Read Payback - A Cape Town thriller Online
Authors: Mike Nicol
‘David Beckham,’ they joked, one running to retrieve it.
Pylon got into the car, fired the engine. Mace waited while the boy opened the garage doors, reversed the TT into the street. He stalled it, swung the engine again with the accelerator floored, the revs howling. The young men all stood next to the van now, none of them smiling. Pylon gave a beep on the hooter and Mace eased into the passenger seat, said, ‘Let’s go.’
On the highway the boy took off without a wave of thank you and Pylon let him go, clucking his disapproval. ‘Bloody rich kids.’
Mace said, ‘Who’s the fella back there?’
‘Oupa K,’ said Pylon. ‘Started off as a car-guard. He reckons he’s seen the chick, Vittoria what’s her name?’
‘Sure he does.’
‘No, I’d believe him,’ said Pylon. ‘On the club scene, Oupa K’s the operator. He’s the merchant. Es from Amsterdam. Coke from Columbia. Oupa K has it all.’
‘Attractive man.’
‘Embittered man. Thought when he came back from the bush war, the powers would set him up. They did. With a chauffeuring job. Not exactly what Oupa K had in mind.’
Pylon took the off-ramp into the airport. ‘Probably what I’ll do while you’re away is hang out in the clubs for a while.’
‘Exciting,’ said Mace.
Two nights later Pylon hit Club Catastrophe a little after midnight. The building pumped, the street was jumping. On the corner Oupa K’s van issued a low requiem. He imagined the man inside watching him pass, knowing his reason for being there, probably smiling to himself. For a moment wondered if he shouldn’t knock on the tinted windows but didn’t. What for? Let the guy chill to his weird music in peace.
At the club door Pylon had to shout at the bouncers, ‘Ducky Donald around by any chance?’
The doorman looked over his head at the kids dancing in the street. ‘Who’s asking?’
Pylon told him.
The man spoke into the mic clipped to his lapel, kept his eyes on Pylon moving aside to let a couple of white boys stagger out, both wiggers, their hip-hop gear falling off their bums, their Nike laces whipping about like snakes. White kids, black kids, street cool was ridiculous.
The bouncer tapped Pylon on the shoulder, indicating with his thumb that he could go inside. ‘At the bar,’ he shouted. ‘Wait there.’
Pylon nodded, headed into the thundering drone of the club’s dark interior. Nothing seemed changed since he’d last been there, had to be almost three years back in ‘99: the same gothic style on the walls, the images of hanged cats.
At the bar Matthew shouted at him to go upstairs where Pylon found Ducky Donald sprawled on the not-so-white leather couch watching a movie of a bare-torsoed Ben Kingsley mouthing off at himself in a mirror.
‘Grab a beer, take a pew,’ said Ducky, flapping a hand towards a drinks counter that ran the length of the wall. Ducky sitting there in green tracksuit bottoms, a red T-shirt, bare feet. No sign of any female company. The room a pit of old newspapers, magazines, stacks of videos. A polystyrene box from the Hot Wok takeaway perched on a tower of discs. Ashtrays of butts on the bar and coffee table, the air heavy with cigarette smoke and not a window open on this hot night.
Pylon got a Becks from the bar fridge, uncapped it with a waiter’s friend. One thing he had to give Ducky, the noise insulation was good, only a dim boom audible from below.
‘Cheers,’ said Ducky, patting the white leather. ‘Siddown, watch this. Sexy Beast it’s called. I got a pirate. Bloody best movie Kingsley ever made.’
Pylon scooped newspapers off the couch, dumped them on the coffee table and sat.
‘Check this.’ Ducky Donald rewound to Kingsley aka Don Logan dissing Ray Winstone aka Gal.
The two guys facing off, Logan going: ‘Look at you, fuckin’ suntan, like leather! Like a leather man, your skin, you could make a fuckin’ suitcase out of you, holdall! Look like a crocodile, fat crocodile, fat bastard, you look like fuckin’ Idi Amin, know what I mean?’
Ducky slapped at his thighs. ‘Isn’t that great. Bloody wonderful. Wouldn’t you say?’ - and spun back for a replay.
Pylon sipped his beer, thinking fat Ducky Donald with his sunbed tan was only a shade or two off Idi Amin himself.
When the scene came to an end, Ducky paused the movie, an image of the bald psychopath in a tight white shirt with a face like a demon filling the screen. He tossed the remote onto a woven grass plate, gave Pylon a toothy smile. ‘So what you want, boykie?’
Pylon said, ‘I’m looking for a girl looks like this’ - he handed Ducky two newspaper clippings: one the cop’s identikit, the other of a passport mug shot. ‘She’s been around the clubs, I heard.’
‘Hundreds of broads look like this,’ said Ducky, giving Pylon back the cuttings. He took a cigarette from a pack, fired it with a Bic. Said, ‘Let me show you something’ - blowing smoke from the corner of his mouth as he picked out a remote from the four lying in the bowl, aimed it at a black box standing on the floor below the screen. Logan disappeared; the club’s dance floor popped up, a packed mob swaying with their hands snaking above their heads. ‘I can sit here, keep on eye on the ravers.’
Ducky zoomed in on a couple, ecstasy written over their faces. ‘How about that? Truly bombed, hey!’
He switched cameras: the doormen having words with a kid waving a knife in their faces. The one bouncer took the knife away like the kid had given it to him. Ducky Donald laughed. ‘Got sound too.’ He powered up the volume, the kid shrieking about how they were racists, not letting blacks in. Ducky Donald sighed out a stream of smoke. ‘We get that all the time.’
The bouncer sneered. ‘What, you an MK? The bloody spear of the rainbow nation. Piss off arsehole.’
Ducky Donald jumped to a camera in the chill room, no one there. ‘In here’s where the shit happens,’ he said. ‘The things I’ve seen you wouldn’t believe people’d do in public.’
‘This cover the loos too?’ said Pylon.
The screen filled with dancers, the speakers blasted an amplified sound. Ducky shut down the volume, zooming on and off faces. ‘We’re thinking of that.’
Pylon thought, yeah, sure, like that wasn’t the first place they installed the system. He watched the play of the camera, had to be on some track across the ceiling.
‘Goddamned wonderful piece of hi-tech,’ said Ducky, dollying slowly over the crowd.
Pylon caught an upturned face, said, ‘Stop. Go back.’ Ducky Donald opened the angle. ‘There. That one. With the black hair.’ The camera came tight on her: eyes closed, sweat glistening on her forehead, mouth slightly open to show the tips of her teeth. It could be. An outside chance, something about the shape of her face. He leant forward. ‘What d’you think?’
Ducky Donald pulled at his cigarette. ‘You’re gonna tell me that’s her?’
‘I reckon.’
Ducky squinted at the screen. ‘Nah. Not a chance.’
‘It is,’ said Pylon. ‘Except last time I saw her she was blonde.’ He took a long swallow at his beer, watching the young woman dancing, not a care in the world. Seemed to be dancing all by
herself
. Attractive babe.
‘And why’s she of note?’
‘Cops’re after her.’
‘I gathered. Question is, why are you?’
‘Long story,’ said Pylon. He drained the bottle of beer, stood the empty at the foot of the couch. ‘Thanks for the help.’
Ducky Donald shrugged. ‘Just don’t cause any shit on the premises.’
‘Wouldn’t dream of it,’ said Pylon.
Two hours later he watched the woman leave the club with a man that had a decade on her at least. The two of them walking hand-in-hand casually through the dark streets to an Audi
Quattro
parked a block away. He followed them across the city, up and over the Nek, along the coastal stretch to Llandudno, down into the suburb. Not another car about this time of the morning. At a fork he lost them, then saw headlights sweep into a street below. He made it down in time to see an automatic gate rolling closed. Lights came on in the house. Pylon went back to his car, tapped an SMS through to Mace in New York.
‘Trust me. I’m a dealer.’ Isabella ran a finger down Mace Bishop’s cheek. Opened the door to her apartment, going in ahead of him.
‘You’re not the problem.’
‘So what is?’
‘Mo’s the problem.’
‘Schmooze him.’
In the lounge Mace took off his coat, draped it over the back of an armchair. ‘All I want to know are two things: when, and that the deposit’s secure.’
‘You can’t believe me?’ Isabella collapsed on the couch, eased off her shoes. ‘It’s going to work out, Macey. I’ve got my little husband on the case.’
That, Mace thought, was the real problem. The little husband didn’t have a great track record from what he could gather.
‘I’m not going to leave you out in the blue exhaust, am I now? There’s lots riding on this, Mace. A cool fortune.’ She patted the seat of the couch, enticing.
He sat in the armchair. ‘Exactly. So when?’
She ignored him, kept patting the couch leather. ‘Come and keep me company.’
‘Not a good idea,’ said Mace.
‘You wouldn’t have said that once.’
‘Once was once. Times change.’
‘I forgot. The family man.’
Mace nodded. ‘So when, exactly?’
‘That last time in the Meurice,’ she said, getting up, kneeling down beside him, ‘wasn’t good. Not the sort of memory I like for what we had. What d’you say?’ Reached up to take his hands.
‘You said you’d got over it.’
She nibbled at his fingers. ‘I lied.’
‘Bella,’ he said, ‘don’t do this.’
‘No? Then why’re you here, Mace? Tell me? I didn’t ask you. You came up. Or is this my Macey-boy the smuggler, daring all, suddenly getting cold feet?’ She sat astride him, lap-dancer style, her skirt riding up, and took his face in her hands.
Mace said, ‘No.’
Isabella grinned at him, her hand pressed into his crotch. ‘No? I’d have thought, yes, by the feel of it.’ Her lips came down to his, pushing hard against his teeth.
Mace thought, don’t. Felt his hand on her thigh. Her hand covering his, taking it higher. The touch of her on his fingers brought a rasp to his breath.
Afterwards he had to leave. Right away. Isabella lying on the couch beneath a throw, amused at his hurry. His searching for shoes under the furniture, mismatching his button holes.
‘You can stay the night,’ she said. ‘We could do it again, in bed.’
‘I don’t think so.’ Mace shrugged into his coat.
‘Oumou on your conscience. How cute. Not like you, Mace, to have a conscience.’
‘What we haven’t settled,’ said Mace, ‘is the date.’
‘Ever the Pitbull.’ She sighed. ‘Never lets go’ - watching him flip open a small diary, scanning a calendar. ‘For heaven’s sake, Mace, it was just a screw. Something we used to do before you met Oumou. It’s not like I’m a new lay.’
‘When in January?’
‘You tell me.’
‘Saturday 18th?’
‘That’s good, if it’s good for you.’ Isabella put her head coquettishly at an angle. ‘It was good for you, I could tell.’
She was right, Mace admitted back at his hotel, sex with Isabella smelt of guns. Always had done. A brush of linseed when her body heat came up. You could taste it if you licked her skin. That excitement that possessed you.
He stared at himself in the bathroom mirror: the lines at the corners of his eyes that hardened his gaze. The curve of his lips, tightening. A redness at the flanges of his nostrils. ‘Why’d you do it?’ he said aloud. ‘You weak bastard.’
Oumou’d know. Sense it somehow. Just know. Truth was he felt like shit. Really bad. Sick in his gut.
‘You think you can get away with it?’ He searched in his eyes for a remorse that frightened him. In their marriage he hadn’t betrayed her, always respected her. Until now. He spat in the basin. Rinsed his mouth and spat again, the taste of bile still on his tongue.
He went through to the bedroom and from the minibar poured a whisky. This took away the taste and the lurking edge of unease. He chased it with another, drinking without pleasure. The second down, he stripped off and showered, over the jet of water could hear his cellphone beeping. Five minutes he let the water drum against his skull, thinking, how was this going to end?
The message was from Christa: What r u dng?
A towel wrapped round his waist, he sat on the bed to respond: Why are you awake?
He knew she went through spells of waking in the night. At first she’d called out to them and they’d rushed through to her. Lay with her, held her while she sobbed with terror. But over the last year she’d moved out of that, reached some accommodation with her fate, become accepting. If she woke, she read. In a household of no books, Christa took to reading. Some mornings he’d find her asleep with the bedside light on, a book fallen on the floor, Cat2 and Cupcake entangled at the bottom of the bed. Her thing with books he couldn’t understand. Stories had no fascination for him. Unless they were real.
Christa replied: Reading Harry Potter. What u do 2day?
Major shit, he thought. Thumbed back: Saw some people. Walked in Central Park. Very very cold. Had supper in a little bistro.
The message sent, he unscrewed a third miniature from the minibar, filling this with soda. Hoping as he sipped it to hear again from his daughter. The queasiness still in his stomach. The room phone rang. Isabella.
‘Just to say goodbye,’ she said. ‘See you in Cape Town.’ Her voice light with laughter.
I’ll bet, thought Mace, entirely sure having Isabella in the same city as Oumou was a bad idea. ‘Till the 18
th
,’ he said, a silence opening between them. His cellphone beeped twice.
‘Such a busy boy,’ said Isabella. ‘Keep the faith, Mace, you’re still a good screw.’ She hung up before he could think of a reply.
He checked his messages.
The first was from Pylon: Found her in Llandudno.
The second from Christa: Poor daddy all alone. Should have taken Cupcake.
When Mace got back from New York the first thing he checked on was Vittoria Corombona. Found her on a packed Llandudno beach under the noonday sun.
‘No question,’ he said to Pylon.
‘Pleased I got it right.’ Pylon handed Mace back a photograph of Isabella’s husband. ‘Makes this a bit messy.’
‘No kidding. Gonsalves on her tail and we’re supposed to do business with him.’
They watched the couple walking in the shallows hand-in-hand.
‘Question is how soon’s Gonsalves likely to find his way here?’
Mace slipped off his shoes, rolled up the bottom of his chinos. ‘Perhaps he needs delaying.’
‘Meaning?’
‘Search me. Maybe something like a contribution to his pension.’
Pylon wiped a hand over his face, said, ‘How about an ice-cream?’
They bought mint-chocolates on a stick from a vendor sitting on his coolbox eyeing the tanga babes.
‘The problem with mint-chocolate,’ said Pylon, ‘is it tastes like mouthwash.’
‘Only to you. My ice-cream of choice.’ Mace took a bite, letting the chocolate and mint fuse in his mouth. ‘The trick is catching the chocolate before it falls off.’
They ambled onto the sand towards the water, feeling
overdressed
among the sun worshippers.
‘You think Gonsalves might be tempted?’
‘Possibility. I seem to recall retirement held some terrors for him.’
At the far end of the beach Vittoria and Paulo reached the boulders that shaped the bay and turned, heading slowly back.
‘She’ll recognise us,’ said Pylon, watching the couple. ‘Which would not be a good thing.’
Mace picked at the remains of the chocolate coating his
ice-cream
, freed a sizeable piece and dropped it into his mouth. Crunched it, said, ‘We’d not be asking much of him. Just a postponement.’
‘And the reason?’
‘No reason. Why’s there have to be a reason? The money’s the reason he won’t be interested in any other reason.’
Pylon flicked his ice-cream wrapper and stick into a dirtbin. ‘If you say so.’
Top down in the Spider they drove back to town, getting into a bumper-to-bumper along the Camps Bay strip, the traffic moving slower than the bikini moms pushing prams under the palms.
Mace said, ‘What I hate about the season is traffic jams. Every beach round the peninsula there’s a snarl-up.’ He pressed the hooter to get the driver in front concentrating on the road instead of the beautiful bodies playing volleyball.
Pylon said, ‘How much were you thinking of?’
‘We could start low. Say ten K. Raise it to a max of say fifteen. I wouldn’t be comfortable going beyond that.’
Pylon whistled. ‘Just to keep him off for a few days?’
‘Actually almost three weeks.’
‘Almost a thousand a day!’
‘Sounds attractive, doesn’t it?’
‘No kidding.’
They met Gonsalves at the Long Street Café. On a stinking afternoon the day after New Year the place was empty, everybody headed for the sea. Mace and Pylon flopped onto two couches in a corner. Ordered Kahlúa Dom Pedros and tall sparkling waters. As the order arrived Gonsalves came in, carrying his jacket over his shoulder, his shirt stained with sweat at the armpits. He gave off a blast of tobacco and BO.
‘I’ll have two of those,’ he told the waiter, pointing at the Dom Pedros. ‘With whisky, not the fancy stuff. Oh ‘n hey, you got an ashtray for me?’
‘Sorry, sir, smoking’s outside,’ said the waiter.
‘Who said I’m gonna smoke?’ - Gonsalves collapsed into an easy chair, fished in his jacket pocket for a cigarette. ‘Heat I can’t take.’
‘Sir…’ stammered the waiter.
‘It’s alright,’ said Pylon, ‘he’s not planning to smoke it. Just bring the drinks, okay.’
The waiter backed off dubiously.
Gonsalves said, ‘So what you want?’
Mace cleared his throat. ‘More or less to find out how things’re going.’
‘In a nutshell: up to shit.’ Gonsalves stripped paper off the cigarette. ‘I got the commissioner wanting to know every second day where’s the poppie? His word. Poppie. You ever heard anyone wasn’t an Afrikaner use that word? Meet my commissioner. A black man. Been in the force as long as me, now he’s a commissioner, I’m a white man with a foot in the marble foyers. What the French say c’est la vie. Never mind. The commissioner’s point is how come a poppie can go missing in our fair city? Because this is not good for tourism, captain, this is not the sort of incident what they call the gateway city, the mother city, wants riding on its name. We’ve got a brand here, captain, he tells me, this brand can’t be tarnished or all the lovely Germans, English, Americans, Japanese gonna take their lovely euros, pounds, dollars, yen off to Malaysia. Find the poppie, captain. Find the killers. Get the Italians off my back. Know what I mean. This is pink city, captain, we can’t have gays being butchered. Think of the brand. Get out there, captain, talk to people.’ Gonsalves balled tobacco between the palms of his hands. ‘This commissioner, Khumalo, talks of whistle-blowers. Somewhere there’s gotta be a whistle-blower. Find the whistle-blower, captain, help him blow his whistle.’
The waiter brought the two Dom Pedros and an ashtray.
Gonsalves popped the plug of tobacco into his mouth, surveyed the mess of tobacco bits strewn over his trousers and the floor, said, ‘Bit late with that’ - indicating the ashtray. He reached for a Dom Pedro, sucked down half of the mix without coming up for air.
Mace wondered how he did that and kept from swallowing the tobacco.
‘Another thing,’ Gonsalves wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, ‘you ever heard of irritable bowel syndrome?’
Mace and Pylon shook their heads.
‘Well that’s what the commissioner’s given me. It’s virulent. I wake up about two, three in the morning with this pain like someone’s got their fist in my gut. I lie there breathing shallow ‘cos this fist’s pressing against my lungs too. Then the pain starts in my side, sharp, like a stitch except worse, slowly it slides down into my colon and I know okay it’s going, soon I’m gonna be okay again. Except sometimes it goes on for six hours. Khumalo’s
gut-ache
I call it.’ He finished the Dom Pedro, sucking noisily around the ice. ‘Sorry you asked, hey?’
Mace said, ‘That’s a pity.’
Gonsalves glanced at him. ‘More’n a pity, china. Hope it’s not in your destiny.’ He licked ice-cream from the straw. ‘So what’ve you got to tell me?’
Pylon said, ‘Just wanted to know if there was some way we could be of help.’
‘Such as?’
Mace leant forward. ‘Such as, letting you in on some information.’
‘Meaning you know where she is?’
‘In a manner of speaking. Only problem is there’s a time issue involved.’
‘What sort of period are we talking?’
‘Till, say, the middle of January.’
Gonsalves swirled the straw through the mixture. ‘You’ve got a good reason for this?’
‘We have.’
‘Which’s obviously confidential?’
‘That sort of thing.’
The captain sucked at his Dom Pedro. ‘What if I get to her before then? In the normal course of events.’
Mace said, ‘Maybe we could talk about it. At that point.’
‘Anything’s possible.’ Gonsalves finished the drink, ran a
finger
round the inside of the glass and licked it clean. ‘We in the service’re open to discussion as long as justice is served.’
‘It will be.’
‘Splendid.’ Gonsalves wiped his fingers on a serviette. ‘What’ve you got in mind?’
Pylon moved a leather briefcase across the floor until it bumped against the policeman’s leg. Gonsalves looked at him, them, for a long time. ‘I’ll have your balls,’ he said. ‘Both of you.’
‘It’s cool,’ said Pylon.
Gonsalves chewed at what was left of the tobacco wad in his mouth, staring at them both. ‘Don’t get me wrong, about this. I can make you think car-guarding’s a good option.’
Mace said, ‘We’ll deliver. Tuesday 21 January. Scout’s honour.’
Gonsalves ignored the humour. ‘If we need to talk again, we need to talk again.’
‘Of course.’
Captain Gonsalves rose, hawked the tobacco into the ashtray, dusted his trousers. ‘Happy New Year.’
‘Likewise,’ said Mace.
Pylon nodded. ‘Don’t forget your briefcase.’
‘No intention of doing that.’ Gonsalves smiled at the two men, stooping to grip the briefcase by its handle. ‘Real leather.’ He
patted
it. ‘How thoughtful.’