The Wall

12

The second bedroom wasn’t very big. One bed, barely large enough for two, with the headboard against the wall. Across from it, a built-in wardrobe in pale wood. A nightstand between the bed and window, a table and two chairs in the corner, near the door in which Thembinkosi was standing. Blue carpet. Cheap furnishings.

Nothing indicated that this room had been recently used. Except for the keyring sitting on the bed.

“Hey,” he heard Nozipho call. “Look at this.”

He glanced up from where he stood. Nozipho was standing there, clutching a bundle of money. She was having trouble not dropping the bills on the floor. A few of them had already slipped through her fingers. Thembinkosi liked what he saw.

“It’s kinda strange,” Nozipho declared as she opened the briefcase and stuffed the bills into it. “Who leaves this kind of cash just sitting around? I mean… so much of it.” She walked back into the kitchen. “It was stuck in one of the drawers,” she added.

Nozipho was right. Who used cash these days? Who paid with anything but a card at this point? Except for them, but they had a reason for it: they were stealing it. Thembinkosi didn’t really want to answer these questions right now.

“We need to hurry,” he said as he returned to the small bedroom. Out the window, he saw someone jog past. Pretty fast at that. A young black man.

What he’d just seen didn’t really count as jogging, Thembinkosi thought. The boy was running away from something.

An older white man now came running after him. Okay. Not from something. From him.

Stress, Thembinkosi thought. Stress wasn’t good in their line of work.

He turned back to the room and looked around one last time. If the money had been kept somewhere as open as a kitchen drawer, then he might not need to waste time on the usual hiding spots. Not to speak of the unusual ones. However, he wanted to look anyway.

As he stepped toward the wardrobe, he noticed a small suitcase that had been shoved under the bed. He pulled it out and unzipped it. Jeans, t-shirt, a red dress. No modellike measurements, nothing all that modern. Also, women’s underthings, nothing very sexy. A cosmetics bag. A guest, no longer young. At least fifty, he guessed. Probably older.

The wardrobe was completely empty. A thin layer of dust lay on the boards and the hangers. He rapped briefly on the inside walls. Nothing. Went through the room one more time. Ran his hand under the tabletop, without much hope of finding anything concealed there. His thoughts darted back to the little guest room in the house in Gonubie, where they had been last year. Carelessly stored boxes and a few tattered pillows sitting on top of them. Carefully orchestrated disorder. It was the pillows that had tipped him off. He’d immediately sensed that there was something worth getting there. And he’d been right. The family jewelry had been hidden in an old stuffed animal, a hippo. Not much, but valuable items, including two diamond rings. The stuff here was different. He shut the door behind him as he returned to the hallway.