Nairobi Heat

by Mukoma Wa Ngugi

  Walking around to the back of the house we found three graves marked with wooden headstones, the names of the dead carefully burnt into them. There were rose bushes growing on the mounds of soil, each one of them surrounded by a ring of carnations – the families that lived in the house had obviously been taking care of the graves.

  Muddy was visibly moved. Thinking she wanted to be alone, I started to walk away, but she reached for my hand and slid it around her waist. ‘Stay,’ she said. So I did, holding her in silence as she sobbed away quietly.

  ‘A word is flesh,’ she began to repeat to herself over and over again. ‘A word is flesh.’ And then she would say their names over and over again. ‘A word is life. A word is flesh.’

  Even though she was not raising her voice, her chant became louder and louder until I was lost in it. I found that I was breathing heavily and I felt myself getting light-headed – it was as though I was going to have a panic attack. And then, just as suddenly as she had started, Muddy stopped and we stood together in silence.

  When she was ready, we walked back into the compound and she gave the women her contacts. They hugged and then we left for Kigali.

  It was evening by the time we got back to the hotel and we were pleasantly surprised to find O and Mo chatting away, the table in front of them crowded with empty beer bottles. We sat around and told stories and jokes. A DJ started playing and we danced, or closer to the truth, stormed the dance floor. Later that night, Muddy and I, alone at last, made love, and the following morning we travelled to the airport together before finally parting ways. Everything had come to an end. Everyone had some sense of closure.

  THE AFRICAN CONNECTION

  There are things we all do that regardless of how bad we feel always make us feel better. For some it’s cooking, for others it’s sex, but for me It’s running – it’s the closest I come to meditation. By the time I got home from Rwanda I hadn’t run for close to two months and I was beginning to feel like my body was clamping up. It was time – the case was behind me, I was due back at work soon and I was feeling ready to regain my life.

  Stepping out of my apartment building, the sun streaming into my eyes, I took a deep breath of the crisp fall air and decided to run my usual circuit, past the graveyard where I always enjoyed watching names roll by. I knew this was going to be a good run when by the end of the first mile my breathing – which had started out a little heavy – was steady and my feet were moving in a good rhythm. I could just enjoy moving. I could listen to myself – my breathing, the sound of my feet hitting the ground and my heart thumping against my ribs – and know that I was alive. But somewhere around the third mile I hit the wall. Any runner can tell you about the wall – the mind tells the body to stop and the body begins to believe the mind, exhaustion sets in, breathing becomes short gasps, muscles burn and pure agony seems only a few steps away. But if you can get past the wall the mind lets the body go, and this, for me, was the prize – why I ran. As my body took control of itself my mind was washed by thoughts and ideas that came over me without my willing them.

  As my mind let my body go, it wandered to Muddy: I saw her as I had first seen her on stage, then as she had appeared at our last meeting; how sad she had seemed even while appearing to be happy. Then I was back at the graveyard, looking at the names as I passed them, reading them aloud, one after the other. Then it was off to Macy Jane Admanzah’s funeral. Was she finally at peace? How could she be if her family’s killer was free?

  As I ran on little pieces of the case began to flow into my mind at a steady pace, each piece fitting snugly into the next. Then some of the lessons I had learned with O in Kenya began to surface: nothing is random; look at who wins, who comes out on top. And there was only one big winner, and that was Joshua. With everyone else dead, the Foundation in one form or another was his to inherit. Only Jamal stood in his way and he would be no match for Joshua. And more than this, his tarnished reputation had been restored – he had become a victim all over again. His past had been exposed and the claims against him thrown out of court. It was as if he had been forgiven for his role in the genocide. No one would ever again be able to question his heroism. His biggest gain was his freedom from his past.

  Then I decided to ask the toughest question of all the other way round. What would Joshua have gained by murdering Macy Jane Admanzah and leaving her body on his doorstep?

  There was only one answer that made any sense. He had let the finger of suspicion point at him initially because he knew the search for Macy Jane’s identity would eventually point to others. No matter how suspicious it all looked he had known from the beginning that he would never be found guilty, not without an answer to the question of why he would kill her and then leave her body outside his own door. And indeed, when I had finally found out Macy Jane Admanzah’s identity, I had cast doubt on my own suspicions by asking myself that very same question. He knew his plan didn’t have to go perfectly – only a few things had to work right and everything else would be a bonus. He simply had to eliminate those associated with the Foundation in a way that would leave him still standing, no matter how wounded. The media, the public and the police would do the rest for him. He had outwitted his enemies. It was him. It had to be him.

  I created another scenario in my head as I ran. Macy Jane Admanzah had gone to the Never Again Foundation to blow the whistle on Joshua. Perhaps Samuel Alexander had sent her to the US. Perhaps she had come on her own. Either way it made sense that the Foundation and Joshua would work together as one to contain a mutual threat. And with Macy Jane gone, balance, as Chocbanc had called it, would have been restored. But somewhere along the way plans changed. Why did they change?

  According to Joshua and Jamal, greed was the culprit. Even for Chocbanc greed had been involved, but whose greed? Who stood poised to inherit the earth? It was Joshua – he had seen an opportunity and had taken it. He had killed Macy Jane Admanzah, cleaned her up and left her on his doorstep.

  And then there was BQ telling me that the murder was personal. He was Macy Jane’s killer. It was the only way the case made sense. I had to confront him. I still had nothing beyond a theory, but if I could get him to speak I was sure he would supply all the answers – now that he had fooled everyone, and was in the clear, he would be willing to talk; it would be in character.

  I thought of rushing back to my apartment, taking a shower, changing into a T-shirt, jeans and sneakers and then driving to his house. But I was close to Maple Bluff and I would look more convincing, harmless even, if I ran all the way to his house. I got into an easy pace. It was going to be one hell of a walk back.

  Joshua – dressed in jeans, a black shirt and light leather shoes – was clearly surprised to see me, but he quickly recovered and invited me in. He was packing, he said, leaving later that night for Rwanda and Kenya for a while. It was time he confronted his past. But I knew he was going to try and rebuild an empire.

  In spite of the early hour he produced a bottle of wine and poured two glasses. ‘In the morning I eat wine; in the evening I consume breakfast,’ he said with a laugh.

  ‘Can I have a glass of water?’ I asked. I was hot and sweaty after my run and the last thing I felt like was a glass of wine.

  ‘Wine no turn to water for you?’ He laughed as he went to the kitchen and came back with a glass of water.

  I gulped the water down, knowing that the gesture would open him up – for people like us a gesture would always establish trust faster than a word.

  ‘So, Ishmael, what do you want?’ he asked.

  I told him that I knew, that I had figured it all out. ‘Tell me everything, Joshua,’ I said. ‘Surely you must want at least one person to know.’

  ‘Why?’ he asked, although he was clearly interested.

  ‘Because you’ve won. Look, you got away with the genocide, didn’t you? Who better to know the truth than I?’ I asked him.

  It made a kind of crazy sense. There is no sweeter victory than one in which you tel
l your beaten opponent how you defeated him or her.

  ‘You have point there …’ he started. ‘Okay, Ishmael. But we make rules to make game interesting, eh?’ he said with a look of pure glee in his eyes.

  ‘Sounds like a plan,’ I said as I picked up my glass of wine.

  ‘Let’s see … Simple rule. You ask one question only. I answer, make one statement only, then we finish. Okay? You agree?’ He made it sound like we were little kids making up ground rules for some game.

  I agreed. I needed to know only one thing with certainty. Everything else – the hows and the whys, the moralisations and justifications – came a distant second.

  ‘Did you kill her?’ I asked.

  He took a deep breath. ‘Yes, I kill the girl,’ he answered without a flicker of emotion. ‘She come to me, so I take opportunity for myself and kill her. She dress like that because she know I like young women, and she want to seduce me then give me heroin … She look for justice for herself. But she didn’t know I know about her … So, we go for a ride to the lake in car I rent, and she start her move to seduce me. I play for a bit, then I tell her we come back to my place. I leave her in room and go meet friends for drink, then I come back. She want to continue. I play more, then I turn her face on bed and I push down till she die. Then I put her in warm water. I drive car to bar, to return to rental place tomorrow and pick up my car where I leave it. I come back quickly, dry her hair, put her on the stairs and inject her with heroin for final effect. Then I call police. I shower and change, but forget to add socks …’

  Everything had fallen in place. When she saw that the Never Again Foundation was just stringing her along Macy Jane Admanzah must have understood that she didn’t have enough evidence, power and money to buy justice, so she had decided to get it herself. And when she had turned up on his doorstep Joshua had seen his opportunity and killed her.

  ‘Why didn’t you just let her go? She had no evidence against you … No one would have investigated her claims,’ I asked angrily, knowing that now he had finally told me the truth Joshua wouldn’t be able to resist breaking his own rules and telling me everything.

  ‘I tell you when you come to my house before,’ Joshua said. ‘That part truth. Samuel want to eliminate me by sending her to the Foundation. Foundation want her gone, I want her dead too, but Samuel and Foundation think they get rid of me by killing the girl and plant evidence to say it was I. So I kill her first. Death for her inescapable, from me, Samuel or Foundation.’

  ‘How did you know they wanted to implicate you in her murder?’

  ‘I get told … Too much greed in Foundation, people compete and secrets leak out. And Samuel behave like stranger, so I suspect as well. I mean, how you suspect me now? Many things, some without name, no?’

  ‘And people like Jamal, where do they fit in?’

  ‘Jamal small man who think he big. Three principals: Chocbanc, whom you kill, Samuel, who kill himself, and I. And now only I remain,’ he said proudly.

  ‘If all that you say is true, why did Chocbanc try to kill me and not you?’

  ‘Ishmael, you surprise me. Very simple. No you, no evidence to point at him or Foundation or I. No victor between him and I. No victor and it just me and Chocbanc making money. He want things return normal. He was old man, you know?’

  I had to laugh at the pained look on his face. The stubbornness of old folk, his expression seemed to say, so stuck in their ways.

  ‘What about the first call to the police? Who made the call?’

  He laughed. I knew the answer already.

  ‘Money talks, eh? The same person from Foundation who tell me plot, I pay him.’ He paused, studying me intently. ‘I think you have all answer now,’ he finally said. ‘I do good and answer four or so question. I think you leave now.’ He was suddenly very aware of himself – as if something had broken a spell and he had returned to the real world. ‘Okay, we conclude our business. Everyone happy, no?’

  ‘No, our business is not yet concluded,’ I replied as he stood up to show me out. ‘I do have one last thing to say …’

  ‘Of course, Detective, always one last thing, no?’

  ‘I promised Macy Jane Admanzah I would kill her murderer,’ I told him, ignoring his interruption.

  He looked shaken for a second and then he burst out laughing. ‘Tomorrow morning I drink coffee in Paris, in overlay. Go home, Detective Ishmael. To kill me, you destroy yourself. Americans too selfish for that. Just go home. You lost, no?’

  ‘But I don’t fight fair, Joshua,’ I told him as I stood up to leave.

  It was a long walk back and I used the time to try and figure out what to do next. Finally, as I neared home, it struck me: I hadn’t lost yet, I had one last play.

  It was about four pm when I decided to drive into the KKK militia farm, aptly named Little Pentagon. This was Madison’s dirty secret – we regularly stormed black neighbourhoods looking for drugs and guns, but we never touched the KKK militia, even though everyone knew that half the drugs and guns in the state were sitting right there on their farm.

  To get to the farm, I had to drive through desolate looking neighbourhoods, where poor whites stared at me with a mixture of hate and envy. Poverty, here like elsewhere, whether in Allied Drive or Mathare, was the original sin.

  Arriving at the farm gate, I showed my badge at the gate guarded by two rednecks with swastikas tattooed on their arms and AK-47s slung over their shoulders. The whole thing was a little overdone, they were outlandish caricatures of themselves, but that didn’t make them any less dangerous.

  My badge didn’t faze the rednecks. What they wanted to know, though they didn’t say it, was why a nigger cop was knocking on their door.

  ‘I have some important business with your boss,’ I said, opening the glove compartment and throwing in my badge, making sure that they could see my weapon was in there as well.

  They called him on a walkie-talkie and then waved me through. I drove further into the farm. Nothing was grown here – in case it provided any kind of cover, I thought – and even the cabins had a temporary feel to them, like they were moved from time to time in order to confuse the enemy. Eventually, after getting myself lost a couple of times, I was directed to a cabin at the centre of the many others.

  ‘What can I do you for?’ James Wellstone asked when I opened the door. He was sitting in an armchair like some kind of a general, and looking at the maps of Dane County on the wall behind him. One would have thought he was in the middle of a major military operation.

  ‘I have some information that might be of use,’ I said, handing him a copy of the Never Again Foundation logbook.

  He looked at it, whistling in surprise. ‘Jews and niggers follow the dollar,’ he muttered to himself. ‘No offence, man, you okay by me,’ he added, suddenly remembering I was there. ‘Why are you giving me this?’

  I explained the whole situation, how Joshua had not only escaped with the murder of a white girl, but was going back to Africa a richer man. ‘Jim, I don’t care about your fucked-up KKK war games,’ I said to him pointing at the maps. ‘But here is an opportunity for justice. Justice for your people.’

  ‘And you, what do you get, Ishmael?’ he asked.

  ‘Justice …’

  ‘You are prepared to see a black man die for the murder of a white woman?’

  I knew what he was driving at – I was a traitor to my race, no matter how I looked at it. But I had prepared for this. ‘Genocide, justice for his role in the genocide. He killed a lot of my African brothers and sisters,’ I said to him, knowing that the success of my mission depended on him believing me. ‘Sometimes in history enemies find themselves on the same side. And it’s not for one to judge the other … they act because it’s good for them. And afterwards they continue with their own battles. Let me ask you something, if black people had supported Hitler to defeat the British, Americans and communists wouldn’t both your people and my people be better off? We would have Africa and you would have
Europe. Now everything is a mess. And why? Because both sides were too consumed with hatred to seize an opportunity …’

  ‘I hate traitors, Detective, no matter the race. But you are right, today we are oppressed by the same governments,’ Jim added.

  It was then that I knew he would do it. He was striking a blow not just for his people, but showing cooperation was possible between two enemies for a larger goal. And more than that, he hated Joshua for being successful.

  As Jim listened I explained how best to carry out the hit. Joshua was on a ten pm flight, so he would probably call a cab to pick him up at eight. All Jim had to do was steal a yellow cab. Joshua wouldn’t be expecting any trouble, except from me, and looking outside his window and seeing the yellow cab would be enough. When he opened the door, Jim was to push him back inside and kill him.

  ‘No fancy stuff, no photographs or souvenirs to show your little redneck friends, just walk out and drive off,’ I said to him. I was being sarcastic, but he got my point.

  ‘I will send someone to take care of this,’ he said, but I knew it would be him. He wouldn’t be able to pass up an opportunity like this. This was a chance for real action and it would turn him into a legend.

  ‘It ends tonight,’ I told him as I took the logbook from his desk.

  He reached out and we shook hands.

  I went to the station and left in a sleek black Mercedes-Benz 300 that we used for undercover surveillance. I drove to Maple Bluff and parked on the street two houses down from Joshua’s place, blending in with other expensive cars. It was close to eight pm and I knew that Joshua would have already called a cab. I called the main offices, pretending to be him, and cancelled his request, saying that a friend had offered me a ride. The dispatcher called me an idiot but she did as I asked.

  A few minutes later I saw Jim and one of the KKK goons drive by in a yellow cab. They pulled up a little way along the street and Jim got out and walked up the path to Joshua’s house. As I had predicted, I saw Joshua peer through a window to verify it was the cab he had ordered. A few seconds later Joshua opened the door and Jim pushed him back into the house.