Free Mixed Blood by Roger Smith

“Is there anything else?”
    The fat cop seemed reluctant to leave. “No. Thanks.”
    As Burn closed the door, Barnard put out a hand and gripped it. The door was going nowhere. “Mr. Hill, what hospital is she in?”
    Burn studied the piggy eyes peering out at him from within the folds of fat.
    “She’s in Gardens Clinic.”
    “Maybe I can talk to the ambulance crew. They might have seen sv hYou have a good night now.” Barnard released the door and allowed Burn to close it.
    Burn breathed easily for the first time, free of Barnard’s stench and the weight of his own terror. The cop had traced the car to the gangsters. Did that mean he had found the bodies?
    Burn forced himself to calm down. He went back into the house and walked straight to the bottle of Scotch in the kitchen, poured himself a shot, and knocked it back neat. He felt like flattening the bottle, but he knew he couldn’t.
    He had planning to do.
    They were going to have to run again.

    Barnard called in a tow truck to impound the BMW; then he drove away from wealthy Cape Town down to the flatlands he knew so well.
    What Rikki Fortune and his friend Faried Adams had been doing up there on the mountain wasn’t difficult to imagine. They were predators. Always on the hunt. They had been down in Sea Point looking for a whore; then they had seen something as they cruised like shadows through that white suburb, something they desired. Animals like that, half out of their minds on drugs, never made plans. They acted on impulse. Raped. Murdered. Took what they wanted without thought.
    But where were they?
    Barnard drove to the Golden Spoon for his usual gatsby full house. It was dark by the time he walked out to his car, but the heat was still intense. He sat for a while, chewing like a hippo on a riverbank, washing the food down with the piss-yellow Double O.
    Barnard had touched base with the cops at Sea Point police station. No violent crimes, home invasions, or murders had been reported in the last twenty-four hours. And they knew nothing about this John Hill.
    Barnard thought about the American. There was something that worried him about the man, something he couldn’t name, something that nagged at him worse than the rash on his thighs.
    Hill was hiding something. He was sure of it.

    Benny Mongrel searched the black trash can and found a plastic container of potato salad. Next he found a half-eaten bar of Belgian chocolate. The greatest prize of all was a T-bone steak, cooked but uneaten.
    Tomorrow was garbage collection day for the road on the mountain, and a bin stood outside each house ready for the dawn truck. Benny Mongrel was always amazed at what these rich people threw away. Uneaten food still wrapped in plastic, brand-new clothes, electrical equipment. Last month he’d found a portable TV that worked perfectly and had swapped it with his landlord for rent.
    It was no wonder that squads of homeless people seeped from the doorways, gutters, and open fields, to sift through the trash cans of the privileged. Beatings from the police and rent-a-cops were a small price to pay for these rich pickings.
    Benny Mongrel put his spoils in a plastic bag and went back to the building site. He climbed the stairs to where Bessie lay with her gray muzzle between her paws, staring silently into the night. The fat cop’s boot had hurt Bessie. When Benny Mongrel had felt her ribs, the old dog had moad and licked his hand. She was tough. Like him. And like him, she wore the visible signs of abuse and ill treatment. There was a scar across her nose. When he stroked her, he felt bumps and lesions from old wounds. The kick from the cop’s boot was just more of the rough treatment she had come to expect from the world. Her ribs would heal. That much Benny Mongrel knew. Even so, it pained him that she had been hurt trying to protect him.
    Looking at the scarred old dog, Benny Mongrel saw himself.
    Benny Mongrel unfolded a scrap of housepainter’s canvas in front