Sundowner Ubunta (13 page)

Oh sure. No problem. I go to Africa all the time. They have the best deals on spices and colourful bolts of fabric.

But, of course, I
could
do this.

But, should I?

“Would you be coming with me?” I asked.

She quickly shook her head. “Oh no. I don’t want him to know about me. Please remember that.”

“Mrs. Ridge, I…well, first of all, I have to tell you that you have taken me a bit by surprise. Please understand, I think your willingness to find a son you haven’t seen in twenty years by sending a detective to Africa is…commendable. But doesn’t that show you how much you
do
want to see him? I know you are nervous about it, but you obviously love your son, and miss him. Don’t you think you should be there when he’s found?”

She shook her head resolutely. “I can’t, not yet.”

I sat silent for a moment, taking it all in. Again, Mrs. Ridge had not taken off her coat, and again it looked like she was beginning to cook. “Can I take your coat?”

“N-n-no.” She seemed as jittery as an earthworm in a bait shop. “I can’t stay long, really. I have a friend, a travel specialist, who can arrange your trip, all the way to Cape Town-that’s where Matthew lives, right?”

“That’s the address I have for him,” I said with a slow nod. “But I have to caution you again, Mrs.

Ridge, I cannot guarantee he will still be there.”

“My friend will get you to Cape Town, so you don’t have to worry about that. The money,” she nodded at the fat envelope on my desk, “is for everything else once you get there. I know it won’t be cheap. If you think you need more, you can let me know by calling my number.” She leaned in and opened the envelope and splayed out a ream of cash, thousands of colourful Canadian dollars (lots of red ones and brown ones.) Where the heck had she come up with that? I had visions of her excavating the million dollars she’d received from her husband’s estate from some old shoe-box in the basement or underneath the mattress they’d once shared.

“All I need you to do is to call me, every chance you get, and tell me where you are, every day if you can. Let me know what’s happening, what you find. Will you do that? I want to know exactly where he is the moment you find him.”

I nodded my head in agreement, but insistent doubt was demanding my attention like a flashing neon sign in my brain, doubt about whether this was the right next step to take in this case, doubt about whether 59 of 170

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I was the one best to take it. It wasn’t that I didn’t want an all-expense-paid trip to South Africa, but the whole thing was happening so fast and seemed so incredible (and I was pretty certain I was going to have to get shots in the bum for dengue fever or something like that).

“I wonder, Mrs. Ridge, if it would be better to arrange for a local South African detective to look into this.”

“No, this is better. I don’t speak the language anyway.”

“I believe many South Africans speak English,” I told her.

She shook her head. “This is better. I don’t want to deal with someone I don’t know. How could I be sure they were any good, or if they were doing what I asked them to do? They could take my money and do nothing; I’d never know the difference.” I didn’t bother to point out to her that I could do the same thing for all she knew, but of course I’d never do that. Maybe she just sensed that in me.

“Besides,” she kept on, “I have no passport, and I want this done now. You go. You’ll let me know where you are, and you’ll let me know as soon as you find him.” She was very intent on my staying in close and constant touch. Maybe that was how she intended to keep tabs on me.

I couldn’t tell if Clara Ridge was excited at the prospect of finding her son, or perhaps a little baffled by the enormity of what she was hiring someone to do for her, or maybe just scared of what the outcome might be, but I did know that she was serious about what she was asking. There was no doubt in her mind that she wanted this done, and I was the guy to do it. What I hoped she knew was that there was a very real possibility that she could go to all this trouble and expense and I could find nothing more in Cape Town than an empty room and more dead ends. Or, if I was lucky enough to find him, her son could shun her, have no interest whatsoever in meeting or knowing about his mother, for, despite what Clara Ridge told me, I believed this was her true goal.

We talked for another half hour and then she left. When she was gone, I sat zombie-like behind my desk, a stunned expression overtaking my face like moss on a north-facing tree, disbelief oozing from my body at every pore. What had I just agreed to do?

To alleviate the stress of the unknown, I leaned into my computer, punched a few buttons and visited the first website I found about the continent of Africa. Information is power. I read through some quick facts: Africa is considered by most scientists to be the origin of mankind, a continent of fifty-three independent countries including fifteen of the world’s least developed nations; a place of vast deserts, tropical rain forests, rugged mountains and fertile grasslands. Africa is the home of the Nile, Kilimanjaro and about 690 million people, seventy percent of whom survive on less than $2 a day. Disease and famine kill millions of Africans each year and even basic education is denied to a large percentage of its children; Africa is the biggest sufferer of HIV and AIDS.

I scrolled through several more pages of information, then checked out several online photo albums, the pictures gloriously stunning regardless of whether they were taken by amateurs on safari or professional photographers. There is no denying Africa is a spectacular place with some of the most dramatic vistas in the world, and still, amongst the beauty is wretched poverty and sickness and death, and it wasn’t difficult to see why this continent, with all its natural wealth and splendour, was still in desperate need of aid from people like Matthew Moxley.

I don’t know if it came from the movies or some long forgotten news broadcast or TV documentary, but as I surfed through the pictures, I kept hearing the same thing, like a soundtrack for my coming adventure: an ominous voice repeating a warning to all, a warning to beware the dangers of the land known as Africa…
The Daaaaaark Continent
. My skin shifted ever so slightly.

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One of Sereena’s most endearing qualities is her willingness to drink in the afternoon. At the end of a rather garbled telephone call, during which my tongue was still thickened with the reservations that plagued me about my agreeing to find a single man somewhere on the second largest continent in the world, Sereena offered to meet me at Earls for a late lunch and drinks. Mostly drinks.

I was already waiting in a booth with a glass of Kendall-Jackson Collage white when Sereena made her majestic entrance behind Malibu Barbie hostess, looking like she owned the place. I watched bemused as Barbie kept on having to stop and wait as my friend alighted at this table and that like a queen bee greeting her soon to be disposed of but momentarily amusing drones. Under an early-spring jacket of mint green with a splendid tartan-patterned collar of orange, dark green and purple, she wore a darker mint sweater made of something like saran wrap and a skirt with a thigh-high cut and of the same tartan as the collar. Her towering boots were sharp-toed, her jewels sparkling, her lips vivid red and her hair big. She was in a feisty mood.

Ordering a pitcher of double margaritas with the offhand comment, “When in Rome” (a reference to Earl’s prodigious margarita menu), she sent away Convertible Barbie drink-server with a twiddle of her fingers and focussed on me with gem-like eyes. “You’re in love,” she announced.

I snorted a few drops of Semillon Chardonnay through my nose but otherwise reacted well to her out-of-the-blue observation. “Sereena, what the h…we’re here to talk about Africa, and how crazy it is to be talking about Africa as if it’s like going to Puerto Vallarta, and why I shouldn’t consider going even though I think I just might!” I spurted out in one breath.

“Oh that.”

Yoga Teacher Barbie food-server, along with Gay Ken busboy (the only Ken available), arrived to clean up my mess-which really wasn’t all that bad-and asked if we’d had time to look at the menu.

“The Sweet Soy Salmon…” Sereena started, looking at me for agreement.

“…Chili Chicken…” I added, in favour of the idea of tapas rather than full entrees.

“…Baby Calamari and Tuna Lettuce Wraps…”

“…and maybe the Spinach and Artichoke Dip?”

“Too much food,” Sereena decided. “Cut the chicken and keep the pitcher full.” She turned to me and poured her eyes into mine with meaningful precision. “This is superb news, Russell. You will absolutely adore Africa. And really, Russell, you have to get it out of your head that the plane is going to drop you off in some baboon-infested jungle where you’ll have to battle for your life and live in a tent-as delightful as that sounds. And you can just forget any Me: Tarzan, You: Jane Russell fantasies you may be conjuring up in that handsome head of yours. You’re going to Cape Town for goodness sakes, one of the most stimulating and stunning and cosmopolitan cities in the world.”

“Will you come with me?”

Sereena had accompanied me on work trips before; I’d do some detecting, she’d shop, and then we’d meet at day’s end for dinner and cocktails. I just knew I’d feel better about going to Africa if she was with me.

“Love to but can’t,” she told me, and I knew I’d only get an explanation if she felt like it and apparently she didn’t. Her reasons could be anything from she just didn’t feel like it to she was going to be in Abu Dhabi having dinner with the crown prince of someplace or other. “But I can arrange the next best thing.” Sereena hesitated, reconsidered and added: “Well, something pretty good at least. “ She consulted her watch, and announced: “Perfect.” She pulled a cellphone out of her purse and began pushing buttons.

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I eyed my friend over the heavily salted rim of my margarita glass (having switched from wine-when with Sereena, do as Sereena does) and wondered what the heck she was up to.

“Roy,” she said into the phone’s receiver, and I could tell by the look on her face-not an all-out smile by any means, but a certain glow-that she had some fondness for whoever this Roy character was. What I couldn’t tell was why she’d decided to have a telephone conversation with him in the middle of a perfectly good drinkfest. “How did you know?” she said. “It’s a pleasure to hear your voice as well.”

As I watched Sereena talk on the phone, she moved her head just so and the restaurant lighting hit her face in such a way as to momentarily highlight the gentle half-moon scar on her chin. Although I’d seen it many times, it took me somewhat by surprise. I’d thought after my clandestine meeting with Uncle Lawrence in the Arctic last year that I’d learned everything there was to know about my enigmatic neighbour. But the scar?

How and when had she gotten that scar?

A boating accident off the island of Capri? Fisticuffs with Gisele Bundchen over Leonardo DiCaprio? A lover’s quarrel gone bad? A drunken misstep on the slippery steps outside a Santorini tavern? An Oktoberfest in Berlin gone
schlecht
? I made a mental note to ask her…then thought better of it. I surveyed my friend with the detachment made possible when the person you’re studying doesn’t know it.

Suddenly something became blazingly clear to me, something I’d never allowed as a possibility before: I’d
never
know the whole of who this woman was.

In many ways, Sereena was, is, and always will be, an alluring mystery to me. And finally, I was okay with that. I did not need to know all of her. In many ways, I preferred not to: it was endlessly more interesting for me.

“I know it’s late, Roy,” Sereena apologized, still on the phone. “So I promise not to keep you long, darling. I’ll call you again over the weekend and we can tell naughty stories.”

Late? Did she say it was late? I checked my watch, worried that I’d been drinking too much for too long and didn’t even know it. Nope. It wasn’t even two in the afternoon.

“I have a friend coming your way, Roy, and I’d like you to take care of him. He can make his own way to Cape Town, but he may need occasional assistance once he’s there, and I’d like to be able to tell him you’re available to make arrangements for him. I’ve told him all about you and what a magician you are and now he simply refuses to go to Africa without the promise of your help.”

Sereena was plying her own brand of magic. Again I consulted my watch and did some math. It would be nearing ten p.m. in South Africa. That’s where it was late.

“You are a doll, Roy,” Sereena told her friend. “I’ll give him your information. Thank you.” She listened a bit more, sipped at her drink, then rung off with a: “Pleasure” and “Goodbye.” She hung up, returned her phone to her purse and announced with a tone of finality, “Roy will take care of you.”

Okey-dokey. “And who, may I ask, is Roy?”

“You may. Roy Hearn is a delightful man. He runs a travel business that looks after clients for most of the important American touring companies that send people to South Africa, anywhere in Africa actually.

Anything you need or want, Roy can get it for you,” she told me with absolute confidence in the man.

And if Sereena trusted Roy, I trusted Roy.

Suddenly I felt better, excited actually. I could do this. I could go to Africa. I could find my way around, especially with the help of someone like Sereena’s friend. The bigger question was: how lucky was I going to be at finding a Canadian needle in an African haystack?

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After partaking in a particularly punishing program of high-incline, high-speed treadmill cardio, tension squats and lunges to burn off the high-carb, high-fat, high-calorie meal Sereena and I shared in order to absorb the high-alcohol afternoon, I returned to the office to check for messages. It was nearing nine p.m.

and I expected the place to be deserted. It was, except for a light under the door to Errall’s office.