Killer Country (16 page)

Manga let the Spider turn into the exit lane before he left the parking bay, driving past the family at their SUV, everyone of them giving him and Spitz the once-over.

Spitz said, ‘Wave to our club of fans.’

‘Don’t sweat it, captain,’ said Manga, turning into the exit lane, slowing for a Ford Focus to nose between them and the Spider, fifty, sixty metres ahead.

‘That is okay for you is it? They see two black men in a BMW with one driving, the other in the back, they will think this is very strange?’ 

‘They’re whiteys. Whiteys think everything we do is strange. Probably think you’re a cabinet minister.’

‘Without any security forces? With no vehicles to back up?’

‘Or new elite.’

‘I can ask the same questions. White people are not stupid.’

‘Most are.’

‘Then you are stupid. When white people see two black men in a BM car, they think there is trouble.’

‘’Cos they’re paranoid.’

Spitz had to laugh, the sound coming out like a bark. He pulled on his gloves.

‘What’ja need those for, captain?’ Manga shaking his head, frowning.

‘They are how I do the job,’ said Spitz.

The Spider turned towards the exit booms, and Manga nudged up close behind the Focus to move it along, muttering, ‘Come on, guys. Let’s roll it. Let’s tap the pedal.’

The four exits were occupied, no chance of getting out at the same time as the Spider. Manga went in behind it.

‘Why are you doing this?’ said Spitz. ‘He can see you in the mirror.’

‘So what?’

‘He is watching you. The man is not a fool. Later he will think about we two. He will remember the black men in the car. The one behind the other. He will give the police details.’

‘What details?’ The Spider eased off and Manga rolled forward, inserted his ticket into the receiver. The boom went down behind the Spider and up immediately. ‘In this light. A black face wearing shades. You’re not even gonna see me. And maybe you didn’t notice, anyhow, gotta be about a million of those faces in this city. Captain, you’re stressing.’

Which riled Spitz but he kept it down.

The Focus was ahead of them again, driving slowly. At the intersection the traffic lights on red, the Spider in the fast lane, a car in front of it. The Focus went right behind the Spider.

‘Heita,’ said Manga, coming up slowly on the Spider’s left, giving Spitz a clear shot. Less than two metres. ‘Plan A, one time.’

Spitz shifted to the centre of the seat, readied the Ruger. When they pulled opposite, he’d sight and squeeze.

The lights changed and the car ahead of the Spider fish-tailed off burning rubber. The Spider accelerating behind it, the opportunity quickly lost to pop and peel.

‘Bloody bushies,’ said Manga. ‘A coloured gets a car he thinks he’s Michael Schumacher.’ He went through the gears keeping with the game, before them now a clear kilometre of two-lane feeder road to the highway on-ramps. Plan B with no complications.

Spitz said nothing, watching the Spider pull ahead in the fast lane, Manga holding steady a car’s length behind and to the left, the Focus parallel to the right, a kid in the back of the Focus levelling a bright orange gun at him. The gun held sideways like the kid had seen hoods do it on CSI.

Spitz raised his left hand in surrender, the Ruger lightly in his right. The kid shot him once and ducked down.

Manga caught the movement of Spitz’s hand. ‘What’s happening, captain?’

‘There is a boy in the Focus playing that he is shooting me,’ said Spitz.

Manga snorted. ‘Kids see too much shit on TV. Okay, you ready for this?’

‘If there was sun it would be better.’

Spitz pushed the window-down button, felt the car picking up speed, pulling ahead of the Focus, his line of sight coming onto the back of the Spider, riding to the open passenger window, the passenger turning to look at him.

‘Now, captain, now,’ shouted Manga, holding the car straight before swinging left, taking the gear down, putting foot, the BM coming alive with a jerk and tyre screech.  

Rudi Klett, his window down, his arm leaning on the door, was shouting above the tyre noise, ‘I came in that time, Christa was a little one, must have been when, what year, 1996?’

‘She was five.’ Mace checked the rearview: the Focus behind them, headlights on dim, the BMW on the inside lane, sitting squat in the blind spot of his wing mirror.

‘Louder.’

Mace thinking this was crazy, having to shout at one another. He held up a hand, showed Rudi Klett five fingers barely visible in the gloom. ‘Five years old. Maybe we should wind up the windows, switch the aircon on?’

Rudi Klett shook his head, not put off at having to shout. ‘Wait one minute.’ Taking deep breaths. ‘Still the same smell.’

Mace thought, you’ve got to be kidding.

‘In ’96, there was a wonderful feeling with everyone. So much excitement and promise of building houses so that no one lived in a shack anymore.’

‘Didn’t happen as you’ll soon see,’ said Mace.

‘Some of the big boys saying, no what did they want with a navy and jet fighters? Who was going to invade South Africa? So I have to tell them this is an uncertain world of course you must have an insurance policy. You don’t know what is going to happen. The wise man has cover. A good thing the Old Man listens to what I’m saying. The message is passed on and even the critics change their tune. Everybody sees the light. Hallelujah.’

Mace pointed ahead at the on-ramp to the highway. ‘We go up on that curve and you’ll see squatter land. Some of them double storey. Double-storey tin shacks!’

‘Ah so.’ Rudi Klett turned his head at the sound of a car coming up on the left.

Mace bellowing, ‘I’ve been in some of them. You get inside and  its Home and Décor, what the magazines are calling township chic. Unbelievable.’ He sensed the BM taking the off-ramp east, caught a flash of its headlights in the wing mirror. ‘Only problem is fires.’ He pointed again at the squatter shacks below. ‘There’s a fire in that lot, the fire fighters haven’t got a chance of getting the engines there. Every time a candle blows over, there’s a fire. People burn. Not the sort of death you’d want.’

Coming off the approach, Mace lined up the Spider to merge between two long-haul juggernauts, the noise deafening, the traffic on the highway fast and free. He clocked in at one twenty, tiny between the rigs, the chrome radiator of the Mack behind on his bumper. Not a situation Mace relished. In his right wing he watched minibus taxis belting up and go booming past, and squeezed more juice from the Spider, throwing it right to overtake the front truck, the needle climbing to one thirty, thirty-five, the Spider beginning to feel light on the road. Mace kept it steady in the drum and tear of the road roar, lights flicking at him from behind, the Spider hauling past the horse and trailer. Then he was ahead, the noise receding.

‘Wind up your window,’ he shouted, winding up his own. ‘It’s crazy out there.’ When Rudi Klett made no move, Mace glanced at him to see Rudi Klett leaning away, his head slumped forward. ‘Hey, Rudi.’ He tugged at him. ‘What’s the matter. Wind up your window.’ The body of Rudi Klett flopped towards him, only checked by the safety belt.

Mace saw the blood then. Not much, a small red stain above the pocket of Rudi Klett’s golf shirt.

‘Rudi. Jesus Christ. Rudi talk to me. Stay with me.’ Mace groped for Rudi Klett’s wrist and found a pulse still fluttering there. He pushed the Spider back up to one thirty, thinking he could make the nearest hospital in maybe ten minutes or stop and check out the wound? Deciding on the hospital, telling Rudi Klett to hang in that he’d get to medics in no time flat. Then phoned Pylon.

‘How’m I supposed to understand this woman?’ was Pylon’s opening.

Mace said, ‘Klett’s been shot.’

A beat, then: ‘What?’ Then: ‘Dead?’

‘There’s a pulse,’ said Mace.

‘Where’re you?’

‘Coming up to the cooling towers. Heading for Groote Schuur.’

‘What’s it?’ Pylon said.

‘Head shot. Left side. Don’t know where exactly or how bad. Not much blood though.’

He heard Pylon blow out breath. ‘I’ll phone it in. Just get there. Fast.’

Mace disconnected, felt again for Rudi Klett’s pulse and pressed down his fingers to find a faint throb. ‘Rudi,’ he shouted. ‘Rudi, can you hear me?’ Getting no response, keeping his eyes on the traffic thickening now with flows coming in from Bridgetown and Athlone. He rode the needle higher, seeing the temperature climb too with the speed. All he needed now was the radiator to blow.

Mace eased the accelerator back to one twenty over the Black River rise, planning to make his break left across the lanes at the last moment. His cell rang: Pylon. Mace keyed on the hands-free, said, ‘I’m in the corner towards the Parkway bridge. What’s that two minutes if I run the lights?’

‘Run the lights,’ said Pylon. ‘They’re waiting. Klett still with us?’

‘Hanging in I hope.’

‘Talking?’

‘Not a chance. Can’t hear his breathing, shallow pulse. I’m going over the bridge. Jesus, the bastards won’t let me across.’ Mace flicking his lights, leaning on his hooter.

Under the noise he heard Pylon say, ‘I told them he’s a German VIP caught a stray bullet down the N2. Nobody’s fazed. Medics say it happens all the time.’

‘Keep with me,’ said Mace, taking a gap between two cars onto  the hard shoulder to pass inside a surfer’s rust-bucket kombi and onto the off-ramp.

Pylon saying, ‘I’m staying right here.’

‘Light’s red,’ said Mace and came up right of the cars stopped at the intersection, swinging right again into the traffic. Caused a bewildered moment and a cacophony, hooters and brakes and one bang of a collision. ‘I’m through,’ he said.

‘Sounds bad,’ said Pylon.

‘Running the next red,’ said Mace, this time with a clear passage down the wrong side of the street. He pushed the Spider against maximum revs through the next light, braking hard at the hospital entrance. ‘Here now.’

‘With you in ten,’ said Pylon.

Mace chased an ambulance to Casualty, squealing in behind it. Even before he was switched off, medics had the passenger door open, were unstrapping Rudi Klett and dragging him out on to a gurney.

Mace and Pylon sat in a reception room down from the operating theatres. The prognosis on Rudi Klett not sunny. His condition critical, a bullet stuck behind his ear.

Mace phoned Oumou.

‘I’m alright,’ he told her, comforted by the anxiety in her voice. ‘Just a bit hyper.’

She told him he needed coffee. With sugar. Lots of sugar.

‘Here?’ He laughed. ‘You don’t get coffee here. They call it that but it’s not.’ Again he assured her that he was fine.

‘I am not hearing this in your voice,’ she said. ‘I can hear something different.’

He didn’t respond.

‘Mace,’ Oumou said. ‘Cheri, are you with Pylon?’

‘Sure. He’s here,’ said Mace, feeling suddenly fatigued. Thinking the Rudi Klett jaunt had been bad news all round. Thinking this  was exactly the sort of reason to get out of guarding. Who needed this in his life?

‘Then what is the matter?’

‘I don’t know,’ said Mace. ‘I don’t know what happened. One minute we’re talking the next he’s shot. I can’t understand it. No one knew he was coming.’

‘This is shock,’ said Oumou.

Mace snorted. ‘Klett’s not the first person been shot next to me. This’s not shock, Oumou, this is worry. That I buggered up a simple job.’

‘No. That is wrong. This is bad luck.’

‘I don’t know. A stray bullet’s pushing bad luck.’

‘It is possible. From a person shooting out of the squatter shacks.’

‘Maybe, maybe not. The doctors believe it.’

‘You are tired, no?’ She paused.

Mace didn’t deny it.

‘Why don’t you leave it to Pylon? Come home. I will fetch Christa from Treasure’s.’

‘There’s stuff we’ve got to sort out. Security arrangements.’

‘This is what he can do.’

‘I’ll see,’ said Mace. ‘I’ll call you later.’

‘In an hour. Or we will fetch you.’

Mace smiled, disconnecting. He liked the idea she was concerned. His phone rang: Judge Telman Visser’s name on the screen. Mace clicked him to voicemail.

At a dispensing machine in the corridor he bought two cans of Coke and lifted five sachets of sugar from a holder on a tray with teabags and a jar of instant coffee. He tore the ends off the sachets one at a time, poured the contents into his mouth, crunching the granules. Washed the last one down with a mouthful of Coke. The other can he took to Pylon in the reception room.

Pylon, finished talking to a doctor, said, ‘He reckons it’s dicey.’ 

‘They get the bullet?’

‘Yeah. No sweat the doc said.’ Pylon pulled the ring on the can. ‘Found it lying there right behind his ear. That wasn’t the hard part.’ He sipped at the Coke. ‘The hard part’s stabilising him. The doc says a lot of brain damage.’

Mace nodded. ‘The bullet ran around? Went in the top and down.’

‘Probably a light calibre.’

‘I’d say, if it’s a hit.’

They sat down on plastic chairs opposite the theatre door.

‘But it doesn’t have to be. Something coming over from the township would’ve gone in like that. Bounced around his skull.’

Mace finished his Coke. ‘A tired bullet.’

‘Why not?’

‘No reason why not. Any other time I’d say probably. Except the man in there is Rudi Klett.’

‘Problemo,’ said Pylon.

They sat in silence until Pylon said he’d arranged for security. Two of their best guys. And went quiet again until Mace said, ‘Klett was weird in Berlin’ and told Pylon of the business with Herr Dr Konrad Schultz.

‘Like I’m standing there thinking what am I doing here with you? He’s going in to plug the Herr Dr from the start. So why am I along for this? He tells me so I can see the sort of commissions being paid traders these days. What’s that about? We’re out of that shit.’

Pylon said, ‘Klett’s a dealer.’

‘No kidding. He’s got some government commission on his arse. He’s got the big politicos anxious that he’s got stuff on them. Top government, he tells me. The last place on earth he wants to be is here. People are out for him. He’s travelling under a different name. So what’s he here for, I want to know? Not to put his signature on some small-change land deal.’

‘Hundred million’s not small change.’

‘The sort of figures Klett talks, it’s small change, believe me. Klett’s into something else. Someone else knew he was going to be here. What flight. Who he was with. All the little details.’

‘Scary.’

‘Damn right.’

Mace got their empty cans and walked across the room to dump them in a bin. What he wanted was to go home, take a shower, lie down on the cool sheets of his bed and get Oumou to massage the hard knots in his shoulders. What he didn’t want was to be sitting in the bright fluorescent light waiting to hear if Rudi Klett was dead yet.

Pylon said, ‘Best to get a story to the paper.’

‘Saying what?’

‘Tourist survives stray bullet.’

‘Assuming he does?’

‘Either way, doesn’t matter. It was a hit, someone’s going to rock up asking about the tourist. The man wants his payment, he has to have Rudi Klett dead.’ Pylon toyed with his cellphone.

‘You do it,’ said Mace. ‘I’m going home.’

‘There’s other stuff,’ Pylon said.

‘Like what stuff?’

‘Like Popo Dlamini. Lindiwe Chocho.’

Mace rubbed his hand over his face. ‘Tomorrow, okay. I’ve got to crash.’

Pylon put a hand on Mace’s shoulder. ‘And some good news.’

‘Such as?’

‘Such as your case with the American couple is off. According to the captain.’

‘What?’ Mace stared at his partner. ‘For real?’

‘Yeah, for real. Both of them dead. She trying to escape. He in a prison gang thing.’

Mace let out a long whoosh of breath. ‘Wonder of wonders. There’s a relief.’ Gave Pylon a wide grin. ‘You could’ve let me know earlier.’ 

‘I meant to. Except stuff kept happening.’

Mace came out of the hospital into the warm darkness carrying the stench of antiseptic on his clothes. The smell embedded in his nostrils. Wasn’t for Rudi, he’d sing.

He opened his car door, thinking, shit, he hadn’t locked it. Felt down the side for the clip where he’d attached the P8, his fingers sliding lightly over the metal. Out loud he thanked the gods. He checked the boot: the bags untouched. Had to be some kind of miracle.

Getting in behind the wheel, Mace noticed a smear of blood across the passenger seat: a faint glisten from the arc light in the parking lot.

‘Bloody Rudi Klett.’ Everywhere he went, afterwards there was blood.

The end of the world as we know it. Mace shook his head as if to dislodge the lyrics still on their endless loop through his mind.

The Spider fired at the turn and Mace drove up the dark street beside the hospital taking the slip road onto the highway. This hour of a Monday night the traffic into the city moving light and fast. On the bend he lined up for the De Waal Drive split, tapping a devil’s tattoo on the steering wheel.

If it was a hit, it’d been a long time coming. If it was a hit, some seriously strange links must’ve played out behind the scenes. The sort of linkages that worried Mace. Meant they’d have to jack up security, for sure. Sweep their offices. Their homes. Check out the staff profiles. Heavy stuff that made him sigh.

He kept the Spider to the speed limit, drifting easily through the curves, the city bright below him, the mountain dark above.

If Rudi Klett stayed alive and the morning news touched the hitman where it hurt most, all kinds of shit could unravel in the coming days. Nothing Pylon couldn’t handle. Alone. Mace smiled at the thought of Pylon taking this news.

Because why? Because after the crap Rudi Klett had dealt him,  Mace believed he deserved chill time. Like a few days on a farm. So he’d tell the judge he’d drive up on Friday. And would be taking Christa. Whatever the judge’s problem was of having Christa along, the judge would have to lump it. For Chrissakes he was doing him a favour.

Roads opening up. Long scrub vistas. Huge skies. The idea of doing some serious Karoo travelling was appealing. Top down through the small towns. It would be a gas. And Christa with him.