Mixed Blood (14 page)

The smell of fear washed across the desk. “Rudi, please. I’ve put all that behind me. I am not your enemy in this, please understand. There is nothing I can do to change the situation with this man from Jo’burg. I’m powerless.”

Barnard had stood and loomed over Peterson like a wall of stinking fat. “Just remember. I go down, I take people with me.”

Sitting in his car, Barnard lit another smoke, eyes fixed on the American’s house. Lights were on in the gathering gloom.

Barnard needed to throw money at this Zondi thing. A lot of it. And if he couldn’t buy his wayem" wide situation, he’d have to do what he did best. Zondi wasn’t some crack whore on the Flats; he was a darky with a fancy badge, but that didn’t make him bulletproof.

He would die like all the others.

Barnard found himself smiling at the thought. His smile evaporated when he became aware of headlights in his rearview mirror. A car was creeping down the road toward him. An armed response vehicle.

Barnard loathed rent-a-cops, who fed off the paranoia of the wealthy. They looked down on the real cops, smug as they cruised around these privileged areas. Normally, he would have relished a face-to-face with the cowboy driving the car, just for the pleasure of it, knowing his badge always trumped a rent-a-cop’s ID.

But not tonight.

He didn’t want to be placed near this house. Barnard started his car and drove away before the rent-a-cop could reach him.

Burn went into the house and saw that Susan lay on the sofa, asleep or pretending to be. Matt was in front of the TV. Usually, Burn would get the boy away from the screen, fighting the kid’s desire to lose himself in the numbing banality of the tube.

But right now it was almost a relief to see Matt occupied, distracted from the rupture in his parents’ relationship.

Burn had come home and found Susan reading a fashion magazine, sitting with her feet in the plunge pool, taking the edge off the heat. Matt was splashing in the pool, wearing flippers. Mrs. Dollie was inside, wielding the vacuum cleaner like a weapon, the high-pitched whine making her deaf to anything Burn was saying.

Burn told Susan he had found an apartment. It was right on the ocean, overlooking Clifton Beach, and, most important, it was unoccupied. The agents asked him for a day to send a crew in to clean it, and then his family could move in.

Susan had stared at him, shrugged, and went back to her magazine.

The chopper clattered overhead once again, and Susan opened her eyes to find him staring down at her. She closed her eyes.

“Susan?” He had to pitch his voice above the noise of the helicopter.

“Yes?” Her eyes stayed closed. A cartoon man was squashed flat by a rock, and Matt laughed.

“I’m going out.”

Her eyes flicked open. “Sure.”

“Come if you want. I just need to get out of here for a while.”

She shook her head. “No. We’ll stay.”

“Are you going to be okay?”

“We’ll be fine, Jack.” She wasn’t even trying to mask her irritation.

“If you want me to stay, I will.”

“No. Go. It’s better if you do.” She closed her eyes again, dismissing him.

“Keep the doors locked. Okay?”

ght="0em">ht="0em" width="1em">She didn’t reply.

He grabbed the car keys and headed for the garage.

As he reversed the Jeep out, he saw the blaze was leaping lower on the mountain. Now two choppers were fighting it.

Disaster Zondi sat in a coffee shop on the ocean, not far from the Waterfront, drinking a poor excuse for a cappuccino. Too much foam, not enough kick.

He spooned some excess foam into his saucer, but when he lifted the cup to his lips some of the froth came dangerously close to dripping onto his silk shirt. He replaced the cup in its saucer and pushed it away.

It was dark now, and he was the only customer left in the coffee shop. The staff were circling like vultures, eager to get rid of him.

After the interview with Barnard, Zondi had suppressed the urge to rush back to his hotel and take a shower. The man’s stink had nearly taken his breath away. No mere body odor, it was something far more toxic, fetid. Sulfurous. From nowhere a memory came to him, from his Anglican mission school upbringing, that the Devil had a foul stench, like sulfur. Of course Zondi no longer believed in the Devil. Or God.

But still.

He hadn’t expected to be as disturbed by the encounter as he was. He had kept it deliberately short, just fired a shot across the fat man’s bows. Let him know that Zondi was on to him. The proximity to Barnard had come close to thawing Zondi’s cool, the layer of permafrost he kept between himself and the world. He told himself he was letting this get personal. He needed to slow down. Detach himself. Keep his focus.

He had escaped Bellwood South HQ and driven his rental BMW back toward the city as the sun set over the ocean, the last rays painting Table Mountain gold. Cape Town putting on its show. Even the pall of smoke from the blaze on Lion’s Head couldn’t mute the splendor.

Cape Town offended Zondi. Its languid slowness and devotion to sun worship, wine tasting, and the deification of its natural beauty struck him as decadent and fatuous. Like a woman obsessed with nothing but her appearance. This place didn’t even look like Africa. It was like a bit of Europe transplanted onto a mountainous peninsula that stuck out toward the South Pole like it was giving it the finger. Even the climate was Mediterranean.

And it was the only sub-Saharan city where a black man was in the minority.

Zondi had no wish to go to his hotel, so on impulse he had stopped for the coffee. The undrinkable cappuccino.

The colored waitress whipped the cup away from him. On her way back to the kitchen she paused to chat with another brown-skinned woman, who was mopping a table and setting salt and pepper shakers straight.

They spoke softly, in the local patois, but Zondi could hear them. And understand.

“Can’t he see we want to go?”

“Typical darky behavior. I’m sorry, but it is.”

“They behave as if they own the place.”

“But they do. Now.&8221;

“I know. It makes me sick.”

“I mean, did you hear on the radio this morning, they even saying that God is black.”

“No!”

“I’m telling you.”

“I’m sorry. I can deal with God being white. But not black. I can still work for a white boss!”

They laughed and walked to the back of the shop.

Zondi allowed himself a tight smile. His cell phone chirped. Bellwood South HQ.

Carmen Fortune put her lips to the globe and sucked hungrily. The glass burned her lips, but she didn’t feel the pain, too anxious to get the smoke into her lungs, desperate for the rush that followed like a train hurtling from a tunnel.

Sweet Jesus, her head felt like it was going to fragment into a million shards of bone and brain matter. She saw the tattooed hand, nails black with dirt, take the globe from her before she collapsed back onto the stinking mattress and closed her eyes. The rush passed, and she was left with the glow, the euphoria, the feeling of owning the whole fucken world.

She opened her eyes and smiled. Conway Paulsen squatted, watching her, a mushroom cloud of tik smoke exploding from his mouth. He returned the smile, exposing teeth blackened by years of abuse.

Carmen sat up, light-headed. She was in Conway’s zozo, a wooden hut built in the yard of his parents’ house. Conway, still in his teens, was a connection of Rikki’s, an American wannabe who was used as an errand boy but was never allowed the full initiation he dreamed of. He was simpleminded, the butt of endless mean-spirited jokes.

“So, you gonna tune Rikki. About me? That I wanna sell for him?”

“Ja. Soon as he get back from the west coast.”

“What he doing up there anyways? I hear some abalone deal with the Chinks?”

“Fuck, I dunno. Maybe.”

“Or, is it tik? Is he, like, supplying towns right up to Namibia?”

She shrugged. “You know Rikki.”

Conway laughed. “Ja, he’s big time.”

“Ja. He’s fucken big time, okay.”

Using the wall for support, Carmen pulled herself to her feet. She thanked Conway and went out into the night.

Carmen walked down Tulip Street, passing the rows of identical houses, stepping around potholes, heading toward her ghetto block. The heat was oppressive, and she felt as if she were being suffocated under a blanket of stale air. Snatches of Cape Flat’s life wafted out to her as she walked: shouts, curses, the low keening of a crying woman, a drunken man laughing.

A chopped-down Honda Civic, tuned loud, bumped down the road toward her, forcing her to give way. She saw the four boys inside, slumped low in the car, their eyes sliding across er as they passed, gangsta rap thudding in their wake.

Little fuckers.

Carmen walked faster. She passed three housewives gossiping on a corner, under a streetlight. Two of them had their hair in curlers; all three sucked on cigarettes like they were life support systems. Their eyes locked onto her.

Carmen pretended to ignore them, their whispers echoing after her like sticks dragged along a wooden fence. She heard
tik whore
and
slut
before she was out of range.

When she heard her name being called, she ignored it. More insults. Then she felt a tugging at her sleeve and found her hands in fists, ready to lash out. She turned and saw the wife of her useless brother.

“What you want?”

Carol was a runt of a girl who caught a fright at her own shadow. She let go of Carmen’s sleeve and stepped back. “It’s your father, Carmie.”

“I don’t got no father.”

“He’s very sick.”

Carmen stared at the girl. “Good. I hope that rotten thing dies.”

Carmen walked on. That was enough good news for one night.

Burn couldn’t lose.

No matter what he did, he kept on beating the dealer. He sat drinking Scotch at the blackjack table out at Grand West Casino, Cape Town’s answer to Vegas.

The dealer, who was sitting with a queen, dealt Burn a ten and a six.

Burn tapped his cards. “Hit me.”

There were mutters of disapproval from the others at the table. Fuck them. The dealer was looking at Burn inquiringly. “You heard what I said. Hit me.”