Roger Smith - Mixed Blood

He had resigned himself to being a man alone.

Until he met Bessie.

To his surprise, he had found his still-point, a place of peace, with the old dog. Bessie was a constant. She was pleased to see him in the evening. She slept beside him, ate the food he gave her, and asked for nothing more. It was strange, but when he was with her he felt a different sense of himself. For the first time in his life, he could simply be.

Just two more days, and he could start the new life he had wanted since he got out of prison.

The taxi lurched to a halt in Salt River, and Benny Mongrel climbed out. It was a short walk to Sniper Security and the start of his shift.

The hot wind roared with a ferocity that got the nerves screaming like tight banjo strings. And the fires had started. A carelessly flicked cigarette, a spark, a shard of broken glass concentrating the sun onto the dry scrub-any of these was enough to get the mountain blazing.

Burn stood next to the plunge pool, watching as a helicopter hovered over the ocean, scooping water into the basket suspended beneath its fuselage. The chopper lifted, battling the weight of the water and the force of the wind, and passed almost directly over him. He watched as it banked over the fire that ate its way down Lion’s Head and released its load of water. Then, lighter, it flew down toward the ocean again.

Dark orange smoke blotted the setting sun, obscuring the top floor of the buildings in Sea Point.

Burn felt trapped.

The house on the mountain was like a magnet for Rudi Barnard. He couldn’t explain rationally why he was parked up the street from the American’s house, but he didn’t question the impulse. His hunches were usually right.

Barnard sat in his car watching the helicopter clatter over, so low that drops from the basket splattered his windshield. He finished the last drag of a cigarette and flicked the still smoking butt out into the street. Fuck it, he couldn’t give a shit if the whole bloody place burned to the ground.

His hemorrhoids were killing him, but his mind was on that monkey in a suit. Disaster Zondi. What a fucken name.

The face-to-face with Zondi had gone as Barnard’s intuition had warned. The darky had sat there and looked at Barnard like he was shit under his expensive shoe, tapping his fingers on the thick file that lay in front of him. The file that had Barnard’s name on it.

Zondi hadn’t confronted Barnard with anything, just said that he was under investigation. Called this a preliminary meeting. Said they would have some more face time. Used those words, face time. His voice, a kind of semi-American drawl, had grated on Barnard’s nerves like a hangnail on a blackboard.

He knew men like Zondi. Hell, he had spent a whole chunk of his life hunting, torturing, and killing them. Some had screamed like women, begged for their lives, but others had stared him down until death glassed their eyes over.

Zondi had that look. Like he wanted to take Rudi Barnard down and nothing would stop him. Least of all Barnard’s so-called superior officer.

Superintendent Peters was everything that Rudi Barnard hated. A half-breed who had benefited from affirmative action to pole-vault over the careers of more qualified white cops. A minor politician who wore a policeman’s uniform but wasn’t fit to direct traffic. A PR man whose tongue had grown permanently attached to the asses of his masters.

After the confrontation with Zondi, Barnard had gone straight to Peterson’s office. Barnard knew that his commanding officer was terrified of him. Barnard was a law unto himself, who kept his badge through cunning and manipulation. Those who could be bribed he bribed. Those who refused his bribes he intimidated. Over the years Barnard had built up a massive database of information about his fellow cops and his superiors. He knew who was crooked; he knew who had falsified arrests; he knew who was never booked for driving drunk; he knew who took favors from hookers; he knew who screwed brother officers’ wives.

As Barnard sat facing Peterson in the superintendent’s office at Bellwood South HQ, he was aware of the half-breed’s fear. The man had splashed himself with tons of aftershave, but he stank. Barnard, unaware or uncaring when it came to his own stench, was acutely attuned to others’.

Peterson, a happily married, churchgoing paragon of New South African virtue, had become involved with a much younger woman a few years back. Her husband was a scrap merchant who dabbled in stolen cars. Barnard knew for a fact that Peterson had planted stolen parts at the scrap yard and had used his influence to make sure that the man was sent away for a couple of years. The unfortunate bastard had died in prison, the victim of gang discipline.

Peterson knew that Barnard knew. Simple as that.

So Barnard wrote his own ticket, seldom bothering to come into headquarters. But today he was here for a purpose. He leaned in close to Peterson.

“I want this darky off my back.”

Peterson shook his head. “I have no jurisdiction here, Inspector.”

“You’re not hearing me, Peterson. Make the fucker go away.”

Peterson fidgeted with an expensive pen on his desk. “You have to believe that all of us are being kept out of this loop. It is being run by the ministry directly.”

“So, you’re saying it’s okay if he hangs me by my balls?”

Peterson shrugged. “I’m sorry. My hands are tied.”

Barnard nodded. He even tried a smile, which was terrifying to behold. “How’s your girlfriend?”

The smell of fear washed across the desk. “Rudi, please. I’ve put all that behind me. I am not your enemy in this, please understand. There is nothing I can do to change the situation with this man from Jo’burg. I’m powerless.”

Barnard had stood and loomed over Peterson like a wall of stinking fat. “Just remember. I go down, I take people with me.”

Sitting in his car, Barnard lit another smoke, eyes fixed on the American’s house. Lights were on in the gathering gloom.

Barnard needed to throw money at this Zondi thing. A lot of it. And if he couldn’t buy his wayem" wide situation, he’d have to do what he did best. Zondi wasn’t some crack whore on the Flats; he was a darky with a fancy badge, but that didn’t make him bulletproof.

He would die like all the others.

Barnard found himself smiling at the thought. His smile evaporated when he became aware of headlights in his rearview mirror. A car was creeping down the road toward him. An armed response vehicle.

Barnard loathed rent-a-cops, who fed off the paranoia of the wealthy. They looked down on the real cops, smug as they cruised around these privileged areas. Normally, he would have relished a face-to-face with the cowboy driving the car, just for the pleasure of it, knowing his badge always trumped a rent-a-cop’s ID.

But not tonight.

He didn’t want to be placed near this house. Barnard started his car and drove away before the rent-a-cop could reach him.

Burn went into the house and saw that Susan lay on the sofa, asleep or pretending to be. Matt was in front of the TV. Usually, Burn would get the boy away from the screen, fighting the kid’s desire to lose himself in the numbing banality of the tube.

But right now it was almost a relief to see Matt occupied, distracted from the rupture in his parents’ relationship.

Burn had come home and found Susan reading a fashion magazine, sitting with her feet in the plunge pool, taking the edge off the heat. Matt was splashing in the pool, wearing flippers. Mrs. Dollie was inside, wielding the vacuum cleaner like a weapon, the high-pitched whine making her deaf to anything Burn was saying.

Burn told Susan he had found an apartment. It was right on the ocean, overlooking Clifton Beach, and, most important, it was unoccupied. The agents asked him for a day to send a crew in to clean it, and then his family could move in.