The Song Dog Read Online Free Page A

The Song Dog
Book: The Song Dog Read Online Free
Author: James McClure
Tags: Suspense
Pages:
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of some females, in what now passed for traditional Zulu costume, it seemed: a bead-bedecked headdress, lots of copper anklets, even more crude, copper bracelets, a short, pleated skirt, and—if they bothered with a top at all—a plain, white singlet. Short Arse had on an old sports jacket, turned inside out to show off its satin lining, plus a pair of riding britches with a front flap, now outmoded. By way of contrast, the coon in front of him was wearing the pinstripes of a posh lawyer—or the public hangman, come to that, Kramer having seen him once—plus a pair of massive rugby boots. That was a point: unlike anyone else in the line, Short Arse’s footwear looked the right size, even though his were only cheap tennis shoes, and this set him subtly apart from the others. It also posed a few interesting questions: how fast was Short Arse on his feet, how often—and
why
?
    Short Arse turned to stare at something back out on the street, tantalizing Kramer with only a rear view of that alert, cannonball head. He tried to will it to turn just enough to show that profile again. Contrary to what most people outside the SAP said—“They all look bloody alike to me!”—Kramer had never experienced any such difficulty. Hell, telling actual monkeys apart, that was different: you didn’t have the infinitevariations afforded by moustaches, beards, eye size, jawline, nostril width, and so on. But any breed of kaffir, to the trained eye, presented a few problems. Even so, the back off a head wasn’t much to go on, and then he began to have doubts about his initial reaction. He noted the two small pigtails braided from the close black curls above the left ear, and had to admit they rang no bells. He also failed to make anything of the yellow kitchen matches being used to keep open Short Arse’s pierced earlobes.
    “Sir …? Your very generous purchase, sir,” said the Indian shopkeeper, placing a brown-paper bag on the counter in front of Kramer, too polite to hand it to him directly. “But first, is there anything else I can be doing for you, sir?”
    There wasn’t, so Kramer paid him and left, lighting his first Lucky on the way out and forgetting to give Short Arse one final look. Not that this mattered anyway, he told himself—at worst, the coon was probably just some city kaffir’s country cousin.
    “Lieutenant!” said Maritz, hotfooting it up the road from the police station, outside which the Chevrolet was now parked. “Lieutenant, the station commander wants to know where the hell you’ve got to!—his words, Lieutenant …”
    “He can go shit in his shoes—
my
words, Bok,” replied Kramer. “After a long journey like that, the next thing a man must do is go bleed his dragon.”
    I’m stalling, he told himself ten minutes later. Ja, there’s something very weird about this whole Jafini business that I don’t understand yet, and I don’t think I want to. Especially when it comes to my part in it. Stalling won’t help, though; I’d best get going, get the bloody job done and then get the hell out of here again, back to the Free State.
    Yet, even after he zipped up, Kramer tarried, his gaze lowered in the corrugated-iron privy marked WHITE MALES ONLY behind Jafini police station. He was studying the state the floor was in. None of the white-males-only seemed to care much where they aimed, and had left five separate puddles. Moreover, a large patch of the cement floor was noticeably darker than the rest, as though perpetually damp, and this suggested such was the norm. Interesting, mused Kramer, for this in turn suggested one of two things about the station commander he was about to meet: either the man was a born pig, or else too gutless to insist on basic standards of decency among his subordinates.
    And I bet I know which of the two it is, decided Kramer, as he crossed the parched lawn to the back door of the police station, where Bokkie Maritz was anxiously waiting for him.
    “The station
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