Man Down (12 page)

11

When Turner, becalmed at a red light on William Nicol Drive, felt his fingers trembling on the wheel of the HiAce, he decided that he was suffering the effects of eighteen hours straight without booze or drugs.

Since the dainty joint he’d smoked the day before while riding shotgun beside Bekker in this battered van he’d ingested nothing stronger than instant coffee.

Returning to his cottage after the visit to the death house—the enormity
of what he was doing rushing at him like the headlight of a subway train—he’d fallen onto his roiled bed, groping for the bottle of Jack Daniel’s stationed atop a dog-eared paperback of
Siddhartha
on the floor beside the mattress
,
ready to drink himself into a numb, dreamless sleep.

To his surprise, as he cracked the cap and lifted the whiskey to his lips, the cloying smell of the liquor made him nauseous and he set the bottle down and rummaged in a drawer—dirty underwear; smeared CDs; a furrowed copy of
Rolling Stone
with Bob Dylan on the cover, the aged musician’s face tinted Martian-green from the preparation of countless joints—and found a half-smoked spliff.

Digging into the pocket of his Levis he snagged his lucky Zippo (whether a genuine relic of the Vietnam war as the Albanian photojournalist who’d traded it to him for a baggie of weed had sworn it was, or just a Thai knock-off, Turner neither knew nor cared, but the crudely engraved motto was something to live by: “When I die bury me face down so the whole world can kiss my ass.”) and spun the flint wheel beneath his thumb, catching a sharp whiff of butane before the flame flared as he brought the lighter toward the stubby doob clamped between his lips.

Turner fired the joint, the paper crackling with promise like an unopened gift, but the acrid smoke tickling his nostrils was suddenly as toxic to him as a gust of pesticide and he was unable to take even a hit, spitting the roach onto the carpet and crushing it dead beneath his Chuck Taylor as if it were one of its termite namesakes.

What the fuck was going on?

Liquor and weed were the staples of his daily diet.

Without them he would unravel, his frayed nerves (all forty-five miles of them) would stutter and scream and send messages of terror to his unmedicated brain.

Nothing for it but to take a pill.

But when he flipped the cap of a transparent plastic container and shook a Mandrax onto his sweating palm and regarded the white pellet, its face grooved into the impersonation of a mocking smile, he knew he wouldn’t swallow it.

If he were to do what he’d promised Bekker he would have to do it straight.

Straighter than he’d been in maybe ten years.

It wasn’t so much that he feared screwing up snatching the girl, or even the consequences of being caught (although the thought of being thrown into one of Jo’burg’s overcrowded prisons—his white skin as distinct from the rest of the inmates’ as the film of cream atop an Irish coffee—caused a swoosh of fecal matter to dribble from his anus into his skivvies) it was the knowledge that he had to be present, to bear witness to his actions, rather than watch himself through a lens of booze and drugs with all the detachment they allowed.

Why this was he couldn’t say.

It was what it was.

So he’d sprawled fully clothed on his bed and viewed a succession of beloved DVDs—
The King of Comedy
;
The Sweet Smell of Success
;
The Conversation
—until, finally, he’d fallen into an uneasy slumber while Elliott Gould as Philip Marlowe mumbled his way through an L.A. supermarket, searching for Courry Brand cat food in Altman’s
The Long Goodbye
.

And now here Turner was, sweating in the furnace that was noon in the Jo’burg summer, the Toyota’s fans blowing hot, gasoline-perfumed air in his face, his fingers atremble on the sticky molded plastic of the steering wheel.

Then he realized it wasn’t some precursor to delirium tremens that had him in its grip, it was the thumping bass from the mini-bus taxi idling beside the Toyota, blasting out Kwaito—South Africa’s homegrown bastard-child of hip-hop and techno—causing tremors powerful enough to get his fingers shaking.

Turner laughed and lifted his hands from the wheel, amazed to see that they were absolutely steady.

Why was he so preternaturally calm?

Surely a man who’d been trapped since adolescence in a revolving door of liquor, cannabis, methaqualone, cocaine, LSD, psilocybin, secobarbital, tuinal, amphetamine, codeine and any and every sundry mood-fucker-upper he could swallow, smoke and even spike should be Saint Vitus dancing his way to his date with destiny?

But as the lights changed and he accelerated away at speed, causing a legless beggar who balanced his torso on a skateboard to nosegrind his Tony Hawk Birdhouse
into the asphalt in his haste to get clear, Turner suddenly reveled in the newfound clarity, taking in the shockingly blue sky that soared from a layer of khaki smog and framed the giant billboards advertising cellphone networks, cosmetics and luxury cars here in the money belt of Johannesburg, a city that had fled from itself, rushing northward from the festering downtown cesspit.

Speeding past the concrete bunker of the Sandton City Mall Turner felt dangerously omnipotent.

Could he do this?

Could he snatch the girl and save his head from Mr. Paul’s hammer?

Fuck, yes.

Yes, he could.

12

Turner exited the sliding door of the living room and walked with his hands locked behind his head, Bekker dogging his heels, the snout of the small man’s pistol gouging his spine.

As they skirted the pool, the glass from the shattered tequila bottle lying like diamonds on the tiles, the PoolShark
nosed to the surface and floundered for a moment, gulping air, before sliding beneath the water and juddering away, the ripples from its motion sending curls of light across the two men.

“Jesus, Bekker,” Turner said, “this is a fucking mess.”

“Ain’t it a kick in the head?”

“This thing is out of control.”

“Just shuddup,” Bekker said, nudging him with the gun, “and keep walking.”

When they reached the door to the office Bekker stepped back a pace.

“Unlock it.”

Turner removed his keys from his pocket and opened the door.

“Switch on the light.”

Turner reached over and pressed the rocker switch and four recessed halogen lamps cast a cool glare across the two desks and twin vertical file cabinets.

A PoolShark was mounted on one wall, Turner’s idea of a retro joke, echoing the sports fishing trophies that had once decorated the manly dens of Papa Hemingway and other swinging dicks.

Only Grace had ever got the gag and had posed for a photograph where she had leaned in close to the mouth of the PoolShark, lips in a
Monroesque
-pout, her blonde hair falling like cotton candy around her shoulders.

After he took the photograph, wielding his BlackBerry’s camera like he was Bert Stern, Turner was so inflamed by this evocation of his pubescent fantasies that he’d bent Grace over his desk, lifted her dress and taken her from behind while the phone rang unanswered.

“Where’s the safe?” Bekker asked.

“Behind that calendar,” Turner said, pointing at the wall calendar beside Grace’s desk that showed scenes of the Southwest, this month a sunset rendering of Monument Valley.

“Open it,” Bekker said.

“We need to talk.”

“Just open the safe, Englishman,” Bekker said. “They can see us from the fuckin house.”

It was true.

The office, like all the rest of this biscuit-colored confection, featured floor to ceiling glass doors set into the pueblo plaster walls and the two masked men stood in the living room staring across the pool at them.

As he edged past Grace’s desk, empty drawers protruding like tongues, Turner’s arm brushed aside a brochure from a hardware retailer and revealed the gleaming curve of her cell phone reflecting the hard shine of one of the downlights, forgotten in her haste to box her things and get the hell away from him.

Turner, his hand hidden from Bekker’s view, reached down and snagged the phone, slipping it into the pocket of his chinos, a faint trace of Grace’s fragrance hanging in the air over her desk like a broken promise.

13

A dimly lit booth in a windowless cocktail bar where it was always midnight.

Frank Sinatra warbling about having somebody under his skin.

An American blonde looking into Turner’s eyes.

All that was amiss was the glass of club soda that he raised in salute.

“Cheers.”

“Cheers,” Grace said and sipped at her Jack and Coke.

Turner could smell the sweetness of the booze and it took all his resolve not to flag the barkeep, a troll with the beak of a carrion bird, and order one for himself.

“To you getting PoolShark into a big-box store,” he said.

“Well,” she said, “it’s not a done deal yet.”

“Oh, I’d say it is. You were brilliant in there. You had those good old boys eating out of your hand.”

She shrugged. “I just pretended I was talking to my horny uncles.”

“You had horny uncles?”

“Don’t all little girls have horny uncles?”

He looked at her.

“You make it sound like a rite of passage.”

“Don’t dress it up, John. It is what it is.”

Grace’s tongue slid between her lips and she used her thumb and index fingers to remove a fleck of tobacco from its tip and Turner had an almost overwhelming urge to kiss her.

“I had it better than most. Or no worse, at least,” Grace said.

He saw something in her face that made him regret the detour the conversation had taken and he leaned back in his seat.

“I meant what I said, about the commission.”

She nodded. “I know you did. And I’m not going to say that it won’t be welcome.”

They sat a while without speaking.

The place was sparsely populated: a man with a comb-over slumped at the bar counter and a couple of adulterers indulging in alcohol-lubricated verbal foreplay in a far booth.

Turner watched Grace drink.

She held the glass in her right hand, not releasing it even when it sat amongst the little rings of moisture on the tabletop, as if she needed something to anchor her.

Her fingers were long and looked as if they possessed a sinewy strength; the nails cut short and painted a pale ivory. The nail on her index finger was a little ragged, as if it had been chewed.

She lifted the glass to her mouth and took a sip.

Her lips were naturally full and her teeth white and even.

American teeth, Turner thought.

When he saw her blue eyes narrow quizzically—triggering a fine lattice of wrinkles at their corners—he realized he was staring.

Turner looked away and watched the fish in the tank behind the bar. A minnow, nothing more than an inky little blur, was swallowed by a fat red predator
with yellow fins.

“John?”

“Yes?”

“Can I ask you a question?”

Grace tapped her glass lightly with the nail of the index finger of her left hand.

Another tell?

“Sure.”

“You don’t drink?”

“No, I don’t drink.”

“But you used to?”

He nodded. “Yes. Now, I’m dry.”

“You had a habit?”

“Yeah, there wasn’t a drink or a party drug I didn’t love like a brother.”

She laughed. A breeze tickling a wind chime.

“I guessed it.”

“You guessed what?”

“Okay, when I look at you I see this well put together guy, kinda proper and even a little conservative, maybe. But there’s something else going on.”

“Something else?”

“Uh huh.”

She took a long drag on her cigarette, closing her eyes as she tilted her chin and exhaled and then she looked at him through the scrim of smoke.

“Like what?” Turner asked.

“You tell me.”

“Nothing’s going on.”

“Nothing?”

He shook his head.

“Not anymore,” he said.

“You don’t mind me asking?”

“I don’t mind.”

“Okay.”

“We work together. You should know this stuff.”

“How long since you quit?”

“Ten years.”

“Congratulations.” She swirled the ice in her glass. “Why did you suggest we stop off here? Isn’t it kinda tough being in a place like this?”

He shrugged. “You deserved a little celebration. But, yes, it reminds me of things.”

“Bad things?”

“Good and bad things.”

“What are the good things?”

“The way you look when you drink.”

“How do I look?”

“Thirsty.”

She laughed and tapped her glass.

Ting, ting.

“You sometimes miss just getting loaded or wasted?” she said.

“You better believe it.”

“Oh, I’m a believer.”

“Yes?”

“Yes. I spent the last five years with a mean drunk.”

A look of vulnerability crossed her face for just a moment before she wiped it away with a sweep of her hand.

“Well, I admire you, John.”

She pushed her half-empty glass to one side and stood.

“Come on,” she said. “Let’s get out of here before you stumble.”

“Not going to happen.”

But he rose and followed her out into the glaring sunlight.

As they crossed the parking lot to where his Lexus waited—the asphalt tacky beneath their shoes—Grace slipped on a pair of black sunglasses reminiscent of Camelot-era Jackie Kennedy. A soft, hot wind licked at her blonde hair.

Turner opened the car door for her and worked hard not to look at her legs as she slid into the passenger seat.

After they’d been driving a while through the sunstruck streets, past strip malls and industrial sites, Grace spoke.

“John, can I say something?”

“Sure.”

“I like you.”

“I like you too.”

“And I really like my job.”

“I’m pleased.”

“What I mean is, I’m just coming out of a mess of trouble and I’m trying to get my life back. You understand what I’m saying?”

“I think I do.”

“Okay.”

“Don’t worry, I’m not going to give you any trouble.”

“Good.”

Turner was swinging the Lexus into his driveway when Grace said, “Oh shit.”

A black BMW convertible with Phoenix plates was parked in front of the garage.

The driver’s door opened and a woman stood up out of the car.

She was tall and rangy, dressed in jeans and a work shirt, her dirty-blonde hair worn in a careless tangle.

When Turner saw the way Grace was staring at her he knew he needed to revisit the easy assumptions he had made.

“You okay?” he asked.

Grace nodded, opening the door.

“I’m fine, John. I’ll see you tomorrow, okay?”

Grace stood, walking toward the other blonde.

There was an awkward moment, the lanky woman holding out a hand to touch Grace, who shrank back.

Then, aware of Turner’s eyes on her, she stepped in and let the woman hug her.

Grace said something that Turner couldn’t catch and the blonde looked toward him.

Grace got into the passenger seat of the BMW and the woman gunned the engine and reversed at speed, almost colliding with Tanya driving up in her Subaru.

Tanya, stepping down from the SUV, watched the BMW drive away and then she looked at Turner in a way that only she could.

In a way that denuded him.

He started to walk toward the house, Tanya falling in behind him.

“Johnny?”

“Yes?”

“You’ve got the hots for that milk cow, haven’t you?”

He walked on without answering, peeling off toward the office.

Tanya said, “You can fuck her, I don’t care. But don’t stray, or . . .”

She drew a finger across her throat and tipped him a wink as she walked into the house.