Of Cops & Robbers (5 page)

Ambulance sirens in the distance, getting closer.

There’s a man in the car, fallen sideways across the gear shift into the passenger seat.

The car’s a Mercedes-Benz S600. It’s rolled forward a few metres from the junction, come to rest against the kerb.

The man’s wearing a jacket with the collar skew, his tie is undone. There’s a bullet wound in his head. Another in his chest. There are blood sprays on the windscreen.

Traffic cones cordon off the scene. Cops stand around talking to tow-away vultures. Blue strobe lights flash on the man’s face.

‘Must be a rich bloke. With a car like that.’

‘Someone’s got an order on it.’

‘Someone’s gonna be pissed off it wasn’t delivered.’

A man walks out of the crowd of onlookers, four, five paces into the darkness, keys on his cellphone. He turns to face the people bunched around the Benz.

‘Chief,’ says the Voice, ‘talk to me. What’s happening? Tell me things. Things I want to hear. Ticks in all the boxes. Is it done?’

‘Yes,’ says Mart Velaze. Mart Velaze a smart guy in jeans, a black leather jacket. Good shoulders, slim waist. Carrying no fat, no stomach swell.

‘What’s the talk?’

‘From the cops a botched hijacking.’

‘Everyone’s happy with that?’

‘I would say so.’

‘Ah ha. Well done.’ The Voice repeating the refrain, ‘Ah ha, ah ha. No one saw you?’

‘No one.’

‘Of course not, my silly question.’

Mart Velaze has never met the woman he’s phoned. The
Voice. All instructions come telephonically. He pictures the Voice as a big woman. Big stomached. Braided hair. Moving like an elephant, a matriarch, in her creased suits. Power-dressed as a man would. All he knows is the Voice is deep inside security. That’s what he hears from colleagues. Not national intelligence, or military, or police, but something else, somewhere else. You get told to expect a call from her you pay attention. You do what she asks, you get a cash payment.

The Voice says, ‘Go home, chief.’

‘And Jacob Mkezi?’ says Mart Velaze.

‘You stay loyal to him, my brother. We’re getting to him, chief. Patience. The English virtue. Patience. His days are short. Mr Mkezi is an embarrassment.’ The Voice laughs. ‘Chief, you have done very well. We appreciate you, Bra Mart. Go with the ancestors.’

On the backline in a mellow sea, Fish Pescado and Daro Attilane sit their boards, noses towards the shore. Their feet in the water: Fish’s feet numb with the cold, Daro’s snug in booties.

Yesterday’s swell has gone down, the sets coming in at long intervals. There’s not much action. The next front is a day out with the promise that the scene’ll start cooking. Until then there’s this ripple. But a ripple is better than a flat sea.

The last two sets, Fish and Daro tried for waves, the little greenies sliding beneath them. They’re too far out, they need to move in. Only, they move in they lose some of the view.

Right now they’re enjoying the view: watching the sun rise. This shoo-whaa spectacle that shifts Muizenberg mountain through a colour spectrum: pink, orange, tawny.

Daro breaks their daydreaming. Checks his watch, says, ‘Got to go. Got an order last night on a Subaru. You ever heard of Cake Mullins?’

Fish splashes water. ‘Yeah, I’ve heard of him. Weird name.’

Daro laughs. ‘No kidding.’

‘He’s a card player,’ says Fish. ‘Vicki knows him. Played cards with him. Before.’

‘He might be. The way I know him he’s one of those agents, you know, arranges things for expensive people.’

‘A fixer?’

‘Sort of thing. But a sale’s a sale. These days a rare event.’

Tell me about it, thinks Fish, work being such a rare event he’d even spring to a divorce job. Even a muscle job. Or a murder. Lots of people wanting private investigators to take on murder hunts. But Fish’s not sure he wants those. He’s done three. Nailed the killer before the cops. But it wasn’t nice work.

‘Let’s go closer in,’ he says. ‘Jump on some of the little boogers.’

They lie down on their boards, paddle in to where there’s more chance of catching a ride. Reluctant to end the session, sitting again, waiting for the ripples. Fish gazing at his feet, his toes white, bloodless. The peaceful mood on him.

Daro says, ‘Can I ask a favour? Two favours?’

‘Sure,’ says Fish, wondering if this is yesterday’s ask that never happened.

‘This afternoon with this Subaru, if the guy takes it I’ll need a lift back.’

‘No problem,’ says Fish.

‘I’m buying your time,’ says Daro. ‘At your hourly rate.’

‘Ah, man, this’s a favour.’

‘No, I mean it. It’s a job.’

Fish picks at wax lumps on his board. ‘I could use the cash.’

‘There you go. I’ll call you when I’m heading out.’

‘And the other thing?’

‘The other thing … Oh, yes, the other thing. You mentioned once about someone you know, used to be a junkie.’

‘Uh huh.’ Fish keeping his eyes on the sea, watching for
ripples
. ‘Why’re you asking?’

‘You said she gives talks to schools.’

‘She does. Has this routine of taking off her peg leg, throwing it to the kids to look at. Very bizarre. Very effective when she tells them her leg was cut off because the needle sticks went gangrene.’

‘Interesting,’ says Daro.

‘You could say,’ says Fish, ‘why d’you ask?’

Daro shrugs. ‘Was wondering if she’d give her talk to Steffie’s class. You know, through the forum. Part of our programme.’

‘No problem,’ says Fish. ‘What about the Seven business?’

Daro holding up his hands. ‘We’re working on it.’

‘Offer’s still open,’ says Fish, getting prone, stroking to ride the first of a small set. He and Daro catching the ankle snapper, going in side-by-side, 1960s style.

Jacob Mkezi, in his Hummer in the traffic, says on his handsfree to Mart Velaze, ‘You know, comrade, this is pissing me off.’ Jacob Mkezi on his way to court for another day of the corruption showdown.

‘Mr Mkezi, did you accept as a gift a pair of crocodile-skin shoes?’

‘They were not a gift.’

‘You went into a shoe shop with the man who bought them, correct?’

‘Yes.’

‘You tried on the crocodile shoes?’

No response.

The judge: ‘Please answer, Mr Mkezi.’

‘Yes, I did.’

‘You liked them. You decided to buy them?’

‘I didn’t have my credit card.’

‘You liked them, the shoes?’

‘Yes.’

‘You asked the shop assistant to keep them for you?’

‘I can’t remember.’

‘Then your friend said he would buy them for you as a gift. And you accepted?’

‘I said I would refund him.’

‘Ah, you would refund him. And have you, Mr Mkezi, refunded him?’

‘Yes.’

‘You can prove this? An EFT transaction? A cheque?’

‘It was cash.’

‘I’m sure it was.’

Mr Mkezi’s advocate on his feet, the judge waves him down.

‘Cash. Almost three thousand rand in cash. That’s a lot of cash, Mr Mkezi. Did you make a special withdrawal for that cash?’

On and on about the crocodile shoes. The newspapers loving it: ‘Jacob’s sleazy shoes’; ‘Top cop gets expensive shoes as gift’; ‘Hood and cop on shopping spree’.

And now he’s known as the man in the crocodile shoes, which Jacob Mkezi likes. Jacob Mkezi, no longer the top cop. Now Jacob Mkezi, businessman, African Enterprises (Pty).

He’s wearing the offending shoes on his way to court while he talks to Mart Velaze.

‘Comrade,’ he says. ‘Comrade, you’re pissing me off, I don’t read the newspapers. I don’t need to know the news.’ Jacob Mkezi is speaking in English because that’s their common
language
. ‘We should not be talking.’

He hears Mart Velaze sigh. He catches this despite the traffic noise, the Hummer growl, he catches this shift of exasperation. ‘You know,’ he says, ‘you know, comrade, that this was
important
. You are the man I trust, comrade. Don’t let me down.’

‘Never, comrade,’ says Mart Velaze. ‘I am your man.’

‘I trust you, comrade. I do not need reports.’

‘No, comrade.’

Jacob Mkezi stares down at the commuters in the car
alongside
him: a man and a woman, husband and wife maybe, she’s doing her make-up, he’s on his cellphone, breaking the law. No one gives a toss for the law. Politicians, citizens, the high and mighty, the lowlife all doing their thing, no problem. Except he can’t be gifted a pair of shoes it doesn’t make headline news.

The man in the crocodile shoes.

Well, the man in the crocodile shoes is on it. The sorter. The saviour. The cleaner. The man who helped everyone into Armani suits, Breitling watches, Gucci handbags.

‘Cheer up, comrade,’ he says to Mart Velaze. ‘We can live with it. You hear what I’m saying? It’s what the Americans call pre-emptive. Or as the proverbs tell us, better to be the safe ones
than the sorry ones. Are we on the same page?’

He hears Mart Velaze grunt ‘Uh huh’, thumbs him off.

The trouble with Mart Velaze, thinks Jacob Mkezi, is that sometimes he doesn’t get the bigger picture. Sometimes he gets stuck on the details. Which is the trouble with intelligence agents. Their focus is too narrow. But most times you cannot have everything accounted for. The world doesn’t operate like that. In this world you work with what you’ve got. What Jacob Mkezi calls the AK tactic. Shoot everything. It’s safer that way.

His cell rings: Mellanie. Pronounced Mel-lar-nie. Never Mel or Melly. Only Mellanie. Or in Jacob Mkezi’s dulcet tones: Sisi. As in, ‘Hey, sisi.’

‘Hey, sweets,’ Mellanie says back, that edge to her tone, sarcastic. Then cuts the crap. ‘Listen, sweets,’ she says. ‘I’m not going to make it. Client meetings all day.’

Mellanie, as in MM Coms, as in Mellanie Munnik
Communications
, spins for a big fishing company, a short-term insurer, the vulture tow truck industry, the building industry and any BEE company screwing up its stock exchange profile because the directors are skimming or incompetent or both. Spins for African Enterprises. Top of her preference are those companies because they don’t mind her fees. Large fees. Outrageous fees.

‘Mr Mkezi,’ she said to him at a dinner to honour Madiba’s eighty-ninth birthday, ‘very snazzy shoes. Crocodile skin?’ Not a glow of a smile on her face. He was police commissioner then. The top cop.

He looked at her, she gazed back at him, unwavering.

‘Sisi,’ he said, ‘be careful. I’ve always worn crocodile skin.’

‘Sweets,’ she said, ‘you’re the one in the headline shoes. Here’re my contact details’ – snuck a business card into his top pocket. ‘Give me a call.’

Which Jacob Mkezi did. Two days later was a client of MM Coms. Three dinners later found himself lying naked, except for his socks, beneath Mellanie Munnik, handcuffed to her four-poster bed.

‘Sisi,’ he said, ‘this is not my culture.’

‘Sweets,’ she said, ‘too bad, it’s mine.’

Now she’s telling him she’s not going to be in court. She’s been beside him through his resignation from the cops, through the bad press conferences, she’s spun his story that his resigning was strategic, that it wasn’t about fraud, wasn’t about unaccounted-for expenses, that he wasn’t fraternising with organised crime, he was working an angle.

‘I want you there,’ says Jacob Mkezi. ‘It’s what I’m paying you for. It’s important.’

‘Sweets,’ says Melanie, ‘you’re paying me to make you Mister Goodfellow. Not hold your hand.’

Jacob Mkezi hears her saying off-phone: ‘Put him on hold. Won’t be a minute’ – as if talking to him, Jacob Mkezi, is part of her morning checklist. Mellanie coming back to him: ‘Sweets, you’re in the grey suit, pale blue shirt, dark tie with the thin green stripes, the crocodile shoes? Tell me, yes.’

‘Yes,’ he says.

‘Good,’ she says.

She’s turned the crocodile-skin shoes into his brand. Like Batman’s cape. When Jacob Mkezi, even a tainted Jacob Mkezi, shows up at social events in his crocodile-skin shoes then there’s a charge in the room. Women touch their hair. Men pour larger drinks. Politicians, cabinet ministers, directors-general pay attention before the man in the crocodile-skin shoes.

‘Later,’ Mellanie says.

Jacob Mkezi would like to tell her cancel everything, but goes with, ‘We’re going on safari this weekend. This afternoon.’

‘We?’ she says. ‘This is the first I’ve heard of it.’

‘I’m telling you now.’

‘This afternoon, Jacob!’ No more Sweets.

‘Thank God.’ Jacob Mkezi tries a laugh.

‘I’m running a business, Jacob. Clients who need my time.’

‘I need your time,’ he says, his tone hardened. The voice of the man in the crocodile-skin shoes. ‘I need your time today
with me in court.’

A silence.

Mellanie says, ‘I’ll see what I can do, Jacob.’ Pauses. ‘I’m not promising anything.’

‘Be there.’

He disconnects. And that’s Mellanie gone and Jacob Mkezi coming down Eastern Boulevard in three lanes of solid traffic for another day at the High Court, in this city beneath the
mountain
. The mountain huge, looming behind the city; the city sharp and white, lying at its harbour edge the ocean, perfect. Smooth, blue, shiny. This irritating city. This city that has him on trial. Jacob Mkezi thinking, he’s the man who knows what’s really going on in government, yet he’s in court for fraud, corruption, embezzling, associating with known criminals, the whole nine yards, the whole rooty-tooty, the complete kraal and reed dance. Except Jacob Mkezi will not be hung out to dry.

Couple of days before Christmas the Commander calls the blond agent tells him the time has come to deliver the briefcase.

The next morning the Commander arrives to collect Blondie in his Benz. The Commander wearing the same jacket and tie he wore the RAU TEM night. They drive to the winelands, not talking.

What the Commander doesn’t know is that Blondie’s been into the briefcase. That night, after they dropped him at the hotel, the flea-ridden Station Hotel, he tried the locks. Combination locks. Not expecting them to open. But they did, flipped up with a sharp click. Inside: election flyers, letters for signing, newspaper clippings, draft of a speech, and …

And under that a sheaf of photocopies. Blondie flipped through them saying, Jeez, man, jeez, man. Wondering: that man, the politician, couldn’t be so rich? No, man, never. This was about something else. This was why he’d been told not to open the briefcase. This was stuff the politician shouldn’t have had, these copies of numbered Swiss bank accounts holding millions. You got killed for having this sort of information. Your own had you killed.

Blondie propped himself on the bed, smoked two cigarettes staring at the open briefcase. A thing he’d been told on training, always take insurance. Especially documents, photographs. Anything looks like it might have value, take it. You never know. The thing about insurance, mostly you don’t need it but sometimes …

The first opportunity he made photostats. Bank statements of all the accounts, deposit slips, correspondence. Then closed the briefcase, spun the combinations. Safe my mate.

That briefcase right now on the back seat of the Merc.

‘You ever heard of Dr Gold?’ says the Commander.

Blondie sucks on the cigarette, exhales. ‘Of course. The
minister
of finance.’

‘Was minister of finance. Now ambassador to Switzerland. You know why they call him Dr Gold?’

‘Nah.’ The cigarette dangling on his lips, trademark-style.

‘Because he shifted our country’s gold from London to Zurich, at a profit.’

Blondie thinking, makes sense of the millions in the bank accounts. Makes sense of blotting the RAU TEM politician, if the politician had found out what was going on. Blondie doesn’t know what’s going on but he thinks it has to be some get-rich scheme for Dr Gold and his mates.

‘This’s who we’re going to see,’ says the Commander. ‘To give him the briefcase.’ The Commander glancing at him. ‘You didn’t open it?’

Blondie blows out smoke. ‘It’s locked.’

‘Not a problem for some people.’

‘Ja, well. I didn’t.’

Blondie reckons the Commander’s not convinced. Tough tittie.

The Commander half-looking at him, one eye on the road, smiling. Says, ‘There’s a boykie.’

Blondie, eyes on the mountains ahead hazed in the heat, lets a trickle of smoke curl up the side of his face, disappear in his blond surfer’s thatch. They drive in silence, the Commander tapping the steering wheel with his fingers. The road narrow through the winelands, past silos, sheds, the Commander going wide round a donkey cart, children in the cart waving.

On a hill he slows, turns off the tar onto a dirt road, the road ungraded, the Merc’s underbelly scraping on the bumps. Takes them through a labourers’ settlement of low white cottages, women staring at them, children and dogs running out.

At the end of the settlement they swerve between two cottages into a plantation of bluegum trees, the track smoother, covered in brittle eucalyptus leaves, still heading upwards. On the rise
the trees clear, the vista opening into a valley, a pond below, beyond that lawns rising to the gabled house.

Blondie whistles.

‘Built 1730,’ says the Commander. ‘Says so on the gable.’

‘You’ve been here before?’

‘Not long ago.’

‘You met him?’

‘Was his job we pulled. His orders.’

Blondie lights another cigarette from the stompie of the last.

‘This is where he lives?’

‘One of the places. Dr Gold moves around. Has a house in Cape Town for when he was in parliament. Another one in Pretoria. The farm he likes best’s in the Free State. Has this koppie, more like a mountain, on it. Flat-topped mountain, you go up there you could be in another world. Something to see let me tell you. You think this looks good, you gotta see that place. Air you can drink. Big landscapes, big big landscapes. At night stars and stars to the end of the universe.’

‘What sort of farm?’

‘Cattle.’ The Commander shakes his head. ‘Not Angus or any of them. Not Frieslands. Nguni cattle, he calls them. Even breeds the bastards.’ The Commander does his finger drum on the steering wheel. ‘I don’t know, something strange about Dr Gold, if you ask me.’

The Commander stops the Merc near the house. There’s a black man standing at the front door. Smartest-looking black man Blondie’s ever seen. Even wearing a jacket in the heat. Young too, about his own age, Blondie reckons. Says, ‘Check those shoes.’

‘Crocodile skin,’ says the Commander. ‘Very pretentious all that patchwork. Bloody awful.’

‘Who’s he?’

‘Jacob Mkezi,’ says the Commander, keeping his voice low. ‘Dr Gold’s man. Only Bantu security in the whole government. Comes from the Free State farm. We trained him. Special
training
in the security branch.’

They get out of the car, Blondie reaching in to lift the briefcase off the back seat.

‘Kill the smoke,’ says the Commander. ‘Don’t light another one.’

As they walk up the steps onto the stoep, Jacob comes forward. No smile, nothing in his eyes.

The Commander unholsters his gun, hands it over. ‘Give it to him,’ he says to Blondie.

He hesitates.

‘Give it to him.’

Blondie obeys, pulls a pistol from his belt.

‘And the briefcase.’

‘You said …’

‘Give it to him.’

Jacob takes the guns and the briefcase, stands aside to let them enter. Inside it’s dark, cool, smells of thatch. The ceiling of wood planks, a fan turning in the dimness.

‘Wait,’ says Jacob.

They wait not speaking, the day bright and harsh beyond the open door. Their eyes growing accustomed to the gloom. The room looks like a museum. Old farm implements on the walls. Rack of ball-and-powder rifles. Ancient cabinets, writing desks. Riempie furniture: chairs, benches, footstool bankies.

A door opens at the end of the room, a voice says, ‘Thank you for bringing the briefcase.’ There’s a short man, stocky, carrying weight on his stomach. His pate bald, grey whispers of hair over his ears, approaching them. ‘People call me Dr Gold,’ he says, chuckling, shaking hands with the Commander, moving on to Blondie, lingering, his hand damp and soft in Blondie’s grip.

‘You are a surfer,’ he says. ‘So I’m told. Very nice, exhilarating, I would say.’ He releases Blondie’s hand. Turns towards a movement in the passage, says, ‘Jacob, is all in order?’

‘Yes, sir,’ says Jacob.

‘The briefcase was locked? The papers inside?’

‘Yes, sir,’ says Jacob.

Dr Gold smiles at Blondie. ‘I was told you are discreet.’ He lays his hand on Blondie’s arm. ‘There are no waves in
Switzerland
but we could use someone … discreet. Don’t you think so, Jacob?’

Jacob says nothing.

‘Well, think about it anyhow.’ He backs off two paces. ‘I appreciate your trouble, Commander, most sincerely. As they say, you’ve taken a great weight off my mind. I can return to Switzerland, relieved.’ His hand flutters a goodbye. ‘Oh, Jacob,’ he says, ‘fetch them a jug of lime juice. It is a hot day to be driving.’