Snake (11 page)

“
Here?
”

“No, man, I can see he’s clean—not even a knife,” said Williams, at last settling for English, which would be less confusing than a mixture. “But I stand in the doorway, see? Sort of half on. Then he tells me. The butcher wasn’t paying up right. He wasn’t doing what he should, seeing as he’s got this contract.”

“Did he say Chainpuller?” Zondi broke in.

Beebop Williams flinched. “That word’s on your tongue, brother, and it’s ideal—but I didn’t put it there. Are we agreed?”

Zondi nodded.

“Then he says his boss is now one short on his contracts and he figures that Beebop is just the man for the job.”

“How much?”

“Ten rand a week.”

“And did he say anything about Lucky and the others?” “He kind of waved his hand around. So I got the message.” “The guy that came here—he is coming back for the money?”

Beebop patted to show how flat his pockets were.

“One payment already? How about the rest?”

“Put it like the others in a tin, go up near his—near the hut, and throw.”

“When?”

“Sunday night when there’s no people around. Now look, man, I don’t want no pigs—”

“What did the guy look like? Know his name?”

It nearly came out, then the heat of the moment cooled.

“What guy?” Beebop Williams said, all surprised.

But that was enough. Even the softening effects of sophistication had their limit, and it was time now to contact the lieutenant.

Marais was confident of one thing: the button had not been lost off any of Monty Stevenson’s work shirts.

Mrs. Stevenson had emptied the wardrobe shelves for him, and they had ticked off each and every garment against an inventory she kept to inhibit the wash girl’s congenital dishonesty. Then there had been tears in the hall—during which Marais learned that whatever happened to Monty didn’t matter much, but she’d just realized how she and poor little Jeremy might suffer—and that had been that.

Now he was on his way to interview the last member known to have left the club that night, having decided that the poser of the clean glasses would be best left to a fresh start in the morning. He was light-headed through lack of decent sleep.

It was six o’clock by the time he drove onto the forecourt of the garage. With the law prohibiting the sale of petrol at night and over the weekend, it looked deserted until he noticed a light still burning in the small office to the rear of the showroom.

There Gilbert Littlemore turned out to be one of those ex-Kenya types who kept calling coons “Sambo” and “nig-nog” and other childish names. The sort who made Marais’s membership in the Nationalist party seem ridiculous when they twisted apartheid to mean having polite servants and not separate development for all races—which was far more important to anyone who loved the country. Trust throw-out Englishmen to think that politeness was something you needed a policy to control.

“You don’t take any of their damn cheek, I suppose?” Littlemore said, pushing aside the hire-purchase forms he had been completing. “I’m sorry to go on like this, but I did expect a bit more discipline down here. Good God, at the rate we’re going, I’m likely to find myself working with Jungle Jim alongside of me! As a salesman, I mean!”

“Jungle Jim?” queried Marais, deliberately needling him. That was another thing he couldn’t stand—the way they kept trying to be what they thought was South African.

“Oh, my mistake! Jim Fish—that’s it, isn’t it? Now, you were saying…?”

“I’m making certain inquiries concerning the Wigwam, as I told you on the phone, and I would like to have a statement from you.”

“Public or private use? Ha-ha!”

“Ha, bloody ha,” said Marais wearily, getting out his ballpoint.

“Well, I was there with a party actually, but they all toddled off before Eve’s second performance because one of the ladies said it made her come all over peculiar.”

“Or was it you?” Marais said in Afrikaans.

“What? Oh, sorry, can’t understand a word of it yet; a jolly bad show, I know.”

Just as Marais had supposed. Christ, even Mickey could speak it fluent, and English, too, for that matter, and he was only a wog. But he was on duty and would have to stop playing games and behave himself.

“
Ach
, my mistake, as you say. But can we get to the point, please? When did you see Stevenson?”

“Ah. Seeing I was left alone at the table, the manager came over—Monty, that’s right—came across and sat with me. We saw the show, then quietly killed the rest of the wine together. Then he started making noises about licensing hours and, rather unnecessarily, I thought, saw me to the door. After all, we had stopped drinking, and I wasn’t going to ruin his carpet for him! Remember saying to him, ‘Steady on, old chap, only twenty past—you can’t throw a knight out on a dog like this!’ Picked that one up in Dar.”

Marais, for his part, would have left it there.

“Well, Sergeant, any good to you?”

But Marais was so tired by then that this indication of Stevenson’s innocence hardly meant a thing. Except more problems.

Kramer stopped the Chev for only three seconds before roaring off again, saving Zondi any problems in getting the passenger door slammed shut Then they laughed together as they often did when first meeting up.

Zondi began by reassuring him that all was well at Blue Haze, and that the children were very pleased with it, and then related his discoveries from the time of seeing Yankee Boy Msomi at the railway station. That gave them a great deal to discuss.

“Okay, so I’m biased,” Kramer said eventually, “but all this explains is why they didn’t go for big-money places. It wasn’t the till they were interested in—that was just a cover-up.”

“It also explains why the people say they see nothing. If they hear that Chainpuller is listening, then we stand no chance.”

“That’s the part that contradicts, Zondi. All these years I’ve been hearing how Chainpuller can knock the ding-dongs off a bloke at forty yards by just scratching on the wall—and now suddenly he needs gangsters, guns, cars. Why?”

“I have another thought: maybe this gang is
using
Chain-puller, boss.”

“Hey, just wait. Another part that contradicts is that at Lucky’s place you told me the minister was a good bugger. Would he believe all this crap about wizards, too?”

Zondi shrugged as if religion and superstition had never been separate in his view.

“But you were saying…?”

“Yes, boss, it is the way the money’s paid. One of these
skabengas
could hide there in the grass and catch the tins that are thrown. That’s how I mean by using Chainpuller.”

Kramer smiled and said, “I take my hat off to them, then— at least
they
can’t be so poop-scared of him!”

Which was another point that Zondi had evidently not considered, and so they went back to the first theory again.

Until Kramer brought the Chev to a halt, made a U-turn on the Kwela Village road, and started back the other way.

“So we go to find the guy who came in the shop,” Zondi said with satisfaction. “Beebop will talk to you, boss—you know his type.”

“I’m not sodding round when I can go to the top,” Kramer replied. “That bastard Chainpuller has had things his way for too bloody long.”

And not without reason, suggested the silence at his side.

The rain began again, softly. Freckling over the windshield and then making Marais switch on the wipers.

He leaned forward to see better, cursing the sting of his eyes, and regretting having accepted that drink from Littlemore. Scotch gave him heartburn.

The street was oily with colors from the shopwindows and illuminated signs on either side of it. Cars cruised slowly, looking for parking places, and sodding well getting in his way. The route he had chosen was the shortest between the garage and the CID building, but perhaps it might have been quicker to go a longer way round.

One sign, he noted, was out. Nobody was being enticed up the alley to Wiggle at the Wigwam. Tonite.

“
Ach
, ja,” Marais said to himself. He had known there was method in his madness: he’d promised Gardiner to check by on the way back, mainly so they could have a drink together.

Driving much more slowly, he passed the entrance to the alley and saw a group of people standing there. That was odd. Mrs. Stevenson had surely thought to cancel any reservations, and he himself had pinned up a
CLOSED
sign on the door.

Ghouls! The boss had left strict instructions about how they were to be treated.

Marais left his car double-parked with the flasher going, and sprinted across.

“Okay, what’s going on here?” he demanded.

Indians all dressed up in bow ties and mackintoshes turned in alarm at the sound of the familiar phrase, making him blink disbelief until he identified them as waiters. Then a short white man in a ginger beard and wearing a sheepskin jacket came from the back of them.

“That’s what we want to know!”

“Who are you?”

“Could ask the same!”

“Police, so watch it. What’s the problem?”

“We turn up for work and sign says the joint’s closed. Nobody told us. Why and for how long? We’ve—”

“Owner’s under arrest,” said Marais.

The man grinned and said, “Hear that, boys? What did I tell you?”

The Indians smiled.

“You told them what?”

“Monty definitely had a finger in that pie,” the man replied, smirking at his witticism.

“You’d say—”

“Man, what are you? Security Branch? I’m not giving away secrets—everyone knows what a two-faced bastard he is!”

Everybody then decided to leave the pair of them alone.

“Give my love to Minnehaha!” the man called after them, and this time got his laugh. From a safe distance.

“Monty’s squaw,” the man explained. “Him we call Big Chief Running Guts—or Hiya Sexy! Depends.”

“You’re the funny man in the show?”

“Me? I’m the tickler. Pianist. Y’know. Drums and sax were here, but they’ve gone over the road to get pissed.”

“Name?”

“Bix Johnson. And you?”

“Marais, CID.”

“I’m BA.”

“Hey?”

The street, it seemed, was no place to hold an intelligent conversation.

“Are you prepared to assist in some inquiries? If you’re not, then I’ll want to know why and I’ll—”

“How much do you pay?”

“Who?”

“You know something? You’re terrific! Unreal! Oi, oi, oi. For you, I do dis for nuttin.”

“What?”

“You ask, I’ll tell. Easy as that. Where’s your motor? What do you say—can we make a move, Captain?”

They made a move. And then they made surprisingly good friends. Bix Johnson had a way with him that gave Marais an entirely new lease of energy.

He also gave him some information that had Marais on the radio, calling urgently for Lieutenant Kramer.

But answer came there none.

7

T
HEY MADE A
startling sound in the dead of night. Within seconds the caretaker was out in the hall with a gun shaking in his hand.

Then, when he saw the empty milk bottles rolling about, and who had knocked them over, he quickly lowered the revolver before there could be an accident.

“Heaven’s sakes, laddie, but you gave me a terrible turn!” he said.

Kramer admired the old bugger’s courage and alertness, but wondered if he hadn’t been drinking—then saw his teeth were missing.

“
Ach
, sorry, Mr. McKay. I was backing up and I didn’t notice them by the door.”

“Your boy should have warned you,” McKay said, just to show there were no hard feelings. “Still at it, then? Thought you’d finished before lunch.”

And he nodded at the burden Kramer and Zondi were carrying between them, peering short-sightedly in an effort to make out what was wrapped inside the car tarpaulin.

“Some bits of carpet from upstairs that didn’t suit the new place, so she thought the new tenants might like to at least see if they wanted them They can always chuck them out.”

“But they’re not moving in until the day after—”

“I realize,” said Kramer, “but you know what womenfolk are like in this mood—they can’t stop till it’s all done.”

McKay showed gum and sympathized. “I ken fine! I ruddy dread new arrivals—Mr. McKay this, Mr. McKay that. The worst are the ones who think your name’s Jock and that you’re responsible for the dirty books their bairns find left under the bath.”

Zondi gave Kramer a pleading look.

“We better be going, Mr. McKay. Mustn’t hold you up.”

“A wee moment—the keys?”

“Tomorrow?”

“Aye, fine, no hurry, no hurry. Then I’ll be wishing you a good night.”

He hobbled back into his flat and Zondi immediately pushed toward the lift, making Kramer nearly start the whole thing up again outside the door to number IB.

That had been their worst moment. The actual abduction of Chainpuller Mabatso had run like clockwork, while observing to the letter a strict condition Zondi had placed upon it. All they had done was to sneak down the ridge behind the hut, arrange themselves with the tarpaulin on one side of the door, toss up a cocoa tin with some change in it, and wait. Chain-puller had meandered out, buttoning up his fly, and had been engulfed as he stooped to recover his dues.

And the best moment had been when Chainpuller’s current rental, all straight-haired wig and white lipstick, had poked her head out to see the wizard of Peacevale being carried off by two demons without faces—a sleeve of cheesecloth, thoughtfully provided by Bokkie Howells for cleaning the car’s windows, had been easily divided into two masks that didn’t even need eyeholes. While the story she’d tell would be half the battle won already.

Kramer groaned and took a grip on the heavy end again as the lift opened at the fifth floor. As lightweight as Chainpuller might prove on a set of scales, having to lug him all the way up the ridge and then down the other side, to where their car was hidden, had been enervating as well as time-consuming.

“Last lap,” he said to Zondi, “and for Christ’s sake don’t step on that cat.”

Strydom sat up in bed panting. His wife’s plump arm encircled his waist and tried to pull him down again as she muttered endearments. But he stayed where he was, tense and in a muck sweat.