Dietrich was the kind of guy who would invite you to join him for a drink and mean it. That is, he would have only one drink and expect the same of you.
On the evening in question, as they called it on those old cop shows I listened to on the radio way back in the ‘70s, we were in the upstairs lounge of the Metropole Hotel in Long Street, a dark, quiet room in what has not been a fashionable watering hole for as long as I’ve been in Cape Town. We were the only persons in the lounge. In the bar proper there were three patrons: two males in their late forties, wearing white short-sleeved shirts and Old Boys’ ties, dark trousers, white socks, brown loafers, weathered faces with hair in an unfashionable length and style, and a woman of a definitely certain age with a white-blonde hair in a feather cut, wearing possibly fake leopard print leggings and a big T-shirt. From the brief snatch of accent and conversation I overheard while I got our drinks, these three were ex-Rhodesians, never Zimbabweans, who were still chewing over the bitterness of having given their country up to the “Afs.” I guess they saw the Metropole as a last reminder of the wonderful colonial past of the 50’s when post-war Africa was God’s own white-run country.
This venue was hardly Dietrich’s customary haunt but I guessed he had his reasons for coming to such an out of the way place.
Dietrich had asked for a double G & T. I opted for a beer. It had been a hot and tiring day and I wanted to pour an extra-chilly beverage down my throat to wash down the dust. Dietrich uncharacteristically swallowed his drink in just about one gulp, then placed the empty glass on the coaster, wiped his mouth with his handkerchief and gave me a grim look, as if it was his unpleasant duty to inform me the budgie was dead.
“I want to ask your professional advice,” Dietrich said.
“You don’t trust my friendly advice?”
“No jokes. This is serious business. Depending on what you can tell me now I’ll obviously consult you at the office, officially, but for now I want to do it outside of the terribly formal context of an attorney’s office. I am tense and nervous already and sitting in your office will just make me more nervous. If you were wondering why I brought you here, the Metropole I mean, it’s because this place is generally almost empty. One of the benefits of an untrendy watering hole. This conversation is going to be serious and I hate to be surrounded by people and noise when I want to get serious. Plus I really need to have a drink or two for this little session. Another beer?”
I declined this kind offer as my glass was still virtually full and Dietrich got up to fetch himself another drink. He came back with what looked like a stiff whiskey on the rocks.
“What do you think of me?” he asked as he settled into his chair. He took a sip of his drink.
“You’re a nice guy?”
“Fuck off! Be serious, what do you think of me as a person, how do you think other people see me?”
“You are a nice guy.” I said, “although you tend to be a bit pompous sometimes. You are intelligent, hard-working, a good husband and father as far as I know, stable, decent, a good sense of humour, likes sports, watching it, anyway, not a big raver but knows how to party when the occasion demands it, otherwise moderate in your vices, a good and loyal friend. What more do you want me to say? Comment on your reputation as a businessman?”
I was entirely puzzled by this. I had known Dietrich for maybe fifteen years, ever since we had done our National Service together. He was a computer sciences guy while I was a law graduate and we were platoon mates during our officer’s training course and we became friends mostly out of necessity rather than because of a deep meeting of minds. This meant that the friendship seemed to be one of those that would not survive any distance. Once we’d received our officer’s commissions we were posted out to different stations and there was a sporadic correspondence that died out after a while, probably from indifference, and in due course and out of touch with one another we finished up our national service period and commenced our respective careers. The SADF was responsible for our reunion by allocating both of us to the same Citizen’s Force unit in Cape Town where we met on the evening all the fresh-from-National Service junior officers convened at the Unit’s headquarters in Claremont to meet our new commanding officer. Over a drink in the Officers’ Mess we rediscovered the reasons we had liked each other in the first place, made the usual flimsy excuses for having allowed the friendship to founder and vowed to resume it.
The bonds had been stronger when were both still bachelors; almost as soon as Dietrich met his wife-to-be and definitely once he started courting her, we saw less of each other, mostly just drinks after work, and became close acquaintances rather than friends. I had nothing against Charmaine, his wife, and she was always very friendly to me on the rare occasions we met, yet somehow I felt superfluous in their company, if not exactly unwelcome then at least outside their laager of life-partnership.
It was years before Dietrich and I again started spending time together after work and then only for drinks, maybe a meal, now and again when Charmaine was out of town and Dietrich felt like company. He owned a successful IT business and appeared to be well set, with a large house in Bergvliet and two daughters in a private, convent school. Charmaine ran a personnel agency because she was the type of woman who wanted a career and a family, not because Dietrich couldn’t support his family from the proceeds of his business.
So, while I knew a bit about Dietrich and his household, no part of my knowledge was particularly intimate or in depth. He had never shared any serious, dark secrets with me.
“You’re a nice guy,” I said. “Be fair, I don’t know that much about you and we don’t have any mutual friends, so I can’t tell you what your other friends’ opinions may be, never mind the people you do business with. What is this all about? Do you need a testimonial?”
Dietrich laughed bitterly. He leaned forward over the low table between us and cupped his glass, turning it around in his hands. He flexed his neck and back muscles as if he was trying to get rid of stiffness, maybe a crick in his neck. I realised that he was tenser than I had ever seen him and even so it was a nervous tension that seemed to have deeper roots than the ordinary end of working day tiredness. He stared unblinkingly at me and I could almost feel him make the effort to speak to me, to share something with me that he would rather not have shared with anyone at all.
“I’ve built up a good business,” he said. “I believe that I have a good, stable marriage and I believe that I have good kids and I love my wife and children and I don’t want to harm them in any way. I’m doing okay, better than some people who knew me way back when at varsity would have believed. I have been described as a pillar of the business community, a model of the small businessman, and I have always tried my best to be involved in the community, in my kids’ school. My golf game isn’t too shabby, sometimes I even beat my clients, and I can still play forty minutes of competitive squash every so often. We have a nice house in a good neighbourhood, nice neighbours. I serve on a couple of committees, I always help when there’s fund raising drive or give money or sponsorship if I can’t do anything personally. I’m a good guy, really.”
“Yes, that’s what I said. I take it you are leading up to something?”
“I’m in deep shit. I’m not going to be a good guy anymore. There are going to be all kinds of repercussions and I’m afraid it’s going to hurt the kids, and Charmaine. I’ll be lucky if we stay married. I’ll be lucky if I have anything left over of the business.”
“Something wrong with the business?”
I immediately thought major tax evasion or serious fraud, something like that which was likely to have criminal consequences as well as bring down the business. Then I felt ashamed for this automatic assumption. This would not be the Dietrich I thought I knew but on the other hand such suspicions were not too far fetched in this day and age. A downturn in the economy, price wars, cash flow problems ... it would not be such a giant step to attempt evasion of VAT payments or some other simple fraud. Dietrich’s business did a lot of importing.
“No, not the business,” Dietrich said. “No, nothing like that, at least not yet.”
“If you’re talking to me because I’m an attorney, if it’s a criminal matter I don’t know if I can help you,” I said. “I haven’t dealt with criminal law, appeared in Court, since I was a very junior attorney. If it’s in the commercial sphere I can probably tell you whether or not you’ve committed an offence but if you want me to act for you, defend you in Court, then I’m the wrong guy. Matrimonials, MVA claims, deceased estates, yes. Criminal law, no.”
“Never mind that. I just want to talk to you as friend and attorney. I need advice from both angles.”
“Well then, what is the problem? I guess the doctor is in.”
“Okay. I’m involved with a woman.”
A great surge of relief flowed through me. Was that it? Glory be! Dietrich was such a serious, conservative codger that he thought this was a major crisis. He must be afraid that adultery was still a crime. He wanted to know whether he should dump his outside thing or maybe Charmaine had found out and he wanted an idea of how expensive a divorce could be. I tried to recollect whether they were married in or out of community of property. Okay, so it might be hard on the girls and it might cost him a bundle but it was fixable.
“These things happen,” I said.
“Listen, let me tell you the story before you get dismissive. Her name is Lee-Anne, I call her Lee. She’s with Pink Cadillac, an ad agency that opened in town about three years ago. We had the contract to install their computer system, supply the hardware, wire it up, set up the software. It was rush job so we had to work around the clock, two or three days in a row. Charmaine was up in Durban then, to interview some woman she was headhunting and I had to be at this installation myself partly because it was such a big job, very sensitive, and I did not want anything to go wrong and partly because I was forced to anyway, my main guy, Anwar, was off sick. Anyway, so it turned out that I hardly slept for those three days.”
This was the Dietrich I knew, the guy who was meticulous with detail, the man who would go the extra mile especially if the job was important and the man who would have hands-on involvement, not because he did not trust his employees but simply because he wanted to be involved, on the spot, get his hands dirty. He was the kind of boss who wanted to feel like a worker.
“Lee was the Pink Cadillac IT person, so she was around to tell us exactly what their requirements were, to liase, make sure we didn’t fuck up. Because we were there around the clock, she was there around the clock too. Now, you know Charmaine, she’s a classy lady, beautiful, but, and I’m not proud of saying this, she’s getting on, needs too much make-up to make her feel happy about her face, too skinny for her age. Women her age should put a little meat on their bones. Anyhow, Lee was thirty-three then, just about to turn thirty-four, in fact her birthday was the last day of our installation there. She’s small, blonde, strictly natural blonde, marvellous body, was a semi-professional dancer once, before she got into IT and the advertising game. Really nice person, always cheerful. And hell of a smart, fully sussed, knew what she wanted out of the computer system, knew what she wanted out of life.”
At this point we decided to have more drinks. Dietrich went off to the bar to order and I sat back and gave his story some more thought. He was taking a lot of time to tell me a simple story of an affair and I was warming to the theory that he was giving me a slow build-up for a more major narrative. Maybe the complication was that this Lee was pregnant and that he was not about to leave his wife and family and now Lee was getting stroppy and demanding and he wanted to know his rights. Whatever it was, Dietrich was evidently doing a bit of unburdening, sharing a dire secret with me that he had not dared to share with anyone else up to that moment and it was important to him to give me the context of the whole situation.
Dietrich returned with a beer for me and another whiskey for himself, plus a small bowl of complimentary peanuts.
“Okay, so for three days we all work together,” Dietrich said, “and by the last day we are all pretty well buggered. I think I had maybe two hours sleep a day tops and I went home only to shower and change my clothes. Lee seemed to be around all the time, as if she never slept and I must say I was impressed with her stamina. Anyhow, we finish the installation, we’re very happy but very tired and we’re sitting there, Lee and I, my guys have gone, left as soon as I told me we were done, can’t blame them, they’ve families too and I guess their wives weren’t off headhunting in Durban. So I suggest to Lee that we go have a celebratory drink before I go home to crash. She’s keen and she tells me that it’s her birthday too and it turns out that I’m on my own, my wife’s out of town, Lee’s on her own, she’s between boyfriends, so I suggest we go for dinner somewhere to celebrate her birthday and the end of this installation, seeing as how it would be too terrible for her to have to celebrate her birthday on her own. To tell you the truth, at this point, after three days with her, I’m fully aware of how sexy this Lee is, in her tight jeans and sweat shirts, hair put up, never wears a bra, but I’m cool with it you know, just an innocent, mostly, a little lech thing on my part because I’m fully married. What the hell, I told myself, dinner with a pretty young thing, enjoy!”
Dietrich went home to shower and change into more elegant clothes and picked up Lee from her Wynberg townhouse. She’d changed her clothes too, slipped into a little black dress that showed off her cleavage, legs and tan, and had her hair down. A classy little package, as Dietrich put it. Since it was a birthday dinner, Dietrich took Lee to Buitenverwachting where they had a fine meal and a happy conversation on the lines of getting to know more of each other’s lives than they’d had time for during the installation. Dietrich was candid about his married status and Lee told him she respected him for his honesty, a remark he found puzzling at the time, and urged him to just relax into having a simple good time.
“But I’m dog tired,” Dietrich said. “It’s been a long three days and the reaction is setting in. We’ve shared a bottle of wine and I‘m starting to sag, yawning, and I’m irritable because by then, after the half bottle of wine, I’m starting to get into this chick and I don’t want the evening to end at nine ‘o’clock or something. Lee’s as fresh as a daisy. But I can’t keep it together anymore so I tell her with great regret that I’ll have to take her home before I fall asleep. At her place she invites me up for coffee, you know, saying that I need something to keep me awake for the drive back to Bergvliet, but I’m thinking, yeah, right, invite me up for coffee, where have I heard that before, except I’m really bushed, not much hope of any hanky panky here tonight, babe. “
Dietrich trudged in behind Lee, into her smartly appointed and surprisingly spacious duplex townhouse. He reckoned that she must be making a good salary at her place of employment because he recognised expensive furniture and fittings when he saw them. Dietrich collapsed onto the red leather couch in the open plan lounge while Lee buzzed off into the kitchen area to prepare the espressos, and there, enfolded by the soft Napa leather, he virtually fell asleep.
“Lee shakes me awake and berates me for lack of staying power and I have to explain to her that I am an old man who no longer has the strength of his youth and I ask her how in hell she manages to keep up with life in the fast lane. ‘Stay right here,’ she says, ‘and I’ll be right back with something to cheer you up.’ She goes upstairs and I think she’s going to slip into something comfortable, you know what I mean, but she comes back in the same clothes, the black dress, no shoes though, and a Berocca tube. Wonderful, I think, she thinks she‘s going to boost my system with calcium and vitamin C. But no, it was something even more insidious.”
Now it was my turn to fetch fresh drinks. Dietrich stuck with his previous choice while I switched my allegiance to Bells on the rocks. Twilight had sneaked up on Cape Town and the lounge felt much cosier with its subdued lighting softening the faded gentility of the room. The colonial heritage was not so bad after all, in its quiet decay musty aura of disappeared white privilege.
“To cut to the chase,” Dietrich said, “she takes a sachet of cocaine from the tube, at least, at the time I didn’t know what it was until she told me, and pours some of it onto the glass table top, starts chopping the powder with a credit card and offers me a straw to snort the powder, telling me it will perk me up. I’d never had any kind of non-medicinal drug before, so I was gung-ho about it, also l was quite pissed, and I had a couple of snootsful. By and by I’m a lot more awake and cheerful, really chatty. Lee pours wine and the next thing I know, we’re screwing on the couch. Of course, the next morning I have a major headache, both literally and metaphorically, with this huge guilt thing. I’d never cheated on Charmaine before and I didn’t know what to make of this situation with Lee except to shrug it off to experience and to hope it never gets to Charmaine’s ears.”
I was losing the plot to a certain degree. So far there was adultery and some illicit drug experimentation, one debauched night shared between two lonely souls. I failed to see what Dietrich’s fear could be unless it was still a long way around to get to the point that his wife had found out about this indiscretion, was not disposed to forgive and forget and had every intention of taking his last penny and all his self-respect in a nasty divorce action. But that was not too much of an ugly thing. Dietrich would not have to fight an ugly matrimonial action, as far as I knew both he and Charmaine were too intelligent and decent to destroy each other over a very human indiscretion like that.
“I didn’t count on the Fatal Attraction scenario though, I don’t mean that Lee was this sexually voracious bitch pursuing me against my will, well, she did pursue me, but once I got over the surprise and shock of that, I did not make any attempt to escape. My marriage was at what they call a crossroads and not far from landing on the rocks anyway. We were keeping up appearances for the children’s sake and just to preserve our social facade I suppose, but the whole situation was tricky. I suspected that Charmaine was screwing around too, all those out-of-town trips, but later I realised that I was projecting my own thing on her and that it was just a way of substituting anger for guilt to make me feel self-righteous and to vindicate my betrayal of her trust. This was after I started seeing a psychologist, in case you were wondering.”
This peek into Dietrich’s marriage proved to me how little I knew of him, proved that if we were indeed friends we had not been so close that he would have confided in me in the ordinary course and that I knew so little of his relationship with his wife and had seen so little of the interaction between them that I would not have noticed anything amiss in the marriage, especially if they had taken pains not to reveal the cracks.
It was completely dark outside by now and the dim lighting of the lounge was rather pleasing, it also figuratively took the edge off what Dietrich was telling me, somewhat depersonalised the sordid tale as if Dietrich was simply giving me the synopsis of some torrid romance he’d recently read. The whiskey was mellowing me out nicely and I had settled back comfortably in my chair, ready for a long evening’s drinking and storytelling. Other sorrows could wait until tomorrow while I wallowed in Dietrich’s sorrows.
“Okay, so we started seeing each other seriously,” Dietrich said. “Not everyday but as often as we could. Crazy adolescent stuff, sneaking around, screwing furtively in cars, but mostly in her place. Drugs played a major role. Lee was, is, a major cokehead, which I didn’t know to begin with, of course, but it didn’t take too long before I twigged that this wasn’t just some recreational thing for her. For example, she told me that she managed to keep up with us during that installation only because she was forever sneaking off to the loo to do lines of coke. We were drinking lots of coffee or taking Lerts, still collapsing every now and then, while she remained strong and chirpy because she was coked out.”
“Some people drink a lot,” I said, “other people take a lot of drugs. Was, or is, she addicted?”
“Yes, of course, I suppose so,” Dietrich said, “she does plenty of it, not all the time I was with her but a lot anyway. In case you’re wondering, I never did that much myself, mostly because I didn’t see Lee every day and we didn’t automatically do coke every time we spent time together. I must confess that at first I thought she was going to tap me for money to pay for it, she was doing so much of it and at the same time maintaining what I would call a comfortable, upmarket life style and even though she must’ve had a good package she couldn’t have earned all that much, but she never asked me for cash. I’d take her out for meals, buy drinks or take out food, small things, groceries every now and then, never gave her cash. After a while she told me that she was financing her coke consumption by dealing in the stuff. She got the coke from some guy who got it from the people who brought it into the country and then she sold it on, to her friends and their connections. She said this was low risk because she sold only to people she knew and because she didn’t run the risks of actually bringing the coke into the country. If some Nigerian was bust at the airport it meant that the big boys were out of supplies, at least temporarily, and that the mule, that Nigerian arrested by the narcs, would likely face jail time and deportation, but none of that ever affected her, the level she was dealing at.”
“Pretty fast lane living, that kind of life,” I said. “Not too mention the dangerous elements one meets. Not to mention the possibilities of unpleasant, early death or lengthy jail time. Or is that an adrenaline junkie thing I wouldn’t understand?”
“Tell me about it. I never thought of it as a search-for-a-thrill kind of situation as far as Lee was concerned, it was more like a habit gone out of control and the only way to afford it was to be part of the supply chain. In one of her desperate moments Lee said that if you want to be friends with the Devil he sometimes demands that you suck his dick. And she did get desperate sometimes. She’s honest enough to admit that she should stop doing coke and every now and then she’d go through a withdrawal thing, you know, like smokers who give up smoking, she counts the days without a line but pretty soon, sometimes a week later, maybe a couple of weeks, she’s back on it. Over the last year or so she also started doing crack, partly because it was a new thrill and partly because it suddenly became very much available and cheap. Six months ago she gave up her job, or was fired, depending which version you believe. I wouldn’t be surprised if it wasn’t the usual ‘you’ve got two options’ showdown, you know, ‘it’s your choice, either you leave right now and quietly or we fire your ass.’ Anyhow she was unemployed and in need of cash, so she started dealing big time. Again, in case you’re wondering, I wasn’t supporting her, well, maybe a few bucks here and there but nothing like the amounts she needed for living expenses, the bond, the groceries, and the rest.”
Dietrich suggested more drinks. I was feeling peckish and made the counterproposal that we seek out a fine restaurant for a cheap but tasty and filling meal over which we could continue this tale of the seamier side of Cape Town’s glamorous underbelly, a tale that seemed to me to be heading towards a denouement where a formerly fine, beautiful and together woman finds herself firmly and inexorably on the skids and seeking desperate solutions to the crisis. It could have made a wonderful plot for a grand opera. Dietrich proposed that we try a new Kloof Street bistro owned by friends of his, the first restaurant to offer authentic, old-fashioned French cooking in that street, then choc-a-bloc with eateries offering dull, hackneyed food -- you could hardly dignify the offerings with the description ‘cuisine’ -- and indifferent service, the hallmark of the restaurant trade in Cape Town.
Dietrich’s BMW was closest to the Metropole, so we drove up to Kloof Street in that. La Madeleine, the bistro, occupied one ‘house’ in what was once a whole row of semi-detached residences half way up the street.
At some juncture in the late Eighties and early Nineties the people who’d lived in these houses for years started dying off or simply got tired of living in that area and they or the executors of the deceased estates sold the houses to buyers who had no intention of living on a busy street but who had a fine appreciation for the business rights attaching to these properties fronting on Kloof Street. The first businesses were estate agencies and I always thought it highly outrageous that these people formed the beachhead of the invasion of Kloof Street by the business community, like a body where a few opportunistic cancer cells prepare the way for a overpowering wave of other disease-carrying organisms to invade the body and ultimately to kill it. The estate agents made their killing and moved on. Thereafter the quintessential Kloof Street business was a restaurant
I had never been to La Madeleine before but I recognised the venue. There had been another restaurant there the last time I’d been in Kloof Street, a brave attempt to bring African fusion cooking to Cape Town. The new owners had repainted the exterior and had redesigned the interior to more closely resemble an authentic French cafe than the faux African decor the previous incumbents had inflicted on their clientele. Instead of Selif Keita or Baaba Maal, the background music now came from what sounded to me like The Best Chanson Album In The World ... Ever!
The place was not crowded and we were given a window table, with a fine view of Kloof Street for whatever that was worth. In keeping with the concept of making the diner think he’s entered an environment that is forever a little piece of Paris, and maintaining the authentic French tradition of male staff, the waiters wore black trousers, starched white dress shirts and black waistcoats. Somehow the effect was spoiled by the cheery youthfulness of the waiters who ought to have been surly middle-aged men with hooded eyes, pomaded hair and big moustaches, sporting watch chains and an air of carefully calculated insolence; then I might have believed in the bridge the restaurateurs were trying to sell me.
We ordered a hearty peasant stew for two and a bottle of wine and as soon as our waiter -- whose name was Jeremy though he said we could call him garcon -- had brought our bread and had poured our wine, Dietrich was ready to tell more.
“Okay, so now Lee has no job and she supports herself and her habit by full time dealing. We’re still seeing each other as often as possible but with one thing and another it is not as much as it used to be. So, one day she calls me, she needs me to drive her somewhere and as it happens once again it is a time when Charmaine is out of town for business and the kids are way for the week-end on a camp or something and so I tell Lee we could spend the week-end together, some quality time, you know, not go out much, just screw and eat and drink and maybe do some coke to keep the festive spirit going, a nice week-end at home. She’s keen but she still wants me to drive her somewhere, her car is in for a service. What the hell, I’m going to say no? So, we head off to some place in Claremont, one of these big old houses on a humongous piece of land behind a huge wall, the kind of place where you’d expect to find seriously old Cape Town money. Turns out at this moment in time the place is occupied by some Nigerians, some Colombians, they live in this baronial splendour but everything is very sleazy as far as I can see, real scumbags these people, and it doesn’t take long for the scales to fall from my eyes. Lee got me to take her there because she is taking delivery of a substantial amount of product and maybe she wanted me along as protection against these scuzzbuckets, you know, white woman last seen entering lair of restless natives. I’m not in on the actual negotiations but I’m skulking around. To be honest, this was the first time I’d ever been part, even this minor part, of Lee’s deals. I’d never had anything to do with any of that part of it. I met some of the people she sold to but on the whole it was her private business. So, I must admit I’m also fascinated by this whole set-up, this drug den in the centre of the respectable, upper middle class southern suburbs.”
“Vice and degeneracy are everywhere,” I said. “Have you never heard of the upper middle class facades hiding a multitude of sins? The Victorian drug addicts were all upper class types, the working class was gin-sotted.”
“These guys were just living there, I don’t think they were all that classy. They were the type of people you should never turn your back on in case they stab you in the back while they bugger you. Anyhow, I’m not part of the actual deal, the commercial transaction if you like, I’m just there as back-up and driver, so I wait downstairs while Lee and some of the guys disappear upstairs for while. When she comes back down she’s pretty wasted already, I can tell she’s been sampling something, testing the merchandise no doubt, she’s smiling and tells me its time to go. There is some talk from our hosts about staying and partying but I’m not keen. I’ve heard these stories of the gangsters selling you the dope, taking your money and then taking the dope back again, possibly over your dead body, and I was fully in favour of getting out of there in one piece, walking out completely sober and alert, in possession of my faculties and whatever it was that Lee had come to collect, and getting the fuck out of the neighbourhood. So, we leave. And here’s where the interesting part happens.”
Jeremy served up the stew and we tucked in; silencing the desperate cries of our hungry bellies was of more immediate importance than Dietrich’s story. The stew was good and was excellently complemented by our wine. An air of decided bonhomie settled in at our table and I started forgetting that Dietrich was telling me a story that had promise of being a tragedy and not some picaresque tale of two middle class drug dealers abroad in this fair city, meeting interesting people and even though fearing and distrusting them, still compelled to enter into illicit trade with them, irrespective of the possibly nasty consequences. I regarded Dietrich fondly, seeing him as an adventurer hacking his way through life’s impenetrable jungle armed with nothing but a machete, his intrepidity and a healthy dose of madness. The guy sitting there opposite me in his dark blue button-down shirt, floral pattern tie, navy blue double-breasted Jax blazer and Hilton Weiner khaki pants, was a veritable modern day alternative urban hero unbound by ordinary moral constraints or ethical concerns. He had adulterous affairs, he took drugs, he hang out with the notorious Nigerians, in fact his girlfriend was a drug dealer. I idly speculated whether he was perfectly honest in his dealings with the Receiver of Revenue. An outlaw like Dietrich was probably under-declaring his turnover and juggling his VAT returns, all par for the course and rather banal once you’d started breaking other social taboos.
When Jeremy came around to remove our empty plates we ordered another bottle of wine and declined Jeremy’s kind offer to bring us the dessert menu, making vague promises to think of having coffee later on.
“My tummy is full,” I said, “and now I’m ready for the interesting part. Hit me with your rhythm stick, kiddo. Lay it on me, Jack.”
“I must be honest and say and sitting here with you, having dined dwell and enjoying a good wine, I’m starting to feel some distance from the terrible experience I went through and it is helping me to tell you this whole story. That’s why I’m going the long way around because I want to give you as much of the context as I can so you can give me your considered opinion. Okay, we drove out of the gate and I’m hugely relieved that we’re still alive and kicking and Lee is happy because she’s high and because the deal went off without problems. But ... our happiness is premature, very fucking premature. Not too far from the house a car cuts in, in front of me and forces me to stop and another stops right behind me so I can’t even reverse and my first thought is, the Nigerians for reasons of their own have decided to stage a mock hijacking to recover the drugs they‘ve just sold Lee. It is far worse though. These people turn out to be cops, the narcotics squad, and they politely request us to accompany them to Caledon Square to assist them in their inquiries. They grab Lee’s bag, frisk both of us and they take my car to thoroughly search it, I hear later. Of course they find nothing illegal on me. I’m not so sure at the time that they won’t find something highly illegal in Lee’s bag but I didn’t see anything then. I’m sober so I remain calm although I’m in a state of shock as you can imagine, too stunned to get angry or upset. That happened later. These people must have been tipped off about us, this wasn’t just some coincidental bust, unless they were shaking down everyone who visited the Nigerians. Lee is meanwhile going crazy. As I’d learnt over the years, somewhat sorrowfully, she’s not the most stable of women to start with and this situation plus the fact that she was wasted on probably a substance that promoted volatile reactions to stressful situations, made her go off her head, you know, hysterics and all that.”
“It’s never fun being arrested,” I said, “particularly when you’re not expecting it and particularly when you’ve been caught red-handed, fingers in the till and so on and so on. I wouldn’t blame Lee if I were you.”
“Fuck that! She was the reason for it all, the unpleasantness and even at the time I thought she was overreacting just a tad. Never mind that now. We get taken to Caledon Square in separate cars and at the cop station we are kept separately. On the drive there I did some hard thinking, considering options. I knew Lee’d bought something at the place. Okay, she did not in so many words tell me she had and she certainly never told me exactly what the product was but I thought I knew her well enough to make an educated guess. I also knew that I had never been part of her dealing business. This was the first time I’d come anything like close to any of those dealings. Okay, I know this sound self-serving but it’s also true. I kept my nose out of the actual transactions while I enjoyed the fruit of them so I wasn’t ignorant or innocent but at the time, there in the cop car, my immediate concern was to save my own ass and to think up a plausible story to explain what I was doing with a woman with a shitload of drugs in her bag. I guessed that it would do no good to deny that I even knew her.”
“It might not have been wise under the circumstances. Lee might have been very upset. Your relationship might have suffered. Breach of trust and loyalty and all that.”
“Fuck that too. My other worry was how I was going to explain it all to Charmaine and I was praying that I could find a way of keeping this whole disaster a secret from her. Please, dear God, I prayed, don’t let the press get hold of this story.”
“I’d forgotten about Charmaine,” I said. “Is she part of this story at all?”
“Oh, fuck off! Of course she’s part of it. She’s my bloody wife, or did you forget that too!”
“I don’t think it was me who’d forgotten he was married.”
“Fuck off! Can I go on with my story? Thank you! I decided to play blind, deaf and dumb. I’d admit that she was my girlfriend and admit that we’d been to visit the Nigerians but I’d deny knowledge of any illegal activities, after all, that was my first visit to these people and I had no idea what they did for a living or why they were in Cape Town. My girlfriend had asked me to drive her because she didn’t have her car and she had private dealings with these people in a different room and if the cops told me they’d found drugs on her or in her bag I could truthfully say I had no knowledge of anything like that, that I had not seen anything and that she had not told me anything. I was sure there was nothing illegal in my car, nothing hidden in the spare tyre, so I was safe there. Of course, my version of events would probably drop Lee in the shit but at that moment in time my attitude was that Lee should worry about protecting her own arse and that my primary concern was to protect mine. And, as I’ve said, no matter how deceitful it may sound to you, I could defend myself without telling a word of a lie.”
“Desperate hours call for desperate measures.”
“Exactly! Exactly! Okay, so this is the story I give the detectives after they tell me they found a big bag of heroin in Lee’s handbag. I didn’t even have to fake my shock. This was news to me! I knew about the coke, the crack and I knew sometimes she dealt in methampethamines too, the stuff they call ‘crank,’ but she’d never dealt in heroin, as far as I knew anyway. So, still truthfully and not hiding my astonishment and shock I could tell the cops that this revelation was news to me and that I was utterly innocent of any wrongdoing. They told me that they didn’t believe me and I suppose that it was their suspicious nature and maybe I wouldn’t have believed me either if I wasn’t the guy who was in the shit there, desperately trying to distance himself from any criminal activities that might have taken place. Meanwhile, I’m praying like mad, like I haven’t prayed since the night when I was about seventeen, this horny virgin, on a date with a girl I’d lusted after for a long time, and was sure I was about to screw if the mood I was creating could just be sustained for long enough, you know that kind of pathetic prayer for the fates to be kind to me. I think I made all kinds of stupid promises to God of things I’d do or vices I’d give up if he saved me from this situation with the my hide intact. I’d even actually keep same of those promises if I could just remember what they were. God came through for me, sort of. After a long night in that room in Caledon Square the cops allowed me to go, gave me my car keys. They said they were keeping Lee a little longer because of finding the heroin in her bag but that I seemed clean, my story was plausible. They had my address and would contact me if they needed to ask me anything else. I was sorry about abandoning Lee but on the other hand I was very happy to be allowed to go home.”
Dietrich underlined his sense of satisfaction with escaping the long arm of the law by calling for the bill and paying for the meal with his Diner’s Club card.
“I get air miles, you know,” he said. As if I cared, as long as he picked up the not inconsiderable bill. I still always feel a twinge of irritation and unease when I realise to what extent the Capetonian dining experience is an experiment in fleecing the unwary and unwise diner.
“There’s a nice cozy little bar I want to take you to,” Dietrich said. “My story ain’t over yet and we could do with a couple more drinks.”
Once again I was not about to contradict Dietrich although I was astonished at his prodigious alcohol intake. As I’d mentioned right at the beginning, this was a one drink at a time man, or so I had always thought. My guess was that the stresses of his encounters in the adultery and drug trade had breached his resistance against indulging in sinful substances and beverages to the extent where he was just like the rest of us who never minded having a drink or three on occasion and who certainly had no problem with getting really trashed when it was appropriate. This night seemed pretty appropriate to me.
Dietrich drove to the bottom end of Bree Street where he miraculously found parking and then led me to a building with a pulsing neon sign announcing that it was home to the Hong Kong Kitty Club. Sedan taxis were double-parked outside the club and unsavoury characters lounged on the pavement. The group comprised a mixture of locals who may very well have been perfectly innocent youths out on the town, smoking a cigarette in the cool night air away from the frenzied noise and smoky interior of the club, although I would have bet on them being pimps or drug dealers or both, and long haired oriental types I guessed to be off the fishing boats that so frequently dock in Cape Town harbour and are just about the sole reminder of what a busy and typical sea port it once must have been. The loud and deeply throbbing bass sound of a massive sound system leaked out through the closed entrance door.
“This looks highly dubious to me,” I said, with visions of being assaulted and robbed by gangsters protected by the anonymous darkness and confusion of a disco club. “I hate to ask this but are us white guys even allowed in here?”
“Relax, relax, just chill out,” Dietrich said. “I know these people. I met them through Lee. It’s cool, you’ll see, it’s a nice place to have a drink.”
He knocked on the door. A tall, broad oriental opened up a fraction, inspected us and apparently recognised Dietrich. He opened the door wide enough for us to slip inside into a small entrance hall at the bottom of carpeted stairs. Before we could go any further a second brawny oriental expertly frisked us, then allowed us to ascend the stairs. The thump of the bass became louder. One flight up we passed a closed door that must have led to the dance floor but Dietrich kept going. Another flight up we passed another closed door and this time the music seeping out from underneath the door seemed to more eastern in flavour with a dance beat. Dietrich kept on climbing. He came to halt at the door on the third landing and knocked. Once again the door was first opened just wide enough for the person on the other side to inspect us. We passed muster and were allowed into a very sumptuously appointed bar.
The carpet was a luxuriously thick burgundy pile and the room, was full of dark wooden panelling and brass fittings. A long bar ran along the wall to our left and small round tables occupied the rest of the floor space. In one corner there was a big video screen with some hi-fi equipment in one corner of a small, low stage underneath it. The screen was blank when we entered. The music in the bar was soft, melodious jazz from the stable of Grover Washington Jr. and others of that ilk.
The male patrons were mostly oriental but there was also a smattering of what I assumed to be locals of various hues and shapes. They were all dressed in jackets, dress shirts, no ties, and the style of pants that go by the description of smart casual. No one wore trainers. A fair number of the men had female company. The women all looked young but were made up and styled to the max and dressed in clothes that could have been expensive but seemed somehow tawdry given the overt sex exuding self-consciousness with which the outfits were worn. The dresses were low-cut, short and tight, the pants were tight, the tops skimpy, low-cut and tight. The fabric either shone or glittered. The heels were high. In general, bar the odd high-pitched giggle, the atmosphere was one of subdued refinement although it seemed to me to be weirdly at odds with the overall look of the patrons who should have been partying down at a raucous speakeasy, playing pool or pinball, having loud drunken arguments over girls or about actual or imagined insults or just over sports statistics.
“This is probably the most sophisticated place I’ve ever been in,” I said.
“Not too shabby, hey?” Dietrich said. “I’m told this is supposed to be a replica of the kind of place they had back in the old days in Shanghai. Lee knows the owners, two guys from Mainland China said to be the kingpins behind the local Chinese Mafia. I think she met them through her drug connections or maybe they were her drug connections. Heavy guys, but they run a nice place here, everybody behaves or they get tossed out, not so much on their ears as without any ears, if you catch my drift. The lower floors are where the plebs hang out. Only the main dudes are allowed in here, you know, VIP’s like us, and the possibility exists that some of these girls here are actually genuinely the dates of the guys they’re with, not just escort girls like you might find downstairs.”
We moved towards an empty table and by the time we sat down a small, swarthy shorthaired oriental in a tuxedo was at the table.
Dietrich jumped up again and greeted the oriental loudly and with what looked like a power-grip of a handshake.
“Hey, Tommy, long time no see!” Dietrich said.
“Long time no see,” Tommy said. “You decided we’re okay again, my pal? Our fortunes are bound to improve. How’s Lee? She not with you tonight? The boys’ night out or what?”
“She’s doing okay,” Dietrich said. “She’s fine, you know Lee, always bright and bouncy. Yeah, this is a boys’ night out. I brought my friend here to show him what a really classy place looks like. He’s impressed.”
“You flatter us and our humble bar,” Tommy said. “We do our best to keep up the tone, keep out the riff-raff. I hear Lee is not doing so well. Some troubled times for her this year. Most unfortunate that such a wonderful lady should have misfortune, don’t you think?”
Dietrich studied Tommy’s deadpan expression for a moment. I wondered whether Tommy knew more than I did and whether he might be a threat to Dietrich if this place was a hangout for Lee’s drug buddies.
“It’s nothing much,” Dietrich said. “A small hiccup in the oesophagus of life, if you know what I mean, Tommy. A matter of minor importance. Can a man get a drink around here?”
Although he clearly was no waiter Tommy took our drinks order and went over to the bar to relay the order to the bartender. Tommy then disappeared around the furthest corner of the bar counter. A young woman in a tight purple satin dress with dragons on and a high slit on the one side brought our drinks.
“Where was I?” Dietrich asked after his first sip of a double Jack Daniel’s.
“At the end of our last thrilling episode you hotfooted it out of the police station, free from police pressure, while your paramour was still securely held in custody somewhere behind its sinister walls, as far as you knew. You were so happy that the cops hadn’t charged you that you could care less about Lee who after all had landed you in this fine mess.”
“Oh, yes, that was where I was, you’re quite right. I checked my voice mail when I got home and I had a message from Charmaine who wanted to know where I had been roistering the night before, it was broad daylight by then you understand, and a couple of messages from a furious Lee who calls me a shithead for deserting her in her hour of need. She’s screaming about bail and revenge. I’m fucked, so I take a shower and crash. When I wake up there is another voice mail message from Charmaine and another couple of rants from Lee. She wants me to get a lawyer yesterday and bail her out. I first phone Charmaine and spin her some story, confirm her worst suspicions about a serious golf day and pub crawl with the boys from one of my big clients, then I phone the cops to find out what’s happened to Lee and if I can talk to her. I tried you first, the only lawyer I knew, but you were away for the weekend, the cell-phone switched off.”
“In my line of practice I never get emergency phone calls over week-ends,” I said, “so I can afford to be out of contact with civilisation when I go away for week-ends. Anyway, like I told you, I don’t do criminal law anymore. I would’ve had to refer you to someone else.”
“Doesn’t matter. I couldn’t get hold of you so I just phoned the cops anyway to find out about Lee. The guy I eventually manage to speak to, tells me the investigating officer has gone off duty until much later in the day and there’s no way they’ll contact him at home and anyway he reckons Lee won’t get bail until the Monday morning when she’s got to appear before a magistrate who’ll give her bail if the investigating officer is happy to let her go. He might still be doing some investigating and wouldn’t want her running around, maybe disappearing when he wants to question her some more or maybe destroying evidence or warning her accomplices. Shit like that. The bottom line is, he says, Lee’ll have to stay in jail until Monday morning. I ask if I can at least visit her and he says no, only an attorney will be allowed in to see her and then only for professional reasons. At the end of this discussion I was frantic and very despondent because I didn’t know nay other attorney I could phone to help me, so I decide to just sit tight until Monday morning and go around to the court to see what was what and then phone you again, although actually on Monday I decided not to phone you after all. I did get hold of the investigating officer later that day and got the details of the court where Lee was going to appear. The rest of my weekend was not happy and I hardly slept Sunday night and I was at court eight o’clock on Monday morning to see the prosecutor and to see what’s what. She says she doesn’t know much yet because the docket hasn’t come in and she hasn’t spoken to the investigating officer but that I should be patient and wait for the matter to be called.”
We ordered more drinks from our slit-skirted attendant -- it seemed patronising to think of her as our waitress --- and turned our heads to the far corner when the jazz was cut off in mellifluous mid-tootle to be replaced by the sound of the backing track to My Way, that hoary old Frank Sinatra war-horse subsequently brutally annexed by just about every hotel lounge crooner who normally took possession of it as if they were invading Poland, and we saw that the TV screen was now on and showed a clip of a night-club scene perhaps not too distant from the fond imaginings of the Rat Pack aficionados of this world, with the lyrics of the song running from left to right underneath it. A tall, thin oriental in an azure jacket, black shirt and shiny white trousers stood on the small stage, the TV screen behind him, eyes closed, and took what is called ‘a stab’ at performing the song. This kind of thing is called ‘taking a stab at’ because the performer usually assassinates the tune fairly brutally but in this instance our singer had a good voice and had control of the tune. The performance was not exactly ‘on the money’ but it was not painful either. My Way ended, the patrons applauded politely, there was a brief pause and the backing track of I Can’t Help Believing came on with a ‘romantic walk in the woods’ video clip. The same guy sang this tune too, in a sub-Elvis baritone and with a few suggestive hip movements and stylised karate chops for emphasis.
“I’ve never been to a karaoke night before,” I said. “At least they’ve started with the best vocalist first.”
“This isn’t free-for-all karaoke,” Dietrich said. “That guy is a pro, he’s a regular entertainer here. The actual karaoke comes right at the end of the night when everyone is absolutely pissed but first they have him doing his versions of all those songs, setting the mood kind of. If we’re lucky we might have a stripper on after him but I’m not sure if tonight is the right night for that.”
“Is any night the right night for a stripper?”
“Do you have a problem with that? The shows are very erotic, the girls take off all their clothes and if you’re really lucky you could get a chick right on your lap for a moment or two.”
“Stripping is kind of tacky, isn’t it. The women are always too old and the bodies are too hard and the moves are so clichéd. How can a strip show be called erotic when the whole excitement of it is just that you might see a naked woman at he end of the performance. I mean, please, how sophisticated is that?”
“You haven’t seen these chicks, man, they are definitely not too old. I’d bet that if anything they’re too young to be legal, and they’ve got hot moves. If their routine doesn’t turn you on, you’ve got a prosthetic dick. But I’m almost sure that we won’t have a strip show tonight, so you can relax.”
Our entertainer was now doing his interpretation of Under The Boardwalk. He was giving us those weird Egyptian tomb styled hand movements the Supremes did back in the Sixties.
”Okay, so there I am waiting at the court for Lee’s case to be called. I think the prosecutor came into the courtroom just after quarter past nine and the investigating officer arrives maybe ten minutes later. He was surprised to see me in court, probably thought I would be so scared I’d stay the hell away. Anyway, I asked him about bail and he’s cagey, pretends to ponder this issue, whether she’s not going to be a risk to society or something if she gets out on bail, won’t come back to stand trial or something. You know, he wants to make me sweat. Big fucking deal. Anyway, after a while he tells me she can get bail for R1000,00 and we go over to the prosecutor to tell her this so she can tell the magistrate. The prosecutor tells me I’ll have to pay the bail in cash before Lee will be let out so I tell her I’ll have to run off to my bank to get the cash and she promises not to call Lee’s case until I get back. It took me about thirty minutes to get the bucks and by the time I got back the court was in full swing, a bunch of people at the back of the court room, spectators I presumed, and a bunch of lawyers. I wanted to sit in front at the table where the lawyers were since I had an interest in one of the cases but the court orderly told me to go sit at the back too. Not long afterward Lee’s case is called and she comes in from some place below the court, some dungeon underneath the court room floor, and she looks terrible, dirty hair and she looks tired and when she sees me, as she goes into the accused box, she gives me one of those looks that kill, turns her back on me and faces the magistrate who, coincidentally was also a woman. Female prosecutor, female magistrate, female lawyers, I thought, justice is in the hands of the so-called gentler sex, will Lee get a better deal here? Just about that time a lawyer jumps up and tells the magistrate he’s Lee’s lawyer. As you can think, I was stunned and amazed, but in retrospect I shouldn’t have been because people in the drug trade probably have lawyers on tap twenty-four hours a day, the risks they take. I couldn’t see the guy because I was sitting down and the accused box and Lee were in my way but he sounded like a young guy, you know, a kid but he had the schpiel about the bail right and told the magistrate that he believed a friend of the accused, as he referred to Lee, would pay it and when the magistrate asks where this friend is Lee turns around and points at me, without actually looking at me, you know, just like there’s the fucker who deserted me and is now so guilt-stricken he’s here to pay my bail. Anyhow the magistrate grants the bail and postpones the case for a month. I leave the court immediately because I think she and the lawyer are going to come out and then we’ll go pay the bail so she can go home. The lawyer comes out alone, introduces himself as Ronnie something, and when I ask where Lee is he says she had to go back to the cells and that we’re waiting for the court orderly to come out with the charge sheet so we could go the clerk of the court to pay the bail. Once I get the bail receipt Lee will be released.”
“I remember that whole tedious process. That’s one of the reasons I abandoned criminal law, all that wasted time. Generally also for little money.”
“This attorney of Lee’s, he was a young guy but he was pretty sharply dressed, like he didn’t hurt for money. Fancy suit, slick haircut, the whole LA Law image.”
“That’s because he’s young, probably new to the game and he’s just recently splashed out for a lawyer’s outfit or two. A couple dark suits, a navy blue blazer, some khaki pants, a bunch of bright ties, coloured shirts. But if he sticks around in criminal law and unless he turns out to be one of the few who makes big bucks out of it, he’ll pretty soon lose his tarnish. When you see him at the courts ten years down the line, he won’t be so sharp anymore. By then he’ll switched to a sports jacket and comfortable trousers, partly because he’ll have learnt that a magistrate isn’t overly impressed by a snazzy suit and that a colourful tie won’t get his client off if he doesn’t have a good defence to start with.”
“This guy was pretty slick in there. Anyhow, I went with him and the court orderly and we paid the bail and I got my receipt. the orderly told me to hold onto it so I can claim the bail money once the matter was over and settled. His manner made me think he didn’t believe Lee would stand trial, as if I’d just pissed a thousand bucks down the drain. The attorney went downstairs to the cells to show them the receipt and to get Lee. When she got back up to the ground floor, she was still angry at me although I could tell she was also glad as hell to be out of there and because she knew I’d paid the bail she didn’t know whether to snarl at me or to thank me. She settled for just a curt thank you and then never said another word until we got back to her place. I thought she wanted me to buzz off straightaway but she asked me up and then had a shower while I at around in the lounge with a drink. If the occasion hadn’t been so fraught I’d’ve jumped into the shower with her, we’d done that before. It just wouldn’t have been right even though the anger I could feel radiating out of her made me damn horny. I know it was probably pretty sick under the circumstances but, hey, who knows how to account for the sexual impulse. Lee came out of the bedroom in a dressing gown, towel wrapped around her head and made herself a stiff drink, saying that she was dying for a line, except that her stash was gone and the cops had obviously confiscated whatever she’d had in her bag when they grabbed us. She then starts interrogating me about my release, why I was let go so easily, had I made a deal? and why had I abandoned her like that, you know, that kind of bitter, suspicious questioning. I caught on quickly that she thought I’d told the cops something about her or the deal to buy my freedom and to get her in the shit, so I take great pains to reassure her that I had done no such thing and I apologised for running off like that but I explained to her that I had panicked, which was true, and that I had never intended dropping her or of not helping her in any way I could although I was damn angry at being caught in the middle of her drug dealing activities. Then she got really angry and started going on about how I damn well knew she was dealing and what the reason was for us going to that place in Claremont and that I was a big fucking hypocrite for pretending not to know what she had been carrying when the cops jumped on us. This was her response to me telling her that I probably got off the hook because I could truthfully tell the cops that I had no idea what she’s gotten from the Nigerians. I had to point out to her that she had better be thankful that the cops had let me go otherwise she might not have had anybody to pay the bail and then I suddenly remembered to ask her where this attorney came from all of a sudden.”
“I’d wondered about that myself,” I said.
