Bones Omnibus (31 page)

“This shooting?”

“The shooting and the prostitution are enough to arrest all the boys at the top. Then it becomes about getting them all to start implicating each other in the shakedowns, security scams, clubs, and hijackings. They’re taking down the drug labs, the chop shops,
everything
.”

Moqoma felt a dull hot throb behind his eyes. He stared at Hofmyer, searching the man’s eyes for signs that he knew what was happening. Seeing nothing, he turned to Zhu. She was more inscrutable. Instead of a blank look, she seemed to be reading Moqoma even as he tried the same thing on her.

“Come on, Bones,” Moqoma said, hurrying on his way. “Let’s get you back to the kennel.”

Once they were back in the Land Rover, Moqoma’s mind raced. There was no such thing as a coincidence, was there? Moqoma knew Roogie. The
last
thing he’d do with ammunition from a hijacking was use it. In fact, he seemed to remember that case specifically. The Yankee Boys got the bullets, put them on a boat, rounded the Cape, landed at Durban, and were sold up country, likely to the Sudanese.

But maybe, they were actually selling them to a Triad.

That was, Moqoma knew, the type of criminal organization Qin sat at the top of. Traditionally, a Triad wasn’t like the Cosa Nostra or some other traditional emigrant-organized crime groups where homage is paid to the groups back home. A Triad was established within a new community of Chinese expatriates. In recent times, however, this had changed with the arrival of the so-called “snakeheads,” Triad members who would leave China (or Hong Kong, or Singapore), arrive at a new destination, set up shop, and then act as a sort of travel agent for human trafficking, typically illegal immigrants who paid a certain amount to be slipped into the country of their choice. In the United States, those who brought illegals over the southern borders from Central and South America were called “coyotes.” Snakeheads served much the same function.

There was no doubt in Moqoma’s mind that such an operation was going on in Cape Town, but Qin’s connection to the Consulate and the girls brought in as prostitutes confirmed this. But though he was involved in several shady legitimate businesses, it was clear that he now meant to move on the Western Cape’s indigenous criminal outfits, starting with the most powerful and the most connected, Roogie Mogwaza’s Yankee Boys.

Mogwaza did not come up in a gang, as so many had. Instead, he’d grown up in a fairly successful family – well, successful for the apartheid era – in which the father owned a handful of buildings around the Cape Flats.
His
father had been a collections man for a white slumlord who never wanted to see one of his tenants face to face. So he hired Roogie’s grandfather to collect rents. Rather than be the hard-ass the slumlord thought he’d be, Roogie’s grandpa would often cover those who couldn’t pay and allow them to “catch up” on rent later. Because of this, he built a reputation among the community and was favored by many despite their sometimes squalid living conditions. No one blamed Roogie’s grandfather. He was the go-between. But he didn’t make things harder than they needed to be.

By the time the slumlord figured out what Roogie’s grandfather was up to, the old man, already a father of nine children, had saved up enough money to build a handful of houses in Langa. Naturally, people fought to be his tenants. Others with money approached Roogie’s grandfather about investing in more homes, and he built these, too.

By the time Roogie’s dad took over the business, the family owned several commercial and residential properties in the Flats. This was in the mid-eighties, when Botha began to relax certain strictures of apartheid, the ownership of property being one of them. The use of subterfuge and white fronts went away, and the family emerged as one of the more successful in the Western Cape.

But this wasn’t enough for Roogie.

No, he wanted a bigger piece of the pie — in this case, the commercial real estate game in the Cape Bowl downtown where the whites played. With a stroke of genius now characteristic of his family, Roogie bribed his way into a job as a building inspector. He spent five years opening every door in the Cape Bowl. He learned which buildings were the most desirable, which were crumbling, whose name was on the door, but who actually built and controlled the structure, and most importantly, the sort of unteachable instinct for the commercial real estate business that allowed one to gather inside information without needing to seek it out.

All this meant Roogie was in the perfect position to cash in when the building boom of the Mandela years hit in the mid-nineties. But Mogwaza knew from the start that he’d never be happy with the income of a “successful businessman” and had been growing the criminal side of his business as well. Roogie had a cousin named Thembi in the Yankee Boys. Roogie had long been a fixture at Yankee Boys events, but it wasn’t until he’d made a name for himself in business that he began to hire them for jobs.

The “security scams” referred to by Hofmyer were one of Roogie’s specialties. A new business would move in at an address in the Cape Bowl, and a legitimate security firm – bodyguards, locks, cameras, etc. – owned by Roogie would come by and pitch its services. If the owner refused, a few weeks would go by, and then the Yankee Boys moved in. During business hours, they’d go in and make trouble, harassing the workers, then daring them to call the SAPS. After hours, there’d be break-ins and vandalism until the owner threw his hands up. Nine times out of ten, a neighbor clued him in to what was happening, and he would go ahead and hire Roogie’s firm. That one in ten who tried to raise a ruckus, employ gangsters of his own, go to the police, or try to rally the other business owners against Roogie? These men were soon victims of Cape Town’s notorious carjacking rings, a bullet to the head for their wallet, vehicle, and cell phone.

The message was clear, and soon Roogie not only owned several buildings around the city, but he also ran the largest commercial security company in the Western Cape. A number of people suggested he go into the equally lucrative home security field, where, with his brand name, he could’ve made money hand over fist. But Roogie, a nickname that came from the old slang for a 50-rand note, had no interest in this. It was money without power.

When Moqoma met Roogie, it was almost a decade since he’d been on top. Having spent years coasting on his reputation, he’d made himself and the Yankee Boys soft targets for other gangsters looking to get a leg up. When he inevitably retaliated, he did so with the violence of a wounded lion, all bravura while hoping that he had a slugger’s chance of knocking out his opponent with one blow. It was his connection to an execution-style killing of a rival gang leader, a bullet to the head and the body dumped into the bay for the great whites to devour.

But everybody knew Roogie was behind it, and the SAPS couldn’t look the other way anymore. So he was arrested, stood trial, and was convicted on a ridiculously lesser charge that earned him two years in Pollsmoor. Moqoma believed from the start that Roogie knew he was an undercover officer but didn’t threaten him in any way. They were both intelligent, interested men who had several things in common. Though Moqoma never admitted to being a detective and Roogie never admitted to wrongdoing, they spoke often and took their meals and exercise together. Moqoma didn’t know it for sure, but he believed that Roogie’s unofficial protection kept the undercover alive while on the inside.

And now that man, whom Moqoma felt he owed a debt, was likely soon to die. Worse, it wasn’t at the hands of another
tsotsi
, but the police, and part of their justification for doing so would come from his zeal in pursuing van Lagemaat’s killers.

That’s when Moqoma glanced at Bones.
The girl
. If they could find her or her body, there was still a chance they could tie it back to Mr. Qin and his mysterious organization. But would the damage already be done?

“Bones,” Moqoma said grimly, accelerating toward the Cape Bowl. “For what it’s worth, I hope I’m not leading you into death and danger. If so, I apologize in advance.”

Moqoma glanced to the animal, searching for any sign the shepherd understood his words. The dog seemed only to register that his temporary handler’s mood had darkened and had become alert, if not eager.

“All right. Time to make a phone call.”

Mduduzi “Roogie” Mogwaza was behind his desk when the head of his security team burst in, announcing that a heavily armed police tactical unit was swarming up three of the building’s four stairwells.

“There are several more taking up positions in the surrounding blocks,” the man continued, winded from his run.

It wasn’t that Roogie hadn’t believed the rumors that they were going to try to pin the chief warden of Pollsmoor’s assassination on the Yankee Boys. He just didn’t think the reaction would be so swift. He reached for his cell phone, but the security man shook his head.

“No time.”

Roogie ignored the man and began dialing a number. But then a pair of assistants in his commercial business firm came running in. They looked terrified.

“We heard shots.”

Roogie tensed. He’d anticipated being frog-marched out of his office in handcuffs. The reality of the situation, however, began to dawn on him.

“You sent men downstairs?” he asked.

“Two unarmed teams,” the security man replied.

“Try them.”

The security man hit the “call” button on his radio. “Alfred? Judas? What’s going on down there?”

Static.

The security man shook his head. Roogie nodded and quickly moved across his office to a narrow wood panel alongside his bookshelves that ran from floor to ceiling. There was a sound of distant thunder, as if someone had thrown a barrel down the fire stairs and it was gaining speed as it rolled through the building.

Their mistake was tipping their hand
, Roogie thought.
If they’d come to kill him, why announce their intentions by killing his guards
?

He pulled the wood panel back to reveal a service elevator. On all other floors, the elevator was obscured in a building-wide redesign. Anyone who might’ve remembered that it existed in the first place would be hard-pressed to remember where it had been located.

For Roogie, it was an insurance policy.

The car door was already open, and Roogie stepped inside. He nodded to his chief of security, who seemed to understand his grave new role as temporary stop-gap and nodded back.

With that, Roogie touched the only button that still worked in the car and began his descent. As he went, he idly wondered why the police hadn’t cut the power and decided they probably didn’t think it necessary. Regardless, the elevator could be operated manually for a single descent, so he wasn’t worried, only curious.

He felt for his phone, only to feel it vibrate. He plucked it from his pocket and saw the number of a gatsby stand in Fresnaye on the caller ID. It was one of the dozen or so public numbers he’d established to be used only in an emergency. He then provided this information to only one other man.

“
Awe
, is this El Zayde?”

“
Ja
, El Zayde here. Howzit Lazarillo?”

Roogie exhaled. “Not great. We have guests.”

“You’ve had guests before,” Moqoma offered.

“These are more insistent. Far more.”

“I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but I’ve heard in cases like this that it gets worse before it gets better.”

“What’re you saying?” Roogie asked, apprehensive.

“What they want is to make things unlivable. They flushed you out of your own house, and they’ve got you right where they want you.”

Roogie cursed under his breath. He knew what Moqoma was telling him, that the police must know about his elevator and were potentially waiting for him at the exit, hoping he’d try to get away. They wanted blood, and only his would do.

“Suggestions?”

“Don’t drive away. Put down stakes. Dig in.”

Roogie knew the detective couldn’t possibly mean stay and fight. Then he figured it out.

“I’ll see you there?”

“Might take me a minute to find you, but I’ll be along.”

Roogie hung up. He didn’t consider for a moment that Moqoma was in on it or was baiting some further trap, though he wasn’t sure why. He’d be suspicious of almost anyone else. But Moqoma was an odd fellow, a Cape Flats boy who watched his father get burned alive for refusing to side with either the ANC or the Inkatha during the violence leading up to the ’94 elections. Roogie had always believed the young man had become a cop to exact revenge on those who did the job, but then he did nothing of the sort. Rather, he was a peacemaker, a cop with a sense of fairness who understood there would always be a dirty side to things and let certain things slide. He wasn’t driven by a strong sense of justice or moral duty, but more a belief that everyone was in this together, and sometimes the bullies taking advantage had to get sorted.

It occurred to Roogie that the young Moqoma put on the gun and uniform out of a sense of fear, a need to feel the weapon close to him and know that if he used it, it would be assumed he was in the right. But this wasn’t it, either (though he’d met plenty of SAPS who fit that profile). No, Moqoma did the job because he understood that someone had to, and that person might as well be him.

When Roogie reached the fourth sub-level parking garage, he emerged from the service elevator with trepidation. There was the work truck, gassed up and waiting for his egress, but he knew from Moqoma’s words that the police were stationed at every garage exit. So he bypassed the truck and headed straight for a service door against the far wall. Though it was covered with signage alerting passersby to its danger, suggesting live wires behind it, that was camouflage. In reality, the locked door opened into the city’s oft-derided and disease-ridden sewer system, a descent into which many might feel was worse than electrocution.

Roogie took the key from his wallet, one of the only ones he had on him at all times, and unlocked the door. He stepped inside and closed it behind him.