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and clear as he
waited for the questions to start again. He thought, as he had
before, There shouldn’t be a slot at the bottom of that
door . And, There shouldn’t be a wooden floor in a mining
building.
    Anthony looked at anything but the boss’s
face. It wasn’t fear that kept him from looking as the man started
to pace his way around the small room. He just wasn’t looking
because he shouldn’t be. It wouldn’t be a black shift
supervisor’s place to do so.
    “What were you doing?”
    Rupert spoke in English, with the blended
British and Dutch inflections of an Afrikaner. He stopped moving
for a moment. He backed to the wall in front of the chair, leaning
against it. He sucked at the cigarette and blew an angled column of
smoke.
    “Wasn’t doin’ nothing, boss.” Anthony had
given the same blunt, dead answer each of the repeated times the
question was asked.
    “We’ve had some losses, you know,” Rupert
said. “No big ones, I suppose. Little stuff, mainly. But it’s
enough that we noticed, and we’ve been looking for who’s at it ever
since.”
    “Didn’t take no diamonds, boss.”
    “I think you did.” Rupert pushed himself
away from the wall.
    “Don’t got diamonds.” Anthony risked a
glance up at him. His head was tipped and turned with a shying,
deferential tilt.
    “True enough.” The super dropped his
cigarette and crushed it out before leaning back once more. He
folded his arms, his shirt tightening across his chest.
    “We searched your apartment at the
dormitory,” he said. “Same with your girl’s flat in town. They’re
still looking over whatever they took from there, but I don’t know
it’ll get us anything. Ran a check on your accounts, too, such as
they are.”
    “Nothing there, boss.”
    “That’s what I hear,” Rupert nodded. “But
we’ve been watching you a little, too. Not much reason at first, of
course. We’re just always looking, like I said. Then we saw
this.”
    Rupert pulled a folded picture from his
breast pocket. He opened it and moved a step forward. He held it
out to Dikembé.
    The photo was four inches by five. Anthony
was in one corner, clear as could be. He was bending at a truck’s
tire. The picture was taken in the evening, the sky a dark band in
the background, but Anthony’s face was visible, and his hand was
reaching into the rear wheel well.
    For a moment, Anthony thought it could have
been the plant the other day. It could have been when he placed the
pink. But it wasn’t. This was one from before, which meant they’d
known for some time.
    “Couldn’t have been nothing all too big,
mind you,” Rupert was saying, examining the picture himself. “One
piece or two. A few carats is all, I’d guess. Enough for you,
though, I’d warrant. But we can’t find the cash, and I’m baffled by
that.”
    The super folded the photo and tucked it
into his pocket again. “What’re you doing with the cash,
Anthony?”
    Dikembé was silent.
    “You sending it out to your mom or a sister
somewhere?”
    No answer.
    “Got a friend we don’t know of? Another
girl? Boy, maybe?”
    Anthony was counting the bolts in the door.
He didn’t move.
    “Got no diamonds, boss,” he said again.
    “Maybe not. But that’s not exactly the same
as not taking any diamonds. Is it.”
    “Boss?”
    Rupert’s hands found his pockets, and he
wedged them in. He strolled a slow circle around the man on the
chair. He stopped in front of him again. He looked down on
Anthony.
    “We get tire smugglers every so often,” he
said softly, as though sharing a secret. “They’re trouble enough,
but they never get anything big.” He withdrew a hand and held it
out, his palm up and open.
    “Till now.”
    The pink was in the center of Peter Rupert’s
sweating red hand.
    “Who are you working with?”

Chapter 4
    Bucephalus
    “Who’s the heavy?” Megan asked. She had
fresh coffee that was a peace offering of sorts from her secretary,
for having allowed Waldoch in.
    She