James PATTERSON - Cross Country

“Detective Stone, is that you?” I said. “I guess you missed me?”

“Of course I did. But I asked a serious question. I’ve been worried sick for three days. We all have, especially Nana.”

“Okay, here’s what happened, and it’s part of the case. It has to be. I was arrested at the airport.”

“Arrested?” Bree said it in a whisper that registered new concern. “By who? At the airport? On what possible gounds?”

“On the grounds that due process is a relative concept around the world, I guess. I was in a holding cell for two and a half days. They never charged me with anything.”

Her voice slipped a little – more Bree and less Detective Stone. “How bad was it?”

“Scale of ten, I’d give it a fifteen, but I’m mostly okay now. I’m at the Superior Hotel. Of course, that’s just a name. There’s nothing superior about this joint.”

I looked out the window, where dark thunderheads were rolling in over the gulf. The pool area, ten stories down, was starting to clear out. It was hard to believe I’d woken up in Kirikiri just that morning.

“Listen, Alex, I don’t know if you want to hear this right now, but we had another multiple last night. Another family was slaughtered over in Petway. This time, the parents were Sudanese nationals.”

I sat down on the bed. “Same MO as the first two?” I asked.

“Yeah. Large knives, possibly machetes, extreme malice. Just ugly for the sake of ugly, cruel for the sake of cruel. Whether or not your boy and his gang were here, I’ll bet his people were involved.”

“Apparently the murderer is called the Tiger. So I’m playing Catch a Tiger. He could have ordered a hit from anywhere.”

“That’s right. Or he could be back in Washington, Alex. You could be over there, while he’s here.”

Before I could respond, there was a sudden flash from outside and a huge smack of thunder overhead. The lights in the room flickered, then went out, taking the phone with them.

“Bree?” I said. “Bree, are you there?”

But the line was dead. Shit. I hadn’t even told Bree how much I missed her.

I’d seen candles and at least one propane generator in the lobby, so I guess they were used to this kind of thing at the Superior. I lay back on my bed and closed my eyes, figuring I’d go down and check things out if the power didn’t come back on soon.

Meanwhile, what was the upshot of the new murders in DC? And what did they mean for me?

Was the killer I was chasing – the Tiger – still here in Nigeria?

Or had I come all this way… just to get my nose broken?

MY PHONE WAS ringing.

And ringing.

I finally blinked awake, starting to come out of a deep comalike sleep. The clock flashed 12:00, 12:00, 12:00 on the bedside table next to my face.

It was morning, and the power at the hotel was obviously back on.

When I rolled over to answer the phone, my whole body resisted with an aching stiffness and the pain of severe bruising. It brought everything back into focus. Jail, the beatings, the murder of Ellie and her family, the investigation.

“Alex Cross,” I said.

“Don’t do that.”

“Who is this?”

“It’s Flaherty. Don’t answer the phone with your name. You never know who–”

“What time is it?” I asked Flaherty. Too early for a lecture anyway.

I stared up at the ceiling, then down the length of my body. I was still in my clothes, and my mouth felt like paste. My busted nose was throbbing again too. There were bloodstains all over the pillow, both dark and bright red.

“Eleven o’clock. I’ve been calling all morning. Listen. I can give you a couple of hours if you make it soon, and then I’m out on assignment till next Monday.”

“What have you got? Anything at all?”

“Besides the eczema on my ass? I’ve got the closest thing to a cooperative contact you’re going to find in Lagos. You been to the bank yet?”

“I haven’t been to the John yet.”

“Yeah, well, sleep when you’re dead, right? Get yourself a driver. The front desk’ll set it up, but tell them you want it for the day, not by the hour. You’re welcome for the travel tip.

“Go to the Citibank on Broad Street. And tell the guy to take the causeway so it’ll sound like you know what the hell you’re talking about. If you get going, you can make it by one. I’ll meet you there. And don’t be late. Citibank on Broad.”

“Yeah, I got it the first time.”

“I could tell you were a quick study. Get going!”

BY THE TIME I pulled away from the Superior with a steaming and delicious cup of dark Nigerian coffee in one hand, I felt like someone had hit my “reset” button.

Not counting the way my face looked or half my muscles felt, it was as though I were getting a first day in Africa all over again. I thought about Ellie’s being here just a few weeks ago and wondered what had happened to her. Had she come into contact with the Tiger? If so, how?

There was no case file or intelligence to go over – my clothes and passport and empty wallet had been the only things returned to me – so I spent the slow crawl over to Lagos Island just taking in the sights.

“You know they call Lagos the ‘go-slow city,’” my driver told me with a friendly smile. All the many abandoned cars on the side of the road, he said, came from people running out of gas in perpetual jams, or “go-slows,” as they called them.

Our pace picked up somewhat on the mainland bridge, where I saw downtown Lagos for the first time. From a distance, its cityscape was typical of large cities, all concrete, glass, and steel.

As we got closer, though, it started to look more like something out of an Escher painting, with one impossible cluster of buildings tucked in and around the next, and the next, and the next. The density here – the crowds, the traffic, the infrastructure – was startling to me, and I had been to New York many times and even to Mexico City.

When we finally got to the Citibank on Broad Street, Flaherty was standing out front, smoking. The first thing he said to me was, “Jack Nicholson in Chinatown.” He grinned at his little joke, then said, “You squeamish?”

“Not so much. Why?”

He pointed at my nose. “We can make a quick stop after this. Fix you right up.”

Meanwhile, he said, I should go in and get my replacement cards and also the cash I owed him. Plus whatever I needed for myself and at least two hundred American, in small bills if I could get them.

“What for?” I asked.

“Grease.”

I took him at his word and did what he said. From there, my driver took us across Five Cowrie Creek to the more upscale of the city’s major islands – Victoria – and to a private medical practice on the fifth floor of an office building. Very private.

The doctor saw me right away. He examined my face and then gave me one quick, and excruciating, adjustment. It was the strangest doctor visit I’ve ever had, hands down. There were no questions about my injury and no request for payment. I was in and out in less than ten minutes.

Back in the car, I asked Flaherty how long he’d been based in Lagos. He had obvious juice here, and plenty of it. He also knew enough not to answer my questions.

“Oshodi Market,” he said to the driver, then sat back again and lit another cigarette.

“You might as well chill,” he said to me. “This is gonna be a while, trust me. You know what they call Lagos?”

“The go-slow city.”

He turned down the corners of his mouth and exhaled a cloud of white smoke.

“You learn fast. Some things, anyway.”