Frederick Ramsay_Botswana Mystery 01 Page 11

  Bobby had no idea what she was talking about, but the sight of the pointed spear point triggered something in his brain. What that might be did not register in its currently anesthetized state, but it would later.

  “Do they have more of those spear things?”

  “I think so. You gotta be quick if you want one, though. Travis and that engineer guy, what’s his name, were looking at them when I left.”

  “I think his name is Polanski or something. He’s, you know, Polish, maybe. I guess one spear is enough for us. You think you’ll be able to get it back in the country?”

  “Hey, it’s, like, a private plane. If the pilot, you know, don’t object, who’s to know.”

  “What are you going to do with it?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe I’ll hang it on the wall next to the Chinese lion mask we picked up in San Francisco. I could use it like a letter opener.”

  “When did you start reading letters? None of your ditzy pals know how to write.”

  “You are, like, so not right. Desiree writes poems and stuff all the time. And there’s the bills I gotta look at every month.”

  Brenda removed and folded her safari outfit and put it away in the dresser. The soft breeze from the overhead fan felt good on her skin. It was time to find out what Bobby had been up to with Leo, and that meant she had to be quick. One more beer and lover boy would not be able to perform, and she needed him pliable. She perched on the bed, batted her eyes, and smiled.

  Bobby passed out.

  ***

  The game cruise boat was configured so that nine passengers could sit three across on the thwarts and the guide sat in the stern. Neither Leo nor Bobby had made it. Bobby because he was still asleep when the time came to leave, and Leo begged off.

  The guide took them out in the river and headed upstream toward Sedudu Island. Brenda was fascinated. She’d seen movies and once, when she was dating a guy from Northwestern—well, she called it dating, he might have had different descriptor—she’d watched a lot of PBS’ Nature. But to see the real thing…

  “Wow, look at those hippos, will you!” She unslung her camera from her shoulder and began snapping pictures. She turned to the guide managing the boat’s outboard motor. “Can you, like, swim with them?”

  “Excuse me, you wish to swim with the hippos?”

  “Yeah, you know, like in Florida, you can do it with the dolphins.”

  “Oh, no, Miss. You see that old fellah there, that one is the bull and very protective of his territory and his ladies.” The hippo in question opened his jaws wide to display a set of tusks and a pink maw that was nothing short of spectacular. “If he get you in that mouth, he would snap you in half.”

  She’d never imagined hippopotami could be dangerous. She thought of them like panda bears. Big, only not as cute.

  “That animal is not even bothered by the crocodile, you see. Now if you went swimming and managed to stay out of his area, then the crocodiles would find you; that is, if the tiger fish didn’t get you first. No, no. Swimming in African rivers is not a thing you can do.” He gunned the outboard motor to move the boat out of the hippos’ range as the bull began to move toward them with a less than friendly look in its eyes. They cruised along the shore of the island. The guide pointed out the impala, gazelles, and elephants. The latter were hard to miss. There were two basking crocodiles on the Namibian shore that seemed uninterested in their presence. Brenda took their picture as well.

  She turned to the passenger next to her. “You’re the engineer guy that flew up on the plane with us. I know who you are, you’re Polanski, or something, right?”

  “Guilty as charged. Bart Polanski, right. That’s me. And you are Brenda Starr.”

  “How’d you know that? I used to be Starr, but only now I’m, like, Mrs. Brenda Griswold.”

  “Congratulations.”

  Polanski seemed to be having difficulty keeping his eyes on her face, probably because her safari skirt had not been designed for sitting on the thwart of a boat.

  “Yeah. So, what brings you up here?”

  “Mr. Parizzi asked me to accompany him. We have some matters to discuss.”

  “Oh, now I got you. You’re the Reilly grandson, aren’t you? Yeah, Travis sort of needs you. Me, too. Without us he’s crapola. Am I right?”

  Polanski glanced nervously at Travis who sat three seats away.

  “Probably ought to cool that, Mrs. Brenda Griswold formerly Starr. But, hey, if you’d like to have a drink with me later, maybe we could, you know, compare notes.”

  “Okay, but only if you think you can manage a conversation without staring down the front of my blouse.”

  Polanski blushed and backed off. She turned her attention back to the guide.

  “Sir, how did those animals get out to the island?”

  The guide smiled, displaying a set of the whitest, straightest teeth Brenda had ever seen.

  “They swam, Miss.”

  “Aren’t they afraid of the crocodiles and the…you said, tiger fish?”

  “Oh, yes.”

  “So, what happens if, say, a crocodile catches them?”

  “Then they become that croc’s dinner.”

  “Really? So, you don’t feed these animals?”

  “Not unless we get careless.”

  “Then they, like, eat each other, you mean?”

  “Oh, yes. Some are predators, some are prey, and once in a while, one of them will be both.” He laughed, flashing those wonderful teeth again and added, “In this way they are like people, you see?” He turned the boat back downstream toward the lodge.

  “Please understand, Miss, the bush is not a zoo and this is not one of your famous theme parks. These are wild animals living just as they have done since God put them here. We must observe and admire them. And stay out of their way.”

  CHAPTER 24

  Bobby had been sufficiently awake, if not exactly alert, to join the game drive into the Chobe National Park the next morning. Brenda noticed that Leo managed to appear as well. She thought he looked really dorky in his wingtips. The golf shirt with the logo of a Palm Springs club on the front amounted to the only gesture he seemed to have made to the informality of the occasion. She drew what she interpreted as admiring looks for her safari outfit from the people waiting to board the vehicle. She’d added a leopard print scarf to the ensemble. After Polanski’s misdirected ogling the night before, she figured she should do something about the cleavage. The truck, with its passengers packed three and four across in four tiers of forward-facing benches, rumbled out of Kasane to the park gate. The guide/driver dismounted and visited the building at the entrance, she guessed to pay their fees. She took a picture.

  The next hour and a half was spent moving slowly through the bush. The driver rarely shifted from low gear. There were plenty of hoofed beasts to be seen. She tried to make a list of the variety but soon lost track. Bobby was no help. She asked him repeatedly to spell things like lechwe and he made a botch of it. An English couple made a nuisance of themselves asking the guide to stop for, like, every freaking bird in the world. And then they had to take its picture. Brenda wasn’t into birds.

  The elephants were plentiful and really big. One juvenile followed them for a while trumpeting and wagging its ears. Brenda took a dozen pictures of it. The English just laughed at it. What was up with them?

  “Hey, sir,” she shouted over the grinding of the engine, “are we going to see any lions?”

  “I hope so, yes. We are going to the place where they are often found. There is a pride that has its territory a kilometer or two from here. If they haven’t moved away we should find them.”

  Twenty minutes later the truck rounded a clump of bushes and stopped. A half-dozen lions lolled on the ground like so many sleeping pussycats.

  “This pride, you see has a new alpha male. Two weeks ago the old lion was driven off by this younger one that you can see over there beyond the termite hill.” He pointed in the general direction
of a tall pillar of dirt and sure enough the maned head of a male lion stared back at them. “We called the old one Sekoa because we think he was sick. Sekoa is our word for invalid, yes, a sick person? He was not so good and then this young fellah came along and send him away.”

  One of the lionesses rolled over on its back as if waiting for a belly rub. Brenda started to climb down to take its picture.

  “Do not move,” the guide barked.

  “I was only going to take a picture. They’re okay.”

  One large female rolled into a crouch, set her back legs, her eyes riveted on Brenda’s dangling leg.

  The guide quickly maneuvered the truck to put Brenda, who hung on to the side, away from the lions and out of their line of sight. The lioness relaxed.

  “Hey, what was that all about?”

  “The lady lion was looking to grab you, Miss. You must not leave the vehicle. I told you before, as long as you stay in this vehicle, she will not bother. The lion sees us as bigger than they are. But, if you walk away from the truck, you will be on their dinner plate before you can say your prayers.”

  Brenda sat back in her seat and endured the hard stares of the rest of the group. Two more trucks filled with tourists arrived. The lions barely acknowledged their presence. One smaller vehicle, which looked like the old SUV she’d seen Leo drive off in the day before, pulled up close beside them and on the side away from the lions. Leo muttered something to the guide, who nodded, and then alit and stepped quickly into the other car. One lion lifted its head and seemed aware of the exchange and then it closed its eyes again.

  “What was that all about?” She asked Bobby.

  “What?”

  “Leo just got out and went into the car next to us. The guide just gave me hell for trying to jump down for a picture and then Leo just hops out and disappears.”

  “I guess he has his reasons. That’s the Russian in there with him. I wonder who those other guys are.”

  Travis, she noticed, had his eyes locked on the SUV as well. Brenda took a picture.

  When the clicking and whirring of cameras abated, indicating everyone had their fill of lions, the guide put the truck in gear. He looked toward the odd SUV and Leo, who waved, and they drove off without him.

  “We will go toward the river now and see if the giraffe are waiting for us there today,” he announced.

  “You really think they wait for this truck?”

  Bobby gave her a look.

  “Well, they might. You don’t know everything. I mean the pigeons in the park know when that old lady with the bread crumbs comes every afternoon. Animals aren’t so dumb, you know.”

  “Right. Smart enough to stay in their seats rather than be eaten. Jesus, Brenda, what were you thinking?”

  “Shut up, Mr. I’m-no-genius-either.”

  She turned and took another picture of the SUV, this time with the zoom all the way out.

  ***

  “Did that woman take our picture?”

  “Probably, why?”

  “There can be no record of this meeting, Mr. Painter. We agreed with Yuri to see you but it cannot be known.”

  “No mathata,” Greshenko said. “She is related to Mr. Painter. He will see to it that there is no picture.”

  “There are no police here, I take it. It is the police you were worried about. Is that not correct?”

  “You do not know if there were police or not.”

  Leo cleared his throat. “The guide is temporarily in my employ. He assured me that the only passengers on the truck were tourists from the hotel. Rest easy. Now can we discuss a meeting with Botlhokwa?”

  “Ah, as to that. Rra Botlhokwa asks if there is any remuneration in the meeting.”

  “He wants to know what’s in it for him, is that the drift?”

  “Drift? Ah, yes, I understand. Yes, that is the question.”

  “If he will give me an hour of his time, he will discover if there is something in it for him or not. We are not talking about a little over-the-border smuggling of proscribed substances. This will be a legitimate undertaking that he might find beneficial to his other enterprises.”

  The truck drove back the way it came. Leo would miss seeing the family of giraffe.

  CHAPTER 25

  Mma Santos tended a herd of goats. They represented her wealth. Her husband died in a mine accident in Kimberly many years before, when she was still a young girl. She depended on her goats and the support of her village to survive. Her children had fled south to the capitol. One son died of HIV/AIDS, another in an automobile accident, and she had not heard from either daughter in two years. She did not know if they were alive or dead. She grieved for them as if they were.

  Her goats replaced them. They provided milk which she sold to her neighbors and she used to make cheese. She bartered kids, milk, and cheese for the remainder of the things she needed to live. She owned nearly a dozen, more or less. When the kids arrived the herd grew, of course. She kept only the females, her girls, she called them. The boys, the males, she sold to the butchery as soon as they were weaned except, of course, the old ram, which she would keep as long as he could do his business. When that stopped, she would trade with a neighbor for a new male and send the Old Man, as she called him, to the abattoir with his most recent off-spring.

  She gave names to her girls. She would look between their eyes and a name would come to her. She learned this method from her grandmother, who maintained she, in turn, had learned it from hers. Her friends said she shouldn’t name them, as it would make it difficult for her to sell them later. They were right. Mma Santos had no close friends other than her goats. Her favorite she called Sesi, which means sister. She would have long conversations with Sesi, conversations she would have had with her own children had they been available.

  When the LADA tore around the corner on its way from Kazungula to Kasane, scattering her goats in every direction, and ran over Sesi, she was beside herself. When her sons had died, they were far from her, away in Gaborone, and their deaths, as painful as they were, did not tear at her heart as did this last one. Sesi was her friend, her companion, her constant comfort. She tore her hair and wailed. The SUV skidded to a stop. She heard loud voices coming from the vehicle. Her English wasn’t good and she could only make sense of a few words. The man on the passenger’s side seemed angry. The other man sounded like he wished to explain something. The first one yelled and tried to move again. Mma Santos circled the vehicle and stood in front, her hands on her hips. She wanted to see the man who murdered Sesi. A man, not a motswana, leaned out of the right window and apologized to her for her loss in strangely accented Setswana. He begged her forgiveness. Before he could finish, the other man, on what she took to be the passenger’s side, pulled out a fat wallet and threw some bills at her. The gears racketed and the car lurched forward, swerved around her, and, kicking gravel on Mma Santo’s legs, roared away.

  She picked up the bills and stared at them. They were not pula. The denominations were large, she saw, but she could not read the writing on the paper. She stuffed the money in her blouse and went to gather the broken carcass of Sesi and her other goats. She would take them back to the kraal early and mourn her loss.

  “Tomorrow,” she muttered, “I will see the ngaka, the witch doctor. He will know what to do.”

  ***

  “Bad move, there, Mr. Painter,” Greshenko said.

  “What kind of crazy country lets goats wander all over the road? That woman should have to keep them fenced.”

  “People graze their livestock in the open. It is customary. Even if the government wanted them not to, it would take more than a law to make them stop. People learn to drive ‘cattle conscious’ here. Besides, they would tell you, the goats owned the road first. They grazed on that grass when the road was no more than a path or an elephant walk. The natives believe the cattle have rights. And so does the government. The people are only responsible for keeping their livestock fenced in after dark.”

&
nbsp; “Idiots. How in hell do these people think they’ll get to tomorrow if they keep this up? Goats with rights? There is wealth here for anyone smart enough to see it, but they won’t if they put goats’ rights on the top of their list.”

  “Nevertheless, what you just did will get back to our decision-makers, and they won’t like it.”

  “Then we’ll spread some money around, offer an equity share for a few of them, and that should settle it. Besides, I left a year’s wages with that woman. She should thank me.”

  Greshenko shook his head. Their project didn’t appear that easy to move in the first place. Now…a step back. But it was Painter’s money and as long as he paid, the work will go on. The meeting with Rra Botlhokwa had been cordial, but it didn’t end with any commitments on his part. His help with the purchase remained at best, a distant maybe. And, of course, any move into the game park, they said, was out of the question. Painter had slapped the table at this news.

  “But there is a lodge out there that is privately owned,” he’d complained. “Why them and not us?”

  “They were allowed into the game park because the tourism board wished it. There were villages in the park once, as well. The people of those villages were moved out, as well, and there are some private holdings along the river. But no new things can be added without the appropriate Ministry approval.”

  “We’ll buy the Chobe Game Lodge, then.”

  “Not for sale, and if it were, you can bet the government would exercise a right of first refusal on it.”

  “Then why aren’t we talking to the ministry in charge of this business?”

  Greshenko looked away, his eyes narrowed, which only annoyed Painter more. Used to getting his own way and used to greasing the skids of any slow-to-move project with infusions of cash, both above and below the table, he’d left the meeting visibly irritated—at Greshenko and with the movers and shakers in the north country.