The Death of Rex Nhongo Read Free

gone. Surely the man was too blazed to remember his face or the name of his cab. He just had to play it cool.
    The man slammed the rear door. Patson watched the girl tottering towards the Belle View. There was nothing less glamorous than high heels in Harare dirt. He recalled a time in this very place when he’d seen a prostitute stop and peel a used condom from her stiletto.
    Patson had his fingers on the key, but he resisted the temptation to turn it. Instead, he checked the back seat. The man had left his briefcase. He hooted the horn. The man turned and Patson buzzed down the passenger window a crack. He said, “Your briefcase.”
    What followed happened too fast for Patson to order it later in his mind. He remembered the girl disappearing into the shadows, the distress of the man’s breathing as he reached across the back seat, the sudden awareness that they were not alone, the two men in military fatigues who emerged from the night.
    He couldn’t tell you who spoke first. Presumably it must have been one of the off-duty soldiers, who thought they’d found a way to a fast buck. He’d heard the rumors of this kind of shakedown from fellow drivers, but until tonight they had been just rumors. He heard, “What do you think you’re doing, fat man?” He heard, “Who are you talking to?” He heard, “You think we won’t fuck you up?” He heard, “Who do you think you are talking to?” He heard his passenger scrabble in his briefcase, then the gunshots stopped him hearing anything. He saw the two soldiers flee. He saw the man’s face in his rearview mirror. He saw the man mouth the word, “Drive.” So he did.
    He drove into town. He dropped the man at the Jameson Hotel. Before the man got out, he touched Patson’s shoulder and said, “What’s your name?”
    “Moyo,” Patson lied. “James Moyo.”
    “Let me take your number, Moyo,” the man said.
    Patson gave him a fake number and watched him key it into his phone. “I am Mr. Mandiveyi,” the man said, and pressed “call.”
    Patson pretended to answer. “I’ve got it,” he said. He hoped the man was too drunk to notice, and he was.
    “You’re a good man, Moyo,” Mandiveyi said. “I will call you.”
    Patson watched his passenger stumble into the Jameson public bar, his briefcase bouncing against his knee.
    He went straight home. He’d had enough for the night. He was back in Sunningdale before ten. He told Fadzai what had happened. Her brother Gilbert was there too. Gilbert said, “You’re sure the guy was a Cee-ten? How do you know he was a Cee-ten?”
    Patson considered his brother-in-law. Gilbert was lately arrived from the family home in Mubayira and he used the urban slang for secret police with affected ease. But his question was ridiculous: Patson had picked up a man from the offices of the Central Intelligence Organization who’d shot at two off-duty soldiers—he wasn’t a gardener.
    As for Fadzai, she only seemed bothered that her husband had cut work so early—what money had he sacrificed, and could they afford it? Patson was startled both by his wife’s lack of concern for his wellbeing and his own surprise at the same: there was surely no experience that would have led him to expect otherwise. But he was too tense to argue the toss and insisted on going to bed.
    The next morning, their son, Chabarwa, cleaned the cab as usual. Patson, Fadzai, Gilbert and Anashe were eating their porridge when the twelve-year-old came in carrying the gun he’d found beneath the driver’s seat. Fadzai stared at her husband, her eyes round with alarm. Patson said, “Give that to me.”
    He took the gun to the bedroom and stowed it in the chest of drawers. When he came back to the main room, he found Gilbert entertaining the two kids with an improbable story of the time he had killed a baboon with a stone. Generally, Patson disapproved of his brother-in-law’s fantasies, but today he was grateful for the distraction.
    Fadzai was washing the