Night Must Wait (11 page)

"But kid," Sandy couldn't help saying, "you're no drinker. You ain't used to it. Not neat shit. Water? Ice?"

"No." Wilton took a hard swallow and shuddered. "Tonight I want it straight."

Wilton hadn't been so fey for years. Even back in college, in the nights when they wasted sleep as if it came free and talked as if words could satisfy, she'd seen this Wilton only twice. Once when Wilton's father died, once the night they all pledged to join her in Africa.

"You love Lindsey," Wilton said. She covered Sandy's sputter of horror with sure words. "I know, 'none of that mushy stuff…that's disgusting.' I
know
, Sandy. But if you didn't love her better than yourself, I would tell you lies, and tonight I'm tired of being alone in what I know. Even if I can say these things only once, it'll be a pleasure to do so in payment of my debt to you. To you, Porthos, most loyal of all the musketeers. Companion to our Athos."

"Musketeers," Sandy said. A shared favorite novel among the friends back in college.

"I tire of being court fool. As do you," Wilton said.

Sandy turned the heavy tumbler in her hands and looked at Wilton's slender shape. Who sat there really?

Wilton's hand moved in boneless gesture, its shadow like a snake's.

"Lindsey loves you too, of course, shoulder to shoulder into the fray you go, and all that. But she doesn't think about you any more than that, nor should she. You do what you do, so she doesn't have to think about it. You have her back, with Oroko's help. He's the best there is. I know. Together you'll keep her safe, but God, it won't be easy. "

Wilton settled on the bench, letting herself down with care, and now she leaned forward, eyes enormous in her narrow face.

"What do you think when I come by on my visits? What do you expect when I come and go? 'There goes little Wilton on her endless trips. Restless. How many birds out there for her to study and paint? Well, I guess her birds are restless too. Wonder when she'll publish her bird book. Wonder who reads the stuff. Sort of a glorified tourist, concerned about politics because it interrupts her collecting. A mad dog of an American. Sneaking around after her birds, talking to the hunters, talking to the schoolteachers, carrying her binoculars and cameras.'"

She took another swallow of her whiskey and laughed. "No, it's not the alcohol talking, Sandy. I'm like this because I nearly died tonight. It would have been a bad death, so the air seems very sweet. I wish you were drunk though, because I'll wish someday that I'd never spoken. But you'll never tell, even if you believe me—Sandy never breaks her word, and who would you tell anyway?"

Wilton looked into the corner of the room and smiled as though she saw something beautiful in the dark.

"Oh, I remember the first time I saw my Lindsey. She stood in that high-ceilinged room at the college reception desk, her face like something carved in white stone and the spirit in her like flame. Her savage intellect, famished for glory. I knew then what a power she might become. What I might make of her. Yes, you should follow her lead.

"You, Sandy, have kept Lindsey safe, and I have kept her successful. She holds the strands of my informant net. But God knows, there have been failures. For all my planning, I lost Balewa."

The sudden note of grief jolted Sandy. She reached for the bottle, not taking her attention from Wilton's intent stare. What did she mean by that? Could Prime Minister Balewa's assassination have been averted? As if Wilton, at least, had known the conspiracy to topple the government when Lindsey didn't? The hair prickled on the back of Sandy's neck at Wilton's meditative tone.

"The corrupt leaders had to die. What alternative but to have the military kill them? The army as judge and executioner. No other group was so dedicated, so tribeless, so believing in the ideal of One Nigeria as the army was. But I didn't anticipate the rest of Nigeria would see only tribal identities, identities the coup officers themselves forgot. If we could have saved Balewa, the only honest ruler, a Hausa and a Muslim from the North, the whole equation would have changed. He represented legitimate civil authority, and the military gunned him down with the rest. I could have stopped that but for a car accident. I lost an informer and I didn't know until too late."

"A car accident." Sandy tested, surprised at how natural her own voice sounded. "What freaking car accident?"

Wilton caught herself in a gasp of laughter and shook her head.

"Sandy, I owe you just so much, but no names or places. Our purposes converge in Lindsey. We're on the same side. Don't worry."

"Screw that. What in hell are you doing?" Sandy said.

"I create a maker of kings. Lindsey will choose leaders for Nigeria's future."

"Goddamned mysteries, Wilton. Sometimes I swear your cheese slips off its cracker."

"Lindsey will appoint. She wants that power. I help her to it by reaping what my father sowed. I inherited his friends and contacts. I've lived in this land most of my life, and I have sown on my own. There's a web of people who owe me, and I use their obligations to advance Lindsey. You and I make Lindsey a power, hidden but potent. The new Federal Government leader, Gowon, will listen to her. Lindsey shall have influence but no glory. Which is hard, because it's the glory that she craves, whatever she says to the contrary."

"You're frigging drunk. Why were you out pretending to be a man?"

"Yes, let's say I'm drunk." Suddenly sad and faded, Wilton bent, using her old anxious gesture to brush the hair from her face. The biggest bruise on her right cheek deepened fast, even through the brown stain on her face. But she fixed a challenging owlish look on Sandy in the kerosene lamplight. "Out on my own as a woman, wouldn't I look a whore? It's that simple. Don't look for mysteries that have no significance.

"After all, Sandy, why would a man Oroko knows and hates, want to kill me?"

Sandy flinched. Every time she thought she followed what Wilton meant, Wilton confused the picture.

Wilton slumped, pulling back over herself that look of a tired helpless woman.

"Oh, don't fret. It was all a mistake. How could a man Oroko hates know me? In disguise, too? My attacker and his friends are dead. Mistaken identity. And I've been spewing silly extravagant stuff, Sandy, merely to tease you. It's nothing but accident and circumstance, of course. Lagos is filled to bursting with killers and would-be killers."

She sighed. "I'm drunk. Don't worry about my ramblings. Oroko saved my life and I got a little crazy tonight. We're all a little insane these days. I stumbled into the wrong place, wrong time, ran afoul of thugs. So lucky Oroko and his chum came by. So sorry for my nonsense, but you looked as if you'd believe anything. The robbers must've mistaken me for someone else. This evening was a mugging gone wrong."

She was lying again. Sandy squinted in the dim light as if she might be able to see how. What the fuck was going on? A disguise, a beating. Would Oroko know what lay behind it? Would she violate Wilton's trust by asking him?

Wilton slid down onto the bench in a long slow slump. The body seemed almost a child's, thin boned and limp, the spilt whiskey smell filling the hot room. Sandy stopped her before she slipped all the way off the bench, straightened Wilton on the pillows. The electric lights flickered and came on. Sandy caught her breath.

Now she saw the abrasions and filth that smeared Wilton's skin, in tropical Africa an invitation to blood poisoning and God only knew what other sorts of infection. Sandy unbuttoned and pushed up the sleeve on Wilton's left arm and found bruises marching up the surface. Marks on her throat, the bruising Sandy had half seen by lantern light became clear, and a split along the cheekbone. Beaten and dragged? Sandy found a raw, slow-bleeding patch on the back of Wilton's head, where a sizable tuft of hair was missing. She glanced down at the wig on the floor. Blackened blood in it and a mat of hair. Blunt object blow. Reason to bless that wig.

"Goddamnit." Sandy hesitated. Couldn't call for help—she didn't know what the fallout might be for Wilton. She turned down the kerosene lantern but left it lit in case they lost power again, then went to the storage cabinet for her first-aid kit, cursing under her breath. The sink in the corner would provide water and soap. Unlike Gilman with her love of broken bones and cutting people open, Sandy didn't like blood. But the abrasions needed cleaning before infection set in. Sandy had learned that much in her years in Nigeria.

Crazy night, crazy night, she kept telling herself. But why would those men bother to soften up a random victim like Wilton? For simple robbery, quick death worked best. Professionals would begin to work a victim the way Wilton had been handled only if they had nastier plans. Long-term torture. A bad death, Wilton said, as if she knew. Which meant that there was nothing random about this at all.

No broken bones, lucky Wilton. Couple of loosened teeth for sure, maybe one missing if that swelling of her lower lip meant anything, but Sandy wasn't about to open Wilton's mouth and check. No way.

"What do you do, Wilton, you loopy kid? Is it all sleight of hand and smoke and mirrors? Or something fucking serious? Don't you know better?"

What did Sandy have for proof, after all? Just a handful of incoherent minutes with Wilton in the dark, that was it, that was all. Wilton who prowled around through the country looking for birds with binoculars in her hand and a life list in her pocket. And a camera. Wilton, who apparently went birding in the night streets of Lagos. She shivered at the thought. Sandy went to work. One bandage at a time.

When she finished, Wilton had a patchwork of smeared antibiotic cream on her legs and arms, and a clumsy gauze bandage on the back of her head. Sandy sat Indian-style on her desk, tumbler in hand. The hands of the office clock had passed three when Sandy finally swung her crossed legs down and stretched. She replaced the nearly empty whiskey bottle in her bottom drawer, then stared across at Wilton, asleep on the long bench.

"Fuck, shit and piss," she heard herself say, but it did not ease her at all. High-school words without power.

She looked at Wilton with aching eyes. Wilton seemed a lost child, thin brown wrists and slender bruised throat. Someone she should damned well take care of, watch over. If Wilton went down, would she and Lindsey go on without her? Sandy went to the closet again and found a blanket she had once used to wrap some fossil-bearing rocks. She spread it over Wilton's sleeping form.

No matter what she might try to tell Lindsey about Wilton, all the old college memories, all the perceptions that Wilton herself had built over the years would make Sandy sound totally weird. Paranoid too. Lindsey would possibly believe Wilton had delusions. Clumsy inattentive Wilton with her eyes on the birds in the sky. What good would that do? Lindsey was too busy laying plans and moving money. Even Sandy didn't know how much Lindsey was worth now. Sandy lit herself a much-needed cigarette.

Besides, she'd fucking promised not to tell. Whatever else might come, whatever friend gave her secrets better told, Sandy didn't break promises.

Chapter 18: Lindsey

March 1967

Lagos, Western Region, Nigeria

"Madam, Lionel Inara is here. Do you wish to see him?"

Lindsey's mouth went dry.

"Yes," she said before any doubt could interrupt the smoothness of her voice. She rose and took the needle off the record on the player behind her desk. Tchaikovsky wasn't appropriate for this meeting. She glanced once at her reflection in the glass of her bookcase. Neat, cool, formal.

Oroko didn't go. She sat down and continued moving her pencil across the checked boxes on the indexing sheet before her. Everything in its place. He to his.
What was wrong with him?
She jerked her head at him, signaling him to leave.

"Not alone," Oroko said.

She took a considering breath, noticing the aura of patience that he seemed to carry. So academic in appearance with his steel-rimmed glasses.

"Alone."

"Inappropriate confidence," Oroko said.

"That will suffice. I know what I'm doing." She went back to her forms. He moved without a sound across the room and the door clicked shut.

Less than a minute later Lionel came in, a big man, noisy with mouth-breathing enthusiasm.

"Madam Kinner. Lindsey. May I say you look simply splendid today." His rich voice sounded too large for her office.

He took a seat without invitation and she felt herself slow down, taking in the details. The European cut of his suit, the silk tie, the white shirt too tight across his midriff. He probably couldn't see that, but he should feel it. Everything new. Maybe he imagined that if he wore a smaller size it might make him appear slim. He had a fine-featured face, too small of nose and mouth for the heaviness of his jowls.

"I am seriously vexed at you, my friend," he said.

"How did I annoy you?"

"You failed to attend my party last weekend. I felt it too deeply."

She folded her hands on the top of her papers. She had seen him trying to read them upside down and now his eyes moved back to her face and she realized he didn't want to look at her. The scent of his aftershave was expensive and too strong.

"Such a disappointment. You are all business," he said, the note of complaint exaggerated.

"That should not be a problem."

"Ah, but it is," he said. "You have pressed me, good madam. Pressed me too hard. Without kindness. Are we not old best friends? How many years have you held my note for the hotels in the North?"

"Four years and three months."

"And I have paid you hand over fist, more than you would have made on any other loan." His voice sharpened.

"One percent under market and you have always paid late," she said. "I am willing to sell the loan if you can provide a buyer."

How he sweated.

"It's a difficult time. As an economist you understand that. Troubled times call for a little kindness between old friends."

"This is business," she said. "It always was."