Of Cops & Robbers (21 page)

Fish’s been into the back yard three times with a torch to stare at the Isuzu. Once at seven, again at eight thirty and now at ten. He shines the beam at the slashed tyres first, then the smashed windscreen and rear window, the bust mirrors. It still seems impossible. Unbelievable. He clicks off the torch, stands there dumbstruck.

A couple of grands’ damage. Just replacing the tyres would take care of most of that.

Then the rest.

Like how much is this going to cost to sell?

Like Seven is ever going to cough up. This thing with Seven has legs. One of those nasty tit for tats. Depresses the hell out of Fish.

What’d he think telling the cop over the wall that fishing was an option? No ways he could get the Isuzu on the road any time soon.

Unless he got a loan from Estelle. Yeah, that was likely. Really likely he was going to ask his mother.

Especially with ten voicemails from her, eight SMSes, four emails.

‘You said this afternoon, Bartolomeu. It’s now seven o’clock your time. You’re letting me down badly. Don’t do this to me.’

Ten messages of that order. Every time Fish saw his mother’s name on the screen he keyed her to voicemail. Tomorrow he’d sort out her problem. Right now he’s got other worries.

He goes inside. On the kitchen table’s the plastic bag with Colins’s life story. He takes out the first page, reads: ‘I am Colins, you will know me by this name.’ This written in a neat cursive in ballpoint, filling up the whole line. Not a bad start, Fish
reckons
. Has a ring to it. On the next line the same sentence: ‘I am
Colins, you will know me by this name.’ Below that a repeat, repeats all the way down the page, the same line like Colins is doing detention at school. Filling up all the pages in the bag, the same line.

Jesus, thinks Fish, this’s his life story?

I am Colins, you will know me by this name.

Fish blows out a long breath. Takes a pinch of weed from his herb tin, pestles it with his right index finger in the palm of his left hand. Sprinkles the crush on a Rizla paper, picking out the seeds.

What a wipe-out day!

Starts like it’s paradise, ends like it’s hell. A tanked job. A good deed turned crap. An ace surfboard maliciously chopped. A stuffed-up bakkie. The bergie Colins dead on his conscience. His mother on his case. You get through all that then you get to the Vicki thing. Her tone of voice that he knows means she’s lying. She’s not with clients. Not at some business dinner. Not at Gamblers Anonymous. Something else is happening.
Something
she’s ashamed of. Has to be a poker game. Has to be she’s on the cards again. And when did that start? Last week? Last month? Tonight?

Not a good situation.

Fish licks along the edge of the paper, rolls it into a tube. Taps the spliff on the table.

The worst was sitting on the beach wall watching the
afternoon
surfers slicing the waves. The swell building again on the high tide.

‘You not going in?’ one or two asked him as they strapped leashes to ankles. ‘Haven’t seen it cooking like this in ages.’

‘My boards’re broken,’ Fish replied. ‘Both of them.’

‘Ah, bru, that sucks,’ they sympathised.

Sucks alright. Sucked so badly Fish thought about going another round with Jouma. Knocking the rest of the pegs out of his mouth. But didn’t. Just sat on the wall, hugging himself as the sun dipped behind the mountain, spread a cold shadow
across the beach.

Sat there waiting for Daro to pitch. Because Daro had spare boards at home, could loan him one until the thing with Seven was sorted. At least that’s what Fish was thinking while he waited for Daro.

Around five he gave Daro a call, got his voicemail. Left a message: ‘This is what you missed’, held his phone towards the crashing surf.

Then walked home. More hangdog than a township mongrel, obsessing about his misfortune. Again counting off the downers on his fingers: totalled four. When he got home, five was the state of his fridge: one piece of cold lasagne, wasn’t even meat lasagne, two bottles of milk stout.

He drank the stout, nuked the lasagne. Vicki’s idea of supper, a veg lasagne. The only thing with some chew were the
mushrooms
. After that, he put Shawn Colvin on the sound system while he smoked a joint. An older singer but sexy, very sexy.

Shawn singing about not getting too close, not going too far.

Vicki Kahn’s hating this. She’s driving around Cape Town’s vineyard suburbs in search of Cake Mullins’ house, cursing the darkness, cursing Cake Mullins. A bad bad feeling in her
stomach
. Churning in the pit of her stomach.

That bad feeling and the darkness.

The thing about the vineyard suburbs at night is the darkness, the darkness in between the street lights.

You’ve got high walls, electric fencing, dense shrubbery, trees overarching the street, you’ve got darkness. At nine o’clock no one’s about. Everyone locked down. The CCTV cameras on. Outside sensors throwing beams across the lawns. Occasionally you get a passing security patrol car, big bloody deal.

She doesn’t like the vineyard suburbs at night. At night they’re scary. And now she’s lost in their darkness.

The last Cake Mullins poker game Vicki played was about a year ago, just before she signed on the programme, so she’s trawling the streets trying to recall the route.

Her phone goes. Cake Mullins on the display. She thumbs him on. There’ve been calls from Fish she pressed through to voicemail. His SMS too that she’s ignored. Didn’t want to ignore but had to.

‘Everyone’s here, Vicki,’ he says. ‘Waiting. You’re late.’

‘What’s a couple of minutes?’

‘That’s the problem.’

‘Help me here,’ she says. She gives him a street name, he gives her directions. She’s a few houses away.

‘Get a Garmin,’ he says.

Before she can reply he’s disconnected. ‘Rude bastard,’ Vicki mutters, thumbing her phone off.

The thing about Cake Mullins, Vicki Kahn remembers as she
buzzes him from the intercom box at the gate to his house, is she doesn’t know how he makes his money. Poker’s more a passion. Ask him about his financial interests he trots out a story about investments. Offshore leveraging. Dubai developments. Vicki thinks not. On the net she found a photograph of Cake Mullins and Mark Thatcher. You’re photographed with Mark Thatcher this puts a different spin on offshore leveraging.

The wrought-iron gates open, she drives between the white columns. Since her last visit Cake has added two guardian lions to his entrance. Very Cake Mullins.

There’re four cars parked in the driveway. She stops her Alfa behind a Hummer, checks her lipstick in the rear-view. Checks in her handbag: the money, a can of mace. The tiny .32: the Guardian.

She takes out the pistol, releases the clip: six rounds, hollow points. Presses the magazine back, racks a load into the chamber. Better than a full house, aces high.

The garage door swings up, Cake Mullins stands, in the light, behind him a Porsche Boxster, a Lexus coupé. Cake not the sort of man to bother with family cars. Not the sort of man to bother with family. Women, yes. Including a one-nighter with Vicki Kahn, which she regretted. Cake being a sweaty man, all that meat.

Big Cake Mullins, in black chinos and a rollneck, snazzy leather loafers, his hair cut short, his moon face more cratered than the moon, says, ‘The gorgeous Vicki Kahn.’

Vicki standing there in skinny jeans, a loose jersey wondering if he’s expecting a kiss. She holds out her hand.

‘Hello, Cake.’

‘Ah, don’t give me that,’ he says, clasping her into a hug. Cake holds her tightly, whispers into her ear, ‘I’ve got a great opportunity for you here tonight. You won’t regret it.’

‘I feel I might already,’ she says.

He tickles her ear with his tongue. ‘This’s the making of you.’ He squeezes. ‘Let’s go inside.’

‘Yes,’ she says. ‘Let me go.’ Coughing to get her breath back.

‘There’s a Vicki-chick,’ says Cake Mullins, holding her at arm’s length. ‘Sweetness herself. Come and meet the man
himself
, the other guys.’ Cake pressing the remote to bring the door down behind them, shutting out the darkness.

They thread through the cars to a room at the back of the garage. The room Cake’s decked out like a gambling saloon. ‘Hell,’ as he would say, ‘it is a gambling saloon.’ Round card table covered in green baize in the centre under a low light with a wide metal shade. Five chairs circling it. Bar down one wall, posters, movie photographs on the others: saloon scenes from
Unforgiven, Tombstone, Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid, Maverick, Shane
. Some of them signed, Clint Eastwood, Sam Peckinpah, Val Kilmer. What Vicki doubts is the authenticity of the signatures. Far as she knows Cake’s never set foot on US soil, despite his Vegas stories.

There’re four men in Cake’s saloon. Two men at the bar drinking whisky, the whisky bottle on the counter between them. Jacob Mkezi at the table, a bottle of mineral water at his elbow.

‘We meet again,’ says Jacob Mkezi, standing, his hand
outstretched
. ‘How wonderful.’ Mr Ultra Dude wearing the kind of jacket you don’t buy in Woolies. Don’t buy in the Waterfront boutiques either. The sort of jacket you buy in Germany or France, Italy. Underneath, a cashmere sweater, V-neck. A chain round his neck, not bling silver, this’s delicate. But it’s still a chain. Vicki’s not into chains on men.

They shake.

The whisky drinkers watching them, their eyes on her boobs and crotch like she’s part of the game. Men with wet mouths. Cake doesn’t introduce them.

‘Sit, please,’ Jacob Mkezi pointing at a seat to his right. ‘I’ve heard all about your poker skills. It is a favourite pastime for me, nothing serious. Just something I enjoy.’

Vicki thinking, This’ll be fun.

‘I asked Cake to arrange this. Thank you for coming.’

Vicki saying, ‘I’m on the programme, Gamblers Anonymous. I shouldn’t be here.’

‘I know,’ says Jacob Mkezi. ‘Which is why I appreciate your coming tonight. I hear you are called the poker queen. The killer lady.’

‘Was.’

‘Okay,’ says Cake Mullins, ‘all good, let’s do it.’ Saying to one of the men at the bar, the coloured guy, ‘Whitey, bring the bottle.’ To Vicki, ‘You want a drink?’

‘Vodka,’ says Vicki. ‘Lime and soda.’

Cake Mullins goes behind the counter. Vicki nods at the whisky drinkers. They nod back, unsmiling.

‘So were you the poker queen?’ Jacob Mkezi focused on her.

Vicki meeting his gaze. ‘Don’t believe everything you hear.’

‘I don’t. Just some things, from some people.’ He leans back, appraising her.

Vicki doesn’t like it, glances down at her hands. Decides to shift the terrain. ‘Last Thursday, you mentioned you knew my aunt.’

‘I did. In the 1980s, when she was in Paris. A dynamic woman.’ He pauses. ‘What they did to her was … criminal.’

Vicki waits for more but he leaves it there. ‘They, the security branch?’

‘Not only them. Long story.’ He leans towards her. ‘For another time.’

‘She was assassinated by a government hit squad.’

Jacob Mkezi frowns. ‘That’s what it looked like.’

‘What’re you saying?’

He lays a hand on her wrist. ‘Another time.’

‘You’re saying it wasn’t that?’

‘I’m saying, another time.’ His face bland, his eyes hard on her. ‘I will tell you. I give you my word.’

Vicki draws her wrist from under his hand. ‘I’ll hold you to that.’

‘I expect it.’

Cake Mullins plonks the drink next to her, says to everyone, ‘Your buy-in chips’re in a drawer in front of you. Green’s ten, yellow for twenty, pink for fifties, purple for hundreds. I’m the dealer. As agreed, seven-card stud.’

The two whisky drinkers shrug, don’t say anything.
Poker-faced
poker players.

Jacob Mkezi says, ‘If that’s the way you do it.’

‘House rules,’ says Cake, breaking the cellophane on a new pack. He hands them to Vicki. ‘You do the honours.’

Jacob Mkezi intercepts. ‘I’ll shuffle.’

Vicki says, ‘Be my guest.’ Thinking, going to be interesting. The thrill starting in her, pulsing at her heart. Going to be a session. But that’s okay, she’s entering the zone.

The side window shatters, the man’s inside the car with a .45 at Fish’s head before Fish can raise his gun.

‘Too slow, my friend,’ says the man. ‘Give me that.’ Takes the revolver from Fish. A snub-nose S&W .38 special. ‘Nice. We can use this.’

‘Who’re you?’ says Fish.

‘Don’t worry,’ says the man. ‘Tonight I am your guardian angel.’ He laughs: Ha, ha, hey. The sound pitched upward. ‘Now watch.’

Fish is sitting in the Perana, Sunrise Beach, on the wrong side of midnight. Crazy mad southeaster sand-blasting his precious car. He’s got a night scope. He’s watching a white Subaru on the other side of the parking area stopped, facing the beach.

‘Drop the scope,’ says the man. ‘You don’t need that.’

Fish does.

‘Both hands on the wheel.’

Fish clutches the steering wheel.

‘You watching?’ says the man.

Fish doesn’t respond.

‘I need an answer.’

‘I’m watching,’ says Fish.

‘Now learn, my friend.’

The area’s lit by high mast lights, enough illumination but the salt spray hazing the windscreen.

‘Wipers,’ says the man with the .45.

Fish flicks them back and forth. The windscreen still smeared, streaky.

A Jetta approaches from the traffic circle, goes slowly
towards
the Subaru. Stops. The men get out. Wait. The driver of the Subaru joins them. There’s talk. Gesticulation. The two
from the Jetta separating either side of the other man. Muzzle flash. Four shots.

Fish says, ‘Jesus Christ!’ leans forward to start his car.

‘Don’t,’ says the man in the passenger seat. ‘Keep watching, my friend. This is what happens when you play shit with us. You get fucked up. We know you, Mr Fish Pescado. You are the next one. You kill one of ours, we kill one of yours. Last time, the man you shot died, Mr Pescado. Bad luck for your friend over there.’

Fish sitting helpless. The man getting out, Fish planning to grab the Astra in the glovebox.

The man leaning in, opening the glovebox. ‘Very obvious, Mr Pescado.’ Looks at the gun. ‘What old rubbish is this?’

‘Leave it,’ says Fish.

The man smiles, shakes his head. ‘You whiteys. Use any antique.’

‘Leave the gun.’

The man pockets the pistol. ‘You better call Emergency for your friend, my friend. They can fill out the, what’s it? … The declaration of death.’

The laugh: ha, ha, hey.

Thing is Fish gets maudlin at times. Times like this. Times alone with doob. Time when things aren’t working out. Is inclined to replay moments.

This scene’s a top-ten replay. It burns him that he can’t
remember
what he said to the dude. That he didn’t react. Didn’t shoot first. Smash the night scope into the guy’s face. Grab his arm when he leant into the car. Anything. Burns him that the guy had it all his own way.

Has had it all his own way since. Not that Fish has let it go, he’s biding his time. Patience being the virtue Fish’s father told him it was.

Thing is in this mood Fish starts dredging up other
questions
. Questions like: what if his father hadn’t died? Would he
have finished his law degree? If he hadn’t gone to work for the insurance company, would he have got into investigations? If he hadn’t hooked up with Mullet would he have been shot? Would he have had to watch his partner being gunned down?

At the end of this road is Vicki.

And the question: what does he really know about her?

She’s a lawyer.

She’s compulsive.

She’s a gambler. Now in the programme. So technically reformed.

She’s got her own flat.

Drives a zooty car.

But she doesn’t talk about family. All she’s ever said was they’re dead. Didn’t want to talk about it further. The most he’s ever got out of her is that she grew up in Athlone.

Why’s that?

Fish realises he’s never pushed it. In their time together he’s talked about Estelle, his father. Even telling her his father had died didn’t bring her folks into their heart-to-heart. So
nothing
about her mom, dad, brothers, sisters, grannies, grandpas, aunties, uncles. No past. No background. Like she was loose, an unconnected body wandering the city.

Not so much a lost soul, he thinks, rather an alone soul. He can identify. Despite his family history, despite his mother’s distant presence, he knows alone. Only-child alone. The reason he took to surfing, because he could do it alone.

So he hasn’t gone after the family bit with Vicki. Figuring eventually it’d come out, just needed time. And Fish is nothing if not patient.

So what’ve they talked about?

About the jobs she’s moved his way. About surfing. Her gambling past. Lots about her gambling. He even went to some meetings with her in the early days, just after she stopped. When she was all jittery. There was some weird stuff had happened then that he’d never got a handle on. That she wouldn’t talk about.

Like now. Vicki stringing him a line. He knows it in his gut.
But what can he do?

After he’s smoked the first joint, he goes out to look at the bakkie. Make sure he isn’t imagining it. He isn’t. It is as wrecked as it was.

He SMSes Vicki: Some serious prob’s happened. That’d get a reply from her. When it doesn’t, he phones. Get her voicemail.

He listens to Shawn, cheer me up, cheer me up. Thinks, right, you’re all that I’ve got.

Maudlin Fish.

The dope gets him through the hours.

Now he’s about to light up again he realises Shawn’s not singing. The remote’s on the table. Fish gets her back on the system: ‘These Four Walls’.

Shawn singing about dying in some godforsaken room. About being the hell in, had it with all the crap life dishes up.

‘She walked in here and said come, I’d go,’ Fish told Vicki one time about Shawn Colvin.

‘Leave me just like that?’ Vicki playing along with laughter in her voice. ‘For an older woman?’

‘Only if it was her.’

‘Thanks, babes,’ said Vicki. ‘Least I know where I stand.’

Fish never really sure if Vicki was joking or not. He dropped the topic.

He stares at the photo of Shawn on the back of the CD box: she’s lying propped against a wooden wall, wearing this yellow jacket zipped tight, a yellow dress puffed around her, a glimpse of thigh between the dress and her long black boots reaching up to her knees. Southern fancy. An edging of black lace to her dress. Her eyes’re closed. Maybe she’s smiling, recalling every little thing she can. A sad smile. Her heart breaking.

You wouldn’t want to look in her eyes, Fish thinks. You looked in her eyes you’d see the hurt of a lot more people than Shawn Colvin.

The same happened when you caught Vicki gazing at you. The same sadness in her face. The same feeling that it wasn’t
just one woman staring at you.

He shakes a Bic, brings the flame to the joint, takes the smoke into his lungs. Keeps it there. Imagining the grey swirl rubbing against his blood vessels, being absorbed.

He exhales, hits it again quickly. Closes his eyes.

Shawn singing about being a tough kid.

Fish feels the world drifting off. Vicki and Shawn merging. Shawn in her flouncy summer dress, brushing her hair, going out to face the wilderness.

Vicki in that white dress she sometimes wears with the thin straps. The honey colour of her skin against the white. The sheen of the light on her shoulders. Enough to make you cry.

Fish smokes the spliff to the end. Long hits, taking the herb in, releasing it through his nostrils. Herbal medicine for those in what Shawn’s calling the dead of the deep dark night. Telling him, don’t worry me now.

‘Me neither,’ says Fish aloud.

He crushes the roach in an abalone ashtray, goes outside to shine the torch on his bakkie. The tyres still slashed. The
windscreen
still smashed.

He kills the torch, sits in the bergies’ chair. Gets a whiff of them that’s now part of the fabric.

Shawn stops singing. Fish’s spinning his cellphone between his fingers. Can’t even remember picking it up. He puts another call through to Vicki. By now the dinner’s got to be over. His call goes to voicemail.