Or should he wait until someone stopped to help him? Super idea. He was stuck between Abbotsford and Dorchester Heights, two suburbs where pretty much only whites lived. Sure, they’d be willing to stop to help a young black man.
Walking it was then. That was okay, too.
A white man appeared at the corner he had just rounded. Sturdy, but not stout. Shorts, t-shirt. Looked like a rugby referee. Better not to cross his path. Moses turned in the other direction. He needed to get out of here now and call Sandi. The gate would hopefully open automatically from the inside.
Somebody else was coming from the other direction. Shit, a guard. And another white man. A white man in a security uniform always meant trouble. White trash despair. He looked around. The referee was getting closer, his hand hidden behind his back. The thought that he should run flashed through Moses’ mind, he might have even winced a little. After a brief hesitation, the referee flinched back a step. He’d been waiting for something like this. Run or not run? Moses was in better shape than both of them. But where? Where could he run to escape? Did he really need to escape?
He could already make out the grin on the referee’s face. Focus. The guard was swinging a club in his hand. The referee now pulled his hand from behind his back. Wow! What was that? A pistol? There was no way he’d use that.
Both of them had slowed down. The referee was still grinning. Thin mustache over his upper lip. The guard looked very, very grim. Bristly short hair, a just-as bristly beard around his chin and mouth. Moses realized that his uniform wasn’t actually a uniform, just plain black clothing, shirt and shorts. Both of them would reach him in about twenty meters. There wasn’t much time for Moses to make a decision. Fifteen meters now, twelve, ten. Only a few steps remained between him and the two men. As if in agreement, both men slowed down even more. Moses wanted to run, but he hesitated. The men both came to a stop in unison. About five meters away from him, possibly less.
Why do I feel so numb? Moses wondered. He hadn’t done anything.
“Are you lost or something?” The referee. What was he dangling in his hand? Wasn’t a pistol, but what was it?
“You’re a long way from home, boy!” The one with the club.
“What should we do with you now?” The referee.
“Should we teach him a lesson?” The other man swung the club solidly into the palm of his other hand.
“Whoa, whoa…” Moses said, raising both hands in front of his chest as a sign that he meant no harm. “I just wanted to visit a friend. Where’s the problem?”
“Hm, a friend.” The club was now being tapped rhythmically against the other hand. Thud, thud, thud.
“There’s no way somebody like you has a friend in here.” The referee.
“Do you think he’s the one?” The club now gripped in both hands.
Moses had seen the thing the referee was holding in his hand only once before. It was a taser, operated by electrical shocks. Or something like that. Could knock you out. Or even kill you.
“Okay,” he said. “You win. What should I do?” He kept his hands up where they could see them.
“Look at that,” the referee said. “The boy knows how to behave himself.”
“Yes, as long as he sees no way out!” The one with the club. “Now get on your knees, hands behind your head.”
“Okay,” Moses said. “Right away.”
He tensed his muscles for a moment, braced one foot a few centimeters behind the other. Took a deep breath. And took off. Toward the wall, past one of the houses, and back in the direction from which he had come.
“Hey!” he heard behind him. Followed by the sound of the two men also beginning to run.
For one very brief moment, it occurred to him that he had just made a serious mistake. But what other choice did he have? Bastards.
Moses kept running.
10
Start with the drawers. Utensils in the first one. Nozipho examined it closely, anyway. People sometimes hid their stuff in the oddest places. Lifted up the utensil tray. Nothing. She noticed that the forks didn’t match the knives and the spoons were different from the other pieces. Mixed patterns.
In the next drawer, plastic. Salad servers and soup spoons. Scratched up. Nozipho looked around. She caught sight of plates and bowls through the glass cabinet doors.
Another old, colorful mishmash. These folks were definitely not rich.
However, wealth wasn’t one of her criteria. Access was. The open window, the door with a decrepit lock, the decoy instead of the real alarm system. Her morning job with the realtors helped with this. Organizing emails and mail. Sometimes she knew a week in advance where it might be worth taking a look.
The next drawer was empty. The fourth one, too. There were four more, one on top of the other, at the other end of the custom kitchen. She started at the floor. Empty. Then, tablecloths and napkins. Old and faded. She wouldn’t find anything here. The third was a junk drawer. Toothpicks, cleaning sponges, a pile of folded rags, two new and two half-burnt candles.
Nozipho ran her hand through the drawer. Wait, here was something. A few bills. From Mozambique, worthless. A ring. Perhaps gold. A pen. A heavy watch. Stuff you’d stick in here if you didn’t have a better place for it.
This is what it had looked like at their place when Thembinkosi lost his job. Too much to starve, too little to enjoy life. And the two girls had still been living at home back then. One of them about to graduate. And college was expensive.
When Thembinkosi had told her that as a teenager he’d spent two years breaking into houses, she hadn’t believed him at first. The alcohol. And when he had suggested starting back at that, she’d said: “You’re crazy!”
But by the following morning, she had asked what he had in mind. Completely sober again. They needed money.
Nozipho opened the last drawer.
Wow, she thought. These people weren’t all that poor after all.
11
Happiness still hadn’t shaken off the previous night’s chaos. Her daughter had managed to eat something that disagreed with her, causing her mother to start loudly spouting ever new complaints about food poisoning. To top it off, the baby got riled up by all the turmoil and couldn’t stop sobbing. As for Happiness, she had felt increasingly desperate because the hours she needed to sleep were slipping away.
Happiness was tired. Much too tired to be watching these monitors. Nothing ever happened anyway. And it was so hot.
In theory, her duties were quite easy. Six monitors for six gated communities. She was sitting in a small room behind the office out of which the management and sales activities for all six neighborhoods were run. There were varying numbers of cameras in each of these areas. Usually eight, but sometimes ten or twelve. And the pictures changed at ten-second intervals. If something happened, she could select a particular camera. A simple keyboard combination. She could also simultaneously watch four cameras on a single monitor. However, when that occurred, she couldn’t observe what was happening on the other monitors. She only did that if something really wasn’t right somewhere. Last week, she had split one of the computer’s monitors when she noticed that a car had been driving up and down the streets in a gated community in Beacon Bay. She couldn’t see who was sitting in the car, but she had figured out that it was a Golf. A new model. Golfs were popular among some tsotsis. After a while, the car had driven back to the entrance. The gate had opened automatically, and the episode had ended. Happiness had called Warren, the head of security for the company that managed the gated communities. He had printed out a picture of the car and then disappeared. Happiness didn’t know what he did with it.