Indigo (13 page)

Jerry waited for Parker to dismiss Pamela's offer out of hand, but he turned and looked at her. “Do you have a phone at where you live?” he asked.

“There is a phone and I am between house girls. No one will be coming in.”

When Parker heard that, he nodded, and Pamela told Louis to head out Western Avenue until he got to the Anthony Village road. This was a part of Lagos that Jerry didn't know, a Nigerian part of town.

What was he going to do? He did not feel in physical danger. Parker and Louis, though they'd been in jail with him, didn't seem at all tough, and Jerry felt sure that he could get away if he had to, slipping out of the car and running into the night. But where would he go if he ran, what would he do? Since he didn't know anything about the inner workings of the C.I.A., it was still possible that all of this was legitimate, that Lee Logar had truly orchestrated such an unlikely series of events. Also, Jerry wanted to find out more about Pamela, and seeing her house would certainly allow him a chance to do that. So he just sat there, clutching his thermos and sandwich, as if it were they who would leap from the car if he released his grip, giving them half a chance to escape.

Pamela directed them through several more turns, having them stop on a quiet road where modest frame houses lined both sides of the street. “There,” she said, “the white one behind that wall.”

When the car was parked, Parker asked Jerry to stay where he was while he and Louis checked the place out. Was that something they would do? Jerry asked himself. If they were trying to interrupt his flight in some way would they now leave him alone? Jerry looked into the night and fingered the door handle, but in the end he didn't move until Parker came back. “Is fine,” Parker said. “We got de servants' quarters with no one living in 'em. It will be good for one day. I already call Lee and he tol' me so.”

Parker smiled well and when Jerry got out of the car he reached back in to get Jerry's thermos and his lunch. “You don' want to leave dese things lying about,” Parker said. “Too many thieves in dis part of town.”

Pamela's house was small, but Jerry decided that if Nigeria had a middle class this must be it. The living room had chairs and a couch and a floor of bare cement. But what made the room interesting was that Pamela stood in it, having changed into a loose white blouse with a few yards of colorful cloth tied around her middle. She looked so wonderful that Jerry thought surely such a vision must be on his side.

“I am making something for us to eat,” she said. “It will be ready soon.” Had she done something with her hair too? Jerry couldn't quite tell, for the light in the room was bad.

Parker went over and picked up the phone. He then asked Pamela if it was the only receiver in the house.

“There is one in my room, upstairs,” she said, and when Parker went to see about it, Pamela asked Jerry to sit down. “There is another little thing we must clear up,” she said. “My son is upstairs and he wants to see you.”

Jerry had been preparing himself to hear something else about the current state of his affairs, so though she spoke seriously, to him her words sounded light. “Sure,” he said, “I'd love to meet your son.”

“Good,” Pamela said, and when she called up the stairs and he heard the boy's slow walk Jerry grew calm. He was excellent with children, probably Pamela saw that in him, and he realized, as the boy approached, that for the past three days he had been playing the game of seeing himself helping her out, perhaps even putting her child through school. He smiled at that. He was an educator, and it was pleasing to remember that when all of this was finally done, that was what he would be again, maybe in America, or who knows, maybe even back here, in Lagos once again.

Jerry had his back to the stairs, so Pamela put her arm on his shoulder and turned him slowly around. Acceptance was in his heart, but when he saw Pamela's son on the stairs he quickly knew that he had been wrong. There was nothing he could do for this boy. The boy, of course, was Nurudeen, and when Pamela said his name he held out his hand and, like a little gentleman, stepped down into the room.

This time Jerry would not hear an explanation. He backed away from Nurudeen, then went to sit in the upstairs room where the other phone was, looking at the phone as if Lee were about to call with news of how to get him out of town. He had been too much of a fool, but he would stop that now. Nurudeen was her son, yet Jerry had believed her when she had said that he was not. Pamela tried several times to speak to him, telling him that she had said only that Nurudeen was not her stepson, but he would not respond to her knocks on the door. He only sat there, staring at the phone, his old resolve coming back again.

But after a while, when Jerry slumped back against the headboard of Pamela's bed, there came a knock to which he responded simply by standing and opening the door. It was Louis Smith-Jones. “Here I am, Oga,” he said. “De man won' call tonight. Les have good sleep for travel on tomorrow.”

Louis seemed so friendly standing there that Jerry asked, “Who hired you, Louis? Were you working for Lee when we met in jail?”

“Oh no, Oga,” Louis replied. “Dat man fin' Parker, Parker fin' me.”

With Louis in the room Jerry felt better. Surely it was the truth after all; this boy could steal, perhaps, but from what Jerry had learned about him in jail he couldn't lie very well. Surely in the morning he'd be on his way with Lee, off to Ghana and then home. And it was just then that Pamela reappeared. She came out of the darkness carrying soup on a tray.

“I hope you will eat a little,” she said. “I hope you will listen a little as well.”

Jerry didn't respond so Pamela set the bowl down and then told Louis to leave them alone. The mattress on her bed was soft and Jerry felt his end of it rise when she sat down. “Nurudeen is my son,” she said, “but he and I were apart for several years. During that time Nurudeen stayed with his father in that flat near the school.”

“Am I supposed to believe you now?” Jerry asked.

“I couldn't tell you before, don't you see? I had to distance myself from the situation until I understood it better. I haven't had much to say in Nurudeen's upbringing. His father paid for my studies abroad, and when he asked me to play the role of Marge's friend I had to go along. If for no other reason than the chance it gave me to spend time with my boy.”

Jerry tried to make his voice incredulous, but curiosity was its strongest influence. “Everything you did you did with Nurudeen's best interest at heart,” he said.

“As always,” said Pamela, “I knew you'd understand.”

Her voice was matter-of-fact and Jerry was dumbfounded. He did understand. And he believed her again. “But why didn't you tell me the truth when I caught you in that flat?” he asked. “And why spring Nurudeen on me in such a dramatic way?”

“I didn't trust you enough then,” Pamela said. “And I still didn't have Nurudeen physically with me. He was staying with his grandmother. Having him here is my payoff, I suppose, though it's all considerably more complicated than that.”

Jerry took up his spoon and stirred the soup, letting steam rise up between them. During the years since Charlotte's death he had not had many fantasies about women. He'd had so few, in fact, that he had occasionally been ashamed. Now, though, in spite of everything, he was still strongly drawn to Pamela, though she had told him only lies since the day they'd met, and though she might even be lying now.

There was a quiet knock on the door and when Nurudeen came in Pamela touched Jerry's hand, making him look at the boy, asking him with her eyes to say something.

“I'm sorry about your withdrawal from school,” Jerry told the boy. “Perhaps when this is over you'll come back.”

“Are my teachers all fine?” Nurudeen asked. “When you see them give them my hello.”

It was ten o'clock when Pamela took Jerry down to the tiny servants' rooms, each with a made-up cot. Most Lagos houses had such rooms, but these were smaller than Jerry had imagined they would be.

Parker and Louis were already in their rooms, and when Jerry thought of them he had difficulty remembering them as they had been in jail. Now Louis seemed sweet-tempered and much younger than he'd appeared to be in prison. Louis was a boy, no more than nineteen or twenty, and Jerry understood now that if he was a thief he was a careless one, a thief without malice or plan and one who would always be caught.

Parker, on the other hand, now seemed far more like someone capable of succeeding in a fantastic con. He was likeable and he had the charisma of a politician, calm and seemingly honest. Jerry found himself wondering how Lee Logar had found Parker, though he soon remembered that he wasn't sure of any such thing at all. Still, if he was really leaving Nigeria in the morning, it suddenly seemed ironic that on the eve of his departure he was finally coming to know the place, and that was a feeling that added to his growing desire not to leave at all.

Jerry slept until nine, when he was awakened by Nurudeen with the news that breakfast was ready and that there had been a phone call, which Parker had answered, up in the main part of the house. When Jerry entered the living room, Parker was just putting the phone down. “Lee has read dis morning's papers,” he said. “Your photograph is everywhere, with captions saying you are at large.”

Parker then said that in Lee's opinion the newspaper articles dictated a postponement of their departure for a day or two. He also said that Lee wanted to move Jerry to a safer place. Jerry was to wait at Pamela's until eleven and then find his way to Jankara market, where he would be met. Parker and Louis were to go along.

“Do you know de market?” Parker asked. “He says he want to meet us by de monkeys.”

Jerry said he had seen the monkeys, but Jankara market was huge, and too central to the everyday commerce of Lagos. Jerry thought it was a bad place to meet, and he asked Parker to get Lee back on the phone so that he could tell him so. The others, however, all said they thought that Jankara was ideal, a place with such rutted roads that no one, least of all the police, could easily go rushing about. And Louis said that he knew the market well. “Don' worry 'bout nothin',” he said. “My own good brodder stay aroun' dem monkeys. He fin' us housing if de been-to fail.”

Louis had returned the car he'd driven the night before, but Pamela had a Peugeot 504, the most common car in Lagos, and when Louis backed it out of her garage at eleven, Jerry got into the backseat, Pamela on one side of him, Nurudeen on the other. Parker rode shotgun and told Louis where it was that he should turn.

At a roundabout near her home, Pamela rolled down the window and bought three morning papers. Jerry's passport picture was on the front page of two of them and on the back page of the third. He looked fat and clean.

When they neared the market—actually from an overpass just above it—they could look down and see the market sprawl, an endless array of buildings, corrugated roofs and collapsed sides. To their right were mounds of smoking garbage, rag pickers on top of them searching for salvage among the ruined food.

The highway and its off-ramp and the Peugeot in which they sat were made of materials from the modern world, but Jerry could see that what lay before him was of a different composition altogether. During the rainy season the off-ramp would run directly into a lake of mud, but now, with harmattan dust still about, it was embedded in a pathway so cracked and deep that no automobile could pass. There were cars parked along the ramp, but Louis managed to drive a hundred meters more, stopping in front of a line of other Peugeots. “Les walk,” Parker said.

They all slid out the driver's side, depositing themselves on the rumpled ground. Though the market was before them, its entrances were numerous and Jerry had no idea how far they were from the monkeys.

“My brodder in de business of finance,” Louis said. “De finance business be near de monkey business.”

Parker was the tacit leader of the group, but Louis was making everything light, and Jerry was thankful for that. As they walked away from the car the market stretched before them like the canopy of a rain forest. Jerry knew he could get lost in there but when he tried to suggest that they ask about the monkeys and then walk around the market's outskirts until they got close, Parker took the newspaper from him and pointed at his photograph. “On de outside people got papers to read,” he said, “but de inside of Jankara is safer than Ghana, perhaps.”

From where Jerry stood the market didn't look safer than Ghana. He had been to this market only once before; on the occasion of his arrival in Nigeria he had come on a U.S. Embassy wives' tour. He had visited the fabric sellers then, walking tall among a tight group of women, marveling at the disarray.

They entered the market down a thin road walled on both sides with stacks of automobile parts. Jerry was surprised at the parts. He had always worked on his own cars, yet all during his time in Lagos he hadn't been able to find the parts he'd needed. When they passed a shop selling brake pads he seriously thought of stopping. He'd been needing new brake pads for weeks.

Jerry thought they might be near the monkeys when they came to a section of the market where parrots were sold. Here were dozens of African Gray parrots in wire cages, heads hanging sadly down. But the parrots were apparently not near the monkeys and soon they had passed into the section where there was food for sale and through it to a landscape of cups and saucers stacked on cardboard like fake Spode skylines of futuristic towns. Louis Smith-Jones led them here and there. He led them with confidence, but he couldn't find the monkeys. And as the morning heat rose, Jerry's anxiety did too. When he looked at his watch he realized that if Lee was really involved in any of this, they might miss him again because they were late.