tonight, too. If she was lucky.
Faried and Rikki took the BMW to Sea Point after Faried put a couple of bucks in Rikki’s hand. They cruised up and down the hookers’ strip, slumped low in the car, bouncing to Tupac as they drove. There were a few brown girls working the street, all thick makeup and dresses that just about covered their plumbing, but no Bonita.
“I fucken had enough of this, man,” said Rikki. “Let’s go.”
“Okay, tell you what. Drive over to Bo-Kaap. My cousin Achmat is there. We can come back later, and maybe I catch Bonnie swallowing some whitey’s dick.”
Rikki was shaking his head. “I don’t want to go to Bo-Kaap, man. I rather go home.”
“We can smoke a globe. And then we come back later.”
“Achmat going to have a globe?”
“No, I got it by me.”
“Why the fuck you only tell me now?” Rikki was throwing the car into a U-turn, ignoring the minibus taxi that had to slam on its brakes.
Rikki shot up Glengariff Road, wanting to hang a left into High Level, the quickest way to Bo-Kaap. But his cell phone, a tiny Nokia he had recently stolen from a tourist at the Waterfront, blared out the opening bars of Tupac’s “Me Against the World.” Rikki fished it out of his cargo pants, saw who was calling, and sent it to voice mail. Fucken Gatsby. The fat cop wanted money. Money that Rikki didn’t have no more.
Distracted, he overshot the turn and ended up on the slopes of Signal Hill.
“You missed High Level,” said Faried.
“I know. I’ll cut through.”
Rikki was speeding the car down a narrow road, fancy houses hugging the slope. Then he hit the brakes and the car skidded to a stop.
“What the fuck?” asked beanpole Faried, his head banging the roof.
Rikki was reversing back up the road. “You got your gat?”
“Your mommy wearing a panty?” Faried patted the Colt shoved in his waistband. “Why?”
Rikki stopped the car and cut the music. “Let’s go into that house.” He pointed to a house with a deck built over the garage.
Faried was staring at him. “You fucken crazy, brother?”
“Quick, in and out. Those places is full of stuff. Maybe we have some fun, too.” Rikki smiled, showing his rotten teeth. “Let’s smoke that globe, and we do it.”
Faried thought for a moment; then he shrugged. “Why the fuck not?”
He took the stash of crystal meth and the unthreaded lightbulb from his jacket pocket. With practiced ease he fed the meth into the bulb and held it out. Rikki applied his lighter to the base, and within seconds Faried was sucking up a big chesty of meth. It made a tik-tik sound in the globe, the sound that gave meth its Cape Flats name. He held the tik smoke in his lungs and passed the globe to Rikki, who sucked at it. Rikki blew out a plume of smoke.
Nothing like Hitler’s drug to put you in a party mood.
The short man, the one with his hand under Susan’s dress, gyrated obscenely, moving his hips against her. His mouth gaped, and Burn could see the blackened front teeth. Susan opened her eyes and looked straight at Burn.
The guy behind Burn laughed. “We gonna have us some nice fun tonight.”
And that was when Matt came running back into the room. The eyes of the two men were drawn to the boy, who skidded to a stop, staring at them.
This gave Burn the moment he needed. As he twisted in his chair, he grabbed the carving knife from the table and buried it to its haft in the tall man’s chest. Blood geysered from his ruptured heart. Burn stood, grabbed him before he fell, and used his body as a shield. He felt the lanky man take the bullet fired by the short one. Then Burn shoved him away, launched himself, and grabbed the short guy by his gun arm. His weight took both of them to the floor. Burn twisted the man’s arm and heard it break. The gun clattered to the tiles.
Susan backed away. Burn kneed the short guy in the balls, and he curled like a worm into a fetal position. Burn looked over his shoulder. The tall one was dead, his spreading blood almost reaching Matt’s bare toes. His son was frozen, staring.
Burn reached back onto the table for a steak knife.
“Take Matt out of here,” he told Susan.
“Jack…”
“Take him out of here!”
Susan rushed across the tiles, grabbed the boy, and disappeared down the corridor toward the bedrooms.
Gripping the steak knife, Burn kneeled over the short man, who was staring up at him, wide-eyed. “Mister, we wasn’t gonna do nothing…”
Burn hesitated for only a moment; then he reached down and cut the short man’s throat.
CHAPTER 2
Carmen Fortune fed her four-year-old son, Sheldon. He lay in a small crib, his withered limbs jerking and his sightless eyes moving in their sockets. The food dribbled from his mouth.
He had been born three months premature, blind and deformed, with massive brain damage. Nobody knew how or why he’d survived. Except Carmen. She knew God had cursed her. Made sure that every time she looked at her son she remembered all the tik she had smoked while she carried him inside her. He was a constant reminder of the hell that waited for her one day.
If it wasn’t for the grant the state paid every month for Sheldon, she would put a pillow over his face and no one could blame her. But her useless bastard husband, Rikki, smoked away whatever money he scammed or stole.
What the fuck, she was already in hell. Could it, honest to God, get worse?
Carmen was twenty but looked thirty. Her faced was bruised and swollen from the latest beating. Rikki hit her because she wasn’t giving him a normal child, one that he could show off to his buddies to prove that he didn’t father only mutants. That’s what he called Sheldon: a fucken mutant.
The doctors told her that her womb was finished; she couldn’t have no more kids. She didn’t tell Rikki. He would have killed her. Better just to take the beatings.
When she heard the banging on the door, she knew there was only one fat white bastard who would hammer like that.
“Uncle Fatty!” She yelled across to where an ancient rail-thin man, wearing only a pair of dirty briefs, slumped in front of the TV. He drank from a bag of wine, his toothless mouth sucking at it like it was a tit. “Uncle Fatty, open the fucken door!” He mumbled something but stayed where he was.
The banging continued. Carmen drew her nightgown around her body, crossed to the door, and pulled open. Gatsby filled the doorway, fat and stinking.
“He’s not here,” said Carmen.
The white plainclothes cop pushed her aside and walked in. Without a word he crossed the small living room, stuck a head into the kitchen, and then went into the only bedroom. She heard the closet doors banging and the sound of breaking glass. Then he came back out, wheezing like a cheap concertina.
Carmen stood with her hands on her hips. “I tole you.”
“Where is he?” Gatsby came right up to her, and she could feel his foul breath on her face. He had food in his mustache.
“How the fuck must I know? He went out with Faried. In the car.”
“Where to?”
“I dunno.”
Gatsby had her against the wall. Jesus, he stank. “Talk to me.”
“They said something about Faried’s girl whoring in Sea Point.”
