in.
As he threaded the anonymous brown Ford through the traffic on Greenpoint Main Road, he checked out his passenger. The watchman sat absolutely still, staring straight ahead. Maybe that is what prison taught you, to live in the moment. To conserve your energy for when it was needed, and to go into sleep mode when you faced that endless succession of days. Burn knew that he might well be learning those lessons himself soon.
Somehow he no longer cared. He felt detached from himself, from his own ego and desires, for the first time in his life. He understood how shallow, how immature and superficial most of his urges had been. Now all he cared about, all his very being was focused on, was saving his son. If he could achieve that, he would step quietly into whatever uncertain future awaited him.
Burn changed back to second gear as he turned up Glengariff. The car struggled, and he felt the exhaust scrape under the weight of the massive man in the trunk. Burn had to pump the clutch and shift back to first to get the car moving up the hill.
The watchman was laughing, with no sound escaping his lips.
Maybe that was another trick you learned in prison.
Barnard battled for breath. The exhaust of the Ford leaked, and noxious fumes found their way into the trunk, making him feel as if he was being gassed. His leg throbbed, and he could feel the blood pooling under him. He’d underestimated the American, hadn’t thought he’d have the balls to pull the trigger.
Barnard cursed himself for his stupidity. He had been too sure of himself. He was accustomed to dealing with people out on the Cape Flats, who were shit scared to act against him. But he swore to himself that he would tell the American and the half-breed nothing. They had formed an unholy alliance, but they would not break him.
The car hit a bump, and his forehead and nose smashed up against the lid of the trunk. He felt blood flow from his nose, back into his throat. He couldn’t move his head, wedged in like a meat loaf in a mold. The blood, combined with the fumes, convinced him that this was it. He was about to die. The irony was that he was trapped in the trunk with the duffel bag of money, his passport to a new life, squeezed painfully up against his ribs.
He tried to slow his breathing, offered a prayer to God. For some reason God felt very far away.
The Ford was parked in Burn’s garage. The fat cop was still in the trunk. The steel door was down, and the room was very quiet, cut off from the world outside. Not even the shouts of the men tossing bricks on the building site penetrated the garage.
Benny Mongrel was very precise in his requests. He needed a kitchen chair strong enough to hold the fat cop’s weight, a length of nylon rope, a few rags, some newspaper, garbage bags, and duct tape.
And he needed his knife back.
Burn hesitated a moment, considering the request. Then he reached into his pocket and brought out the folded knife. He handed it to Benny Mongrel. The two men went upstairs and gathered the items Benny Mongrel had asked for. Then they went back down to the garage.
Burn watched as Benny Mongrel spread the newspaper. The garage was large enough to hold two cars, so there was plenty of space next to the Ford. Benny Mongrel was methodical, making sure that the edges of the newspaper overlapped. Then he ripped the black garbage bags apart and placed them over the newspaper. Only then did he set the chair in place.
He looked at Burn and nodded. Burn pointed the. 38 at the trunk. Benny Mongrel popped the lid. The fat cop was gasping, his face bright red, blood crusted around his nose and in his mustache. He hauled himself upright.
“Fuck youse,” he said and vomited down the front of his T-shirt. He wiped the back of his hand across his mouth.
“Get out.”
Burn waved the gun toward the chair. It took a couple of tries for the fat man to lever his weight out of the trunk. At last he managed it, like a side of beef coming out of a freezer truck, and stood wheezing, blood from the leg wound flowing into his shoe.
“Sit down,” said Burn.
Barnard shook his head. Benny Mongrel kicked him in the right kidney, hard enough to make the cop piss blood for a week. The fat cop made a sound like a pig fucking and stumbled, fighting not to fall to his knees. He staggered across to the chair and lowered himself with a series of whining grunts. The wooden chair protested but held his weight.
While Burn held the gun on the cop, Benny Mongrel tied the fat man to the chair, quickly and efficiently immobilizing his arms and legs. Then he shoved a rag into Barnard’s mouth and taped it in place. He opened his knife and cut away the cop’s jeans above his left knee. He pressed a cloth against the wound and taped it up. He didn’t want the fat boer to die of blood loss before he had a chance to work on him.
Benny Mongrel laid the knife on the trunk of the Ford. He took a length of white mutton cloth and tore it with his teeth until he had the length he needed. He very carefully wrapped the blade of the knife down from the haft, leaving only a few centimeters of the blade exposed.
In Pollsmoor Prison a new recruit to the gangs has to pass an initiation rite. He has to stab a warder. But the stabbing must never be fatal, only deep enough to injure. To ensure this, the gang “doctor,” the man who performs a similar function to a medic in a marine platoon, carefully prepares the knife by wrapping it in such a way that the length of the blade is set.
Benny Mongrel had never been a “doctor,” but he had stabbed warders and ordered countless terrified young men to do the same. He had supervised the preparation of the blade. His fingers knew precisely what they were doing.
Barnard watched him, his stench filling the room.
Satisfied, Benny Mongrel approached the fat cop. He showed him the knife.
“Where’s my son?” asked Burn, standing behind Benny Mongrel.
Barnard shook his head. Benny Mongrel inserted the knife into the flesh of the fat cop’s right thigh. It slid in like it was going into prison bully beef. The fat man screamed silently behind the gag.
And so it began.
Disaster Zondi drove the rental BMW up the slope of Signal Hill, the Cape Town map book open on the seat beside him. As he left Sea Point Main Road behind, he slid ever upward into a world of rarefied privilege, each block up the slope a leap into a higher tax bracket. A world of high walls, SUVs, and soccer moms with blonde bobs. A white world.
A phone call to Sea Point police station had resulted in a piece of interesting intelligence: there had been a shooting two nights before at the building site where the red BMW had been found. There might be no connection, but Zondi’s hunch was that it was too much of a coincidence.
He found himself at the corner of Mountain Road and brought the car to a stop at the building site. The view was spectacular. He could seankers lying off Robben Island, yachts catching the wind near Table Bay Harbor, the vista spreading to the Hottentots Holland Mountains in the distance. But Zondi wasn’t there for the view.
He shrugged on his jacket, despite the heat that enveloped him as he stepped out of the air-conditioned car. He adjusted his shades and headed toward two men building a wall. One of the men, black, stripped to the waist with the kind of body that no gym can give you, casually tossed bricks up to another man, who straddled the top of the wall, catching them expertly. All the while they were discussing soccer in Xhosa.
Zondi grew up speaking Zulu, a cousin language. That was how he greeted the men. They stared at him with suspicion, this well-dressed black man in his fancy car. He asked who was in charge, and one of them pointed into the site.
Zondi walked through a mess of cement, bricks, and builder’s sand. He was careful not to dirty his loafers. He came upon a young white man in shorts and work boots, shirtless, deeply tanned, with blond dreadlocks. A tool belt hung from his waist as he took the span of a doorway with a steel tape measure.
“Afternoon,” Zondi said as he approached.
“Hey, hi.” The guy gave him a smile. Zondi caught the pungent whiff of recently smoked weed. “You from the architects?”
“No. Special Investigator Zondi.” He showed his ID.
The young guy squinted, probably thinking of the nipped joint that was undoubtedly still in his pocket. “There some problem?”
“No. I hear there was a shooting here, the other night?”
