Killer Country (28 page)

‘When?’

‘About three days before he died. Told me he was in Cape Town with this Spitz.’

‘That’s all?’

‘That’s all I’m telling you.’ She smiled to take the edge off her words.

‘You’ve looked for him?’ said Pylon.

‘Not my scene.’

‘What is your scene?’

‘Insurance. Claims investigations.’

‘Very sexy, I thought,’ said Mace. He and Pylon at a table in the dining room of the Sunnyside Park hotel, drinking beer. Amstels, not Stellas. ‘Little chi-chi boobs and a small bum. Dainty feet, too.’

‘You noticed that?’

‘I look at feet. Toes especially. Sucking toes can change a woman’s attitude.’

‘You suck Oumou’s toes?’

‘The first thing I did.’

‘And others? Isa—’ Pylon stopped. ‘Sorry, my brother.’

Mace finished his glass of beer, shrugged by way of answer.

The waiter brought their steaks, asked if they’d like to see a wine list. They told him they’d stick with beer, ordered thirds.

‘Have to give it to her,’ said Pylon, slicing into the meat’s juiciness – ‘that Cindy was one smart chick.’ He admired the red stain spreading on his plate. ‘This’s what I call rare.’

‘Got your number,’ said Mace, saliva welled in his mouth at the sight of the pink meat.

‘Think so?’

‘Know so. She was playing you. Right from the get-go.’

The waiter set down fresh lagers. Wished them, ‘Enjoy.’

Pylon said, ‘I hate that.’

Mace grimaced, what can you do? He slurped a mouthful of beer, then cut into his steak.

Pylon chewed, said, ‘This is something.’ He swallowed, sliced off another piece of meat. ‘That Cindy’s too cute for her own good.’

‘Probably. Get her into trouble one day.’

‘Why?’

‘What?’

‘Why d’you say she was playing me?’

‘Weren’t you listening? I asked her. She said she’d used that approach herself once or twice.’

‘She said that? When?’

‘As we were leaving.’

‘Save me Jesus.’

Pylon’s cellphone rang. He looked at the screen. ‘Oh shit. Treasure.’ Connected. ‘Babe.’

Mace could hear her saying, ‘I phoned home. Where are you?’ 

‘Babysitting,’ said Pylon. ‘That fertility couple.’

‘In a bar?’

Pylon laughed. ‘Restaurant. They wanted to eat out.’

‘What’s their problem?’

‘Wanted to see the town, I suppose.’

‘His sperm? Her eggs?’

‘Oh that.’ Pylon spluttered, put down the forkful of meat and chips he had halfway to his mouth. ‘Not something we ask.’

Mace heard Treasure cluck disapproval. ‘These people are going to adopt as well, I hope. You should make it a condition. Rich people using us to do this nonsense on the cheap. Like there aren’t enough people on the planet. I don’t like it. People can’t conceive they should adopt. Here, say goodnight to Pumla.’

Pylon said, ‘Your mom enjoying herself?’ Mace couldn’t catch the response but Pylon laughed, said, ‘Pregnancy does that.’ Then said, ‘Oh, yeah, I forgot to tell her, I can’t fetch you from the airport. I’ll get Tami. I’m in Jo’burg all day. Back in the evening.’ He said ciao sisi, disconnected. Forked the food straight into his mouth. ‘A good kid,’ he said through the chew.

Mace said, ‘What’d she say? That you said, pregnancy does that?’

Pylon grinned. ‘She said Treasure was puking. Again.’

Four beers and a cognac down, Mace came out of the shower into his hotel room whistling. Recognised the tune as one that’d been on Mr Short Dreads’s iPod. Matt Ward singing Outta My Head. Thought, huh? Fancy that coming to mind. Maybe it was the possibility of getting into the hitman’s face in the morning. Talk to him about lifting an iPod from a shot man lying there bleeding on a farmhouse floor. Among other matters.

Then realised he’d enjoyed the evening chilling with Pylon in the lounge. Especially the nightcap cognac that’d gone down smoothly. A long time since they’d spent an evening together. Talking. Remembering. Laughing easily. After all the evenings they’d spent together in hotels grand and sleazy across the continent and beyond. Sometimes bored. Sometimes anxious. The weapons drop or the pick-up always bringing a special kind of uneasiness. Loose gut, Mace recalled, was what they’d called it.

He had the television on but the sound turned down. The screen filled with Table Mountain, footage of tourists getting off a car at the upper cable station. Mace aimed the remote, brought up the sound. The reporter’s voiceover said the mugger who’d attacked two tourists that morning hadn’t been caught. The camera came up on the two victims, the woman giving her line about being glad to be alive. Next an official held out the theory that the mugger/rapist might be living on the mountain. A composite mug shot filled the screen: savage, stone-eyed, flat-nosed, thick-lipped face wearing a beanie. A standard mug shot. Mace pressed mute. Said aloud, ‘Your time’s coming arsehole, faster than you think.’

He phoned Oumou.

‘Mace, cheri,’ she said, ‘this is so late to phone me. I was worried.’

‘You could’ve phoned me,’ he said, ‘anytime.’

‘Ah, oui. You would have liked that in the middle of something.’

‘When it’s you I’m never in the middle of something.’

She laughed. ‘Of course not until I phone one day at the wrong time.’ He heard her say ‘Merde’ off-phone. ‘This clay! Nothing will work for me tonight. It is all rubbish.’

‘You’re still in the studio?’

‘Why not? You are not here.’ Oumou putting a suggestiveness into her tone.

‘Pity I’m not,’ said Mace, smiling, catching himself smiling in the mirror. A silly look on his face. ‘Tomorrow I’ll suck your toes.’

She laughed, lightly, not far off a giggle. ‘You say strange things.’

‘I’ve done it before.’

‘That was a long time ago.’

‘Why I thought it would be a good thing.’ 

‘You have been thinking this during the day? About sucking my toes?’

‘It crossed my mind.’

Again the light laughter rising to a giggle. She paused, came back in a softer voice. ‘Mace, you are alright, yes?’

‘I’m fine. I was even whistling.’

‘Be careful,’ she said. ‘I do not want to have trouble like that again. To be told that you are shot. Please.’

‘There won’t be a problem,’ he said. ‘Promise.’

Mace heard her sigh, then she said, ‘You must sleep. Go now.’

After they’d disconnected he realised he hadn’t asked about Christa. Realised he hadn’t thought about his daughter all day. Nor had Oumou mentioned her. He got halfway to phoning back, stopped as he was about to key in the call. Maybe leaving it was better, a sign he wasn’t obsessing. He had a photograph of her in his card holder: Christa sitting on a wine barrel in a blue bathing costume. Her face scrunched in a squint. Serious. Frowning. Her hair shoulder length. The summer before she was shot.

The next morning the rain had stopped. A blue-sky day. The early sun warming a pungency in the wet vegetation. Mace breathed in deeply, smelt his youth. Smelt freedom. Like after a night he’d run away, slept wild and wet in the hills, never gone back to the home. Freedom and loneliness.

The reason he stayed out of Johannesburg.

On the way to Melrose Arch, they stopped at a mall, bought rolls of duct tape from a hardware store and a tenderising mallet, a wooden one, from a kitchen shop. Asked directions to Melrose Arch.

‘Easy,’ said the shop assistant, ‘you go down Corlett, take a right, it’s right there.’

‘What is it?’ said Pylon.

‘Larney,’ said the assistant. ‘You know, everything mixed up like shops and apartments and cafes and restaurants. Full of black diamonds. People with money to blow.’

They took the assistant’s directions down Corlett Drive until they hit the area. Suddenly out of a suburb into a quarter that could’ve been any city in the world that wasn’t at war, even some that were: people at tables on the pavement.

‘The thing about Jozi,’ said Mace, ‘they don’t stop building. Give them a bit of open land, a park, somebody says what a waste, this could be making money.’

‘Gold diggers,’ said Pylon.

‘Once and always.’

Mace parked a distance away in the nearest space he could find. They walked into the quarter, Pylon taking JB’s because if Spitz was there the appearance of Mace would disturb him.

‘Need to keep the brother cool,’ said Pylon. ‘Don’t want him getting uneasy.’

Mace went farther into the piazza, found a little place where he could order a long latte. While he waited got hold of Tami, asked her to find the mining magazines on Pylon’s coffee table.

‘That could take an age,’ she sniffed, ‘going through the piles.’

‘I’m not planning to hold on,’ said Mace.

‘And I’m looking for?’

‘Any mention of a company called Zimisela.’

His latte was down to a tepid milky wash when Pylon phoned that the man himself had just walked in, looking very dapper. Lacoste polo shirt, white trousers, moccasins.

Mace said, ‘Whisper something persuasive to him. I’m there in five.’

He paid for his latte, his phone rang again: Tami. She told him the one magazine was five years old, the other from two years ago. In the more recent one a mention of a Zimisela Explorations. A  news piece about a BEE deal behind the company’s formation.

‘What I need to know is who’s on the board?’ said Mace. ‘Try the internet. And go through the older mag see what’s in it.’

‘Like what?’

‘Like what what?’

‘Like what’m I looking for?’

‘Don’t know,’ said Mace, ‘until you find it.’ He caught her sigh before he disconnected.

Mace paid for his coffee, ambled across to JB’s, clutching the plastic packet with the duct tape and the mallet. Pylon and Spitz waiting for him outside. Spitz looking none too happy. Pylon standing close to the hitman.

‘You have a place round here, somewhere we could talk?’ said Mace.

‘It is possible to talk here.’ Spitz not moving, rigid, his hands at his sides. Mace seeing himself reflected in the guy’s shades.

‘I don’t think so,’ said Mace. ‘Somewhere private would be better.’

Spitz said, ‘I have an apartment.’

‘Excellent,’ said Pylon. ‘Let’s go there my brother.’

Spitz had an apartment four floors up with a view north over the suburbs to the new city at Sandton, the distant mountains beyond. On this clear day, a big-sky view.

‘Nice,’ said Mace, scanning the décor: modern minimalism not unlike Cindy Khumalo’s. Only difference a mega TV screen, more racks of movies than Mace had seen in some DVD stores. Stacked next to a leather recliner, a number of cases with Thelma and Louise on top.

‘Haven’t seen this one,’ said Mace, tapping the box.

‘They die,’ said Spitz. ‘By flying their car into a canyon.’

‘That right?’ Mace deciding maybe the best way to handle the discussion would be on a stool at the kitchen counter, piloting Spitz in that direction.

‘Hey!’ said Pylon, picking up a blue iPod, scrolling through the play list. ‘Here’s the killer country music. You’ve got taste, my friend.’  He docked the player in a speaker system, brought up Tindersticks.

Mace said to Pylon, ‘Probably the stool’s going to be the best option. Nowhere else with a flat surface.’

‘Sharp,’ said Pylon, taking a roll of duct tape from the packet. ‘What we’re going to do,’ he explained to Spitz, ‘is tape you to the stool. At your ankles. So that you don’t kick out and fall over.’

Mace searched through drawers until he found a wooden cutting board. Waved it at Spitz. ‘And your left hand and wrist we tape to this.’

‘This business is not necessary,’ said Spitz. ‘If you ask me some questions I will tell you the answers.’

‘Sure,’ said Pylon. ‘But you might lie to us.’

‘I do not lie.’

‘That’s what you say. Most people in this sort of situation have told us that. But this way we know you’re not.’

Mace’s cellphone rang. Tami said, ‘I can’t find anything in that magazine.’

‘Tami,’ said Mace, ‘now is not a good time, we’re busy.’

‘You don’t want to know the directors?’

‘Quickly then.’

She rattled off five names. Only the name Obed Chocho meant anything to Mace.

‘Have another look through the magazine,’ said Mace. ‘Might have something to do with mining.’

‘That’s what it is,’ said Tami. ‘A mining magazine.’

‘You know what I mean,’ said Mace.

‘Like I can read your mind.’ She disconnected.

‘That girl,’ said Mace, ‘has got a tongue on her.’

‘Tell me about it.’ Pylon, crouching, advising Spitz it was best he sat still.

Spitz did while his ankles were taped to the stool.

‘You’re a wise man, my brother,’ said Pylon, getting up,  next strapping the hitman’s wrist and hand to the breadboard. ‘Not everyone has been so cooperative with us. I appreciate it.’

Finally Pylon wound a reel of duct tape round the man’s torso, binding his arms tightly against his chest. Spitz’s forearms flat on the countertop.

Mace placed a pen between the fingers of Spitz’s right hand and a pad of Sunnyside Park notepaper beneath it. Asked him to write his name. Spitz did so.

‘Good,’ said Pylon. ‘That’s how you communicate with us from now on.’

‘You can ask me a question,’ said Spitz.

Mace sat opposite him. ‘Alright. Here’s the one been bugging me: why didn’t you kill us, my daughter and me?’

‘There was no point. I thought you would die anyway. My job was to shoot the farmer and the farmer’s wife.’

‘You shot your friend.’

‘He was not my friend. We did the job together. When he started shooting I believed he had killed you. Then he would rape your daughter because he had the HIV and kill her too. I thought this was unnecessary.’

‘Most noble,’ said Mace.

‘I thought he would shoot me.’

‘Ah. And why was that?’

‘Some feeling I had about him.’

Pylon snorted. ‘A hitman with feelings.’

‘It is possible.’

‘Okay,’ said Mace, ‘this is what we’re going to do. Pylon will tape your mouth closed because the process is painful and we can’t have you screaming out loud. We are going to flip a coin, him and me. Best out of three wins. That’s how we’ve always done it. The one who wins gets to ask the questions. The loser’ – he took the mallet from the packet – ‘has to smash your fingers and the bones in your left hand to  make sure you answer the questions truthfully. Anything you don’t understand?’

‘I will answer the questions first,’ said Spitz. ‘I have done a job. Nothing is secret.’

‘Well a whole lot of jobs, we reckon,’ said Mace. ‘Seven people according to our arithmetic. Not including your mate.’

‘That is incorrect.’

‘How many then?’

‘Five.’

‘Okay,’ Pylon said, ‘probably not the Smits. Different calibre. Different style. So we’ll give you five. Plus the sidekick. Six.’

‘For who?’ said Mace.

‘He is called Obed Chocho.’

‘A good answer,’ said Pylon.

Mace looked at Pylon. ‘But we need to test its truth.’

Spitz said, ‘It is the truth.’

Mace’s phone rang: Tami.

‘I’ve found it,’ she said.

‘Not now, Tami,’ said Mace. ‘We’re in a meeting.’

She ignored him. ‘It is mining. Well, not mining exactly. More like exploration.’

‘Tami?’ said Mace.

‘In this article. About uranium deposits discovered on the farm owned by Justice Marius Visser. The article quotes him. He says no one will ever mine his land.’

‘Interesting,’ said Mace. Thinking, next question: who sent the magazines?

‘Excellent, Tami.’

‘That’s it,’ she said. ‘Excellent. What about what this’s about?’

‘Not now. Later.’

‘Jeez. You guys.’

He thumbed off the connection, said to Pylon, ‘Obed Chocho’s on the board of Zimisela Explorations. Five years back uranium was discovered on the Visser farm.’

Pylon said, ‘Ummm.’

Mace said, ‘You’re thinking what I’m thinking.’

‘Probably.’

‘Might explain why the judge was shot at. Why he’s so nervy. Why he signed on the quiet.’

‘Might do,’ said Pylon. ‘Quite likely, if Obed’s playing the heavies.’

Mace turned to Spitz. ‘Good to go?’

Spitz said, ‘If you ask me the same question my answer will be Obed Chocho.’

‘Let’s see,’ said Mace.

Pylon gagged the hitman, took a five buck coin from his pocket. They flipped the best of three, Pylon winning with two heads. Mace wanted a rerun. Mace taking it on the first and third call with heads. Spitz watching the proceedings.

Before he flipped the third round, Pylon said to Spitz, ‘You’re very cool, my brother. Most people shit themselves watching us do this.’

‘Flip,’ said Mace, calling heads.

Pylon did, caught the coin, slapped it onto the back of his hand. ‘Tails.’

Second flip went to Mace. Pylon called heads. Mace went through the actions, uncovered the coin on the back of his hand. ‘Heads.’

Pylon gave Mace the mallet.

Spitz wrote on the pad, Obed Chocho.

‘We haven’t asked you anything yet,’ said Pylon.

Spitz shook his head, pointed the pencil at the two words.

Pylon said, ‘Okay, here’s the question: who ordered the hit on Popo Dlamini?’

Spitz underlined the name of Obed Chocho.

Pylon looked at Mace. ‘Seems to be our answer.’

‘Go through all the names,’ said Mace. 

Pylon did. Lindiwe Chocho. This time Spitz circled the name. Rudi Klett. More underlinings. Marius Visser. Deep scoring beneath the name. Mrs Visser.

‘What was her name?’ said Pylon.

‘Something weird,’ said Mace.

Spitz kept on circling the name of Obed Chocho.

‘Now for the moment of truth,’ said Mace, smashing down the mallet on Spitz’s little finger. Felt the flesh soften, the bone snap.

Spitz jerked backwards sending the paper and pad sliding across the countertop. The stool tippled, Pylon and Mace catching him from falling over. The hitman had tears of pain running down his cheeks. They rearranged him, his hand flat on the breadboard on the countertop, the guy’s little finger swelling and bloody, the tip at an angle. They tore off the sheet of notepaper he’d scrawled on, slid the notepad under his right hand, slotted the pencil between his fingers.

‘I’m going to ask you the questions again,’ said Pylon. ‘In case you want to give us another name.’ He went through the list, after each question Spitz writing Obed Chocho on the pad. Five Obed Chochos.

Pylon said to Mace, ‘I think we can accept this.’

Mace, beating the mallet in the palm of his hand, agreed. To Spitz said, ‘Where’s the nearest emergency clinic? We’ll drop you.