Chapter 6 - Revealing

Andre gave up asking her anything after she refused to answer or even look at him for at least 3 minutes. She just stared straight ahead and drove. Andre had never seen Mel like this before, quite frankly it scared him. He knew Mel was capable of a lot; she was a tough cookie and not a woman to be messed with. He had read articles where people had cracked, they had been fine the one minute and then suddenly they had a psychotic break and became a completely different person. He really hoped that had not happened to Mel.

She eventually stopped the car after about 12km from the main tar road. There was nothing out here. She turned off the lights and the engine. The silence was almost deafening. The beautiful sunset had disappeared and now there was merely the rapidly fading gray sky. This place was so lonely and so calm that it was eerie. Mel took a deep breath, turned to Andre and commanded "Get Out!" in such a strong and cold voice that he knew he dared not disobey. He stepped out of the car, and Mel grabbed something from behind her seat. She climbed out and stared at him, her anger so deep, and her face so dark that he wondered if he ought to run. In her hand was not a knife or a gun, just an envelope and a torch.

"Mel, I can see you are angry about something. But can we please talk now?" He asked, his voice nearly breaking.

"Talk? You want to talk? You lied to me. I don’t even know how long you have lied to me. I want you to talk. But I want the truth. I want the truth about what the hell is going on here!" She said as she took a handful of photos out of the envelope and put them on the bonnet of her car and pointed at them.

"What is that?" he asked without moving

"Look at it." she spat at him

He stepped forwards and spread the photos across the car, she handed him the torch and he bent down to look at the photos. He wiped his hand over his brown mop of hair as it fell into his eyes.

The photos were of the harbor, the SUV and the truck where the men were making the shady deal. One photo had a perfectly clear shot of Andre's face as he turned to climb into the SUV with the metal briefcase in his hand!

"Andre, give me a good reason not to tie you to the nearest tree and leave you here to freeze or be eaten by wild animals." She said

"I can explain." He started saying "It’s not what it looks like, its...."

"Oh really" she cut in "Because you know what it looks like? It looks like a really shady deal going on. It looks like you just received a bucket load of cash to let an illegal shipment get through customs!"

"Well," he quietly said "maybe it is what it looks like then. You know what? I'm sorry Mel, I don’t know how or why you thought you should get involved or why you are following me, but you shouldn’t have been doing that."

"Are you threatening me? What is wrong with you, does our friendship mean nothing to you? And before you start thinking this was all about YOU, you conceited piece of rubbish, this was about someone else!" She angrily shouted at him. She pulled out a final photo, a picture of Avesh and thrust it at him "How are you involved and how was Avesh involved?"

He stared at the photo and muttered "oh crumbs, Mel I didn’t know YOU were working for Avesh. No no no!!"

"I am stuck in the middle of this! I have been framed for his murder. The cops are after me. I just caught you red-handed taking bribes for allowing heaven-knows-what into the country illegally. And all you can say is that you didn’t know I was working for him!"

She grabbed and twisted his arm, pushing him against the nearest tree. He groaned from the force that she used to shove against his back, his chest pinned to the tree. Although he was 6" tall, she was a good 5"7' tall and grew up working on an animal farm so she was strong, easily a match for him.

"Start talking" She whispered in his ear.

"The shipment is from China, its plastic dolls filled with cocaine. The Nigerian imports it, once it is in the country I clear them through customs as children’s toys, they truck it out, and I'm told half of it stays in SA and half gets trucked to our bordering countries." He paused; talking while pinned against a tree was difficult.

"And the plastic guns or are they real?" She pushed him, he tried to wriggle free but she brought her knee up hard against his leg, simply stating "Next time it’s the groin."

"Today was the first time the guns came through my checkpoint. They’re real but packaged to look like children’s toys. Same story."

"And it doesn’t bother you one iota that you are helping get drugs and guns into this country? Your own father died in a car crash because some bratty kids were high and drove into him. What are you thinking?"

"Look, they didn’t give me much choice ok. They said if I don’t help them, bad things are going to happen to me. You saw the Nigerian's face, would you doubt if he threatened you?"

"No, dumbass, I would go to the cops. Looks like you were not just scared, but also liked the bonus factor of all that money. So how does Avesh fit into the whole thing?"

"Well, Avesh is into real estate as well as advertising. He owns some warehouses that they store and the shipments in as soon as they get past customs. Unfortunately for him, he had a big gambling problem too. And the Nigerian is a big time loan shark. He got to owing a huge amount of money, and begun asking for more. It would have been fine for him, except he started threatening that he would take the whole operation to the cops if his demands were not met. That’s why he ended up dead, the Nigerian's henchmen did that and framed his PA for it because he was always calling her pet names and had sexual harassment suits filed against him before by other employees."

"So if you are just the 'customs' guy in the operation, how come you know all of this?"

"When the Nigerian came with the guns this morning, I told him I didn’t like this and didn’t want to do it. The Nigerian proceeded to tell me if I tried to back out, I would land up just like Avesh, and he proceeded to tell me in great detail what happened to the guy. But Mel, I swear I didn’t know it was you that worked for Avesh!"

"Really? Is that the honest truth?"

"Yes, I promise I didn’t know you were their fall guy or girl."

"Funny, I don’t believe you. You see, I just figured out where they got a picture of me at a fancy dress party some years ago, they got it from YOU, you took the damn picture! That’s a picture that is playing a part of me being framed for a bloody murder I had nothing to do with!" Tears started running down Mel's face. She didn’t really care much for Avesh, but the fact someone she trusted and such a close friend could betray her so severely, could do such bad things and join in placing the blame on her was almost too much for her heart to handle.

"Oh, I didn’t know you got hold of those too" Andre sounded defeated. Not even remorseful, just defeated.

"Yeah I did. Now does the Nigerian have a name or have you saved his phone number under the unoriginal name of 'the Nigerian' on your phone?" She was so angry now.

Andre grunted, he really didn’t want to get her more involved than she was. He didn’t know what she would do to him, and didn’t like the way things were currently going. He had already actually gotten her into his mess; there was nothing he could do to get her out. She dug her knee into his thigh again, and asked "Does the man have a name or not?"

"What are you gonna do if you know his name, Mel? The guy's a cold hearted murderer and gangster. He won’t think twice about having you killed. Heck, he'll probably make it look like suicide"

"Well you obviously didn’t care about what he might do to me when you decided to help him frame me. Now quit stalling and give me his name!"

"Ok, ok. Stop shoving me, I can barely breathe. The man's name is Felix."

"Are you kidding me?" Mel laughed, "Such a typical Bad Guy name, if you're going to lie, be original Andre!"

"Unfortunately I am telling the truth. Check my phone contacts." He dryly responded, and taking his loose hand he pulled the phone out of his pocket and handed in to her.

After checking the phone and seeing with her own eyes that Felix was really a number saved on the phone, Mel pocketed Andre's phone, never loosening her grip on him. But not much, just enough to relax her now cramping hand.

"Thanks" She whispered, her breathe warm on his ear "and Sorry"

"What for?" He asked with confusion.

"For what I'm about to do to you. You see, I can’t very well trust you again.” She explained “So I am going to knock you out, and tie you to a tree. Don’t worry, I'll tie you fairly loose, once you come round it should take only an hour or so to loosen yourself. Unfortunately for you, I'm also going to remove your shirt and jeans and leave them along with your duffel bag about 2kms down the main road. You’ll be left in your underwear. That's going to slow you down enough for me to get a head start. I am going leave you with my phone, as the cops are going to be tracing that, and they should pick you up easily. And don’t even think about pinning it on me, because I've already emailed those photos to the cops from an untraceable email account. And you won’t find me at Jen's place, because that’s far too obvious!"

Andre grunted and tried to get free "Mel, you're crazy! Let me loose I can help you with this." he begged

"Yeah, I am crazy! Sorry buddy, I really did care for you. But I cannot trust you now." and she knocked him out with a carefully placed hand on his neck and elbow to his temple. After he was out she rubbed her elbow, which had hurt more than she expected.

With a gentle peck of a kiss on his lips, she began her job just as she had told him she would while tears streamed down her face.

An hour later Mel pulled up into Jen's driveway and honked the hooter. She had lied to Andre about this one thing, and although she knew it was a risk, she really didn’t have anywhere else to go. At least for tonight she would fabricate some excuse for why Andre was not with her and try to figure out her next step. She couldn’t stay here long though, the cops would figure out she was here fairly soon.