The Carnivorous City

by Toni Kan

  ‘OK, so what do we do? Just let him go with the money, just like that?’

  ‘Ehen, bros. Now you are talking. We will go and see him and if we catch him, I swear, he will vomit that money.’

  When Ada brought him dinner, she set the food down and said, ‘Food is served, Uncle Mugu.’

  ‘Very funny.’

  ‘But how could you have been so gullible?’

  ‘I was desperate. I thought he was telling me the truth. I didn’t realise he was leading me on.’

  ‘Beer or wine?’ She opened the fridge.

  ‘Just water, my sister. I am tired of everything. Everybody in Lagos is out to get you. And you know, after I gave him the money, he turned to me and said “God bless you.”’

  Ada sat down and regarded Abel like a mother addressing a dim child. ‘So, what next?’

  ‘Santos says we should go and see him. Make him “vomit” the money.’

  ‘Tough guys. You should take it easy o.’

  Abel ate with appetite. When he was done, he went upstairs, showered and got into bed with a novel. His phone buzzed with a message from Calista.

  Abel waited a while and then a file came through. He accepted and opened it. Calista was topless with just her hand shielding her breasts.

  About two minutes later, his phone buzzed, and when he picked it up, there was a picture of Calista topless, her breasts hanging low, like ripe fruit, but her face wasn’t showing.

  ‘Bad girl,’ Abel muttered, as he enlarged the picture.

  —

  The office was off Olowu street in a big two-storey building that was a riotous warren of offices and residences. There seemed to be a million burglar-proofed doors festooned with stickers from the religious to the political and the unapologetically commercial.

  Jesus is the answer

  Where will you spend eternity?

  Vote PDP

  Eko oni baje

  APC is the party

  Fashola is working, Lagos is working

  Alamo Bitters na the baba

  Apart from the rash of stickers, Abel noticed many drooping wires hanging from doors, eaves and roofs like tired, emaciated snakes.

  It was the sort of building that made Lagos what it was: a city bursting at the seams with people. Mayowa’s office was hard to find and they had spent close to ten minutes walking up and down before they finally found a door with an Excel Magazine sticker.

  ‘It must be here. Now the dog will vomit that money,’ Santos said as he turned the handle and pushed at the door. It didn’t open.

  ‘Knock. Say you want to place an advert,’ Abel told him, while he stepped out of sight, down the stairs.

  Santos knocked but no one answered. ‘Bros, nobody is here.’ Abel was walking up the stairs when Santos motioned at him to wait.

  ‘Who are you looking for?’ a voice asked. Mayowa; he would know that voice anywhere.

  ‘Is this Excel Magazine? Santos asked. Mayowa replied that it was.

  ‘I want to place an advert.’ Abel knew that if Mayowa didn’t bite Santos was likely to say something that would give them away.

  ‘Is it product or public announcement?’ Mayowa rattled the chain to get the door open.

  ‘Em, na advert for house.’ The door creaked open. ‘Na you be the publisher editor?’

  Mayowa answered, then uttered a sharp cry as Santos struck him. Abel bounded up the steps, slammed the door shut behind him and latched it using the chain and padlock that was still dangling. Blood streamed from Mayowa’s nose.

  ‘Santos stop. How many people are here?’ he asked Mayowa as he pulled him up from the dusty rug and propped him against the wall.

  ‘Only me.’

  ‘Where is your artist? We want to place an advert,’ Abel mocked. He asked Santos to look around the office.

  ‘Nobody is here,’ Santos confirmed when he returned to the room.

  It was a small place with just two rooms; Mayowa’s office and an outer one that served as reception area.

  Abel studied him. His shirt was already stained with blood but it was clearly new. He had on a brand new pair of shoes and there was a gold chain on his wrist.

  ‘Where is my money?’ Abel punched him in the face.

  ‘I don’t ha—’

  Santos kicked him hard in the stomach. Mayowa gagged and sank to the floor.

  ‘Where is the money?’ Santos asked again.

  ‘I spent it,’ Mayowa said, curling into a ball. Santos directed a well-aimed kick to his head.

  ‘So, you think you can job my bros?’ Santos asked, kicking him with every word.

  ‘Sorry, sorry, sorry,’ Mayowa was crying, the pain making him slur.

  Santos stripped Mayowa of his wristwatch, phone, bracelet, shoes and necklace. He placed the shoes on the table and stuffed the rest in his pocket.

  ‘I thought you are a publisher; why did you do this?’ Abel asked, stooping to hear him.

  ‘Bros we are all hustlers. Who doesn’t want to hammer like your brother?’

  Abel regarded him for a while, then straightened. Mayowa looked like he had been run over by a car. His left eye was already swollen and he was bleeding from his nose and mouth. His new shirt was dusty and bloodstained. He didn’t look good.

  ‘Santos, let’s go.’

  Santos shook his head. ‘If he starts screaming thief, we are dead. Let’s tie him up and cover his mouth.’

  They gagged Mayowa and tied him to one leg of his table with his belt. As they made to go, Santos said, ‘Bros, give him one for the road.’

  Abel looked from Santos to Mayowa. There was fear in the publisher’s eyes and a silent plea too, but Abel remembered how he had strung him along; how he told him about the mysterious stranger who knew Soni’s whereabouts; how he had taken the one hundred thousand naira and then asked for something for the boys; and how he said ‘God bless, you’ and crossed the road, probably whispering to himself and smiling at how easy and gullible Abel had been.

  Anger bubbled to the fore. He lashed out and kicked Mayowa in the gut. Mayowa screamed as bloody snort bubbled out of his nose, tears clouding his eyes.

  ‘That’s my bros,’ Santos said as they headed out. ‘Leave the door open, so someone will see him.’

  Abel was tingling all over and his heart was pounding. He felt alive. He hadn’t been in a fight in years. Not that what had happened back there could be termed a fight, but it had been good to give as good as he got. He had lost one hundred thousand naira but that wasn’t what it was about. It was the insult of being had by a man purporting to help. He felt good that he had stepped up to the plate and said, you don’t mess with me.

  ‘Bros, I didn’t think you could do it.’ Santos said as they made a right at the roundabout that led to Allen and Opebi. There was respect and admiration in his voice.

  ‘Why?’ A sharp thrill coursed through him; he had acquitted himself well in the eyes of his younger cousin.

  ‘Bros, you na gentleman. Na we be street boys.’

  Abel smiled to himself as they waited at the traffic light, pleased to have done something tangible. True, he was a gentleman, and all his life he hadn’t been in more than three fights because there was something about hitting and hurting another human being that made him recoil.

  But that afternoon Abel had been ready to kill. Something had snapped in him and all the impotence he felt since arriving in Lagos and not being able to do anything to find his brother had bubbled over into rage in Mayowa’s office.

  ‘Where’s that Fela CD?’ he asked, rummaging in the glove compartment.

  ‘It’s here.’ Santos fished it out of the side pocket of the door.

  Abel slotted it in and selected track six, ‘Palaver’.

  —

  He showered when he got home and was surprised to find his hands shaking. His knuckles were bruised. Now in Lekki, with the adrenaline rush gone, he was suddenly back to his old self – the analytical, rational man.

  He wondered how Mayowa w
as and whether someone had found him and freed him. It wouldn’t be nice to leave him tied up for long in that state. He and Santos had done some damage. Abel was suddenly overwhelmed by fear; what if he didn’t make it? What if they had done much more damage than they had planned to? He thought about that last kick and rolled out of bed.

  He pulled open the cabinet and poured himself a Scotch. He downed it in one gulp and stood up, remembering that Mayowa’s phone and things were still in the car. The phone could be traced to Lekki if someone called and it rang. He went downstairs, dismantled the handset and took the SIM card to the kitchen, where a bemused Philo watched as he fried it to a cinder over the flame from the gas cooker. He went back upstairs and dropped the empty hand set in the drawer of his dresser.

  Abel sat down on the couch. Where had all that rage come from? He knew now, with the excitement gone, that he had lied to himself in the car. It wasn’t about the money and it wasn’t even about the insult of having been conned. Something was changing inside him. Living in Lagos, he was beginning to act in ways that were completely alien to his personality.

  He drank some more Scotch, then switched off the light. Sleep didn’t come, so he put on some music and lay there in the dark, praying that Mayowa would not die.

  Morning brought no respite. He had a hangover from drinking too much, too fast the night before. The box of painkillers was still on the dresser, so he popped two caplets in his mouth and tried to sleep again, but it was no use.

  He showered, hoping that cold water would help ease the hangover and clear his head. He had breakfast with Ada, who was full of questions about their visit to Mayowa, but Abel only let on that they had given him a few slaps and warned him off.

  ‘Wow, I hope he won’t come after you guys,’ she said.

  Abel looked up from his plate. He hadn’t even considered that. He had been so sure that Mayowa would be so scared he would never make contact again.

  ‘I don’t think so,’ he said, affecting bravado he didn’t feel. ‘We made it known that we weren’t people he could mess with.’

  ‘Good. I didn’t think you had that in you, Mister Lecturer.’

  Abel could feel the respect in her eyes and at that moment he realised what his brother had seen in her. Beyond her obvious beauty, Ada was a woman who could be counted on when things got hairy. Abel had seen her take charge, her analytical mind working. She knew what kind of businessman Soni was. She had always known that the situation in which they now found themselves was a possibility and she had been prepared for it, although she hadn’t figured that Soni would have his brother as next of kin. Without him in the picture, Abel was convinced that Ada would have taken charge completely. He understood, also, that when she asked questions about what to do, she was not really asking questions but directing him in ways she thought they ought to go.

  ‘Well, I guess a man has to do what a man has to do,’ he said, flushed with pride despite his misgivings.

  ‘That’s the kind of man I like,’ she said and rose as Philo came to clear the dishes.

  —

  Things returned to normal.

  Zeal went back to school. Abel and Ada went swimming at the club and watched movies at the cinema. In the evenings they sat on the balcony and drank wine. Santos handled the clearing and sale of the goods with the buyers paying into a new account Ada had advised they open so they could have access to cash unencumbered by legalese. And though he waited for Mayowa to call threatening fire and brimstone or worse, nothing happened.

  With school reopening in two weeks, Abel wrote a letter to his head of department explaining his situation and asking for some time off. He despatched it by DHL.

  Ada had been right: the news cycle was done in one week, but they bought the papers anyway just to be sure. Abel was surprised at the way the magazines had moved on as if the previous week hadn’t happened. He had expected a follow-up, but there was nothing.

  Santos told him Excel Magazine wasn’t on the stands and for a moment, Abel regretted having taken Mayowa’s phone. He could have called the bastard, even if to issue a threat. But it was probably all for the good, he reasoned; a clean cut.

  To ease the tedium of his days, Abel finally agreed to a date with Ada’s friend Helen. They had dinner at a Korean restaurant in Victoria Island. She talked about her late husband and her son, who was some kind of child prodigy. At nine, he spoke four languages, could play the violin and piano and was already taking guitar classes.

  ‘He will take care of me when I am old,’ she said, maternal pride lighting up her face.

  Ada was right; Helen read widely and loved movies. She was big on Toni Morrison and Salman Rushdie, and liked movies by Pedro Almodóvar, of whom Abel had only heard.

  ‘We should go see a movie, sometime,’ she told him as he walked her to her car.

  ‘Yes, we should,’ he agreed as he gave her a peck.

  He called her up two days later, more out of courtesy and because Ada made him. They went to see This is War, an action-comedy that left them laughing hard with tears in their eyes. They had a drink afterwards and when he walked her to the car she surprised him with a kiss.

  He liked her and enjoyed talking to her, he told Ada, but she didn’t do it for him.

  ‘I thought it was women who talked and thought like that?’ Ada told him, surprised. ‘I thought men just stuck it wherever they found a hole.’

  ‘Well it has to be hard enough to stick someplace.’

  ‘Sad. She really likes you.’

  Abel’s head of department called the next day to say he could take one month off without pay. Abel thanked him and later shared a celebratory drink with Ada.

  Things continued in that quotidian manner until Tuesday morning, when Santos sauntered into the dining room during breakfast.

  ‘Philo, get another plate for Santos,’ Ada called out, but he hadn’t come to eat.

  ‘Abel, we need to talk.’

  They both looked up in surprise. Santos never called him Abel, always ‘bros’.

  ‘What’s wrong with you?’ Ada asked.

  Santos was whistling and picking his teeth. ‘Ada, excuse us.’

  Her jaw dropped.

  He placed a soft-sell magazine on the table. The screaming headline and rider made Abel die a million times as he read it.

  WHO KILLED MAYOWA? Excel Magazine publisher found beaten to death in his office!

  Ada snatched the magazine from the table and read the caption. ‘Is this why you have lost your manners?’ she said to Santos in Igbo as she turned the pages. She read the story out loud and each word was like a stab in Abel’s gut.

  Mayowa Akindele, the amiable publisher and editor-in-chief of Excel Magazine, was discovered dead in his office three days ago. Initial police reports indicate that he was beaten, tied up and left for dead. His body was already decomposing when it was discovered by neighbours, who alerted the police. The police are asking for members of the public with information to contact their hotline. Mayowa is survived by a wife and son. He cut his journalistic teeth at the defunct FAME magazine and launched Excel two years ago, after a stint with a public relations firm. Reactions have been pouring in from colleagues who are shocked at his brutal killing.

  Abel was breathing hard by the time Ada was done. He thought he would throw up.

  ‘So, what do you want now?’ Ada asked turning to Santos.

  ‘Fifty million naira and the X5,’ Santos said without missing a beat.

  ‘After all these years.’

  Santos nodded. ‘Yes, after all these years.’

  ‘We can’t get fifty million naira from the bank,’ Abel finally managed to say. He was a mess. His hands were shaking again and he didn’t trust himself to get up.

  ‘Yes, you can. We have over seventy-three million in the new account we opened. Just make the transfer to this account.’

  Abel picked up the piece of paper with Santos’ account number, his eyes burning with tears. He and Ada would have to sign the ch
eque.

  Ada looked from one man to the other. She rose and told Santos to get out of the house and go to the police. Santos staggered to his feet, his face a mixture of rage and confusion. This was not in the script.

  ‘What will you tell them, eh? Let me hear it,’ she asked advancing upon him.

  ‘I will tell them everything!’

  ‘Then why are you still here? Go on and don’t come back. You no longer work here. Go to the police but remember we have the money and we have the lawyers and we can fuck you up.’

  She flung a teacup at him, raving mad now, with eyes blazing and hair in disarray. She looked to Abel like a deranged Medusa with a full head of hissing snakes.

  Santos ducked again as another teacup flew at him, and ran to the door. ‘You don’t know me, Ada. You don’t know me. You are playing with fire,’ he said from a safe distance.

  ‘But at least you know me and you know what I can do,’ Ada screamed and threw another teacup. It shattered against the door.

  ‘Witch! Wicked woman!’ He ran out as she advanced.

  ‘Open that gate and let him out,’ she yelled at the gateman. ‘If I see him in this house again, you are dead. You hear me?’

  Abel was standing by the dining table and watching Philo clean up the debris when Ada strode in and walked straight upstairs.

  The blinds were drawn and the room was shrouded in darkness when he stepped into her room. He switched on the light. She was slumped on her pink couch, her head in her palms, crying softly. Her whole body trembled from rage as he settled beside her and pulled her to himself.

  ‘What are we going to do, Abel?’ she wailed. ‘What kind of wahala is this?’ He held her close as sobs wracked her slim frame.

  Abel realised at that very moment that he had rounded a bend and there was no going back. So many things had changed and he had to change along with them. A man was dead and he was culpable. He had to fix that and fix the Santos problem too. He knew who to call.

  ‘Everything will be alright,’ he said, and he had never meant anything like he did those words.