Night Must Wait (10 page)

He could have been any Joe, that was her primary impression. A clerk, an office man.

"I'll let you open it so you know I didn't poison you." She could have kicked herself.
Way to go, Sandy.

He took the glass she handed him, opened the bottle and tilted about half of the lager in.

"I see," he said. "But you forgot to wash the glass in front of me."

"Yet still you drink." Joking back was the last thing she'd expected.

He lifted the glass to his lips in proof.

"On behalf of my principal, I want to employ you. Exclusively," Sandy said.

There, it was out. Of course he woulda done his research. Woulda guessed. She noted strength in his wrists, the hands balanced like a sculptor's. Did he like to strangle or was he a jack-of-all-trades?

He shook his head. "More than any question of expense, I require variety, challenge."

"I wouldn't waste your time with anything less."

"So you say."

He drank like a girl, a little at a time as if he thought the lager tasted bitter.

Sandy took a gulp of hers. The beading on the glass cooled her hand.

"Besides, Wilton told me you're our man."

His eyes went opaque, pupils closing in, and that was when she felt the hair on the back of her neck rise. He looked down. He sat still, elegant to the point of a reproof, but Sandy knew better now. She'd thought earlier of asking for his real name, but now she knew she wouldn't. She heard the plaintive call of a beggar on the street below, then the buzz of a motorcycle passing.

"I would not make Professor Wilton a liar," he said, his voice flat.

"It's almost five o'clock and my stomach thinks my goddamned throat's been cut. Drink up and let's blow this pop stand. Join me for dinner."

He didn't question her idiom, simply nodded. Sandy watched him swallow. She wondered if she would ever know what made him agree.

Chapter 15: Oroko

February 1967

Lagos, Western Region, Nigeria

Oroko stood by the corner where the flickering streetlight couldn't reach. He watched and explored the night air with every sense. Tumbled broken cardboard boxes by a storefront barred in iron for the night, a splay of broken glass from a green bottle. A drift of quality aftershave and sweat. A man slipped into a doorway and the door opened without a sound. Perhaps on the other side a person watched for the moment when the right men came. Business afoot? Not his business anymore, but it honed his skills to pay attention. He might have a new employer, but it wouldn't take him away from the streets he knew so well. The place he almost belonged.

Oroko never knew why he had no scars, no clear tribe, no identity displayed upon his face, but he'd lied about it as often as lies worked. An orphan is bad luck, bad for the parents, bad for the village, bad for the tribe, bringing death. So he was a death bringer and in his mind that had become his profession long before he left the orphanage and the missionaries with their white hands and weak eyes. Expatriates proved soft in more than flesh. He found so much about death in their books. They praised his eagerness and his memorization and creativity without seeing the pattern in what interested him.

Now he was Lindsey Kinner's bodyguard, hired by that funny woman Sandy. He smiled in the darkness. Lindsey Kinner should have been like him, a killer, because she was like him, an orphan. Maybe it was learning that her parents were dead that first convinced him to take her employment. Or maybe it had been the loopy charm of Sandy Hemsfort, who first offered him a drink before offering him a job.

He hadn't needed either, and had drunk the beer and toyed with the idea. But Sandy looked at him with those green-gray eyes, grinned and said, "Wilton says you're our man," and he'd felt the blood rush that usually came after a killing. The blood rush that made his hands shake and his eyes blur.
Wilton
, the only woman and the only white who had ever frightened him and Sandy mentioning her as if she could be her friend.

Sandy didn't make the mistake of repeating herself. She went on talking about food and politics and the beer as though she'd never said anything involving that name, and he'd played along, waiting for the next blow. When it came, he rolled, agreeing, rationalizing it as a temporary job until he figured out the lay of the land and could set his own terms on quitting.

It wasn't only that Wilton could have imprisoned him with her evidence. It was the understanding in her eyes when she found him, a twelve-year-old poring over diagrams in the enormous green medical text. She was possibly five years his senior, but already teaching at the orphanage. He'd flipped the pages but not fast enough, and when she looked down at the picture of the naked female form, she considered him without a word, those black eyes still, and he knew that she saw what he really wanted to learn. Not about sex, breasts and vaginas, but all about where the vital organs nestled, where the thick arteries pulsed, where the bones lay that might impede a blow. He'd wondered what she read in his face, wondered if he'd imagined the knowledge in hers. Only a year later she offered him a first contact. He left the orphanage and his old name forever.

Something not quite a sound caught his attention, and he looked, recognizing David, his old assistant. David on his rounds. Oroko scanned the street once more, then moved out from the darkness half a pace, signing David over to him. They exchanged a grip—his fingers signaled
men, behind door, business unknown, for sport, join me
.

Chapter 16: Wilton

February 1967

Lagos, Western Region, Nigeria

Out on the streets of Lagos, Wilton walked on edge. Even when the task merely entailed crossing a crowded room, mouthing some prearranged joke, lifting a certain glass, or requesting a particular mix of martini, she feared. She tried herself against the passion of fear, testing. Felt how it drove her heart, tightened her skin and senses. Never take anything for granted. This might be a time she failed. God was watching, but He made no promise of protection.

And there had been failures. If only they'd succeeded in saving Balewa after the coup, the only leader with a reputation for honesty—he might have led them out of disaster. A Bageri of the North, a Muslim, he had everything they needed. She remembered sliding from her car in earliest dawn, her heart choking her. Her sandals slid in the mud. She looked down at the long lumpy shape of him, the stiffening splashes of gore on black robes and grass. She remembered the final telling slackness of Balewa's slender fingers half curled on nothing.

If only they'd saved him as prime minister, he might have held Nigeria united. Sparing him would have prevented the public from concluding that Igbo officers took over the government. Because he died, two thirds of Nigeria believed the coup had been an Igbo play for power, not the altruistic execution of corrupt rulers. Perception. So much depended upon perception and ambition. The same ambition that made the Igbos rise in the ranks of the army, so they held the guns that January execution night over a year ago.

Tonight demanded speed.
God go with me
. Wilton carried two forged documents on microfiche. She touched the flat envelope, small like a gift card that she'd tucked deep into her pocket, and thought of Gowon, young head of the government. He'd stopped that crazy Northerner, Murtala Mohammed, from invading the Igbo East with troops. She owed him, they all did. She could buy Gowon a few days, sow some confusion, shift the balance. These letters that implied collusion between the old corrupt politicians and Gowon's present opponents might help him consolidate power.

Tonight felt bad. She thought over the back entryways she'd used, hurried arguments against earnest young men with damp foreheads, and she checked herself in the window of the store she passed. Nothing looked awry in her appearance. She seemed no more than a slender young man in faded tans, a flat cap on her head. A bit of a dandy, the splash of cologne signaling confidence, the body language of a cocky young stud. She sauntered down the alley. When she walked with fear, she walked with God.

She came down the crooked stairs, out the unguarded door. A pair of hands snaked out, bit into her arms and yanked. An explosion of pain.

Chapter 17: Sandy

February 1967

Lagos, Western Region, Nigeria

"What the fuck?"

The knock straightened Sandy from her maps of the Jos Plateau, plans for her next trip startled away. Way after hours. She checked the clock—ten o'clock and a bit. God, way past time to head out of the office unless she simply wanted to camp out on her bench for the night. Lindsey wouldn't worry. She'd slept there frequently enough. The knock came again on the door.

"I have your friend," Oroko's voice came through the hollow metal door. Cripes. What the hell? Sandy unlocked and yanked her door open. Oroko and a young stranger supported a slumped figure between them. The heavy stink of blood.

What friend? Short-cropped curly black hair? This wasn't what it seemed. Oroko came in, awkward with the weight and drag of the body. His companion helped carry, then stood back. Oroko eased the slack victim onto the bench. It was Wilton, she'd colored her face dark. She looked drunk. Strange. The hair was wrong. No, not boozy, knocked silly. Sandy noted blood on Oroko's sleeve and his glance of regret at the ruin of his shirt.

"She is not so badly injured," Oroko said. "I brought her to you, for discretion."

"What the hell happened?"

The lights flickered and went out. Sandy swore, backing to her desk in the sudden black, groping for the kerosene lantern that always waited there, the box of matches ready.

"God damned fucking electrical company," she said. "Talk. Tell me."

Oroko did, the other man maintaining silence through the lighting of the lantern. Sandy turned up the flame.

"I saw a man I recognized," Oroko said. "I knew to terminate him, so when I saw him drag your friend here into a building, I completed my job and David and I silenced his two companions. We identified Professor Wilton and brought her to you. I believe she is your friend."

He'd recognized Wilton disguised as a Nigerian man? He made it sound incidental and simple, in his exceptional English. Sandy didn't challenge him and his coincidences. She checked Wilton's pulse. What did she know about pulses, but it seemed like the thing to do. She was better at cuts and bruises, little stuff, and Wilton had plenty of those. The tension she could see in Wilton's neck told her Wilton was conscious, but waiting. All right.

"Thank you. No one saw you?"

"They are not of concern," he said.

There was more to this story, but she didn't want to talk in front of this stranger who might or might not be reliable. Maybe she could discover more from Oroko tomorrow, but she wouldn't bet on it. Good man, puzzling, but perhaps the rest of the story would be best heard from Wilton. Poor Wilton.

"And who is this gentleman?" she said.

"David—my brother."

"Same mother, same father?" A necessary question in a country with polygamy.

"Same village." She knew, maybe since he spoke a fraction too fast, that he hadn't spoken exact truth. He knew he hadn't covered well, she noted that too because he rechecked her expression. He didn't try to say more; he wasn't going to make the error of adding anything to a failed lie.

"I would like to thank him," she said, her hand going to her money belt, but Oroko stopped her with a slight frown.

"It is my favor that he performed," Oroko said. "I am the one who thanks him."

"I see," Sandy said. "Thank you," she added and saw the flash of the white in his eyes. She'd surprised him. She must always make certain to thank Oroko then. Good to keep him a little off balance. Besides, courtesy had its place. The sounds of the two men retreating diminished down the corridor.

Wilton moved. Sandy settled her butt on the corner of the desk and watched. Wilton sat up as if it hurt and glanced about.

"I owe you," Wilton said. Sandy frowned at her—Wilton should see that there was no getting around her by making nice, and she swung her sneakered foot to and fro.

"I was lucky," Wilton said.

Sandy gestured. "You're fucking wearing a wig. And make-up."

"If I traveled as white, I'd receive too much attention."

Wilton turned in the kerosene glow and looked about the office with wide eyes and Sandy looked about too, wondering what Wilton was looking for. A microphone? A wire running where it shouldn't? Utilitarian shades of gray and cream, with the main colors lent by the geological maps that covered the walls and some of the tables. Just a touch of comfort added by the long padded bench, where Wilton sat. Wilton stripped the tight-fitting wig from her head and let her hair loose, veiling the bruises on her face.

"Does what happened tonight have anything to do with your being a witch doctor?"

"Where did you hear about that?" Wilton said. "No. I'm no witch doctor. Never will be, God forbid.
You shall not suffer a witch to live
." Sandy nearly apologized.

"Thank you for sending Oroko away. Sandy, what do you believe in?"

"God," Sandy said, startled into a private truth. "Damn it."

"Oh yes, but that's not what I meant. Do you believe in Lindsey? Do you believe in me? Whom would you choose?"

"Lindsey," Sandy answered. She couldn't imagine following Wilton. She'd lead too far into the other world.

Delight altered Wilton's plain and narrow face, such that Sandy had to smile back although she didn't get it. Wilton up to her strange tricks again.

"When you say you believe in Lindsey, who is she?" Wilton turned her head. Her neck must hurt, the way she moved. She stretched, not waiting for an answer, and went around to Sandy's desk and opened the bottom drawer. Wilton took the bottle of Johnny Walker Black and poured a generous slop into one of the crystal tumblers sitting on the shelf behind the desk. How'd she know the whiskey was there?