Authors: Roger Smith
Wake Up Dead (8 page)
B
ILLY AFRIKA DROVE THROUGH WHITE CITY AND TURNED INTO LILAC Road, the sparse streetlights weeping yellow into the cloud of dust that blanketed the Cape Flats. The wind was up, and anyone with half a brain and a house to go to was indoors. The homeless found doorways and holes in the ground and drew plastic over their faces to keep the sand out, like urban bedouins. Or they fried their brains on foil bags of rotgut wine and let the sand pepper their prone forms like buckshot.
ILLY AFRIKA DROVE THROUGH WHITE CITY AND TURNED INTO LILAC Road, the sparse streetlights weeping yellow into the cloud of dust that blanketed the Cape Flats. The wind was up, and anyone with half a brain and a house to go to was indoors. The homeless found doorways and holes in the ground and drew plastic over their faces to keep the sand out, like urban bedouins. Or they fried their brains on foil bags of rotgut wine and let the sand pepper their prone forms like buckshot.
Billy liked the wind. Liked this display of natural force, knew that when it blew itself out by morning, even the Flats would lie still and clean under a pristine blue sky.
The banging had started again, coming from the trunk, as if somebody was trying to kick his way out by dislodging the rear seat. Billy saw a deep pothole in the poorly paved road and accelerated, smacked it at speed—what the fuck, it was a rental car—and heard a metallic thump and a muffled cry. He laughed as he flicked the turn signal and slowed outside the two-story
house that loomed over its squat neighbors like a guard tower. The house was surrounded by a high wall and electric fencing. A heavy iron gate barred access. Billy stayed in the car. Leaned on the horn.
house that loomed over its squat neighbors like a guard tower. The house was surrounded by a high wall and electric fencing. A heavy iron gate barred access. Billy stayed in the car. Leaned on the horn.
He saw a face at one of the windows on the top floor of the house, caught a curse carried on the wind, and the gate blew open. Two men stood there, T-shirts and low-slung jeans billowing in the southeaster. One man, small and skinny, carried an Uzi. The other, a big piece of meat, held a .22 Smith and Wesson snubnose at his side, almost invisible in his paw. Liked to get nice and intimate when he killed, this one.
“The fuck you want?” the man with the Uzi asked, coming at him.
Billy cracked the window an inch, enough to take a blast of sand in both eyes. “I got something for Manson.”
A glimmer of recognition crossed the man’s face. “What?”
“Just open, man. Or he kick your ass.”
The two men shouted questions at each other, then pushed against the wind, forcing the gate open far enough to allow him to drive in. The snout of the Uzi followed him. A floodlight on a motion detector kicked in as Billy parked next to a black Hummer. He stood up out of the Hyundai and felt nothing more than a breeze in the sheltered yard.
The Uzi was right up to Billy, and he lifted his hands. The man with the .22 frisked him like a pro. Billy had wedged the Glock under the driver’s seat, so the man came up empty.
Manson emerged from a side door of the house, dressed in expensive white sweats and a peaked cap, as branded as a sports celebrity.
“What you want here, Barbie?”
“I got something of yours.”
“Ja?”
Billy walked to the trunk. “I’m gonna open this, okay?”
Manson nodded, and the Uzi kept its black eye on him.
Billy popped the trunk, and Godwynn MacIntosh, bleeding from the nose, ears, and mouth, sprang up like a bloody jack-in-the-box.
“And what the fuck mess is this?” Manson asked.
ANOTHER CALL TO his man at Bellwood South—and the promise of more money—had got Billy the names of the two geniuses. And Disco De Lilly’s address. The cop had also passed on a piece of information that gave Billy pause: Disco had been Piper’s wife when he’d done time in Pollsmoor.
Snag a thread in the Cape Flats tapestry, and it unraveled all the way to Piper.
Things hadn’t added up back in Bantry Bay. That blonde was into something, and Billy couldn’t shake the feeling that the two fuckheads from the lineup were involved. He didn’t care about Roxanne Palmer, but there was a 26 in the frame. One of Manson’s crew. And Billy needed leverage with Manson.
Knew that he’d have the best chance of scaring the truth out of the sex-boy. Spending time as Piper’s wife would have tenderized the toughest piece of meat.
He found Disco sitting on the step of his
zozo
, sheltering from the wind, shirtless body seething with prison ink, his head lost in a cloud of tik. Billy grabbed him by the hair, smacked the pipe from his mouth, and threw him into the hut. Kicked the door shut behind him. A naked bulb dangled from the ceiling, washing the
zozo
with piss-yellow light.
zozo
, sheltering from the wind, shirtless body seething with prison ink, his head lost in a cloud of tik. Billy grabbed him by the hair, smacked the pipe from his mouth, and threw him into the hut. Kicked the door shut behind him. A naked bulb dangled from the ceiling, washing the
zozo
with piss-yellow light.
Disco was a pretty boy. A useless shit, one of life’s rejects. But pretty.
He looked to be in his early twenties but was one of those men who would still be called a boy even when he was middle-aged. If he lived that long. Disco was trying to get up, trying to glue back together the pieces of his day. Billy slapped him through the face and sent him flying against the wall, where he
slumped under the framed photograph of a woman who looked too much like him to be anyone other than his mother.
slumped under the framed photograph of a woman who looked too much like him to be anyone other than his mother.
His body hitting the wall had set the frame askew.
“This your mommy?” Billy pointed to the picture. Disco nodded, panting. Billy approached the photograph and stuck out a hand.
“Don’ break it. Please!” The voice hoarse and plaintive, fighting its way through tik smoke and fear.
“I’m not gonna break it. What you think I am?” Instead Billy carefully straightened the picture. “She passed on, your mommy?”
The pretty boy was nodding. “Fifteen years now.”
Billy squatted down in front of Disco, showed him the Glock in his waistband, figured there was no need to draw it.
“Okay, this is how it’s gonna go.” Disco looked from the gun to Billy’s face. “I’m gonna ask you a couple of questions, and, on your mommy’s grave, you gonna tell me the truth. You understand?”
“Ja.”
“So say it.”
“Say what?”
“Jesus. Say, ‘On my mommy’s grave I’m gonna tell you the truth.’”
“On my mommy’s grave I’m gonna tell you the truth.”
“Good. Now understand me here, I’m not a cop no more, so I’m not interested in busting your dirty ass. But you try to lie to me, and I’ll kill you. You hearing me?”
Disco nodded. “Ja. I hear.”
“You and your buddy Godwynn jacked a car last night. Up Bantry Bay side. A Benz. That right?”
Disco hesitated. Billy pointed to the gun, then pointed to the photograph. The boy nodded.
“A man was shot. A whitey. You shoot him?”
Disco shook his head. “Not me. He try to fight, so Goddy plug him in the leg. But it’s not us who kill him.”
Billy took this in. “How many times Godwynn shoot him?”
“Just the once. And then we was in the car and away.”
“Where’s the gun?”
“He drop it there. Goddy.”
Billy was staring but looking straight through this weak, pretty boy. Seeing another face, with wide blue eyes. Seeing the truth.
Meanwhile, he was scaring the tik head shitless. He refocused on Disco and saw that he had drawn his knees up, covering his face with his arms.
“I’m telling it true, I swear on my mommy.”
“Relax. I believe you. You and Goddy went back to the house today. That right?” Billy could see a lie coming. “You doing very nice so far, Disco. Don’t fuck it up now.”
Disco shrugged. “Ja. We took some stuff.”
“What you tell that blondie?”
“Tell her that we gonna come back tomorrow for money. If she don’t give it, we is gonna go to the cops and tell them she shoot her husband.”
Billy laughed. “And she believed you?”
Disco shrugged. “It were Goddy’s idea.”
“Fucken shit idea.” Billy looked around the filthy hut. “Where’s the stuff?”
“Goddy took it.”
“Now, Goddy, he’s one of Manson’s boys? 26? American?”
“Ja.”
“Manson know about this visit of yours to the house?” Disco shook his head. “So it was freelance, like?”
The boy nodded. “You working for Manson?”
Billy slapped Disco hard enough to snap his head back against the wall. “I ask the questions. You answer. Okay?”
Disco blinked. “Okay.”
Billy stood. He grabbed the boy by his nice wavy hair and pulled him to his feet.
“Now take me to Goddy.”
Disco’s head was wobbling like one of those toy dogs in the back of old men’s cars.
“He kill me, man.”
“Not gonna happen.” Billy shoved the boy toward the closet. “Come, put on a shirt. Cover up your wedding pictures.”
ROXY SAT IN the looted room for a long time after Billy Afrika left. Zoned out. Blank. Wondering just what the hell she had set in motion by lifting that gun and pulling the trigger.
She forced herself to get up from the sofa. Thought of the two brown men, found herself wiping at her skin as if she could somehow slough them off. Took in the mess around her. Not only had they robbed her; they’d taken pleasure in trashing the place. And they were coming back tomorrow.
Roxy could process the assault on her, didn’t care about what they’d done to the rest of the house, but knew she’d crack if they’d violated the pink room.
She had to find out. Had to open that door.
Roxy climbed the stairs. Stopped at the closed door. Put her hand out toward the doorknob. Hesitated. Finally turned it and walked in. Stood in the dark, listening to herself breathe. Then she found the wall switch, and soft light bloomed.
The pink room. Rose-colored wallpaper, butterflies dangling from the ceiling, a crib, a walking ring, and a carpet littered with infant toys. A nursery. Waiting for the daughter who had died inside her. The room untouched by the men.
She could close the door now and go downstairs and get blasted on vodka. But she knew she needed to stay here; this was the place where she could cauterize the pain and the grief.
And the tendrils of guilt tugging at her over what she had done to Joe Palmer.
And the tendrils of guilt tugging at her over what she had done to Joe Palmer.
Roxy sat down on the floor beside the crib and let herself remember.
She saw herself in this room a month ago. Her heavily pregnant, absurdly happy self.
Like most things in Roxy’s life, getting pregnant had been an accident. A year or two into their marriage, Joe’s sexual demands had cooled. She guessed he was outsourcing his needs, as he would have said. Roxy looked good on his arm, but his preferences ran to rougher trade between the sheets.
Fine with her.
She’d taken a break from the Pill, intending to have a loop fitted, which she’d never got around to doing. So a few weeks after they’d had an unexpected bout of hurried, suffocating sex—Joe drunk enough to want her—Roxy found herself peeing on a pregnancy test, watching as a thin blue line traced itself in the little window. At first it seemed a no-brainer; she’d take herself down to a smart private clinic and get this thing handled.
Then an idea snuck up on her: what if she kept it? Not an it. A baby, a child. Suddenly she understood that having a baby was everything she’d wanted. She just hadn’t known it.
For the first time in her life she felt love. For herself and the child growing inside her.
The notion that Joe Palmer was a less than perfect father was washed from her mind by hormones and happiness. When she told him he she was pregnant, he looked at her and shrugged. He was hardly home as the months went by and her belly swelled. She was too happy to notice that his trademark smug expression had become haunted and he was drinking even more than usual, as if he was selling his soul along with men and weapons. Her happiness made her blind to the warning signs.
The ultrasound showed she was carrying a girl, so she created
a bedroom for her daughter. A room that seemed to capture all she’d never had as a child.
a bedroom for her daughter. A room that seemed to capture all she’d never had as a child.
A fairy tale.
A fantasy.
The pink room.
Roxy was in the room the night it happened, hanging a mobile over the crib, a butterfly with dangly feelers on springs. She heard the gates rolling open and saw the headlights of Joe’s car flame against the window. Something—the time it took him to leave the car, maybe—warned her, and she tensed at the scrape of the key in the front door.
She heard his voice. “Roxanne?”
He only called her that when he was in one of his mean moods. Joe had smacked her around a little in the early years, until she’d threatened to leave him. He’d stopped with the fists, but his mouth still spewed bile when he was angry and drunk.
“Roxanne!”
She didn’t answer. Heard Joe coming up the stairs, wheezing, his footfalls heavy and unsteady. Roxy left the pink room and shut the door. She didn’t want him to poison the air inside. Met him on the landing. He stank of sweat and booze, his linen shirt wet against his paunch. His eyes were dark little pebbles, tongue probing his gums and cheeks like an eel feeding.
Now she knew why he had taken so long to leave the car; he’d been doing a line. She could see traces of white powder smeared on his unshaven upper lip.
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