no birds, complete quiet before he lets the whole clip run. A bloody Czech Skorpion, but it must’ve been the first time he’d shot it because the bullets went every which way. Now the others start shooting. Pylon starts shooting. I’ve fallen on the ground and start shooting. For I don’t know how long, not long, thirty seconds, a minute, no more than that because we’re all out in the open, in this clearing in a forest, with nothing to hide behind, so it couldn’t have been for long but for whatever time it was, it was crazy shooting. Felt like an age but it couldn’t have been. These things always seem longer than they are. I don’t know. Say, thirty seconds. Anyhow when it stopped we were the lucky ones. Perhaps we shot better than them. I don’t know. It’s just when the shooting stopped, three of them are dead. The other two made it to their truck and drove off.’

  Christa said nothing. Mace glanced at her but she was staring out at the scrub and flat-topped koppies rising in the distance. He caught his own shaded eyes in the rearview mirror, raised his eyebrows, wondering what it was his daughter made of his life.

  ‘You still want to shoot?’

  She took her time about replying. Said, yes.

  They stopped for a fast food lunch at a joint attached to a petrol station in the middle of nowhere. Parked the Spider in what small shade the building cast.

  Christa frowned, hesitant. ‘We’re going to eat here?’ – looking around at some long-haul trucks, goats browsing among car wrecks in the veld, five ragged children sitting in the dust watching her.

  ‘Sure,’ said Mace. ‘Toasted cheese and tomato sarmies and a Coke float, more ice cream than Coke.’

  She followed him inside to a table in the window, the children still watching her.

  ‘They’re looking at me,’ she said after they’d ordered.

  Mace called the waitress back, asked her to send out three packets of deep-fry chips to the kids. The woman shrugged. ‘They eat better than me.’

  Mace eyed her wide backside and thought not. He shielded his mouth with his hand, whispered to Christa, ‘They’re probably her kids.’

  Christa looked at the group. The eldest, about her own age, got up, went round the back of the building and the others followed. They were barefoot, white scratches on their legs. Mace watched his daughter: the intensity of her gaze, her shoulders easing when the children were gone.

  ‘You can relax now,’ he said.

  She held her nose. ‘We’re going to stink of cooking oil.’

  Mace laughed. ‘The hazards of travel. Hey!’ – he pulled the iPod out of his pocket, unpopped his earphones. ‘Plug yourself in and listen to some serious music’ – searching through the playlist for Lilium’s ‘Lover’.

  Christa listened all the way through, so loud he could hear the slide guitar. At the end she said, ‘He killed her, didn’t he? Up on the mountain.’

  ‘Sounds like it,’ said Mace. ‘But what about the music?’

  ‘It’s okay,’ said Christa. ‘For country.’

  Mace leaned back mock-horrified. ‘Where’s your soul, girl?’

  ‘Papa,’ she said after the waitress had clattered down their toasted sandwiches, slopped their drinks, ‘when those soldiers shot at you, was that because of guns?’

  Mace bit into a quarter of toast, chewed. ‘Why d’you ask?’

  ‘Pumla said you and Pylon sold guns.’

  Mace nodded. Not exactly the sort of conversation he wanted to get into. ‘Uh huh. That’s what we did.’

  ‘Like gun-runners?’

  ‘Gun-runners.’ Mace laughed. ‘What d’you know about gunrunners?’

  ‘Lots.’

  ‘Tell me.’

  ‘That they’re not nice.’

  ‘I’m not nice?’

  She spooned ice cream from the glass, not looking at him.

  ‘Okay. What else?’

  ‘This DVD. In life skills class they showed us this DVD of men selling rifles to children.’

  ‘Life skills?’

  ‘You know like I told you that woman with the one leg told us about drugs? That’s life skills. Last time a woman told us about gun-runners. She had this DVD where children shot people in villages. Shot women and little babies.’

  ‘She showed that to you? To your class?’

  ‘I cried,’ said Christa.

  ‘I didn’t do that,’ said Mace. ‘Okay. Pylon and I didn’t do that. We didn’t sell guns to children. Also it was a long time ago. Before you were born. What we did was sell guns to soldiers because they were fighting wars. Wars to free their people.’ He moved to sit next to her, put his arm around her. ‘We gave up selling guns, C. We protect people now.’

  ‘It felt like I was being shot again,’ she said.

  Mace clenched his jaw, an old anger twisting in his stomach. He tightened his hug, drawing Christa to him.

  They sat for a time looking out at the children playing with a soccer ball, kicking it between themselves and to the truck drivers. Occasionally cars pulled into the petrol station but mostly the petrol jockey sat smoking in the sun, a ghetto blaster at his feet tuned to a hip-hop station. Mostly no one s
topped here, mostly the big horse and trailers came blaring through non-stop with three long toots on the horn. Somewhere, at the back, among the thorn acacias and the kapok bush, Mace knew would be a group of small brick-and-tin houses. Dogs lying at the doors. Women inside cooking. Litter, bottles, metal scrap scattered about. He’d seen it everywhere. Variations of it. It made him jumpy.

  ‘Let’s go,’ he said, standing. ‘Let’s hit the road.’

  ‘Doesn’t mean I don’t want to learn to shoot,’ said Christa.

  Manga and Spitz sat down at the table while the waitress removed the glasses and plates.

  Spitz watched the man and his daughter get into the red Alfa Spider and pull off. He recognised the man, the car too. More specifically he noticed the blue iPod the guy’d been attaching to his earphones.

  Manga said, ‘They don’t do burgers.’ He flicked at the menu with his fingers. ‘Yo, captain, what sort of place doesn’t do burgers? Cheese. Cheese ‘n tomato. Bacon and peanut butter. Toasted or plain. But no burgers. They’ve got chips. I can smell chips. The place stinks of fry oil.’

  Spitz remembered what Sheemina February had said, ‘I’ve got pictures of the man who’s not the target. The one with him is. No collateral, okay?’ The same man wiring into a blue iPod. Like the one he’d lost. Like the one the security had at the hospital. The security in the big Merc.

  Manga was saying, ‘Anywhere you go in the country whites want toasted cheese and tomato. If it’s not a burger place, it’s cheese and tomato. What’s with them they always wanted cheese and tomato when they drove across the country?’

  Spitz said, ‘Do you recognise that car?’ – pointing at the Spider accelerating onto the road.

  ‘It’s an Alfa,’ said Manga, squinting against the light. ‘Hey, captain, like the one at the airport.’

  ‘I think so,’ said Spitz. ‘And the driver has a blue iPod. The same as mine was.’

  ‘Coincidence,’ said Manga. ‘Has to be more’n one red sports car. Certainly there’s plenty of blue iPods.’ He turned back to the menu. ‘They’ve got beer.’ Grinned at the waitress, ‘Hey, mama, bacon and peanut butter, toasted. Brown bread, for health. A Black Label. What you say, captain?’