Of Cops & Robbers (26 page)

‘Agga no, my bru,’ says the skinny one, ‘three’s too little. This’s the best. Five hundred’s rock-bottom, going for a song, ek sê vir jou. Low as we go.’

‘Three,’ says Fish, waving the notes.

‘Dis daylight robbery,’ says the driver. ‘You’s stealing the bread and butter from our children, out of their mouths.’

‘Three,’ says Fish.

The skinny one and the driver stare at Fish, stare at the money until the driver pushes a bag off the back seat.

Fish thinking no ways these guys are dealers, they’ve ripped it off, they want to unload quickly.

‘Okay, my bru,’ says the skinny one, snatching the money from Fish’s hand. ‘You’s a thief.’

‘Hey,’ says Fish, ‘it’s three hundred you’re getting for
nothing
. Makes three of us’re thieves.’ He watches them until the car’s out of sight before he picks up the bag. A bloody good deal. Stash that lot in baggies he could score four thou, even five thou maybe.

He’s about to drive off, his phone goes: Vicki.

‘So what’s so urgent you have to ditch me?’

Fish laughs. ‘Sorry, Vics. Had a little situation developing. Some kids, you know …’

‘I don’t, but your situation’s over I take it?’

‘Oh yes.’

‘Then listen to what your personal secretary’s got for you: Willy Cotton’s cellphone number, email address, lots of photies even some with Fortune Appollis. And the courses he’s registered for. Want me to get Willy’s timetable as well?’

‘Would you? Thanks, Vics.’

Silence.

‘I’m having a bad day, Fish. Don’t push it. You want
printouts
of this stuff, come and get them.’

She disconnects.

Fish smiles.

Jacob Mkezi tells Mellanie, no, no more profiles. Doesn’t matter who it’s for. No more profiles.

She’s not taking no as the final word.

‘Jacob,’ she says, ‘hear me, this is the
Sunday Times
. This is major exposure. This is not my touting. This is their request.’

‘No,’ he says.

‘Lifestyle,’ she says. ‘Not some op-ed Q&A, this is Jacob Mkezi at home. Jacob Mkezi on the golf course. Jacob Mkezi judging a beauty contest of bomb victims. Jacob Mkezi visiting a school feeding scheme. His personal charity.’

‘What charity?’

‘The one we’re going to launch.’

He laughs. ‘You’re full of shit. You know that, full of shit. What’re you doing this for, sisi? I don’t need this crap.’

He hears Mellanie sigh. ‘My job, Mr Mkezi, is to reinvent you. No more the man in the crocodile-skin shoes. Now it’s Mr Heart. Mr At Home. Geddit?’

‘What for?’

‘Ah, Jacob, to save your career, my former commissioner.’

‘What do I need that for? I’m at home in the crocodile-skin shoes. No police career needed, everything’s good. I don’t need a career. I don’t need a cop job. What do I need that for? I’ve got a company. I’ve got everything. I don’t need that hassle and crap, I need to relax. Take time out. Live my life.’

Jacob Mkezi looking down at his crocodile-skin shoes. He’s sitting in his lounge, the sliding doors open to the lawn, the hadedas doing their thing on the grass. What does he need to be in an office for?

‘Lunch,’ he says to Mellanie. ‘Let’s talk about lunch. Let’s talk Steenberg. Bistro Sixteen82 we can sit there look up at the
Elephant’s Eye. Eat their duck confit. Drink that Rattlesnake Sauvignon Blanc. Listen to the water features. Day like today, what d’you say?’

‘I say,’ says Mellanie, ‘that’s a nice idea but some of us have jobs, Mr Mkezi. Some of us need to pull in the shekels.’

‘Give it a break,’ he says. ‘Meet me there.’ Jacob Mkezi thinking, Mellanie for lunch is a good idea. After that he needs self-time. Self-time to track down that little rent boy. Put the feeding scheme into operation. Up the rent buti’s calorie intake.

He catches Mellanie saying, ‘One thirty. That’s the earliest I can do, Jacob.’

‘One thirty’s good. Give you something to look forward to.’

He hears her laugh. ‘Jacob Mkezi, sometimes, I dunno,
sometimes
you’re too much.’

Next he keys through to Tol Visagie. A stressed Tol Visagie.

‘You found out who he is?’ Tol Visagie wants to know right off. ‘That Vusi Bopape?’

‘Not yet,’ says Jacob Mkezi.

‘He’s just sitting there, at the lodge. My friend says he spent all morning on the deck, reading, checking the wildlife drinking at the waterhole. That’s all. Makes some phone calls. Sits there drinking beer.’

‘Sounds like he’s having a good time. His wife there?’

‘No. She didn’t come back with him. He’s waiting for
something
. Waiting for someone.’

‘Hang loose, Tol,’ says Jacob Mkezi. ‘Stay away from the horns. Thursday morning you meet the trucks at the river
o-five
-hundred. Got it?’

‘Ja,’ says Tol Visagie, ‘I’ll be there.’

Jacob Mkezi’s onto Mart Velaze next.

Mart Velaze says, ‘The boy died. Didn’t come out of the coma.’

‘I’m sorry to hear that.’

‘Happens all the time.’

‘Daro Attilane?’

‘Being handled.’

‘Vusi Bopape?’

‘Nothing. Not NIA, definitely. Not military. Not police.’

Jacob Mkezi gets up, closes the sliding doors. ‘You’re a good man, comrade. Keep trying.’

He thinks about phoning Vicki Kahn. Thinks about it, but doesn’t. Better to let a few days pass. Let her contemplate owing him a favour. He likes that, the thought of someone owing him a favour.

Daro stares at the unopened package on his desk.

Adler Solutions.

There’s a city address, suite twelve, fifteenth floor of an office block on Long, and a telephone contact.

Daro knows if he rings he’ll be told wrong number. If he does the legwork he’ll find it’s the office of a management
consultant
or a forwarding agent, anything but a company called Adler Solutions.

He pushes aside what’s left of the croissant. There’s that
nauseous
feeling in his stomach. Reaches for the package, cuts off the plastic courier bag. Inside’s a box wrapped in brown paper. The size box a jeweller’d have for a diamond ring. Taped to the box a card for Adler Solutions. Same address, same telephone number. The sort of card you could have run off at an
instant
-print booth.

Daro pulls off the card, tears the wrapping. Inside’s a black box with a hinged lid, a little brass fastening clasp. Someone’s got a sense of style.

He flips up the catch, springs back the lid. Lying on a cotton wool bed’s a bullet.

Daro tweezers it out with the thumb and index finger of his right hand, lays it in the palm of his left. So light it’s no weight at all.

The bullet is a .22 long-rifle. Not a big bullet, the brass and lead no more than fifteen millimetres. Not an impressive bullet, small, insignificant. But give it a chance it’ll do death and damage at three hundred and thirty metres per second.

Daro doesn’t know the specifics here.

Doesn’t know, for instance, that way back in 1887 in Chicopee Falls, Massachusetts the J. Stevens Arms & Tool Company
started churning these out and nowadays it’s a popular bullet everywhere: good for plinking, good for hunting pest animals, good for hitmen. Not much noise. With a silencer little more than a pop.

Another advantage, this cartridge works for both rifles and pistols. It’s the inauspicious nature of this bullet that deceives. A mere two point six grams of lead but you put that into your target in the right spot, job done ’n dusted.

One case: a photographer covering the township wars back in the early 1990s copped a .22 long-rifle load fired by the
peacekeepin
g force. Copped it in the chest. Small hole, invisible if it hadn’t leaked just a tear of blood. Inside the lead tumbled about his ribcage chewing up heart and lungs. End of his story.

What Daro doesn’t think about is that the example lying in the palm of his hand is one of millions, the brass tarnished, the cross in the lead snag-edged from the cut. Apart from the cross, a common bullet. Can be bought by the box at any gun shop.

Might be common but it gets Daro’s heart racing. His mouth’s dry, the sweat’s damp in his armpits. He keeps himself seated, the bullet clutched in his fist.

What Daro thinks about is who made the cut? Mart Velaze springs to mind. Except Mart Velaze is a messenger. That being the case, Daro decides, he needs him to deliver a message. Well, a whole dossier.

Fish makes a mental list: Seven, Cake Mullins, Willy Cotton. His mother doesn’t crack the list. Despite that she’s his mother, despite the hours he could bill, he’s got a reluctance here. He promises himself, tonight he’ll handle her job. First things first.

He tools along Baden Powell beside the sea, half an eye on a neat wave rolling in at Cemetery. Very rideable. Not much excitement in the swell but still would be a better thing to do than any of the calls he has to make.

Fish buys a croissant at Knead, munches down on the pastry for the short walk into the warren.

Seven’s not at the house of bad breath. Nor is Jouma the Toothless. Who’s there is the chick he found Seven shagging the day before. Her and a coloured girl. They stand in the
passageway
, tell Fish Seven’s upped and offed.

‘We don’t know where to, dude,’ the white one says. ‘He’s gone. You want to see?’

‘He’s taken his bag,’ chips in the coloured one. ‘And his CDs.’

‘What about the other guy, without the teeth?’ Fish taps his own front teeth.

‘Both, gone.’

They stand there staring at him, these two urchins can’t be more than sixteen years old wearing baggy tracksuit pants and jerseys, grey school socks, no shoes. Lank hair that could do with washing. The coloured one says, ‘Can you give us money for food?’

Fish laughs at her. ‘No. You should be in school. Sleeping at home.’

‘Please, dude, we’re hungry.’

‘Go home then,’ says Fish.

She gives him the finger.

‘Fuck off, cunt,’ says the white one, slams closed the door.

Nice, thinks Fish. Gives his cop neighbour Flip Nel a call.

‘Runaways’re not my scene exactly,’ says Flip Nel. ‘But I’ll check it out for the promise of a fishing trip. You getting your tyres fixed?’

‘Sort of caught up in other things,’ says Fish.

‘Weekend’s coming, china. Thank Christ. I’m baiting up.’ Flip Nel rings off, Fish hoping the cop’s not going to be a pain in the arse about going fishing.

Cake Mullins has much the same attitude as the teenage girls, though he puts it differently at first. At first Cake Mullins says, ‘I don’t know who you are. Go away.’

They’re talking through the buzz box: Fish leaning out the window of his car at the gate of Cake Mullins’s Constantia house. Fish recognising the place where Daro Attilane came to sell a Subaru. Nice-looking pad. Double-storey, porticoed entrance, neat lawns, swimming pool, a gardener weeding the grass. Fish thinking, How about that? One of life’s little
coincidences
. Fish taps his fingers on the buzz box. He hates buzz boxes. The crackle’s bad, there’s a CCTV system projecting him onto a screen somewhere in the house, giving Cake Mullins all the advantages.

He says, ‘Can we do this face to face?’

‘No,’ says Cake Mullins. ‘I don’t know who you are.’

‘I told you, Fish Pescado.’

‘That supposed to mean something, Mr Pescado?’

‘Yes. Plain curiosity should have you opening the gates for me. Can’t be every day you have an investigator investigating.’

‘Go away, pal. I’m a busy man.’

Fish tries a different angle, says, ‘Vicki Kahn, know her? I left a message about her on your answer phone.’

‘Never heard of her.’

‘Quick refresh: she was here last night for a game you set up. Ring any bells?’

‘Do me a favour, pal, bugger off will you?’

Fish looks up at the camera, giving the raised eyebrows query. Wonders if Cake Mullins has a clear picture. ‘Don’t be like that. Be nice, Cake. I’ll say again: she was here last night for a poker game.’

‘Wrong address, pal.’

‘I don’t think so. You’re Cake Mullins, this is your house so far so right. Grand place, by the way. Musta costa plenty. Costa plenty to keep it spick ’n span, I’d say.’

‘What you say doesn’t matter, pal. Let me run through this one more time: bugger off.’

Fish holds up his hands to the camera. ‘Okay, I’m going. You can get back to your scones ’n tea, Cake. But hear me: you do that to her again I’m probably going to bust your balls.’

‘Yeah, big man. Whatta hero.’

‘’Nother thing, your mate Jacob Mkezi—’

‘I don’t know any Jacob Mkezi.’

‘Course you do, Cake. That’s why you butted in so fast there.’

‘Fuck off,’ says Cake Mullins. The crackle dies on the buzz box.

Nice, thinks Fish, twice in half an hour. Enough to make you feel unloved.

Willy Cotton’s not the friendliest young man Fish’s ever stumbled across either.

Fish’s sitting on a bench on the campus gazing up at Table Mountain, rising grey against a winter blue, thinking, he loves this city: the tower blocks, the posh suburbs spread round the lower slopes, like rock lichen at low tide.

Fish thinks it’s been a time since he walked St George’s Mall, hasn’t smelt the early morning fish pong that would drift up from the harbour some days. Hasn’t eaten a burger and chips at the Gardens restaurant in a year or more. Hasn’t heard the noon-day gun chase up the pigeons in yonks.

Where he’s sitting faces towards a lecture theatre where Willy
Cotton is learning the wonders of business information
systems
. How Vicki pinned this down Fish doesn’t know and Vicki wouldn’t tell him.

When she gave him Willy Cotton’s contact details and two printout photographs of the young man all she said was, ‘Don’t think you’ll always get this lucky, Mr Pescado. That’s where he is right now, in class.’ And pinched his cheek and was gone back into the building before he could say thanks.

The students come out, Fish stands on the bench to get a better view. No mistaking Willy Cotton: shaved head like a gangster’s, little moustache and chin beard, body that’s
gym-toned
. Obligatory jeans, though Willy Cotton’s are belted round his waist. Denim jacket over a 50 Cent T-shirt. Happy chappie having some laughs with his mates.

Fish phones him. Watches the guy squeeze a cellphone out of his jeans pocket. Seems to be some sort of smartphone with a keyboard. Impressive, running a smartphone means Willy
Cotton
’s making money somewhere, somehow.

Only bummer in Willy Cotton’s image is that he has this high-pitched voice doesn’t belong to his pumped-up body.

‘Got a minute?’ Fish says.

‘Who’re you?’ says Willy Cotton in his Cape Flats soprano.

‘Friend of Fortune Appollis’s family.’

End of conversation. Willy Cotton keys him off on the turn.

Fish stares after the big man, moving away with his friends. But the jauntiness has gone from Willy Cotton’s walk. He’s agitated, not paying attention to them, staring at his phone like he expects it to ring again.

Fish follows the group off the campus up a couple of streets to Justice Walk where they’ve parked their cars. They do parting hugs and back thumps, Willy Cotton going further along the road to his drive, a new-model Corolla. Not bad going for a student.

Fish calls to him. Willy Cotton pivots.

‘I’m the guy who just phoned you,’ says Fish.

Willy Cotton checks him out, faces him with the calm of a
club bouncer. Being given the hard-eye by Willy Cotton’s not for sissies. Nice polite boy he might be but he can also throw attitude.

‘Stay cool,’ says Fish. ‘No need to get all aggro.’

‘What d’you want?’ There’s that voice again, high and squeaky.

‘Couple of things.’ Fish stops about two metres off, at the back of the Corolla. ‘Can we talk in your car?’

‘Nothing to talk about.’

‘Fortune’s dad thinks there is.’

‘Like what?’

‘Like what happened that night.’

Willy Cotton keeps up the stare, says nothing.

‘Come’n, Willy, what’s going on?’

‘I can’t say anything.’ Willy Cotton opens his car door.

‘Fortune’s dead, Willy.’

‘You lie.’

‘Last night. In the larney private hospital, where someone was paying for his treatment, Fortune died. Who was paying, Willy? Not the Appollises because they’ve got no money, no insurance policy. So who, Willy, who?’

Willy Cotton’s looking at the ground now, at his sexy
silver-and
-blue takkies with white stripes, Pumas. Could be grief he’s experiencing.

‘Aaaah!’ He smacks the roof of the Corolla three times with this fist.

Fish waits, the guy tears up, gets the sniffles. He wipes his eyes, sucks back hard.

‘Do this for Fortune, Willy. Just a name. All I want’s a name.’

‘I don’t know any names.’

‘No? I think you do.’ Fish takes a step closer. ‘You were Fortune’s big mate. You rolled together, parties, those
speed-racing
gigs, clubs. Why didn’t you go’n see him in hospital, man? You were friends. Why didn’t you phone his folks? They’d have liked that.’

‘I couldn’t. Yusses, man, don’t you understand?’

‘You couldn’t?’

‘No.’

Fish leans back against the car. ‘What don’t I understand, Willy? What’m I missing here?’

‘I’ve got to go.’

‘Wait.’ Fish grabs a handful of Willy Cotton’s denim jacket. Comes up close to him. Willy Cotton raising a fist. Fish says, ‘Don’t be stupid, okay. You’re a big boy but so’m I, muscle’s not the end of the story. I know moves you don’t.’

Willy Cotton shakes himself free. Fish releases him, staying up close, in his face.

‘Think about Fortune, Willy. Fortune got hit by a car. Alright, it was an accident. Let’s forget it was an illegal street race. Now Fortune’s dead and no one’s going to pay. That’s not right, is it? Fortune was a good guy. A good friend. You had major times together. Means zilch if you let it go. Let him die when there’s this other guy running around like nothing’s happened. Like he hit a kitty cat in the street, who cares? How’s this play in your head, Willy? At night when you’re lying there thinking about your friend. How’s it play then?’

Fish gives Willy Cotton time to think on it.

‘It’s not right, Willy. Fortune’s life’s worth more than this. Wouldn’t you say?’

‘His name’s Lord.’

‘Like the Lord God?’

Willy Cotton nods.

‘His surname?’

‘That’s his handle. That’s how he rides. I don’t know his surname.’

‘Rides?’

‘Races.’

‘Give me a break. How old’s he? Young like you?’

A shrug that Fish takes for yes. ‘He’s a big deal?’

Willy Cotton coughs a high laugh, points into the sky. ‘Up there.’

‘Connected, hey? But you wouldn’t know who to?’

‘Government.’

Fish’s turn to laugh. ‘All the main manne are connected to government, Willy. You’re not telling me anything. I need
something
specific. What’s he? A minister’s boykie? Son of a DG? One of the president’s kids, grandkids?’

‘No idea. Listen, man, I can’t help you.’

‘Course you can, Willy. You just don’t know it.’ Fish thinking from the sour breath coming out of Willy Cotton’s mouth the boy’s seriously nervous. ‘So, let me come up with a scenario: after your friend Fortune was hit by Lord’s car, everyone made a duck. Lord drove away, someone called the medics.’

‘I did. I stayed with him.’ Willy Cotton’s scratching at his goatee as if he’d like to scratch it off.

‘You see, now there’s a detail his folks don’t know, Willy. They’d like that, knowing their son had his friend with him.’ Fish gazes across the vacant ground of long-gone District Six to the harbour. From here the gantries and cranes, the towers of an oil rig seem part of the city centre. Always gives him a thrill to glimpse through the urban riggings the bay beyond, a white scythe of beach. ‘Then what?’

‘When the medics were there they didn’t worry about me.’

‘You drifted off?’

‘Ja.’ Willy Cotton leaves off the scratching.

‘Thing is the emergency centre had your phone number. The cops must’ve called for a statement? You make a statement?’

‘No.’

‘The cops never called?’

‘No.’

‘But you got a visit?’ Fish pulls his eyes off the view, looks square into Willy Cotton’s face. Sees there a young boy terrified. The same look kindergarten-Willy might’ve had watching a Dobermann bounding, snarling towards him. Huge guy like this with a face full of fear. ‘You don’t have to say anything, I reckon I could tell you who showed up, even what sort of car
he drives.’

‘Leave me,’ says Willy Cotton, ‘leave me out of this. Fortune’s folks’ve got no chance. No chance ever.’

‘I hear you,’ says Fish, drums his fingers on the car’s roof. ‘All the same, help me out here. If I want to see this dude Lord racing, how’s that happen?’

‘There’s an SMS comes round. He’s racing tonight.’

‘That right?’ Fish chews on this. ‘Tell you what, I’ll pick you up, we can go together and watch him race. I’d like that.’

‘No ways. No ways.’

‘Shouldn’t be a problem. Who’s going to know? I’ll pick you up, Willy, I know where you’re living. What time these things happen: ten, eleven, midnight?’

‘Eleven,’ says Willy Cotton, throwing his bag into his car.

‘Don’t let me down, Willy. That wouldn’t be a good idea.’ Fish backs off. ‘And, hey, give Fortune’s parents a bell, they’d like that.’