Dead at Daybreak

∨ Dead at Daybreak ∧

17

Superintendent Leonard “Rung” Viljoen was a living legend. He was also a living, walking denial of the medical fact that too many knockout blows in the boxing ring can cause permanent brain damage.

There were four photographs in his office at the South African Narcotics Bureau. The first showed Viljoen in a fighter’s pose, taken years ago, a young man with only slight tissue damage around the eyes and a minor defect in the shape of the nose. But what drew the eye was Viljoen’s massive muscles, a body trained to the highest point of physical fitness. In the other three photographs the young, muscled Viljoen lay flat on his back. In each one another boxer stood over Viljoen, his arms raised triumphantly above his head. The three joyful boxers were heavyweights Kallie Knoetze, Gerrie Coetzee, and Mike Schutte, all our great white hopes, in that sequence, from left to right.

This knockout gallery was known as “The Three Tenners,” Viljoen’s clever-for-a-boxer play on words, because all three fights were scheduled for ten rounds but in each one he heard the “Ten!” knockout announcement and was unable to beat the ten-minute margin in any of them.

Below the photos, behind a desk, sat a man whose face looked like a battlefield but whose body, at the age of fifty-four, was in the best possible physical condition. “To reach the top as a heavyweight, you have to climb the ladder to the top. I was lucky to have been a rung on that ladder for so many successful boxers” were the self-ridiculing words heard in police pubs throughout the country whenever Viljoen’s name came up. It was also the origin of his legendary nickname.

“I know you,” said Rung Viljoen when Van Heerden knocked on the door frame on Saturday morning.

He walked in and extended his hand.

“No, don’t tell me.” He pulled his large hand over his scarred face as if he wanted to wipe off cobwebs.

Van Heerden waited.

“I must just place the face…”

He didn’t want to be remembered.

“Do you box?”

“No, Superintendent.” Involuntarily his hand went to his eye.

“Call me Rung. I give up. Who are you?”

“Van Heerden.”

“Used to be with Murder and Robbery?”

“Yes, Superintendent.”

“Hang on a second, hang on. Silva, that fucker who shot Joubert’s wife. Weren’t we on the task team together?”

“That’s it.”

“Thought you looked familiar. What can I do for you, colleague?”

“I’m working with a legal firm now.” Manipulating the truth, trying to avoid the PI remarks. “We’re investigating a case for a client that goes back a number of years. Early eighties. Drugs could be involved. Rumor is, if you want to know something about drugs, you ask Rung Viljoen.”

“Ha!” said Viljoen. “Flattery. Always works. Sit down.”

Van Heerden pulled out the old civil service chair and sat down on the worn leather seat. “We suspect that a big transaction took place in ’eighty-two or -three in which American dollars were involved, Superintendent.”

“Rung.”

He nodded. “I’m afraid that’s about the extent of our information.”

Viljoen’s frown carved deep scar tracks next to his eyes. “What do you want from me?”

“Speculation. For argument’s sake, let’s say there was a big drug deal in 1982. Let’s say dollars were involved. Who, typically, would have been the players at that time? What would they have smuggled? If I dig around, where do I start digging?”

“Shit,” said Rung Viljoen, and dragged the broken-knuckled hand over his face again. “Nineteen eighty-two?”

“Somewhere about then.”

“American dollars?”

“Yes.”

“The dollars don’t mean a thing. It’s the currency of the trade, any place on earth. Tell me, are there Chinese involved? Taiwanese?”

“I don’t know.”

“But it’s possible?”

“The deceased in the case is a forty-two-year-old white man from Durbanville, an Afrikaner by the name of Johannes Jacobus Smit. It’s probably not his real name. The age is more or less correct.”

“The deceased? How did he become deceased?”

“One shot in the back of the head from an American M16 rifle.”

“When?”

“Thirtieth of September last year.”

“Mmmmm.”

Van Heerden waited.

“M16?”

“Yes.”

“Don’t know it.”

“Nougat O’Grady says it’s an American army assault rifle.”

“The Chinese prefer smaller stuff. But one never knows.”

“Where do the Chinese come into it?”

“In 1980 there were a few routes. Number one came from Thailand. Heroin, mainly, if we’re talking big money in dollars. Through India and Pakistan, Afghanistan occasionally, and then the Middle East, four, five different agents, to Europe. Number two was Central America, which had just started doing their thing, through the Gulf of Mexico to Texas and Florida. But if you’re talking about us, it was probably the other route. Possibly heroin from the Golden Triangle to Taiwan and the Far East. In those years the Taiwanese triads slowly but surely became the big suppliers in South Africa. But we’ve never been a large market. Too few people with enough money for drugs. If you ask me, it could’ve been an export transaction. Marijuana, perhaps. Or Mandrax, imported. Makes no difference what it was – the amounts couldn’t have been much larger than a million dollars.”

“Why?”

“We’re a very small fish in a very big ocean, Van Heerden. We’re at the ass end of the world, the dope desert. In comparison with the trade in the USA and Europe, we’re not even a wart on the ugly face of international drug sales. In the eighties we were even smaller.”

“This guy had a walk-in safe built – too small for missiles and too big for a few hundred thousand dollars in notes. He had to have something he wanted to keep in it…”

“In Durbanville?”

“In Durbanville.”

“Fooock.” Rung plaited his fingers behind his head, and his biceps swelled impressively. “What about diamonds?”

“I thought about that. He imported antique furniture from Namibia, so it would fit, but stones are too small.”

“But valuable. Lots of dollars.”

“Could be.”

“Durbanville feels more like stones to me. Drugs aren’t a Boer thing. But show a white Afrikaner a diamond…It’s in our genes.”

It was a good argument. He couldn’t deny it. But he didn’t want to change gears: the lack of sleep lay between him and new thought processes. He wanted to hang on to drugs, the packets of white powder that, in his imagination, lay on the shelves in the safe, neatly stacked, filling Jan Smit’s hiding place so tidily.

“Just presume for a moment that it was drugs. Who would’ve been the local players in those years?”

“Hell, Van Heerden…” Hand over the face, an odd, unconscious mannerism. “Sam Ling. The Fu brothers. Silva. It’s a long time ago.”

“Where can I find Sam Ling?”

Viljoen laughed, a phlegmy, rattling sound. “The life expectancy of those guys doesn’t exactly have insurance agents rushing for their forms. Ling, they say, was fed to the fish in the harbor. The Fu brothers were shot in a gang war in ’eighty-seven. And you know what happened to Silva. You’re looking for shadows. Everything has changed. It’s almost twenty years.”

“And if it’s stones? Who do I speak to?”

Viljoen smiled slowly. “You could try the detectives at Gold and Diamonds. But if I were you I’d pay the Horse a visit – if you can get past the gate, of course.”

“The Horse?”

“Don’t tell me you’ve never heard of Ronald van der Merwe?”

“I’ve been…somewhat out of circulation for the past few years.”

“Must have been, because there wasn’t a policeman south of the Orange River who didn’t gossip about Ronnie. And if you quote me, I’ll say you lied like a trouper.”

Van Heerden gave a quick nod.

Viljoen drew his palm over his face, slowly, from forehead to jaw. Van Heerden wondered whether he hoped to heal the damaged tissue. “Ronnie. Colorful. Big guy. Was at the Diamonds branch for years. Calls everyone ‘Horse.’ Always greets everyone with a ‘Hi, old horse.’ Likes big American sports cars. Drove a Trans Am while he was still a sergeant, and everyone wondered how he could afford it and there was always gossip, but his arrest record was good. Very good. Captain, later. And about two years ago Ronnie resigned and the news was that he’d bought a house at Sunset Beach, a castle with three garages and a high wall and electronic gates that open by remote control. And now he doesn’t know any policemen.”

Van Heerden said nothing.

“They said his ship had come in. All the way from Walvis Bay, if you know what I mean.”

Lonely?

Beautiful Natasha wants to listen

Call her now at

386-555-555

He drove from the city on the N1, then north on the N7, the sun breaking through cloud, the green of the wet Cape glowing in the bright light.

His head was dancing the rhythmless dance of the sleepless, thoughts jumping, unfocused, without depth. It was going to be a long day. A shallow tiredness pervaded his body. Why had he phoned the fucking number again? He knew the humiliation would scorch him, as it had before. Why had they pushed the fucking pamphlet under his windshield wiper? Another great lie, just one more great lie like all the other lies to extend and tighten the world’s web of deceit.

That first time. Lord, he had phoned the number with so much expectation, so much consuming loneliness because Natasha wants to listen and he had to speak to someone, he wanted to speak to someone, he wanted to tell someone, someone had to embrace him even if it was only with words, had to say, “You’re okay, Zet, you’re okay, Van Heerden,” but he wasn’t, he was weak, he was trash, he was as big a lie as Natasha and the rest of fuckin’ humankind.

He sighed.

And Johannes Jacobus Smit. What the fuck was his lie, his deception?

He knew his leap from one scrap of dollar-wrapping paper in a walk-in safe was very big. Too big. But why do you build such a safe? If you were a normal, law-abiding citizen. You might buy a small gun safe or a jewel safe. Law-abiding citizens didn’t bother with false identity documents. Smit-whatever-his-name-might-be was a man who wanted to hide a great deal. Who he was. And whatever the fuck was in the safe.

Not stones.

Stones are small.

Stones are hot. You get them and you sell them fast. You don’t amass them in a small town with a steel door.

Not drugs. Drugs weren’t a Boer game.

Not weapons. Weapons were too big.

Documents?

Dollars?

Documents.

What fucking kind of documents?

Secret documents.

Secret. God knows this country has enough secrets to fill a warehouse. Documents of death and torture, of chemical weapons and nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles and murder lists and secret operations. Documents of deceit. People deceiving one another on national and international levels. The Great Deceit. Important documents. Documents that would make people commit murder with an attack rifle and a blowtorch.

Documents…

But the dates of Smit’s new identity and the hiding of secrets didn’t work. If Smit had been Secret Service or BSB or MI or whatever unholy acronym it might have been, the nineties would have been a good time for a new identity.

Not the early eighties.

Documents?

An M16 and a blowtorch?

Not your standard “Kill a Whitey and Steal the Television Set.”

On the Modderdam interchange to Bothasig. Middle-class. Police suburb.

He remembered the route vaguely, found it easily. Mike de Villiers’s house. He stopped in the street, walked to the front door. The garden was simple, neat. Knocked at the front door, waited. Mike’s wife opened, didn’t recognize him, a wide, waddling body, dishcloth in her hand.

“Is Mike here, Mrs. de Villiers?”

Broad smile, a nod. “Yes, he’s busy at the back. Come in.” Put out her hand, a woman satisfied in her home.

“Are you well?”

“Yes, thank you.”

He followed her – the house was shining and neat and smelled of cleaning materials, laundry on the table – out of the back door.

Mike de Villiers stood in the backyard, screwdriver in his hand, next to the lawn mower, wearing his blue police overall, his bald head reflecting the sunlight. He looked up, saw Van Heerden, showed no emotion, as usual, shifted the screwdriver to his left hand, wiped the right hand on the overall, extended it.

“Captain…”

“No longer, Mike.”

“Superintendent?”

“I’m out of the Force, Mike.”

De Villiers merely nodded. It had never been his place to ask questions. Least of all of officers.

“Coffee?” Martha asked from the kitchen door.

Mike waited for Van Heerden. “That would be nice,” he said.

“Still at the armory, Mike?”

“Yes, Captain.” Old habits. The eyelids. Which blinked from the bottom up like a lizard’s. “Let’s sit down.” He put the screwdriver in the tool chest and walked to the white plastic furniture under the peppertree. Square and neat in the sunlight, each chair in its precise place.

“I’m working on a case, Mike.”

Eyelids blinked, waiting, as always, like years ago.

“M16.”

They sat.

“Assault rifle,” said Mike de Villiers. The eyes closed. How many years had it been since he saw it at the armory for the first time, since Nagel had told him, “I’m going to show you the biggest secret weapon in the Force,” and they had gone to the armory and looked for Mike de Villiers and fed requests for arms information into the man as if into a computer and stood and watched the wheels turning behind the closed eyes and the information coming out, precise and systematic. Sometimes here, in this house, Nagel, who made Martha laugh with his slim body and his deep voice and his charm and then the ritual, You’re our secret weapon, Mike, drawing on the knowledge and then leaving again, like traveling salesmen who came to quickly use a whore. He was always slightly uncomfortable, wondered what de Villiers thought, if he ever minded.

“The Smit case,” de Villiers said.

“You heard.”

An almost invisible nod.

“Did they speak to you?”

“No.” The bare word, hanging.

“It’s an American rifle, Mike.”

“Military. The rifle of their infantry since Vietnam. Good weapon. Up to nine hundred fifty rounds per minute on fully automatic. Light. From less than three kilograms to just under four. Different models. M16, M16A1, M16A2, M4 carbine, La France M16K submachine gun, 5.56 caliber, the whole lot. That’s what makes it so odd because it’s not popular round here. R1 and AK-47 use 7.62; ammunition is freely available.”

“Who would use it, Mike?”

De Villiers looked at him, eyes open now. Nagel had never asked him to speculate.

“How would I know, Captain?”

“Did you wonder?”

The eyes closed again. “Yes.”

“And what did you think, Mike?”

De Villiers hesitated for a long time, his eyes closed. Then he opened them again.

“It’s not a good weapon for housebreaking, Captain. It’s big, even if it’s light. It’s a weapon for the battlefield, for the swamps of the Far East and the deserts of the Middle East. It’s a weapon for killing outside, not inside. How do you hide it under your jacket in a suburb? It’s not a good weapon for close work, in a house, Captain. A revolver would’ve been better.”

“What’s your opinion, Mike?”

The eyes, the strange, hypnotic eyes closed again. “There are a few possibilities, Captain. You want to intimidate, people are scared of a large weapon. M16 is in every movie. Or it’s your only unregistered weapon and you don’t want to leave a trail. Or you’re an American. An American soldier. Or…”

Eyes open. He shook his head slightly from side to side, as if he wanted to leave it.

“Or?”

“I don’t know…”

“Tell me, Mike.”

“Mercenary, Captain. M16 is just as available on the black market in Europe as the AK. Mercenaries. Many of them like it. But…”

“But?”

“What would a mercenary be doing in Durbanville, Captain?”

Martha de Villiers came out with the coffee and somewhere a Karoo Prinia long-tailed tit’s clear song sounded in the sunlight.

♦

When he drove away, Mike and Martha de Villiers stood in front of the house, the buxom woman’s arm around her husband’s waist, a couple in Bothasig on a street with neat gardens and ugly concrete walls and children on bicycles and the low whine of lawn mowers using the sunlit gift of a winter morning, and he wondered why his life couldn’t have been like that, a woman and children and a small castle with its own little pub built on and a mongrel dog and a career and a home loan. That had been, somewhere in the past, a possibility.

What had driven him to take the wrong turns to nowhere, to seek the dead ends? The road signs had been so clear, so attractive.

Was that not what he wanted? he suddenly asked himself. Wife and children and a lawn mower?

Yes, he thought.

So fucking badly.