419

  "About recent kidnappings."

  "In Lagos?" he said, acting surprised.

  "Yes. So, for my own safety, and theirs, we have had to keep everything anonymous." The lies she'd rehearsed were spilling out now, so smooth, so clean, they surprised even her. It wasn't enough to tell a lie, she realized. You had to believe it as well.

  "Very wise. One can't be too careful," said Chief Ogun. "So, please pick up the money and then we will hurry down to the Central Bank.

  I will make you a millionaire by sundown!" The lies he'd rehearsed spilled out, so smooth, so clean. This was the first time he'd met one of his mugu face to face and he felt almost elated. It's not enough to tell a lie, he reminded himself. One has to believe in it as well.

  "They're not going to let me bring the money out. You'll have to come in."

  "But madam, I am not a guest at this hotel. They will treat me with suspicion. There are armed security guards throughout.

  Please, madam, you fetch the money. I will wait in the car."

  "How do I know I can trust you?" she asked.

  "Here, my business card." He fished one out of his wallet.

  "Anybody could print one of those."

  "Madam! Please. I am an upstanding citizen, an educated man.

  Look—" He dug out a snapshot of himself in university robes, arm slung around a woman in her middle years, a woman with the same broad smile.

  "Your mother?" Laura asked.

  "Yes," he said, tucking the photograph back into his wallet.

  "Now, please. Go fetch the money before the banks close."

  He waited, but she didn't move.

  "Can I see that photograph again?"

  "Madam, please. We are parked improperly. Hotel security will soon rouse us."

  "I need to see that photograph again."

  He sighed. "Fine."

  Laura examined the photograph carefully. "Your mother," she said, "is very beautiful. You have the same smile, the same gap in your teeth."

  Chief Ogun laughed, embarrassed. "An unfortunate inheritance, I'm afraid."

  "Well, I think it's very attractive."

  "Madam, please—"

  "Do you see this cleft, here, in my chin? It's faint, but do you see it? My father had the same cleft in his chin. I got it from him.

  That was my inheritance. Can you see it?"

  Chief Ogun laughed warmly. "Oh yes, I see it. Very good."

  Oyibos were so odd. "Now madam, at the risk of being rude, I must emphasize again the urgent nature of our..."

  It was as though she were outside a window watching events unfold within. She didn't know whether it was jet lag or the after-effects of her inoculations or the sleeping pills she'd taken en route, or the fact that she was far from everything familiar to her, but as she looked at this young man, this thief, she couldn't feel anything resembling fear. Only a certain detached... anger? Somewhere inside her, a voice was whispering: Let the Heavens fall.

  "Your father," she asked Chief Ogun. "Is he still alive?"

  "Yes, still alive. Both my parents. I am blessed."

  "You are blessed." And then: "I will need to meet them."

  "Pardon?"

  "Your parents," she said. "I will need to meet them."

  "The bank—"

  No. Not at a bank. Not in a hotel lobby. Here was something better. Much better. "The banks can wait," she said. "I need to see your parents."

  "Why?"

  "The men who are fronting this endeavour will need assurances from me that you are indeed a legitimate investor. That you're not some sort of swindler."

  "Miss Scarlet, I assure you—"

  "They were going to drag you into one of the rooms, force you to take a polygraph test—a lie detector. And if you failed, well..."

  She lowered her voice. "Bam."

  "Bam?"

  She nodded. "These are dangerous people we're dealing with."

  She could see the agitation in his eyes.

  "Miss Scarlet, I cannot submit myself to such indignities, I am chief of the Obasanjo and I—"

  "Listen, I'm on your side. I told them. I said, ‘This is ridiculous.' But they insisted. So I asked, ‘What if I were to vouch for Mr.

  Ogun personally?' And they agreed."

  "Thank you, madam. That is most kind."

  "Which is why I need to meet your parents. That way, I can report back that you're an honourable son of good stock. As soon as we do that, the investors will release the money."

  Chief Ogun chewed his lip for a moment, then retrieved a cellphone from the voluminous billows of his robe, speed-dialled a number. No answer. He leaned forward, shouted something at the driver in Yoruba, and the driver passed his own cellphone back.

  Again, nothing.

  "If you prefer to take a polygraph..." Laura said.

  "A moment. Please."

  She half-expected his lip to start bleeding, such was the worrisome nature of his gnawing. Then: "Fine, madam. You may meet them, but only for a moment. Nothing more. I am adamant on that."

  "A moment is all I need. A quick handshake, that's all. After that, the money is yours."

  "Ours," he corrected.

  "Of course," she said, playing along. "We're in this in the all together."

  The driver put the sedan back into drive, pulled out of the parking lot, pointed them to Lagos Island. Laura had stepped off the balcony, would find out now whether she would float or fall.

  CHAPTER 97

  The sedan's a/c wasn't broken. It was turned off, the better to addle the oyibo. Whites couldn't handle the heat, everyone knew that; they got flustered by it, distracted.

  But now it was Chief Ogun Oduduwa of the Obasanjo who was getting flustered. As the driver eased them out of the Sheraton parking lot, he made one last attempt at changing the course of events, at controlling the narrative.

  "Miss, it is twenty kilometres or more to Lagos Island," he said.

  "It will take us an hour, maybe more if we get caught in a go-slow.

  And even then we shall have to get to my parents' home at the far end of the island, out in Ikoyi. Why not simply tell your financiers you have met my mother and father? Vouchsafe my honesty."

  She smiled. "By lying? I'm afraid I can't. They might hook me up to a polygraph test or inject me with a truth serum. I told you, these are dangerous men. I will meet your parents, shake their hands, and then we can turn right around and go back to the hotel."

  "But Miss, by the time we get back, the Central Bank will be closed and—"

  "If I meet your parents, if I look them in the eye, I will know whether I can trust you. If we do that, you can pick up the money tonight. We can meet again tomorrow morning, at the bank, to complete the deal."

  Well, that certainly pleased him! "As you wish, madam. But only a quick handshake, nothing more."

  "Nothing more."

  They were sucked into traffic like a log down river rapids, the din and the odours hitting simultaneously: a fog of exhaust, the taste of diesel. Backfiring motors, broken mufflers, and the constant cry of car horns.

  The lanes painted on the road seemed mere suggestions, rough guidelines rather than rules. A bus muscled past with passengers hanging on. "Movable morgues," said Chief Ogun. "It's what we call them."

  A battered minivan forced its way in. Butter-yellow taxis fought back. Dented and dinged, they carried the scars of past battles.

  Three-wheeled Chinese tuk-tuks jockeyed for position alongside SUVs and Mercedes-Benzes. It wasn't traffic, it was an ongoing melee.

  Laura held the seat in front of her, had to remind herself to breathe.

  Cement buildings crowded in on either side, row upon row, cluttered with lean-tos out front. Boulevards lined with wilting palm trees. Humid and dusty at the same time.

  Their window was down, and when a BMW pulled up alongside, she saw herself reflected momentarily in its tinted glass, her face rippling across, looking lost and small. As the BMW roared ahead, Chief Ogun's driver pulled
into its slipstream, cutting off other vehicles, horn blaring.

  "The Nigerian brake pedal," Chief Ogun said, referring to the horn and shouting to be heard.

  A motorcycle squeezed in beside them, using the sedan as cover as he attempted to fit his motorcycle through a gap narrower than the actual bike itself.

  "Okada boys," Chief Ogun explained, referring to the young motorcycle taxi drivers, unencumbered by mundane notions of their own mortality, who were weaving in and out of traffic, passengers clinging tight. "They saw off the ends of their handlebars to better fit between vehicles. Very ingenious."

  "Doesn't that make it hard to steer?"

  He shrugged.

  The okada driver hit his own horn, a blast so loud it made her jump.

  "The music of Lagos," said Chief Ogun. "The okada boys like to replace their usual toot-toots with air horns scavenged from trucks. It clears a route more quickly. As I said, very ingenious."

  The okada driver, gunning his engine impatiently, spotted another opening and sped off into—and somehow through—the cross-hatched traffic ahead, defying both the odds and basic physics.

  Ogun's driver grinned back at them. "If they ever have a World Cup of taxi drivers, I promise you Nigeria will win!"

  The traffic ahead converged in an intersection where a broken street light, stuck on red, dangled from the cross wires like an eye from a socket.

  What am I doing here?

  The blare of horns grew louder as they worked their way past a recent collision: steam was rising from the crumpled hood of a taxi and oil was pooling below the rear axle of a BMW. It was the same BMW that had passed them earlier, the same one that had reflected her face back at her in its tinted glass. Its owner had gotten out and was waving his hands angrily. Onlookers had quickly taken sides in the matter, forming instant and passionate allegiances, from the looks of it.

  "Traffic in Lagos can be fatal," Chief Ogun said to Laura. "Take a wrong turn, and someone will be waiting. General Murtala, the namesake of our airport and past president of our nation—he was murdered in a go-slow. The assassins walked up to his car, filled it with bullets. They have the vehicle on display at the National Museum. You can still see the holes." He nodded at the mob that had formed around the accident scene, the cries and recriminations. "Are you sure you wish to go to Lagos Island?"

  "A minor snag," said the driver. "Very common in Lagos.

  Sometimes it leads to fisticuffs, but once past, we will be free."

  Chief Ogun glared at him, but the driver was busy forcing his way through a gap he'd spotted, all but nudging bystanders aside at times. Bands of young boys had now appeared, taking advantage of the go-slow to jog alongside vehicles, knuckle-rapping the windows as they offered newspapers and baggies filled with water that bounced as they ran. "News from the world and water! Pure water! Pure water-o!"

  "Tap water," said Chief Ogun, sitting back in his seat. "Filtered through cheesecloth. Best not to buy."

  Other boys held up packets of batteries, fistfuls of pens.

  "Power and pens!"

  "Pure water! Pure water-oh!"

  "News from the world!"

  Behind a roadside boulevard, cement houses were packed in.

  In among them, a truly surreal sight—a home with a shuttered door and a message painted on its rolled-down metal slats: THIS

  HOUSE IS NOT FOR SALE. More such messages soon appeared. Some on shops: THIS PETROL STATION NOT 4 SALE. Some on unfinished construction sites, rickety with scaffolding: NOT FOR SALE!! One storefront had added a warning: BEWARE 419.

  "That?" Chief Ogun said when Laura asked. "A blight on the good name of Nigeria, I'm afraid. Sometimes, when a family or business owner is away, crooked men will sell their homes and businesses out from under them. They pass themselves off as the true owners, sell fake deeds to the property, and then run off with the money. Property is very expensive in Lagos, so people feel they need to act fast to get a good deal. They often pay up front.

  And when the honest owners of the properties return, they find someone else living in their house. Can you imagine such a thing?

  Losing one's house like that? The legalities of it can get very messy, as you might suppose. Sometimes the legitimate owners end up losing their homes in their entirety, even though it was they who were wronged. Best to put a notice up instead."

  This house. Not for sale.

  "And 419?" she asked, feigning innocence. "What does that refer to?"

  "That I don't know about. Look ahead, miss. We are coming now to the Third Mainland Bridge. A feat of engineering!"

  She could see the rise of the bridge ahead, the long line of cars caterpillaring across.

  "Lagos is very flat. Built on reclaimed marshlands. A collection of islands, really, sewn together by bridges. The one ahead is the longest in Lagos, maybe in Africa. A marvel, don't you think?"

  As they approached the bridge, the number of street sellers grew. Hawkers and hustlers, products and pleas. Men and women holding up their goods, calling out their wares. A dizzying inventory moved past. Some vendors held up trays filled with shoes, others with hats. Some were selling spark plugs, others sunglasses.

  Tubes of toothpaste, packets of laundry soap. Cigarettes. Nicorette.

  Gatorade and books—Bibles, mainly, and the Qu'ran. Fan belts and fans. And trouser belts. Racks of razor blades. Cartons of rum. Trinkets and toys and DVDs. Magazines. Pocket calculators. Neckties and nectarines. Flip-flops and alarm clocks. Ad-hoc barber's chairs and shoe repair stalls. Cutters moved through, brandishing nail clippers, and a tailor balancing a hand-cranked Singer sewing machine on his head called out to passing vehicles.

  One enterprising young man carried an array of toilet seats on both arms as though caught in an oversized game of ring-toss.

  "In Lagos, we say that you can leave your house in your underwear, and by the time you get across the first bridge, you can be shaved, shampooed, and fully dressed, with polished teeth and a fresh manicure. And if you have forgotten your underwear, you can get that, too."

  He wasn't kidding. She saw one hawker waving men's briefs on a pole, back and forth like a flag, saw another selling brassieres.

  (Hefty bosoms evidently abounded in Lagos, given the cup size of the bras on sale.)

  "Do you have such a place as this?" Chief Ogun asked Laura.

  "Where you're from?"

  She thought about this. "The mall, I suppose." Forget the bridge; it was the street sellers along the way who were the true marvel.

  As the sedan made its way up the slow rise and curve of the Third Mainland Bridge, buses ahead of them slowed in order to pick up passengers, gearing down without coming to a complete stop.

  "They are not permitted to stop for passengers on expressways or bridges," Chief Ogun explained. "But no one said anything about not slowing down for passengers."

  From the rounded swell of the bridge, Laura could see thousands of makeshift shacks spread out directly on top of the water. It looked like an optical illusion, but no.

  "The Venice of Nigeria!" Chief Ogun said with a grand laugh. "The Makoko slums. All of it built upon stilts. Ingenious, don't you think? A floating city, built piece by piece over generations. And do you see that cloud of dust over there? Those are the timber yards of Ebute Metta. The forests of the Niger Delta end up there, are cut and stacked and shipped to America and other such places."

  Along the water's edge, flat-bottomed boats were moving through the tidal flats, poling across the thinnest veneer of water.

  "Fishermen?" she asked.

  "Scavengers. The main sewage line from the mainland empties there, and a lot of good things get washed out with the sewage."

  Lagos proper was like a honeycombed hive kicked open.

  Everything was in motion, even the buildings, it seemed. The smell of fish and flesh. Narrow lanes and claustrophobic streets. And hers the only pink face in sight.

  Wiry men pushed wheelbarrows through the traffic, oblivious to the cars a
nd okadas that clipped past. Women with pyramids of oranges balanced on their heads followed, threading their way through with a grace Laura had never known—and all without dropping a single piece of fruit. How did they manage that?

  "I will tell you one thing," Chief Ogun said with a laugh. "God is a Nigerian! I promise you, only a Nigerian could make order out of such chaos. There is Africa, and then there is Nigeria. There are cities, and then there is Lagos."