Ннеди Окорафор - Lagos Noir

They left the station before the hour struck seven. They took two vehicles, a Hilux truck and an old Peugeot sedan. Traffic on the bridge to the island was light; they got to their destination in no time. The estate’s security team had been expecting them and let them in. The housing estate was like the others — gated, clean, and pretentious. They parked their vehicles away from prying eyes, in the part of the estate with the industrial-sized water-treatment facility and giant electricity generators. Gabriel imagined that, like the other housing estates that had been hit by Scorpion’s crew, the occupants of this one also had no idea about the real Lagos life, about constant power failure and taps with no running water. Everything worked here. Everything here was a big lie.

“We walk to the house from here,” the sergeant said.

They set off by foot. They used side streets and hidden paths, trying their best to avoid being noticed by the occupants of the estate. The houses were separated by little gardens and picket fences. Gabriel noticed basketball hoops in some yards and a child’s bicycle with pink ribbons on the handlebars in another.

They arrived at a house that was far removed from the other ones. It was large, with a fancy facade, the type of house that would inevitably pique the interest of a criminal like Scorpion and his gang, Gabriel imagined. The occupants of the house were not there but the police were let in by a security guard. The sergeant instructed him to leave afterward.

Everything from then on seemed to happen fast, just like life in Lagos — the real Lagos, not the make-believe utopia of these island estates, where rich people’s children rode fancy bicycles, played basketball, and had nannies and gatemen. Complete darkness came swiftly. Lagos nights could be unforgiving. They all took their places to wait. Gabriel’s spot was inside the house. The others remained outside, hidden.

Just before midnight Gabriel heard a bus pull up in front of the house. His heart was racing. He checked to make sure his gun was loaded and ready. He waited to hear his squad attack the gang, to hear their barked commands for surrender and warning shots fired, but there was nothing. He wondered what was wrong. It occurred to him that maybe he had been abandoned, so he crept to one of the curtained windows in an upstairs room. And then he heard her voice: “Gabriel...”

It was too unreal, like something out of a bad dream. At first he thought he had imagined it, though when he shifted the curtain slightly, enough to remain hidden but still allowing him a good view outside, there she was — his wife. She was flanked by thuggish men.

“Gabriel, please come out,” she called, her voice as calm as if she were at home. “No one is going to hurt you.”

“Listen to your wife, Gabriel.” That was his sergeant.

He peeked out of the window again and saw they were all there — his wife, his squad, Scorpion, and his gang. It suddenly dawned on him what this was: it wasn’t a sting operation, it was an initiation. Everyone was in on it except him. His wife must have been the one who told the sergeant about what he’d discovered and what he planned to do with it. The night at Colony Estate must have been possible because his sergeant and squad had been paid off to look the other way. Gabriel had always known that some police officers were corrupt, but he never imagined this grand scale of deceit.

He knew he was cornered. If he attempted to be a one-man Rambo, they would surely kill him. This was not the night he would die, Gabriel thought. He had to find a way to play along and survive. His wife was out there with them. He would join her, surrender his weapon, and act like he understood the score and was in with them. After all, this was Lagos, where the police force was everybody’s friend.

“Hey,” Gabriel shouted out through the window, “I’m coming out!”

Ojo

Ifeatu said Reverend was the go-to guy in Lagos for anything from prayers to money. Reverend was a miracle worker, Ifeatu had said. Exactly what Emeka needed.

Reverend was not a man to be seen on a whim, Emeka’s friend Ifeatu had warned him. Appointments had to be made via middlemen, who demanded a cut for their services. And then Emeka had to wait — three weeks in his case — before word was brought to him that Reverend was ready to receive him. He was given a number with which he was to identify himself at Reverend’s gate before he would be let in.

“Three weeks is nothing,” Ifeatu had told him when Emeka asked if Reverend was God Himself that he could keep people waiting that long. “I waited four months!” Ifeatu explained, smiling as if it were a mark of honor. “Four months, but it was worth every single second to get to see the man. Without him, I’d be nowhere.”

Now, a mere two and a half years after the fortuitous meeting with Reverend, Ifeatu was living in a furnished two-bedroom flat in Surulere, running his own business manufacturing and selling sachets of pure water. In another year, he hoped to have saved enough money to build a house in his village, Osumenyi. A house with four bedrooms and a two-car garage, he told Emeka. And then he would find a good girl and marry.

“None of these Lagos girls, ooo . Their eyes are too open!” His own eyes twinkled with mischief. And then someday he would be a landlord in Lagos. “Imagine that — owning my own house in this city! Once Reverend sets you up, you too will be able to say the same.”

Emeka thought that if Reverend could perform this miracle on Ifeatu, transforming him from the pimply faced young man who had arrived in Lagos with nothing but a plastic bag of clothes and dreams, to this fresh-faced bobo who could afford to accommodate the dreams of another man, surely he would be able to do the same for Emeka. Ifeatu, who had spent his first weeks in Lagos sleeping under the Third Mainland Bridge and begging for alms in traffic, was now the proud renter of a flat and the owner of his own enterprise, a man who could be magnanimous with his good fortune.

“You can stay as long as you want, Emeka. But I tell you, once you take off with Reverend, you won’t be needing my room anymore. You’ll be able to rent your own place.”

The thought of having enough money to rent his own flat and buy a TV and a small generator to counteract the frequent power outages, maybe even keep a girlfriend (a Lagos girl, with hair extensions down to her buttocks; those girls who were as bold as men — Ifeatu said — in bed), filled Emeka’s stomach so much that on the day he set off to see Reverend, he could not eat a single bite of food.

Reverend’s house — it’s name, Midas House, carved into a piece of sandstone above the front door — was the biggest Emeka had ever seen. It had not occurred to him before now that anyone could afford to live in a place that massive. It reminded Emeka of the cathedral in Enugu where he and his family sometimes went to church. Not in size — Reverend’s house was even bigger — but in the number of religious portraits lining the walls. Emeka was ushered in by a guy wearing dark sunglasses and a beret. There were huge oil portraits of a man with a prominent scar on one cheek, flanked by Jesus, His disciples, and angels with ruddy cheeks and tie-dyed wings. In one portrait, the same man was the twelfth disciple of Jesus, his gold locket on a chain around his neck throwing off slanted rays of light, the scar on his cheek dotted with stars.

Emeka wondered if the stars had any particular significance. He was still contemplating this when Reverend walked in — Emeka immediately recognized the scar. He had expected to see a man who was as large, as expansive at least, as his reputation. But Reverend was small, no bigger than Emeka’s teenage brother in Enugu. Yet unlike Emeka’s brother, Reverend was dressed expensively, as if he had just emerged from a vat of liquid gold. The LV on his belt buckle shone bright and confident. The watch on his wrist almost blinded Emeka. The metallic thread running through his brown shirt shimmered. This was a man, Emeka thought, to whom money was of no concern. This was a man who, despite his diminutive stature, he could entrust his future to. When Reverend spoke, his voice was surprisingly, reassuringly strong.