Mixed Blood (21 page)

“Mr. Burn?” The man knew his real name. The voice on the other end, heavy with a guttural local accent, was distorted. As if the caller was talking on speakerphone and had muffled his voice to disguise it.

“Who is this?”

“Never mind. I’ve got your kid.”

“Where is he?”

“The boy is okay. And he will stay that way if you do exactly what I say. Understand?”

“Yes. What you want?”

“I want a million. Cash. By the end of tomorrow.”

“I don’t have that kind of cash lying around.”

“Listen, Burn, fuck with me, and I start cutting off his fingers and stuffing them in your postbox. You get me?”

“I understand. Please, I’ll do as you say. Don’t hurt my son. I need to transfer money, from offshore. I’m going to need more time.”

“How much time?”

“Until the day after tomorrow.”

All Burn heard was the wheezing of breath. Then the man spoke. “Okay, but no longer than that. Understood?”

“Yes.”

“Now, I know who you are. I know the U.S. Marshals want your ass. So you’re not going to do something fucken stupid now, are you? Like go to the cops?”

“No. I won’t do that.”

“Okay. Because if you do, I’ll kill your brat.”

“I give you my word.”

“Can I at least speak to my son?”

“Not now. Just get the money.”

And the man was gone. At least it was about money. Greed Burn could comprehend; it meant there was still a chance that he was going to get his son back alive.

Something about the voice reminded him of the fat cop. Barnard. It made sense, the man prowling around, showing them photographs. Maybe even lifting Susan’s fingerprint. Barnard was foul enough. But Burn couldn’t be sure. Still, he felt the urge to do something, to take action. Try to track the fat cop down. Find out if he had taken his son.

He calmed himself. Making those kind of moves would be the quickest way to get Matt killed. Tough as it was, he had to wait. Take it step by step.

Burn crossed the living room, trying not to look at Mrs. Dollie where she lay under a blanket. He went into the spare room, booted up his laptop, and accessed his anonymous Swiss bank account.

The kidnapper wanted one million in South African currency. That was about one hundred and fifty thousand U.S. dollars. Not a lot of money, but double what he had lying in the safe in the bedroom. He completed the transactions, transferring money into two different Cape Town banks. He would attract less attention that way. He logged off and stood up. He needed to do something about Mrs. Dollie.

For the second time that week, Burn had to get rid of the dead.

C
HAPTER
19

Disaster Zondi battled his frustration. He prowled the cramped office at Bellwood South HQ, the strip lights buzzing like angry insects. The building was deserted, way after midnight.

The fat man, the very reason for him being in this bloody painted tart of a city, had disappeared. Rudi Barnard, previously so visible, so present with his fat and his stench, so much part of the corner of the Cape Flats he’d made his own, was nowhere to be seen. He never went back to his apartment. He made no contact with those of his informers who could be relied upon to cooperate with the police. Even the woman who supplied him with his junk food had noted with relief that she hadn’t seen him.

Gone.

Zondi, via Peterson whom he used like a glove puppet, had mobilized as much manpower as possible to scour the Flats for the rogue cop. They had come up empty.

Meanwhile Zondi’d had to distract himself by interviewing the other two bent cops on his list. They were nothing, small-time nobodies who had their hands in a few pockets. Run-of the-mill. Boring.

His prey was Barnard. And his prey had slipped off the radar.

He knew he had to be patient. Barnard was too used to writing his own rules; he would screw up, and then they would have him.

Zondi stood at the window staring out at the lights of distant Cape Town. He fought an urge to go out into the night and prowl for sex; the more alienated the encounter, the better. Zondi had never married and had no companion. He had become slful at fending off the sexual advances of the female hunter-gatherers of affluent black Johannesburg. So skillful, in fact, that many thought he was gay.

He wasn’t, but he did nothing to contradict the rumor.

Zondi had no use for the comedy of manners that a relationship, or even an affair, would demand. The mating dance, the shared intimacies, the endless conversations about careers and status and, God forbid, where the relationship was going. The idea of waking up with a woman in his bed, her body slack from sleep and sex, her expensive perfume mixing with other more pungent smells, frankly revolted him.

Zondi was a hit-and-run man. When he couldn’t suppress the urge any longer, when it became too insistent, he went on the hunt. A pickup in a bar, or even a street corner—he had no qualms about paying, liked it in fact—a quick and brutal coupling in the back of his car or an anonymous hotel room and then out of there. Back to his place for a shower, a thimbleful of Glenmorangie, and, with the smoky tang of the barley and the peat fire still on his palate, a peaceful sleep alone in his bed, his appetites satiated. For the moment.

But he had made a pact within himself before he left Johannesburg. No sex, no distractions, until his work in Cape Town was done.

He had to be disciplined.

His cell phone rang. It was the computer technician at the police lab. The man, an Afrikaner barely out of school, surprised Zondi with his efficiency. “Uh, Mr. Zondi, I’ve traced that IP address, via an ISP in the States.”

“In English, please.”

“Okay. I tracked back the Yahoo address to a person in the USA.”

“Yes. And?”

“He is a deputy U.S. marshal in …” The technician paused; Zondi could hear fingers tapping a keyboard. “In Arlington, Virginia.”

Now Zondi was interested. “How do you know that?”

“The IP address is registered to the U.S. Marshals’ headquarters.”

Zondi reached for his notepad. “You have the name of this marshal?”

“Torrance. Dexter Torrance.” The technician spelled it for Zondi.

Zondi thanked the technician and killed the call. All thoughts of his howling libido were gone as he sat down in front of Barnard’s laptop. It was in sleep mode, and he drew a fingertip across the touchpad, wiping his finger on his silk handkerchief in unconscious fear of contamination.

The image of the fingerprint faded up onto the screen. Why had Barnard sent it to a deputy U.S. marshal in the States? And who the hell did it belong to? The first question might take some time to answer. The answer to the second question was within his grasp.

His own slimline laptop chimed the arrival of an e-mail. It was from his commanding officer, Archibald Mathebula. His boss had called in a favor and acquired an encrypted password for Zondi, a password that allowed him to access the FBI fingerprint database.

Burn slowed the Jeep and eased it into a parking spot between streetlights. He switched off the interior light of the car before he opened the door. He stood a moment in the quiet street of houses much like the one he rented, watching and listening. It was after 2:00 a.m., and the world was asleep. Aside from a dog barking in the distance and a car whining up an incline blocks away, all was quiet.

Burn walked around the Jeep and came to a steep flight of steps that connected the road he was on to the one below. They were a feature of this suburb built on the precipitous slope. The steps were used by joggers and dog walkers and domestic workers taking a short cut down to High Level Road and the minibus taxis. They were also used by homeless people as a place to sleep. Burn walked halfway down the steps. He saw no dispossessed bundle of humanity.

He went back to the car, looked around once more to make sure he was alone and unobserved before he opened the rear door of the Jeep. Mrs. Dollie lay in the same spot he had stowed the last two corpses. She was wrapped in a blanket. He bent down and lifted her. She was small and thin, easy to carry.

Burn hurried down the stairs. He lowered her gently to the concrete steps and unwrapped her from the blanket. Enough streetlight reached him to see the look of terror on her face. For a moment he felt he couldn’t do this, leave this decent woman who had treated his son so tenderly lying like refuse dumped on the steps. Then Burn took the blanket and went back to his car. He checked once more that he hadn’t been observed and drove away.

He knew that when the body was found on the stairs in the morning, it would be called a mugging. When the police came, he would add substance to that fiction, tell them that she had left his house at around seven, refusing his offer of a ride, saying that she enjoyed the walk down to the taxi. That it did her good, the bit of exercise. It would be easy enough to reproduce the dialogue that had passed between them many times before.

As he pulled the car into his garage, Burn felt sick. Because of him Mrs. Dollie had unwittingly been drawn into something that had taken her life. He had met her husband, a timid and self-effacing man who could not be persuaded to call him anything other than
Mr. Jack
. He’d also met her daughter, Leila, a young woman in her twenties who was pursuing a career in business, the product of her parents’ years of selfless dedication.

Burn knew he couldn’t afford the luxury of guilt. He had to keep one thing, and one thing alone, on his mind.

Matt.

Carmen Fortune woke in the morning with the tik craving chewing at her nerve ends. Fuck, she had to score. Then she remembered the white kid, her little present from God. She sat up, the greasy sheet falling from her naked breasts. Where was he?

The night before, she had put him in the bed next to her and locked the bedroom door from the inside. He hadn’t woken when she had released his hands and feet. He probably had a concussion. She had made a token effort of cleaning the blood from his blond hair. The hair was so fine and soft under her fingers, not like her Sheldon’s, which had grown out hard and wiry, like steel wool.

She saw the boy sitting on the dirty linoleum in his pj’s, staring vacantly into space, sucking on his thumb. He didn’t look at her when he got out of bed and crossed to the closet, pulling a T-shirt over her nakedness.

She crouched in front of him. “Hey,” she said.

He didn’t react. She saw that he was sitting in a pool of piss. Jesus, was it her curse to be surrounded by men who couldn’t control their fucken waterworks?

She shook him by the shoulder. “Hey, little guy.”

Slowly, his eyes tracked up to her face. Carmen, even in her state of low-grade tik withdrawal, could see they were beautiful eyes. Blue, with something almost like purple in them. Like her week-old bruises from Rikki.

“How’s your head?” She reached out and parted his hair to see if the cut was healing. The boy flinched and pulled away.

He took the thumb from his mouth and spoke for the first time. “I want my mommy.”

The accent was American, like one of those smart-ass kids on the sitcoms. It made Carmen want to laugh. Was this for real? “You’ll see your mommy later, okay?”

The kid was starting to cry, the mouth quivering and those beautiful eyes tearing up. Jesus, she wouldn’t be able to deal with a bawling brat right now.

She stood and held out her hand. “Come, let’s go get you some food.” The kid just looked at her. “You wanna watch the TV?” No reaction.

She grabbed hold of his hand and hauled him to his feet. He wobbled a little, then found his balance, pulling his hand away. “What’s you name anyways?”

“Matt.”

“Okay, Matt. You can call me …” She stopped. She couldn’t very well tell the kid her real name, could she? “Call me Jenny.” Like J. Lo’s “Jenny from the Block.” Still one of Carmen’s favorite songs.

“Are you Leila’s friend?” He was looking up at her, desperate to make some sense of what was happening to him.

Who the fuck was Leila? Some Muslim chickie who looked after him, maybe. “Ja, sure. Me and Leila is tight. She tole me to look after you, okay?”

He nodded. When she held out her hand, he took it this time, and she unlocked the door and walked him through to the kitchen.

Uncle Fatty sat on the sofa, just woken up. His hands shook as he tried in vain to squeeze a drop of wine out of an empty foil bag. Then he saw the white kid, and his face looked like he was sure he was having hallucinations.

“You just shut up about this, okay?” she said, pointing at the boy. “I’m gonna go now and get you a wine.”

Uncle Fatty nodded, licked his dry and scummy lips. Carmen knew how he felt. She was going to take some of Gatsby’s money and go and score a globe. Then Uncle Fatty could get pissed, and she could get high, while the American kid watched cartoons.

Life on the Flats.

Burn found himself sitting in tt.#8217;s bedroom, on the bunk bed with the brightly colored duvet. A Dr. Seuss book lay on the carpet.
The Cat in the Hat
. Burn picked it up, leafed through it, each page imprinted on his memory from the endless nights he had read it to his son. He put the book down.

Was his son still alive?

Burn pushed these thoughts from his mind, went to the landline in the living room, and called the clinic. He finally managed to talk to the nursing sister from the night before—was it only the night before?—who told him Susan’s procedure had been postponed by a day. It would happen tomorrow; her doctor was delayed at a conference in Johannesburg. This suited Burn. The longer Susan stayed away from the house, the better.

His cell phone rang. He snatched at it. “Yes?”

A young woman spoke, vaguely familiar. “Mr. Hill?” Definitely not the kidnapper.

“Yes. Can I help you?”