When the half-breed finally opened the door, Barnard grabbed her by the throat and walked her backward into the room. He kicked the door shut behind him as he pushed her into a kneeling position on the floor. In the same motion he produced the. 38 from its holster and shoved it into her mouth, grabbing a fistful of her kinky hair with his left hand. By tilting the gun barrel, he forced her to look up into his eyes.
“Okay. Listen to me and listen careful. When I take this gun out your mouth, I’m gonna ask you a question. And you not gonna lie. Understood?”
She nodded, choking on the gun. He slid the barrel from her mouth and she coughed.
“Who was that fucker who was here now?”
She shook her head. “There was nobody here.”
He took his arm back and hit her with the barrel. The sight dug deep into her cheekbone, and blood sprang, a red ribbon against her sallow face. She moaned and brought a hand to her cheek, trying to stem the blood that flowed between her fingers.
“There was one light on in the building when he came out. Yours. I’m only gonna ask you one more time. Who was he?”
“My dealer.”
“Did he see the kid?”
She was about to lie. He knew it and took his gun hand back, ready to hit her again. He saw the truth come into her eyes. “Ja. He seen him.”
“What did you tell him?”
“That it’s my friend’s kid.”
“A white kid?”
“I tole him that the daddy was a sailor.”
“He buy that?”
“Ja. I think so.”
“Anybody else see him?”
She shook her head. He believed her. He lowered the gun. “Where’s the kid?”
“In the bathroom.”
He banged past the old alkie, who snored on the sofa, dead to the world, and opened the bathroom door. The kid lay next to the filthy shit pot, so still he looked dead. Barnard lowered himself down and prodded a sausagelike finger into the kid’s neck. He could feel a pulse. The kid didn’t stir.
Barnard went back through to the other room and found the half-breed at the kitchen sink, holding a wet cloth against her face. The cloth was already turning pink.
“You give him something to make him sleep?”
She nodded. “Half a Mogadon.”
“And what if you’d fucken killed him?”
She stared at him, the blood seeping through the cloth. “You gonna kill him anyways, aren’t you?”
“What makes you say that?”
She shrugged. Blood dripped through the ook/p›
Then he came at her. She shrunk back against the sink, but he surprised her by putting his thumb against the cloth where the cut was, applying pressure. He held it there for nearly a minute, staring at her, his rotten breath rolling over her like the fumes from a septic tank.
“I’m gonna stay here tonight.”
“You can’t sleep with me!”
“You’d be so fucken lucky.” He laughed and released the grip on her face. The pressure had slowed the flow of blood.
Barnard turned and walked over to a threadbare chair, dragged it so that its back was to the wall and it faced the front door. He sat, his fat overflowing the arms of the chair, and unzipped the kit bag. He unwrapped the towel and rested the Mossberg 500 on his lap.
He looked at the door, not at her, when he spoke. “I won’t be sleeping. I’ll be sitting here waiting for somebody to come through that fucken door.”
The helicopters woke Burn again. This time he knew exactly where he was. And where he was made Desert Storm look easy. There had been rules of a sort in that war, if you were an American, that is. You took orders, you moved forward, and you killed people. At night you pissed into your ration pack to get the heater going and ate a turkey dinner while the smoke from the blazing oil fields wrapped you like a blanket.
But now, in Cape Town, the rule book had been lost. Or maybe never written.
Burn looked at his watch, just gone six a.m. His head was thick from the Scotch that had sent him to sleep. Reaching for his phone, he thumbed Mrs. Dollie’s number. He heard her voice, self-conscious, uncomfortable with technology, saying that he should leave a message. He killed the call, fighting his guilt at her death. And the terror that the kidnapper had already killed Matt.
Mrs. Dollie’s daughter, Leila, had called him again the night before. Her voice had been thick with grief, but she was composed and polite. She accepted his condolences gracefully, then asked him to come to the funeral. Mrs. Dollie was Muslim, and according to Muslim rites she had to be buried as soon as possible. The police had completed an autopsy and released the body to the family for burial. Burn had heard himself saying that of course he would be there.
That was today, later in the afternoon.
He dragged himself from the bed and into the shower, alternating hot and cold to smash himself into some form of alertness. He shaved and combed his hair, dressed in the casually expensive clothes appropriate to the morning’s banking.
He looked at his face in the mirror and remembered that he was going to be a father again that day.
Barnard woke to the sound of somebody at the door. Fuck it, he hadn’t meant to sleep. He battled his way out of the chair, leveling the shotgun, then realized that he’d heard voices of men in the corridor, early morning workers on their way to the taxi stand. It was light already. He’d meant to get away in the dark.
He looked across at the old drk, who lay on his back, his mouth gaping, dentures slipped off his gums. The blanket had fallen from the sofa and showed his emaciated body, naked except for the filthy underpants. Barnard saw that the old alky had a hard-on, bulging out the front of his briefs like a tent pole. At his fucken age.
Barnard lifted the blanket with his foot and dumped it over the old man’s balls; then he walked across to the window. The glass was cracked and taped up. Barnard eased back the greasy lace curtain and peered down into the street. His Ford was there, and so was the Honda. From where he stood he couldn’t see the blood of the fucker whose brains he’d pulped, but he knew that sooner or later it would be noticed. He had to get out of there.
He bent over the sink and splashed his face, resting the Mossberg 500 on a pile of dirty plates. He wiped his face with his hand, not trusting one of the soiled dish towels. Grabbing the shotgun, he lumbered into the bedroom.
The half-breed bitch was asleep, covered by a gray sheet. He could see her naked shoulders, the swell of a breast, the kinky hair squashed against the pillow. He stood over her, looking down at her face. Her left cheek was swollen, the gash from the gun barrel crusted with blood. A vivid purple bruise was already spreading across the cheek toward her eye. Cape Flats mascara, he’d heard a colored cop call it one night during a domestic disturbance call.
These fucken people, they made a joke of everything in that lingo they spoke, a complex sublanguage of Afrikaans, prison slang, and street talk. Barnard understood it, after all the years out on the Flats. Though he would never bring himself to admit it, he felt more at home among these brown people he loathed than the white world he was supposedly part of.
The half-breed turned in her sleep, the sheet falling away, and he could see her tits. Aside from the stretch marks, they weren’t bad. Ja, you knew it was time to leave Cape Town when you started finding a tik whore attractive. He brought the shotgun up from his side and placed the barrel against the side of her head. She didn’t move, soft snores escaping her gummed-up lips. Maybe he should finish her now, one less witness, one less drug-fucked mouth to worry about. Finish the kid too, and the old rubbish on the sofa, and get the ransom and drive away from this long-drop of a city.
His fat finger tightened on the trigger. Then it relaxed. No, maybe it was too soon. He might need her and the kid. He could clean up this mess later.
He left the bedroom and walked into the bathroom. The boy was still asleep, curled up on the blanket, lying in the fetal position, sucking on his thumb. Barnard lowered himself onto the pot, lid down, and sat looking at the kid. He couldn’t stand children. Maybe because he knew only too well what they grew up to become. Just another fucker who wanted to take away from you what was yours.
Barnard leaned forward and prodded the little brat with the shotgun barrel. No response. He prodded him again, harder, and the kid opened his eyes and looked at him. And his blue eyes widened in terror.