Present Darkness Page 9

  “Almost there.” They walked the pavement of a street lined with Indian- and Jewish-owned shops selling just about anything. Two sharp lefts brought them behind a wide building with prison-style windows. A rickety flight of stairs led up to a cinderblock house with a flat tin roof. Music and the smell of beer and cigarettes came from the building.

  “Sergeant,” Shabalala said. “This is not a place for policemen.”

  “I won’t tell if you don’t.” Emmanuel climbed to the door. The Zulu detective and the German doctor stayed put. He motioned to them. “Come on. It’s a nice place. I guarantee there won’t be any trouble. We can sit and plan tomorrow.”

  Shabalala hesitated and then took the stairs two at a time, deciding it was better to sit with the Detective Sergeant than to lie awake in a strange bed, worrying for Aaron’s future and for his wife Lizzie’s heart. He stopped halfway and gripped the handrail, waiting for a sudden dizziness to pass. Zweigman placed a hand on the Zulu man’s shoulder and said, “When was the last time you ate, my friend?”

  “I do not remember. Maybe yesterday.”

  “There’s a kitchen inside.” Emmanuel pushed opened the door. “We’ll order before we sit down.”

  The illegal bar was a long, narrow room with scarlet walls and two cracked mirrors in place of windows. Cigarette smoke hung over the crowded tables. In the back corner, a couple clung to each other in drunken love. The clientele was a mix of louche black men and women with time to kill and enough money to buy booze. The “shebeen queen”, a middle-aged battleaxe with cherry-dark skin and flat facial features, pushed through the throng. The red and white checked dress and the triple strand of fake pearls looped around her neck probably came from the Indian shop but she wore them like they were priceless. She stood in front of Emmanuel and placed her hands on her hips.

  “I don’t allow trouble,” she said over the noise of rough laughter. “And the white men who come into my place always make trouble.”

  “Not us,” Emmanuel said. “We’re looking for a drink, food, and a quiet place to talk.”

  “Then go to church. Or the Synagogue.” She winked at Zweigman and flashed a hard smile. “There is drink but no quiet place. You can stand in lover’s corner with your friends. That is the only space I have.”

  “We’ll have a couch in the back room.” Emmanuel took out his wallet and handed over a note. “One bottle of the house beer with three glasses, funeral rice, grilled chicken livers and coleslaw. Please.”

  “You know my place?” She stuffed the money down the front of her bra, which was more secure than a bank vault. Men had lost fingers trying to gain access.

  “From when it was Mama Leslie’s house,” Emmanuel said. “A long time ago.”

  “Go,” the shebeen queen spoke with a grudging respect. A white man knew the workings of her bar, the hidden room for the clients who had private business and also the most popular items on the menu. That was a rare thing. “See if there is room.”

  “Thank you, mama.” Emmanuel moved off through the crush of bodies sweating alcohol and perfume. The noise and the anticipation of immediate gratification in the patrons’ faces held the familiarity of home. He pushed aside a lace curtain; five or so mismatched sofas were squeezed into a smaller room with a painted-over window. All seats were taken but for a dingy four-seater in the back corner. They sat down, drawing curious glances from the other drinkers.

  “Is it certain that the men who took the fork work for Mason?” Zweigman asked when the beer and a bowl of yellow rice were set down on a small table by a kitchen hand.

  “It looks that way to me.” Emmanuel waited for Shabalala to take some rice and then helped himself.

  “The men could have been the actual criminals returning to the scene to cover their tracks,” the German doctor said after a sip of beer. “They had even more to gain from the theft of the fork than the Lieutenant.”

  “They were not the same men.” Shabalala joined in. “Their footprints do not match.”

  Zweigman worked a mound of rice onto his spoon, thinking out loud. “The two groups must have communicated with each other,” he said. “How else did the men who searched the garden know about the fork in the bush?”

  “Mason.” Emmanuel was certain the Lieutenant was the link. “Either he’s personally involved with the crime or taking money to cover up for someone else. I don’t know which.”

  “Lieutenant Mason, two points, and us, zero,” Zweigman said, referring to the “successful” car search and the disappeared pitchfork.

  “That’s the score. We’ll visit Aaron tomorrow. All he needs to do is provide the name of one person who saw him walking through Sophiatown on Friday night.”

  “I will talk with him but …” The Zulu detective chewed the rice slowly, searching for the right words. “I do not know if he will speak the truth to me.”

  “You are his father.” Zweigman leaned back while a fat-armed woman in a blue housecoat and a white headscarf delivered the rest of the food. “He is your son.”

  “Yebo. This is so but Aaron now belongs to the oldest child of my mother. He is my brother’s son through me. It was decided ten years ago.”

  The laughter from the front bar and the heated whispers of the couple cuddling on the adjacent sofa seemed to magnify the stillness in Shabalala’s voice.

  “How did he come to be your brother’s son?” Emmanuel asked. This practice of “giving” children to other members of the family was a familiar concept in Sophiatown.

  “The son of my mother had a wife, two children and much money. With this money he bought a car and with this car he took his family to see the ocean in Natal. On the way home to Johannesburg it grew dark and the car hit a cow on the road. The wife and children died.” Shabalala took a mouthful of beer and then another. “He married again but no children, no children with the second wife. That is when my father came to me and said his eldest child was heart-sore. He needed a son to make things whole again.”

  “Could you not refuse?” Zweigman asked. Dead children were at the heart of his own sorrow, having lost all three of his own offspring in the German death camps.

  “My father lived by the old ways. For his eldest son to die without issue, that was a thing he could not stand. He said that Lizzie and I must share our good fortune and in turn Aaron would be blessed with education and with money. This man, my father, gave me life. His request could not be refused. That is the Zulu way.” Shabalala cleared his throat to dislodge the hard lump that had formed around his larynx since hearing about Aaron’s arrest. “My wife’s youngest child has been well taken care of. He came home to us on the holidays, just as if he was still ours.”

  “Surely your brother knows where Aaron went on Friday night?” Emmanuel said. Sophiatown was not entirely the lawless free-for-all most people believed it to be. Good families still worshipped in church and drank no liquor. Their children attended school and youth clubs supervised by the clergy. Shabalala’s son did not belong to the streets as Emmanuel had.

  “The son of my father has a lung sickness.” The Zulu detective opened his hands in apology. “He is at a special hospital outside Pretoria. For three weeks he has been there. On Friday morning his wife went to visit for the weekend. The priest at Aaron’s school said he would keep watch over him. This was to be his first time alone in the house.”

  They ate amid the chatter of bar patrons and of drunken singing. Emmanuel’s thoughts were equally noisy. A boy left alone for the weekend might have a girl over for a drink or hold a party for a group of friends. An empty house presented the perfect opportunity to play grown-ups. Yet Aaron, according to his own statement, chose to walk the streets aimlessly and alone. Mason took advantage of that lie. Could Cassie Brewer really be worth climbing the gallows for?

  13.

  The curtain that divided the secret room from the public area opened and the couple on the next couch sat up, nervous as impala at a watering hole. Three men in baggy suits and two-tone shoes wal
ked into the room with predatory grace. Emmanuel topped up the beer glasses and kept eating, hoping that his companions would follow his lead and stay absolutely calm. Zweigman scooped up more chicken livers. Shabalala divided the remaining coleslaw between the three plates. Good. They were in tune.

  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 acce
pted 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 party, 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.