Killer Country

by Mike Nicol

  Mace could see behind her a framed picture of the Virgin Mary, candles burning either side of it.

  Pylon said, ‘What about girlfriends?’

  ‘At the funeral there were lots of girls. All crying for Manga. All strangers to me.’

  ‘Can we come in?’ said Mace, water beginning to drip off his hair. ‘Just for a moment.’

  ‘Speak to his sister,’ said Mrs Khumalo, giving them a telephone number. Slowly closing the door.

  ‘Great start,’ said Mace in the car. ‘Such a friendly mother for a Catholic.’

  ‘Wouldn’t you be,’ said Pylon, ‘your son made a living heisting security vans?’

  ‘I’d excommunicate him.’

  ‘She probably did.’

  Pylon dialled the number. ‘Miss Khumalo,’ he said, ‘Your mother gave me your number, it’s to do with your brother.’

  She told him she’d told the cops everything. When he told her he wasn’t the cops she said what was his problem? Pylon said, insurance. Manga had his life insured for six figures. She was his beneficiary. Miss Khumalo said her name was Cindy, gave an address in Melville.

  Pylon fired the car.

  Mace said, ‘That pressed her buttons.’

  ‘Money does that,’ said Pylon.

  ‘The reality won’t please her.’

  Pylon grinned. ‘For sure.’

  He gunned it out of Soweto – ‘Not a place to be with the sun going down’ – took the ring road to Ontdekkers, shuffled through the robots along the ridge towards the Brixton Tower. They found Cindy Khumalo in a renovated house in one of the avenues: high wall fronting a street of shedding jacarandas, intercom at the street door. She buzzed them into a damp courtyard, the garden plants dripping.

  Cindy stood at the door all smiles. An expensive stunner dressed down in pink tracksuit. Her feet bare, her toenails green. Mace thought, someone else had green toenails. What was it with women and green toenails?

  She invited them in, sat them down in a sitting room that was all angles. New low-back couches with chrome legs, matching chairs in red. Hi-tech reading lamps bent over the chairs like servants. Chrome and glass coffee table, splatter of magazines on it. And an ashtray: glass inlaid with mother-of-pearl.

  She offered them single malt whisky, a choice of three: Dalmore, Arran, Whyte & Mackay – twelve-year-olds. Or beer. They both said beer.

  Cindy Khumalo brought Stella Artois in the right glasses for all three of them. Said she was a beer girl at the start of an evening. Fetched a pack of cigarettes, held them towards her guests.

  Mace and Pylon shook their heads.

  ‘I have to,’ she said, bringing up a flame from a thin roller bar lighter.

  ‘A Sarome?’ said Mace.

  She gave him the eye. Blew a plume from the corner of her mouth. ‘An ex-smoker and a connoisseur.’ Handed him the lighter.

  ‘Nice,’ said Mace, rubbing his thumb over the rounded corners. Appreciating the featherweight. Handed it back to her.

  She didn’t look at all like her brother to his way of thinking. Except for something in the smile. A charm. The same sort of smile Manga had used stepping into the Vissers’ house waving the thirty-eight around.

  Pylon was saying, ‘Like I said, you are your brother’s beneficiary. Except that when a crime’s involved the policy is void.’

  ‘So you wanna cut a deal?’ said Cindy. That smile.

  Brought out a smile on all those who received it, Pylon and Mace hardly immune. Mace had to admire her cool. Must drive men wild.

  Pylon coughed. ‘We could do that.’

  ‘Ten per cent.’ She took a mouthful of beer, followed it with a draw on the cigarette.

  ‘We’d have to go a bit higher,’ said Pylon.

  ‘Because of the police.’ She studied the end of her cigarette, letting the smoke trickle from her nostrils. ‘Fifteen tops.’

  Pylon and Mace looked at one another. Mace giving the shrug.

  ‘We could stick at that,’ said Pylon. ‘Assuming…’

  ‘I can give you the man with him.’

  ‘Yes. To straighten the paperwork.’

  Cindy took another pull at the cigarette, shallow, hardly holding the smoke, crushed out the remainder.

  Said, ‘You’re good, but not good enough. So, guys, what’s this about, really?’

  Mace looked at Pylon. Pylon held his hands up, nodded.

  ‘It’s personal,’ said Mace.

  She studied him, a gaze Mace was hard-put to hold. Not a blink, a black depth to her eyes, dense as coal. ‘Alright,’ she said. ‘I’ll give you what I gave the cops. Seeing as they weren’t interested. It’s someone called Spitz. Hangs at Melrose Arch. Check out JB’s first. That’s all I know. All Manga told me.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘About three days before he died. Told me he was in Cape Town with this Spitz.’

  ‘That’s all?’

  ‘That’s all I’m telling you.’ She smiled to take the edge off her words.

  ‘You’ve looked for him?’ said Pylon.

  ‘Not my scene.’

  ‘What is your scene?’

  ‘Insurance. Claims investigations.’

  ‘Very sexy, I thought,’ said Mace. He and Pylon at a table in the dining room of the Sunnyside Park hotel, drinking beer. Amstels, not Stellas. ‘Little chi-chi boobs and a small bum. Dainty feet, too.’

  ‘You noticed that?’

  ‘I look at feet. Toes especially. Sucking toes can change a woman’s attitude.’

  ‘You suck Oumou’s toes?’

  ‘The first thing I did.’

  ‘And others? Isa—’ Pylon stopped. ‘Sorry, my brother.’

  Mace finished his glass of beer, shrugged by way of answer.

  The waiter brought their steaks, asked if they’d like to see a wine list. They told him they’d stick with beer, ordered thirds.

  ‘Have to give it to her,’ said Pylon, slicing into the meat’s juiciness – ‘that Cindy was one smart chick.’ He admired the red stain spreading on his plate. ‘This’s what I call rare.’

  ‘Got your number,’ said Mace, saliva welled in his mouth at the sight of the pink meat.

  ‘Think so?’

  ‘Know so. She was playing you. Right from the get-go.’

  The waiter set down fresh lagers. Wished them, ‘Enjoy.’

  Pylon said, ‘I hate that.’

  Mace grimaced, what can you do? He slurped a mouthful of beer, then cut into his steak.

  Pylon chewed, said, ‘This is something.’ He swallowed, sliced off another piece of meat. ‘That Cindy’s too cute for her own good.’

  ‘Probably. Get her into trouble one day.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Why d’you say she was playing me?’

  ‘Weren’t you listening? I asked her. She said she’d used that approach herself once or twice.’

  ‘She said that? When?’

  ‘As we were leaving.’

  ‘Save me Jesus.’

  Pylon’s cellphone rang. He looked at the screen. ‘Oh shit. Treasure.’ Connected. ‘Babe.’

  Mace could hear her saying, ‘I phoned home. Where are you?’

  ‘Babysitting,’ said Pylon. ‘That fertility couple.’

  ‘In a bar?’

  Pylon laughed. ‘Restaurant. They wanted to eat out.’

  ‘What’s their problem?’

  ‘Wanted to see the town, I suppose.’

  ‘His sperm? Her eggs?’

  ‘Oh that.’ Pylon spluttered, put down the forkful of meat and chips he had halfway to his mouth. ‘Not something we ask.’

  Mace heard Treasure cluck disapproval. ‘These people are going to adopt as well, I hope. You should make it a condition. Rich people using us to do this nonsense on the cheap. Like there aren’t enough people on the planet. I don’t like it. People can’t conceive they should adopt. Here, say goodnight to Pumla.’

  Pylon said, ‘Your mom enjoying herself?’ Mace coul
dn’t catch the response but Pylon laughed, said, ‘Pregnancy does that.’ Then said, ‘Oh, yeah, I forgot to tell her, I can’t fetch you from the airport. I’ll get Tami. I’m in Jo’burg all day. Back in the evening.’ He said ciao sisi, disconnected. Forked the food straight into his mouth. ‘A good kid,’ he said through the chew.

  Mace said, ‘What’d she say? That you said, pregnancy does that?’

  Pylon grinned. ‘She said Treasure was puking. Again.’

  Four beers and a cognac down, Mace came out of the shower into his hotel room whistling. Recognised the tune as one that’d been on Mr Short Dreads’s iPod. Matt Ward singing Outta My Head. Thought, huh? Fancy that coming to mind. Maybe it was the possibility of getting into the hitman’s face in the morning. Talk to him about lifting an iPod from a shot man lying there bleeding on a farmhouse floor. Among other matters.

  Then realised he’d enjoyed the evening chilling with Pylon in the lounge. Especially the nightcap cognac that’d gone down smoothly. A long time since they’d spent an evening together. Talking. Remembering. Laughing easily. After all the evenings they’d spent together in hotels grand and sleazy across the continent and beyond. Sometimes bored. Sometimes anxious. The weapons drop or the pick-up always bringing a special kind of uneasiness. Loose gut, Mace recalled, was what they’d called it.

  He had the television on but the sound turned down. The screen filled with Table Mountain, footage of tourists getting off a car at the upper cable station. Mace aimed the remote, brought up the sound. The reporter’s voiceover said the mugger who’d attacked two tourists that morning hadn’t been caught. The camera came up on the two victims, the woman giving her line about being glad to be alive. Next an official held out the theory that the mugger/rapist might be living on the mountain. A composite mug shot filled the screen: savage, stone-eyed, flat-nosed, thick-lipped face wearing a beanie. A standard mug shot. Mace pressed mute. Said aloud, ‘Your time’s coming arsehole, faster than you think.’

  He phoned Oumou.

  ‘Mace, cheri,’ she said, ‘this is so late to phone me. I was worried.’

  ‘You could’ve phoned me,’ he said, ‘anytime.’

  ‘Ah, oui. You would have liked that in the middle of something.’

  ‘When it’s you I’m never in the middle of something.’

  She laughed. ‘Of course not until I phone one day at the wrong time.’ He heard her say ‘Merde’ off-phone. ‘This clay! Nothing will work for me tonight. It is all rubbish.’

  ‘You’re still in the studio?’

  ‘Why not? You are not here.’ Oumou putting a suggestiveness into her tone.

  ‘Pity I’m not,’ said Mace, smiling, catching himself smiling in the mirror. A silly look on his face. ‘Tomorrow I’ll suck your toes.’

  She laughed, lightly, not far off a giggle. ‘You say strange things.’

  ‘I’ve done it before.’

  ‘That was a long time ago.’

  ‘Why I thought it would be a good thing.’

  ‘You have been thinking this during the day? About sucking my toes?’

  ‘It crossed my mind.’

  Again the light laughter rising to a giggle. She paused, came back in a softer voice. ‘Mace, you are alright, yes?’

  ‘I’m fine. I was even whistling.’

  ‘Be careful,’ she said. ‘I do not want to have trouble like that again. To be told that you are shot. Please.’

  ‘There won’t be a problem,’ he said. ‘Promise.’

  Mace heard her sigh, then she said, ‘You must sleep. Go now.’

  After they’d disconnected he realised he hadn’t asked about Christa. Realised he hadn’t thought about his daughter all day. Nor had Oumou mentioned her. He got halfway to phoning back, stopped as he was about to key in the call. Maybe leaving it was better, a sign he wasn’t obsessing. He had a photograph of her in his card holder: Christa sitting on a wine barrel in a blue bathing costume. Her face scrunched in a squint. Serious. Frowning. Her hair shoulder length. The summer before she was shot.

  58

  The next morning the rain had stopped. A blue-sky day. The early sun warming a pungency in the wet vegetation. Mace breathed in deeply, smelt his youth. Smelt freedom. Like after a night he’d run away, slept wild and wet in the hills, never gone back to the home. Freedom and loneliness.

  The reason he stayed out of Johannesburg.

  On the way to Melrose Arch, they stopped at a mall, bought rolls of duct tape from a hardware store and a tenderising mallet, a wooden one, from a kitchen shop. Asked directions to Melrose Arch.

  ‘Easy,’ said the shop assistant, ‘you go down Corlett, take a right, it’s right there.’

  ‘What is it?’ said Pylon.

  ‘Larney,’ said the assistant. ‘You know, everything mixed up like shops and apartments and cafes and restaurants. Full of black diamonds. People with money to blow.’

  They took the assistant’s directions down Corlett Drive until they hit the area. Suddenly out of a suburb into a quarter that could’ve been any city in the world that wasn’t at war, even some that were: people at tables on the pavement.

  ‘The thing about Jozi,’ said Mace, ‘they don’t stop building. Give them a bit of open land, a park, somebody says what a waste, this could be making money.’

  ‘Gold diggers,’ said Pylon.

  ‘Once and always.’

  Mace parked a distance away in the nearest space he could find. They walked into the quarter, Pylon taking JB’s because if Spitz was there the appearance of Mace would disturb him.

  ‘Need to keep the brother cool,’ said Pylon. ‘Don’t want him getting uneasy.’

  Mace went farther into the piazza, found a little place where he could order a long latte. While he waited got hold of Tami, asked her to find the mining magazines on Pylon’s coffee table.

  ‘That could take an age,’ she sniffed, ‘going through the piles.’

  ‘I’m not planning to hold on,’ said Mace.

  ‘And I’m looking for?’

  ‘Any mention of a company called Zimisela.’

  His latte was down to a tepid milky wash when Pylon phoned that the man himself had just walked in, looking very dapper. Lacoste polo shirt, white trousers, moccasins.

  Mace said, ‘Whisper something persuasive to him. I’m there in five.’

  He paid for his latte, his phone rang again: Tami. She told him the one magazine was five years old, the other from two years ago. In the more recent one a mention of a Zimisela Explorations. A news piece about a BEE deal behind the company’s formation.

  ‘What I need to know is who’s on the board?’ said Mace. ‘Try the internet. And go through the older mag see what’s in it.’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘Like what what?’

  ‘Like what’m I looking for?’

  ‘Don’t know,’ said Mace, ‘until you find it.’ He caught her sigh before he disconnected.

  Mace paid for his coffee, ambled across to JB’s, clutching the plastic packet with the duct tape and the mallet. Pylon and Spitz waiting for him outside. Spitz looking none too happy. Pylon standing close to the hitman.

  ‘You have a place round here, somewhere we could talk?’ said Mace.

  ‘It is possible to talk here.’ Spitz not moving, rigid, his hands at his sides. Mace seeing himself reflected in the guy’s shades.

  ‘I don’t think so,’ said Mace. ‘Somewhere private would be better.’

  Spitz said, ‘I have an apartment.’

  ‘Excellent,’ said Pylon. ‘Let’s go there my brother.’

  Spitz had an apartment four floors up with a view north over the suburbs to the new city at Sandton, the distant mountains beyond. On this clear day, a big-sky view.

  ‘Nice,’ said Mace, scanning the décor: modern minimalism not unlike Cindy Khumalo’s. Only difference a mega TV screen, more racks of movies than Mace had seen in some DVD stores. Stacked next to a leather recliner, a number of cases with Thelma and Louise on to
p.

  ‘Haven’t seen this one,’ said Mace, tapping the box.

  ‘They die,’ said Spitz. ‘By flying their car into a canyon.’

  ‘That right?’ Mace deciding maybe the best way to handle the discussion would be on a stool at the kitchen counter, piloting Spitz in that direction.

  ‘Hey!’ said Pylon, picking up a blue iPod, scrolling through the play list. ‘Here’s the killer country music. You’ve got taste, my friend.’ He docked the player in a speaker system, brought up Tindersticks.

  Mace said to Pylon, ‘Probably the stool’s going to be the best option. Nowhere else with a flat surface.’

  ‘Sharp,’ said Pylon, taking a roll of duct tape from the packet. ‘What we’re going to do,’ he explained to Spitz, ‘is tape you to the stool. At your ankles. So that you don’t kick out and fall over.’

  Mace searched through drawers until he found a wooden cutting board. Waved it at Spitz. ‘And your left hand and wrist we tape to this.’

  ‘This business is not necessary,’ said Spitz. ‘If you ask me some questions I will tell you the answers.’

  ‘Sure,’ said Pylon. ‘But you might lie to us.’

  ‘I do not lie.’

  ‘That’s what you say. Most people in this sort of situation have told us that. But this way we know you’re not.’

  Mace’s cellphone rang. Tami said, ‘I can’t find anything in that magazine.’

  ‘Tami,’ said Mace, ‘now is not a good time, we’re busy.’

  ‘You don’t want to know the directors?’

  ‘Quickly then.’

  She rattled off five names. Only the name Obed Chocho meant anything to Mace.

  ‘Have another look through the magazine,’ said Mace. ‘Might have something to do with mining.’

  ‘That’s what it is,’ said Tami. ‘A mining magazine.’

  ‘You know what I mean,’ said Mace.

  ‘Like I can read your mind.’ She disconnected.

  ‘That girl,’ said Mace, ‘has got a tongue on her.’

  ‘Tell me about it.’ Pylon, crouching, advising Spitz it was best he sat still.

  Spitz did while his ankles were taped to the stool.

  ‘You’re a wise man, my brother,’ said Pylon, getting up, next strapping the hitman’s wrist and hand to the breadboard. ‘Not everyone has been so cooperative with us. I appreciate it.’