From Cape Town with Love

by Blair Underwood

  “So they’re not just gangbangers from South Africa?”

  “No, they’re not. All immigrant groups bring crime with them. The Italians, Koreans, Chinese, Japanese, Mexicans . . . ask the Native Americans and they’ll probably talk about the Pilgrim Mafia. At first, it’s all just criminals organizing to stay out of each other’s way, but they eventually evolve to share political coverage and information resources. The Kingdom followed this model: It’s like a small multinational now. Actually, probably not so small. Some of the leadership is still in SA, but Umbuso Izulu is only the brand name.”

  I flipped through the pages she had given me.

  “. . . [DELETED] has long purported that Kingdom of Heaven’s smuggling operation, based at the [DELETED], has successfully smuggled tens of millions of dollars’ worth of weapons and drugs over U.S. borders . . . [DELETED] first proposed a partnership between the Kingdom of Heaven and Al Qaeda to bring biological weapons through Los Angeles . . .”

  “How firm is the Al Qaeda tie?” I said. “Or is it speculation?”

  “They’re smugglers, and they’re damn good at it, so that’s enough to get our attention. We’ve had a lot of chatter in the past week. Maybe it was just about the kidnapping, but we’re not sure. We don’t like not being sure.”

  Marsha was suddenly using the word we, like Maitlin had when she invited me back into the investigation. Marsha’s we didn’t include me, but maybe she was opening a window.

  I tested the fresh air. “What were we really doing yesterday?” I said.

  “Looking for a trail to the Kingdom of Heaven. We have mutual interests, Ten.”

  “And the Girl Scout who wanted to do a good deed? Isn’t that what you said when you bared your soul to me yesterday? That was a good moment for you, by the way.”

  “Who says it’s not both?” she said. “Nandi’s a two-year-old girl. I used to be one, too.”

  “How did you end up . . . ?” I didn’t finish. The woman in my car had banished the shy, sweet-faced girl I’d known in high school. “You were all set to be an actress.”

  “I am an actress, as you might have noticed. Are you ready to focus?”

  “Promise me you didn’t know,” I said.

  “Know what?” Marsha sounded flustered.

  “You didn’t know Nandi was about to get grabbed.”

  “Of course I didn’t know! You honestly think I would sit back and let that happen?”

  You might, if you thought it would get you closer to your targets. I thought. All I knew for certain was that I couldn’t believe her. But I thought there was a chance I could, just once.

  “Do you know where Nandi is?” I said.

  “If I knew where she was, we’d be there now.”

  The might of Marsha’s bosses hadn’t done any better than we had, and neither had the FBI. The growing futility of our mission deadened my blood.

  “I heard about Paki,” Marsha said, reading my face. “Nelson’s a fool for calling you on your landline. But I guess he’s a big boy.”

  Marsha was still monitoring my phones, but it seemed pointless to nag.

  “Who else has me wired?” I said.

  “Maybe that group we affectionately refer to as the Cowboys In Action. And I’d bet you’re still on the FBI’s radar,” Marsha said. “Nelson’s a pawn. His FBI source isn’t telling him everything. They’re giving you the rope to hang yourself.”

  “I don’t get it,” I said. “With Paki taking off, how can they think I’m a suspect?”

  Marsha chuckled, shaking her head. “You’re screwing with their case. That’s enough. Do I know for sure they’ve got your house wired? Maybe not. But why take the chance?”

  I hoped she was wrong. I could imagine breaking Nelson’s nose someday, but I’d hate to see him blow his career because Dad had asked him for a favor.

  “So, Mr. Sensitive . . . ,” Marsha teased me. “Do you see now why I couldn’t tell you everything? And why I sure as hell can’t tell you more?”

  “Maybe,” I said. “Where was fucking me in your plan? What did that get you?”

  “Orgasms,” she said. “What did it get you?”

  “This is about trust, Marsha.”

  “In my line of work, there’s no such thing. Take it or leave it.”

  “Who was the Asian man?” I said softly, her last chance.

  “Listen to you! Are we back in high school?”

  “I saw you following him, Marsha. You took his picture.”

  “He’s a figment of a sleep-deprived imagination,” she said. “I didn’t notice any Asian guy, Ten, or any other guy except Spider. I saw a long line for the bathroom, darling. I remembered there was another bathroom up front, but once I got closer I could tell it was more packed out there. I gave up. I had to go so badly, I nearly pissed on myself when some fool stranded me on an empty street without a car. End of story.”

  I didn’t quite believe her, but most of me wanted to. I felt my face coloring, warm.

  “Which reminds me . . . ,” Marsha said, her dark eyes steady. Her voice was as calm as her eyes. “If you leave me stranded again, I might shoot you. Pulling that trigger would be a waste beyond words, and I’d probably feel really bad about it later, but I’m just warning you, Ten: I might. That was a bullshit move. And unprofessional as hell. You could have gotten me killed.”

  She was right. Dad had told me stories about soldiers getting fragged for less.

  “I thought you said this was an apology,” I said, touching her cheek.

  Marsha didn’t move away. “I suck at apologies.”

  “Me, too,” I said. “Sorry I left you. It won’t happen again.”

  “And . . . ?” Marsha prompted.

  “Thank you for last night.” I lifted her right hand from the steering wheel, and brushed my lips against her knuckles. “I owe you my life.” She smiled. “That’s what friends are for.”

  She stopped at the red light. I leaned over to kiss her lips, my fingers playing like moths’ wings against the length of her neck. Her tongue was fresh maple syrup. Her heart pulsed as her neck fell back against the headrest. Marsha’s taste was genuine. Her breath couldn’t lie. Her skin was all I really knew.

  “Let’s find our little girl,” I said, cupping her chin in my palm.

  “Tennyson Hardwick, you stole the words out of my mouth.”

  The light turned green. Marsha drove.

  The FBI was probably staking out Paki’s apartment, and I had no doubt I would go to jail if I got caught there. So naturally, Marsha and I zipped straight down Interstate 5 for San Diego.

  I wasn’t filled with hope, but desperation moves were better than no moves at all.

  Spider wasn’t going to stick his head up again. If I could have cloned myself, I would have checked out South African Sun on Melrose, the limo company with the mysteriously missing driver, and a dozen other leads, including Simon—but going after Paki felt like the best move. The FBI had lost Paki, so he was fair game. If I got into Paki’s apartment, I might find something the FBI didn’t know it was looking for.

  Paki was the key, but not just because of whatever connection he had to the abductors, or Kingdom of Heaven—Paki was a piece to an even bigger puzzle that bothered me more and more in new daylight. Was he involved? Planned all of this from the beginning? Made it seem he only wanted passage to America, using Maitlin’s lawyers to get him a visa, just to hook up with his home boys and snatch his own child? Christ, he would have had every opportunity to scope out her mansion, detect her weaknesses, even help plan the party. This was a nightmare.

  But something was still missing.

  Maybe Maitlin and her husband, Alec, had a secret relationship with Kingdom of Heaven. Could Alec’s shipping connections be of use to the international smuggling operation Marsha had spoken of? Maybe the abduction was like the nightclub killing my father had described—an internal squabble that veered out of control. What wasn’t I seeing?

  Whatever the whole truth was,
I hoped it wouldn’t get me killed.

  “You say Kingdom of Heaven has international ties . . . ,” I said. “They approached someone from Pakistan. You mentioned Zimbabwe. Which other countries are they tied to?”

  “You already know more than you’re supposed to,” she said. “Don’t push it.”

  “I’m trying to crack this thing, Marsha.”

  “I’m helping you crack it—but it’s need to know. This isn’t Spies ‘R’ Us.”

  “What about Greece?”

  “Oh, I get it—you name every country, and I eliminate them one at a time?”

  “I’m not playing games, Marsha. Sofia’s husband is Greek. He’s in shipping. Maybe something ties him to the smuggling. What if there’s a connection?”

  Marsha hid a bemused smile by turning away from me, suddenly fascinated by the freeway as we drove. “I love the way you think, Tennyson Hardwick,” she said. “But you’re getting colder, not warmer. Nothing in Greece.”

  “If I can believe you.”

  “Throwing darts at the map won’t help us find Nandi. You’re wondering about Alec Dimitrakos? I wondered, too. Nothing points to him having ties to the Kingdom.”

  Maybe, I thought. Maybe.

  “My guess is . . . ,” Marsha went on after a pause. “The abduction wasn’t a part of the larger scheme of things. Limited international involvement. Paki just has friends in low places.”

  “They sure took their time to look his way,” I said.

  “So I noticed. But as a wise man once told me, I’ll cut Maitlin some slack. This is an emotional time. You think she’s in on it somehow?”

  It wasn’t that. Not exactly. But I couldn’t find words for it.

  “I hope they don’t have a guy inside Paki’s place,” I said, imagining John Travolta sitting on the toilet in Pulp Fiction while Bruce Willis snuck back into his apartment.

  “That would definitely be inconvenient,” Marsha said. “I’m just hoping their guys are easy to make. I’m pretty good at sniffing out feds.”

  “You and that dress might make a good decoy.”

  Marsha’s skin was bare above her breastbone except for a string tied around her neck, so she wasn’t wearing a bra. She looked like dark chocolate in a golden wrapper. No wonder my father had gawked.

  “Thanks for the compliment, baby, but the bureau’s not that easy,” Marsha said.

  TWENTY-THREE

  11:05 A.M.

  We caught some traffic during our one-hundred-plus-mile drive down Interstate 5, but it gave us time to research.

  While Marsha drove, Google Earth on my iPhone showed us that Paki’s “apartment” was a small guest cottage on the property behind a two-story historical Mediterranean in North Park. The view on my screen was crisp enough to show me a potted plant on the house’s windowsill.

  “Shit,” I said, and held my screen up for Marsha to see.

  “Big fun now,” Marsha said. The last time she’d mentioned fun, I’d nearly died.

  I’d hoped Paki lived in a larger apartment building, which would have made it easier to blend in as a resident. I liked the shaded yard’s cover of the guesthouse, keeping it barely in view from the photo, but we had to expect surveillance from the front and the rear, so it would be harder to get close without being noticed.

  “A couple of calls from a throwaway phone . . . a few anonymous Paki sightings might keep the boys busy for a while,” Marsha said. “They might pull out, if they’re at the house.”

  I glanced at her, hoping that was a joke. “We’re on the same team, Marsha. We’re all trying to find Nandi. We can’t muddy the FBI’s investigation—I just want a peek around.”

  Not to mention that it sounds like a sure ticket to a perp walk.

  Marsha shrugged. “Sorry. Habit.”

  “Who belongs on a quiet residential street on a weekday morning? Repairmen . . .”

  “You need a marked truck or a van to sell that,” she said. “And a uniform. No time.”

  We passed a large nursery on the side of the freeway, and the answer came to me in a mental lightning bolt. “Gardeners!”

  Marsha gave me a look of delight, like a teacher watching her favorite student graduate.

  “Genius,” she said.

  In a tough economy, day laborers are easy to find. All we’d have to do was swing by Home Depot and recruit a work crew. We would descend on Paki’s house as a team of gardeners, in the FBI’s plain view. If someone was at home in the main house to challenge us, we could put our gardening team to work at a neighbor’s house. At least it gave us a reason to be nearby. Close enough to peel off to the guesthouse.

  Easy money for a gardening crew. Free landscaping for a homeowner. Everybody wins.

  While I drove, Marsha climbed into the backseat to change into a T-shirt and jeans from her mobile closet, a garment bag she apparently took everywhere, beside the black backpack she’d called her “burglary kit.”

  Her lovely sundress had been for my eyes only. I glimpsed skin as she put on her bra. If the drivers near us were paying attention, they got a peep show. Their loss if they missed it.

  We tried a Home Depot about ten minutes from Paki’s address, and hit the Lotto. At least two dozen workers waited in the slim shade of an awning, most of them Latino, likely Mexican, a couple of them black. A half dozen of the men wore the orange shirts of professional gardeners, and others were in street clothes.

  Best of all, one of the men was in the driver’s seat of a large white pickup truck. Tejano music played softly from the truck’s open windows.

  About time I caught a fucking break, I thought.

  My Spanish would have been good enough to get by, but Marsha took the lead with rapid Spanish spoken with an accent that sounded Mexican when she hopped out of her car to talk to the driver. He was about sixty and had a salt-and-pepper mustache and two days’ worth of gray stubble. He told her his name was Demetrio.

  “We’ve got a job we want done in a hurry,” she told him in Spanish. “We need six or seven guys. You’ll be back in a couple of hours. Ten bucks an hour. You’ll get an extra hundred for driving them and for using your tools.”

  Demetrio nodded. “¿Cual hombres?” he said. Which men?

  I sighed, scanning the group of eager workers who were gathering closer. Some were as young as sixteen, and one looked as old as seventy, their faces broiled red-brown. The worse the economy got, the bigger the knots of waiting workers. I felt uncomfortable about making the men unknowing players in our private drama, but Marsha could barely keep from smiling. For her, it was just another day at the office.

  “Orange shirts,” I said, pointing out six men in orange shirts. “You, brother. Tú, Tú, Tú, Tú, Y tú también,”

  Most of the men hopped grinning into the truck bed, but a white-haired man who looked like he was in his fifties corrected me as he walked past me: “Usted,” he said, checking for insolence in my eyes. “Not tú.”

  “Lo siento, señor,” I apologized. “Perdóname,”

  I’d been too informal with him. In his place, my father would have jumped on me, too.

  The black man bumped my fist as he climbed in. “Thanks, man. Lost my damn job.”

  “Glad to help, bruh,” I said.

  We had a crew.

  Damn, we’re good, I thought. Almost scary good, I’d known how easy it was to manipulate people as an actor, a sex worker, and a private detective, but Marsha was a master. And I was learning to think just like her.

  When I offered to trade Demetrio my fresh white T-shirt for his orange work shirt, he looked confused, but was happy to oblige the boss. His shirt was damp with warm perspiration, giving me the scent of his long day. Perfect protective coloration. If someone was going to stand out, I didn’t want it to be me.

  I took the wheel of Marsha’s car, driving slowly so she wouldn’t lose our truckload of gardeners while they followed us to Paki’s house. I kept them in the rearview mirror.

  “If the FBI’s inside the gues
thouse, we’re screwed, of course,” I told Marsha.

  “But I’m thinking they’re outside, or maybe inside the main house. I’d pick a second-story window. Or maybe across the street, or in a neighbor’s yard. Walking or jogging up and down the sidewalk. We’re looking for a man or woman, young or older. Could be anybody.”

  “Who are you in all this?” I said. “Sorry, but you don’t look like a gardener.”

  “If anyone asks, I’m the supervisor,” she said. “Somebody inside the house challenges us, we’re at the wrong address. We find a time to break for the guesthouse.”

  “The rear,” I said. “We’ll use the shade for cover and figure out our way in.”

  “Tennyson Hardwick, I could get used to working with you.” Her sweet smile made me want to agree with her. I’d seen that smile in bed, in the moments before she went to sleep.

  “Let’s just try to get this one right,” I said.

  The long gravel driveway at Paki’s house, as I’d hoped, was empty. The peach-colored house sat on the corner as vividly as its photograph, unchanged. A driveway led to a carport on the side of the house. Beyond that, the darkened guest cottage was nestled in trees.

  Since we had the truck behind us, we pulled up to the curb. No explanations necessary.

  Marsha and I barked orders: Trim the swath of grass in the front yard. Clip the hedges. Weed the flower bed. The house already looked well landscaped, but a gardener’s work is never done. Suddenly, the yard was a hive, orange-shirted bees buzzing everywhere.

  The sidewalk was also busy with pedestrians, another break in our favor. There were so many college students, young mothers, and joggers of all ethnicities on the street, we probably didn’t need the extra cast. But with so much at stake, why not?

  Apparently empty house. Busy neighborhood. We’re cool again, God. Throw a big break my way with Nandi, and I’ll be first in line at church on Sunday.

  “Think I’ve got our guy . . . ,” Marsha said, lips barely moving as we surveyed the workers from where we were leaning against the bed of the truck. “One of them, anyway.”