Free Killer Country by Mike Nicol Page A

him a cigarette. As the lights changed, Mace’s cellphone rang. Pylon.
    ‘You coming in?’ Pylon wanted to know.
    ‘Wasn’t that the arrangement?’
    ‘I’m just asking.’
    ‘Man, what’s with the rattiness.’ Mace laughed. ‘Treasure on your case?’
    ‘Ah, just get here.’ Pylon disconnected.
    Sometimes Mace wondered who was pregnant: Pylon or Treasure.
    He cut down Wale past the cathedral and the Slave Lodge, the streets easy except for coach loads of tourists grouping to wander through the Company’s Gardens. Japanese strolling about like they weren’t taking pictures from the middle of a street. He gave one man a toot and smiled at the apologies. Yeah, yeah, have a nice day, pal.
    Up a deserted Plein Street back of parliament, the government quarter so quiet, Mace thought, you’d think there wasn’t one. Come to that, wasn’t much busier during a weekday either, even with parliament sitting. He turned into Dunkley Square and parked opposite their offices, a Victorian in the middle of a terrace.
    Almost midday, no one about. The late-night cafés still shut, windows of the houses and apartments curtained. Some tables outside Maria’s: the only customer, Pylon, at the only table under an umbrella.
    ‘Today some sort of holiday I forgot?’ said Mace, flopping into a chair opposite his partner. ‘The town’s still asleep.’
    ‘On a day like this at the beach,’ said Pylon. ‘Or in the shopping malls. What’s anybody want to be in town for?’
    Mace ordered a Coke float, stressing lots of ice cream in the Coke.
    Pylon snorted. ‘That’s a kiddy drink. You want a milkshake have a Dom Pedro. At least it’s whisky.’
    ‘Hey,’ said Mace, tapping his car keys on the table. ‘Look at me. I’m not your wife, savvy? This is your friend and business partner sitting here. Treasure’s riding you, I don’t want to know. Pregnant woman aren’t a joy.’ 
    ‘No kidding.’ Pylon called back the waiter and ordered himself a Dom Pedro with whisky not Kahlua. Looked across at Mace and shook his head. ‘That’s the part I don’t get: why this isn’t a happy thing? Why she’s not sweetness and light?
    ‘We’re in the Palms okay having breakfast. She likes the Palms. It’s off the street, inside, all the expensive home shops packed together. She can go feel the bed linen, stare at all that black wood shit from Bali, hey I don’t know, choose bathroom tiles, get people to show her a million colours of paint. For Treasure this is heaven. Pumla and me, we go along with it. I go along with it on account of Treasure’s a bit edgy over where I’ve been all morning. But that’s alright, I talked her through it.
    ‘So we order breakfast: eggs Florentine with the spinach garnish. You know it? Treasure’s best. She’s got a cappuccino, lots of froth. Everything’s humming. Out of the blue she says, we got to get the orphan child first before ours is born.
    ‘I’m what? That’s not how we planned it. A year later’s how we planned it. Let’s get over one baby before we take on the next. Because with the orphan she wants a baby. No pulling in a two- or three-year-old, definitely not anything older. Because Treasure’s theory is nurture beats nature. We disagree here, for me it’s in the genes. But for the sake of a happy home I go with nurture.
    ‘So now, starting Monday, we’re visiting the AIDS adoption centres. Or wherever the government’s hiding the kids. Except here’s a thing: Treasure doesn’t want a Zulu. They got Zulu babies stacked up five deep because that’s where the bug’s bitten hardest. Also there’re more Zulus than anyone else. But no we can’t have a Zulu. You’re going to tell me now about nurture and nature. The reason she doesn’t want a Zulu is that the males are bastards; the woman are like cows. Take any shit the men dish out. But no, hey, this is not racist. This is fact. Now, you tell me you can pick a Zulu from a Sotho when the kids lying there a week or