Payback - A Cape Town thriller (9 page)

A late Easter, with the days cool, shortening, Mace stood in their bedroom gazing down at the city, the bay beyond. He put the
cellphone
back on its unit to charge.

Below, Christa in the garden with Cat2, putting flowers from the well-trimmed hedge on the grave of Cat3 that’d lived until they moved into the renovated house, then died suddenly when stones formed in the urinary tract. Happened sometimes in males, the vet said. So he’d heard, Mace told him.

His own water works were clear. Blood tests negative. The doctor’s finger test caused him to grunt, ‘That’s okay, meneer, just keep coming in for checkups.’

Off the gurney Mace hitched up his jeans. ‘Great job you’ve got.’

The doctor stripped off plastic gloves, washed his hands at a basin. ‘Just another day at the orifice’ - handed him an invoice to pay on the way out. Between the doc and the prostate pills Mace believed he could’ve financed a war of liberation in Sierra Leone.

Thing was he had his health and the Victorian gem in the City Bowl.

‘My son,’ Dave Cruikshank said when Mace signed the papers, ‘I thought your missus had your balls in her grasp. Good on yer.’

After the renovation, he said, ‘I told you didn’t I. A dream you were buying, I told you. My son, you’ve done good. This is a marketable proposition.’

‘Not for sale,’ Mace said.

Mace gave the house a total make-over. Not just spruced up. Redone. Olde worlde meets stainless steel and glass. Featured, after they’d moved in, in Home and Garden. The cellar even getting a special picture and a comment from the university historian that he believed it went back to the seventeenth century.

When Mace told Oumou he’d signed and sealed she said, ‘This is because of your cancer, I understand. But I am telling you I will not live there.’

When he persuaded her to at least look at the renovations, she went grudgingly at first. Inspected the changes without a word, then said, ‘You think you are a smart man, no?’

He smirked.

‘I shall give up,’ she said. ‘This will be a beautiful house. We can stay here.’

Mace showed Christa her en-suite bedroom. ‘Ah cool,’ she said. ‘Papa can I have my own TV?’

Instead he promised her the world.

They moved in a month into the new year. Handed the keys and lease to their suburban townhouse to Pylon and Treasure.

‘I don’t want this,’ said Pylon. ‘This’s smaller than we’ve got. This is crappy. We’re giving up four en-suite bedrooms, hi-tech kitchen, entrance hall, marble tiles, for what? For a better address?’

‘So what?’ said Treasure, stamping township dust from her shoes. ‘No shit in the streets. No dead dogs in the gutters. No all-night shebeens. No slaughtering cows in the backyard. Security. No worries my daughter’s going to be kidnapped. No more township. This’s fine by me.’

Her daughter Pumla’s rave: ‘Can I have my own TV?’

Mace’s wasn’t the only renovating going on in those months: Ducky Donald and Mattie-boy got their insurance payout and fixed up Club Catastrophe due to rise from the ashes, according to the invite Mace got, in ten day’s time. One thing he was pleased about, Ducky Donald had no more favours to call in.

He called nonetheless. Sheemina February had set up another meeting with Matthew, could Mace be present?

Mace said, ‘I see on the news some of her clients are in jail. What’s to meet about?’

‘Same thing again.’

‘So go to the newspapers. Stir the pot. People are on your side.’

‘Not so easy, china. What’m I gonna tell them? We got a PAGAD lawyer threatening us?’

‘Sounds good.’

‘I’d rather hear her out first.’

Mace said nothing, let the silence go until Ducky said, ‘Please, okay?’

‘We’re square,’ Mace said. ‘Far as I’m concerned. No more obligations to you. And you forget about Cayman and Techipa.’

‘Sure. Agreed. Forgotten already.’ Ducky cleared his throat. ‘This’s more something involving you.’

‘Not interested.’

Mace could hear him swig at a drink, Ducky loving this. ‘Thing is there’s something else here that I don’t understand. The bitch said she wants my Mattie and his advisor. Mattie tells her he hasn’t got an advisor. She says Mace Bishop. He says history. She says, you, meaning you, owe her.’

‘Interesting perspective.’

‘Not one I comprehend, Mace.’ Ducky took another gulp. ‘Further, she says Mattie doesn’t have you with him, Mattie’s gonna be the only paraplegic club owner in the city. I tell Mattie we’ve got no holds on you. Debt paid up in full. The only thing I can do is put it to you, see what you say.’

Mace had encountered Sheemina February a good couple of times since PAGAD bombed Mattie’s club. Each occasion had to keep himself from getting in her face about the bombings. The victims. Once had been in the foyer of the Cape Grace, another time at an evening concert in the winelands. Then again about a month back on the forecourt of the petrol station on Orange where he usually filled up. Mace was busy signing the chit, she stopped at a pump alongside. Electric blue BMW coupé open to the early autumn. This was a small city, people moved in small circles. Bumping into people you knew was nothing out of the ordinary. Point was, if she’d wanted to have her say about the hole in her goon’s shoulder she could have phoned him at any time. But no, she kept her cards. Until now.

The voice in his ear said, ‘So what d’you say?’

‘Don’t know, I can’t see the leverage here.’

‘Except my boy’s health.’

‘There’s that.’

‘And my memory.’

‘I wouldn’t go there.’

‘Joke, boykie. Take half an hour of your time. Give a bit of interest to your day.’

Mace looked down at Christa in the garden, her attention now on her toys. He should have said no, he’d said, ‘Alright, for this you owe me.’ Thinking, maybe he’d unload some opinions of his own.

Pylon asked Mace in the weeks after the bomb, was he going to have a word with Gonsalves about his theory regarding the Hartnells? Mace had more pressing matters on his mind: getting his prostate back to size for one, rebuilding a house for another. Also he still worried Ducky would pull the Cayman and Techipa plug.

Gonsalves was in touch though to let him know Ducky
Donald
Hartnell had powerful friends. He mentioned the name Mo Siq early in the conversation. Asked Mace if he knew such a man. Mace said he did.

Captain Gonsalves said, ‘One night the phone rings, my wife answers, says to me a Mr Siq says he wants to have a word. I leave my warm chair next to the gas heater, go out into the passage where there’s no heating and it’s colder than a witch’s tit. My wife says we should get a cordless phone but they cost five hundred bucks, Mr Bishop. I tell her while there are pension instalments there are no cordless phones. Except while I’m out in the freezing passage listening to Mr Siq I did consider it.

‘What Mr Siq had to say,’ he said, ‘was that anything I could do to expedite - which is the word he used - to expedite the report on the Club Catastrophe bombing would be appreciated, seeing as how it was a simple PAGAD bombing situation. Here I
hesitated
. Simple bombings. I dunno about simple bombings. I gave a long aaah. He then told me Mr Hartnell had made a considerable investment in the rebuilding of the club but was feeling exposed - which is also the word he used - because the insurers were waiting for the police report before they paid out. Mr Siq said he wasn’t going to offer me an inducement - again his word - because that was bribery by another name but that he had entered my details in his little book as an aide-memoir. Either way.’

‘Either way what?’ Mace said.

Gonsalves chewed into the mouthpiece of his phone for a moment. ‘I believe you know what that means, Mr Bishop,’ he said.

Mace told him, ‘Uh huh.’

‘The next day,’ the captain continued, ‘I found out that Mr Siq is known by the first name Mo and that he buys big grey ships and fast grey jets on behalf of my employer. My ultimate employer that is. What they call in the vernacular my makulu baas. Otherwise known as el presidente. I learnt that I should not mess with Mr Mo Siq.’

‘You should not,’ Mace said knowing that Mo was not the guy he once was, who drank palm wine on a Lagos beach till sunrise. Mr Mo Siq now dressed in Armani suits, Rolex watches and Bally boots. Mace had no problem with the Bally boots.

‘What I’m saying,’ said Captain Gonsalves, ‘is that I appreciate the tip-off, even if we didn’t act on it as we should have. I have Matthew Hartnell’s account of his - your - meetings with a
person
called Sheemina February, who is known to us as a PAGAD lawyer, and Abdul Abdul who we had the pleasure of hosting until he got bail. Ms February represents Abdul Abdul but that is her only association with known suspects. On the other hand she is a lawyer. In my experience they are at home in what my wife would call sleaze.’

He coughed loudly. When the spasm petered out, told Mace he would be grateful for any further information.

Below in the garden Christa arranged in a circle Cupcake, her teddy bear, the Incredible Hulk, Belinda, a Barbie doll, and Spiderwoman. She placed a cup and saucer before each and poured a brown fluid from one of Oumou’s reject pots. She stood back to admire her tea party. Mace came to a decision.

In the room directly below their bedroom Oumou had her
studio
, she was there now, throwing clay, at the wheel fashioning tall elegant vessels. He went down and kissed her on her neck below the silver and amber earrings she was never without. These earrings were the envy of Christa who never let up to Mace on how she couldn’t wait to have her ears pierced.

‘I’ll be an hour,’ he said. ‘An unexpected meeting.’

Oumou gave him lazy hooded eyes. ‘This is your holiday, no?’

‘Supposed to be.’

‘Do not be long,’ she said.

Outside Christa wanted to know, ‘Papa, can I come?’

Mace swung her round on a three-sixty carousel ride until he got giddy. ‘Next time, C. This is business.’

‘Please, please please please,’ she said, slightly giddy herself. At his shaking head changed tack, ‘Can Cupcake go with you instead?’

Cupcake went with Mace on away business trips to fetch
important
clients. He’d been to Madrid, Milan, Munich, Hamburg, Copenhagen, London, New York, Los Angeles, Miami, Lusaka, Chobe, Victoria Falls. Also a number of cities and safari ranches within the country. Never before had Mace had to strap him into the passenger seat of the Spider and drive him about town with the top down.

When he pulled into the Harrington Street parking lot, a surly black guy handed him a slip of paper. On it was a name he couldn’t make out.

‘Where’s the Angolan?’ Mace asked. ‘Cuito?’

The car-guard shrugged, gave him a hard stare.

Mace looked about, only locals. He reckoned if Cuito wasn’t dead, he was probably close to it. Wondered about Dr Roberto. Locals had a hatred of foreigners, especially those with enterprise.

He pointed at his passenger. ‘The bear’s called Cupcake,’ he said. ‘He goes home with me. So does everything else in here.’

The Xhosa didn’t even register he was talking to him.

Matthew was waiting in his hole of an office, smoking, playing a game on his cellphone. He’d smartened up his image: leather jacket, black T-shirt, regular jeans, hi-tech footwear without socks. His hair gelled into spikes. The office was unchanged, occupied but not occupied, as the corridor had been unchanged, every room locked with a security door, occupied but not occupied.

The room reeked of cigarettes: ash and two crushed butts in the saucer on the desk. Mace opened the window. It made no difference.

Matthew kept his eyes on his game. ‘Th-the ma-macho with his gun?’ he said.

Mace had a short-barrelled Smith & Wesson .38 in the pocket of his chinos, a loose shirt and denim jacket meant to hide the outline. He sat down where he’d sat down before. ‘Don’t annoy me Mattie-boy. It’s not a good idea.’

Matthew flicked a head of ash into the saucer. ‘D-don’t call me Ma-Mattie-boy.’

Mace considered this. ‘How about you try growing up first.’

Matthew put down the cellphone, still didn’t look at Mace. ‘Wha-what’s with you ol-old guys? It’s l-like you all sucked p-piss from your ma’s tits. Li-lighten up, ar-sehole.’ He made to pick up the cellphone again, Mace leant forward to stop his hand.

‘One thing you have to watch, Mat-thew,’ he said,
tightening
his grip, ‘is your language.’ He squeezed the pressure point behind Matthew’s thumb until he yowled. ‘You’re playing in the big world, Mat-thew. You’ve got bodies to your name. You need help. At the moment I am that help although I do not want to be. I want to walk out of here and leave you to Sheemina February. Except that again your daddy prevailed upon me. And now you owe me, understand?’

This time they had not heard Sheemina February coming up the stairs, walking along the corridor. This time she came alone and she came on soft-soled shoes. She was standing in the doorway.

‘I am not interested in boys, Mr Advisor,’ she said. ‘I prefer men.’ She came in, sat down across the desk from Matthew but angled towards Mace. Crossed her legs with the faint rasp of pantihose. No briefcase. A shawl about her shoulders. Throughout, Mace was the object of her gaze. Not once did her eyes acknowledge Matthew. She tapped the fingers of her gloved hand on the desk, then said to the club owner, ‘Do you mind not smoking.’

Matthew crushed out what was left of his cigarette.

She smiled at him. ‘Thank you.’

Her Nordic eyes came back to Mace, and he held them. The smile remained, a hint of white teeth behind her gloss plum lipstick.

‘Mr Advisor I’m pleased you could make it. I’m pleased Matthew’s father prevailed upon you, even if you don’t want to be here. Even if you don’t ever want to see me again.’