Bones Omnibus (34 page)

“Roogie?” she suddenly asked. “Roogie Mogwaza?”

Roogie eyed her suspiciously, holding Xiang’s pistol tighter as he rose.

“Who wants to know?”

There was suddenly a new sound in the room. Or, it had been there for a few minutes already and Moqoma hadn’t noticed, as his ears were still ringing from all the gunfire. It was the low, guttural growl of a furious dog.

At the base of the stairs, barely a meter into the room, Bones stood with his feet planted, his head and tail low, and his eyes fixed unblinkingly on Li. His teeth weren’t bared, but his message was clear. This person was a threat.

“Bones, chill out,” Moqoma ordered but knew the shepherd wouldn’t respond to such a command.

He turned back to Li to apologize for the dog but then saw something alarming. Her face had undergone a subtle shift. Her eyes, which he’d thought brown only moments before, were now bronze with a thin gold band encircling her retina. The skin along her arms rippled, as if something was moving just below the epidermal layer. But just as Moqoma was trying to figure out what was causing the motion, the tiny waves froze as they crested, becoming peaked and rigid. The skin on her face tightened to her skull like a death mask. Her black hair, once long and straight, stiffened as well, matting itself to her neck until it looked as if she had no hair at all.

As Roogie and Moqoma watched this mad transformation, Li’s body extended, raising her to a full height of almost three meters. Her now alien head curled downward to accommodate the ceiling.

“
I must thank you, Lieutenant Moqoma, for bringing the elusive Mr. Mogwaza to me,
” Li hissed, revealing a red tongue, forked in the middle. It slipped between two saber-like fangs curving down from her upper jaw. “
We knew he had his methods for escaping the police service’s net. So imagine our delight when it proved so easy to direct you to the house in Clifton. Sibulele did well for us. She will be rewarded with a quick death. As will you
.”

Bones’s growls became loud, savage barks. His entire body shook as he roared angrily at the snake-woman. Saliva flew off his teeth in every direction. This was enough to shock Moqoma out of stasis, and he launched himself toward the stairs. But Li’s first target wasn’t Moqoma or Bones, but Roogie.

The gangster’s jaw dropped as the snake-woman struck, a motion so quick that it was a blur to human eyes. The last thing Roogie saw were the long bone-white blades slashing into his throat like twin daggers.

T
he force of Li’s attack was devastating. The tips of her fangs caught just under Roogie’s clavicle, and, as she pulled backward, this had the effect of tearing his upper torso in half. His head had been virtually severed by the first strike, but now he didn’t even look human as his life’s blood splashed from his body as if from a popped water balloon.

All of this took the snake-woman less than a second to accomplish. Moqoma was only two steps up the carpeted stairway when Li turned in his direction. But this time there was a second flash of movement, this one brown with several more teeth than the serpent.

Bones landed on the snake-woman’s back and immediately gripped the nape of her neck in his jaws. As she changed course, whipping around like a rodeo bull, the shepherd held on. But Moqoma could see that the dog’s teeth had barely pierced the snake-woman’s thick hide. Only the tiniest trickle of blood descended from both.

Knowing he had less than a second to react, Moqoma reached for his recently acquired AK-47, checked the magazine, and aimed at the snake-woman.

“Bones!
Down
!”

He didn’t know if the German shepherd would react in time but pulled the trigger anyway. As the bullets struck home, blasting into the snake-woman, the dog did either leap or was thrown free, slamming into the far wall. As the snake-woman thrashed around, Moqoma emptied the entire magazine into her.

It was only when he’d fired every round, smoke drizzling from the hot barrel, that Moqoma saw that not a single bullet had done much, if any, damage. In fact, the barrage seemed only to have enraged the snake-woman.

“
Fuck
!” Moqoma shouted, managing to lunge upward just as the serpent’s head struck the stair the detective had just been seated on.

Moqoma’s survival instincts took over. His hands grasped at the stairs and pulled him up even as his feet sought holds to push off from. There was no fighting this thing, only escape. He climbed, crawled, and ran up the steps even as he felt the snake-woman’s hot breath a mere few centimeters behind him. When he made it to the top of the steps, he just kept going. There was no collecting himself, no plotting a better route.

Only ascent.

Even when he made it to the second floor from the top, he didn’t allow himself a moment of relaxation. He still ran out of white-hot fear.

When he burst through the front door and out onto the street, he kept going. He didn’t look twice at the small gathering of onlookers. He didn’t glance back to the house to see the looks on their faces as the snake-woman flew past them, or even if she did in the first place, but just ran and ran and ran.

It was almost dusk by the time Moqoma slowed to a stop, completely winded and in desperate need of water. The day had been turned upside down. A case that he had meant to break in order to save the day had revealed itself to be…
something
. Something he couldn’t rationalize, no matter how much he tried to. Worse, he’d led the man he was trying to save into, literally, the jaws of death.

This actually produced an impulse to laugh. That’s how he knew he needed to stop. He was clearly going mad.

“What
was
that?” Moqoma said aloud. “What the
FUCK
was that?”

As he slowed down, he realized the muscles in his legs were on fire. He could barely stand. Also, his feet were torn and blistered. He still wore the heavy boots he always took when the possibility of kicking in someone’s face or through a door was on the table, as they’d been that morning. Now he was the one on the run.

He had made it all the way to the top of the Sentinel, the peak that rose up over Hout Bay, and finally had a great view out to the South Atlantic, the sun setting far on the horizon. There would still be about another hour of daylight, but even though he’d put significant distance between himself and Qin’s house as he ran, he wanted to be twice as far when night fell. This was someone else’s problem, not his.

When he heard something moving in the brush behind him, he almost wilted. He knew it was the snake-woman. She was just waiting for him to slow in order to strike. She’d been there the whole time, just as he’d imagined.

“Go on,” he whispered.

But then he felt only the wet nose of a German shepherd touch his hand and begin to lick.

“Jesus Christ,
Bones
!”

He sank to one knee and threw his arms around the dog, partly out of joy, but also from the guilt of having left his partner behind at his moment of greatest need. Still, he didn’t think he’d ever been happier to see anyone, human or otherwise, in his entire life.

“You got away without a scratch?” he asked, searching the dog’s body for wounds. Bones made no reply, but Moqoma’s hands continued over the animal’s body, finding nothing. “You lucky chop.”

Special Agent Zhu had just sat down to dinner when her cell phone rang. It had been an eventful day, particularly given the strange goings-on at Mr. Qin’s house. Zhu had no love for Qin, really, just another over-entitled fat slob of a businessman who provided the face for a vast conglomerate of businesses with ties back to the mainland. He’d also made endless remarks about her obviously being some sort of prostitute on the Ministry’s rolls, as otherwise, why would anyone employ a woman? When he’d made a weak attempt at putting his hand up her skirt at a local function the previous year, she’d almost snapped his wrist in four places.

Even so, he was back at it the next time she encountered him, this time at a trade agreement signing when Party Secretary Jia had visited South Africa, the first time such a high-ranking politician had set foot on the continent. It was a day that filled Zhu with pride, only to have Qin’s infantile pawing at her breasts in an elevator ruin her exuberant mood. She punched him so hard in the groin that she thought he’d pass out.

Instead, he laughed.

“One day, my daughter,” he’d croaked in broken English.

But now he needed her, and her superiors would be very unhappy if she didn’t succeed in deflecting the South African government’s attention from one of China’s citizens. She knew Qin was likely guilty of everything he was routinely accused of, but that didn’t mean she thought he’d receive a fair trial in Cape Town. She watched how easily the local government and constabulary could be bribed and knew that could lead Qin directly to jail. Of the many tasks of her overseas posting, keeping its people out of foreign prisons was a priority.

So when she answered her phone and heard the harried voice of Lieutenant Moqoma on the other end, she greeted it with mixed feelings. There was something about him in that study in Camp’s Bay. He’d handled it perfectly, putting her in a position where deflection wouldn’t work. He was a smooth operator and clearly wanted to get to the bottom of the van Lagemaat killing. She wasn’t
as
certain he cared that much about the missing girl, even if he said he did, but it didn’t matter. He’d been stonewalled by superiors of his own, and she figured that would be the end of it.

But now here he was with her private number.

“How can I help you, Lieutenant?” she replied, as icily as she could muster, letting him feel her aggravation.

“It’s the missing prostitute, Li. The passports were both forgeries. She’s not some poor country girl being run into this country or that for sex work. I have a feeling she’s up in the Triad, big-time. Bigger than Qin.”

Zhu paused. This was a ludicrous accusation, and she wondered what Moqoma could gain by making it. When she could determine no angle, she sighed.

“What’re you getting at, Lieutenant? Have you found her? Did she reveal something to you?”

“I found her, all right. Her and three dozen dead men, including Qin’s number two, that guy Xiang. They’re all dead, but they were just bait in the trap. She wanted Roogie Mogwaza.”

Zhu knew who this was. “And why would she want him?”

“To kill him herself. If she and the Triad were using the cops and local government to push out their biggest rival gang, Roogie’s, then it must’ve had some kind of significance for her to kill Roogie herself.”

Yes, in fact
, Zhu thought. Going back centuries, the Triads had made a show of killing their rivals, particularly with beheading. But she couldn’t say that to Moqoma.

“And how do you think she’ll accomplish this?” Zhu asked.

“It’s already been accomplished. I watched her do it. Roogie’s dead, his body just about ripped to pieces.”

Zhu went cold all over. She searched Moqoma’s words for a sign that he was lying. When she determined that there was none, she felt even more afraid.

“So why call me? Isn’t this the definition of a local matter? Particularly a murder on your shores?”

“Of course, but you saw how tied in my government is to Qin, who is probably just the front for the Triad down here anyway.”

This could be true,
Zhu thought. “Again, I must ask: Why call me? Couldn’t I be just as tied in?”

Moqoma went quiet for a moment, but then he returned with a sliver of his rakish charm. “I’m a cop, madam. I saw you in there when they were tying this up with a bow. You know it stinks.”

“So you expect me to immediately fly in the face of my own superiors as you are undoubtedly doing, upset a few apple carts, and allow justice to be served?”

“That would be optimal, yes.”

Zhu fell silent again. “And barring that?”

“Figure out who Li really is. They had a clock on this. There’s a reason it all went down today. I don’t think she’s going to be in South Africa much longer.”

“You don’t?”

“Nah, I get the feeling her profile means that she has to move around a lot. I’m starting to think I really wasn’t meant to see that South African passport of hers in Clifton. That’s the kind of forgery she could get on a plane with tonight or….”

Moqoma realized.
A boat
.

“What?” Zhu asked.

“Nothing. But see what you can find. This is some dark shit.”

“What’re you going to do?” Zhu found herself asking.

“You remember my dog-friend?”

“Of course.”

“Well, he’s got her scent good now. We’re going to track her down. You know how we kill snakes in Africa?”

“Wait, what? How?”

“Same as everywhere else. We cut their fucking heads off.”

“Lieutenant Moqoma, you’d better not do anything that rash…”

But Moqoma had already hung up. Zhu stared at the phone, knowing that calling him back would be fruitless. Similarly, calling his superiors. She’d have to figure her next move on her own.

And what had the detective meant by
snakes
?

There were six three-story buildings at the edge of Hanover Park that everyone knew better than to go near. They were arranged in two parallel lines of three and were bracketed by a small parking lot and the buildings themselves, and their windows were completely painted black, hence the compound’s nickname, “Black Windows.”

Along the eastern side was a field that extended all the way to the highway. The road that ran along the western side and the twin parking lots acted like invisible barricades, suggesting to all that crossing that particular minefield would be hazardous to one’s health.

But just in case, someone spray-painted “The Gates of Hell” on the side of the building closest to the neighborhood it ran up against in tall black letters. Now even strangers to the area would know it was the property of the Yankee Boys. And for those who poked fun at the names of the various Cape Flats gangs – The Junkie Funky Kids, Total Pipe Killers, The Firm, The Sexy Boys, The Globe, The Hard Livings, The Naughty Boys – one only had to point at the literally thousands of casualties in their ongoing and endless turf wars to know that they were as savage as they were ruthless. Human life meant very little to the most dangerous members of each gang, and the Yankee Boys were no exception.