Zoo City Read online

  The inspector's face is perfectly, studiedly neutral, like a 3-D rendering of a face waiting for an animator to pull the strings. 860 alligator. Watching her watch me gives me the opportunity to study her. She has a round face with cheeks like apples and baggy pouches under her eyes that look like they're settling in for the long haul. She wears her hair in braids tied back with a clip. Not exactly practical for ipoyisa, but then she's an inspector, not a patrol grunt. There is a tiny scar where she once had a nose piercing. 884 alligator. Maybe she still wears a diamanté stud off-duty. Maybe she has a whole secret life, a sideline in punk rock or a night-class PhD in Philosophy. 902 alligator.

  Her navy suit has a food smear on the lapel. I'd venture tomato sauce. 911 alligator. Maybe blood. Maybe she beat up another suspect in another grey room just before she came in here. 922 alligator. I'd feel her out for her lost things, but cops and police stations are all equipped with magic blockers. It's regulation infrasound. Low-frequency sound waves below the range of human hearing, but which still resonate in your body, the kind that scientists use to explain experiences of haunted houses or the divine, usually brought on by something as mundane as an extraction fan or the low notes of a church organ. 932 alligator. That was before the world changed. It's a fragile state – the world as we know it. All it takes is one Afghan warlord to show up with a Penguin in a bulletproof vest, and everything science and religion thought they knew goes right out the window. 948 alligator.

  Inspector Tshabalala leans across the table to pick up the ring, idly rolls it between her fingers. 953 alligator. She takes a breath. 961 alligator. Caves.

  "Hardly seems worth it," she says. Sloth startles with a hiccup, as if he'd just been dropping off to sleep, which is not unlikely. He sleeps around sixteen hours a day.

  "You think?" I'm annoyed that I have to clear my throat.

  "You could probably get a good price for it. R5000 if you had the certification. But let's assume you don't, which means you're looking at what, R800 max, at a pawnshop. You that hard up for cash, Zinzi?"

  She flicks the ring over her knuckles and back, the kind of cheap magic trick you might use to impress girls in high school.

  "I don't know how Mr Luditsky would feel about that."

  "Feel about what?"

  "Being pawned. Bad karma. He might haunt me." I incline my head at Sloth. "And I'm haunted enough already."

  "What are you talking about?"

  "The ring? It's made with dead guy. Do your homework, Inspector."

  She blinks, but just the once. "All right, so what were you planning to do with the ring?"

  "Return it. It was a job. Like I told your guys outside her building. Repeatedly."

  "Your fingerprints were all over the scene."

  "I was in her apartment two days ago. She made me tea. It was undrinkable. You going to tell me how she died?"

  "You tell me, Zinzi."

  Sloth grazes my shoulder with his teeth, which is his way of kicking me under the table. I sort of specialise in social faux pas.

  "All right," I say, causing Sloth to bite down on my shoulder hard. I shrug him away. "Let's see. She died on the scene. In her apartment. Gunshot?" I'm imagining a retro number with the words Vektor printed down the side, even though that's ridiculous. "Stabbing? Blunt object? Choked on a piece of stale biscotti?"

  Inspector Tshabalala flicks the ring, backwards, forwards, palms it. Then she reaches into her bag and places a brown cardboard police docket on the desk. After a moment, she flicks it open to reveal the photographs. She fans them out, hoping to get a reaction. "You tell me," she says again.

  There is a woolly sheepskin slipper lying in the passage by the front door. There is stripe of blood over the toe of the slipper that continues in an arc across the wall and a framed print of waterlilies.

  There is a bloody smear against the wall, as if someone had fallen against it and scraped along, using the wall for support.

  There is a black raincoat in the bathtub, a puddle of plastic and blood under the full blast of the shower. There are pink streaks down the bathroom sink.

  The display cabinet is overturned. There are drag marks in blood across the floor. Someone trying to crawl away.

  There is the shrapnel of china figurines everywhere. And I mean everywhere. A cherub's rosy buttock in the TV room. Little Bo Beep smiling blandly up from the kitchen tiles, decapitated, among the splintered remains of her little lamb.

  Mrs Luditsky is sitting on the floor, slumped against the couch, her legs splayed out in an A. Her head lolls backwards and to one side at an uncomfortable angle. If it weren't for the wrinkles and the wounds, she could be a sloppy drunk, a teenage girl at a house party after one alcopop too many. She is wearing a voluminous silk blouse soaked in blood. It gapes in the places where it has been sliced through, revealing a beige bra and bloody gashes. She is wearing one slipper. The toenails on her other foot are painted a dark plum. Her eyes are open, as cold and glossy as Little Bo Peep's. Her crème brûlée hairdo is half crushed against the arm of the couch.

  "I'm going to venture it wasn't stale biscotti," I say. Nor gunshot. Tshabalala exhales through her teeth and glances at the door.

  "That," she says, tapping the photograph, "is not your everyday burglary. Seventy-six stab wounds? That's personal."

  "Was anything taken?"

  "We're checking with her housekeeper. She's still in shock. Why? You got something else you want to hand over?"

  "The TV? The DVD player? Other jewellery?"

  "You're the one with the ring in your pocket," Inspector Tshabalala smirks.

  "I didn't do it," I say.

  She strings out the silence. 97 alligator. 99, 128. "It's not like we don't know what you're capable of, Zinzi," she says, finally. I lean back in my shitty grey plastic chair. I've heard this tune before and it's nothing but cheap muzak. She's reaching, which means she's got absolutely nothing.

  "That's unconstitutional, Inspector."

  "Save it for the animal rights people."

  "That's the SPCA."

  "What?"

  "The animal rights people. Dogs, cart-horses, cats, lab rats, neutering programmes. I know you didn't mean to say anything that could be construed as racist, inspector. Something that could go on your permanent record."

  "All I'm saying is that you've murdered before."

  "The court said accessory to."

  "That's not what the thing on your back says."

  "He's a Sloth."

  "He's guilt. You know how many people I've shot in eleven years on the force?"

  "Do I get a gold star if I guess right?"

  "Three. Non-fatal, all of them."

  "Maybe you should spend more time at target practice."

  "A good cop doesn't need to shoot to kill."

  "Is that what you are? A good cop?"

  She spreads her hands. "You see a furry companion at my side?"

  "Maybe your conscience is on the fritz. There have been studies: sociopaths, psychopaths–"

  "The difference between you and me?" she interrupts, the ring re-materialising in the crack of her fingers like a jack-in-the-box. "The Undertow isn't coming for me."

  She flicks the ring into her palm and replaces it neatly, exactly in the centre of the table. I let her have her moment. One alligator. Getting the last word is all about the timing. Two alligator.

  "Don't worry, Inspector," I say. "You've still got plenty of time to fuck up."

  By the time I get out of Rosebank police station, the bright and shiny coating on my day has started to peel off. The cops kept the ring, confiscated the R500 in my wallet as "evidence" and made me sign a hundred billion forms.

  The security cameras on Mrs Luditsky's building provided a clear record of my comings and goings. Arrived Saturday 11h03, signed in, departed 11h41. Arrived again this morning, 07h36. Departed in the back of a police van in plastic cuffs after a heated argument on the street: 08h19.

  But, really, it's thanks to my crimin
al record that they eventually had to let me go. Because they have my details on file.

  Ref: Zinzi Lelethu December #26841AJHB

  ID 7812290112070

  Animalled 14 October 2006

  (see Case SAPS900/14/10/2006 Rosebank cf: Murder of Thando December) Ability to trace lost objects.

  Which means that my story checks out. Although the charming Inspector Tshabalala still insists that Benoît comes down to sign an affidavit about my whereabouts at 06h32. That's when the security cameras mysteriously fritzed out and Mrs Luditsky's neighbours reported hearing screams, right before they rolled over to go back to sleep, figuring it was probably just a violent show on TV with the volume pumped up, because maybe the old lady was finally going deaf. Tshabalala told me that much before she chucked me back out on the street.

  People are such assholes.

  4.

  The Daily Truth 22 March 2011

  POLICE FILE

  Crime Watch with Mandlakazi Mabuso

  Mall Rats

  Yoh, mense. Another nightmare day in dream city. Killarney Mall gets hit by armed robbers on Friday, and yesterday the same gang hits Eastgate! No one got killed but believe you me, the shoppers are plenty shook-up by having okes with AKs storming around. The tsotsis hit a jewellery store and emptied the tills at Checkers before clearing out while mall security twiddled their thumbs. Okay, maybe understandable when witnesses report that the gangsters had a lion with them. Makes me wonder if we don't need a pass system for zoos after all!

  Jump over to Linden for a happy ending (for once). A young mom was hijacked on her way back from crèche yesterday, but the baddies took pity and dropped the baby off, still in his car-seat, by the traffic lights a couple of kays away. Ag voeitog. Even gangsters have a heart sometimes.

  But maybe not a nose. Over in Cyrildene, the cops found several million rands worth of perlemoen rotting in a garage. The okie who owned the place was bust when the neighbours complained about the reek of vrot sea snot that's supposed to be a potent aphrodisiac – and a protected species! Tell that to the Triads shipping them off by the rotting bucket-load to China, my china.

  And over in larney-ville Sandton-side, it turns out Bafana boy Kabelo Nongoloza is a good striker off the field as well as on. His long-time girlfriend and debutante, Queenie Mugudamani, laid charges of assault against the young soccer star on Tuesday and is sporting a nasty bruised and swollen face as Exhibit A. Sounds like time for another nose job for Queenie. Pity you can't get a makeover for your bad taste in men!

  5.

  People want to believe: you just have to feed them plausible constructs. The help-poor-widow-of-defunctgovernment-minister-get-$25-million-out-of-the-corruptcountry is so stale and overused that even my mother wouldn't fall for it. And I know from personal experience that my mother would fall for a lot. I brush the dusting of Mongoose fur and flea eggs off my laptop, and flick open the screen to see if the phish have been biting.

  I've become a master builder in the current affairs sympathy scam. A broken levee and an old lady with a flooded mansion, desperate to sell her priceless antiques cheap-cheap. A Chechnyan refugee fleeing the latest Russian pogroms with her family's diamonds in tow. A Somali pirate who has found Jesus and wants to trade in his rocket launcher and ransom millions for absolution.

  It's all topical. All rooted in the hard realities of the world. Ironic that Former Life I never watched the news. But then, lifestyle journalists don't have to. And normal people don't have to pay off their drug debts by writing scam letters for syndicates. Or hide their sideline from their lover, who would definitely not approve.

  There are 2,581 replies waiting. Not a bad hit rate out of the 49,812 that I sent out on Monday, not including the tens of thousands that bounced off spam filters. There are 1,906 "out of office" replies, which at least marks the email addresses as active, 14 irritated missives that range from "fuck you, scamfucks" to "pull the other one". Add

  292 kanji variations, 137 in French, 102 in German, 64 in Arabic, 48 in Spanish and 12 in Urdu, all of which I'll plug into my translation software later. This leaves six potentials, two responding with cautious interest and the rest with abject confusion. I forward them all on to Vuyo, who is my catcherman. If people would just read the damn email properly, they would have responded to him directly.

  And then there's an anomaly that chokes my auto-filter. Two stark sentences that read as either nonsense or poetry, or both.

  When you eat, you are eating things from planes. The plastic forks, they leave a mark on you.

  There is no link. No return address. No point to the message at all. It makes me nervous.

  There is also an email from the dentist, a friendly reminder that it's time for my six-month check-up, please contact Ms Pillay to make an appointment. I haven't been to a dentist since I went to jail three and a half years ago. This is code for "contact me immediately", which is worrying because I'm not due to report in until next week. I log in to Skype chat where Vuyo is already online. Probably talking to "clients" in other windows.

  >>Vuyo: Yes?

  He answers right away, curt as always. Vuyo is not his real name, of course. It's probably one of several not-hisreal-names that he uses in the course of business.

  I like to think of him hanging out in a huge sprawling Internet café adjoining a raucous street market in Accra or Lagos, kinda like a 419 sweatshop, but the truth is he's probably in a dingy apartment like this one, maybe even right next door. Flying solo, because it's all carefully decentralised.

  >>Kahlo999: Hey, hello. How are you? Got a very strange msg. No return address. About forks. I'll fwd it.

  >>Vuyo: No! U dont know what it is girl. Might b a virus. Might b bad muti.

  >>Kahlo999: Or a msg about cutlery.

  >>Vuyo: U dont know. Could b rival syndicate. Police. Click here.

  >>Kahlo999: What am I downloading? It's just, you know, I have very particular tastes in porn.

  >>Vuyo: Propriertary firewall 4 viruses spyware malware muti. And delete that thing.

  >>Kahlo999: So what's with the dental appointment, boss guy? I haven't been flossing enough?

  >>Vuyo: I need u 4 an interview. 2pm. Rand Club. Frances format. Clients want to meet her.

  I turn cold. Frances is a refugee in a camp in Côte d'Ivoire. Twenty-three years old. Suitably flirtatious if the moegoe on the other end of the line is a man, a good chaste Christian girl if it's a woman. More or less. Most characters are designed to be slightly flexible depending on the operator, although Frances is fairly one-dimensional. After the rebels attacked, she fled to safety, got stuck in the refugee camp, and now she can't access her father's fortune. Bog standard format. That is to say, not one of mine.

  >>Kahlo999: Sorry. Not in my contract.

  >>Vuyo: Not neg.

  >>Kahlo999: Let's talk remuneration.

  >>Vuyo: Will deduct it from ur total. Dont worry, Im keeping track.

  >>Kahlo999: It would be nice if I could keep track too. Not that I don't trust you.

  >>Vuyo: U forget who u dealing with girl.

  >>Kahlo999: My own personal knacker. The guys who bought the lame horse of my drug debt for cheap-cheap to turn it into glue.

  >>Vuyo: Lame horse? Ur horse is expensive.

  >>Kahlo999: Do you know how much racehorses go for? R150,000 is cheap at the price. So, here's the thing. Where do we stand you and I? What's my lame horse ass worth?

  >>Vuyo: R55,764.18.

  >>Kahlo999: Profit?

  >>Vuyo: Ha. No. U still owe us R94,235.82.

  >>Kahlo999: That's impossible. How many moegoes have I hooked for you?

  >>Vuyo: Is v. possible. U forget interest. Normally 45%, but u get employee discount. Only 34%. And it is not fish on the hook, it is the fish in the bucket that counts.

  >>Kahlo999: Fuck you, Vuyo.

  >>Vuyo: This deal will bring in 50 Titos. If u do well, it is worth 10% to u.

  >>Kahlo999: And if I don't?

  >>Vuyo: Of cou
rse u will do well. U R practically a pro. Ur dealer told us about all the stories u came with, crying about ur mama with cancer + ur dead granny + being mugged just when u were coming to pay for ur coke. This will b easy for u.

  >>Kahlo999: I mean, if I don't do it at all.

  >>Vuyo: I will have to add a penalty to ur total. 20% + usual interest. So that is ... let me work it out.

  >>Kahlo999: I got it, thanks.

  >>Vuyo: 2pm at the Rand Club. Dress nice. But not 2nice.

  >>Kahlo999: Refugee chic.

  >>Vuyo: Good girl. BTW ur new format – the coltan – its doing well. Head office likes it.

  >>Kahlo999: What can I say? I'm all about the job satisfaction.

  >>Vuyo: Cheer up girl. Greed is a bad thing. They deserve it.