Killer Country (21 page)

‘This is so cool.’ Christa in jeans and T-shirt stuck her arms in the air as Mace accelerated the Spider onto the N1. No doubting that. Top down into tangy air, eight-thirty in the morning, all the good citizens going about their jobs: on the left loaders working the harbour’s container yard, to the right a slow crawl of commuters on the incoming lanes. Behind them the bright mountain, ahead blue sky forever. It didn’t get better.

Mace had to smile, actually felt like laughing. He leaned across, squeezed his daughter’s knee. She swatted his hand. For a moment they looked at one another grinning.

To hell with it all, Mace reckoned, for three days he was out of it. On the road, baby.

He pushed more juice into the Spider taking her to one twenty down the Woodstock straights, out, out past factory land, under flyovers, out past the office parks, the malls, the ranch-house suburbs and over the Panorama hill out out heading for the mountains.

‘Tunnel or over the top?’ he shouted on the long glide across the valley towards the pass.

‘Over the top,’ Christa yelled back, her hair blown wild, so young-miss behind her sunglasses.

Mace took the mountain pass, no other cars behind or ahead. He roared the engine on the straights, geared down for the corners working the car like this was fun. At the top he pulled over onto a view point at a gravel clearing.

‘I’ve got to pee, I’ve got to pee,’ said Christa. hopping out of the car.

‘Take your pick,’ said Mace, ‘behind any rock you like.’

Christa, legs clamped, bending against the urge, looked dubious. ‘What if there’s snakes and scorpions?’

Mace laughed at the sight of her. ‘Take a chance.’

‘Ahh, Papa, I’ve got to go.’

‘Next to the car,’ said Mace. ‘No one’s going to see you.’ He threw his arms wide. ‘There’s no one to see you.’

He caught the movement of her pulling down her jeans, crouching, heard the hiss of her release. It made him want to pee. He found a bush a short way off that half hid him from the road.

He heard Christa call out: ‘It’s so easy for you.’ And shouted back, ‘Well, you wanted to be a girl.’

Before they left the view point, they stood together not talking, gazing into the valley and at the distant mountain, flat as an ironing board. The quiet held them: only sunbird twitter among the proteas until a baboon barked. They looked up, saw the troop coming down the slopes towards them. Some big buggers in the lead.

Mace said, ‘Time to go.’ Christa racing him to the car.

The pass down was still in shadow mostly, the mountains rising high and green either side and up against the summit, grey crags and shale.

Where the pass bottomed out they swept into the long curves beside a river, the road gently cambered and wide, the Spider humming. Came out of the mountains, crossed the Worcester floodplains into the Hex River Valley with the sun beginning to scorch. Along the roadside stood vendors, women and young men, holding up boxes of grapes, shouting at the sports car as Mace and Christa bore down and on. Sometimes Christa waved, sometimes she looked back at their poverty, her hand half raised.

At the end of the valley the pass took them onto the escarpment, the long plains of scrub and the silence of heat. Mace pulled into a picnic spot, cut the engine. For some minutes they sat getting used to being still, their ears popping from the road noise.

‘It’s so quiet,’ said Christa, ‘except for the flies’ – swatting at their irritation.

‘It’s what I remember,’ said Mace, ‘just the whine of insects.’

He brought out two Cokes from a cooler pack. They leant against the Spider’s bonnet, sipping, staring at blue hills in the distance.

Obed Chocho, dangling a car key and remote, said to Spitz and Manga at breakfast on the patio, ‘This is yours.’

Manga said, ‘And the VW, captain?’

‘I’ll have those keys.’

Manga dug the keys for the hire car from his pocket, tossed them onto the table.

Obed Chocho let them lie. From the breakfast tray took a bowl of muesli, heaping on yoghurt. ‘This’s another G-string. Especially for you. More vooma. Nice white colour. Nobody sees a white car.’

‘There must be no blood in it,’ said Spitz.

Obed Chocho stared at him. ‘It’s clean.’ 

‘It was hijacked.’ Spitz peeled an apple, keeping the skin curling unbroken.

‘Go’n have a look.’

‘It’s okay, captain,’ said Manga.

Still standing, Obed Chocho spooned muesli into his mouth and said without swallowing, ‘No, go’n have a look.’

Spitz quartered the apple, and halved the quarters. Speared a slice with his knife and ate it. ‘Blood is not a good sign.’

‘My brother.’ Obed Chocho pulled out a plastic chair and sat opposite Spitz. ‘My brother listen to me. You find blood in it, mighty fine, I’ll lick it clean.’ He kept his eyes on Spitz but Spitz didn’t meet them. ‘There’s no problem here. You do the job. Drive home to Jozi, lose the car.’ He took another mouthful of muesli, glanced across at Manga. ‘When’re you going?’

Manga juggled the key and remote. ‘After breakfast.’

‘Mighty fine,’ said Obed Chocho, ‘that’s now.’

‘I am not finished,’ said Spitz. On his plate seven slices of apple. He took one on the knife, raised it to his mouth. Bit into the crisp flesh. ‘For this drive we have all day.’

Obed Chocho pointed his spoon at Spitz’s shoes. ‘You been shopping. Expensive.’

Spitz bit into another piece of apple. Didn’t answer, gazed off into the garden at the concrete statuary, bright in the early sun. He felt Obed Chocho tapping him on the knee with his spoon.

‘I can hurt you Mr Spitz-the-Trigger,’ he was saying. Tapping his spoon with each word. ‘Pour shit on your reputation. One-time
big-time
bugger-up. Single word, Mr Triggerman, and no more work. Forever. You hear me, my brother. You are mighty fine in deep shit with one word from my lips. No more work. No more money. No more fine and dandy shoes. Finish.’ Obed Chocho made a gun with his right hand and shot himself in the temple. ‘Kapow. You give me any shit with this job and that’s the story. One word and mighty fine Spitz is the living dead. Like a zombie. Take my meaning?’ 

Spitz placed his knife on the plate next to the six remaining slices of apple. He stood, his chair scrapping on the patio tiles. ‘That would not be a good idea, Mr Chocho,’ he said, bowing slightly in the German manner, walking off indoors.

‘Don’t threaten me, my brother,’ Obed Chocho shouted after him. ‘I can hurt you mighty fine. I can make you disappear outta this world.’ To Manga he said, ‘Go, comrade. Take him away. Quickly. Any more sight of that brother and I will kill him.’

Mace couldn’t see the link. One minute they were talking about the wool stuck on the barbed wire fence, the next Christa was asking about his parents, her grandparents.

‘I don’t have any,’ he said. ‘So you don’t have any either. On my side. Not on your ma’s side either, actually. They’re both dead.’ Trying to make light of it.

‘I know about them,’ she said. ‘But what about yours?’

‘I’m not kidding. I don’t have any.’

She laughed. ‘You’ve got to have.’

‘Sure,’ he said, ‘I’ve got to have somewhere but I don’t know where they’d be. Or who they are.’

She went thoughtful. ‘No. Really?’

‘Really.’

‘You don’t want to know?’

‘Once. But that was long ago. Then I stopped thinking about it.’

‘So who looked after you?’

‘An orphanage.’

She grimaced.

‘In Johannesburg. St Thomas’s Orphanage for Boys. Horrible place. Smelt of toe jam.’

Christa picked at another tuft of wool snagged on the fence, rubbed it between her fingers. ‘That’s weird,’ she said, offering him the wool. 

He took it, feeling the oily fleece under his thumb, strands coming away. ‘It wasn’t nice.’

‘And you didn’t know your mom at all?’

‘The story is she threw me away. Someone found me in a rubbish bin.’ Mace saw Christa’s eyes water. ‘I’m joking. That’s what they used to tell me but it probably wasn’t like that at all.’

‘It happens in stories.’

‘Not all stories.’

They walked back to the car and Mace put up the hood.

‘Sometimes,’ said Christa, ‘I pretend you’re not my papa. That there’s another man in Maman’s village that’s my real dad.’

‘Why?’ said Mace. ‘Why’d you want to think that?’

‘So I’m like Pumla.’

‘Really?’ said Mace.

‘No,’ said Christa coming up to him, holding her arm against his. ‘We’re different colours.’

‘Pumla’s black like Treasure.’

‘So?’

‘So you’re not dark, not the same colour as your ma. Has to prove something, doesn’t it?’

Christa thought about it, grinning at him. ‘One girl calls me latte.’

‘And you do what?’

‘I don’t freak out about it. I call her vanilla ice.’

Mace laughed. ‘Yeah, well. Nothing wrong with latte. It’s all the rage.’

They drove off, Christa plugging herself into her iPod and Mace thinking he might do the same to the tunes of killer country in the iPod that Pylon had thrust on him. But before he settled in for the ride, his phone rang: Judge Telman Visser.

‘You checking on me, judge?’ said Mace.

‘Yes, if you put it that bluntly,’ said the judge, a laugh in his voice. ‘No, to put it politely, but so that I can advise my father.’ 

Mace nodded to himself, not amused. ‘All as we agreed. Right now I’m staring at the Karoo.’

‘With your daughter?’

‘You got it.’

‘I wish you hadn’t, Mr Bishop. I wish you’d listened to me.’

‘Why, judge? What’s the big deal?’

‘Unnecessary exposure, I think is the term.’

‘You don’t mind risking my life.’

‘Security’s your business, Mr Bishop. And you know how to take care of yourself.’

Mace thought, bugger you china, said, ‘Meaning I don’t know how to take care of my daughter.’

‘I didn’t say that.’ He paused but Mace didn’t come in. ‘Nevertheless, enjoy your stay.’

‘We will,’ said Mace, and disconnected.

He was about to wind up the first of the Killer songs, Johnny Cash with ‘The Man Comes Around’, when his phone rang again: Pylon.

‘Listen to this,’ Pylon said, ‘two guys in a white BM have just gone into the tunnel. Drove out of Obed Chocho’s place forty minutes ago.’

‘Where PI Buso was on a stakeout.’

‘It just so happens. I’m going to sms the registration. Belonged to a scrapped Toyota. I got pictures too.’

‘Tell the cops.’

‘I have, for what it’s worth.’

‘There’s a law-abiding citizen.’

‘Don’t take the piss,’ said Pylon. ‘You never know what’s going to come in useful. And just so’s you’re on the nail, the short dreads brother’s the one from the hospital.’

‘Why’d I guess that,’ said Mace.

‘Captain,’ said Manga. ‘There’s a Merc behind us, big black job, black dude at the steering.’

Spitz lowered his sun visor to check in the vanity mirror, the mirror and the back of the visor sprayed with dried blood. ‘Aah, this is shit.’ He shouted it, staring at his own face behind the blood.

‘What?’ said Manga. ‘What the…?’ – looking up at the stains on the visor.

‘I told him,’ said Spitz, ‘there must be no blood in the car.’ Spitz thumping the dashboard with his fist. ‘No blood.’

‘Okay, captain, okay,’ said Manga. ‘I’ll pull in at a garage, we can clean that mess, okay. Relax.’ Leaning over and flipping the visor up, glancing in the rearview to see the black Merc one car back. ‘What we gonna do about this guy? In the Merc?’

‘I told him,’ said Spitz, ‘there must be no blood.’

‘Right, that’s right,’ said Manga. ‘We’ll get it cleaned.’

Couple of blocks later at a suburban shopping mall, Manga pulled into a petrol station. Spitz was out, cracking a menthol from a packet before Manga had switched off. Manga waved away the petrol attendants, tearing a length of paper towel from a dispenser. To Spitz he said, ‘Just cool it. Okay, captain, be together.’ The Merc he noticed cruised past, the driver not giving them a moment’s attention.

When the visor was clean, Manga said, ‘That suit you, captain?’

Spitz looked in, still unhappy. ‘He said he would lick it clean. That is what he should have done.’

‘Come on,’ said Manga, ‘we’ve gotta go.’

They got into the car and Manga took off gently, Spitz striking up another menthol. ‘Blood in a car is no good.’

Manga kept shut-up.

They turned out of the suburb and headed for the highway in steady traffic. At the on-ramp, Manga moved into the fast lane, nodded at the car’s response. One thing about a Beemer, it had guts in its early life. He put foot. Five kilometres later, he glanced in the rearview mirror to see a black Merc locked in behind them. The black Merc with the black dude in his dark glasses.

Manga said, ‘What’s this, captain? What’s this brother’s problem?’ He pointed at the rearview mirror. ‘Behind us. That guy again.’

Spitz lowered the sun visor using the tips of his fingers, angled it to get the car in the vanity mirror.

‘What’s he want? What’s he following for?’

Spitz turned to get a better look, and the Merc driver made a gun of his hand, pointed it at them. Spitz thought, the second time in an hour someone had done that. Then he recognised their follower.

‘He was at the hospital. He was probably a security.’

‘So what’s he doing here?’

Spitz shrugged, straightened himself in the seat. ‘Maybe he is the sheriff to see us out of town. Like in the Western movies.’

‘Funny, captain.’ Manga pulled his thirty-eight from the holder in the door, laid it in his lap. ‘Security guards don’t drive big Mercs. They don’t follow people.’

Spitz crushed his cigarette, flicked the butt out the window. Ahead were the mountains. ‘Go through the tunnel,’ he said. ‘Then we will see.’

When the Merc turned off at the approach to the tollgate, Manga whooped. ‘Maybe we’re ritzed, captain. Maybe it was nothing.’

‘It was the security,’ said Spitz. ‘Do not get too happy.’