Frederick Ramsay_Botswana Mystery 01 (12 page)

Chapter 24

Bobby had been sufficiently awake, if not exactly alert, to join the game drive into the Chobe National Park the next morning. Brenda noticed that Leo managed to appear as well. She thought he looked really dorky in his wingtips. The golf shirt with the logo of a Palm Springs club on the front amounted to the only gesture he seemed to have made to the informality of the occasion. She drew what she interpreted as admiring looks for her safari outfit from the people waiting to board the vehicle. She’d added a leopard print scarf to the ensemble. After Polanski’s misdirected ogling the night before, she figured she should do something about the cleavage. The truck, with its passengers packed three and four across in four tiers of forward-facing benches, rumbled out of Kasane to the park gate. The guide/driver dismounted and visited the building at the entrance, she guessed to pay their fees. She took a picture.

The next hour and a half was spent moving slowly through the bush. The driver rarely shifted from low gear. There were plenty of hoofed beasts to be seen. She tried to make a list of the variety but soon lost track. Bobby was no help. She asked him repeatedly to spell things like
lechwe
and he made a botch of it. An English couple made a nuisance of themselves asking the guide to stop for, like, every freaking bird in the world. And then they had to take its picture. Brenda wasn’t into birds.

The elephants were plentiful and really big. One juvenile followed them for a while trumpeting and wagging its ears. Brenda took a dozen pictures of it. The English just laughed at it. What was up with them?

“Hey, sir,” she shouted over the grinding of the engine, “are we going to see any lions?”

“I hope so, yes. We are going to the place where they are often found. There is a pride that has its territory a kilometer or two from here. If they haven’t moved away we should find them.”

Twenty minutes later the truck rounded a clump of bushes and stopped. A half-dozen lions lolled on the ground like so many sleeping pussycats.

“This pride, you see has a new alpha male. Two weeks ago the old lion was driven off by this younger one that you can see over there beyond the termite hill.” He pointed in the general direction of a tall pillar of dirt and sure enough the maned head of a male lion stared back at them. “We called the old one Sekoa because we think he was sick.
Sekoa
is our word for invalid, yes, a sick person? He was not so good and then this young fellah came along and send him away.”

One of the lionesses rolled over on its back as if waiting for a belly rub. Brenda started to climb down to take its picture.

“Do not move,” the guide barked.

“I was only going to take a picture. They’re okay.”

One large female rolled into a crouch, set her back legs, her eyes riveted on Brenda’s dangling leg.

The guide quickly maneuvered the truck to put Brenda, who hung on to the side, away from the lions and out of their line of sight. The lioness relaxed.

“Hey, what was that all about?”

“The lady lion was looking to grab you, Miss. You must not leave the vehicle. I told you before, as long as you stay in this vehicle, she will not bother. The lion sees us as bigger than they are. But, if you walk away from the truck, you will be on their dinner plate before you can say your prayers.”

Brenda sat back in her seat and endured the hard stares of the rest of the group. Two more trucks filled with tourists arrived. The lions barely acknowledged their presence. One smaller vehicle, which looked like the old SUV she’d seen Leo drive off in the day before, pulled up close beside them and on the side away from the lions. Leo muttered something to the guide, who nodded, and then alit and stepped quickly into the other car. One lion lifted its head and seemed aware of the exchange and then it closed its eyes again.

“What was that all about?” She asked Bobby.

“What?”

“Leo just got out and went into the car next to us. The guide just gave me hell for trying to jump down for a picture and then Leo just hops out and disappears.”

“I guess he has his reasons. That’s the Russian in there with him. I wonder who those other guys are.”

Travis, she noticed, had his eyes locked on the SUV as well. Brenda took a picture.

When the clicking and whirring of cameras abated, indicating everyone had their fill of lions, the guide put the truck in gear. He looked toward the odd SUV and Leo, who waved, and they drove off without him.

“We will go toward the river now and see if the giraffe are waiting for us there today,” he announced.

“You really think they wait for this truck?”

Bobby gave her a look.

“Well, they might. You don’t know everything. I mean the pigeons in the park know when that old lady with the bread crumbs comes every afternoon. Animals aren’t so dumb, you know.”

“Right. Smart enough to stay in their seats rather than be eaten. Jesus, Brenda, what were you thinking?”

“Shut up, Mr. I’m-no-genius-either.”

She turned and took another picture of the SUV, this time with the zoom all the way out.

***

“Did that woman take our picture?”

“Probably, why?”

“There can be no record of this meeting, Mr. Painter. We agreed with Yuri to see you but it cannot be known.”

“
No mathata,
” Greshenko said. “She is related to Mr. Painter. He will see to it that there is no picture.”

“There are no police here, I take it. It is the police you were worried about. Is that not correct?”

“You do not know if there were police or not.”

Leo cleared his throat. “The guide is temporarily in my employ. He assured me that the only passengers on the truck were tourists from the hotel. Rest easy. Now can we discuss a meeting with Botlhokwa?”

“Ah, as to that. Rra Botlhokwa asks if there is any remuneration in the meeting.”

“He wants to know what’s in it for him, is that the drift?”

“Drift? Ah, yes, I understand. Yes, that is the question.”

“If he will give me an hour of his time, he will discover if there is something in it for him or not. We are not talking about a little over-the-border smuggling of proscribed substances. This will be a legitimate undertaking that he might find beneficial to his other enterprises.”

The truck drove back the way it came. Leo would miss seeing the family of giraffe.

Chapter 25

Mma Santos tended a herd of goats. They represented her wealth. Her husband died in a mine accident in Kimberly many years before, when she was still a young girl. She depended on her goats and the support of her village to survive. Her children had fled south to the capitol. One son died of HIV/AIDS, another in an automobile accident, and she had not heard from either daughter in two years. She did not know if they were alive or dead. She grieved for them as if they were.

Her goats replaced them. They provided milk which she sold to her neighbors and she used to make cheese. She bartered kids, milk, and cheese for the remainder of the things she needed to live. She owned nearly a dozen, more or less. When the kids arrived the herd grew, of course. She kept only the females, her girls, she called them. The boys, the males, she sold to the butchery as soon as they were weaned except, of course, the old ram, which she would keep as long as he could do his business. When that stopped, she would trade with a neighbor for a new male and send the Old Man, as she called him, to the abattoir with his most recent off-spring.

She gave names to her girls. She would look between their eyes and a name would come to her. She learned this method from her grandmother, who maintained she, in turn, had learned it from hers. Her friends said she shouldn’t name them, as it would make it difficult for her to sell them later. They were right. Mma Santos had no close friends other than her goats. Her favorite she called Sesi, which means sister. She would have long conversations with Sesi, conversations she would have had with her own children had they been available.

When the LADA tore around the corner on its way from Kazungula to Kasane, scattering her goats in every direction, and ran over Sesi, she was beside herself. When her sons had died, they were far from her, away in Gaborone, and their deaths, as painful as they were, did not tear at her heart as did this last one. Sesi was her friend, her companion, her constant comfort. She tore her hair and wailed. The SUV skidded to a stop. She heard loud voices coming from the vehicle. Her English wasn’t good and she could only make sense of a few words. The man on the passenger’s side seemed angry. The other man sounded like he wished to explain something. The first one yelled and tried to move again. Mma Santos circled the vehicle and stood in front, her hands on her hips. She wanted to see the man who murdered Sesi. A man, not a
motswana
, leaned out of the right window and apologized to her for her loss in strangely accented Setswana. He begged her forgiveness. Before he could finish, the other man, on what she took to be the passenger’s side, pulled out a fat wallet and threw some bills at her. The gears racketed and the car lurched forward, swerved around her, and, kicking gravel on Mma Santo’s legs, roared away.

She picked up the bills and stared at them. They were not pula. The denominations were large, she saw, but she could not read the writing on the paper. She stuffed the money in her blouse and went to gather the broken carcass of Sesi and her other goats. She would take them back to the
kraal
early and mourn her loss.

“Tomorrow,” she muttered, “I will see the
ngaka,
the witch doctor. He will know what to do.”

***

“Bad move, there, Mr. Painter,” Greshenko said.

“What kind of crazy country lets goats wander all over the road? That woman should have to keep them fenced.”

“People graze their livestock in the open. It is customary. Even if the government wanted them not to, it would take more than a law to make them stop. People learn to drive ‘cattle conscious’ here. Besides, they would tell you, the goats owned the road first. They grazed on that grass when the road was no more than a path or an elephant walk. The natives believe the cattle have rights. And so does the government. The people are only responsible for keeping their livestock fenced in after dark.”

“Idiots. How in hell do these people think they’ll get to tomorrow if they keep this up? Goats with rights? There is wealth here for anyone smart enough to see it, but they won’t if they put goats’ rights on the top of their list.”

“Nevertheless, what you just did will get back to our decision-makers, and they won’t like it.”

“Then we’ll spread some money around, offer an equity share for a few of them, and that should settle it. Besides, I left a year’s wages with that woman. She should thank me.”

Greshenko shook his head. Their project didn’t appear that easy to move in the first place. Now…a step back. But it was Painter’s money and as long as he paid, the work will go on. The meeting with Rra Botlhokwa had been cordial, but it didn’t end with any commitments on his part. His help with the purchase remained at best, a distant maybe. And, of course, any move into the game park, they said, was out of the question. Painter had slapped the table at this news.

“But there is a lodge out there that is privately owned,” he’d complained. “Why them and not us?”

“They were allowed into the game park because the tourism board wished it. There were villages in the park once, as well. The people of those villages were moved out, as well, and there are some private holdings along the river. But no new things can be added without the appropriate Ministry approval.”

“We’ll buy the Chobe Game Lodge, then.”

“Not for sale, and if it were, you can bet the government would exercise a right of first refusal on it.”

“Then why aren’t we talking to the ministry in charge of this business?”

Greshenko looked away, his eyes narrowed, which only annoyed Painter more. Used to getting his own way and used to greasing the skids of any slow-to-move project with infusions of cash, both above and below the table, he’d left the meeting visibly irritated—at Greshenko and with the movers and shakers in the north country.

“Tomorrow you get back to those birds and get something moving.”

“That may easier said than done.”

“What? Why?”

“They are suspicious of the police, for one thing. And there are other considerations.”

“What’s that supposed to mean? I pay you to use those special skills I was told you possess to make this happen. You are here to help me.”

“Yes, well, not entirely.” Painter jerked his head around to look at Greshenko and nearly clipped a battered pickup. “I am here because you contracted for my services. My other connections—”

“You mean the Mafia.”

“We do not use that term. That is what you call Italian gangsters. No, they permitted this trip away from Chicago so that I could take the pulse of the country, so to speak. They did not know about Botlhokwa, however. ”

“But you do. Yes, I see. You mean you’re on a scouting mission for them to introduce the rackets.”

“For them, for me, who can say how all this will play out. We do not do ‘rackets,’ by the way, Mr. Painter. We have other, more profitable interests.”

“Like what?”

Greshenko did not respond right away. “It would be better if you did not know. If that DIS agent were to query you, you will be ignorant. One of your presidents referred to it as
deniability
, you see?”

Leo didn’t see. He’d brushed Greshenko aside after the meeting and insisted on driving the LADA back to the Safari Game lodge himself. That put him mostly on the wrong side of the road and driving at an unacceptably high speed given the circumstances. If he even saw the goats, he apparently had no intention of slowing down or even sounding his horn.

Had he done the latter, the goats might have scattered and the Mma Santos would not have felt it necessary to solicit a
moloi’s
curse.

Chapter 26

After dismissing Greshenko with the caveat he might need him later and asking that he investigate one or two of the smaller properties on the river, he returned to his room. The phone blinked at him as he stepped in. A message. Sheridan Baker had called and reported everything Leo requested had been done as asked. The paperwork was in the mail and should be in Chicago today. Faxed copies had been sent to the lodge. Leo called the desk.

“There should be some faxes for me. Would you please have them delivered to my room?”

“Certainly. And sir, you had a long-distance call from San Francisco while you were out. The caller left a message.”

“Send that along as well.”

Fifteen minutes later the several papers were in his hands. He read through them to assure that the contents were correct on the one hand and useful on the other. The call from San Francisco had been placed by Cavanaugh.
Thank you
. You’re welcome. More than you will ever know, At least I hope so. That bit of his program done. Leo settled into a chair and smiled. This could turn into a good day, after all. Now he needed a sit-down with Travis, but first, he needed Bobby Griswold’s signatures on the transmittal forms. He called the latter’s room. Not surprisingly, Brenda reported him as unavailable.

“You mean he’s drunk or close to it, I assume. Throw him in the shower and then tell him to get his lazy butt down here on the double.”

He hung up and sat at the small desk. He arranged the papers he needed Bobby to sign on its surface and placed the others face-down next to them. He fixed himself a martini and settled in to wait for the boy. He liked the gin and wondered why the same label bought in the States didn’t taste the same. This had more flavor, more body, if that could be said about gin. He did not consider himself a gin snob, but he could taste differences between the cheap stuff he bought in his youth and what he drank now. He guessed the British version, which would be sold in Botswana, underwent a different distillation process than the American. Hell, the Brits practically invented the stuff. He’d take a case home with him; that and a couple dozen Cuban cigars.

Bobby arrived thirty minutes later, bedraggled, his hair wet from the shower, a little worse for wear, but coherent. Leo sat him down and pointed to the places needing a signature. Bobby hesitated.

“Problem?”

“I’m just wondering, you know. Like, if I want to buy these shares back someday…They were my mother’s and all, and well.”

“I know that. Sentimental value is it? That’s fine with me. As soon as you have the wherewithal to do that, they’re yours.”

Leo studied the boy’s face for some hint at what really lurked in the dim recesses of his mind. He did not like what he saw, the slow, sly expression that Bobby could scarcely hide. Something was up.

“Suppose you, like, died. I mean, I don’t think you will or anything, of course, but, you know, you had those heart attacks back then and…” His voice trailed off. Leo waited for what might come next. “See, I was hoping, like maybe, you could add them to the part of the will that’s about me.”

“Will? What will would that be?”

“Your will. I mean, Brenda said she talked to Farrah before we came over here and she thinks I’m in it, in your will.”

“Ah, that will, my will, the one Farrah executed, you mean. I see, yes, of course. Well, as to that…” Leo considered what Bobby really had in mind. He didn’t like where his thoughts took him. He didn’t believe Bobby had the courage or audacity to take him on, but with idlers like this boy, you can never be sure.

“Very well, this is what I can do for you. Look, here is a bit of white space between the last paragraph in the paper in which you assign the shares to me and the signature line. There is enough room, if I’m careful and write small, to add a statement that will serve as a codicil, so to speak, in the agreement.”

Leo sat at the desk and started to write in a cramped hand, paused, and looked up.

“It’s important we get this right. The date on that will was…yes, the second week in February. We don’t want some slick lawyer to find a loophole that will keep you from what you…” The greedy look on Bobby’s face said it all. Leo left off.
What you deserve.
“That which is rightly yours. Let me see, I signed it on Friday, the week after the Super Bowl. Okay…The will of February…” he added the year, reread what he’d written, and handed it to Bobby to inspect. He, in turn, screwed up his face in concentration and read, silently, his lips moving.

“It says that in the event of my death, if these shares are still in my possession, they will be added to the corpus of your inheritance under the terms of my will dated February, etcetera, etcetera. Does that sound about right?”

“Um, yes, yes, it does. I sign here?”

“Right there where I put that little check mark.”

Bobby signed both letters of transmittal and handed them to Leo, who signed them also.

“You want to give me the money so I can pay off Travis now?”

“No, I think it would be better if I, as they say, cut out the middle-man. I have both these documents. When Travis sees them he will sign the first and that will be that.”

“But I thought—”

“You needn’t bother yourself about it anymore. If Travis balks, I’ll call you. Now go enjoy yourself. Oh, and you haven’t said anything to Brenda about either the divorce or this matter, have you?”

“No. Not yet. When would be a good time to do that?”

“Wait until you hear from me. I need to have a chat with Travis first. You understand, he may have something to say about that. It would be beneficial if he could be persuaded to testify about their relationship, at the hearing, I mean. Save a lot of legal maneuvering, right?”

“Um, okay, I guess so.”

Leo doubted he did but it didn’t matter. The ill-disguised look of disappointment on Bobby’s face did concern him, though.

“Fine, now run along.”