“Get in the house!” she ordered Flower, who turned around and gazed into Moses’ eyes.
She then walked around Mommy, but looked back one last time. “But Moses hasn’t done anything,” she said.
“Go!” Mommy insisted. “Go to your room.” Up the stairs, door open, door closed.
Mommy stood in the middle of the doorframe. She wasn’t especially tall, but she made an intimidating impression on Moses as her eyes bored into his. She slowly placed her hands on her hips.
“I just need help,” Moses said quietly.
“If you ever get close to my daughter again…”
“But…”
“You’re the one everyone’s looking for, right? I know what you did. They’ll catch you. You can bet on that.”
She slammed the door.
“But…” Moses tried once more.
He glanced around. The street was empty, but it wouldn’t be for long. He needed a new plan. Where was Sandi? Had she even come?
A knock over his head. Flower was standing at a second floor window, waving sadly. Moses waved back. He felt just as sad.
Flower spun around suddenly. Mommy must have just come in the room. He had to get out of here.
72
The garage door shut again. Footsteps heading straight into the room.
“But I took the money out.” High Voice.
“Look one more time.” Deep Voice.
Thembinkosi listened while someone sat down on the bed and opened the suitcase zipper. Rummaged around. Threw things on the floor.
“I told you it’s not in there.” High Voice.
Thembinkosi could see his shadow through the cracks in the wardrobe louvers. High Voice was sitting less than a meter from the door. He tried to hold his breath.
“Then tell me where it is.” Deep Voice was now very quiet.
“I don’t know.” High Voice’s voice grew a little higher.
“I’m not saying you have it, but I’d like to know you’re giving some thought to this. Tell me what you think.”
“How do you mean that?”
For a few moments, Thembinkosi heard nothing. Deep Voice then inhaled and exhaled, loudly and slowly. “Look, I just want to know what happened. What did you do with the money?”
“You know that already. I put it in the kitchen drawer.”
Another pause. Deep Voice was waiting for High Voice to continue. “And?” he finally prodded.
“And?… It’s gone now.” Pause. A long one.
“Explain that.”
“I can’t.”
Outside the sound of cars driving up. Doors slamming.
“Give it a try. Just a little one.”
“Shit,” High Voice said.
“What?”
“Out there. The dog.”
“They’re not here because of us.” Deep Voice’s voice grew even quieter. It sounded menacing.
Silence. Again. Thembinkosi tried to imagine what was going on outside the house. Cars. Sure. A dog? Why?
“Someone was here,” High Voice now said. Silence. Another second and then another. And then another.
Open the wardrobe door, apologize for being in the wrong place at the wrong time. We just want to get out of here, just want to go home. Best of luck with the corpse! And, uh… by the way, here’s the money. No hard feelings. None at all!
Still silence. Deep Voice eventually broke it. “Exactly.”
High Voice leaped up. Some synapse had finally fired. “You think I’m the one behind it!”
“Did I say that?”
“No, but…”
Shit, thought Thembinkosi. If this were a film, they would now be at each other’s throats.
If this were a film, nobody would be standing in the wardrobe. Unbelievable.
“Did you tell anyone about it?”
“You.”
“Anyone else?”
“No, of course not.”
“Who could’ve known then?”
“Nobody.”
“Could someone have suspected? Gwen?”
“How? She hears us plan to murder her mother? We set the trap for her, and Gwen lets us do it and then comes to the house to grab the money out from under us?”
“And your mother-in-law herself?”
“She’s dead. She couldn’t have taken the money.” High Voice was growing more self-assured. Receding fear. Deep Voice wouldn’t take him out. At least, not immediately.
“But she might have told someone. My son-in-law says he’s in trouble, but I don’t believe him.”
“And someone followed her?”
“Why not?”
“And waits until she’s dead to take the money.”
“What did you actually tell her?”
“You know already.”
“I wasn’t there.”
“They’ve left again,” High Voice said. He began to pace up and down.
“What?” Silence.
“Oh! The dog and the people. They’re gone.” High Voice. “I told her that I didn’t know what to do. And I told her about the Czech.”
“So, the truth.”
“Yes, just not the amount. I exaggerated that. A little.”
“That was the plan. What did you tell her about the Czech?”
“The truth, that he’s going to kidnap Gwen, and then rape her and cut her into little pieces.”
“If he didn’t get his money back.”
“Yes. If he didn’t get his money back.”
73
Leaden legs. Moses turned back toward the street with the thought that he would never again run as long as he lived. There was no point to any of this here. What had he run away from in the first place? A poor white man who hadn’t accepted the political transition. A caretaker whose responsibility it was to repair faucets. A couple of security guards who didn’t understand the difference between democracy and dictatorship. They were stuck in jobs that had no real productive value as it was.
Pull yourself together, he admonished himself. Everyone was just doing their job, just trying to survive. Except for the white guy with the club. And then there were the cops. They were after him, too.
He didn’t want to run anymore.
Looked down the street to the right. Empty. Left. Empty.
How in the world was he supposed to get out of here?
One more glance to the right. Shit. The white man with the club. And he had already caught sight of him.
So to the left. A security car was now driving toward him. The same bakkie again.
Moses turned around and ran. Past Flower’s house to the wall, and then left down the hill. Toward the exit. However, a guard was standing in the yard a few houses down. With his back to him, yelling something or other. Had to have seen him.
Moses whipped back around, running back the way he’d come. Once again the wrong way. Away from the exit. Away from rescue. Away from Sandi. Was she on her way yet?
74
Ludelwa Tontsi was still standing next to the Central Alert car when the dog sniffed the threshold. She was thinking about her mother and what she had advised her. Better to have a badly paid job than none at all. And it was indeed badly paid. She received 2,200 rand for an entire month of work. Six days a week, twelve hours a day. After deducting the 300 rand for the shack in Duncan Village and the cost of the taxi trips to the headquarters, she barely had enough to pay for food. Bread, milk, and instant oatmeal for breakfast… And she could forget about a monthly visit to her family in Mnyameni. Those 150 kilometers also came at a price. That was why she had to sometimes ask her mother to send her money, so that she could pay for the trip out of her pension.