Since I hadn’t lost my mind, I had heard enough to understand where this was going. I became ice, and ice could not smell the lavender in her hair. Or wonder how her skin tasted.
“Ms. Maitlin, I don’t know what you think you’ve heard about me . . .”
“I didn’t have to hear anything.” She laughed. “Sex drips off you, Mr. Hardwick. And if I can see it, the others can, too. Rachel will see it, and you don’t want that. She’ll bounce you off the job before you get started. My manager is Moses to me.”
My face wanted to go hot. I lowered and slowed my breathing, putting an end to that.
“You’re a beautiful man,” she went on. “I hear you’re an actor.”
“Malibu High, some commercials,” I said. “Nothing like you.” To amuse her, I adjusted my facial muscles into “actor” mode. “‘The future looks bright!’ ” I said; the catchphrase had paid my bills for months.
“I remember,” she said in a voice that made me doubt it. Her lips drew into a thin line. “You’ll want to listen to me very carefully, Mr. Hardwick.”
“I’m listening.”
“The spark between us is there. I know and you know. But I’m engaged to a wonderful person. Greek, very proud. He gives me freedom, but he’s old-fashioned. He’s very patient with me. And he is in love with me.”
She didn’t mention that she was in love with him, too. Her fiancé, Alec Dimitrakos, could be excused for an old-fashioned streak—he was twenty years older than Sofia Maitlin. But his two billion dollars went a long way toward erasing wrinkles.
“So I’ve heard,” I said. “Congratulations.”
“I would never do anything that could hurt or shame him,” she said. “And I couldn’t work with someone who might give that appearance. I’m in the process of building a family, which I intend to carry out with the same tenacity that built my film career. Punto.” Period.
“I understand.” I had entered my professional space. Maitlin was testing me again. She wanted to make sure I was thinking about her safety, not her ass. Actually, I approved.
“So you’ll call me Ms. Maitlin, never Sophia. You are not to be photographed walking beside me. I don’t need you to open doors for me or carry my umbrella in the heat. And if you can stop oozing sex, we might work together again.”
I smiled. “I’m not concerned about working with you again.”
She raised an eyebrow, surprised. “No?”
I had a test of my own. “All I care about is you coming back from Langa safe and whole,” I said. “That means I’ll judge my distance from you depending upon the situation. You’ll agree to follow my directions, and trust that I won’t ask for anything I don’t need for your protection. You have your professional and personal standards, and I have mine. I can’t take responsibility for your safety unless you let me do my job.”
Either I had just lost the job, or I had just sealed it. I didn’t know which until Sofia Maitlin smiled. “Agreed,” she said.
I wasn’t finished with her.
“And I can’t take the job if you go to Langa this morning as scheduled, Ms. Maitlin,” I went on. “The driver in the van? I can’t allow an unknown second party to drive us. And I’ve never laid eyes on this orphanage, so I can’t—”
“Roman, my head of security, has left a folder for you,” Maitlin said, ready for my objections. “All that paranoid stuff is on the dining-room table. Information on the driver. Photos. Maps. Schematics. I’ll give you time to digest it.”
“I may need more time than you want to give me,” I said.
“How will we know unless you get started?” she said, winking. “I’d like to get dressed.”
We made our deal without a handshake. Touching her would have been a bad idea.
“Sí, como no,” I said as I turned to go, an homage to her Cuban roots. Yes, right.
“In the next life, guapo,” she said, almost to herself.
With that, my head slightly spinning, I left Maitlin alone with her ocean and the morning sky. We were both actors, but unless she had figured out how hard I was from the moment I set foot in her bedroom, I deserved the Oscar more than Sofia Maitlin ever had.
* * *
Maitlin hires Tennyson
http://www.simonandschuster.com/multimedia?video=87313459001
* * *
FOUR
ROMAN’S RESEARCH WAS meticulous. He had collected the names and photos of every orphanage worker who would be present, attaching their clean police records. He had photos of the two-story Children First facility from several angles, including the front and rear doors, with a detailed risk analysis. The facility reminded me of a well-kept inner-city school, and it had an impressive playground. Brand new. Crime was fairly low in that section of Langa, and local police had promised an escort. I called Langa police to verify that six officers would be waiting.
By ten A.M., I was ready to go.
When I climbed into the front seat with the black African driver and shook his hand, I leaned close enough to try to smell his breath. His driving and criminal records were clean, according to Roman’s file, but everyone has secrets. No alcohol, from what I could tell. Good start. Princess Diana might be alive today if her driver hadn’t been drunk.
“My name is Toto, like the little dog,” he said when he introduced himself. Two missing teeth transformed his smile into a leer. There was an old doll on the passenger-side floor, a nude white Barbie with blond hair cascading down her back. The doll’s grubby face told me that she had brought nameless little girls more joy than her current condition could convey.
“Is Langa home to you?” I asked the driver as he pulled away from the hotel, although I already knew from Roman’s file.
“From birth.” He glanced in the rearview mirror at his passengers with curiosity.
“Do you work for Children First?” Again, I already knew.
“When Mama Bessie calls, we all work for her,” he said. “She knows I don’t lose my head over silly things.” Another glance in his rearview mirror. I couldn’t blame him; I wanted to stare at Sofia Maitlin, too. But I also wanted him to keep his eyes on the road.
“How are things in Langa?” I said.
“You can see for yourself,” he said, shrugging. “It’s Saturday. Burial day.”
While Maitlin and the others chattered excitedly behind us, Toto explained to me that Langa had one of the highest HIV rates in South Africa. On any given week, he said, there are forty burials in a township of two hundred and fifty thousand.
There are contrasts of wealth and poverty in the States, especially in L.A., but somehow it never feels as stark to me as it does in South Africa. When we reached Langa, a hush fell over the van. I almost felt sorry for the passengers trying to process the visual whiplash of African poverty. They sat close to the windows, gaping.
Like I said, in the bosom of beauty, it’s hard to fathom ugly.
A brown dog lay bloated and forgotten at the road’s dusty edge, forage for flies. A skinny boy, too young to roam alone, strolled in scuffed and laceless shoes past the corpse without turning his head or holding his nose. A clutch of teenage boys who looked fourteen and fifteen drank beer in a circle, pouring out the first drops as a libation to ancestors or absent friends. At a makeshift barbecue grill—a barrel sliced in half, propped on its side—a skinned, spotted lamb carcass lay in the sun. When we passed more closely, I saw that the spots on the lamb were a mantle of blue flies seeking shelter and nutrition for children yet unborn.
The man in Maitlin’s entourage made an ewww sound. “Garçon, may I see the vegetarian menu?”
“Like I could eat for the rest of the day now,” Rachel Wentz said.
“Hey, hey, are we at the zoo?” Toto muttered, just loudly enough to be heard. He definitely wasn’t used to driving tourists. I almost smiled.
The van went quiet again.
There are sections of Langa with paved streets, brick homes, and street signs—locals, ironically, call it “Beverly Hills.�
�� Other sections, with blandly painted apartment buildings, look just like American projects. And there were signs of recent improvement; I noticed more colorful murals and newer construction than I’d seen during my last visit. But even in the so-called New South Africa, too many of the township’s residents live in overcrowded hostels, or ramshackle lean-tos built of strips of plywood and corrugated tin. On some streets, Langa looks like the new South Africa; on others, the poverty seems as ancient as the rocks in Tanzania’s Olduvai Gorge.
At the corner, the two-story white brick orphanage stood out on its drab street—a professionally painted sign hanging on a well-kept fence, and walls hosting a parade of convincing Disney characters, although Snow White and her seven dwarves had deep suntans. April would get a kick out of that, I thought, and then I banished her from my mind.
No children were in sight in the large yard behind the fence, but there was plenty of playground equipment. The orphanage looked better off than any of the shabbier buildings in sight, with at least a quarter of an acre on its grounds. It could have been a school in Compton, except for the razor wire.
But when we rounded the corner, with a better view of the orphanage entrance, Children First didn’t look the way it had in the photos.
“Shit, shit, shit,” Rachel Wentz said behind me. My thoughts exactly.
Word had gotten out. A crowd of more than fifty people had gathered, and there was only one white-and-powder-blue police car parked on the street near the gate. As soon as the onlookers spotted the van, the crowd congealed and surged toward us.
Two police officers in dark blue uniforms and caps—one male, one female, both black—were trying to keep the crowd contained. A quick scan didn’t turn up anyone who looked dangerous, but I didn’t like the growing numbers. Doors were opening at homes and businesses up and down the street as more people came running. Soon, our crowd could number in the hundreds.
Toto honked angrily. “Move!” he yelled from his open window, precariously close to clipping two teenage girls as they ran up to the van.
Maitlin didn’t look happy as she craned to peer through her window, where eager palms slapped the glass with cries of “It’s her! It’s her!” It sounded like a hailstorm.
Locals, not media. The only video camera was a small Sony in the hands of a grinning teenage boy who probably had The Vintner etched on his eyeballs. I searched the crowd for more cops, but there were only two.
“Ms. Maitlin, we don’t have the police we were promised,” I said. “If we come tomorrow, I can coordinate—”
“No,” Maitlin snapped, sounding angry. “Today. I’m not turning back.”
“The bodyguard’s talking sense, Sophie,” Rachel Wentz said, playing mother.
But Maitlin had made up her mind. “Pull up,” she told the driver. “We’re going in.”
I didn’t have a choice, at that point. She would have gone in without me.
The female police officer waded through the crowd to the driver’s window, so I leaned over to talk to her. She was probably a rookie; she looked about twenty-three. “I was promised more manpower!” I said, raising my voice over the thumping hands. Would six be enough?
“There is a funeral today, much bigger than expected,” she said, apologetic. “We’re sorry, but there have been some problems. The others are delayed.”
“How long?” I said. I’d just confirmed an hour before.
“Indefinitely, I would say,” she reported matter-of-factly.
“Officer, do you see this crowd?”
Her apology veered quickly to irritation. “What do you want me to do—shoot them with rubber bullets? It isn’t every day a movie star comes to Langa.”
Yeah, no kidding.
“Can you and your partner help us make a ring around Ms. Maitlin?” I said.
She nodded, satisfied with my plan. She motioned for her partner, who was husky but looked even younger than she did. Slim backup, but better than none.
I climbed into the backseat so that I could be the first one out of the van’s sliding door. Four pairs of attentive eyes stared at me as if their lives were in my hands. Tim, in particular, looked terrified.
I didn’t want anyone to get hurt, of course, but I was only one man with one client—Sofia Maitlin. I hate to put it this way, but her entourage, to me, was just cushioning between Maitlin and the bad guys. Strategic cover. I couldn’t protect Maitlin from front and rear simultaneously, so I chose to take the lead, stick close, and wrap her up snugly in her entourage.
“Those are fans, so don’t panic,” I told Maitlin and her entourage. “The police are here to help with crowd control. Here’s the plan: We’ll put Ms. Maitlin in the center. I walk first, Ms. Maitlin behind me—Tim, you’re behind Ms. Maitlin. Until we get in, you’re her shadow. Rachel and Pilar, stay at her side. Walk close together, and don’t stop moving until we’re inside. Any questions?”
Nervous silence. Tim had paled two shades; maybe he’d figured out I wasn’t his bodyguard. He obviously wanted to ask Maitlin to call it off, but he didn’t have the nerve.
I gave Maitlin a reassuring bodyguard’s smile. “I got you,” I said. “Let’s do this.”
I slid the door open and climbed out. Autograph seekers waved paper scraps in my face as I helped Maitlin climb out, holding her hand. The police officers held the crowd back, and the rest of us formed a tight circle as we made our way toward the open gate. It was only a ten-yard walk, but the growing throng made it seem a football field away.
“Clear the way! Make room!” the male police officer shouted. His voice was almost lost in the excited shrieks as Maitlin smiled and waved to the crowd with her pro’s public face.
Someone bumped against me, hard. I spun a portly, wild-eyed man around and pushed him back.
“Sofia! I love you!” he called, ignoring me. On closer glance, he looked sixteen, his scalp covered with tight, tiny ringlets that glistened in the sun. The female police officer gave me a disapproving scowl, so I let the boy go. He panted with elation that he had been within a few feet of Sofia Maitlin. I knew exactly what he would think about when he went to sleep that night.
“Open the gate!” I called out. I couldn’t be a doorman and a bodyguard; my eyes had other work to do. Milliseconds count. The female police officer ran to the gate, keeping it open for us while she barred anyone else from going in.
A glint of light and quick motion in the corner of my eye made me look to the right as a boy lunged at Maitlin. He was screaming something, and I saw nothing but blurred limbs. I moved into the space between his limbs, my palm tapping the point of his chin. His teeth clicked together, and he stumbled back. In that instant my eyesight resolved, and I was able to actually see who I faced: perhaps fifteen, thin as a rail, bright eyed, and with teeth like Chiclets.
And the dark shape he held in his right hand was a black, wallet-size autograph book. Damn. Just a fan trying to get a souvenir. I didn’t have the chance to apologize, because his right hand flashed to his belt to grip the hilt of a seven-inch black blade.
He glared and crouched, holding the knife with an ice-pick grip.
I remembered my Filipino Kali knife training, and the number of times master instructor Cliff Sanders had warned me about proper hand positioning. The reverse grip was for suckers and Michael Myers wannabes. I seriously hoped I wouldn’t have to dance on this boy.
“Go,” I said, giving Tim’s back a shove toward the open gate. I wanted Maitlin clear as long as that knife was nearby. We were closer to the gate than we were to the van. No one else in our group had seen the knife, including the cops. The boy’s crouch nearly hid him in the pushing and shoving gawkers in Maitlin’s wake.
My eyes tricked me as I watched the kid: The slender blade dissolved into a blur as he wove a web in the air, hypnotic and disorienting. Quite a display. He sliced the air two dozen times in three seconds, from every angle imaginable.
But he never lunged at me, and he wasn’t tracking Maitlin. Even when he rose to
his feet, his demeanor seemed more playful than threatening. He was politely warning me off, that was all. And I was receptive to his courtesy. That was us, just two gentlemen passing the time.
I slid back a step as the nearest witnesses in the crowd cheered. He danced, enchanting them with the fastest knife techniques I’d ever seen, his arms weaving like snakes. The boy must have been a local celebrity, because they called his name: “Ganya! Ganya! Ummese Izulu!”
“Boy!” the driver shouted, annoyed. “Stop showing off!”
Ganya, if that was his name, ceased his dazzling display, panting. His smile was thin, tight, proud. Ganya made a little bow to me, then slipped into the crowd.
As I had stood with my back to our party, the others had slipped through the gate. I could only stare where the boy had disappeared. I’m fast, especially when I need to be, but the way he moved was a primer on how to bleed.
Toto, the driver, grinned at my unease, patting my back. “Kids, eh?” Toto said.
Like hell. I would be watching for that “kid” on the way out.
As soon as we crossed the threshold of Children First, the noise was gone.
The orphanage smelled like a school and a home, piles of fresh laundry and well-seasoned, roasting chicken and mystery meat. I would have known it was clean with my eyes closed. The building was brand new, probably less than a year old. Everything gleamed.
“Welcome, welcome,” said the black South African woman who met us inside the small foyer, clasping Sofia Maitlin’s hands warmly. “We have looked forward to this soooo much!”
The woman had full, round cheeks and a whisper of gray hair in her cornrows. Her records said she was fifty-five, but she looked like she could be in her thirties. She was heavy for her height, but she commanded her weight with youthful energy.
Maitlin hugged her as if she were an elder relative. “I’m so glad to be back, Mrs. Kunene.”
From Cape Town with Love Page 5
