Mixed Blood (25 page)

C
HAPTER
24

Instinctively, Burn swung the duffel bag. The man was fast. He grabbed the bag with his left hand, deflected it, and pushed Burn back against the car.

It was then, when a shaft of light from the small window above the garage door struck the man’s face, that Burn saw the livid scar and the empty eye socket. The watchman from the building site next door. In that moment everything made sense to Burn. The ugly freak had spied on them. He’d broken in and killed Mrs. Dollie and kidnapped Matt.

All the pent-up fear and rage exploded in Burn, and he went for the bastard’s throat. His fingertips had just brushed the watchman’s neck when he took a massive blow in the abdomen and fell to his knees, useless. He knew now that the watchman would take the money and disappear. And he would never see his son again. Then, as he was gasping for breath, he saw the watchman squat down in front of him, their faces almost level, the dark man looking at him like he was some alien life-form.

“Where is he?” Burn asked, his voice strangled.

“Who?”

“My son. What have you done with my son?”

The watchman shook his head. “I don’t got your son.”

Burn was sucking air, trying to get to his feet. The watchman was standing, too, helping him. Burn pushed his hands away. “Look, stop playing fucking games. Tell me what you want.”

“I don’t got your son. But I saw who do.”

Burn stared at him. The watchman continued slowly, the heavy accent grating on Burn’s ear. “I use to work next door, by the building site.”

“I know who you are.”

“That night, I seen him. He come and take your boy; then he come and shoot my dog. And me.”

Burn remembered arriving home the night Matt was taken. Seeing the watchman bleeding as he was led to the ambulance. “Who was it? Who took my son?”

“The fat cop.”

Burn knew then that the watchman was telling the truth. “I’m sorry.”

The watchman sh

“Please, come into the house. Tell me what happened.”

Burn took the duffel bag of money and walked to the stairs, his stomach still tender. The watchman wasn’t big, but he punched like a heavyweight.

They walked into the open-plan living room, all glass and light and Scandinavian design. The watchman looked around, taking it in. He was out of uniform, wore a pair of jeans meant for a bigger man, cinched in at the waist and rolled at the cuffs that fell onto a very tired pair of sneakers. His check shirt was frayed, short sleeved, showing plenty of prison artwork. He wore a cap, which he took off now that he was inside, standing holding it in his left hand, like it was something he’d been told to do. Burn found it hard not to stare at the dented, ravaged left side of his face.

Burn put the duffel bag down. “What’s your name?”

“Benny.”

“Just Benny?”

“Jus’ Benny is okay.”

“I’m Jack.”

“Ja, you tole me.”

Burn invited him to sit, which he did reluctantly, forward on the chair, his elbows on his knees, hands fidgeting with the cap. He told Burn what he had seen, expressionless, no emotion when he gave the details.

“He locked him in the trunk?”

“Ja.”

“But he was still alive?”

“He was, like, kicking. Ja.”

Burn battled to process this. His four-year-old son trying to fight off the huge cop. “You didn’t tell the police any of this?”

A smile touched the watchman’s scarred face. “Me and the cops don’t talk.” Then he was serious, his good eye fixed on Burn. “The fat cop. He tole you what he wants?”

“Money,” Burn said.

“And when you gonna give it to him?”

“When he calls me. Later today.”

“I wanna be there.”

“Why?”

“He kill my dog. I’m gonna kill him.” Like he was saying he took milk in his tea. No emphasis. No emotion. And no doubt that he meant it.

“Look, I understand. But I have to get my son back. Alive.”

“You think he gonna give him to you?”

“Yes. If I pay him.”

The watchman shook his head. “Man like that, he take your money, but maybe he don’t give you your son.”

Burn heard the scarred man give voice to his deepest fears. Right now the fat cop held all the cards.

“Ja. I find out about this cop. His, his moves, like. Where he operate and such. He’s dangerous.”

“Okay, I get that much,” Burn said. “You have an idea? A plan?”

“I go with you when you drop the cash. To watch your back, like.”

Burn nodded, taking this in. Trying to figure out whether he could trust this man and whether he would be risking or saving Matt’s life by getting the watchman involved.

The wind howled across the Flats, picking up sand and grit and firing it at Zondi like a small-bore shotgun. He felt it in his ears, up his nostrils, and it sneaked in and found his eyes behind the Diesel sunglasses. He kept his mouth shut and his hands in his suit pockets as he followed the uniformed sergeant through the rows of cars at the police pound.

Wrecked vehicles, endless minibus taxis, and a surprising number of luxury cars spread out across the yard. The cop carried a clipboard and seemed to know where he was going. He stopped and pointed. “There’s your car.”

A red BMW four-door with all the gangsta accessories: chopped suspension, fat tires with chrome mags, louvers, spoilers, and tinted windows. Zondi saw that the side window on the driver’s side was smashed and the trunk lid banged in the wind. The lock had been forced.

“Did it come in like this?”

“That’s right, sir.” Calling this black man
sir
stuck in the throat of the colored cop.

“That window too?”

“Yes.”

Zondi opened the trunk and looked inside. A spare tire and a jack. A couple of empty beer bottles and rags. An old newspaper and an empty brake fluid container. He walked around to the driver’s side and opened the door, looked inside.

“Who did you say this car was traced to?”

The sergeant consulted his clipboard. “A Mrs. Wessels of Table-view. She reported it stolen two years back. Wouldn’t recognize it now.”

“No, I bet she wouldn’t. Not something she’d use in the carpool.”

Zondi sat in the front seat. He popped the glove box: a couple of nipped joints and a half-empty bottle of vodka. He moved the bottle aside and saw a used condom.

“Pass me your pen, please, Sergeant.”

The cop obliged, and Zondi lifted the condom out with the nib of the pen and held it to the light. Damned if he was going to use his Mont Blanc. There was a good squirt of semen in the tip of the condom. He took a folded paper evidence bag from his jacket pocket and shook it open. He dropped the condom into the bag and held the pen out to the cop.

“Thanks.”

The sergeant hesitated, then shook his head. “You can keep it.”

Zondi dropped the pen onto the floor of the car. He had a quick look around the interior, saw nothing more of interest, then slid out, back into the howling ing “So this car was found up above Sea Point?”

The cop wiped sand from his eyes, then squinted at his clipboard. “Ja, we towed it from Thirty-eight Mountain Road.”

“Write that address down for me, won’t you?”

“Yes, sir.” The sergeant muttered to himself as he bent to retrieve his ballpoint from the car.

Zondi was already walking away, back toward the shelter of the office. How did people live in this bloody place?

The wind whipped across the graveyard, blowing the imam’s Arabic chant back toward the Maitland railway line. Burn stood at the rear of a small knot of mourners—all men—some dressed in traditional Muslim garb, others wearing knitted kufi caps with Western clothes. Burn had been handed a kufi as he joined the group, and he had to hold it down with one hand to stop it blowing away. He stood with the duffel bag containing one million in notes between his feet. His other hand was on his cell phone in his pocket, to feel the vibration if Barnard called.

Mrs. Dollie’s body, wrapped in a white cloth, lay next to the open grave as the imam droned the prayers. Mr. Dollie, small and bearded, looked almost lost inside his Muslim clothing. His face was pinched and drawn, and a young man in a suit had to steady his arm, as if the wind might take him.

Burn wasn’t sure why he had attended. He could have made an excuse, that Susan was about to have a baby. It was a valid excuse; the cesarean section was to be performed that afternoon. He knew it was ridiculous, but he felt that by attending the burial, facing Mrs. Dollie’s husband, that he was at least atoning for some of his actions.

Burn had been brought up a Catholic but had lost touch with religion by the time he was a teenager. He was surprised to find that now, in his midforties, the idea of guilt and retribution should be so present. As he stood and listened to the Arabic prayers directed at a god he was not on first name terms with, he heard a voice making a deal with some invisible force out there: I’ll face up to my guilt, I’ll take what comes to me, but just save the life of my son. It was his voice. He knew it was superstitious. He knew it was irrational. He didn’t care.

It was all he had right now.

That and a disfigured brown man with prison tattoos, sitting in the Jeep in the graveyard parking lot. The watchman had made it clear that he was going to shadow Burn until this thing was over, until he could get to the fat cop.

And kill him.

Burn had no reason to trust the watchman, which was why he stood with the bag of money between his feet, and the .38 Colt belonging to the dead gangster in his waistband. He knew that the watchman was a killer, but for now, at least, they wanted the same man dead: Barnard.

Men stepped forward and carried the wrapped form of Mrs. Dollie toward the grave. They lay the body on its right side, facing Mecca. The prayers moaned along with the wind.

Burn felt his phone vibrating, and he stepped away from the mourners as he looked at caller ID. Mrs. Dollie. He was almost moved to hysterical laughter at the surreal juxtaposition of her body in the gravand her name on his phone.

Then he took the call from his son’s kidnapper.

C
HAPTER
25

Benny Mongrel sat beside the American, who sped through Salt River, toward Woodstock, on the frayed fringes of the city. Burn was tense, checking his mirrors, nosing the Jeep into gaps. Then he made a visible effort to calm himself, and he slowed down, dropped to the speed limit.

Benny Mongrel had a cell phone in his hand, looking at it as if it might bite him. He’d seen people using them, sure, the guards at Pollsmoor, many people since he was released. But he had never held one in his hand. Never mind used one. Burn had given it to him earlier, saying it was a spare he kept as a backup. It would allow them to keep in contact during the drop-off of the money.

They had stopped at a light. Burn was looking at him. “You understand how to use it?”

“Ja.”

“Call my phone. Just to see everything is okay.”

“It’s okay.”

“Do it. Please. We can’t afford screw-ups.”

Benny Mongrel shrugged and jabbed a finger at the tiny phone. Burn had showed him that he only had to push that one number, the three, and it would dial his phone. Burn’s cell, lying on the seat between them, chirped and flashed.

“Okay, hit the red button.”

Benny Mongrel’s finger searched, found the red button, and jabbed at it. The chirping stopped. They were driving again.

“You clear on how we’re going to do this thing?”

Burn overtook a minibus taxi, which suddenly veered into their lane, and he had to swerve, almost colliding with an oncoming truck, horn blaring.

“Jesus!” When they had passed the taxi, Burn shot him a look. “You clear?”

Benny Mongrel nodded. “Ja.”

He was clear. Burn would drop him off just before they got to the Waterfront. Benny Mongrel would make his way to the place where he could observe the drop-off point. Burn had drawn him a map. He would watch the fat cop pick up the money and follow him. If the cop didn’t leave the boy, Burn wanted to know where the fat man was, to go after him. Benny Mongrel had no doubt the boy wouldn’t be left. The fat cop would take the money, and he would go back to his car. Benny Mongrel would follow him and kill him. He had no use for this stupid little phone.

Burn was talking, asking him to run through details of the plan. Benny Mongrel grunted, nodded, but his hand was in his pocket. He gripped the knife, the blade honed to perfect sharpness.

The Waterfront, Cape Town’s dockland development, attracted twenty-two million visitors every year, and it looked like most of them were there that day. Part shopping mall, part theme park, the Waterfront sprawled around the working dock. Restaurants, street musicianoat trips, and spectacular views across the city packed in the crowds.

Burn, duffel bag hanging from his shoulder, pushed his way through throngs of European tourists, skins fried Bockwurst pink by the African sun. They strolled in their shorts and sandals, digital cameras slung around their sunburned necks, wallets bulging with euros. Burn checked his watch; he had five minutes to get to the drop-off point.

Barnard’s instructions had been clear: Burn was to leave the bag on the stairs of the Mandela Gateway and cross the pedestrian bridge toward the shopping mall. Once the money was in place, Barnard would call his cell and tell him where in the Waterfront he could find his son. Burn’s gut instinct was that Matt was nowhere near the Waterfront. Barnard would be keeping him as an insurance policy.

If he was still alive.

Burn had tried to argue that he wouldn’t part with the money until he saw his son. Barnard’s counter was simple: if Burn didn’t shut up and follow instructions, he would remove one of Matt’s fingers. Burn shut up.

Burn skirted a group of black boys stripped to the waist, doing a loud and energetic gum boot dance. They blew whistles and clapped, the boots like gunshots on the cobbles. He approached the Mandela Gateway. The area teemed with tourists, queuing up for the half-hour boat ride across to Robben Island, to see where Nelson Mandela spent twenty-seven years in jail. Shortly after getting to Cape Town, Burn and Matt had taken the trip. Susan had begged off; she was suffering from morning sickness, and there was no way she was getting on a boat. While Burn had stood and looked into Mandela’s cramped cell, he had felt uneasy. Too vivid a reminder of where he could end up.

Burn checked his watch. Two twenty-nine. He forced himself not to look up at the first floor of the shopping area—curio shops and African theme restaurants—where he had told the watchman to take his position.

Burn headed for the stairs. He knew that Barnard wouldn’t waste time collecting the bag. The Waterfront had been the target of bomb attacks in the late nineties, and the security personnel were ultravigilant. An unattended bag would be spotted immediately.

Two thirty. Burn stood on the stairs, gave the area a sweep, then set the duffel bag down against a pillar. He headed off toward the pedestrian bridge, not looking back.

Barnard sat under an umbrella at a table outside a German restaurant, his eyes not moving from the Mandela Gateway. An untouched mug of pilsner stood in front of him. He thought it made him look like a tourist. He wore his cap and a pair of sunglasses, sweating into a T-shirt. Barnard took the sunglasses off and wiped the sweat from his eyes. He checked the watch that cut into the fat on his massive wrist. Almost two thirty.

Then he saw him. The American. Carrying a bag, heading straight toward the stairs. Barnard would let the American drop the bag and walk away. Then he would collect the money and drive over to Paradise Park. Put the Mossberg to the heads of the half-breed bitch and the American kid. Shut them up for keeps.

He regretted that he wasn’t going to be able to kill the American. He’d made a promise to his friend U.S. Marshal Dexter Torrance that Burn would be made to pay. Well, his dead son would have to be pyment enough.

The fat man stayed seated until he saw the American place the bag on the stairs and walk off in the direction of the pedestrian bridge. Barnard stood, hitched up his trousers, shifted the position of the holster under his T-shirt, and went to get his money.

Benny Mongrel waited at the railing on the first floor, outside an African restaurant, his cap pulled low. He watched the stairs. He saw Burn drop the bag and walk away. Benny Mongrel kept his eyes locked on the bag. He was aware of somebody coming up next to him, on his right side. Instinctively he felt for his knife; then he saw it was some young white girl with blonde hair, wearing a backpack.

“Excuse me, can you tell me where I find the taxis?” To Benny Mongrel’s ear, the German accent was nearly incomprehensible.

He turned to her, favoring her with the carnage of the left side of his face. “Fuck off.”

She saw his face, blanched white under her tan, and did as he said.

Benny Mongrel looked back toward the bag. It was gone. He scanned the crowd and glimpsed a fat shape about to disappear up the flight of stairs that led to the street.

Benny Mongrel was running.

As Burn approached the pedestrian bridge spanning the waterway, he heard a shrill blast of a whistle and the gates at the front of the bridge closed. A yacht with a towering mast approached the low bridge, en route to its mooring. With agonizing slowness, the bridge swung away from where Burn stood and traveled in an arc until it hugged the opposite bank.

The yacht glided slowly past, a tanned man in shorts at the wheel and a ridiculously good-looking woman sipping a glass of wine on the deck, neither deigning to look at the rabble on the banks.

Burn couldn’t resist a glance over his shoulder, up to the first floor. He saw the watchman take off, running, toward the stairs to the street. On the tail of Barnard.

Burn couldn’t stop himself. He turned and plunged into the crowd.

The call that Disaster Zondi was dreading came as he piloted his BMW southbound on the N2, cruising toward the city that huddled at the foot of the mountain. His outward appearance of imperturbable calm belied an inner turmoil. He sensed that Barnard was close, so close he could almost smell him. He couldn’t shake the feeling that he was dogging the fat man’s footsteps. But how far behind he didn’t know.

Zondi had decided to leave Superintendent Peterson and the rest of the cops at Bellwood South HQ out of the loop. He couldn’t risk a leak now. He knew it would take him more time to do everything himself, but he needed to keep control.

His phone, hooked up to a hands-free, was yapping on the seat next to him. He sneaked a glance at caller ID. His commanding officer. He was tempted to let it go to voice mail, but at the last moment he took the call. “Zondi.”

“Afternoon, Zondi.”

To Archibald Mathebula, Zondi was always just Zondi. He called his other investigators by their first names, but it was as if giving voice to the name Disaster was an insult to his sensibilities. He would have fought to the death to defend Zondi’s right to the name, but it conjured up an African world that was too rural, too primitive for a man of his refinement.

“And how is the Cape?”

“Windy,” said Zondi.

Mathebula chuckled. “Yes, it can be. Now I understand that you have completed your task?”

“Well, not entirely.”