“Detective. People do not live a happy life unless they make hard choices and stick with them. You do not serve the mafia and then you retire with a nice pension. If you are in, you are in for life.”

  “At least Sade is more intelligent. She is trying her best to get out, and she is doing a great job of pinning it all on you. She will go free if my estimation of her capabilities is correct. And you, Stefano, you are going to hit bottom so hard that forensics will have to use tweezers to pick your brains from the asphalt and put it in a plastic bag. Nice seeing you wearing a nice suit, enjoying an expensive meal. I’ll hold on to this image when you are gone. They are coming for you.

  Liam stood up and was ready to leave. But he spent another second fighting the tablecloth that somehow caught between his legs, and the white serviette that fell on the floor. Enough time for Stefano to recover from the shocking news that the mafia was coming after him.

  “Detective,” he called when Liam turned his back on him. “What do you mean by pinning it all on me?”

  Now you are scared. There’s the real meaning behind divide-and-conquer phrase. They had been out of contact for too long, so he was unaware of her latest undertakings. And he does not trust her.

  Liam worked out a smile that touched his eyes before he turned to face him. He took his seat and, using his gestures dramatically, he first looked around before he leaned forward as if to speak a secret that nobody else should hear.

  “Sade is working with Interpol to get herself a deal and find a way out of this money laundering business. She is a smart girl.” Liam winked. So inappropriate for the tense situation, but he couldn’t care less about the Italian’s feelings.

  “Where is she now?” asked Stefano, as if he could strangle her and get rid of her forever.

  “Police custody. Safe. And about to get for herself the deal of her life. Interpol asked for your head, too. How did you think I knew where you were? Interpol had been tailing you for months. But you already knew that didn’t you?” Liam laughed, the first real satisfactory laughter he allowed himself in a really long time.

  No wonder all branches of the organization were going underground. Someone had tipped them that Interpol was alert and searching. So, all their carriers, situated all around the globe, were asked to lie low, enjoy life and waste Interpol’s time and resources. They had enough to stay under radar for a while. But Liam could not afford years on this. He wanted to close this case and move on with his life. He had a young daughter to take care for God’s sake!

  56

  Sade’s hearing in court approached. Liam was back in Johannesburg for a week already, but he held back from visiting her to increase her anxiety and make her doubt herself. If she had a plan, he would make her swallow the bitter taste of failure before he would offer her a way out, the only escape she could have in exchange for her cooperation.

  “Bru, you are cruel. I have never known this part of you,” said Elon when they met for a drink or two and ended up both ridiculously drunk, to the point of crawling out of the bar and laughing until Liam peed on himself.

  “These cheats, the good-for-nothing tricksters with nothing but time and imagination in their toolbox, they turn you into a brute… I swear…” Liam was so drunk that he would spit the words out of his mouth all over Elon’s face, who would laugh like a caricature in a bad comedy. The bartender eye them disgusted, probably thinking: These drunkards, they are all the same.

  “Stefano gave in. He told you everything. Why do you need Sade for? Let the bitch rot in prison.”

  “Sade is the key to the organization. She knows them personally. Stefano knew only his contact, which is just another peon like him. If we want to end this, we need the head of the fish, not its tail.”

  “What makes you think Sade knows the head?”

  “The way she played everyone. The way she routed us to Zanzibar, away from the actual crime scene, yet she baited us to follow her when she could have kept quiet if she were truly guilty. This, bru, is a master gamer move.”

  Now the two drunken friends were taking a break from brushing all the walls in their path and set on a bench in the park. It was past midnight, and they didn’t feel like going home. The night was chilly, and the sky was spectacularly alight with stars and an overly large full moon.

  “I’m almost sorry she is not the true murderer. I would have liked to see her behind bars, the cheek of her,” said Elon. He had listened to his friend’s hypothesis. It made sense now, after putting together all the evidence and comparing it with the file gathered by Interpol.

  At sunrise, if they recovered from their intoxication, they would go together to where Sade was provisionary jailed to make a deal. But this time, they would do it under their terms and conditions. They expected full collaboration and a rich file of names. Sade will enter the witness protection during the trials and once they put everyone behind bars, she would get a new name and a new life. The supreme judge already signed the agreement if Sade will cooperate.

  “How do you think she got herself into such a tight situation that she needed to play such a long game?” asked Elon, watching the starry sky, more out of exhaustion than romanticism.

  “She had a hard life and got herself mixed with the wrong kind. They must have recruited her when she was poor and desperate; they usually go to the hopeless. Plus, you must admit, she is exceptionally skilled with smoke and mirrors. Finding out she had a twin and suddenly coming into money must have changed her condition, and she wanted out. They murdered her family in front of her and let her live a comfortable life as an incentive to never dream of getting out of the business. She is not stupid. She wants to live, so the only way for her is to put away for good all those that have her in their clench. And personally, I reckon she wants revenge for her family, too. At least for her twin, if she still holds her parents accountable for her rough life.”

  Sade was waiting patiently in the prison meeting room. She would show no fear or signs of anxiety, though she lost sleep over their quietness and absence long ago. Now she was summoned by the two hunting dogs one day before her trial.

  “Keeping well I see. Prison becomes you,” said the big man as he entered the meeting room. He was louder than he needed to be and, although he scrubbed himself clean that morning, he still reeked of alcohol. Sade could smell him from the entrance.

  Liam followed him, less energetic, poorly nursing a headache. The dark bags and the frog-like swollen eyes made him look sick and much older. Sade was hiding well her exhaustion and uneasiness as she split cold water all over her face when she was called out for the meeting. She had one last card to play.

  “Celebrating already?” said Sade. “And you didn’t even hear the judge passing the verdict. I might still surprise you.” She smiled in her attempt to enjoy the ruined condition of the two policemen. They probably still see her double.

  Elon pushed away the lamp from the table, disturbed by its light.

  “Take a break, clown. We had enough of circus as it is. Leave room for others to dance their piece,” said Elon in his rough morning voice, though it was past noon.

  He threw a file in front of her with no other words and waited for her to open it. Sade obeyed. She read the words on the paper.

  “It’s this what you wanted, isn’t it?” asked Elon.

  Sade swallowed, not to let emotions overwhelm her.

  “If I cooperate, do I go free? They will pass no charges in my name?” She wanted to check. You never know with the legal language.

  “You are absolved of all accusations known to date. If we discover that you’ve been part of any other illegal activities, we might still charge you with something.”

  “Why would you offer me this deal? You don’t seem to like me much, and I bet you would rather see me rot in prison,” she asked.

  “How well you know me, miss. I do prefer to see you rot in this shithole. But as things are, you have not committed such a horrible crime to be punished so drastically. Though toying with the Police it’s a crime in itself. But we will let that go. We are not resentful people.”

  “There will be no further negotiations,” said Liam. “Take it or leave it. We know you did not kill your parents and sister, and we also understand your actions until today were a cry for help. I would have preferred if you came to us to tell the complete story and spare us the embarrassment.”

  “Would you have believed me? Are you that thick that you don’t get it? They have connections with the police, too.”

  Elon and Liam clicked their tongues in annoyance. The girl was walking on a thin line. Elon was debating the possibility of taking the deal off the table and leaving. He would inform the judge that she didn’t wish to cooperate. “A case opened on the topic would have got me killed instantly, and then the accusation would have disappeared in the paper shredder. After all, you’ve arrested me for murdering my family, didn’t you?”

  “We applaud your wittiness. Now give us what we need to put the bad guys away,” said Elon. He felt nauseous and the fresh shaving was making his skin itchy. His mouth was dry, and he ran low on patience. Usually in control, the big man started drumming his heel on the floor. Both Liam and Sade watched him, then exchanging a quick glance between them, as if they could not believe the big man, once a monument of patience and control, had lost it.

  “Bru, how about you go and get us something to drink? I prep Sade here and by the time you come back, she will have written the list. After all, this is what she wanted all along. Didn’t you?”

  Sade smiled like a good little girl, somehow pleased with herself and the results of her strenuous work, but also happy to put at easy the big man that showed up intoxicated for the most important day of her life. This was the moment when she would reclaim her independence, and she needed calm and focus to make it right.

  Elon left the room. Liam went straight for answers he was looking for, anticipating the end of this dragging case.

  “How did you come to be part of this organization?” he asked.

  “The person you are looking for is my father.” There you go, she said it.

  Liam raised his eyebrows. He did not expect that. He knew it must be an adoptive father, because the biological one was buried in his front garden after someone cut his throat.

  Sade allowed a quick, condescending smile, but her eyes told a different story.

  “Simon saved me from the hospital where my parents abandon me to die. His own kid died at birth the same day, and he pitied me when he saw me alone and neglected in the hospital cradle.”

  “I don’t understand. You had such a rough time living in an orphanage and then mostly on the streets and among thugs.”

  “Yes, he was a busy man. No time to take care of a babe that needed to learn to survive. He sent me to the orphanage to get my three meals a day and play with kids my age, while he paid for my medical expenses. I was a really sick child. Nobody expected me to live. Not even him. Probably that’s why he didn’t want to create an intimate bond, in case I die, too.”

  “But he didn’t really abandon you in that orphanage, did he?”

  “You guessed it, Detective. The only quality he appreciated in me was my determination to live. Every time we met, he reminded me that he didn't like anything more about me than my surviving skills. He took me from the streets when I was kicked out of the orphanage and placed me in the hands of his affiliates at the money-making machines. I am who he turned me into.

  There were no tears left to cry, but Sade felt the knot blocking the words in her throat. She really hated her life, all her painful memories, the hunger for love she felt, the fear that sickened her to the point of vomiting almost every day for two years when she finally managed to shut out all her emotions and went with the flow.

  “You do not seem to be too grateful for his saving,” said Liam, observing her throat tensing to block the emotions threatening to burst out of her.

  “His saving means life-enslavement. He builds you tough like iron, or he tears you to pieces. For years, he’s been using me like a piece of soft meat that needed to go hard, and I bled for him. But I knew there was no escaping him.”

  “Have you ever considered taking your own life to get away from him?” To Liam, it seemed the only logical action for someone that was deeply trapped.

  “Not for a second. Dying would have meant admitting defeat and that he is better than me. He loved to remind me how he is better than anyone. Simon is a psychopath. He is 60 now, and he lived his entire life feeding on people’s weaknesses. I don’t think he remembers how many people he shattered, pushing them to the edge of insanity or even murdered.”

  And then it happened that she let it all go. Tears burst out to the surface, flooding her eyes. They ran so quickly down her cheek, so many of them, that Liam didn’t know how to react. He grabbed some tissues and offered them to her. Sade started crying with painful howling and she tried to mute some of them into her fists.

  Elon entered the room to see Sade shaking while covering her face, sobbing loudly and Liam, who was patiently waiting for the episode to pass. They exchanged some unspoken words before he set himself at the table.

  “There you go. Have some water.” Elon offered her a plastic bottle. “It will help you replaced the ones…” Liam elbowed him. “It will help to calm down.”

  He had brought some canned coffee for Liam and himself. He asked with his eyes: What the hell happened while I was gone? Liam shrugged.

  It took Sade long minutes to get a grip on her emotional outburst. She forgot how liberating crying felt. Slowly, a state of peacefulness descended over her. She looked at the two policemen and chuckled, seeing them so awkward and uncomfortable to watch her cry for the past quarter of an hour. Now she was crying and laughing at the same time, blowing her nose and drying her red eyes.

  “You should see your faces,” she said when her laughing fit passed, too.

  “You should see yours,” said Elon. “If I were a woman, I wouldn’t want to be seen like this.”

  Somehow, the atmosphere cleared.

  “It cannot be worse than your intoxicated, bloated ones. I can tell you’ve been drinking from a mile away.”

  “You are just jealous,” countered Elon.

  “All right. Now that we’ve insulted each other, let’s move from small talk to how we put these sons of their mothers in jail,” intervened Liam.

  Sade took up the pen and started writing. She had an A4 paper filled out front and back with names and some details she knew about them.

  “Brat is Simon’s right hand. He is doing most of the strategic placements and controls most of the intermediate companies. Dave oversees the network of people in each subsidiary. Mike is the boss-thug, he is the one that keeps everyone in check and scared for their lives.

  “Who killed your parents and sister? Was it him personally, or did he send his men?”

  “Simon did. He appeared out of the blue at my house. He said that important deeds are best done personally. I didn’t know what he meant by that until he drove me to my parents’ house and introduced me to them as their child left for dead and then he slit their throats in front of me. He even added at the end, No need to thank me. You just do what you do best, and nothing will happen to you. I always take care of my babes. He left me with my parents’ inheritance intact.”

  “Take it this way… you had our attention, and now you’ve got our full support,” said Liam.

  “Don’t wiggle your tails too soon. It is not easy to make such an organization collapse. And I might still die in the process. But I promised myself, and I owe it to my sister, that I would make this prick count his minutes in jail as I counted my miseries.

  Sade signed the legal papers that were making her the primary witness in an international money laundry case and entered her in the witness protection program. From now on, she had to forget who she was, use a new name, live a different life, and fight to stay alive. If any of Simon’s associates escaped (maybe those that she didn’t know), she would be on the run for life. She despised it already, but she knew she hated Simon and her present life more.

  They went through the details a couple of times, filling notes over papers with information. They even drew an org chart from head to toe for this beast.

  “We cannot transfer you to a safe house yet, as we do not want to tip your buddies that we are on them. We still have work to do to get a warrant for each one of the members. They will be arrested at the same time, so would not give them time to react. Then we will move you and start the witness protection program under special team surveillance. You might want to know that Stefano agreed to work with us and testify in court, and he, too, will be put in the witness protection program.”

  Sade sniggered.

  “That useless fraidy-cat. I helped him get out of his gambling debts and prevented him from going to jail, and now he gets the good stuff for a mite of information. What does he know?” said Sade.

  “You will be safe, and that it’s all that matters,” said Liam.

  Elon gathered all the papers and left the room first without too many civilities. Only Liam remained behind to check if they got everything.

  “Detective…” said Sade when they were alone.

  She knew he was a Captain now, but she was still melancholic for the times they first met, when she tried to get him on her side. They had been together on this for years now. She almost felt warm towards the policeman.

  Liam nodded in sign that he was listening.

  “You know this will not be enough to keep me safe. They will get to me, eventually. And when they do… you will let them kill me. They will never stop as long as I’m alive.”

  57

  The poet wrote:

  “The splendid thing

  about falling apart

  silently…

  is that

  you can start over

  as many times

  as you like.”

  ― Sanober Khan, A Thousand Flamingos