Children of the Street (7 page)

Akosua was in the backseat. Dawson, in the front next to Baidoo, wasn’t much bothered by the chaos of Nima. What was taking his attention was the turmoil in his own head.
You panicked
. Afraid that Akosua’s Daramani was the same as the one he knew, terrified that his “other life” might be exposed, he had ordered Chikata to stay behind. Dawson suddenly felt corrupt and ashamed.

“I think we can get down here,” Akosua said. She pointed to their left. “His house is somewhere over there.”

Baidoo inched over and somehow created a parking space next to a paint and hardware store. Dawson and Akosua got out, weaving to the other side of Nima Highway. He let her lead him through the narrow walkways of the market, where the vendor stalls were packed on either side and space between one person and the next was a matter of a few inches. Whenever there was a cry of
Agoo!
behind them, they moved instinctively to one side to give way to someone pushing or carrying a load of grain or produce so heavy that, if he broke stride for even a second, it would be a disastrous loss of momentum.

Under the pitiless sun, the smell of raw sweat merged with the pungency of heaps of cinnamon, cumin, and thyme, sharp and fresh enough to make Dawson sneeze. As they moved from the sweetness of the spice market to the olfactory assault of the stink-fish section, Dawson was watching which way Akosua was going. In Nima, there was always more than one route anywhere, so it was too early to say if she was moving in the direction of Daramani’s place. She took a sharp right, which Dawson knew would move them out of the main body of the market. Gradually, it became quieter as they reached purely residential areas of both brick and wooden structures. Some alleys were paved; others were of red dirt only. The gutters were a flashback to those of Agbogbloshie—looking like them and smelling like them.

Akosua stopped and looked around.

“Lost?” Dawson asked her, aware of a silly spark of hope that she might not find the place.

She mopped her perspiring brow. “This way, I think,” she said, starting off again.

It happened she was taking a route straight through the prostitutes’ row called 4-4-1. It was inactive now but would spring to life in the evening. Akosua made another turn, but Dawson gently restrained her.

“You don’t want to go that way.”

They had come face-to-face with one of Nima’s addicts’ lanes, where four guys were using wee and cocaine. They looked like they hadn’t eaten in weeks, lifeless eye sockets in gaunt faces. Somewhere at the other end of the alley, where there was a squalid public toilet, a drug dealer could be selling to some well-heeled guy who had just driven up in an SUV, or maybe even to a policeman.

Akosua reversed her direction, getting her bearings back. Down an alley shaded on one side and sunlit on the other, as they passed a dreadlocked guy in a flaming skull T-shirt, Dawson’s heart sank. This was the way to the wee-smoking ex-thief, ex-convict Daramani Gushegu he knew.
Make her turn, make her turn. Please
. He was praying she would change direction, but she didn’t. Instead, Akosua stopped again.

“I don’t want him to see me,” she said to Dawson.

“Okay, no problem. Just tell me which house it is, then you can go back around the corner and wait for me.”

“Number three on the left. The yellow one.”

She disappeared. Dawson approached the house. Daramani’s place was incompletely painted—the yellow had apparently run out. There was a small window with fraying mosquito netting. An antenna was attached to the edge of the corrugated tin roof. It seemed Daramani now had a TV. He must be moving up in the world, despite his complaint that “life make too hard for Ghana nowadays.”

Dawson looked up and down the alley before knocking on the fragmenting wooden door. No one responded. Dawson tried it. Locked, although, quite frankly, he could have got in if he wanted to.
No, you’re in enough trouble already
.

He hesitated, then wrote a note asking Daramani to call him. He slipped it under the door.

10

Dawson asked Baidoo to drive to Agbogbloshie to drop Akosua off. On the way there, Dawson tried Wisdom again and got him this time, explaining the new development with Akosua and the picture on her friend’s mobile.

“I will email the photo to you,” Dawson told him.

“I need you to crop it to show Musa’s face by itself,” Dawson said, “and send it back.”

“Can we publish it after we’ve cropped and enhanced it?”

“As soon as we get DNA confirmation that the lagoon boy and Musa are the same person. Not before.”

“Where are the DNA samples going—South Africa?”

“No, we can get them done at Korle Bu.”

“Hmm, good luck.”

“Don’t be so cynical. Also, I need another favor from you.”

“Anything, my dear Inspector.”

“Please make a print of the uncropped photo—with Akosua in it—so I can give it to her to keep.”

“I can do that. Shoot the pic over.”

“Thank you, Wisdom.”

As he ended the call, Dawson asked Akosua how long she would be able to keep her friend’s mobile.

“I promised to take it to her this evening,” Akosua said.

Dawson thought about this for a moment. He might need to get back in touch with Akosua. He stole a look in his wallet and winced. He was down to almost nothing. He’d be lucky if he made it to the next paycheck.

“Stop at the Ecobank ATM up there,” he told Baidoo, “and then take us to the Vodafone shop near Nkrumah Circle.”

D
awson bought the cheapest available bare-bones phone for GHC35, but since Akosua had never had her own mobile before, she was thrilled, thanking Dawson profusely. A small amount of prepaid time came with the SIM card. Dawson begged her not to run through it making jubilant calls to her friend Regina.

“This is for us to get in touch with each other,” he pressed. “You hear?”

“Yes, please.”

B
efore they dropped Akosua off on Abossey Okai Road in Agbogbloshie, Dawson thanked her again for coming forward and promised he would let her know when he received the photo print of Musa and her together.

“Where now, massa?” Baidoo asked.

“Korle Bu Hospital.”

D
awson had never been to Korle Bu’s brand-new DNA lab, which had been installed in a remodeled space in the Central Lab. The technicians and medical director had both been trained in South Africa.

“Detective Inspector Dawson from CID,” he told the receptionist. “I’m here to talk to the one in charge of police DNA samples.”

Lifting her eyes languidly from her computer screen, she said, “Is he expecting you?”

“No, but he will be if you tell him I’m here.”

“Then please, you can have a seat,” she said, indicating the chairs behind him.

“Thank you, but I don’t have time to have a seat. This is police business. I need to see the person in charge now, please?”

Looking insulted, she got up and left, returning sulkily a few minutes later with a man in a white lab jacket.

“Good afternoon.” He had a wide face and a boyish voice.

“Afternoon. I’m D.I. Dawson.”

“Jason Allotey at your service. Do you have a case registered with us?”

“Yes,” Dawson said. “It should be in your system.”

“Please, come with me, Inspector.”

Dawson followed Jason around the corner to the lab proper, which, though compact, was very impressive. It was colder than the inside of a refrigerator. The floor gleamed white. Three spotless sequencing machines with matching flat-screen computer monitors stood on a central stainless steel counter. Along the sides of the room were glass cabinets, centrifuges, pipettes, reagents, and test tubes.

Jason went to one of the computers. “You know the case file number?”

Dawson rattled it off from memory. Jason matched him by typing it in just as fast.

“Okay, yah,” he said. “I know this one. The guy found in the lagoon. We are working on two blood samples sent to us from the Police Hospital Mortuary. No results yet, Inspector.”

“I brought you a present,” Dawson said, producing the plastic bag containing the tooth necklace.

Jason peered at it. “Whose tooth?”

“The victim—or the person we believe is the victim—lost a tooth, and his girlfriend made a necklace out of it.”

“Wow.” Jason’s face lit up as if someone had just dropped the Asantehene’s gold in his lap. “This is a dream source of DNA.”

“Just one thing, though,” Dawson said. “She wants the tooth back in one piece.”

Jason went over to the microscope to examine it, leaving it in the bag.

“Yeah, we can get material from it without any problem.”

“And without putting a big hole in it?” Dawson asked.

“Eh? You say a big hole?” Jason looked offended. “We deal in microns here, Inspector.”

“Sorry,” Dawson said, sufficiently chastened. “So, how long to find out if we have a DNA match?”

“For you, two weeks, Inspector.”

“Two weeks! Why does the test take so long?”

“It’s not the length of the test, Inspector, it’s how many tests are waiting in line to be done. You know we have a backlog of a whole bunch of specimens that were originally going to South Africa and the U.S.”

“Do you like tilapia?”

“Oh, by all means! Why?”

“I’ll bring the best tilapia to your house if you speed it up for me.”

“Ei!”
Jason exclaimed in wonder. “Personal delivery from a detective inspector?”

“Yessah. Sharp-sharp.”

Jason laughed happily and slapped hands with Dawson, ending with a crisp finger snap.

“You will have your DNA analysis, Inspector,” he said.

O
n his return to CID, Dawson stayed in the car park to call Daramani. There was no answer. He waited a few minutes and tried again. Still nothing. He sucked his teeth with impatience. His need to talk to Daramani was eating him alive. Not only did Dawson need to question him about the lagoon boy but he wanted to ask Daramani to keep his mouth shut about their friendship and, above all, their mutual vice. As he went back upstairs, he heard the words
conflict of interest
reverberating around his head. He felt himself getting into trouble. Just like in quicksand, his every move was drawing him in deeper, making it impossible to pull away.

11

Midmorning the following day, Thursday, Dawson got a call from Christine. He knew at once from the tremor in her voice that something was wrong.

“I’m going to pick Hosiah up from school,” she told him. “They just called me to say he’s not feeling well.”

“What do they mean, ‘not feeling well’?”

“They said it’s his breathing.”

Dawson’s stomach swooped. “Okay, I’ll meet you there.”

“No, wait for me to call you back. I’m much closer to the school than you—I can be there in twenty minutes.”

“All right.”

Chikata walked in drinking chocolate milk. “What’s wrong, Dawson?”

“Hosiah. His school says something’s wrong with his breathing. I’ll have to leave soon.”

“No problem, boss. Take care of the boy, I’ll handle everything here.”

Thirty anxious minutes later, Christine called back. “I have to take him to Korle Bu, Dark. He’s okay when he sits or lies still, but he’s short of breath when he moves around.”

“I’ll be there.”

T
he outpatient pediatric waiting area at Korle Bu Hospital was a hall open on two sides and filled with rows of long wooden benches. With space cleared for future laboratories and treatment areas, the lobby was both expansive and crowded. Mothers and fathers sat with their crying babies, waiting the obligatory eternity before they would be called into one of the three consultation rooms.

Dawson spotted Christine and Hosiah sitting at the end of a middle row. Hosiah’s eyes lit up when he saw his father approaching. They simultaneously reached for each other, and Dawson lifted his son up into his arms.

“How you doing, champ?”

“I’m okay.”

“Is the breathing better?”

“A little.”

But Dawson could see and hear how rapid his respiratory rate was.

“Here,” Christine said. “Let’s change places. I can stand for a while.”

They switched, Dawson sitting down with Hosiah on his lap. “Lean back against me. There. Comfortable?”

Hosiah nodded.

“How long will we have to wait, Daddy?”

“I don’t know, Hosiah. I hope it won’t be long, but there are a lot of people.”

I
t wasn’t until three hours later that they were called into the consultation room. Dr. Asem, the pediatrician, was a youngish male who was managing to look cool and unflustered even under the sweltering, stressful conditions. He went quickly through Hosiah’s medical record.

“So,” he said. “Short of breath today?”

“Yes,” Christine said. “With exertion, but not at rest.”

Asem listened to Hosiah’s chest and lungs with his stethoscope, nodded, and folded it up into his jacket pocket.

“Moderately fluid overloaded. Have you been salt-restricting him?”

Dawson glanced at Christine. “Trying.”

“Need to do more.” Asem pushed back on his mobile stool, putting his head out the door to call for a pulse oximeter.

He returned to Hosiah to check his hands and fingernails. A nurse came in with the pulse ox, and Hosiah automatically extended his right third finger for her to attach the device. He knew the drill.

“Ninety-three percent, Doctor,” the nurse said.

“Not terrible,” he said to Dawson and Christine, “but not good either. I think if we admit him and diurese him overnight, he should be fine by tomorrow.”

Hosiah looked up apprehensively at his parents. Dawson instinctively put a reassuring hand on his head.

“Daddy, I don’t want to stay here,” he said.

Dawson leaned forward, speaking softly to him. “I know you don’t, Hosiah, but it’s so we can get you better. Both Mammy and I will be right here with you.” He wiped away his son’s tears. “And tomorrow we’ll go back home, okay?”

Hosiah nodded, trying not to cry.

Asem dashed off admission orders in completely illegible handwriting and put the note in Hosiah’s chart. “Take this with you to the Emergency Department to get the IV started, and then he’ll go up to the general medical ward on the second floor. Okay?” He smiled at Hosiah. “You’ll be okay. You’re not afraid, are you?”

“No,” Hosiah said defiantly. “Not even of needles. My daddy is, though.”

Dr. Asem laughed. “Is that true?” he asked Dawson.

“I’m afraid so,” he said sheepishly.

As they stood to leave, Dawson softly told Christine, “Go on ahead with Hosiah, I’ll join you in a few minutes.”

Once his wife and son had left, Dawson turned to Dr. Asem. “In your honest opinion, is Hosiah’s condition getting worse?”

Asem inclined his head left to right as he considered the question. “Might be a little bit. On the other hand, maybe his sodium balance is just off. You have to be really careful with that salt.”

“We will,” Dawson promised.

“Is surgery on the horizon?” Asem asked.

“As soon as we find a way to pay for it.”

“I pray that it will be soon. Remember that if Hosiah ever develops the complication of pulmonary hypertension, it’s too late for surgery.”

Dawson bit his bottom lip. The warning was harsh but true.

“Thank you for your help, Dr. Asem.”

T
here were twenty-eight beds in total on the general medical ward, infants on one side of the floor, children on the other. Dawson, Christine, and Hosiah were all too familiar with the large, common room shared by all the patients. That was the way it had been for a long time at Korle Bu, and with the exception of a new private wing for people with a lot of money, that was the way it would be for some time to come.

As the diuretic began to take effect, Christine and Dawson helped Hosiah with the urinal just as other parents did their own children.

Night came. By 2:00
A.M.
, Hosiah had settled down, sleeping without much trouble. His pulse oximetry reading was up to 95 percent. Christine had been dozing off and on with her head resting on the edge of the bed. Dawson allowed his eyes to drift closed for short periods, but he was still on constant watch over his son.

“Christine,” he whispered. “Why not go home and get a few hours? He seems to be doing fine.”

She rubbed her eyes. “You’ll be okay?”

“Yes, we’ll be fine. Are you going to work tomorrow?”

“I’ll go in for half a day. Hopefully he can come home in the afternoon.”

“He should be able to.”

She nodded and stood up. “Okay. But call me if … you know, if anything comes up.”

“Of course.”

She kissed him on the cheek and softly kissed Hosiah as well, and then she was gone.