Roger Smith - Mixed Blood

He sat up and unslung his arm. As he moved the shoulder, he winced, but only slightly. Pain had been part of Benny Mongrel’s life since birth. He knew how to shut it out. He moved the arm some more; then he took the sling off and threw it on the dirt floor.

He’d keep the bandage on, unless it got in his way.

He reached under the mattress and found his other knife and the sandpaper. He opened the knife and began his ritual of honing the blade. With each swipe of the sandpaper, he visualized the innards of the fat cop spilling out like trash from a dumpster.

Barnard. The name carried on the wind when he had buzzed the American’s door.

Benny Mongrel didn’t know where to find him. But he knew men who would, the men he had deliberately avoided since he had come out of jail. The older men who wore the same tattoos he did, who hung out in taverns and cramped houses in Lotus River. They would tell him what he needed to know.

Then he would go back to Mountain Road, to the house of the American guy. Tell him what he saw the night the fat cop dumped the kid in the trunk of the car. Tell him that he would help to track the fat man down and find the boy. He had no interest in the child. Didn’t care if it lived or died. It was a means to an end. Nothing more.

The American would lead him to the fat cop. And if the American outlived his usefulness, Benny Mongrel would kill him too.

He knew how to kill Americans.

Burn eyed the bottle of Scotch. It was only lunchtime, but surely he could allow himself one drink, just to steady his nerves? Then he took the bottle from the counter in the kitchen, put it in a drawer, and shut it away.

He couldn’t trust himself to keep it at one drink.

He went and flopped down in front of the TV, cricket on the screen. The game made no sense to him. It seemed to be played over days, men in white endlessly bowling balls that were bumped back at them by helmeted batsmen.

He hated this passivity. Sitting and waiting, leaving the play in the hands of the kidnapper, was driving him crazy. All his training, those years in the marines, prompted him to action. Take the gun. Get out there. Find his son.

He played the man’s voice over again in his head. Harsh and guttural. He tried to recall the voice of the fat cop, Barnard. Was it him? It made sense, but Burn was no closer to being sure.

The buzzer dragged him to the screen of the intercom. Two uniformed cops stood at the gate, a man and a woman.

Here we go again.

Burn lifted the intercom phone, and within seconds the cops were standing in his living room. The man was white, the woman brown. They both wore blue uniforms, black boots, and Kevlar vests. Must be hell in this weather. They introduced themselves, local names that slid through Burn’s memory like water through a sieve.

A woman’s body had been found that morning, on the steps above High Level. The victim’s daughter had identified the body as that of her mother, Mrs. Adielah Dollie. The daughter said that her mother had left here the night before, walking to a taxi.

Adielah. Burn hadn’t known her by anything other than Mrs. Dollie.

Burn feigned shock, even had to sit down. It wasn’t hard, the way he felt. “My God, this is terrible. What happened to her?”

The man did most of the talking. “Her, ah, neck was broken. Either somebody did it, hit her, or she fell trying to get away. It was a mugging, we think. Those stairs are dangerous. There have been a lot of incidents.”

Burn nodded. “I feel so guilty. I should have insisted on taking her home.”

“Mr. Hill, could we see some ID, please?”

Burn went into the bedroom and returned with his John Hill passport. The cop looked at it, then wrote down the number before handing it back to Burn.

“Is there a problem?” he asked as he pocketed it.

“No, just routine. We’ll type up your statement. Maybe you can go down to Sea Point police station in the next day or so to sign it?”

Burn nodded. “Of course.”

Then they were gone. It had worked. Very little energy was going to be spent on finding Mrs. Dollie’s killer.

Llewellyn Hector caressed the racing pigeon sitting in his cupped hand. Hector gently set the bird on a perch in a wire cage. It was night, and a dangling lightbulb cast shadows across the cramped backyard of the Lotus River house. Hector engaged the latch on the cage and turned. That’s when he saw Benny Mongrel. Hector was too hard a man to let emotion reach his face, but Benny Mongrel saw in the moment of hesitation before he spoke that the gangster was surprised.

“Hey, brother. Where you come out of?” He walked across to Benny Mongrel. Hector was a squat man, almost as wide as he was tall. His large head balanced directly on his sloping shoulders, like a boulder on a hill, and his muscled arms, seething with tattoos, were unnaturally short. He extended his hand for the insider’s shake.

Benny Mongrel took the hand and shook it. “I been here and there.”

“But you haven’t come and see us?”

Benny Mongrel shook his head.

“Come inside, brother.”

Benny Mongrel followed Hector into the tavern that was home to the Mongrels. Hector was a few years older than Benny Mongrel. They had known each other since they were teenagers, had killed many men together, and had spent decades sharing a prison cell. Hector had been out a few years longer than Benny Mongrel, and he was a general, a middleman in the organization. He mobilized members in times of gang conflicts and ran gang-related business interests. Fencing stolen goods and selling drugs.

The tavern was not a place you ventured into unless you were a Mongrel or under their protection. It occupied the front room of a small house, crammed with tables and game machines. The room was full of youngsters, some still teenagers, the cannon fodder of the gang.

Hector led Benny Mongrel through to a private table, where a man in his late thirties sat. Rufus Jordaan. He was a middle-rank enforcer and bodyguardpulled up a chair and motioned Benny Mongrel to sit. “Look what the wind blew in.”

Benny Mongrel had no sooner sat down than a bottle of whiskey and three glasses were delivered by a teenage girl in tight jeans. Hector poured and lifted his glass. Benny Mongrel joined him. Rufus Jordaan didn’t.

Hector led the toast. “No excuses, no explanations, no apologies, not to anyone, not ever.”

Rufus muttered his assent. Benny Mongrel said nothing. Rufus pushed the whiskey aside and reached for a beer bottle. He made a show of knocking off the cap of the bottle with the sight of his. 38 Special. He left the gun lying on the table.

“So,” Rufus said, sucking on the beer, “why you been a stranger, brother? We not good enough?” He was a big man who wore his 28s tattoos with pride.

Benny Mongrel just gave him that flat look that he’d perfected in prison. The look that said: Here I am. I’m not going anywhere. Do what the fuck you like. Rufus hid behind a shit-eating grin like Benny Mongrel knew he would.

Rufus raised his bottle. “Anyways, welcome home, brother.”

Benny Mongrel spoke to Hector. “I need to know about a fat cop called Barnard.”

Rufus leaned forward. “Gatsby?” Benny Mongrel shrugged, fixed his good eye on Rufus. “Big fat boer with a mustache? Stinks like shit?” Benny Mongrel nodded. “What you want with him?”

“We got some business.”

Hector swallowed some whiskey, wiped the back of his mouth with his hand. “He mainly works Paradise Park. He’s in with the Americans there from back in apartheid days, early nineties.”

“Where’s he based?”

“Bellwood South. He’s a bad bastard. Killed more brown men than the HIV. They say he’s a reborn.”

Rufus laughed. “He do it for Jesus.”