Easy Motion Tourist (2 page)

Amaka examined her watch just as the man she was stalking did the same. She was at the bar in Soul Lounge. When she walked in, she counted four girls to each man, staff included. The girls were much younger than the men who they kept company. They had Gucci and Louis Vuitton bags on display on their tables, next to bottles of Moët. Some of the bags had labels that spelled GUSSI. She was the only woman in office clothes: a black skirt suit and a red silk blouse. She slid her hands down to her sides and pulled her skirt up to reveal more of her long legs.

‘Anything for madam?’ said the boy in an oversized black jacket standing behind the bar. She looked up at him and her eyes settled on his yellow teeth. His black clip-on bow tie that was slanted to one side looked like a propeller stuck to his neck. Earlier, when she arrived, he had placed a menu next to her but she pretended to make a phone call. Then he returned and started to say ‘madam’ but she picked up her handbag and searched in it.

‘Can I get you anything?’ he said, louder this time. She noticed he hadn’t bothered with the ‘madam.’

‘Coke, with a lot of ice and a slice of cucumber.’

He gave her a puzzled look but she turned away and looked at the man in the white dashiki, alone on a sofa, throwing nuts into his mouth from a bowl on the table in front of him.

The man checked the time again, then he picked up his phone and made a call, all the time looking at his watch. He frowned, placed the phone back on the table and spread his fingers into the bowl of nuts for another fistful.

The barman placed a coaster next to Amaka and began fiddling behind the bar. He had packed the glass full of cucumber. She resisted the urge to make him repeat what she asked for. Instead, she dipped two fingers into the tall glass and removed all but one of the thick slices, which she then deposited into an ashtray for him to see. She turned back to the man in white. He frowned through another short phone call, checked the time, and leered at a girl walking past. He sighed, placed the phone on the table, and continued with the nuts.

Amaka looked around to make sure no one had noticed her watching him. Someone tapped her shoulder. It was a man she had noticed when she came in. Their eyes had met, and he had tried to take it further by smiling but she looked away and hurried to the only empty space at the bar. He was next to her now, on the stool vacated by a slim girl whose face had been hidden behind an enormous pair of black and gold Versace sunglasses.

‘Sorry to startle you. Do you mind if I sit here?’

He had a British accent. It explained his cargo pants, worn trainers, and ‘Mind the Gap’ T-shirt. ‘If you want to.’ She turned back to the man in white.

‘So, what do you do?’

‘I said you could sit next to me, not talk to me.’

‘Someone seems to be in a bad mood today.’

She watched the man in white end another call and go for another helping of nuts then she turned to the man by her side.

‘Let me get this,’ she said, ‘a girl tells you she doesn’t want to
talk to you, and of all the possible explanations you think she must be in a bad mood?’

‘Well I…’

‘Well what? You just felt like saying something stupid?’

‘You’re a feisty one, aren’t you?’

‘There you go again. I’m feisty simply because I don’t want to talk to you?’

‘Hey, I’m only trying to buy you a drink.’

‘I’ve got mine.’

‘OK, I’m sorry if I came on strong’

‘You didn’t. You came on weak.’

He smiled. ‘Fair enough. I guess I set myself up for that one.’

‘You did. Look, give me your card and maybe I’ll call you.’

She checked on the man in white. He was munching away.

‘Here. Do call.’

She took the card and without looking at it put it into her handbag. ‘I will. And you’re right, I’m not in a good mood tonight, so understand if I don’t feel like talking.’

‘Does it have anything to do with that bloke?’

‘Who?’

‘Him.’

He thrust his beer hand in the direction of the man she’d been watching.

‘No.’ She turned her body away from him.

‘I’m Ian. What’s your name?’

‘Iyabo.’

‘So, Iyabo, what do you do?’

‘I’m a prostitute.’

He choked on his beer, and before he could recover, she was walking towards the man in white. She’d just found her opening.

It was the craziest thing I’d ever heard. They removed her breasts? ‘What the fuck?’ I didn’t realise I’d shouted it till everyone stopped to look at me.

‘They removed her breast. Just now. Outside,’ Waidi said. Surely he’d heard it wrong, whatever that girl told him. I looked for her and instead I saw petrified faces all around.

‘They did what?’

He held one hand cupped under an imaginary boob and did a slicing motion with the other. ‘They cut off her breasts,’ he said.

‘Who cut off her breasts?’

‘Ritual killers.’

‘Ritual who?’

‘Killers. They removed her breast for juju, black magic. It is those politicians. It is because of elections. They are doing juju to win election.’ He wrapped his arms round his body and hunched his shoulders upwards, burying his neck.

‘They’re out there?’ I said.

‘No. They just dumped the body and ran away.’

I fetched my phone and realised my hands were shaking. I pulled out a cigarette, lit it in a hurry and burnt the tip of my finger. Then, staring at my brand new phone with a Nigerian SIM card in it, I wondered who to call.

The morning I checked into Eko hotel, Magnanimous had, with a knowing smile, given me his card and said to call if I needed anything. I pressed the home button and realised I’d meant to store his information but never got around to it. I searched every pocket on me – twice, even though I could picture the card on the bedside table in my hotel room.

The only number I’d stored was for a bloke called Ade, a stringer my company hired to be my fixer in Lagos. So far, he’d sent two text messages to say he was held up in Abuja, the capital, and every time I called him his phone just rang forever and he didn’t return the call. I tried again all the same. It rang once then I got a busy tone. Then the phone was switched off.

‘Fuck.’

‘Yes,’ Waidi said.

I looked up from the phone. He was staring at me and nodding emphatically. He looked so serious that I almost didn’t recognise him from before when he’d been so blasé.

‘Every time there is election we find dead bodies everywhere,’ he said. ‘They will remove the eyes, the tongue, even the private parts. Sometimes even they will shave the hair of the private part. Every election period, that is how it happens.’

The faster he spoke the poorer his grammar became and I had to struggle to make out what he was saying. ‘This has happened before?’

‘Yes,’ he said matter-of-factly. ‘They will take the parts they need and dump the body anywhere. Every election period like now.’

‘Hold on. They dumped a body and fled?’

‘Yes. That is why all these people ran inside.’ He waved at the packed bar.

‘Why?’

‘The security outside have called police. When they come they will arrest everybody they see.’

That explained the sudden influx. The taxi driver who picked me from the airport in Lagos described them as underpaid, ill-trained, semi-illiterates who used the authority of their uniforms to extort the citizens. He swore that some of them even rented their guns and uniforms to armed robbers. This I found very unsettling. I couldn’t help feeling sorry for these people around me, who appeared to be as scared of their police as they were of killers. Then, still staring at his befuddled face, adrenalin rushed into my veins and I almost cried out. This time it wasn’t fear; the journalist in me had just kicked in. I made for the door.

‘Where are you going?’ Waidi said. He ran alongside me on his side of the long counter. ‘If you go outside, they will arrest you o.’

‘It’s OK,’ I said, ‘I’m a journalist,’ and I instantly heard how stupid I sounded. I pushed past the bouncers, who had made it to the door but were understandably more concerned with not letting more people in than stopping those who wanted to leave.

I inhaled warm air as I stepped out of the bar. It was maybe midnight, but the heat was impressive, shocking you in an instant as though you’d walked into a sauna. My armpits went from dry to wet.

Earlier when I arrived, I had pushed through young boys selling cigarettes, cigars, sweets, even condoms, and girls in miniskirts who called me darling. They were all gone now. An unnerving silence had replaced the hustle and the hustlers. Other than the smell of exhaust fumes, dust, and other indiscernible odours mixed together into a faint ever-present reminder of pollution, every other thing about the night had changed.

A small crowd had gathered on the other side of the road. That
was where the news was. I’d left my camera at the hotel. If indeed there were a mutilated dead body there, I would have to use the camera on my phone. I was thinking: Breaking news. Not that the audience back home cared much about the plight of ordinary people in Africa, but a ritual killing captured on video a few minutes after the incident was bound to be worth something.

Ronald would chew his pen lid off when he learned of my scoop. He was first to be offered the job and the minute Nigeria was mentioned I wished I’d been picked instead. Then Ronald moaned about his allergies, complained about his sensitive belly, and reminded everyone of his easily burnt skin. It wasn’t the first time I would put myself forward for an assignment but thus far I had not been entrusted with anything more serious than picking the bar for the Christmas party. The real jobs were reserved for the real journalists. Ronald would hate my guts.

A man who had seen enough walked away from the crowd shaking his head. I caught him by the arm. ‘What happened?’

He stopped and looked at the people standing by the gutter. He was old, easily in his late seventies. He was gaunt and wrinkled, but still standing upright. He had the same sort of ill-fitting khaki uniform I’d seen on the guards at the hotel. His creased face looked close to tears.

‘They jus’ kill the girl now-now and dump her body for gutter,’ he said, his voice quaking with emotion. It didn’t seem right to point a camera in his face but I was going to capture everything I could. I pressed the record button on my phone.

‘They call the girl into their moto and before anybody knows anything, they slam the door and drive away. It was one of her friends that raised alarm. She was shouting “kidnappers, kidnappers,” so I run here to see what happen. One boy selling
cigarette find the body for inside gutter. Jus’ like that, they slaughter her and take her breast.’

He spat as if he could taste the vileness of it.

None of what he said made sense, and it wasn’t because of his pidgin English. I just couldn’t believe any of it had happened on the kerb outside the bar. But then, this was Lagos: a city of armed robbers, assassinations and now, it seemed, ‘ritualists’ had to be added to the list.

‘You saw everything?’

‘Yes. I am the security for that house.’ He pointed to a three-storey building on the other side of the road. ‘I see everything from my post. The moto jus’ park dia. Nobody commot. The girl go meet dem and they open door for am. I don’t think she last twenty minutes before they kill am and run away.’

‘What kind of car?’

‘Big car.’

He spat again and started walking away to the building he guarded, all the while talking, but this time only to himself.

I turned back to the crowd looking down into the gutter shaking their heads. Flashes from camera-phones intermittently illuminated the ground beneath them. There was something awful down there.

I covered the distance, got shoulder to shoulder with them and then I saw it too.

‘Is anyone sitting here?’ Amaka asked.

The man glanced up, scanned her body, shook his head, and turned back to his phone.

She tried to read what he was typing as she placed her Coke on the table. He looked up and their eyes met. She sat in an armchair facing him and he continued tapping into his phone. He looked up again and she was staring at him. ‘Can you imagine what that man told me?’ she said before he could return to his phone. She nodded at the bar. Ian glanced over at them.

‘Was he disturbing you?’

‘You won’t believe what he said to me. He must think I’m one of those ashewo girls who hang around clubs looking for men.’

He looked at her. She crossed her legs, pushed out her chest and turned away to let him get a good look. She moved a strand of her braids away from her face.

‘What did he say?’ he asked as he went for more nuts.

‘Imagine. He asked me how much it’ll cost to take me back to his hotel.’

He chuckled through another mouthful of nuts, looked at Ian, and managed to say, ‘What did you say?’

‘I just picked up my drink and walked away.’

‘And he didn’t try to stop you?’

‘He’s lucky he didn’t. I would have slapped him. Purely on principle.’ He laughed. ‘He’s looking at you.’

‘Oh God. Why won’t he just give up? If he comes here, please tell him we’re together. I hope you don’t mind?’

‘No, not at all.’

‘I mean, if you’re expecting someone…’

‘No, not at all. Don’t worry about it.’

He checked the time. She took a sip from her Coke then looked to the bar. Ian was still there, looking in her direction. She pursed her lips into a kiss and turned back to the man in white.

‘Can’t a girl just enjoy a drink on her own anymore?’ she said. ‘Why do men automatically assume any girl alone in a bar must be a prostitute?’

He scanned the bar. ‘Well, what are you doing alone in a bar at this time?’

‘Having a drink.’

‘Are you expecting anyone?’

‘No. Should I be? Can’t I just have a drink on my own?’

He shrugged. She leaned towards him. ‘You know, there are single girls like me, girls who have good jobs, who have their own money, who can go out to a bar alone and buy a drink for themselves. And if they end up sleeping with a guy they meet at the bar, it would be because they want to sleep with him and not because he’s paying them for it.’

‘And you’re one of those girls?’

‘Well, let’s just put it this way – if I fancy you and I want to do you, I will. And it won’t be because you’re paying me for it. It’ll be because I want to.’

He shifted forward, the sofa creaking under his weight.

‘Who are you?’ he said.

‘Who am I? Who are you?’

‘What do you do?’

‘I’m a lawyer. What about you, what do you do?’

She knew what he did. The only thing she didn’t know about him was what he weighed. He was a professional “big man” in Abuja where he used his contacts to engineer deals and claim 10 per cent or more “commission.” He had married into class. His wife was the daughter of a respected second republic senator; without her family name to throw about, he was nothing.

‘I’m a businessman.’

‘So, what are you doing here all alone?’

He checked the time then picked his phone. He looked at the device as if weighing a decision.

‘I’m meant to be meeting someone,’ he said.

‘A date?’

He smiled. He held the phone for a moment, testing its weight. Then he placed it down and she tried to hide her relief.

‘Not really, just a friend,’ he said.

Lie.

‘I hope your friend won’t mind that I’m with you when she arrives.’

‘No, not at all. It’s nothing like that.’

‘By the way, I’m Iyabo. What’s your name?’

‘Chief Olabisi Ojo. You may call me Chief, for short.’

‘So, Chief-for-short, who’s this girl who’s so rude to keep a man like you waiting?’

‘Believe me, it’s nothing like that. She’s just an aburo of mine.’

‘Aburo? Sister? Real sister or the other kind of sister?’

‘Na you sabi o. What other kind of sister is there?’

‘You know what I mean. My own brother no dey meet me
for club.’

‘I swear, you are funny. What did you say your name was?’

‘Iyabo.’ It was her fake name for the night. Together with her hazel contacts, it completed her disguise. ‘I hope this sister of yours won’t feel threatened that I’m here with you.’

‘No, not at all. I’ll tell her you’re also my sister.’

‘Chief, Chief. Chief player. Don’t worry. Once she arrives I’ll excuse myself.’

He smiled at someone behind her and began to struggle with his weight, trying to get up. For a moment, she thought his date had arrived. But that couldn’t be. She turned to check.

The girl dropped her big yellow Chanel bag on the empty chair next to Amaka and sat with him on the sofa. She was young, mixed-race, tall with large breasts. Her thin waist made her wide hips appear even larger. She was in a long, body-hugging, yellow evening gown to match her monstrous bag. ‘Debby, meet my friend, Iyabo,’ he said when the girl paused, her palms placed one on top of the other on his lap.

Debby looked at Amaka just long enough to flash a quick smile and offer a weak ‘Hi’ before she turned her attention back to Chief Ojo. She placed her hand on his shoulder and threw her breasts around under her dress as she asked him, rather rhetorically, how long it’d been since they last saw each other.

Debby. Mixed-race. Could it be? Amaka ignored them and fetched her phone from her handbag. She switched it to silent then scrolled through the contacts till she found the entry she was searching for: Debby Christina Okoli.

To be sure, she pressed the call button and pretended to be clicking through the phone’s menu.

D’Banj’s hit track, Why Me? started playing in Debby’s handbag.
Without looking up, Amaka ended the call. The younger girl reached for her handbag, but realised to get to it she would have to stand, so she waited for Amaka to hand it to her. Amaka picked the bag, was surprised that it wasn’t heavy, and handed it to Debby. The girl rifled through it to find her phone then she stared at the missed call: ‘Number withheld.’ She placed the mobile on the table and returned her hands to Chief Ojo’s lap.

Amaka continued toying with her phone, careful not to let her face betray the coup she had executed. She knew the girl. She knew her name – her real name. She knew how old she was, when she first came to Lagos, where she lived, where her parents lived. She knew the names of her siblings, when she got her periods, she also knew the result of her latest HIV test, and yet, sitting opposite each other, competing for the same man, Debby had no idea who Amaka was.

Amaka studied her. She was chatting, fluttering her eyes, swinging her boobs, and running her palm up and down his lap. So, this is what she looks like. The voice should have been a clue, but like everyone else, she sounded different on the phone. She was a threat. She had to be disposed of and fast.