Present Darkness Read online

  The men crossed the room, which emptied behind them. Emmanuel unbuttoned his jacket and took a quick look at the tsotsis. Their bodies slotted into three standard sizes: small, medium and large. Their looks were similarly easy to categorise: pretty, average and ugly.

  “You. Trek.” Medium average ordered the lovebirds on the next sofa out of the room. They grabbed hat and bag and rushed for the exit, glad to be let go. Laughter filtered in from the front bar. It might have been noise from a different universe. The quiet in the secret room attained a kind of physical weight.

  “What are you doing in my seat, white man?” Medium swaggered to the corner table, flanked by the others. His words were slurred, his mouth held permanently opened by a fat tongue, the tip of which protruded between his teeth.

  “I’m having a drink.” Emmanuel gave Medium his full attention. Everything about him was brown: brown eyes, brown hair, brown skin wrapped neatly in a brown suit. All three men smelled of beer, marijuana and sweat. “You came at the exact right time. Ten minutes ago the place was packed. Now you can sit anywhere you want.”

  “I do not want the other seats. I want this one.”

  “You can have it after we’ve finished.” Emmanuel took a swig of beer and settled back. Medium and company had come out for their weekly Saturday night fight. The moment they’d walked into the room, it was already too late for diplomacy. They wanted blood. Emmanuel turned to Shabalala and asked, “Still hungry?”

  The Zulu detective patted the flat of his stomach, displaying hard packed muscle. “My wife says I have grown old and fat. I will have more rice but that is all.”

  Pretty man dug lean fingers into the funeral rice and shovelled a scoop into his mouth. He chewed extravagantly. Ugly laughed but the sound had a tired feel, as if this scene had played out too often and with the same results.

  “You shouldn’t eat standing up,” Emmanuel said. “It’s bad for your health.”

  “You’re a doctor, now?” Butter from the yellow rice glossed Pretty’s mouth. Dark-skinned with a dimpled chin, Brylcreemed hair and eyelashes a girl would kill for, he would have had to stab, rape and rob more victims than usual in order to prove his criminal worth.

  “I’m not a doctor but I can tell the future,” Emmanuel said. “Would you like to know yours?”

  “Ja. What?” Ugly bit first, interested in this new twist to the routine. Truth was, some Saturday nights he’d rather stay home, brew a cup of tea and listen to The Twilight Ranger, the current Shadow story on Springbok Radio.

  “You” -Emmanuel pointed to Medium- “will try to overturn the table but my Zulu friend will break your arm and throw you across the room like a piece of firewood. My other friend, the little Jew, will work a knife into one of you. And I will shoot whoever is left standing. Or you can choose to change the future and just walk away.”

  Zweigman kept eating, not once looking up.

  Medium moved fast, Shabalala moved faster. The lip of the table tilted but the Zulu detective slammed a fist onto the surface, stabilising it, while pushing hard into Medium’s chest with the open palm of his free hand. Medium flew, flipped over a couch and his head hit the floor with a crack. Ugly grunted and swung a cabbage-sized fist at Emmanuel. Emmanuel ducked and Ugly lost his balance then sprawled across the table and knocked the plates into the air. Emmanuel smacked Ugly’s head against the surface of the table and let him drop to the floor. Pretty yelped and ripped out the fork that Zweigman had speared into his right hand. He fumbled at his jacket and a flick knife emerged from his pocket. The blade flashed in the dim light and the lock on it clicked. He lunged at Zweigman. Emmanuel met the gangster’s head with the butt of his revolver. Blood sprayed out of the wound on his forehead and Pretty staggered back. His knife hit the floor and slid under a couch.

  “Face down on the ground. Now.” Emmanuel came out from behind the table, the Webley in his hand. He had no memory of drawing the weapon. The not-so-pretty-any-more gangster lay flat, cheek pressed to the floor. Shabalala stood over Ugly, ready for a wrong move.

  “This is your idea of no trouble, Sergeant Cooper?” Zweigman pressed both hands to the tabletop, absorbing the stillness of the inanimate object, while he willed the food in his stomach to stay down.

  “Sorry about this.” Emmanuel crossed the lounge to Medium, the trio’s leader. He pushed the tip of his shoe into the gangster’s ribs. Medium groaned but remained balled on the floor. “It’s too early in the night for a full-blown fight, but there’s no accounting for stupidity.”

  The lace curtain dividing the room from the front bar twitched. Emmanuel turned and aimed the Webley at the opening. His heart hammered in his chest. Maybe the three on the floor had friends outside. “Out where I can see you,” he ordered the person hiding in the doorway. “Hands above your head. Now.”

  The curtain parted and a charcoal-black man wearing white cotton pyjamas and a purple silk dressing gown limped into the room. His head seemed too large for his scrawny neck to hold it up. His smooth baby skin and a peach-fuzz beard magnified the impression of a malnourished child trapped in a man’s body. Grown men had died wondering how the crippled boy could move so fast and stab a blade so deep.

  “Please, don’t shoot, Detective. Spare me, ma baas.” Spindly arms reached for the ceiling. The man’s voice quivered. “I have a wife and ten children. My mother, she is sick with the fever and my father, he is blind and has no hands.”

  Emmanuel holstered the Webley, simultaneously furious and relieved. “That’s your idea of a joke, Fix? I could have shot you.”

  “Never.” Fix Mapela limped closer. “You’ve gotten old and unattractive, my friend.”

  “And you’re still a cripple, I see.”

  “That is because God took three inches from my left leg and put it onto another part of my body. Ask your sister. She knows.”

  “Who else has your measurements? The pretty boy you sent to greet me, or the ugly one?”

  Fix Mapela grinned and said, “Long time, my brother.”

  “Too long.” The pair gripped hands and stepped closer till their shoulders touched, a quasi-Roman greeting that Fix had invented after they’d successfully shoplifted a loaf of bread and a can of jam from Ah Ling’s store. They were eight years old with bellies full of strawberry jam and heads full of plans to become the outlaw versions of Julius Caesar and Mark Anthony.

  “Mama Sylvia.” Fix addressed the bar owner who loitered in the doorway. “Whisky and clean glasses. Only the best and now, now.”

  “As you say, Mr Mapela.” The shebeen queen threw Emmanuel a sour look. White men always brought trouble: the whole lounge was now taken over by a criminal with a heavy reputation. These men never paid. Still, giving away a bottle of whisky beat refurnishing the entire room if things had gotten worse. She retreated.

  Medium groaned and tried to sit up.

  “You have met my friends, Emmanuel.” Fix pressed the sole of his shoe to Medium’s neck and pushed hard, cutting off his air supply. The gangster gasped, eyes bulging in their sockets. Emmanuel did not interfere. Medium flailed like a hooked fish and collapsed under the pressure. Fix stepped over the prone body, the unpleasant business of punishing a subordinate for being weak now over. He continued to the corner sofa. “Now, introduce me to yours.”

  “This is Shabalala and Zweigman,” Emmanuel said. He would have preferred to keep a space between his old life and new, but the township was messy, with the good and bad, the past and the present running together like spilled paint. “Meet Fix Mapela.”

  “Welcome to Sophiatown,” Mapela said after shaking hands. “Sit. Relax. My brother’s friends are my friends also. That is the way it is.”

  “We are honoured.” Shabalala accepted the offer of friendship even as Medium sucked mouthfuls of air through a bruised windpipe and Pretty lay bleeding onto the concrete. Zweigman resisted the urge to help the injured men. Rules were being observed that he did not understand and, like a peasant at an aristocrat’s formal dinner pa
rty, he followed the lead of the other guests.

  Mapela turned to Ugly who nursed a ballooning lump on his forehead. “Go where we cannot see you. Take the others. Your weakness offends my eyes.”

  Ugly signalled to Pretty and together they dragged Medium to a sofa out of Mapela’s sight. They propped him against an arm and then sat and stewed in their failure as instructed.

  “You have come back to Kofifi with a Zulu for muscle and a Jew for money matters.” Mapela lowered himself into the sofa vacated by the lovebirds and tucked his withered leg behind the good one. “What are you planning?”

  “Nothing with a profit margin. We’re looking into a stolen car that the police found in Annet Street this morning.”

  “I heard of this. Fast and red. Very popular with the Portuguese and the English.”

  “Any idea who dumped it?”

  “I am finished with the old trade.” Mapela pulled a tobacco pouch and a three leaves of white rolling paper from a pocket and set them on the table. “That life is behind me. Go to the front room. Ask anyone and they will tell you that I am a respectable man.”

  “For how long this time?” Fix left the life every few years, handing over the reigns to his sister Fatty while vowing that, finally, he had made a clean break.

  “Three weeks but it is forever. No more badness.” He opened the tobacco pouch and dumped a clod of marijuana onto the rolling paper. “I am married now. That is how come I was in bed when you sent greetings.”

  “A permanent wife or a temporary one?” Some wives were so short lived that Emmanuel retained only an impression of their tenure in Fix’s house: cigarette butts tipped with lipstick, the vague smell of perfume in the air.

  “We went to the church and said the words.” Mapela teased the marijuana into a line and rolled a fat joint, which he sealed closed with a lick. “I am too old to jump from one bed to the other. You too, my brother.”

  “And your men? Are they just for decoration?” Changing the subject delayed the inevitable; Zweigman and Shabalala would hear, very soon, about the three wild months that he’d spent in Sophiatown after leaving his stepfather’s farm.

  “When Fatty runs the whole business I will let these men go and then I will live a peaceful life.” Mapela placed a box of matches next to the joint. “For now I must protect myself from my enemies.”

  Mama Sylvia re-entered the lounge with a bottle of Johnnie Walker and four cut-glass tumblers on a tray. “Top quality from the house of a judge in Sandton,” she said.

  “Very good.” Mapela signalled the bar owner to pour. Then he flicked a finger to the dirty plates and cutlery on the next table. “Clear the mess and bring more food, mama. My friends and I are hungry.”

  “Of course. Of course.” She stacked the plates and balanced them against her hip. The old ways were dying out in the city, but with certain men it was best to remain humble. She dipped her head and left the lounge with downcast eyes.

  Mapela handed out whisky shots certain that what he had commanded would be done. They drank. Fix poured a second and third round, each glass more generous than the last. Shabalala and Zweigman drained their glasses in one mouthful and then pushed the empties across the table for more. They understood the rules of the game. Keep up with Mapela or retire to the corner with the other failures. Their innate understanding impressed Emmanuel who watched the dropping liquor levels with a mixture of relief and trepidation.

  “So you’re half-retired but you haven’t told your wife yet.” He picked up the thread of an earlier conversation hoping to wind back to the red car before more alcohol arrived. Fix was a committed drinker.

  “The truth would not suit my wife. Just like you and Ah Ling’s daughter by that Sotho woman. You remember? Church one night. Grabbing cigarettes off the trucks and back to church the next night. You were tired out, man. What was her name again?”

  “Pearl. And that was a long time ago.”

  “You can forget a backside like that? I don’t think so. That was a dream.” He moved his hands to recreate the swish and jig of a female rump in motion. “Such a thing it was. It must have felt good, hey? Like cupping the world in your hands.”

  “A near perfect world,” Emmanuel said. “Too good to last.”

  “That is so.” Mapela sighed and lit up the joint. He drew deep and held the smoke in his lungs a long while. Fix was also a committed smoker. “If you had stayed here and worked with me like we planned, who knows? Maybe a nice house and children and that fine backside to curl around. Instead you are a policeman.”

  “There are worse things.”

  “Ja, like jail.”

  “And you’d know,” Emmanuel said. “Speaking of jail. How is Fatty?”

  A veteran of the South African prison system, Fix’s sister had started out with short stretches in various reform schools before graduating to longer stays in facilities with better security and guards with guns.

  “Fatty is fatter than you remember, but using her brains instead of her fists now that she got rid of that husband with the big nose. No problems with the police for a long time.”

  “Is that so …” Emmanuel remained sceptical. Fatty Mapela was quick to anger, slow to forgive and, in keeping with her elephantine size, she never forgot a slight. “What happened?”

  “One of her new husbands is a policeman from here in Sophiatown. He keeps a look out for trouble. That is why I can leave this life …” Fix paused and took a second hit of the joint. He offered it to Emmanuel, who hesitated. Detective Sergeant Cooper ceased to exist in Fix’s presence. That was the reason he rarely came to the township.

  “Perhaps you are ashamed of me now that you have new friends,” Mapela said. “Perhaps you are all police and this is a trap.”

  Emmanuel took the joint. He smoked. Fix relaxed and shared the remaining whisky between Shabalala and Zweigman, inviting them back into the inner circle. A scratchy recording of Cab Calloway’s Blues in the Night hit the player in the front room and the bar patrons sang along in drunken harmony.

  “Ahh … Fatty, she loves this song. You must hear the records she keeps in her special house. Too good.” Mapela placed a hand to Emmanuel’s arm, the whisky and the marijuana kicking in. “Anytime. Say the word and I will make a place for you here.”

  “Your sister might not like it.”

  “Ah, she is plenty busy with the three husbands. And there is the cathouse and the dance hall there by Kumalo’s garage.”

  Emmanuel handed back the joint while Zweigman and Shabalala wisely sipped on their drinks. When the time came to stumble out of the bar they’d remember things he might have forgotten.

  “Things are no more what they used to be.” Fix spoke through the haze of dagga smoke. “There are too many gangs in Sophiatown: the Russians, the Gestapo, the Vultures. Each day, another boy gets off the bus with a knife in his pocket and plans to be chief of the township. That is why I am getting out. These new men do not think of the future. They just grab.”

  “They missed that Mercedes parked under their noses.”

  “Ja, that is strange. Taking such a car from a white man’s house is a heavy matter. And this Shabalala boy is not involved in such heavy things. If he had come to me I would have paid a fair price. But to park and run, that is foolishness.”

  “Remember the first car we lifted? It ran out of petrol and we took off.” Emmanuel smiled. “We left the doors open and the lights on.”

  “Man, we flew.” Mapela laughed at the memory. “World record time across the field and then to your house. My leg hurt bad for a week afterwards.”

  Emmanuel pulled the snippet of branch that he’d pocketed at the mouth of the dead end lane where he found the car. He placed it on the table. “The Shabalala boy parked, then covered the car with branches like this one and ran.”

  Shabalala senior leaned across the table, examined the branch and then crushed the leaves between thumb and forefinger. He inhaled the odour. “UmPhanda, the raintree. It likes the open bushlands a
nd rivers but grows here in the city also. I did not see this tree in the backyard of the principal’s house, Sergeant.”

  “There weren’t any raintrees near the lane where the car got ditched either. The crack of the boot door was thick with dust and the tyre treads filled with dirt.”

  Zweigman frowned, picking apart the elements. “If the branches were not local then Aaron must have brought them in, knowing in advance that he was going to hide the car.”

  “More foolishness. To cut and stack branches when I could have found a clean space for just such a car.” Mapela drank the last drops of whisky from the bottle. “What is this business to you, brother?”

  “I found the car. Then I got booted off the police case quick smart. I’d like to know why.”

  “Of course,” Mapela said. “If a man hits you, you must hit back. That is the proper way. I can help you with this.”

  “In order to hit back,” Emmanuel said, “I need information. Not muscle.”

  Mama Leslie and the fat-armed woman who’d delivered the first round of food brought dishes of roast corn, beef curry and rice to the table. Mama dished out the food and murmured “Right away” when Fix tapped a fingernail on the empty scotch bottle. Emmanuel, Shabalala and Zweigman ate more, not from hunger but out of apparent necessity.

  “Go and see Fatty.” Mapela scooped food up with his right hand, Muslim style, and licked curry from his fingers. “Once in a month she holds a dance out by the rail yards in Newtown. She will make a special place for you at her table.”

  That’s what he was afraid of. Two Mapelas on two nights in a row made for a severe hangover and short-term memory loss.

  “A dance in a railway yard,” Emmanuel said. He pictured the scene; an old train shed with men milling around, waiting their turn with prostitutes in a warren of rooms out the back. “Sounds nice.”

  “No, no. I know what you’re thinking. Fatty has fixed the place up proper with music and tables.” Mapela shovelled in more curry. “Her policeman husband will be there. He has eyes and ears all over Sophiatown. He is the one you must ask about the red car.”