Mixed Blood by Roger Smith Page A

could she have done that? To her baby boy?
    Matt was calming down; the sobs were not as desperate. Susan blew his nose on a tissue. She pointed to something on the screen, the antics of a cartoon character, and Matt smiled. Then he laughed. Susan sat next to him, held him, until she saw that he was caught up in the swirl of color on the screen. Then she went out on the deck, where her husband stood with his back to her, staring out at the night.
    He didn’t see her, and she watched him for a few moments. He had always been her rock, the one thing in her life she could trust completely. Not anymore.
    “Jack.” He turned to her, his face catching the light from the house. The beaten look on his face aged him.
    “Okay,” she said.
    “Okay what?”
    “Let’s do it. Let’s go to New Zealand. Or wherever.”
    He was staring at her. “You’re serious?”
    “Yes. But I’m doing it for Matt and for her.” She put a hand to her belly.
    He came toward Susan and took her in his arms, her belly pressing up against him. She stared over his shoulder, out at the swollen yellow moon hanging like a bruised fruit over the ocean.
    “I’m sorry, baby,” he said. “I’m going to make it right. I promise.”
    More than anything, she wanted to believe him.

C HAPTER 10

    Why hadn’t he smacked the brown bitch in her filthy mouth?
    As Rudi Barnard left the Flats behind, drove the Toyota across the railway bridge to Goodwood, he puzzled over that half-breed slut, Carmen, and why he hadn’t he hit her. Normally he didn’t think twice about something like that. Disrespect or cross him, and you paid the price. He was confused by this aberration in his behavior.
    Did he really want to fuck her? No, he decided. It wasn’t that. He realized, relieved, that she was someone who would be of use to him sometime. And his intuition was that she had been beaten senseless so often by so many men that it meant nothing to her. In fact, he reckoned he would have more power over her if he didn’t hit her.
    Barnard smiled to himself in appreciation of his psychological insights. He knew women. Hell, he’d been married to one once, hadn’t he?
    Fucken bitch.
    On impulse Barnard stopped in at a cop bar on Voortrekker Road, a few blocks from his dingy apartment. The Station Bar had opened back in the days when men were left alone to do their drinking, women banished to the cocktail bar where a real man wouldn’t set foot.
    Although by law no woman could now be prevented from entering the Station Bar, few did. The bar was ugly, it stank, and it was filled with crude and violent men. It took a certain kind of woman to be drawn to this sort of company, and most of them were out on the street plying their trade.
    Barnard grabbed a stool. The barman, a bald and wrinkled man with skin the color of nicotine, shoved a bottle of pine nut Double O across to him. Barnard grunted his thanks and took a gulp.
    He didn’t come to the Station for alcohol or company. He was a teetotaler and a loner. Rather he came here to plug into the cop network; when mouths were loosened by booze, he often gleaned information that was to his advantage.
    He needed a few questions answered. The grapevine had been whispering to him, telling him stuff that woke him from his sleep, his hemorrhoids aching and the itch between his thighs burning like crazy.
    He watched a skinny guy with a potbelly and styled hair, dressed fifteen years too young, in conversation with a half-breed down at the other end of the bar. The half-breed nodded, laughed at something, chugged back his beer, and left.
    Barnard took his Double O and levered his fat onto the stool beside the snappy dresser. “Lotter.”
    Lotter looked at him with disinterest. “Barnard.”
    Waving at the barman who slumped like a dirty rag across the counter, Barnard pointed at Lotter’s empty glass. “Give him a drink.”
    “Whatever you want from me, the answer is no,” Lotter said.
    “Who says I want something?”