4
That beautiful, annoying American girl had it all fucking wrong, and Dmitri would show her. He was Bratva. He didn’t ask women out; he shoved them in his trunk.
—Abby Chuman, The Russian Mobster’s Innocent Tourist
After March had texted Phyllis to let her know that, against all odds, she still had an employer, we drove east on a deserted country road, passing a few houses and larger properties I assumed were ranches.
A rising migraine throbbed under my forehead in response to the stress of the past hours. My body was exhausted and at the same time acutely aware of the slightest stimuli: the night breeze blowing through our now nonexistent windshield—March had done some cleaning up—or the faint tang of my own sweat. When he saw me massage my temples and forcefully dig my thumbs into my skull, he fished a pack of pain pills out of the glove box and popped one, which he handed me. I swallowed it dry, for lack of any water to help it go down.
His eyes darted over to me. “Will you be all right? Do we need to stop?”
“No, I’m okay . . . Don’t worry about the car. I won’t throw up.”
“Island, I don’t care about the car.”
I slumped in my seat with a sigh. “You said the guys who attacked us were Lions. How did you know?” I sensed he was in no hurry to have this conversation. But we both needed it.
“Someone called me,” he admitted.
I remembered seeing him on the phone in the garden moments before the house had blown up. “Phyllis?”
“No. Dries.”
A bump on the road shook the pickup. The hood clanked loudly, as if to express a shock similar to mine. “He . . . Where is he?”
“Still in Venice. He called to warn me that there would be some cleaning up, and he requested my help.”
“But who . . . Why would anyone want to clean you up? It’s been more than a decade since you left the Lions, and they never went after you!”
“I’m not certain what’s going on, but it would seem that the plane bombing put Dries in a precarious position, and the brotherhood made a decision to cut their losses.”
The brotherhood? More like their commander, and the man my mother had tried to warn me against before her death—Dries’s elder brother, Anies, aka the sketchy uncle. Inside me, confusion gave way to a rush of anger. “It still doesn’t explain why you would pay for the attack.”
March turned left onto a narrow trail. Trees and tall grass flashed by, briefly outlined by the headlights. “When a high-ranking Lion is cleaned out of the brotherhood, his closest disciples will often be cut as well. Anyone whose loyalty might be questioned. It’s not just me. Dries has always entertained strong ties to his disciples. I can think of at least half a dozen men.”
“This is insane! You dumped him, you sided against him, you ruined his plans with the Cullinan, you destroyed his penthouse with a rocket, you killed all of his henchmen, you punched him in the face, you—”
He cleared his throat. “Yes, biscuit, I understand your point.”
“How can they be dumb enough to think you’d still be loyal to Dries?” March went silent, and I felt my throat tighten at the implications. “Did you agree to help him?”
“No,” he said, licking his lips, as if looking for his words. “But as much as I acknowledge our differences, I know what I owe him. Starting with your life, and mine, tonight.”
I rubbed my forehead with the heel of my palm. “You agreed to help him.”
“I did not. He simply gave me a contact. Someone who’ll help us leave the country safely.”
“Out of his good heart?”
“I didn’t expect that from him, but I think he wants you safe.”
I could believe that. While he didn’t exactly qualify for a Father of the Year Award, I knew Dries secretly entertained regrets over my mother’s death and all that could have been. It was in fact an odd, almost chilling hindsight that I could have been raised by him.
March, on the other hand, Dries regarded as some sort of lapdog he had trained. A dog he was proud of but still only a dog. And no matter how much he had accomplished on his own, March did feel the same, to some extent, as evidenced by his comment that he owed Dries somehow. So, if Dries was willing to help March out of the pool of crap he himself had dragged us into, it could only mean one thing: he wanted something from his favorite disciple.
“It’s a trap.” I sighed. “You know it’s a trap.”
“I don’t. What I do know is that the Lions are playing at home, and they have much more reach here than they do anywhere else. If Dries can help me protect you, I don’t care what it costs me.”
That’s when I felt really bad. No, that’s actually when I felt like shit because there he was proclaiming that he’d protect me at any cost like some fairytale knight, and I still hadn’t told him. Guilt filled me up, lapped at the back of my throat, making me nauseous.
I mentally went over the words again and again. My lips parted. “March . . . ”
“Yes? By the way, we’ve arrived.”
His announcement derailed the carefully crafted apology I’d been rehearsing. I checked the road ahead of us to see that we were driving toward a hangar. The doors were still open, illuminating a rusty façade on which a sign painted in bold black letters read Kromrivier Deluxe Garage. On each side of the doors, faded red and yellow logos encouraged customers to trust either Pegasus or Shell for their motor spirits. March parked his pickup in the courtyard. Before we'd even stepped out, a long whistle ricocheted in the quiet of the night, followed by an exaggerated groan. “Jesus fokken Christ, bra. What the fok is that?”
A lean form came out of the hangar, wiping his hands on baggy overalls. At first, all I could make out was a dark silhouette haloed by the warm glow coming from inside the hangar. As he staggered toward the truck, I made a note that the guy had a slight limp, but he sounded relatively young, no more than thirty.
March greeted the shadow with an apologetic shrug. “Good evening, Pieter. There was a slight incident.”
“Man, when my pants fell off at Friendly, that was an incident. This . . .”
That Pieter person took a step closer, and the light revealed a youthful face, large round eyes, and equally large ears. A mop of curly black hair served to half conceal those cute satellite dishes. I decided I liked this guy, maybe because I too had once performed a literal walk of shame, pantsless, in the aisles of a French supermarket, thanks to March. Pieter scuttled around the truck, feeling the deep bullet impacts on the doors, and stood on tiptoe to take a better look at the roof.
He eventually stepped back and dragged his hand across his face. “Fokken shame.”
“Shame,” March agreed with a small nod.
“I told you. I told you this would happen!” Pieter squeaked.
My heart faltered. He knew? About the Lions and everything?
Turned out he didn’t. Pieter’s rationale was a simpler one. He kicked one of the front wheels, causing the hubcap to fall off with a clang. “Japanese car!”
“Well, those bullets were really big,” I said, in defense of the magic pickup.
His face pinched. “That’d never happen with a Polo.”
No, indeed, I thought. Because a Polo would have been blown to smithereens by the very first round of fire. I kept my snark to myself though; the sheer number of Polos I had seen since our arrival in South Africa suggested that, much like Peppermint Crisp, they were serious business around here.
Past the initial shock of discovering the state of March’s truck, it seemed that a light bulb lit up under all that unruly hair. Pieter’s eyebrows arched until deep creases appeared on his forehead. “Who’s that?”
March cleared his throat. “Pieter, this is Island. Island, this is Pieter.” He motioned to the mechanic. “Pieter took over his father’s business and has done a remarkable job developing it.” He paused, and I held my breath. “Island”—we both knew what particular word hung in the air. Would he say it? Or maybe it was too soon. Or . . . —“Island is my girlfriend. She’s spending a few days with me here in Saint Francis.”
Forget about those proverbial butterflies in one’s stomach. The little assholes appeared to have migrated, and they were now fluttering everywhere in my body. Not only that, but I could tell my ears and cheeks were reddening out of control.
Pieter, on the other hand, seemed deflated by the news. “Ag, bummer. Always thought you’d stay single. No more braai nights?”
“I’m sure there’ll be opportunities,” March reassured him.
I looked back and forth between those two. So March did sometimes socialize like any other man his age. Knowing him, those barbecue nights with Pieter must have been pretty quiet—on his part, anyway. But they nonetheless qualified as bro dates. The notion brought me an odd sense of comfort on an otherwise disastrous day.
“So, came here to relax?” Pieter asked me, leading us inside the hangar, where an odd mix of decrepit furniture cohabited with brand-new equipment.
I grimaced. “Sort of.”
He pointed to a blue stuffed chair facing what I assumed to be his desk. “Take a seat. And don’t worry; I never ask.”
So, Pieter did understand that clients—or friends, for that matter—weren’t supposed to show up in the middle of the night driving a truck that was riddled with bullet holes. It wasn’t clear how much he knew about March’s former line of business, but that didn’t appear to bother him. I plopped myself in the chair’s well-worn cushions with a sigh, inhaling the delicious smell of gas permeating the garage. Meanwhile, Pieter and March had reached the other end of the hangar, where a few secondhand cars, Polos mostly, awaited a new owner.
Pieter reverently patted the side of a white one. “So here we have a Vivo GTI. Not even five hundred kilometers on the clock. Panoramic roof. Air conditioning. Front electric windows. Very nice.” He opened the rear door and caressed the back seat covering suggestively. “Lekker comfortabel.”
March tipped his head toward a lone brown SUV. “I’ll take this one. Phyllis will transfer you the money.”
The corners of Pieter’s lips fell. I shifted in my seat to take a better look at the logo on the large grille and had to clasp my hand over my mouth to stifle a snorting laugh. Honda.
“I’ll do the papers,” Pieter muttered. “But you’ll be dead by morning!” he added, pointing an accusing finger at the vehicle.
Pieter lived behind the hangar, in a trailer he’d bought from one of his cousins who lived in Port Elizabeth. The guy worked at Ocean Basket and smoked too much dagga because his girlfriend had dumped him—it was a long story, but the point of it was that Pieter now possessed the trailer, and whenever he traveled to Port Elizabeth, the cousin would get him vouchers for free fried seafood.
Anyway, while its interior was a long shot from March’s hygiene standards—which could explain why he spent less than five minutes inside to freshen up and change—the trailer was cool. It wasn’t huge, and over time, the white walls had turned various shades of yellow, but there was a sink, a shower stall, and tepid water. Also, Pieter had this antibacterial shower gel that promised ten times more protection and “odor control” in stressful situations. I needed that.
I came out smelling of “sandalwood and masculine power,” wearing a perfectly pressed white shirt March had retrieved for me from his magic suitcase, and felt overall very manly. Save for the yoga pants and red polka-dotted ballet flats, which might betray my gender to the most attentive observers. I trotted back to the hangar, where Pieter was busy filling out forms behind his desk.
Watching him print a small card and some kind of green diploma, both bearing the seal of the Republic of South Africa, I came to understand that what he had meant when saying “I’ll do the papers” was “I’ll forge the shit out of them.” March was finished loading any intact weapons into the SUV’s trunk and stood in the courtyard, drinking a coffee while his beer buddy now worked on affixing new plates on the vehicle. I joined him there, thinking of ways to free myself of the weight that had returned in my chest.
Upon seeing me, he quickly sipped the last drop of his coffee and threw the paper cup in a nearby trash can. “Do you feel better?”
“I guess. March, there’s something I have to tell you.”
His eyebrows drew together in a watchful expression, but he let me continue.
“Right before the helicopter, I was . . . I needed to know if Alex had anything to do with all this, Dries in the news, getting exposed like that.” I took a gulp of air. “I knew it might not be such a great idea, so I set up all those proxies so he wouldn’t be able to track me, and I used his Yaycupid address so the messages would be relayed by their servers. I’m sorry, I—”
“You contacted him.” For an instant, his defenses crashed down, shock and hurt plain for me to see in his wide eyes.
“Yes.”
“Behind my back.”
He might as well have reached inside my rib cage and squeezed my heart directly with those three little words. There was no mistaking the anger hardening his voice as the cold mask fell back in place on his face. Trust in exchange for control: that was the name of the game, and it was difficult for March to envision a relationship any other way.
In truth, he himself wasn’t above all reproach when it came to dissimulation, and deep down, he knew that he didn’t need a subservient girlfriend who would turn him from a control freak into a complete tyrant. That was the theory. The reality was that I had broken his trust and, in doing so, reminded him that, indeed, he could not control me at all times. Add to that some degree of jealousy and territoriality because no guy ever wants to see the ex back in the picture, and there was an easy recipe for disaster.
I searched his gaze pleadingly. “I’m really sorry. I knew if I asked, you’d say no.”
“And so you did it behind my back,” he repeated, looking straight past me.
A tiny “Yes” whistled out of my throat.
He crossed his arms. “So was it worth it? Did you perhaps extort some sort of decisive intel from him?”
Choosing to ignore the undercurrent of irony, I answered in a steady voice. “He didn’t say much. I think he was just playing with me.”
A flicker of concern softened his eyes. “Playing with you?”
“I thought I was safe and he could see the proxies relaying my connection. But then he asked if I was in Cape Saint Francis, and he told me that there would be a purge and that I should get away.” I shivered at the memory of that particular fear. Like standing right in front of the eye of Sauron.
“Go on,” March said, glancing at me before focusing back on the trail in an elaborate display of indifference.
“That’s when I saw the helicopter, and at first I thought . . . you know . . . it was like he could see me, and he knew what was going to happen.” I wrapped my arms around myself. “But it doesn’t make any sense, since you’re telling me those guys were Lions. I think he tried to freak me out, and it worked, because he’s good at it.”
He still wasn’t looking at me. There was a twitch in his jaw, as if his molars were grinding together. His eyes were set on the dark, flat line of the horizon where it met a bluish, starless sky. “They were coming from the east. Supposing they took off from a base in the Jeffreys Bay area, it would have taken them about twelve minutes to reach Saint Francis. Meaning they were on their way before you even messaged Mr. Morgan. That’s a spectacularly lucky guess on his part.”
I shook my head. “March, I honestly think he was trying to be creepy. I mean, he could have learned about your place somehow, and maybe he even suspected that the Lions would go after Dries’s disciples, but he couldn’t have known the exact time and location. It’s not like they take their phone to warn the CIA of those things, right?” I reasoned.
“It depends.”
My jaw went slack. “What is that supposed to mean?”
“Never mind. Mr. Morgan and his dubious sense of humor are the least of our problems right now.”
I straightened up. “So you won’t tell me anything?”
He looked at me at last—but only to flash me the cold-killer stare, complete with slanted eyes and all. “You’re not off of the hook yet. If our circumstances were any different, I’d put you in the trunk.”
“But you’ll just be mad at me instead,” I said softly.
“Not mad. Disappointed.”
I flinched. Time to try the big sad eyes. I looked up at him and flashed him my wounded-kitten look. All fuzz and heartbreak. “Will it help if I put myself in the trunk?”
“No.”
I followed him back to the hangar with a despondent sigh. When we entered Pieter’s office, he appeared to be done and ready to hand the SUV’s keys to their new owner. Before he could do so, a flashy green smartphone started rattling on his desk.
Pieter frowned at the caller ID but took the call nonetheless. “Thank you for calling Kromrivier Deluxe Garage. What’s broken?”
He listened to the voice on the other end of the line and stared at me, his brow slowly rising until it became clear it would take off soon. “Um, yeah . . . she”—God. That brow was reaching even higher. I didn’t even think it was physiologically possible—“she’s . . . here.”
And he handed me the phone.
Oooh, the look March sent my way. The way his nostrils flared. One-way ticket to the trunk!
“I have no idea what this is about; March, I swear, this time I didn’t do anything!”
Pieter’s eyebrows landed back, but his eyes narrowed in suspicion. “You don’t know any guy named Colin?”