“Good. Let’s see if he’s home.”
They pulled up in front of Ahmed’s compound and Aima tried to call his phone, but it rang through to voice mail.
“Ugh, that’s annoying.” Ijendu tapped her nails against the steering wheel.
“No, he’s probably home. That’s someone’s car parked there, so he has a visitor.” Aima opened her door and started climbing out of the car. “It’s okay; we have keys to each other’s houses. Let’s just ring the doorbell.” She unlocked the small pedestrian door set within the gate and they entered the compound.
“You’re right, he’s home,” Ijendu said, pointing to Ahmed’s car. She smiled at Aima. “Let’s get some answers so you can have your happy reunion and I can continue looking forward to my maid of honor duties.”
When they got to the front door, it was already cracked. Aima pushed it open more as they entered.
“Ahmed?” she called out. “Are you home?”
There was no answer, and she and Ijendu walked deeper into the sterile silence of Ahmed’s house.
twelve
Saturday, 3:04 PM
Kalu woke up feeling like his eyes were full of sand. His cheek was damp from where he’d drooled onto his pillow, a wet patch of cotton blossoming under his mouth. He groaned and rolled over on his back, swiping a hand over his face. Even with his eyes closed, Kalu winced at the sunlight filling his room.
For the first several minutes, he didn’t remember—that Aima was gone, everything from Ahmed’s party, the warning on the train. He opened his eyes and reached out to the other side of the bed, the one she used to sleep on, and his hand met emptiness, blank sheets, a smooth pillow. Kalu was wondering if she was in the bathroom when memory caught up to him and with it an immense surge of grief that dragged up tears. He covered the surge with anger, grabbing her pillow and throwing it across the room with a shout. Just opening his mouth broke a dam, however, and sobs burst out, loud and ugly. Kalu bent over, muffling the sounds against his palms. There were other hurts buried in there; he could feel them. They looked like a little girl gagged on a bed, like Ahmed’s hands on his skin, like a laugh over a telephone line, like a terrible aloneness wandering the city. Accumulated, they were so heavy, the bartender’s warning didn’t even seem real. So much of the night felt like a dream now anyway. The story was just part of it, an unreal message being filtered through the lowest points of the city.
The grief made way for the warning nonetheless—the bartender’s face, his fear when Kalu had said the pastor’s name. Was it even possible that the man at the party was Okinosho? The man’s face was splashed over signboards across the city and in full pages of newspapers. He was in television advertisements, his voice booming out from the radio, his sermons online—wouldn’t Kalu have recognized him? It was with a little shame that Kalu remembered the frenzy he’d been in when he burst into that room, the fury that had burst in his eyes and hands when he’d seen that girl. Hers was the only face in that room he could remember, not even the bouncer who he’d spoken to at the door. It made complete sense that he wouldn’t recognize the man he’d thrown to the floor even if he was someone as famous as Okinosho. The import of what he’d done slowly filtered in, turning his hands numb.
He’d attacked the most powerful religious leader in the country.
He’d thrown him to the ground, naked. If that bouncer hadn’t intervened, Kalu would have tried to crush the man’s testicles.
He’d humiliated Okinosho in a room full of his peers.
Terror crept up Kalu’s spine. He’d had no choice—would he have turned and walked away from the girl if he knew that it was the pastor on top of her? No, it had been inevitable and he would do it all over again, but part of his head was frantically begging, praying that he was wrong, that the bartender was wrong, that it wasn’t Okinosho he’d attacked. He had to ask Ahmed.
If Ahmed had been with a man when Kalu called him, so what? It was too many emotions making a storm inside him—grief, this irrational jealousy, the developing terror. The jealousy was easier to ignore. He’d been ignoring it for years, after all, telling himself that he was just possessive of Ahmed’s time because they’d been friends for so long. Whatever ran underneath was something Kalu didn’t want to dig up, so he left it alone. As for Aima, Kalu couldn’t help but be grateful that she’d left the city when she did. If Okinosho wanted revenge for the scene at the party, Aima could be a target. All this was an ugliness he didn’t want to bring her into. It was better to not tell her anything about it. She’d be safe in London with her parents by now.
There was even a chance that Okinosho would blame Ahmed for what Kalu had done. It was his party after all, and Kalu was not just his guest but his friend. Kalu looked around the bed for his phone, leaning over the edge to reach underneath where it had fallen. The phone was dead again. He growled in annoyance and plugged it in, then went to the bathroom to splash water on his face and rinse his mouth. He was too anxious to do anything else more than swipe on some deodorant. Aima had left things on the counter—a nearly empty bottle of perfume, a rattail comb, a broken earring. Kalu picked up the bottle and sprayed some of the scent in the air. The intercom to the apartment rang, a short and obnoxiously cheery tune. He put the bottle down and went into the parlor, answering the call.
“Yes?”
The voice of the security guard at the gate came through, edged in static. “Oga, delivery pessin dey here for you.”
Kalu frowned. “I didn’t order anything.”
“Na your name dey for the receipt. Dem no get correct apartment number, so I say make I call and check.”
The terror reared up again, a primal warning scattering up the back of his neck. Run, it said. Run now. Kalu fought the urge to take his hand off the intercom and run out of the door, down the corridor, down the stairs, whirling out into the naked outdoors. It was only the possibility of running into the person at the gate (the assassin, the warning hissed) that held him in place. He had to do something, he had to get somewhere safe, he had to leave this apartment. They knew where he lived, the gates of the estate could only protect him for so long, and Kalu wasn’t sure if he was in a safe house or in a trap, a hole dug into the ground with hunters gathering at the mouth of it, eager to flay him and take his pelt to Okinosho.
“Oga?”
Kalu collected himself, his hand trembling. “Don’t allow him inside. Don’t allow anyone inside who says they’re looking for me. If someone else comes, tell them I’m not around, that I traveled.”
“Okay, sah.”
Kalu took his hand off the button and the static bled into silence. He looked over at his windows, the glass stretching from the floor to the ceiling, a dark linen curtain blocking out the light. His apartment was at the front of the building; you could see the parking lot and the gate from his balcony. Kalu stepped over to the edge of the window, leaning over the potted lilies Aima had kept blooming on a table behind the sofa. The air there dragged sweet from the blossoms. He stood to the side and gently pulled the curtain back just a few centimeters, hoping it wouldn’t be noticed by someone outside looking up at a seventh-floor window. Peeking out, he could see the front gate, wrought black iron, and the security guard in his ironed blue shirt, talking to another man, someone short and lean, wearing a red T-shirt and khaki shorts, holding a small brown package. The conversation got animated as the man with the package gestured toward the building, jerking his arms in sharp, aggressive darts, clearly demanding entry. The security guard squared his stance and puffed out his chest, hooking his thumbs into his belt loops, and Kalu could just imagine the bass that had entered his voice. He watched as the man with the package threw up an arm, then turned away. Kalu let the curtain fall back and exhaled in relief. Some more time, perhaps just enough to figure out where he could go, where would be safe. He had to call Ahmed.
He went back to the bedroom and picked up his phone, pressing the power button and tapping on the screen, frowning when glitched lines appeared underneath the cracked glass.
“What’s this? It was working this morning.”
Fear began to bubble up in his chest as the phone warbled nonsense colors at him. He needed to call Ahmed and figure out what to do. Maybe he was being dramatic to think people were out to get him. Maybe the man outside was simply trying to do his job and deliver a package. Maybe he was overreacting, but Ahmed would know. Ahmed would know exactly how all this worked and what to do. Kalu put the phone back down. If he left it to charge a little longer, perhaps it would work then. It had to work then.
Wiping his hands on his thighs, he went back to the window and looked out. It took him a moment to locate the man in the red shirt, but he found him standing next to a small battered white car. As Kalu watched, the man tossed the package from hand to hand, thinking, then he tapped on the window of the car. Someone inside wound the glass down and reached out to take the package. They conferred for a moment, then the man in the red shirt walked away from the car but not toward the gate. Kalu frowned. Why wasn’t he entering the car to leave? He angled himself to see the man better, then felt his stomach drop as he realized the man was heading for the fence, casting surreptitious glances toward the gate to make sure security wasn’t watching him. There was a row of flame of the forest trees right at the fence, their branches draping over the wrought iron, drowning a section of the fence in green and blooms of yellow and orange. With one step, the man was hidden by the trees, but Kalu could catch glimpses of his red shirt, loud flashes in the green. He was climbing the fence.
The warning bell in Kalu’s head started screaming again in full siren sounds. RUN, it said. RUN NOW.
This time, Kalu didn’t argue. He grabbed his phone, shoved it into his pocket with his wallet, then took his keys, slamming the door behind him. Out on the landing, he jabbed at the elevator button, his heart pounding in his ears. It was only a floor above, thank goodness, and once the doors opened, Kalu threw himself inside, hitting the button to close them again. He hadn’t had time to put on shoes, only slide his feet into leather slippers on his way out. They made it a little harder to run, but he was using his car so it didn’t matter; he could get away from this red-chested assassin hunting him down; he could disappear into the roads of the city. He beeped the car open and sat inside to collect himself for a few seconds. There was no need to rush; it would only draw attention if he sped out of the estate with his wheels burning. It was better to stay calm, ignore the panic shouting in his head. He pulled out of the parking space up to the gate and waved to the security guards. They smiled and nodded and opened the gate, and Kalu started to turn left to connect to the main road, tentatively relieved. He glanced in his rearview mirror at the trees and the fence, and the man was still hidden, still climbing. For a moment, Kalu felt safe.
The feeling was shattered by the white car blasting its horn behind him, the window lowering to show another man leaning out to shout at the man climbing the fence, gesturing toward Kalu’s car with frantic arms. They knew what his car looked like, Kalu realized; they knew he was getting away. The man in the red shirt emerged from the trees, brushing leaves and twigs off his clothes. He looked between his companion and Kalu’s car, then broke into a dead run. Kalu didn’t wait for him to enter the white car; he simply smashed his foot against the accelerator and shot out, swerving wildly into traffic and shifting across three lanes while the other drivers shouted and pressed on their horns. Kalu didn’t care, his car was a large Jeep, it would cause more damage to these smaller cars than they could inflict on him. He sped through two intersections before looking back in his mirror and was horrified to see the white car weaving through the other cars, bearing down on him.
“Fuck, fuck, fuck!” A sharp right turn, spinning through a roundabout, barely missing the side of a bus as he careened down a side road. The bus conductor swore at him and slammed a hand against the side of his car as it passed, but Kalu couldn’t spare a breath to even attempt an apology. He was frantically hoping that no traffic policemen would stop him; there was no bribe he could give that would be worth the time that would cost.
Ditch the car, the voice in his head told him. It’s too easy to find you with it.
“I don’t have time!” he shouted back at himself, his voice shaking, his hands clenched on the steering wheel. The panic was filling his car, choking him. His face was wet. When had he started crying? He slid tightly in and out of traffic lanes, his fear tightening into a slick knot, but then he swallowed it down, calculating. No one was going to save him except himself. He couldn’t afford to scatter, not right now. He could save that for later. For now, he had to think.
There was an intersection coming up, with traffic police and a light that was about to change. There was a market on the right, pyramids of tomatoes catching the sunlight, and a bus stop close to it filled with loud danfos and a fleet of okadas. Kalu fumbled with his right hand at the radio while accelerating to overtake the tanker in front of him, cutting dangerously across two lanes as horns blared and people shouted at him through their open windows. The radio popped loose, thanks to Ahmed—Kalu hadn’t thought he was serious when his friend told him to have the mechanic put a secret compartment behind the radio, but as usual, Ahmed was right. “You never know when you’ll need money on the go,” he’d said. “Whether it’s for a bribe or something else.” Kalu drove even faster as the light turned orange, steering with his left hand as he pulled out wads of cash from the compartment, his radio dangling heavily by its wires. He glanced in the rearview mirror, and he could see that the white car was a few lengths behind. He had time, just a sliver of it, but it would be enough; it had to be enough. And he was going to lose this car. Fuck.
The light turned red and the cars in the other direction started moving. Kalu sped through the intersection, swerving to avoid a small sedan but clipping its bumper. The traffic police yelled and started to walk over. The bundles of money were in his lap as Kalu pulled over right in front of the market between two buses, blocking one of them. Everyone was shouting and he knew he only had moments before someone would start grabbing his shirt. He threw the car into park, shoved some money into his pockets, and ripped the worn yellow rubber band that was holding the other bundles together. Jumping out of the car, Kalu threw the money into the air with as much strength as he had, and the sky exploded with thousand-naira notes. People screamed and rushed, and Kalu ran for the okadas, dodging the bodies pushing and jumping, their hands outstretched. He was living in split seconds—the ones before the traffic police reached him, before the men pursuing him spotted him through the crowd he’d created, before the okada driver who was sitting astride his motorcycle and turning his head toward the noise realized what was going on. Kalu jumped on the back of the motorbike, pulled a wad of money from his pocket, and reached around to slap it to the man’s chest. “No questions,” he said. “I need to disappear now now.”
