The policeman laughed. “You wan play? You tink na play we dey play here?” He sounded drunk.
Emeka doubled the amount. He knew the game: you told the policeman it had been a slow day, you had a family to look after, rent to pay, and then you came to a compromise agreeable to both parties and went on your way.
“Boss, I no get more. Please.”
“I fit keep you here twenty-four hours,” the policeman said.
Emeka was in no hurry tonight. He had all the time to haggle. He added another fifty. He decided that if the policeman rejected it, he would add another fifty but that was it. His mother always said that the person who holds another down to the ground must stay down too. There was no way the cop could hold him for a day. He would have to stay put as well. Emeka could play this game — he did not arrive in Lagos yesterday.
When it came, the slap blinded Emeka and threw him from his bike. “Empty dat ya wallet. You tink you can insult a whole policeman? N50, N100? You mad? Bloody civilian!” Lagos police and commercial drivers had an unwritten agreement: the latter were fair in the amount of bribes they gave, and the former never physically assaulted them. That the policeman was not playing by the rules riled Emeka. This man was not getting another kobo from him. He had been more than fair in his offer. Besides, whatever options Emeka had, emptying his wallet was not one of them. How could he give over everything he had earned that night? Fifteen thousand? He thought of the flat he had promised Sikirat they would go to next month to sign a one-year lease on. He thought of Hope’s school fees he still had to pay. He thought of his mother. He thought of the N7,000 he had to give Reverend the next morning. He thought of Leviticus 26:18. He could feel his wallet deep in his back pocket, the weight of it reassuring him.
Emeka stood up. “Boss...”
VIII
On Monday morning, Ibukun, the president of the student union at Lagos State University, stumbled upon a corpse outside her school gate, eighteen kilometers from Victoria Island. It was that of a young man, possibly in his twenties. He had probably been killed somewhere else, most likely somewhere upscale and exclusive, and dumped where he could be just another anonymous corpse. This young man, so close in age to herself, deserved some respect, even in death. She picked up her mobile phone and dialed the police.
“This corpse you say you found, you know the person?”
“No sir.”
“And so what is your business with it?”
“It’s outside the school gate, sir.”
“Is it inside your room?”
“No sir.”
“Did you kill him? Give me your name and address.”
Ibukun hung up. She knew how very easily innocent citizens could be arrested for crimes they’d had no part of. She remembered the story of her townsman who had taken the victim of a shooting to the hospital, called the police to report it, and was arrested on suspicion of being the perpetrator. Ibukun sighed and headed to class. Let the dead deal with the dead.
Showlogo
by Nnedi Okorafor
Ajegunle
Showlogo fell from the clear, warm Chicagoland skies at approximately 2:42 p.m.
He landed with a muted thud on the sidewalk in the village of Glenview. Right in front of the Tundes’ house. There were three witnesses. The first, and closest, was a college student who was home for the summer named Dolapo Tunde. She’d been pushing an old lawnmower across the grass as she listened to M.anifest on her iPhone. The second was Mr. David Goldstein, who was across the street scrubbing the hood of his sleek black Chevy Challenger and thinking about his next business trip to Japan. The third was Buster the black cat who’d been eyeing a feisty red squirrel on the other side of the Tunde’s yard.
The sight of the man falling from the sky and landing on that sidewalk would change all three of their lives forever. Nonetheless, this story isn’t about Dolapo, Mr. Goldstein, or even Buster the cat. This story is about the black man wearing blue jeans, gym shoes, and a thin coat who lay in the middle of the sidewalk with blood pouring from his face.
“I go show you my logo,” Showlogo growled, pointing his thick tough-skinned finger in Yemi’s face. All the men sitting around the ludo board game leaned away from Yemi.
“Kai!” one man shrieked, holding his hands up. “Kai! Na here we go!”
“Why we no fe relax, make we play?” another moaned.
But Yemi squeezed his eyes with defiance. He had always been stubborn. He’d also always been a little stupid, which was why he did so poorly in school. When professors hinted to him that it was time to hand them a bribe for good grades, Yemi’s nostrils flared, he bit his lower lip, frowned, and did no such thing. And so Yemi remained at the bottom of his university class. He scraped by because he still, at least, paid his tuition on time. Today, he exhibited that counterproductive stubbornness by provoking Showlogo, hearing the man speak his infamous warning of “I go show you my logo,” and not backing down. Yemi should have run. Instead, he stood there and said, “You cheat! You no fe get my money-o! I no give you!”
Showlogo flicked the soft smooth scar tissue where his left ear had been twelve years ago. He stood up tall to remind Yemi of his six-four muscular frame as he looked down at Yemi’s five-eleven lanky frame. Then, without a word, Showlogo turned and walked away. He was wearing spotless white pants and a shirt. How he’d kept that shirt so clean as he squatted with the other men in front of the ludo board while the wind blew the dry crimson dirt around them, no one knew. No one questioned this because he was Showlogo, and for Showlogo, the rules were always different. As he strode down the side of the dusty road, he cut quite a figure. He was very dark-skinned and this made the immaculate white of his clothing nearly glow. He looked like some sort of angel — but Showlogo was no angel.
He walked past two shabby houses and an abandoned building, arriving at his small flat in his “face me, I slap you” apartment complex. He moved wordlessly down the dark hallway, past four doors, and entered his home. It was custom for none of the flats in the building to have keys. Too expensive. Showlogo had always liked being able to just open his door. Plus, no one was dumb enough to rob him, so what need did he have for locks and keys or hiding his most valued things?
He slipped his shoes off and walked straight to his neatly made bed. Then he removed his white shirt, white pants, white boxers too. He folded and put them on his pillow in an orderly stack. He removed the diamond stud from his right ear. Then he turned and walked out. People peeked from behind doors, but not one person spoke to Showlogo or each other. Not a whisper. Unlike Yemi, his neighbors were smart.
Showlogo’s meaty chest and arms were gnarled with scars, some from fighting and some from threatening to fight. Often, he’d take a small pocketknife he liked to carry, stab his bicep, and growl, “Come on!” when anyone was dumb enough to challenge him. Today, however, he didn’t have his pocketknife. No matter, Showlogo thought as he strode down the street naked, I go kill am.
As he walked back to the game, people watched from food stands, cars honked at him, passersby quietly laughed and commented to each other.
“Who no go know, no go know. Showlogo know some logo-o.”
“I hope say you body ready for him.”
“Hope na man today. Not woman.”
Everyone knew that if he said, “I go show you my logo,” to a woman, it meant... something else. Either way, if you were smart, you knew to run. When Showlogo arrived back at the game, he found that Yemi had finally run for his life. Showlogo stood there, vibrating his chest, every pore in his body open, inhaling the hot Nigerian air.