Zoo City

rotten heart of leafy suburbia. The suburbs are overshadowed with oaks and jacarandas and elms. Biggest man- made forest in the world, or so we're told.

The grassy verges on the pavement are more manicured than a porn star's topiary, running up to ten- metre-high walls topped with electric fencing. Anything could happen behind those walls and you wouldn't know a thing. Maybe that's the point.

'Huron. Odi Huron? As in the bigshot music guy?'

'The producer, yes,' Marabou corrects me.

'As in Lily Nobomvu.'

'A tragic loss.'

'Bit of a Howard Hughes thing going on there.'

'He has a condition,' Marabou says, with an elegant half-shoulder shrug that her Stork imitates, like an avian Siamese twin on a one-second time delay.

We turn down a cul-de-sac, past an open plot, wildly overgrown and worth five million at least, and pull up outside a comparatively low brownstone wall overgrown with ivy, real ivy. The ironwork gate reveals rolling lawns leading up to a Sir Herbert Baker stone house, which must date back to the early 1900s, with a small rugged hill or koppie rising behind it. It sticks out in this neighbourhood like a hairy wart on the face of cool modernity.

'And a lost thing,' I press.

'Person,' Marabou corrects.

'And this person is…?'

'Oh, sweetie. Patience is a virtue. Virtue is a grace-'

Marabou chimes in, the old rhyme sounding weird in her East European lilt: 'Grace is a little girl who never ate her face.'

'Washed her face,' Maltese corrects automatically. They have the well-grooved antagonism of siblings or a long-time couple. Marabou ignores him, and he continues, 'He's a wonderful man, sweetie. You'll like him.'

'No little dogs then?' I say.

'Definitely no little dogs.' Maltese presses a remote and the ironwork gate creaks open to allow us entry to the sprawling property.

We drive round the side of the house to a newly built four-car garage squatting in ugly counterpoint to Sir Herbert Baker. One of the doors is open, revealing a wellmaintained Daimler in dark blue with wood panelling. Clearly Huron travels in style, which is funny, because the impression I had was that he didn't travel at all. A heavy in a chauffeur's hat is washing down the rims of the wheels. He stands up when he sees us approach and indicates to Maltese to park on the left. Then he takes the bucket and stalks away into the garage, slopping soapy water in his wake.

'Friendly guy.'

'Friendly isn't in his job description,' Marabou says. She opens the back door and slides out of the car, cradling the Stork's naked head against her chest to prevent it hitting the door-frame.

Maltese stays behind, drumming the edge of the steering wheel with his thumbs. 'You guys go ahead. I'm going to see if John can't give the Merc a bit of a spit and polish while he's got the bucket out.'

'His name is James,' Marabou says.

'Whatever. I'll catch up.'

'The entrance is this way.' Marabou leads me round the side of the garage and up the sweep of driveway to the house. Close up, the property is practically derelict. There are weeds with thorny leaves and dandelion heads nudging up between the paving stones, setting them off kilter. The rolling lawns flanking the driveway are dry and yellowing, patrolled by a lone ibis, poking around for bugs in the grass. The tennis court far down near the bottom of the garden has holes in its fence and cracks in the concrete. The net sags over the centre line like a beer boep on an ageing athlete. The scent of yesterday-today-andtomorrow hangs heavy in the air, the purple and white flowers in late bloom. Sloth mutters in the back of his throat. I know what he means. It feels abandoned.

I needle Marabou for the hell of it. Plus, I'm curious. 'So what does 'procurements' mean exactly? Corporate headhunting? Rare antiquities? Hostage negotiation?'

'It can mean anything you want – a lot like your line of work, Ms December.' The Stork makes a guttural croaking, throat sac jiggling.

'Oh, come on. What were your last three jobs?'

'Discretion is one of our guarantees. As it is yours, I hope?'

'Money makes all things possible,' I agree. 'So, you're not even going to give me a hint?'

'We are like an exclusive concierge service. We do what the job requires. For Mr Huron we have escorted musicians on tours and facilitated deals, most recently with a German distributor, where we accompanied the artist to Berlin.'

'Sounds more like A amp;R than 'procurements'.'

'Before this, we smuggled a shipment of seventeenthcentury crucifixes out of Spain in a container packed with ceramic tiles.'

'Really?'

'Maybe. Maybe I am lying to get you excited. How would you check?'

She presses her finger to the doorbell. The door is a dark heavy wood with a stained glass rosary window. Inside the house, a chime trills and echoes. A moment later, the door swings open, revealing a woman in a cardinalred pantsuit and a blonde bob. She seems delighted to see us, smiling like she's had a sunbeam shoved down her throat. 'Oh, wow, hey. You're super early. Odi's just finishing up something.'

'Carmen is one of Mr Huron's proteges,' Marabou says in answer to my raised eyebrow.

'Oh yaa, sorry,' Carmen says, giving me a flash of white teeth. 'Are you, like, media?'

'Not anymore.'

She loses interest instantly, although her sunbeam wavers only briefly. 'Well, come on in. If you want to head out to the patio, I'll bring you guys some tea.'

She turns and clatters away on a pair of shiny red platform heels, leading us through a house that seems too fusty for such a bright and cool young thing to be breezing through. Faded Persian carpets laid over wooden floors mute the clop of Carmen's shoes. The furniture is overbearing, heavy teaks and yellowwood railway sleepers. Sloth hugs me tighter, and I catch a snatch of a rank mineral smell, like week-old vase water.

We pass a dining room where the yellowwood table has places set for twelve under a huge chandelier that resembles a wedding cake turned upside-down. Lethargic dust motes swirl in sunlight that has managed to penetrate the choke of ivy and leaded glass. Someone has left a scattering of chocolate raisins to fossilise under the table.

'Did Mr Huron just move in?'

'Oh no, he's been here for ages and ages,' Carmen says. 'I know what you're thinking, though. Like, it's not very rock'n'roll.'

'You know, that is exactly what I was thinking.'

'I know, right? It weirded me out at first, when I came to audition? But it's part of Odi's philosophy? 'Cos it's actually about the music.'

'As opposed to?'

'The image. The glitz. The glamour. All that interference.'

The passage is lined with framed plaques and awards, gold records, platinum records, SAMA and MTV and Kora certificates, with names familiar even to a music heathen like me. JumpFish. Detective Wolf. Assegai. Keleketla. Moro. Zakes Tsukudu. Lily Nobomvu. iJusi. Noxx. The

dates read 1981, 1986, 1988, 1989, 1990, 1992, 1995,

1998. And then a jump to 2003, 2004, 2005. 2008. 'What's with the hiatus?' 'Mr Huron has other business interests,' Marabou says.

'And he was sick,' Carmen chips in. 'But don't worry, he's almost, like, totally over it now.'

We pass a study, set up with a video edit suite, surrounded by bookshelves lined with files and weird bric- a-brac. And then the passage ends abruptly in an authentically retro lounge with glass doors opening onto a bright patio overlooking the swimming pool. There is a hanging egg chair and a heavy silver coffee-table, only slightly