Roger Smith - Mixed Blood

He looked at Burn and nodded. Burn pointed the. 38 at the trunk. Benny Mongrel popped the lid. The fat cop was gasping, his face bright red, blood crusted around his nose and in his mustache. He hauled himself upright.

“Fuck youse,” he said and vomited down the front of his T-shirt. He wiped the back of his hand across his mouth.

“Get out.”

Burn waved the gun toward the chair. It took a couple of tries for the fat man to lever his weight out of the trunk. At last he managed it, like a side of beef coming out of a freezer truck, and stood wheezing, blood from the leg wound flowing into his shoe.

“Sit down,” said Burn.

Barnard shook his head. Benny Mongrel kicked him in the right kidney, hard enough to make the cop piss blood for a week. The fat cop made a sound like a pig fucking and stumbled, fighting not to fall to his knees. He staggered across to the chair and lowered himself with a series of whining grunts. The wooden chair protested but held his weight.

While Burn held the gun on the cop, Benny Mongrel tied the fat man to the chair, quickly and efficiently immobilizing his arms and legs. Then he shoved a rag into Barnard’s mouth and taped it in place. He opened his knife and cut away the cop’s jeans above his left knee. He pressed a cloth against the wound and taped it up. He didn’t want the fat boer to die of blood loss before he had a chance to work on him.

Benny Mongrel laid the knife on the trunk of the Ford. He took a length of white mutton cloth and tore it with his teeth until he had the length he needed. He very carefully wrapped the blade of the knife down from the haft, leaving only a few centimeters of the blade exposed.

In Pollsmoor Prison a new recruit to the gangs has to pass an initiation rite. He has to stab a warder. But the stabbing must never be fatal, only deep enough to injure. To ensure this, the gang “doctor,” the man who performs a similar function to a medic in a marine platoon, carefully prepares the knife by wrapping it in such a way that the length of the blade is set.

Benny Mongrel had never been a “doctor,” but he had stabbed warders and ordered countless terrified young men to do the same. He had supervised the preparation of the blade. His fingers knew precisely what they were doing.

Barnard watched him, his stench filling the room.

Satisfied, Benny Mongrel approached the fat cop. He showed him the knife.

“Where’s my son?” asked Burn, standing behind Benny Mongrel.

Barnard shook his head. Benny Mongrel inserted the knife into the flesh of the fat cop’s right thigh. It slid in like it was going into prison bully beef. The fat man screamed silently behind the gag.

And so it began.

Disaster Zondi drove the rental BMW up the slope of Signal Hill, the Cape Town map book open on the seat beside him. As he left Sea Point Main Road behind, he slid ever upward into a world of rarefied privilege, each block up the slope a leap into a higher tax bracket. A world of high walls, SUVs, and soccer moms with blonde bobs. A white world.

A phone call to Sea Point police station had resulted in a piece of interesting intelligence: there had been a shooting two nights before at the building site where the red BMW had been found. There might be no connection, but Zondi’s hunch was that it was too much of a coincidence.

He found himself at the corner of Mountain Road and brought the car to a stop at the building site. The view was spectacular. He could seankers lying off Robben Island, yachts catching the wind near Table Bay Harbor, the vista spreading to the Hottentots Holland Mountains in the distance. But Zondi wasn’t there for the view.

He shrugged on his jacket, despite the heat that enveloped him as he stepped out of the air-conditioned car. He adjusted his shades and headed toward two men building a wall. One of the men, black, stripped to the waist with the kind of body that no gym can give you, casually tossed bricks up to another man, who straddled the top of the wall, catching them expertly. All the while they were discussing soccer in Xhosa.

Zondi grew up speaking Zulu, a cousin language. That was how he greeted the men. They stared at him with suspicion, this well-dressed black man in his fancy car. He asked who was in charge, and one of them pointed into the site.

Zondi walked through a mess of cement, bricks, and builder’s sand. He was careful not to dirty his loafers. He came upon a young white man in shorts and work boots, shirtless, deeply tanned, with blond dreadlocks. A tool belt hung from his waist as he took the span of a doorway with a steel tape measure.

“Afternoon,” Zondi said as he approached.

“Hey, hi.” The guy gave him a smile. Zondi caught the pungent whiff of recently smoked weed. “You from the architects?”

“No. Special Investigator Zondi.” He showed his ID.

The young guy squinted, probably thinking of the nipped joint that was undoubtedly still in his pocket. “There some problem?”

“No. I hear there was a shooting here, the other night?”

The guy relaxed. “Fully. Watchman got plugged.” He wiped his hand and stuck it out. “Name’s Dave Judd. Site foreman.”

Zondi shook the hand. “Would you mind showing me where the shooting took place?”

“No problem.” Judd coiled the tape measure and slipped it into the pouch. He led Zondi into the interior of the house, across two planks, toward a stairway. Laborers in overalls were plastering the walls. Judd dodged the men and went nimbly up the stairs, his surfer’s balance on display.

He pointed to the stairs leading to the uncompleted top floor. “Happened right here. Guy’s pooch got taken out, shame.”

“His dog?”

“Ja. Absolutely. Right here. Can still see the bullet holes, hey.”

He pointed to the wall, and Zondi went closer. One of the slugs was embedded in the unplastered wall. “You mind if I borrow a screwdriver?”

“No prob.”

Judd freed a screwdriver from his tool belt and handed it over, handle first. Zondi dug into the hole and unearthed the slug. He removed an evidence bag from his pocket and eased the slug inside, then sealed it.

He handed the screwdriver back. “Thanks.”

“Sure thing.”

“All right if I wander around a bit?”

“Hey, whatever. I’ll be downstairs if you need me, okay?”

Zondi nodded and watched as the surfer boy bounced back down the stairs, probably counting the minutes until he could get into his wet-suit and go catch some waves. Zondi went up to the top floor, the roof open to the sky.

He was alone up there. He walked to the edge of an unfinished balcony, saw a small pile of cigarette butts. Roll-your-owns. He was prepared to bet that this was where the watchman and his dog had hung out. He wanted to talk to that watchman.

Zondi looked down onto the deck of the house next door. Another one of those high-walled boxes with big glass windows. A man stood on the deck, staring down over Cape Town, the breeze flicking his hair.

Zondi turned and walked back toward the stairs.

It had become too much for Burn. The watchman betrayed no emotion, focused on his task with single-minded determination. He applied the blade with precision to the body of the fat man, stabbing into the blubber, drawing blood that flowed down onto the garbage bags and the newspapers. He worked his way up the legs, then began on the massive torso.

Barnard, shirtless, his immense body streaked with blood, strained in the chair, the veins on his forehead popping out like cords. Sweat and blood coursed off him. He had pissed and shit himself, which, mixed with his fetid body odor and the smell of blood, made the room stink like a charnel house.

Every few minutes the watchman would remove the gag, and Burn would repeat the question. “Where is my son?”