When the Sniper Security truck pulled up at the site, the builders were leaving, talking loudly in Xhosa, laughing as they walked down the road to the taxis. Benny Mongrel jumped down from the truck and helped Bessie to the ground. The truck drove off, and Bessie squatted against a pile of builder’s sand, her back legs unsteady as she pissed. Benny Mongrel looked away, giving her the time to do her business.
He had arrived at Sniper Security an hour earlier than his usual reporting time of 5:00 p.m. He had looked around for Ishmael Isaacs, the shift foreman, ready to report for inspection. Before getting the taxi to town, Benny Mongrel had stood in the tin bath in his shack and scrubbed his body with Sunlight soap. Then he had been forced to ask the fat bitch in the next-door shack if he could use her iron. Even though she nearly shit herself when she saw his face, she was greedy enough to demand money. Back in the day he would have smacked her and walked with the iron. But he paid up, pressed his uniform, and took the iron back to her. She had grabbed it and slammed the door in his face without a word.
Anyway, there he was smelling of soap, with creases like knife edges in his uniform.
But another guard had told Benny Mongrel that Isacs had already gone for the day. He wouldn’t be back. Fucken asshole.
While Bessie pissed, Benny Mongrel took in the view from high up on the slope. All was still. Honey-colored sunlight washed Table Mountain, Lion’s Head, and Signal Hill. Toylike yachts caught the breeze on the placid ocean far below.
He saw the red BMW still straddling the yellow line. A pink parking ticket was glued to the driver’s window, flapping in the soft breeze.
Bessie appeared at Benny Mongrel’s side and licked his hand. He took hold of her chain, and the two of them headed into the unfinished house.
Burn felt like he had been sucker punched. He was relieved that Matt, tired out after the time on the beach, was asleep in his car seat as they drove home.
Burn knew that Susan was serious. He also knew that she was right. That didn’t stop him from feeling as if his entire universe had fragmented and been sucked into a black hole. Being without his wife and son was something he couldn’t process. Not being there to father his daughter was too painful to imagine.
He knew he had brought this upon himself.
As he drove over the Neck and down toward Sea Point, the panorama of mountain and ocean was invisible to him. What he was seeing was the ease with which he had been set up back in the States, and how willingly he had slipped his head into the trap and let it spring shut.
After Tommy Ryan left, Burn had become a regular down at Gardena, sitting at poker tables with strangers who were prepared to wager more than most of them could afford. Burn hadn’t let sympathy get in the way of him taking their money. Money that helped him grow his business and make things more comfortable for Susan and Matt.
And Burn couldn’t deny it: he’d enjoyed the rush gambling gave him.
So he started betting on sports. A guy he met at the poker table put him onto a bookie named Pepe Vargas, who drove an old Eldorado and wore pinkie rings. Vargas amused Burn with his cheesy suits and easy humor. He was a character, and somehow having him around made Burn feel that he was leading a more interesting life. Vargas seemed to like Burn and extended him credit. He never acted bothered if Burn was late in paying.
Then the slide began. Horses stumbled on the homestretch, quarterbacks fired bum passes, and hockey pucks followed paths that defied any reasonable logic. Suddenly Burn owed Pepe Vargas nearly twenty grand, and Vargas started calling the house, looking for his money.
These calls, and Burn’s absences, made Susan suspicious. After a particularly heavy confrontation when she accused him of being unfaithful, he told her about the gambling. She was shocked and angry. Was he going to do what her father did: fade away from his family, leaving a trail of bad debt, lies, and heartache?
Burn swore to her that he’d stop. He’d pay Vargas off, and that would be that.
He kept his word until his biggest contract went south.
Burn had installed a security system in a new mall out on the fringes of the Valley. It was state-of-the-art stuff-security cameras, motion-triggered as, smoke detectors-all wired into an operations room that looked like something out of mission control at Houston. He had to hire more staff and front for expensive gear to deliver on the contract. The developers of the mall had given him only a first payment, a quarter of the billable total-long spent-when they ran out of money. The mall, agonizingly close to completion, was mothballed while bloody legal battles were fought.
Burn’s name was just one on a long list of contractors looking at getting ten cents on the dollar at best.
Meanwhile Burn’s employees needed to be paid, and his suppliers were screaming for money. Money he didn’t have. He was in danger of losing the house, mortgaged to cash-flow his business.
Which was when he did the thing that totally fucked up his life.
And the lives of his family.
Burn called Pepe Vargas and asked him to take a phone bet, eighty large on a tough middleweight out of Jersey City named Leroy Coombs, an ex-champion who was making a comeback against a no-hoper as part of the undercard of a Vegas title fight.
He heard the bookie go quiet on the other end of the line, probably thinking about the money Burn still owed him. But Vargas took the bet.
Burn was running a crazy risk, betting money he didn’t have. But it was a sure thing. The opponent was a glorified sparring partner; there was no way Coombs could lose.
Burn sat at home and watched the fight on HBO. It went according to plan for ten of the scheduled twelve rounds. Coombs toyed with his opponent, and though he couldn’t knock him out, he left him looking like hamburger by the end of the tenth. Burn was starting to feel good, convinced his recent run of bad luck was over.
Then in the eleventh Coombs got complacent, started clowning, and took a blow that should never have landed. A looping right that caught him on the chin and sent him to the canvas. He didn’t get up before the ref waved his arms over his prone body.
The fight was over.
Burn watched, stunned, as Coombs was helped to his stool, his legs like cooked spaghetti. He knew that if he tried to stand, he’d feel the same.
His cell phone rang. It was Vargas, wanting to know when he was coming down to Gardena to make good the damage. Burn muttered a promise and killed the call.
After this loss, with the unpaid bets still on his tab, Burn owed Pepe Vargas nearly a hundred thousand dollars. An amount of money that he had absolutely no way of getting his hands on.
The bookie called again the next day, and his easy manner was gone. He told Burn to meet him down in the casino parking lot that afternoon.
Vargas cruised up next to Burn in his Eldorado and asked him to step into his office. A man sat beside Vargas, a man Burn had never seen before. Burn slid into the backseat and Pepe pulled away. Vargas stopped the Cadillac near a diner, and with a brief, almost apologetic glance in the rearview mirror, he left the car.
The man in the front seat turned to Burn. He was quiet, self-contained, carrying with him an air of understated menace. “You can call me Nolan.”
“Why would I call you anything?” Burn was reaching for the door handle.
“Don’t get out, Jack.” The way the man used his name grated on Burn’s nerves.
“Why not?”
“Because you don’t want me coming to your house. Believe me.”
Burn stared at Nolan. “What do you want?”
“I’m going to do you a favor. The hundred grand you owe Pepe is going to go away.”
“How?”
“You’re going to do a job for me.”
“I don’t think so.” Burn opened the car door.
“If you leave this car, please understand that I will kill your wife and your son.”
Burn stared at him, half out of the car. “What did you just say?”
“You heard me. Now close the door and listen very carefully.”
Burn had closed the door. And it had begun. It had ended with a cop lying dead in the snow in Milwaukee and Burn and his family on the run.
Burn had got them to Cape Town and found them the house on the slopes of Signal Hill. They had more money than they would ever need. All they needed was a life. They were busy inventing one for themselves, day by day, when the brown men with the guns came in off the patio and sent it all to hell.
And now Susan was going to leave him.
As he slowed outside the house, Burn activated the garage door remote. He was nosing the Jeep inside when he noticed a police car parked behind the red BMW. A uniformed cop walked around the vehicle, speaking into his radio.
Burn drove into the garage, and the door dropped like a slow guillotine.
It was still light when Rudi Barnard pulled up behind the red BMW. There was no sign of the cop who found the car. Probably getting pissed in some Sea Point whorehouse. Suited Barnard fine.
Barnard sat in his car a moment, surveying the scene. This wasn’t his turf, this wealthy suburb clinging to the side of Signal Hill, with the sweeping view of Cape Town and the Waterfront below. And it sure as fuck wasn’t Ricardo Fortune’s. No, something was wrong here.
That morning Barnard had woken with a nameless sense of foreboding. He couldn’t shake the feeling that trouble was coming his way. So, on bended knee, Barnard had asked his God for reassurance. For protection. For a sign.
And like Moses, God had sent Rudi Barnard up the mountain.
Barnard heaved himself out of the car and crossed to the BMW. He peered inside, saw nothing out of the ordinary. He tried the doors. Locked. Then he lumbered around to the trunk and tried that. Also locked.
He lit a cigarette, checking out the surroundings, taking in the luxurious homes hidden behind high walls and gates. The street was quiet. Not even a pedestrian in sight. Not akehe Flats, which teemed with people hanging out on street corners, gangsters doing deals, kids playing soccer in the streets, neighbors hurling abuse at one another. Not here, in this sanctuary of privilege.
Barnard went back to his car and got a crowbar; then he attacked the trunk of the BMW. Under the Michelin man suit of fat was a lot of power, and within seconds he’d sprung the lid. No bodies inside. Nothing but a couple of empty beer bottles and a pile of rags.
He smashed the side window of the car, reached in a meaty arm, and unlocked the door. Wheezing, red in the face, he leaned into the car and checked behind the seats and in the glove box. Aside from a used condom, a couple of nipped joints, and a half-empty bottle of vodka, he found nothing of interest.
As he heaved himself upright and leaned against the car to get his breath back, he glimpsed a half-breed with a dog up on the building site, looking down at him.
When Benny Mongrel saw the fat man looking up at him, instinct told him to duck back out of sight. Even though the man was in an unmarked car and wore civilian clothes, Benny Mongrel knew instantly he was a cop. Just like he had known the other men were gangsters. That radar came standard when you lived the life he had.
“Hey!” He heard the cop shouting down in the street. He ignored him. Bessie growled a low growl. He quietened her with a pat. “Hey, up there, I’m fucken talking to you!”
Benny Mongrel knew it would be better to show himself. He stepped forward. The fat cop was standing with his hands on his hips, looking up.
“Come down here. I want to talk to you.”
Benny stared at the cop, saying nothing. The cop was getting impatient. “What, haven’t you got fucken ears? I said get your fucken ass down here. Now.”
Benny Mongrel let go of Bessie’s chain, took the knife from his pocket, and slid it under a cement bag. Better not to have it on him in case the boer searched him. Gut instinct told him not to take the old dog down there with him.
“Stay, Bessie,” he told her softly. She whined as he disappeared down the stairs but did as he ordered.
Benny Mongrel stepped out of the unfinished house and approached the fat cop. It was instinctive for him to hunch slightly as he walked, like a tire deflating, and he fixed a submissive look on his face. He deliberately didn’t look the cop in the eye.
“Evening, boss.”
“This car, when did you first see it?” The cop pointed to the red BMW.
“This morning, my boss.”
“Never saw these guys arrive?”
“No, my boss.”
“You fucken lying to me?”
“No, my boss.”
The fat cop was scanning Benny Mongrel professionally, taking in the scarred face and the tattoos. “When did you get out?”
“Pollsmoor?”
“Yes, my boss.”
“You a fucken 28?”
“No more, my boss.”
“Don’t bullshit me.”
“I’m clean, my boss.”
“My ass is clean. You see anything last night? This car?”
“No, my boss.”
“You fucken lying to me?”
“No, my boss.”
The cop hit him with an open hand, right across the face. It was like being struck by a speeding taxi. Benny Mongrel had to put a hand to the wall of the house to stop himself from falling.
The cop raised his hand again. “You better not fucken lie!”
It was then that Bessie, normally the most pathetically docile of creatures, dragged herself from the house. She threw herself at the fat cop, baring her teeth at him, growling.
The cop was wearing heavy boots, and he took his massive leg back and kicked her in the ribs. Benny Mongrel could hear the air explode from her lungs as she spun in the air, her teeth clacking as she hit the ground. Bessie lay there panting. The cop had a pistol in his hand, pointed straight at Bessie, his trigger finger tightening. Bessie lifted her head and showed him her teeth.
Benny Mongrel grabbed her chain, dragging her away from the fat cop. “Please, my boss, no. Please.”
The cop was panting like a midnight donkey, still pointing the gun at Bessie. He looked up at Benny Mongrel. “Now tell me the fucken truth. You see the guys who came in that car?”
“No, my boss. I was sleeping.”
The cop stared at Benny Mongrel for what felt like forever before he lowered the gun and holstered it. “Fucken useless piece of shit.”
Suddenly, he seemed to have grown bored with the interrogation. He threw Benny Mongrel a last contemptuous look and then turned toward the street.
Benny Mongrel knelt down beside Bessie. She was gasping for air, trying to get up, her claws scratching at the cement, her crippled hips sagging under her weight.
He stroked her and crooned softly. “Easy, Bessie. Easy, old thing. Easy now.”
Burn took a beer from the fridge. Mrs. Dollie, the middle-aged domestic worker, was chatting in the kitchen with Matt. Mrs. Dollie had come with the house. At first Burn had wanted to get rid of her, not wanting a stranger in their lives. But Susan had felt sorry for the woman, and they decided to keep her on.
She was short and skinny with olive skin and gray hair that escaped in tendrils from beneath her Muslim headscarf. She looked frail but was not. Burn had seen her effortlessly moving furniture as she vacuumed. She spoke rapid-fire English with the local accent that had Jack and Susan esiually asking her to repeat herself. Which she did, with a great show of patience, as if, shame, it wasn’t these foreigners’ fault they were so slow, was it?
Matt loved her and seemed to have no problem understanding her. He watched as she dusted the leaves of the potted plants in the kitchen.
“Now look it here, Matty, when youse is by the house and I’m not here, you must look nicely after the plants, okay?”
Matt nodded, earnestly. “I’ll water them.”
“Ja. Nicely. No matter what they say about water restrictions. A plant must get its water.”
Mrs. Dollie grabbed a bucket and a mop and headed to the tiled dining room, Matt trailing after her. Burn watched as she attacked the tiles energetically, her thin arms pumping as she mopped the area where the bodies had lain. He felt a moment of panic. Had he cleaned the blood properly? Had some of it caked in the grout between the tiles? But Mrs. Dollie noticed nothing. She never stopped chatting to the boy as she mopped, and he heard Matt laugh.
Burn walked away from the conversation, out onto the deck, sipping the beer. His son seemed okay, but how could he be? His world had been upended; he had been dragged across the planet and had witnessed something last night that he wouldn’t be allowed to watch on TV.
Burn stood drinking his beer, watching the sun sagging down toward the ocean. Unbelievably, it was less than twenty-four hours ago that those men had come.
The door buzzer sounded, startling Burn. He hesitated, instinctively wanting to ignore it. Then it sounded again. Whoever was down there kept his finger on the buzzer.
Burn walked across to the wall-mounted intercom monitor. On the screen he saw a huge man crowded into the street door recess. Burn picked up the phone.
“Yes, can I help you?”
The man held up an ID to the camera. “Police. Can I talk to you, please?” He had a guttural accent, hard to follow through the intercom.
Burn hesitated. “Okay. I’ll be right down.”
Burn felt sick in his gut.
He walked across to Mrs. Dollie and Matt. He ruffled his son’s hair. “I have to talk to somebody outside. You stay here, with Mrs. Dollie, okay?” Matt nodded.
Burn locked the front door to make sure that Matt couldn’t follow him and walked down the pathway.
Was this it? Was this where the whole thing ended?
He opened the street door.