“Yeah, I got it the first time.”
“I could tell you were a quick study. Get going!”
Chapter 50
BY THE TIME I pulled away from the Superior with a steaming and delicious cup of dark Nigerian coffee in one hand, I felt like someone had hit my “reset” button.
Not counting the way my face looked or half my muscles felt, it was as though I were getting a first day in Africa all over again. I thought about Ellie’s being here just a few weeks ago and wondered what had happened to her. Had she come into contact with the Tiger? If so, how?
There was no case file or intelligence to go over – my clothes and passport and empty wallet had been the only things returned to me – so I spent the slow crawl over to Lagos Island just taking in the sights.
“You know they call Lagos the ‘go-slow city,’” my driver told me with a friendly smile. All the many abandoned cars on the side of the road, he said, came from people running out of gas in perpetual jams, or “go-slows,” as they called them.
Our pace picked up somewhat on the mainland bridge, where I saw downtown Lagos for the first time. From a distance, its cityscape was typical of large cities, all concrete, glass, and steel.
As we got closer, though, it started to look more like something out of an Escher painting, with one impossible cluster of buildings tucked in and around the next, and the next, and the next. The density here – the crowds, the traffic, the infrastructure – was startling to me, and I had been to New York many times and even to Mexico City.
When we finally got to the Citibank on Broad Street, Flaherty was standing out front, smoking. The first thing he said to me was, “Jack Nicholson in Chinatown.” He grinned at his little joke, then said, “You squeamish?”
“Not so much. Why?”
He pointed at my nose. “We can make a quick stop after this. Fix you right up.”
Meanwhile, he said, I should go in and get my replacement cards and also the cash I owed him. Plus whatever I needed for myself and at least two hundred American, in small bills if I could get them.
“What for?” I asked.
“Grease.”
I took him at his word and did what he said. From there, my driver took us across Five Cowrie Creek to the more upscale of the city’s major islands – Victoria – and to a private medical practice on the fifth floor of an office building. Very private.
The doctor saw me right away. He examined my face and then gave me one quick, and excruciating, adjustment. It was the strangest doctor visit I’ve ever had, hands down. There were no questions about my injury and no request for payment. I was in and out in less than ten minutes.
Back in the car, I asked Flaherty how long he’d been based in Lagos. He had obvious juice here, and plenty of it. He also knew enough not to answer my questions.
“Oshodi Market,” he said to the driver, then sat back again and lit another cigarette.
“You might as well chill,” he said to me. “This is gonna be a while, trust me. You know what they call Lagos?”
“The go-slow city.”
He turned down the corners of his mouth and exhaled a cloud of white smoke.
“You learn fast. Some things, anyway.”
Chapter 51
VISUALLY OSHODI MARKET was a lot like the rest of Lagos – crammed end to end with busy, hurrying people, either buying something or selling something, and possibly doing both.
Flaherty curled his way through the crowds and the stalls like a skinny white rat in its favorite maze.
I had to keep my eyes on him to stay with him, but the exotic food smells and the sounds of the market still came through loud and strong. I took it all in – and liked it very much.
There were grilled meats and peanutty things and sweet-spicy stews over open fires, all of it reminding me of how hungry I was. Accents and languages came and went like radio stations, or maybe jazz. Yoruban was the most common; I was starting to pick that one out from among the many others.
I also heard livestock braying from the back of trucks, babies crying in a line for vaccinations, and people continually haggling about prices pretty much everywhere we went in the market.
My pulse ran high the whole time, but in a good way. Faced with squalor or not, I was finally pumped to be here.
Africa! Unbelievable.
I didn’t think of it as my home, but the attraction was powerful anyway. Exotic and sensual and new. Once again I found myself thinking about poor Ellie. I couldn’t get her out of my mind. What had happened to her here? What had she found out?
Flaherty finally slowed at a rug stall. The young seller, negotiating with a man in traditional oatmeal-colored robes, barely glanced over as we walked through the shoulder-high slacks to the back of the stall.
Less than a minute later, he appeared like an apparition at our side.
“Mr. Flaherty,” he said and then nodded at me politely. “I have beer and mineral water in the cooler, if you like.” It felt as though he were welcoming us into his home rather than selling intel in the marketplace.
Flaherty held up a hand. “Just current events, Tokunbo. Today we’re interested in the one called the Tiger. The massive one.” I noticed that the name needed no more explanation than that.
“Anything in the last twenty-four hours gets you twenty American. Forty-eight gets you ten. Anything older than that gets you whatever you’d make selling rugs today.”
Tokunbo nodded serenely. He was like Flaherty’s polar opposite. “They say he’s gone to Sierra Leone. Last night, in fact. You just missed him – lucky for you.”
“Ground or air?”
“By ground.”
“Okay.” Flaherty turned to me. “We’re good here. Pay the man.”
Chapter 52
I HAD PLENTY of other tough questions to ask Tokunbo about the Tiger and his gang of savage boys, but he was Flaherty’s informant, and I followed his protocol. I owed it to him to keep my mouth shut until we were out of earshot anyway.
“What’s with the quick in-and-out?” I said once we had left the rug seller’s stall.
“He’s in Sierra Leone. Dead end, no good. You don’t want to go there.”
“What are you talking about? How do you even know the information’s good?”
“Let’s just say I’ve never wanted my money back. Meanwhile, you’re better off cooling your heels here For a few days, a week, whatever it takes. See the sights. Stay away from the prostitutes, especially the pretty ones.”
I grabbed Flaherty’s arm. “I didn’t come all this way to cool my heels by the hotel pool. I’ve got one target here.”
“You are a target here, my man. You ever hear the saying ‘You’ve got to stay alive to stay in the game’? This is a very dangerous city right now.”
“Don’t be an ass, Flaherty. I’m a DC cop, remember. I’ve done this kind of thing a lot. I’m still standing.”
“Just… take my advice, Detective Cross. He’ll be back. Let him come. You can die then.”
“What’s your advice if I still want to go to Sierra Leone?”
He took a breath, feeling resigned, I think. “He’ll probably go to Koidu. It’s near the eastern border. Kailahun’s a little too hot right now, even for him. If he went over ground, that means he’s trading which means oil, or maybe gas.”
“Why Koidu?”
“Diamond mines. There’s an unofficial oil-for-diamonds trading corridor between here and there. He’s heavily into it, from what I hear.”