Making Wolf (11 page)

“Negative. I met him for the first time three days prior. He was involved in selecting the personnel for the assignment.”

“Did he mention why he selected you?”

“Negative.”

“What did you think of him?”

“He was a competent—”

“Personally. What did you think of him personally?”

His face crumpled up, and he appeared to be on the verge of apoplexy. Maybe he didn’t want to break discipline and speak against a superior officer.

“Disregard the question. What happened next on the way to the PCA camp?”

“At sixteen hundred hours Agent Alao lost control of the vehicle and veered off the road into a ditch.”

“Sixteen hundred hours on the dot?”

“Affirmative.”

There was no mention of that in the official report which, to me, was now taking on the appearance of a whitewash. “Continue.”

“There were two gun reports. One high-velocity rifle, one handgun. The handgun was inside the vehicle, but I did not observe who fired because of the explosion. I can tell you that the subject was hit on the trunk. This ends the report.”

“No, it does not end the report. What—”

“Why are you lawyering me?”

“What?”

“I am barely ready for the outside world. There is nothing left of me.”

“Afolabi, are you saying your people returned fire when you heard the shot?”

“Negative. I am saying one of the persons inside the jeep shot the subject.”

Nana was sitting in the car, leg on the dashboard but otherwise pretty much how I left her. Her face was neutral, but that meant nothing.

“You all right there?”

“I’m fine.”

“Were you bored?”

“Hardly. I made up a one-act play and populated the set with well-known thespians after vigorous casting couch sex. It was diverting.”

“I’m happy for you. Shall we go?”

The car in front had a strange trailer. The boot was open and a man sat inside. His arms and half of his upper torso extended out of the boot of the car and held on to the two arms of a dark green wheelbarrow. Inside the wheelbarrow sat three children, all facing me. They stared with expressionless faces. The man in the boot stared as well, sweating, muscles straining with the undulations of the road. The car itself was sardine-packed with people and rode low with the excess weight. I thought the tires would give out any minute, but they didn’t. Given the surfacing of the road, the barrow was surprisingly stable.

Nana drove in silence this time, but not because of any tense argument situation. This was one of those companionable silences that follow a long conversation in which all participants agree. It was a basking silence.

The second man to survive the bombing of Enoch Olubusi was Idris Wallace.

His address was listed in the files handed to me, but, when I called the number, it had been disconnected and the current occupants of his house had never heard of him. They had moved in a year after Pa Busi died. Just to be sure I spent two weeks outside the property watching the comings and goings. Nothing. I looked for him the old-fashioned way.

There were seventeen “Idris Wallace” entries in the Ede telephone book. If I made the search wider, there were five “Wallace, I.” entries and ten other uses of the surname only. By posing as a solicitor trying to locate Idris for some disability money coming to him, I was able to eliminate all but three after making hundreds of telephone calls and dozens of house calls. People in Alcacia do not like strangers telephoning them or showing up on their doorsteps is what I learned from this exercise.

“If Wallace was sitting beside Pa Busi when the bomb went off, how did he survive?” Nana asked.

“I have no idea. Apparently these things happen. He was severely injured but never on the critical list, it seems.” I thought of the twisted wreck of the jeep again and wondered.

Idris Wallace did not live at the address we were on our way to. Aaron Wallace, motor mechanic, father of five and self-professed first cousin to Idris, did. This had happened before. Once a person got a whiff of money, they tried to fake being Wallace or being related to him. I had to check each one out to be sure, though.

“This is the street,” said Nana.

“Drive through to the next one and park, then I’ll continue on foot. Stay in the car until I call you.”

She mock saluted. “You’ve become more and more sexist since arriving here, Weston.”

“I’m sorry. This country’s a bad influence. I’ll be better.” I went to see Aaron.

Aaron’s children looked like small clones of him and clustered around his chair, listening to our conversation and whispering to each other. They were all boys and seemed to be the same age, which was about seven or eight, no older than nine. He himself greeted me in a white singlet and khaki shorts. His red flip-flops slapped against the floor as he walked.

“Do you want a drink, Mr. Kogi?”

“I’ve just eaten, thank you.”

“Nonsense. Let me offer you a soft drink.” He gestured to one of the children who brought me a frosty bottle of Coke and a glass and placed it on a nested table beside my seat.

“Thank you.” I took a sip to be polite. “You say you know where Idris is?”

“Yes, he’s dead.”

“Dead?”

Aaron nodded. He reached for a box folder beside him. He had spindly arms and a gaunt look with a tendency to talk and move slowly. He was about forty-five or fifty, and there was no sign of a wife. His house was barely furnished and had a smell that I didn’t like.

“I want the disability allowance,” said Aaron. “For that you can have this box.”

“What’s in the box?”

“Proof of what I will tell you after you pay me for it.”

“The money was for Idris. If he’s dead—”

“Mr. Kogi, let me be plain with you. I know you are not here peddling a disability allowance. If that were the case you would have found someone to impersonate him and split the money. I don’t even believe your real name is Kogi. Now, all I’m asking is some money for me and my boys in exchange for information on my cousin. Surely, this is fair?” His upper incisors were cracked, and I wondered how it was that they didn’t cut his tongue when he spoke in his gradual Yoruba.

“One hundred dollars. If I like what you have, another hundred afterwards.”

“No, sir. Two hundred now, two hundred afterwards, whether you like it or not. But you will like what I have to say, sure banker.” He cracked a rare smile. One of the boys scratched his own belly, showing such indolence that I wondered if there wasn’t something wrong with him, neurologically.

I counted off the bills and handed them to him. He carefully verified the amount then slowly put the cash in his pocket. He gave me the box and began to speak.

“Idris was my cousin on my father’s side, first cousin, brothers like. He was the most successful member of our clan and, as a result, the one we all went to. When he went into law enforcement, everybody derided him, and his mother wondered—”

“Mr. Wallace, I don’t want a biography. I want to know what happened to him.”

“Yes, well, he and I were close. I came from our village in Okun to live with him in Ede when he got that government job. He was always paranoid. He would check locks and alarms and telephone me several times a day to make sure I hadn’t broken any of his many security rules or noticed anything out of the ordinary. I would tell him that the Good Book says,
Unless the Lord watches the house
—”

“—
the watchmen watch in vain
,” I completed. Psalm 127. Until that moment I didn’t even know I remembered the Bible verse.

“Yes. Idris did not derive comfort from that. He said I was a superstitious bush man and spouted blasphemies about our Lord.”

“He was a philosopher, I have heard.”

Aaron shrugged. “He had read some books. He broke his mother’s heart when he stopped attending church. She prayed for him every day and begged me to help him.”

I nodded. Deep interior Alcacians understand apostasy as long as it involves taking up another religion like Islam or even Hinduism. What fills most of them with terror is the idea of living without any religion. How could one live without any obeisance to the spirit world, however rudimentary?

“How was he on the days leading up to the explosion?”

“He was his usual self. He gave me advice since I was looking for a job at the time. There were a couple of days leading up to the assassination that he spent away from home. I got the impression that he had found a woman.”

“Why would you say that?”

“I’m not sure.” He thought for a minute. “Perfume. He started spraying perfume and bought a designer white shirt, rather than the regulation one they are meant to wear under their regulation suit. He checked the crease of his trousers.”

“Did you know who he was seeing?”

“No.”

“Did you ever see anyone he was seeing?”

“No, his job did not allow him a lot of time for dating. Irregular hours.”

“Even doctors date, Mr. Wallace, and they have irregular hours.”

“I’m just giving you the reason he gave me. His mother was worried that he was getting old without children.”

“What happened on the day of the assassination?”

“I heard about it in the news like everybody else, but I was detained for a week and interrogated because of how close I was to Idris. I was treated well compared to some. It was three months before I next saw him.”

“What was he like?”

“Scared. He became even more paranoid than before, especially after the official story came out that Pa Busi’s entire retinue had perished in the explosion. He rarely left the house and spent the day at the windows looking out of the blinds with binoculars and making notes of his observations. He bought animal traps which he placed around the entrances to the house. I had to be careful if I wanted to urinate at night. He rifled through my things everyday, looking for evidence of my betrayal. Once, I woke up with a gun to my head and him screaming at me to confess.”

“Confess what?”

“To working for some agency that was out to kill him, that was monitoring him. He was crazy. I wanted to pack up and go back to the village, but I had a mission in the city to get a good job and bring over my wife and children. I couldn’t just leave. He threatened to torture me to get at “the truth.” He spent a lot of time calling a number but being frustrated because nobody picked up the phone. He made me swear that if anything happened to him I would burn all his property. This went on for months.”

“How did he die?”

“Suicide. I went to work one day, came back in the evening, and he had shot himself in the face.”

“I see.”

“It’s not that simple. He had stockpiled weapons over those months. At night he would be beside the window with an array of loaded guns, grenades, and spare ammunition laid out on the ledge, ready for action. He did not want to die, Mr. Kogi. There was no suicide note, this from a man who wrote obsessively into his notebook. The house was in an awful mess as well. All the animal traps were sprung. It was…unusual.”

“You think he was killed, and it was made to look like a suicide?”

“I don’t know. I do know that after he died I feared for my life as well, but only for a short time. As you can see, I am still here and so are my boys. The elders say, as the crab walks so does its children.”

“True talk, true talk.”

“The secret police came and “sterilized” the scene after his death. It did not get into the papers. I was warned about discussing the matter, and I never did until I got your phone call.”

The box contained papers, photos, a mobile phone, and other random bits.

“How goes your job?”

“I lost the job, but my wife found one that pays enough, so I stay and look after the children.”

“That’s very modern of you,” I said.

“Hardly. I have no choice. And I think she’s sleeping with her boss.” He looked sadder than before and I looked away.

I paid him the balance and left with all that remained of Idris Wallace.

The next day I was up early, like four a.m., and at the desk going over my notes. Apart from the occasional crickets, there was silence. The air was muggy but not unbearable since the sun was not out yet. The air carried a residual odor from cooking, but I could not place it.

Nana was crying in the room. Three times we tried to make love, and three times I went soft inside her. I was aroused to start with, but the moment I began thrusting, thoughts of the assassination crowded into my head and I lost touch with her. She thought I was growing tired of her and that I was preparing to leave.

“In your mind you’re already gone. Your body is simply following your thoughts.”

“I’m just tired,” I said.

“Yes, you are. Tired of me.”

Nana was smarter than I; I could not ever play word games with her and win, so I got up and worked on my case.

The case was taking on interesting proportions. No longer did I consider it a chore. I started paying more attention to Nana’s thesis on Pa Busi. Afolabi’s testimony, hell, Afolabi’s existence spelled conspiracy, and Idris’ experience confirmed it.

The car slowed down, fell into a ditch.