Killer Country (6 page)

Obed Chocho, lying on his bed, the screen of the television paused on Tony Soprano’s scheming face, thought about what his wife had told him. What Popo Dlamini had told her. That the money backing the other consortium on the land deal was German. Which he did not like. He wondered what Tony would do in this sort of situation.

Except Tony wouldn’t be in this sort of situation. Wouldn’t be in jail. Wouldn’t have his wife screwing her arse off. Opening her legs to a prick like Dlamini. Carmela wouldn’t do that. Wouldn’t dream of doing that.

Carmela wouldn’t take a man into Tony’s bedroom and fuck him stupid on Tony’s bed. She had respect. She wasn’t going to let some young flash paw at her flesh. Stick his dick in her. Suck her tits.

Tony could trust Carmela. Obed didn’t trust Lindiwe. Turned out he was right not to.

Obed Chocho groaned. ‘Mighty fine. Mighty fine.’ Hit his hand against the iron railing of the bed head until it hurt. Didn’t stop the image of Lindiwe, shiny with sweat, moaning and grinding beneath Popo Dlamini, thrusting her breasts up for his lips to slide around her long nipples. Didn’t stop the twitch in Obed Chocho’s groin but shot him off the bed.

Almost made him get Lindiwe back on the phone. Tell her again: I’m not joking. It’s over. I catch you anywhere near him, you better watch out. 

When she’d phoned he’d let her get to the point of anxiety without saying a thing. Hearing her become nervous over his silence. Blurting out the shit from Dlamini about the German backer with long long euros. The sort of bucks that would get to the greedy mlungu Smits holding out for the big lotto win. White shit dealing white shit, muscling in to take his land. Going to cut a deal with the other consortium that would sweep him off the table. Like he was dirt. To be spat on. Ignored. Oh no. Mighty fine, oh no.

Only his wife crying, saying, ‘That’s what he told me. ‘True’s God, help me, that’s what he said.’ Only Lindiwe’s snivelling snapped him back to her.

‘I hear one more time you’ve seen him, hear me, one more time, then mighty fine, he is dead. No more smses how you want to hump each other.’ He heard her gasp. ‘You talk to him. You phone him. You send him any message I’m going to know. You got that mighty fine?’

She whimpered.

He shouted, ‘You got that mighty fine?’

Her reply so soft through the sobbing he had to get her to say it again. ‘Yes, Obed.’

‘Hear me, Lindiwe,’ he said, ‘listen hard. I know what’s going on. I know mighty fine. You are over with him. You are finished. No more. I sit here, I get your smses “Oh baby, come duze tonight”, you think I like that. My wife screwing this arsehole. Over now, okay. Finish and klaar.’

He waited. Lindiwe going you are my darling, you are my sweetheart, I love you, I never loved him, until Obed said, ‘Mighty fine, enough. Tomorrow you pick me up in the afternoon, this is forgotten. Like it didn’t happen. We are together. No one laughing behind me about who Obed Chocho’s wife is jumping. Obed Chocho the convict moegoe. No more bullshit like that, alright?’

He got her promise. Let her sobbing continue until it became sniffling. Said, ‘Tomorrow you get here two o’clock. No African time shit. Two pee em. Now, let me speak to Sheemina.’

Sheemina February said in his ear, ‘The German’s name is Rudolf Klett. He is a businessman based in Berlin. At the moment that’s all I know.’

‘Find out more,’ said Obed Chocho.

‘Oh yes sir, right away sir,’ said Sheemina February. ‘Anythingelse, sir?’

‘No. Nothing.’ He disconnected, his palms sweating at her sarcasm. Might be the best bloody lawyer in town but two things about Sheemina February put him on edge: one was her tongue. The other thing, she was a bushie. You couldn’t trust a coloured.

Calmed down, the image gone of Lindiwe’s hips banging against Popo Dlamini, Obed Chocho stretched out again on the bed. Stared at Tony Soprano’s scheming face. A German? These guys bringing in a German backer. He snorted. Well, to hell with them. They didn’t know what sort of fight this was. That’s how Tony would handle it. Change the game. Obed aimed the remote, pressed play.

Top down, Mace drove slowly along Somerset Road wondering about Judge Telman Visser, his sense of the dramatic. For heaven’s sake, like a photograph was going to impress someone. A strip of highway with some wreaths on it. And for that he’d pay over a hundred thousand bucks. The judge had more money than sense.

But he had sense too, doing his homework. Checking up on the sort of people he hired. Probably the judge did know the Bishop household’s bank account. Judges had contacts; they could get things done. Find out stuff.

Not that knowing how much was in his bank account was a big deal, Mace reckoned. It wouldn’t tell you anything more than how  often Mace Bishop was in overdraft. And he wasn’t bothered about the judge knowing that. Because that became an explanation for the mean and lean attitude when payment was due.

Issue was, the real issue was, time this bullshit came to an end. This client soft-soaping. He thought about that: soft-soaping. Pictured Judge Visser in a bubble bath, himself an attendant with a loofah on a stick about to scrub the judge’s back. Not a pretty picture. But what guarding came down to, you looked at it that way.

Time to quit the scene as he’d told Pylon. Get out of security, sell the business. Sorting other people’s crap wasn’t doing it anymore. Had been okay for a time. Even fun, even lucrative. But enough. The more he thought about it, the more Pylon’s west coast scheme became an out. Pylon got that to work they’d be steaming. No more Judge Vissers. No more surgical safaris. No more neurotic celebs. Could even make the future look a bright place, you took it in that light.

Mace stopped at the traffic robots on Buitengracht. A hot March sun on his shoulders, hotter than normal without the south-easter pumping across the city.

A
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vendor thrust a magazine at him. ‘Hey, boss my larney, sweet ‘n sporty.’ Dropped the mag into Mace’s lap.

‘I’ve bought one of those,’ said Mace, handing it back.

‘Ten bucks,’ said the vendor. ‘Present for a friend.’

‘I already did that.’

‘Present for another friend.’ The vendor gave him a two-jerk nod of the head. ‘Howsit with a smoke?’

‘I don’t,’ said Mace, irritated now that he couldn’t wait at the traffic light, gaze up at the mountain, be okay about the day undisturbed. ‘Give me a break, hey, china.’

The vendor pulled a sour face. Mace watched him in the rearview mirror getting nowhere with other drivers. Someone finally giving him a cigarette. As the lights changed, Mace’s cellphone rang. Pylon.

‘You coming in?’ Pylon wanted to know.

‘Wasn’t that the arrangement?’

‘I’m just asking.’

‘Man, what’s with the rattiness.’ Mace laughed. ‘Treasure on your case?’

‘Ah, just get here.’ Pylon disconnected.

Sometimes Mace wondered who was pregnant: Pylon or Treasure.

He cut down Wale past the cathedral and the Slave Lodge, the streets easy except for coach loads of tourists grouping to wander through the Company’s Gardens. Japanese strolling about like they weren’t taking pictures from the middle of a street. He gave one man a toot and smiled at the apologies. Yeah, yeah, have a nice day, pal.

Up a deserted Plein Street back of parliament, the government quarter so quiet, Mace thought, you’d think there wasn’t one. Come to that, wasn’t much busier during a weekday either, even with parliament sitting. He turned into Dunkley Square and parked opposite their offices, a Victorian in the middle of a terrace.

Almost midday, no one about. The late-night cafés still shut, windows of the houses and apartments curtained. Some tables outside Maria’s: the only customer, Pylon, at the only table under an umbrella.

‘Today some sort of holiday I forgot?’ said Mace, flopping into a chair opposite his partner. ‘The town’s still asleep.’

‘On a day like this at the beach,’ said Pylon. ‘Or in the shopping malls. What’s anybody want to be in town for?’

Mace ordered a Coke float, stressing lots of ice cream in the Coke.

Pylon snorted. ‘That’s a kiddy drink. You want a milkshake have a Dom Pedro. At least it’s whisky.’

‘Hey,’ said Mace, tapping his car keys on the table. ‘Look at me. I’m not your wife, savvy? This is your friend and business partner sitting here. Treasure’s riding you, I don’t want to know. Pregnant woman aren’t a joy.’ 

‘No kidding.’ Pylon called back the waiter and ordered himself a Dom Pedro with whisky not Kahlua. Looked across at Mace and shook his head. ‘That’s the part I don’t get: why this isn’t a happy thing? Why she’s not sweetness and light?

‘We’re in the Palms okay having breakfast. She likes the Palms. It’s off the street, inside, all the expensive home shops packed together. She can go feel the bed linen, stare at all that black wood shit from Bali, hey I don’t know, choose bathroom tiles, get people to show her a million colours of paint. For Treasure this is heaven. Pumla and me, we go along with it. I go along with it on account of Treasure’s a bit edgy over where I’ve been all morning. But that’s alright, I talked her through it.

‘So we order breakfast: eggs Florentine with the spinach garnish. You know it? Treasure’s best. She’s got a cappuccino, lots of froth. Everything’s humming. Out of the blue she says, we got to get the orphan child first before ours is born.

‘I’m what? That’s not how we planned it. A year later’s how we planned it. Let’s get over one baby before we take on the next. Because with the orphan she wants a baby. No pulling in a two- or three-year-old, definitely not anything older. Because Treasure’s theory is nurture beats nature. We disagree here, for me it’s in the genes. But for the sake of a happy home I go with nurture.

‘So now, starting Monday, we’re visiting the AIDS adoption centres. Or wherever the government’s hiding the kids. Except here’s a thing: Treasure doesn’t want a Zulu. They got Zulu babies stacked up five deep because that’s where the bug’s bitten hardest. Also there’re more Zulus than anyone else. But no we can’t have a Zulu. You’re going to tell me now about nurture and nature. The reason she doesn’t want a Zulu is that the males are bastards; the woman are like cows. Take any shit the men dish out. But no, hey, this is not racist. This is fact. Now, you tell me you can pick a Zulu from a Sotho when the kids lying there a week or two old? No ways.

‘We have some words here until Pumla kicks me under the  table and I wise up. Okay, no Zulus. Next thing the breakfast doesn’t taste right, not the eggs, the spinach. It’s overcooked. I’m about to say, can’t be. You overcook spinach it disappears, when I catch Pumla’s eye. So we don’t go there. It’s not that there’s much spinach. The stuff’s a garnish, save me Jesus.’

The drinks arrived, Pylon taking a quick pull through the straw deep into the mixture to get the whisky.

Mace spooned up ice cream. ‘Pumla’s smart.’

‘It’s her mother. They’re born like razor blades.’

‘You hear about Pumla catching the druggie’s peg leg?’

Pylon frowned.

‘Ex-druggie.’

‘What crap’s this?’

‘Fact. Down the line.’

‘Uhhuh.’

Mace told the story, up to the green toenails.

Pylon laughed. ‘She’s good that kid. Not too much in the world that scares her. Like her mama. Packaged dynamite. This’s what we’re talking.’ Pylon relaxed in his chair, then came forward again, lowering his sunglasses to stare at Mace over the top. ‘Never guesswho I saw this morning?’

‘The pope in shorts?’

‘Sheemina February.’

Mace stirred ice cream into the Coke, sucking the rising head noisily through the straw. ‘I’ve seen her around. You mention it now, probably more than usual in the last two weeks. Before that I hadn’t seen her for a long stretch. Even wondered if she’d left town.’

‘You don’t think she’s tagging you again?’

‘What for?’

‘Old time’s sake.’

Mace thought about it. Couldn’t see an angle. ‘Nah. It’s coincidence.’ 

‘Interesting, though. It’s at her place that Mrs Lindiwe Chocho rocked up.’

‘Her Bantry Bay place.’

‘A new place she has in town. University Estate.’

‘Still the property mogul.’

Pylon tapped his finger on Mace’s hand. ‘You listening to me?’

Mace nodded.

‘Good. It’s to her, Sheemina February, that Lindiwe went after shagging Popo Dlamini all night.’

‘You can see why Lindiwe needs a lawyer.’

‘Mace.’ Pylon, pushed his shades up his nose. ‘Sheemina February’s not mainstream. She’s coloured. There’re black lawyers would’ve creamed to handle the lovely Lindi, a name like that. So if she’s gone outside the tribe it’s because her husband said so.’

He reached for his cellphone lying on the table. ‘Where we’re in the shit is on account of she got to Popo.’

‘Meaning?’ Mace glanced up from his Coke float, met Pylon’s gaze.

‘Meaning…’ Pylon gave some attention to his drink. ‘I like Popo, he’s sharp. Brought us – our consortium – a strong link into government. Even against Obed Chocho. With Popo’s contacts we were in the deal. Fighting. Especially you add Klett’s backing. That’s talking hard cash. Euros. Outside investment. Foreign investment. Not some local bank putting up the capital. You want to know who owns the country after these black empowerment deals? The banks. Brothers and sisters can’t trade in an AK for a seat on the board. Got to have something else. You know the president, that’s helpful. Some moola that’s better.’

Pylon dialled, put the phone to his ear. Mace stretched, tipping back his chair. The square had movement. People stirring for a late breakfast or an early lunch. He heard Pylon say, ‘Popo, my friend, we’ve got to talk.’ One person he didn’t envy was Popo Dlamini being braced by Pylon. Sleeping with the enemy wasn’t something Pylon appreciated.

The noon gun boomed across the town, and Mace checked his watch, thinking, every time he heard it he did that. Automatically, like he was conditioned. You heard the gun, you knew it was twelve, still you had to check your watch.

Pylon closed his phone. ‘Bloody gun. It goes off I have to apologise, sorry, say again.’ He placed the phone on the table. ‘I’ve got him. Tomorrow. Twelve o’clock. At his golf estate. The one other side of Pollsmoor Prison. You ever been there?’

‘Come on,’ said Mace. ‘We’ve got clients staying there right now. Maybe you’re letting the land deal thing take up too much time.’

‘That a criticism?’

‘Hardly. I’m looking at it as a life raft.’

Pylon squinted at him. ‘It can be.’

‘Except I’ve got no cash. Except for Cayman.’

‘How about this?’ said Pylon. ‘I’ll back you five hundred K.’

‘Against what security?’

‘Cayman.’

Mace thought about it. ‘Why not? Or diamonds. I’ve still got diamonds.’ Two, three hundred thousands worth in a safe-deposit box stashed from the Angolan gun run.

‘Whatever.’

‘One catch: Oumou.’

‘No problem. You tell her I’m shifting it sideways to you, at ten per cent when the profit’s totalled. Save me Jesus, what could be easier?’

Mace said, ‘I’ll run it past her.’

‘Why not? Hey’ – he leaned towards Mace – ‘this afternoon I’m seeing the Smits, you know, the whiteys holding out for a stake of the action. I come to a deal with them, some mutual arrangement and we’re home. Everything’s sweet. On Monday you fly in our man Klett and the scheme’s a done deal. Obed Chocho’s left weeping in the dust.’ 

‘We hope,’ said Mace. ‘Right now what we got to talk about is a judge called Telman Visser.’

‘I know that name,’ said Pylon.

‘Sure. What he wants is farm security for his parents.’

‘We don’t do that.’

‘I told him.’

‘So?’

‘So he wants an assessment.’

‘Where’s this?’

‘Hell knows. Out there.’ Mace waved behind his back. ‘Takes six, seven hours to drive. I told him, okay, normal fee I’d do it. He says best to fly in.’

‘At his cost.’

‘Of course. Rather I’m thinking of heading out next weekend with Christa. Give the kid a joyride.’

‘I got it.’ Pylon clicked his fingers. ‘He’s the judge sentenced Obed Chocho.’

‘Physically challenged guy in a zooty wheelchair?’

‘Don’t know that. I remember he handed down six years, knocked the breath out of comrade OC.’

‘What, knowing he’d only sit a tenth of that?’

‘Having to sit at all. Com Chocho couldn’t figure out why fraud was a problem. Com Chocho reckons he personally’s owed big time for the suffering of two centuries of colonialism and apartheid.’ Pylon finished his Dom Pedro. ‘A judge puts away such a nice man can’t be all bad.’