Private investigator unpacks politics with coffee, clowns and conspiracies

I hear the click-click of the sequinned high-heels on the parquet floor long before Gloria’s ample prow heaves into view as she turns into my office. She is carrying my coffee, in a plain white mug with a DA logo on it.

Am I a DA supporter? Hell no!

They ask too many questions and demand too much in the way of results… but it’s nice to see people’s eyebrows shoot up when they spy the mug. If nothing else, it’s a conversation starter – even with those people who would rather chew glass than utter the word “DA”…

My coffee is just the way I like it: strong, sweet and black.

Like my women, I had told Gloria, shortly after I hired her… mainly to put her at ease that my taste doesn’t run to big-bosomed meisies from the platteland.

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Gloria is not the sort of name you’d expect from a girl from the Free State, but she explained that Laura Branigan’s song Gloria was playing in the maternity ward in the Bothaville hospital as she popped out, one bright morning in the 1980s…

My name is Dick, by the way. Dick Falcon. My friends called me “Maltese” after the book. I’ve never read it – books are for losers – but I am a private investigator.

And, like all private investigators, I like a bit of the strong stuff. Nah – not bourbon… this is Sandton, not New Orleans, after all. I add a little slug of Buffelsfontein Brandewyn into the brew. I find it helps me cope with some of the clowns I deal with on a daily basis.

Besides, I like being a rowwe bliksem (rough bugger) as they say in their ads.

Talking about clowns, I hear a commotion in the hallway outside and then a man with a false orange beard, sunglasses and a blonde wig under a MAGA cap bursts into the office.

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Behind him, also in sunglasses and clearly packing heat, are the heavies in black suits.

“Morning, Mbaks!” I shout, “How the hell are you?”

He is taken aback: “Wow! How do you know who I am? I am disguised.”

“I’m an investigator, after all, comrade, and I see things others don’t.”

I don’t have the heart to tell him that the sirens, blue lights and 17 BMW X5s clogging the street below were a small hint.

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“We have a problem,” he says, coming straight to the point.

“That’s what I’m here for,” I reply, thinking about the fat tender I had landed for investigative services for the ANC, paid for out of a secret state security slush fund. It had only cost me one Maserati and a small deposit on a house in Zimbali… but I was quite surprised that, after all these years, they still didn’t know how to game the Public Finance Management Act. Clearly missing the Guptas…

“There are people plotting a coop,” he says.

“Must be stool pigeons,” I reply but the quip, like the birds, flies over his head.

I look at him in the sunglasses: “Why would anyone want to overthrow a glorious revolutionary movement?”

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Sarcasm is not Mbaks’ strength, so he continues: “We think Mkhwanazi is an agent of the imperialist powers…”

He looks at me (I think, but I’m not sure): “You must take care of him for us…”

I think about the Smith and Wesson .38 revolver in my bottom desk drawer. Six slugs up against the KZN cop’s trained special task force operators with their body armour and assault rifles?

I don’t think so. There is only one option: time to say so long and thanks for all the fish (from another book I’ve never read)… and a quick exit stage left to my villa in Mauritius.

“Anyone for a cup of coffee?”

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