Payback - A Cape Town thriller (17 page)

Paulo was hardly out of Global Enterprises than his phone rang: Vittoria. In Milan.

The reason she was in Milan was because back in the spring he’d said, ‘Ria, suges, how’s your fertility?’

‘You want to have babies?’

He squeezed her hand. ‘I’ve got a better proposition.’

She had fertility tests done. The results came back positive. He wanted a copy of the actual report.

‘What for?’ she’d asked.

‘Opening discussions,’ he’d replied.

‘You’re into selling your lover’s body?’ Half-joking,
half-appalled
. ‘You’re joking.’

‘Is $200 large joking?’

‘Sounds like it.’

‘Nine, ten months work max. Not even work, really.’ Paulo
triumphant
, gazing at her as if he was about to score a serious deal.

Vittoria laying it on the line: ‘Let me understand this clearly. You’re suggesting I have some guy’s baby?’

‘Short and sweet of it, yeah. For $200 000.’

‘Don’t you think we should’ve talked about this first?’

‘The $200 thou?’

‘You know what I mean.’

‘We went through that.’

‘Talking about my fertility is not talking about it.’

Paulo standing up from the couch, going over to the window. Her apartment, two floors up a Brooklyn brownstone, the street below empty this time of night: gone 12 a.m.

‘Jesus, Vittoria, when’s somebody laid this sort of money on you? Wasn’t for me passing down some bills, you wouldn’t have this!’ A hand gesturing round the room, an expensive room, the sort of room she couldn’t afford. By herself.‘I’m saying here’s good money.’

‘And your cut?’

He acted hurt. ‘We’re an item. I don’t take a cut’ - wheeling towards where she sat on the other couch, leaning down on her with his hands on her shoulders, their faces close. ‘What d’you say?’

She pushed him away. He straightened, his eyes holding hers.

‘I’m listening. Tell me the small print.’

Paulo sat down alongside her on the couch, laid an arm on the back, almost reaching her.

‘Basically,’ he’d said, ‘an apartment in Milan for the duration. Monte Napoleone district. Classy stuff, I’m talking. High-end fittings. Use of an Alfa exclusively. House staff. Two flights home, business class.’

‘For which I must?’

‘Have his child.’

‘How’s the issue, Paulo?’

‘Basically, artificial insemination.’

‘He gets to screw me?’

Paulo shifting his eyes to the carpet.

‘The guy’s queer, Ria. He’s not gonna want to screw you.’

‘He might.’

‘In the unlikely event, the contract limits it to days of ovulation only. Three days max at each event.’

‘Event!’

‘Sure.’

‘Like a ball game?’

‘You know what I mean.’

Vittoria reaching for the wine on the side-table behind the couch, filling her glass.

‘He can screw me three days a month?’

‘He’s a homo.’

‘How many times?’

‘What d’you mean how many times?’

‘How many times a day?’

‘For Chrissakes. Once.’

‘It’s in the print?’

‘Sure.’

‘I’m not a whore.’

The two of them staring at one another.

‘So who’s this?’

‘Camillo Medardo.’

‘Medardo! The fashion Medardo? He’s gotta be seventy!’

‘Sixty-five. Looks sixty.’

‘Big deal!’

‘Listen, Ria, I’ve wrapped this for you. The guy’s had two heart attacks. He goes before the contract ends you get the full payment.’

‘And the kid?’

‘The kid gets raised by his partner. Guy called Dieter.’

Vittoria thought about other issues, such as, Camillo Medardo’s sperm count.

‘What happens if I don’t fall pregnant?’

Paulo shrugged. ‘Always a possibility. He gets six ovulations. If he doesn’t score the deal’s off, you’re home with $60 000.’

‘$60 000! That’s all?’

‘The best I can do. Chances are you’ll go the deal first time out.’

‘Bah!’ Vittoria hit her wine. ‘$60 000. I can’t believe it.’

‘One other thing, you’ve got to marry him if he knocks you up. For the Italian laws. Also for the life insurance to kick in.’

‘And afterwards?’

‘Divorce proceedings start on termination of contract. No cost to you.’

This was back in the summer. Things had moved on since then, gone wide. The main reason Vittoria was phoning Paulo.

‘Hi, Ria babe,’ he said, pressing the down button for the elevator.

‘I want you to kill this fuck,’ she said, no niceties. Corrected herself: ‘These fucks.’

‘Hey, is it good to talk to your lover, or what?’

‘Your contract’s a load of shit,’ she said next. ‘They just wanted a whore.’

What happened the first time was that Camillo and Dieter actually drove her to the clinic. In his Saab. Champagne, chocolates, flowers in the private ward, made her stay there three days while they hoped the miracle of conception occurred. Or rather kept her on her back so that none of the stuff could dribble out. During this she decided Paulo’s idea was not a bad deal, that she could even get to like these two queers fussing over her.

Then spot on comes her next period, everyone’s disappointed. Dieter goes sulky for a few hours. Camillo bites his lip. Tries to comfort her. Hello, when it’s his piss-poor ratings on the sperm count. Camillo saying, ‘Maybe we’ve got to pamper you even more this time, baby. Get the doctor to come to you.’

Which is what he organises. She tells Camillo when the bleeding stops, a week later her apartment’s flooded with bouquets. She stays in bed. Camillo chats to her about the royals he’s dressed. Dieter looks in with tea. They’re constantly on about her temperature. They’re both in attendance when the doctor comes, either side of her, each holding a hand, peering at what the doctor’s doing. She doesn’t feel happy about this. Especially when it happens the next day and the next. But they’re sweet. Flapping about her like nannies.

Again the blood comes. Dieter throws a heavy sulk. She
overhears
him talking to Camillo in German, understands enough to know he’s questioning the fertility tests. Suggesting that Camillo’s been taken for a ride. Camillo’s less prone to jump to conclusions. He doesn’t talk to her about this. Tells her of his disappointment, like it’s her fault. Like she’s doing something to prevent the pregnancy.

Next time he says to hell with modern science. They’re going to do it like daddy and mommy. He keeps to the contract’s stipulation of once a day, three days only. He’s disgusting.

The month after, nothing’s changed. Except they’re taking her to Cape Town for the Christmas holidays. ‘Cos they wanna go to some queer party.

To Paulo in distant New York she said, ‘I’m not going to this place Cape Town to be a sex toy. I’ve gotta have time off, Paulo. I’ve gotta see you.’

‘What’s happening?’ he responded, that tone of you’re-being-
a-prima
-donna in his voice. ‘Where’s Cape Town?’

‘Fucking Africa. Any place’s more boring than Milan it’s Africa.’

‘Slowly, suges. Go again, slowly.’

‘What’s happening is your queer that doesn’t touch women’s found that maybe it’s not such a bad ride.’ A hiss that could be the transatlantic connection. ‘Three times a day!’

‘Hey, man! For an old guy like that!’

Vittoria considered whether she needed another line to keep talking rationally to her lover.

‘You’re not hearing me,’ she said. ‘We’re talking bisexual. AC DC. That wants a sex toy on holiday.’

‘This happens,’ said Paulo, serious now. ‘What can I say? That’s the deal.’

‘The deal’s not Ria-the-Hooker. I’m gonna kill him. Him and the boyfriend. They’re perverts.’

Silence. A long silence. Vittoria let it drag, the longer it went, the more Paulo would know she was serious. She spilled more coke on the dressing table.

‘Hang in there, suges,’ he said. ‘This’ll work out.’

‘I wanna see you,’ she said. ‘I’m dying here. I’m bored, Paulo. Bored, bored, bored.’

Another silence, which she broke. ‘It’s heavy. I’m not gonna last this. You don’t come here ‘n see me, something’s gonna snap.’

Paulo said, ‘Think of the bucks.’

‘The bucks aren’t enough, Paulo.’

‘Okay, baby, okay. It’s almost over.’

‘Big deal. Know what?’

‘What?’

‘There’s not going to be a kid. Medardo had sago for jism there’d be more chance. I’m gonna kill them. Dirty queens.’

‘Stay cool.’

‘And that Isabella. Get you outta her clutches, the way she’s dangling you. Power-tripping. I’m gonna kill her too.’ The thought of all the dead bodies suddenly very appealing.

Mace, sitting in his office on a warm November afternoon, stared at the photograph filling his screen and thought, now what? Simultaneously had to smile at the image.

The photograph showed him and Isabella buttoned in long coats, huddled into one another, standing among rags of snow. Behind them a canal, on the canal a gunboat, a man in the boat watching them through binoculars. The only colour in the photograph that wasn’t grey was the black of their coats and her red boots, bright against the snow. They were both laughing.

West Berlin, January 1989, Mace recalled. After he’d returned from meeting a bunch of comrades who needed AKs and ammunition ten thousand kilometres away otherside the Limpopo River in five days’ time. AKs and ammunition that Mace hadn’t sourced yet. No problem, he’d said to the comrades. Walked back through Checkpoint Charlie and said to Isabella after he’d made five phone calls from the payphone in Café Adler, ‘How am I going to do this? Pylon’s up the Congo, everyone’s out of stock. I’m on a limb over a shit pond.’

‘Maybe I can oblige,’ she’d said. ‘Once again.’

Her chance to work the phone although it only took one call and she returned to their table in the window to say, ‘You’ve got it.’

‘What?’ he said.

‘Basically, whatever you want. At Francistown. How you get it over the river’s your issue.’

‘Bullets too.’

‘Everything.’

‘I won’t ask,’ he said.

‘I wouldn’t,’ she said. ‘Just think of the money.’

Which was why they were laughing in the photograph. Well, not the only reason Mace remembered. The other reason was the Kempinski, more particularly their suite, as Isabella indulged her flamboyance for fine hotels.

‘Next time in the Meurice,’ she’d said.

The Kempinski suite stacked with antique furniture, a mammoth bed, in the bathroom a double marble bath and gold taps, a shower with adjustable head. You could set it for a massage, the water pulsing out in needle jets.

She’d booked in a few hours ahead of him. Was sitting on the bed in a towelling robe painting her toenails green when he arrived, cold, dog-tired after a four-plane trip from Mogadishu. She’d looked up, the gown loosely tied and gaping, his eyes plunging from her face to her breasts half-revealed. Isabella standing and walking towards him, long-limbed, the gown framing her, the girdle looped across the curve of her stomach.

As Mace remembered, it’d been a lost two days before he met the comrades.

‘Perhaps we should try the shower first,’ she’d said. ‘It’s got this effect you have to feel.’

He had an image of her that the photograph brought back: her hands white against the black marble tiles of the shower, her hair wet in the nape of her neck, soap froth on the curve of her back, her breasts almost liquid in his hands.

‘Bloody hell,’ he thought, snapping to the photograph, ‘what’re you thinking?’

It was why they were laughing. Going back to the Kempinski for another of those showers before they flew out separately the next morning. The penultimate time they had an expensive fling like that. Couple of months later he’d waltzed into Malitia and seen the irresistible Oumou.

Hi Mace, Isabella’s email read, neat website. I heard that security had become a big thing for you guys. But Complete Security? Who’re you trying to kid? Anyhow this is not about that, this is about
something
you’re good at. It’ll fatten up your bank balance, too. And how’s this photie for old time’s sake? When next are you in New York so we can talk? There’s been a lot of water. Isabella.

Dangerous, Mace thought. Dangerous Isabella. When next you’re in New York… He’d be in New York in a week to baby-sit a banker flying out for a holiday at the Fairest Cape.

When he’d told her at the Meurice that they were off, that he’d committed to Oumou, she’d put a Makarov to his head and asked if there was one good reason she shouldn’t pull the trigger. Very melodramatic. Very Isabella. Then she’d laughed and set down the pistol. Stripped off her shirt and capris, said, ‘You’re a bastard, Mace Bishop. Two days you spend screwing me to come out with this?’ For the last time they’d had sex. Nothing loving in it: rough and dry and quick. Afterwards Isabella said, ‘Don’t think we’re finished, Mace. It doesn’t work like that.’

Yet in all this time, ten years, there’d not been a word out of her. For which he was thankful. So now what?

Across the Company Gardens from the offices of Complete Security, Sheemina February in the firm’s offices got Isabella’s email to Mace Bishop and his response to Isabella bundled in a message from her contact at the service provider not long after Mace sent it.

Sheemina February double clicked the attachment to bring up the photograph of happy Mace and Isabella clasped together beside the canal. How quaint, an old flame suddenly rekindled. Had to be Berlin, she reckoned. The Spree, judging by the gunboat and the wall and the dark buildings behind it. Such a beautiful couple. Could be on their honeymoon, tourists getting off on Cold War glamour. The sort of photograph Sheemina February doubted Mace Bishop had ever shown his lovely wife.

She saved it in a folder named ‘Membesh’ after the guerrilla camp where she’d served.

The call to Paulo came from Francisco himself. Made Paulo feel, wow, this was a thing. Not usual for Francisco to put through his own calls.

‘Here’s the situation, Paulo,’ said Francisco, ‘we need someone we can trust.’

Paulo heard him out, thought, incredible, a place you’ve never heard of scores twice in so many days. Cape Town in Africa. Thought Ria, suges, you’re not gonna believe this. Dialled her on the turn.

Vittoria was sitting in the Café Cova, wondering if white powder was big in Cape Town when her cell gave the Star Wars ringtone, her personal signature for Paulo. She picked up the phone lying next to the cooling espresso, clicked on.

‘Baby,’ he said. ‘Like how’s this? I’m gonna be doing a little business in Cape Town. Right about when you’re there.’

That brought a reaction from Vittoria. She licked a finger, dipped it into a sachet of powder open in her bag, sucked the candy, feeling a whole lot better even before it got to work. She had a large swallow of the espresso too. Said, ‘Tell me everything’ - took the rest of the espresso in a second gulp while Paulo outlined Francisco’s scheme.

‘She going to be there?’ Vittoria wanted to know when he’d finished.

‘Isabella? Most likely. Also Francisco’s hitman, Ludo.’

‘Francisco up on my movements?’ Vittoria said.

‘No ways,’ Paulo came back, ‘this is just a coincidence.’

‘Gives us a great opportunity,’ said Vittoria. ‘Also, I’ve been thinking, I’m not going through another session. You get the kill fee before that happens.’

A pause. Paulo catching up; Vittoria waiting.

‘What’re you on about?’

‘The money. Like the contract says. Before my next egg comes on stream.’

‘Ria!’

‘I’ll call you when we get there,’ said Vittoria. ‘Give you the address. They’re gonna want to start trying for baby about a few days after we get in. If my body’s running to schedule.’

She thumbed off, headed for the toilet. In the cubicle she ran a short line on her compact, drew it up through a fuzzy thousand-lire note. Half the powder got stuck on the fuzz. The sooner they went to euro the better, Italy needed some clean new notes. Nonetheless the hit was enough. Made her feel a whole lot better.