Eighteen
Eskia crossed his room to look out the window at the still-rising sun. He hadn’t slept much. He never did, really. He had resigned himself to this a long time ago. His insomnia held the full weight of his guilt; the heft of his father’s sniper rifle.
He’d already spent three days at this hotel and would have to check out today. Routine made it easier to be found. To be marked. It made intelligence operatives careless. From following him, he knew the Venetian was Sunil’s favorite, so he decided on there.
Eskia cupped a mug of coffee in his hands. The room service delivery had not woken the sleeping Asia. He studied her sleeping form, sheets half off her. She had impossibly long legs; so long they made her torso seem short. And her hair was thick and worn in a crowning Afro. Flawless amber skin betrayed her biracial identity. Something a South African would spot easier than anyone else. He was somewhat surprised at the abandon with which she slept. He was irrationally angered by it. What right did she have to be so carefree?
Glancing over at the breakfast for two on the cart, Eskia wondered why he had bothered. He wasn’t that hungry, and while he didn’t typically frequent prostitutes, he was sure they didn’t expect breakfast the morning after. But this wasn’t just any hooker. This was Sunil’s special hooker.
He knew Sunil from college, and while he was the closest thing Eskia had to a friend then, their relationship had always been fraught.
Eskia came from Soweto royalty, an upper-middle-class family of Anglican ministers, doctors, and lawyers. People who lived in Orlando, the part of Soweto the locals sometimes called Beverly Hills; people who sat in the front pews at church on Sundays and sent their kids to private schools abroad; people who made up the cream of the ANC leadership.
Eskia’s parents were paying his way but Sunil was on scholarship, one rumored to be bestowed by the apartheid government. Because of that, ordinarily Eskia would never have befriended Sunil, but they were the only two blacks in their cohort and so an uneasy friendship developed between them, an alliance that affirmed each other’s humanity in the face of the crushing shame of apartheid. But Eskia perceived his need for affirmation as a weakness on his part and so he came to resent Sunil for it.
A resentment that festered into a deep hate when they both fell for Jan. But she chose Sunil, and Eskia’s ego couldn’t take the blow. That someone like Sunil, a township rat with no pedigree, could have taken Jan from him was too much, was unimaginable to him. Over time, Eskia realized that it wasn’t just his pride that was wounded. He came to love Jan and he burned with the fire of unrequited love.
When Sunil left for Europe on an internship, Jan fell apart. Eskia consoled her and a firm friendship and then a romantic relationship grew between them. Eskia struggled though. As a member of the ANC it was seen as a betrayal to date a white woman, not to mention that it was illegal under the apartheid government. But all through their relationship, all five years of it, what was hardest was the knowledge, though unspoken, that Jan still loved Sunil. And not even hurting Sunil’s mother made Eskia feel better. Then Jan disappeared in a raid and just like that, Eskia lost her.
He turned his gaze back on Asia and watched her breathe. He smiled cruelly. The nicer you treat a person, the more it hurts when you turn on them. That was a pleasure he knew well. Asia was stretching and he admired the tattoo on her arm as she flexed. It read: Trae Dhah.
Breakfast, she said with a smile, spotting the room service cart and the two place settings. She helped herself and dug in. Eskia watched the unbridled pleasure with which she ate and found himself lost in her delight.
Not hungry, she asked, pausing briefly.
He shook his head.
She smiled, shoved the last of her eggs into her mouth, and stood up, crossed to her clothes, and began to dress.
You can use the shower, he said.
Thank you, she said. Maybe next time.
As the door closed behind her, Eskia returned to the window. Sitting in this kind of meditation was a discipline he knew well. When he was a boy, his father, a former sharpshooter from the British Army, had been very active in the ANC’s armed wing. Many a Boer policeman had fallen to his skill.
He sometimes took Eskia with him. Together they would cross the vast desert of stubby grass and garbage that marked the divide between Soweto and Johannesburg. Keeping to sewers, culverts, and other places only the blacks knew about, they would travel for miles in the night, Eskia bearing the weight of his father’s Lee-Enfield rifle. By all expectations, a Lee-Enfield wouldn’t make a very good sniper’s weapon with its limited range, but the caliber was solid, and in the right hands even a boomerang was a deadly weapon. A relic of the First and Second World Wars, it should not have fired evenly. But Eskia’s father kept the rust away with oil and a leather rag and a high-caliber bullet. In his expert hand, that projectile could travel nearly a quarter of a mile to bury itself into the resolve of his chosen target.
At first light they would arrive on the edge of a leafy, tree-shaded suburb and, climbing a select tree, they would sit the whole day, unmoving, until at dusk, just before the abrupt curtain of night, Eskia’s father would take the rifle from his son, hold it steady, and, with the tender caress of a whisper, pull the ratchet back. He would wait for a long moment and breathe slow, then he would squeeze the trigger, and before the crack could echo and reveal their location, they would be down the tree, melting back into the depth of night. Eskia, carrying the heavy rifle, always struggled to keep up. But this one time he tarried and saw the target fall. A plump man in his forties with a shiny bald spot. He saw a child running down a garden path to meet him. And then he saw the spurt of blood obliterating the bald spot and darkening the face of the child. And then Eskia turned away and ran after his father in the dark, the weight of the rifle heavier than usual.
He turned back from the view of Vegas, put his coffee mug down with exaggerated care, and walked into the bathroom to shower. He had much to do.
Nineteen
Salazar tipped the last of his coffee onto a white shell, staining it brown, flecks of coffee grounds standing out like black growths. He kicked sand at the shell, then watched the sun come up over Lake Mead. He was always amazed that something man-made here in the middle of the desert could look so natural and blue. The tire marks from the night before were still visible.
Unable to sleep after signing the twins over to Dr. Singh, he had returned to the station, typed up his report, and then driven to Jake’s, an all-night diner off Fremont Street. His other favorite diner, right next door to the Gutenberg Museum on South Main, had gone out of business. Now it was a Chinese fast-food joint that closed at ten. When the Library Gentlemen’s Club and the Gun Store, on the other side of the museum, went out of business as well, he figured he should move on and so he’d migrated to this diner ten years ago.
He liked the old parts of Vegas, ever since he moved here as a teenager. Parts that were now seedy and decrepit. Things seemed more honest here, less beguiling than the Strip or the new developments spreading into the desert. Jake’s had been in the same place for more than forty years, and it seemed that the staff hadn’t changed in that time either. It was the only place in Vegas that didn’t have any slot machines or gambling of any kind. Just a simple menu and a loyal clientele of people often down on their luck. He watched an old homeless man carry his bulldog past the diner, pause, then come in.
Spare some change, he asked Salazar.
Why the fuck are you carrying your dog, Salazar asked.
He’s tired, the homeless man said.