Before I try to log in, I turn to Tim. “This is going to take a while. Why don’t you buy baldy a drink of whatever they serve over there? If you don’t want to get sick don’t have anything yourself. Find out his name and who he’s working for.”
“How am I going to do that?
“Male bonding. You’ve got a great personality and perfect teeth. Smile at him.”
“Bonding? With him? Have you smelled his breath?”
“Improvise. Buy him a mint or some gum. I’ve got faith in you. Never let it be said that you were unable to bond with a bald troll with bad breath in a sleazy internet café. It’d ruin your reputation for male bonding.”
It takes fifteen minutes but I finally get through and open my mail. The only message I’m interested in is one that Gus sent two days ago. It’s short, he doesn’t waste words: “Sent you a package with important documents. You can pick it up at the Post Office in Tugo. It’s essential that you watch your back. Contact me as soon as you read them.” I don’t bother to reply. It’s the middle of the night in Minnesota and Gus only checks his email every other day.
I sit and look at the blank screen, thinking about watching my back and can’t help eavesdropping on what’s going on in the next booth. I stand and look over the partition and see three kids, who look to be around fifteen, crowded around the screen. They’re laughing at a widowed Iowa farmwife who thinks she’s communicating with a Nigerian General who needs to find a U.S. partner to split the ten million dollars he stole. They’re having too much fun to notice me and I watch them send a message asking her to give them bank account information.
I pull out my phony driver’s license, covering the print and exposing the picture. “United States Computer Fraud Agency,” I say in a formal, flat voice while flashing what I hope they’ll see as an official badge. “You boys need to come with me.” They run for the door and I take over the keyboard.
Don’t send any bank account information, I type. This was a fraudulent transaction and the guilty Nigerian party is being apprehended by the law. The ringleader of this scam is Miss Mia Olson of Buck Brush Falls Minnesota. Please contact your local sheriff and ask him to pursue Miss Olson. She’s a known criminal up there. I’m not sure she’ll follow up but it saves her money and takes my mind off Gus’s warning.
It’s time to get out. The owner is talking to the three budding con men and one of his friends is heading for booth eight. Tim plows through the crowd with his elbows extended and I and the troll follow him out the door like running backs following a pulling guard.
* * *
“How’d the male bonding go?” We’re three blocks away standing outside a grocery store.
“Tell her your name.” He turns to the troll.
“She couldn’t pronounce my Nigerian name, she can call me Howard.”
“Who hired you?” I ask.
“A guy from Lagos, name’s Ahmed. It was an emergency call. My boss wasn’t around. It was my first time.”
“Why’d Ahmed want to follow us? What were you supposed to do after you spotted us?”
“I don’t know that. My only instructions were to call every hour and tell Ahmed where you were.”
“Okay, Howard, here’s how it’s going down. First Tim’s going to give you a hundred U.S. dollars. Chalk it up to your luggage carrying skills. Second, I’m going to hit you, maybe dislocate your nose. You can tell Ahmed and your boss that Tim beat you up and you lost us—you’d really lose face if they found out you were hit by a girl. It’s going to hurt but the excuse is worth it.”
I try to take it easy, but I think I break his nose. He holds his hands over the blood. “Thanks,” he says. “Thanks a lot.” We walk away. I think he might actually mean it.
“How’d you do the bonding?”
“First a breath mint, then my personality. You were right, it’s a natural talent. I also told him that I’d beat it out of him and that I’d let you indulge in your fetish of cutting off men’s private parts if he didn’t talk.”
* * *
We take a cab back to the good part of town. “What’s next?” he asks, eyeing a new row of shops.
“According to our volunteer briefing, it’s an eight hour drive over bad roads to Tugo and another seven kilometers to the school. I want to do it in daylight. Let’s have some lunch and find another one of those luxury hotels—maybe stay in a room, not a closet.”
We find a French restaurant. He orders in French for both of us. I can’t exactly identify what we end up with but it tastes great. The waiter offers wine and I shake my head. “I don’t need wine to feel good when I’m with you.” He doesn’t say anything and I can tell his mood is changing. He looks thoughtful and sort of sad so I change the subject. “Where’d you learn French?”
“Some when I was in school, most on a Rosetta Stone course that Ben somehow acquired.” His voice is quiet, distracted. The corner of his lip twitches, his face contorts, and he leans toward me. “Layla, I think I’m falling in love with you but I’m scared that you’ll dump me for your American boyfriend if we ever get to that school—scared that I’ll never get to the U.S.—scared that I’ll end up on the street with the gangs.”
“I won’t ever dump you.” I want to say more and look out the window and search for the right words. What I see makes the choice easy.
“Look out the window and you’ll see something else to be scared about.”
Two police vans are blocking the door and Howard is coming in with three cops and a skinny guy with greasy hair and a pock marked face who must be his boss.
* * *
I made a bad call. The nose job and the hundred bucks didn’t work. He knew we weren’t watching anymore. He followed us and called his boss.
They get the cuffs on me before I have a chance to react, then move toward Tim. “No need for cuffs, he’s not going anywhere. Besides, he’s got to pay the bill.” The troll nods.
“You’re under arrest for entering Nigeria illegally, assaulting a citizen, and disturbing the peace at an internet café,” says the lead cop.
“I broke up a scam at the café. Ask him.” I point to the troll but he just shakes his head.
“Ask the citizen I assaulted if he took a bribe to let us go. If you search him you’ll find an extra hundred bucks.” The troll keeps shaking his head and they lead Tim and me into separate vans.
“What’s going to happen now?”
“You’ll be tried here for your crimes, then, after you do your time, you’ll go to Lagos for trial for your illegal immigration, then do time there,” says the cop.
“What about Tim?”
“He’ll be given probation and sent back to his family.”
“Good luck with that.”
* * *
The cell they put me in is damp and smells like a Desperation Hollow shithouse in August. It’s co-educational. They don’t seem to separate men and women here. Maybe they just want me to suffer. I see four guys. Two are drunk and sitting on the floor. One is very old and babbling to himself in a corner. The third is obese, about 300 pounds, and smells like a dead muskrat. He’s peeing in the clogged toilet, mostly missing and leaving a stream on the floor that flows to the two drunks.
I try to sit on one of the bunks against the back wall but it is squishy and the smell makes me gag. For the first hour, I stand in the middle of the cell. The fat guy moves in on me, puts his face close enough to give me a good whiff of his fowl breath. He shouts at me in an undecipherable language, spraying my face with spit. I push him away and he leaves me alone. I want to wash my hands after touching him.
I move to a corner, lean against the wall and stay there for another hour. That closed in feeling is getting the best of me again. I feel the sweat dripping down my lower back. I close my eyes, shiver, and start to see white dots. There’s no way I can spend the rest of the night here. I’m about ready to start a fight to attract the guards and maybe get moved when the cell door opens.
“Miss Bonner, come wit
h us please.”
It’s the head cop. He’s with the pock-marked man.
For a few seconds, I’m confused, then I remember the name on my North Carolina License, and I scramble out the door.
They take me to a large room cluttered with desks. When my eyes adjust to the bright lights I see familiar faces. Tim, the troll, and two cops are sitting around a long table. Another cop is standing in the background.
Tim’s hair is messy and his brand new shirt is ripped. He’s a neatnick. I’ve never seen him that way. I move toward him. “You okay? What happened?”
“That guy tried to get tough with me. Had me in handcuffs so I took a lesson from you. It wasn’t as spectacular as biting off Bernard’s ear but a couple of his fingers will be sore for a while. I notice that the cop’s left hand is wrapped in a bandage.
What kind of a cowardly police officer would try to hit a guy in handcuffs,” I lunge at the wounded cop and almost get to him before his friends shove me down on a chair. “Calm down, sit down and listen if you don’t want to end up back in the holding cell” orders the lead cop. “Here’s the arrangement. As of tomorrow morning all charges are dropped. We have to wait for a judge to sign the release. Until then, we’re placing you under the surveillance of Mr. Buganda.” He nods at the troll. “He’s been kind enough to offer to put you up for the night.”
I turn to Tim. “The troll? We’re going to spend the night with the guy who took our bribe and double-crossed us?”
“Keep quiet Miss. Bonner or Peterson—whatever you want to go by.” The lead cop pounds his fist on the table. “Shut up or it’s back to the holding cell. Your choice.”
I get the message. The group breaks up and we head out. “Wait.” I turn to the troll. “You’re forgetting something.” I point to our two suitcases sitting by the door. He sighs and picks them up. Tim looks at me and rolls his eyes.
The troll doesn’t live in a cave under a bridge. He takes us to a clean two bedroom apartment in a quiet part of town. It’s nine at night and we’re hungry and dirty. Tim takes a shower in the troll’s bedroom and I use the one in the guestroom. While we’re cleaning up, the troll makes waffles sand heats up a pan of soup.
He talks while we eat. “First order of business is the main house rule. Don’t call me troll. You know my name’s Howard, use it. I’m on your side now.”
I nod. Tim takes another waffle. “I just got promoted from a street gang to a junior cult member,” he continues. “I would have been tossed out, maybe worse, if I’d lost you. After the punch and the money, I knew you’d stop watching your tracks.”
“Why’d they pull that phony arrest?” I finish my waffle and refill my soup bowl.
“Lots of pressure to pick you up and keep you on ice.”
“From whom?” I ask.
“Ahmed in Lagos, fronting for some higher ups.”
“Why the sudden release? You had us caged up.”
“The crooked cops and the mob leaders here got cold feet. They had a big argument with Lagos and told them they were going to let you go. They just need a judge to sign some papers to cover their asses. A murdered American girl held in our jail would cause all kinds of bad publicity. Very bad for business.”
I spit out the rest of my soup. “Murdered American?”
“There’s a bounty on you. Someone wants you dead and is willing to pay a lot of money to get it done.”
“Who? Why?”
“I’m too low on the totem pole to know. My orders are to be nice to you—hard as that is for someone you punched and called a troll—and get you out of town tomorrow morning. Then you’re on your own.”
I have a tough time going to sleep. Images of the various ways to murder me keep running through my head. First it was the attack by Obama and the duck on the reservation. Then it was Henry wanting to drop me in Lake Logos. Now the troll tells me I’m up for bounty. I get up and wander through the living room. Tim is out like a light. I sit down at a desk and open the top drawer. Under a blank sheet of paper I find a .22 automatic pistol with a full clip. It’s not much of a weapon, more for shooting tin cans, but I’ve changed my mind about handguns and take it. Something’s better than nothing and I don’t think the troll will miss it until we’re long gone.
Chapter 27
It’s seven in the morning and we’re in a weed filled parking lot jammed with dirty cabs, pickups and battered jeeps. “Here’s where I leave you. I can’t say I’d like to see you again,” says Howard the troll.
“We appreciate your help Mr. Buganda and Layla is sure sorry about your nose,” says Tim. He gives me a poke.
“Yeah, sorry Howard.” I’m not sure if I mean it but, since I stole his .22, no harm in being nice.
He backs up and points his car the way we came. “I Hope you don’t think that apology will make me give your hundred bucks back,” he yells from his window before spinning his wheels on the dirt and fishtailing onto the pavement.
“Consider it payment for the .22,” I shout back into the dust.
The office looks like the old Standard Oil in Buck Brush Falls that closed when I was in grade school. Tim checks our bankroll before we go in. “We’ve only got the five hundred I hid in my shoe. They must have taken the rest when I was locked up yesterday.”
“I Hope you’re good at bargaining, because I’m not.”
The troll’s gone so we have to carry in our luggage. I wait while Tim haggles with the woman behind the counter. They both waive their arms a lot and shout at each other in a mixture of English and one of Nigeria’s many languages. They keep at it for a very long time.
“She says we can’t get anyone to drive us to Tugo because it’s too close to where the Boko Haram’s been spotted. I don’t know if she’s holding out for more money or there’s something to it.’”
“What’s the fare if we do get a driver?”
“One hundred dollars to her, fifty to the driver up front, and another fifty when we get there.”
“Tell her I’m with the United Nations on an emergency mission and we have the authority to impound a car and driver if she won’t give us one. Tell her I’ve got a gun and get violent when my mission is blocked. If that doesn’t work, offer her another hundred, and fifty more to the driver when we get there.”
They go into another garbled session. This time the woman looks over at me a few times. Tim returns with a smile. “She didn’t buy the UN, but went for the extra money, Says she has only one driver crazy enough to make the trip. He’s bringing his jeep around now.”
* * *
We’re an hour out of Abuja on a road with more potholes than pavement in a rusted out jeep with no top. I don’t think it has any shock absorbers from the way we’re lurching and bouncing. The driver, who says we can call him Zack, is so short he needs to look through the steering wheel, not over it. He’s scrawny and doesn’t look old enough to get a driver’s license in Minnesota. Uncle Gus breeds hunting dogs and would call him the runt of the litter.
We hit a huge pothole with our left front wheel and he swerves just enough to hit a deeper one with right. We’re at a crazy angle with three wheels off the ground and crash back to the ground with a sickening jolt.
“Tell him to slow down. We’re out of control,” screams Tim from the back seat.
“Ease up. You’re going too fast,” I shout. He doesn’t answer and I remember his earphones. I hold on with my right hand to keep my balance for the next jolt and tear them off. The sound of a weird kind of Nigerian rap is so loud I can still hear it after I throw them on the floor.
“Want something boss?” He gives me a bright smile that shows off his perfect white teeth.
“We’re getting seasick. Anymore bumps like that we’re likely to break our backs. And, don’t call me boss, name’s Layla.”
“Can’t miss the bumps, boss Layla. Too many. Best thing is to ignore them and drive fast. That way we’ll get through them sooner.”
How old are you and how long you been driving?” I
yell through the wind and rattles.
“Think I’m fifteen. Don’t know for sure. Been driving for two years. Top driver—yes boss?”
“If you’re the top, I wouldn’t want to see the bottom . . .” We hit another pit and I almost land in the back seat . . . “Damn it, slow down.”
“Pull over, I’m going to be sick,” hollers Tim.
Zack swerves to a stop. Tim doesn’t make it out of the jeep. He explodes over the side, leaving slimy chunks on the fender. The metal is so grimy and caked with baked in mud that once it dries no one will notice.
We’re parked next to a small fenced field that holds four goats. There’s a cluster of huts across the street. One has a Coke sign and two empty tables in front. Zack looks at his watch and pulls a surprisingly clean rug from behind his seat. He gives us another beaming white toothed smile. “No problem, boss. Time to pray anyway. Take a break.” He points across the street and carries his rug to a level spot next to the goat field.
We sit at a dusty table and Tim orders Cokes. They come warm and we drink them from the can. Tim sucks one down and gets another. “Cleans out my mouth,” he says.
Zack is bowing down on his blanket across the street. “What’s that all about?” I ask. Tim drains his second Coke before answering.
“He’s praying, Muslims do it four times a day.”
“I thought you were a Muslim.”
“My father was, not my mother. I don’t know what I am.”
“I get that—story of my life.”
Zack’s done praying. He comes over, sits down and I buy him a Coke. “What’s the story on this Boko Haram?” I ask him. “Aren’t they Muslims too? How come you’re the only driver we could get to come north?”
He starts with another toothy smile. He can’t seem to talk without showing off those prefect teeth. “Boko Haram not real Muslim, boss. They, kill, rape, give us a bad name.”
“I’m Layla, this is Tim. Stop calling us boss and I’ll buy you another Coke.”
Squaw Girl: A Boxer's Battle for Love Page 13
