Wake Up Dead Read Online Free PDF Page B

his soul, but he’d marked his one asset: his looks.
    Forever ended the dream that had kept Disco alive—the
dream that his mommy had given him. That one day he would be a big-time fashion model, vibing for the cameras.
     
     
     
    BARBARA ADAMS DREADED the walk up the short pathway to her house. But there was no other way to her front door, just this gate in a tired fence and the few squares of concrete pavement thrown onto the parched grass that fought a losing battle against the sand of the Cape Flats.
    It was especially bad today. The heat, the angle of the sun, the hard glare bouncing back off the small white house, all reproduced vividly that day, two years before, when she and her children watched as her husband was gutted like a pig, right here on the pathway.
    She saw Clyde Adams sinking to his knees on the yellow sand, staring up at her in disbelief as he tried to stop his intestines from bulging out between his fingers.
    She saw that thing grab Clyde by his hair—the dark, straight hair he had been so proud of—and slit his throat. He had held her husband’s body upright by his hair for a moment; then he let go and Clyde crumpled to the sand, his left foot convulsing, the shoe kicking up a small cloud of dust.
    Then he was still.
    Barbara found herself standing where her husband had died. Her hands holding the plastic shopping bags clenched tight, nails stabbing into her palms. She forced herself to breathe and walked to the front door and let herself into the house, a thin woman with black hair and olive skin who had forgotten she was pretty.
    When she saw who was inside she paused, collected herself.
    Billy Afrika sat on the sofa. Her thirteen-year-old daughter, Jodie, dressed in a T-shirt and sweatpants, sat next to him, bare feet folded under her, showing him her photo album. The one with blonde fairies on the cover.
    Billy looked up.
    “I thought you were dead,” Barbara said, sounding disappointed he wasn’t.
     
     
     
    BILLY STOOD AND followed Barbara as she went through to the kitchen, put the bags on the counter, and started unpacking the contents. Three skinny chops, wrapped in plastic, went into the fridge along with a wilted lettuce. She put a couple of cans of beans and a packet of rice into the cupboard above the sink. Barbara had to slam the cupboard door closed, and it sat skew on its hinge. The house was clean but rundown.
    Barbara’s hair needed to be cut, and her clothes hung on her spare body. Billy saw that one of her shoes had split along the side, exposing the pale flesh of her toe. With the money he had sent her—a fortune on the Flats—she shouldn’t be living like this.
    At last she turned to face him. “So? Large as life, Billy.”
    “Looks like it.”
    She made a sound that may have been a laugh, then splashed tap water into a glass and drank it down in one draft.
    “We never heard nothing from you.”
    “But you got the money?”
    A nod, not looking at him as she rinsed the glass and upended it on the draining board. She didn’t offer him anything.
    “Sorry about these last two months,” Billy said. “I’ll sort it.”
    Barbara shrugged. “You home for good?”
    “I dunno.”
    “You mad to come back here.”
    She walked past him into the sitting room. Jodie was gone, and he could hear R & B moaning from a bedroom. A girl in heat over a boy. Barbara chose the chair next to a table dominated by her wedding photograph. Billy couldn’t look at her without seeing a smiling Clyde Adams.
    “Barbara, why you still living here?”
    “And where must I go?”
    “Move to the suburbs.”
    She shook her head. “The only time you get away from here is in a bag, Billy. You know that.”
    The girl singer was approaching some sort of climax.
    “Jodie, turn that down!”
    A groan, but the volume was lowered.
    “What’s happened to the money I sent?” He watched her eyes. Old cop habits die hard.
    “What you mean?”
    “Why you living like this?”
    For the first time