Bones Omnibus (36 page)

“Sorry about his temper,” Moqoma offered. “You know how Americans get. Now, what do you know about the snake-woman?”

“The snakehead?” Thembi asked. “She’s the boss. The
real
boss, not Qin. But she’s behind the scenes. They’re all scared shitless of her, but only because she’s got some kind of supernatural thing going on. Remember that famous bandit in India who had everybody thinking he employed supernatural means of escape? That’s her. They think she’s got magical powers, so they don’t fuck with her.”

“She does,
baas
.”

Thembi scoffed. “You sure they didn’t drug you or something? That’s part of it. They get their guys all amped up when they fight. Maybe you got some kind of contact high.”

“I saw what I saw. So did the dog.”

“Whatever you say,
domkop.
”

“So, when were you supposed to get your big reward? And remember, I’m doing you a favor by keeping you away from there.”

“There’s a meeting tonight. Before you ask, I don’t know where it’s to be. I wasn’t going to find out until the last minute.”

“Chan was going to call?”

Thembi nodded.

“She’s leaving, isn’t she?”

“How’d you know?” Thembi asked, genuinely surprised.

“I don’t think she sticks around long. Too easy to be exposed. She’s off to blaze new trails.”

Moqoma nodded and got to his feet. Bones had finished his meal. Thembi’s cell phone had been on the counter, and the detective picked it up.

“You’re a thief now?” Thembi challenged.

“Guess so.”

“What’s to happen to me?”

“Word’s going to get around about what you did to Roogie.” Moqoma shrugged. “Once I start spreading it, I mean. If your conscience bothers you, maybe you’ll try and explain it to the boys once they start getting released from jail. If not, getting out of the country would be my choice. Only, I doubt you’ll get that far.”

With that, Moqoma and Bones exited.

On his way to the Sable Square China Town, Moqoma took a mental inventory of his weapons. He had his backup shotgun from home that he’d brought into Black Windows and a backup pistol, an old uppity Glock that loved to jam. But he also had the two AK-47s he’d liberated from the Yankee Boys’ cache. There were more advanced weapons, but he had no experience firing them and wanted something he was comfortable with. He’d also skirted the traditional curved-type magazines most associated with the weapon that the Yankee Boys had stacks and stacks of in favor of a couple of high-capacity drums. Despite resembling an antique straight out of an old gangster movie, the drums held seventy-five rounds to the banana clip’s thirty. Though the danger with a fully automatic meant that he could go through the entire magazine in seconds, he needed stopping power. He’d taken six drums, as many as he could carry, and checked the bullets. Once satisfied, he loaded them into the stolen work truck next to Thembi’s unconscious body and drove the short distance to Nkopane’s shebeen.

So now he had 450 assault rifle bullets, a couple dozen shotgun shells, sixty-eight bullets for the Glock stretched across four magazines, and again, the German shepherd.

He didn’t imagine it would be enough to stop Li or whatever forces she might have with her at the “meeting,” but he hoped it would make a big enough splash that the subsequent press and governmental interest would be enough to blow the lid off the Triad’s activities. He thought exposing the collusion between the Ministry of Justice and the Chinese in killing Roogie and dismantling the Yankee Boys was too much to hope for, but if he knew the spineless men and women who ran the prosecutor’s office, the same people who had disbanded the Scorpions and humiliated him and his fellow officers when their own malfeasance was brought to the fore, he knew how quickly they’d throw the Chinese under the bus.

He also knew that this was a suicide mission.

He didn’t mind so much his own death in the line of duty, but he was upset that he was dragging Bones down with him. The dog had proven to be nothing but the most exemplary enforcement dog he’d ever worked with, maybe even more skilled than Robin.

He glanced to the German shepherd standing on the backseat. Bones had slept for part of the drive in from the Flats, but as they’d left the highway and entered the more urban area of Century City, he’d awoken and began to look excitedly out the window.

Century City was as far removed from the Flats as could be. There were new roads, new housing developments, and forests of apartment complexes and condominiums that had only begun construction a year before. Moqoma hadn’t had much reason to go into Century City, which was relatively low-crime, but every time he had, he marveled at how different it was from the area he remembered seeing as a child.

That was one of the biggest changes to the landscape post-apartheid. It wasn’t the abandoned place and street names, apartheid-era heroes abandoned for those of the new South Africa. It wasn’t the influx of modern goods in the market or equipment in the factories after the various trade embargos were lifted.

No, it was the influx of non–South Africans who suddenly wanted to live in South Africa and the need to supply them with housing and services.

Hence, the construction of Century City.

The Sable Square China Town in Century City was indicative of this change. The old one in Ottery was a rundown, crescent-shaped strip mall surrounded by a parking lot that stayed empty almost year-round. There were a couple dozen stalls that resembled large mechanic’s shops, down to the massive garage doors that were pulled down and locked at the end of the business day. Though Moqoma had only been a couple of times, he’d found it difficult to tell one store from the other. They all seemed to sell the exact same cheap linens, DVDs, clothes, and housewares in every stall at the same prices. The decision to purchase wares from one versus another seemed to be determined mostly by which was closest to the shopper’s parking space.

The new China Town was completely different. It was an actual shopping center, built on a square around an equilateral, open-air cross. In the four corners created by the cross were spaces for eight stores with different floor plans. The shop windows of the largest faced the surrounding parking lot, while the entrances to the others were accessible by the pedestrian walks that ran through the center of the square. In the middle of the complex was a large traditional Chinese arched gate called a
paifang
, a replica of one found at the Summer Palace in Beijing.

Though Moqoma hadn’t spent much time there, either, he’d been surprised to see these new stores filled with the exact same products at the same prices as their counterparts in Ottery. However, the surroundings were more appealing, and the shopping center was closer to the apartments of Century City, where many of the Chinese immigrants had chosen to live.

As he pulled the pickup truck into the parking lot, he spotted a map mounted behind transparent plastic near one of the shops. He parked, raised a silencing finger to Bones, and hurried over to it. As best he could tell, there was only one auto parts shop in the shopping center with the helpfully descriptive name of Car Time.

He determined where the shop stood in relation to where he was now and returned to the truck. He pulled around to the far side of the shopping center and turned off the vehicle.

“Now we wait,” he advised Bones.

Very few customers entered or exited the center over the next half-hour, though a steady stream of employees made their way to their cars and drove away. The stores didn’t all seem to close at the same time, which surprised Moqoma, given their uniformity in other areas. One by one, the lights of the shops turned off, until only the lamps hanging over the sidewalks and parking lot were lit.

It was then that the cell phone in Moqoma’s pocket buzzed.

Extracting it, Moqoma saw a single text:
Duncan Dock, 30 minutes
.

Moqoma didn’t have to guess what lay in wait for Thembi at Cape Town’s deep-sea container terminal. He only wondered whether they planned to let his family recover a body at some point or if Thembi’s corpse was destined for the shark-infested waters off Sunset Beach like so many before him.

Moqoma thought about texting back but realized he hadn’t asked Thembi if there was any kind of shorthand he used with Chan. Deciding it didn’t matter, Moqoma turned off the phone and tossed it on the dashboard.

A moment later, the service entrance alongside Car Time opened, and four men exited. Three were the same kind of young toughs Moqoma had been seeing all day. The fourth, however, was a stooped man with a gray comb-over and matching sweater vest. He looked to be in his eighties. The group moved to a waiting SUV, the three younger men deferring to the older as they opened the passenger-side front door for him, helped him inside, and waited to leave until he was settled.

As the SUV drove away, Moqoma saw the man straighten a little, and his gaze, rather unfocused a moment ago, sharpen.

“That’s a good cover,” Moqoma said, grinning at Bones.

He waited for the SUV to clear the parking lot before starting the truck. He counted slowly to fifteen, then followed.

O
ne of the most popular bits of apocrypha concerning Cape Point, the southern tip of the African continent about fifty kilometers south of Cape Town, was that one could see Antarctica from it. In truth, the Princess Astrid Coast of Queen Maud Land, East Antarctica, the nearest point on the ice-covered continent, was still 4,000 kilometers away. Another popular myth was that it was one of the only places on the face of the earth where one could witness the meeting of two oceans, the South Atlantic and the Indian. Again, in truth, the oceans met a few miles east at Cape Agulhas, despite what innumerable tour guides told their charges on a daily basis.

What was true was that the Portuguese sailor who first rounded the point dubbed it “Cabo das Tormentas,” the Cape of Storms. Though this was later changed to the friendlier-sounding Cape of Good Hope, the weather had changed not at all. The final bit of land overlooking the cape was marked by a lighthouse atop a high, rocky promontory, this itself a part of a large national park that extended all the way back up to Table Mountain. There was only one road into the park, and, as the park closed at sunset, this highway was virtually empty after dark.

So as the SUV he was tailing passed Noordhoek Beach, Sunnydale, and even Ocean View, its destination becoming clear, Moqoma turned off at Scarborough, waited five minutes, then continued his pursuit with his headlights off. He knew this was an incredibly dangerous way to drive along the winding cliff-side roads leading to the Point, but any other way and there was no question he’d be seen.

As he neared the park entrance, really a toll plaza that blocked the road, he realized that there would undoubtedly be Triad men waiting there to shoo away anyone who wandered down. So, when he was about a quarter of a kilometer away, he pulled to the side of the road, parked the truck, and clambered out.

“We’re on foot from here, Bones,” Moqoma said, gathering the guns and slinging the ones with straps over his shoulder. “Means we may run into a troop or two of baboons, but I’d ask you use discretion in your dealings with them.”

Bones made no indication that suggested he understood the detective’s directive as his nose bobbed up and down in the air, having detected several new and unusual scents. The pair hurried the couple hundred meters to the fence, which was little more than a dilapidated wire affair, and crossed, Moqoma lifting the shepherd over before following. Bones was off the leash now, but the cop kept him close.

Though there was barely a moon and the ground was uneven, they made good time. They were out of sight of the road soon enough, Moqoma leading them toward the sound of the ocean. Though he had no idea where the Triad meeting was, which he now surmised to be some sort of ritualistic handoff of power between Li and Qin (or someone else meant to stay behind), he felt it would be near the water if Li was leaving by boat.

The starscape above their heads reminded Moqoma of walking home from his auntie’s with his father as a boy. Though his “auntie” was by all accounts a kind and generous neighborhood woman who cared for children while their parents were at work, Moqoma hated her. Other kids got to go home at the end of the school day. Not Leonard Moqoma. He had to go to the old woman’s house with several other unfortunates and play all afternoon. Though it was hardly taxing, it still felt to him like a double dose of school. When his father finally came by to pick him up, it was generally after dark. Though he would occasionally feign anger toward his dad over this grave injustice, he now looked back at those starlit walks, since Manenberg was just barely wired for electricity at the time, as one of his fondest memories.

What would his father think of his current mission? Moqoma wondered if the old man would think it remotely worthwhile, getting involved with political crimes and their attendant monsters. But Moqoma’s feared it was his father’s reticence that eventually led to his death, tragic as it was.

If Moqoma was to die, he would do so on his feet, fighting for his chosen side.

That’s when he spotted the dark sea on the near horizon. More importantly, he saw the silhouette of a large container ship created by the absence of stars out past the breakers. A few more steps forward, and he could just make out the point where the water met the beach, the sand a dark gray in the dim light. There were at least forty people standing around, some facing the water, others, their stances rigid, facing the surrounding scrub.

Moqoma considered that he had only minutes to live. He gripped the AK-47 tightly in his hand and turned his thoughts to Roogie and all the men the snake-woman had callously sacrificed in order to bring the gangster to her feet. What was the lesson there? Perhaps that these men knew their purpose was to die for their otherworldly leader.

Moqoma took Bones’s collar in his hand and held him back.

“Easy, Bones.”

It was like this that they edged closer to the beach. Neither the AK-47 nor the shotgun had much. If he just started shooting, he might wound a couple, but so what? Death had followed the snake-woman to Cape Town, but he wouldn’t let it leave. Blood would answer for blood.