Nairobi Heat (8 page)

‘Fresh from the farm,’ he cried out to us as he stirred the pot a couple of times before lifting it from the fire and placing it on the dirty cement with his bare hands, flicking his fingers in the air to cool them down. ‘Some tea, gentlemen?’ he asked.

Lord Thompson poured his tea into two huge tin cups before producing a loaf of bread, which he promptly tore into three pieces using his bare hands – old, spotted and dirty. We had been standing all along, but once he had finished with his tea and bread, he waved us towards a number of three-legged stools arranged around the wood burner.

Once we had seated ourselves, and Lord Thompson had handed O and me our tea and bread, he sat down next to me, reached into his overalls and produced a pair of eyeglasses, to get a better look at me, he said.

‘When I heard there was an American policeman on our
bit of the earth, I thought, why not invite him over?’ Lord Thompson began. ‘As my people say: He who does not leave his home thinks his mother is the best cook. I wanted you to taste my cooking before you return to your mother’s.’ His accent was very much like O’s, but I could detect an English accent under the African one. ‘I was expecting a white man,’ he continued. ‘But you, you surprise me.’

I hadn’t thought that someone reading about me in the paper wouldn’t be able to tell from my name that I wasn’t white. I didn’t ask him why it mattered – perhaps it was a calculated slight.

‘And I must thank you for your hospitality,’ I said as I tore into the bread and took a sip of tea. The tea was amazing! Who knew tea could taste like this? Fuck my coffee back in that dingy little café in Madison, I thought. I was moving on.

Lord Thompson surprised me because he wanted to know how the US economy was faring. He talked about the dollar in the world market and declared that the enemy of the United States was not Japan, which was buying America up, but China, which was buying up the treasury.

‘So, Ishmael.’ It took forever before the question left his mouth, but when it came it took me by surprise. ‘Ishmael, where is your white whale? You have a white whale, don’t you?’ he asked in his half-African, half-British accent.

‘I was named after my great, great-grandfather, Ishmael Fofona,’ I replied coldly. ‘I know who I am.’

‘This Ishmael Fofona … He must have been an African prince. You carry yourself rather well,’ he said, seemingly genuinely unaware of the condescension in his words.

‘And the white whale, it was Ahab not Ishmael …’
I began, but then paused, realising that there was no point in antagonising the old man. We needed him more than he needed us. ‘But, yes, I do have my own white whale …’ I finished lamely.

‘To kill or be killed by,’ Lord Thompson said pointedly, looking at O. ‘The devil will get us all in the end. Is that not so, O?’

‘Just tell us why you called,’ O said, putting a hard edge into his voice.

‘Me and O here, we go way back,’ Lord Thompson continued, ignoring O’s question. ‘Have you not told him? Come on now, Detective Odhiambo, that is not the way to treat your brother.’ The amused contempt in the word brother was unmistakable.

O was silent.

‘Ah, my dear brother …’ Lord Thompson said, turning to me. ‘So, he did not tell you, did he?’ He paused as if gathering himself. ‘Twice I have been acquitted,’ he finally continued. ‘One was self-defence. The other was purely accidental. I have the great fortune of African justice working in my favour, and O does not like it. Isn’t that so, O?’ he asked, still looking at me.

I turned to look at O, expecting some response, but he didn’t say anything – he simply smiled, like he knew something Lord Thompson did not.

‘O here thought I shot them like dogs,’ the old man continued. ‘But I was in front of a white judge and he acquitted me. That may not seem like much to you, but whites in this country hate me. Look around you. Whatever I am, I am African. My DNA is from my white parents, my
skin is white, but my soul is African. I would never kill one of us,’ he said with conviction.

O just kept smiling to himself.

‘Enough of this,’ Lord Thompson said, perhaps sensing that O wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction of an argument. ‘Ishmael, I will give you what you came for. Go to the Timbuktu Bar in Eastleigh. There you will find another guide. What you seek is in Africa. One dot connects the next. And as my people say: Only the traveller knows the road.’ Having finished his speech he rang a little bell and the doors opened.

As I followed O out of Lord Thompson’s room I wondered at the way I felt. I couldn’t remember anyone eliciting so much anger and hatred from me in one meeting before. I wanted to hit him so bad, break a bone or two and force him to see the world he had created around him for what it really was – a lie. Perhaps it wasn’t all about him? Perhaps it was about my relationship to white folk back in the US, but whatever it was it was powerful. And to claim that he was African? What the fuck was that all about? I was beginning to hate actively, I realised as O and I retrieved our weapons from the mercenaries, and I didn’t like it. Facts and truth get lost in hate.

Making our way back to Eastleigh in the Land Rover, we talked about our next move and Lord Thompson’s motives. This much we knew: the old man had more information than he had given us. But we also knew that we were finally on to something. There was nothing more we could do except play along until he had revealed his hand. We had to be cautious. Mistakes, hesitations, miscalculations – no more of that, we had to be at our best.

We got to Timbuktu Bar around eight pm. I entered first. The place was empty save for the bartender and a butcher in a bloody apron – probably fresh from slaughtering what would soon become the evening’s
nyama choma
. It wasn’t an upscale place, but unlike The Hilton Hotel bar it did have a cement floor, an iron roof and jukebox. There was nothing to do except wait, so I asked for a Tusker and sat in a booth. O came in a few minutes later, sat at the counter farthest from the entrance and ordered a Tusker as well.

After a little while people started trickling into the bar and the jukebox came to life, blaring
Lingala
song after
Lingala
song – the music all sounded the same, with an annoyingly high-pitched guitar solo at the end of each song. By midnight the place was almost packed. It was an odd mixture of people – different races and classes. The well-to-do folk – some white, some black – were drinking liquor while the rest of us sipped our Tuskers. Couples slipped in and out of the bathroom. Sometimes money changed hands – for drugs or sex, I assumed.

Two hours later I was getting a little tipsy, and was at the point where I was thinking I should just join O at the counter and make a night of it – none of the people in the bar had looked in any way suspicious or sent a look of recognition my way. But just at that moment, a young couple started arguing loudly in Kiswahili by the jukebox, presumably over what to play. People looked on and laughed in amusement. Finally, the couple found a song, Bob Marley’s ‘Is This Love’, a staple from my college days, and before long they were dancing and kissing to whistles and cheers from the tipsy crowd. O made eye contact to ask what I thought of them. I shook my head
and he turned back to his beer.

Half an hour later, I was done with waiting, and decided to go to bathroom before joining O at the bar. Standing up, I finished what was left of my Tusker. I had long ago learned the hard way never to leave half of anything out in the open when working a case. Once, when I had just made detective, I was on a petty drugs case. Well, the fucker I was following slipped a heavy laxative in my coffee. Of course, I lost him and spent a whole day in the bathroom, burning ass and all. Finally, a uniform arrested him for drunk driving, but it had taken a long time to live it down.

I was thinking about that and how this thankless job is not without its humorous moments as I peed, half smiling to myself when the door opened. It was the young man from the jukebox. He nodded drunkenly. I continued taking my piss. Then, from the corner of my eye, I saw a blur of movement. I turned, pissing all over the place – on him and the walls – as I barely managed to stop him burying a knife in my neck.

When faced with a knife you will get injured, it’s just a question of where and how badly. The main thing is to protect your wrists and vital organs. Everything else is fair game. Luckily the man was quite a bit shorter than me, and after his initial attack I managed to grab him in a way that meant he could only jab the knife ineffectually into my shoulder.

Unable to reach for my gun, I finally pushed the knife above us, stepped in and kneed him in the stomach. He doubled over, and holding his right hand up with my left I gave him an uppercut so that his head snapped backwards, then I brought his hand down behind his back so that he spun around. But even as the knife clattered to the floor I heard
two gunshots above the music in the bar and the sound of screaming.

Seconds later the woman the young man had been dancing with walked in with what looked like a .32 in her hand. She had shot O. I was now alone.

I couldn’t let the young man go. I had to use him as a shield while reaching for my gun. She yelled something to him in Kiswahili and he ducked down, moving to the left. I felt a bullet whizz just past my right shoulder. Then he suddenly leapt away from me, stumbling into the urinal, leaving me exposed. I threw myself to the ground as I went for my gun, but I already knew it was too late.

She’s got the drop on me, I thought as I saw her narrow her eyes as she took aim. And, worse, my dick is hanging out of my pants. There was just time for the image of the dead white girl to flash through my mind one last time before the young woman’s gun went off.

For a moment I thought I was hit, but it was just the shock of landing hard on the floor. I looked up at her in surprise as her gun clattered to the floor and she sank to the ground with a look of incomprehension on her face – a thin trickle of blood running down her dress and onto her legs. Then I saw O standing behind her, bracing himself against the bathroom wall, a smoking gun in his hand.

The man contemplated us – calculating his choices I suppose – but it was all over; he had played out his hand.

I stood up and zipped up my pants. ‘Who sent you?’ I asked the man.

‘You, you
mzungu
tourist, we want money,’ he screamed back, trying to wipe my piss and whatever else was in the
urinal out of his eyes.

‘Motherfucker, you call me a white man one more time and I’ll shoot you right here,’ I answered him. I was really tired of the
mzungu
shit.

O carefully unbuttoned his jacket and shirt. I could see two bullets lodged neatly in his vest, over his heart. ‘She called my name, I turned and she shot me,’ he said, grimacing in pain. Even with a vest, you still get quite a knock and he would be lucky if he hadn’t broken a rib. He staggered over and stood over the young man, his gun trained on him.

‘I tell you who sent me, you let me go,’ the young man said. It was half a statement, half a question.

‘Who sent you?’ I asked him.

‘Tell us what we want to know and you live,’ O offered.

‘I tell you, I go?’ he asked with disbelief.

‘To prison you dumb piece of shit,’ I shouted at him.

‘No deal …’ He put his hand over his mouth to show he wasn’t willing to talk.

‘Pick her up!’ O ordered him.

The young man hesitated and O shot at the wall just above his head.

‘Pick her up and put her on your shoulder,’ O shouted.

The young man scrambled to his feet, grabbed the dead woman by the waist and with some trouble hoisted her to his shoulder.

‘You tell us what we want to know and we let you carry your dead. You are a soldier … Tell us who gave the order,’ O said gently, with the kind of patronising understanding that an officer might use when questioning an enemy soldier. I had never heard him speak like that before, but to my surprise it
worked.

‘Lord Thompson …’ the man said, his legs beginning to tremble with the effort of keeping the woman slung over his shoulder. ‘We do works for him all the time. He call, we go to his place. He pay, we work.’

‘Did he tell you why?’ I asked him.

‘No, no, no … He use code: “Cut weed from garden”. He pay, we do. No questions,’ he said, his eyes darting from my face to O’s as he wondered which one of us had the power to let him go.

‘You can go,’ O finally said, holstering his gun.

The man stumbled out of the bathroom and we followed – by now his back was covered in the woman’s blood and he left a trail of it in his wake. The bar was empty. Only the bartender remained.