Victoria Falls

by James Hornor

  “I was helping her to find the shampoo! Look in my revised report. She asked me to help her as she washed her hair!”

  The inspector completely disregarded this second outburst from Charlie, and instead cooly turned the page of his notebook.

  “And then, of course, the scent from Mr. Benjamin’s scarf matched the scent on her robe, and the robe was covered with his fingerprints.”

  “You will see in my revised report that I admit that I slept with her robe, but that happened two nights ago, not while she was still here.”

  Charlie looked over at the sergeant and noticed a faint smile that was one of amusement and disdain. For the first time, the inspector was going to respond to one of Charlie’s comments.

  “Are you accustomed to sleeping with the robe of someone you just met?”

  “We had just met, but she is my half sister.”

  The three officers just sat there for a moment, allowing the incredulity of Charlie’s last statement to fully sink in. Then the inspector asked the sergeant and the Mountie to join him in the entryway. After a few minutes, the inspector came back in and asked James to join them. The inspector spoke to James as if he were the parent of a truant schoolboy.

  “We’re going to have to place him in custody until we can bring the forensic evidence to a judge. If I had to predict, I’d say we will get it to a magistrate by week’s end. While we are in this transition, you may want to get him an attorney. We’ll have him spend the night at our facility in Banff, then he will be remanded to our Correctional Center in Edmonton to await arraignment and a trial. Because he’s a non-resident of Canada, it’s unlikely they’ll grant him bail. Any questions?”

  “Couldn’t he just stay home tonight and I could drive him to Banff once we get the judge’s decision?”

  “Now that he knows the evidence we have compiled against him, he becomes more of a flight risk. If he happened to make it back to the States, it could take years of extradition hearings to get him back for a trial.”

  “Can you give me the phone numbers of the RCMP facility in Banff and the correctional facility in Edmonton?”

  “Sure, the sergeant can get you these numbers. It’s probably time that we get Mr. Benjamin into the van.”

  Charlie now appeared in the hallway. James walked over and gave him a hug. As he did, both of them winced and James whispered into Charlie’s ear.

  “I had to go through something similar when I was your age; only I was guilty and you are an innocent man. We will get through this together, I promise. I love you, Charlie.”

  “Thanks, Dad. I love you too.”

  The Mountie approached Charlie and asked him to raise his arms. After frisking him, he started to put on the handcuffs, but the inspector interceded.

  “We won’t need the cuffs. Put him in the back of the sedan, and we’ll drive him down to Banff.”

  Was it possible that the inspector had an intuitive hunch about Charlie’s innocence? James wasn’t sure, but as he watched his son being loaded into the back of a police car, all of the anguish of incarceration came rushing back to him. He thought about the night Charlie had been conceived, and all that had happened since then. He promised himself that he would not allow Charlie to endure what he had endured earlier. He would somehow save his son from that horrific reality, even if it meant losing his own life in the process.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  MELISSA DIDN’T ARRIVE BACK AT THE NORFOLK UNTIL almost 4:00 P.M., and of course I was curious about what she and Gerard had been doing together since her noon departure.

  “He knows more people in Nairobi than I know on the entire Australian continent.”

  In typical Melissa style, she didn’t provide any specifics about her whereabouts, preferring instead to leave me with the supposition that they had spent the entire four hours meeting a small army of Gerard’s friends. I had learned not to press her on the specifics, as that could potentially bring us back around to an attempt to bring definition to the parameters of our relationship, and all of those conversations had ended badly.

  She, however, assumed that she was perfectly within her rights to question me about my lunch with Nisar, and she didn’t hesitate to get to the specifics.

  “What did he say about our chances of bribing someone to get Jonathan out of Bombay?”

  “It wouldn’t be impossible; in fact, Nisar might be able to introduce me to the right people. The big item would be the cost. He’s estimating at least $25,000 and maybe $50,000 US.”

  Melissa was undressing to get into the shower, and as I said the amount, she carefully removed her bra so that now her breasts and lovely torso were in full view.

  “You know that I would pay you back. Gerard has all but offered me a job, so I could save $25,000 fairly easily in six months to a year. I could even sign something if that will make you feel better.”

  “There’s no need to sign anything. I know you will pay me back. It will take me a few days to have the money wired from my bank in New York.”

  As she had done on so many other occasions, Melissa rewarded my financial largesse by walking across the room to kiss me on the lips. Because she was half naked, she allowed her entire upper body to press into mine, and I thought of my negotiating disadvantage of making these arrangements while she was being so seductive.

  I had allowed her to believe that I was a man of more than adequate financial means, so little did she know that I had a total in savings of $30,000, and that money was to be used for Jenny’s college. Even if Melissa did pay me back in six months or a year, it would be too late to meet tuition deadlines.

  Jenny was depending on that money, and as a part of the divorce settlement, I had agreed to pay for Jenny’s college. So using that money to free Jonathan would be tantamount to me breaking a legal contract. For a moment my mind went back to Nisar’s proposal—$50,000 US for expediting the Bank’s decision to pull the plug on the road construction project. While the ministry in Bombay might be confused by the Bank’s expedited decision, it would be very difficult to connect the dots back to David Fortran or me. I decided to leave the idea on the back burner. Besides, I couldn’t imagine David Fortran agreeing to a plan that would manipulate a Bank decision, even though $50,000 US could buy him countless nights in high-priced brothels throughout Africa and the Middle East.

  Melissa closed the bathroom door and I heard her showering. I loved that Nisar thought she was my wife. Somehow it gave me more power and credibility that he believed I was married to a woman with Melissa’s poise and beauty. Although we were only pretending, it gave me an inordinate amount of satisfaction to have her referred to as Mrs. Monroe.

  As I sat there, I could hear a live band warming up on the Delamere Terrace below, and I called down to the lobby to ask if the band was for a private function or for the general clientele of the hotel.

  “You are, of course, invited,” came the reply from the front desk, and as I hung up the phone, it rang again. I assumed it was the front desk with more information about the band, but instead it was Nisar.

  “James, is this a bad time?”

  “Melissa and I are getting ready to head down to dinner. How can I help?”

  “I didn’t realize until a few minutes ago that the investors have moved up their meeting on Friday. They are meeting tomorrow morning.”

  “I thought I made it clear that I would find out from David Fortran the updated status on the project. I won’t be able to get a hold of him this evening. Besides, he would find it odd that I would be contacting him after hours to get the status on a project that is no longer in my portfolio.”

  “But have you considered my other offer?”

  Nisar was sounding a little desperate. He obviously needed more to report than just an upcoming status update. I thought about Jenny waiting tables all summer, trying in vain to come up with tuition money, and her going to Catherine to announce that I had reneged on my part of the divorce settlement.

  “Tell the investors that I am
considering their generous offer and will get back to them by the end of the week.”

  I could hear Nisar’s sigh of relief through the phone.

  “This is very wise business practice, James. Not only do you have a beautiful wife, you are also an astute businessman. I’ll be back in Nairobi on Friday, and we can meet then to tie up the details. Have a lovely dinner, James, and give my best to Mrs. Monroe.”

  I put down the phone as Melissa reappeared from the bathroom.

  “Who were you talking to?”

  “I called the front desk to find out about the live band. If you want, we can do some dancing after dinner.”

  “Sounds lovely. Most men can’t dance, but I am confident that you, as in everything else, will defy convention.”

  Melissa somehow managed to slip in yet another subtle directive regarding Jonathan even though we were talking about dancing. It was one of her “Melissa expects” moments that are accompanied by momentary eye contact as if to say, “We are on the same page.” She was remarkably adept at moving from “you” to “us,” and like everything else from Melissa, it was an effortless transition.

  I didn’t want to think about the tentative “yes” that I had given to Nisar. It was a foolish acquiescence, and one that I suspected I would live to regret. At dinner that evening, I had too many glasses of red wine, but they gave me the confidence to ask Melissa to dance despite the fact that the dance floor was empty.

  Melissa was a spectacular dancer—one of those people whose kinesthetic sensibility allows them to do last-second variations and combinations that are purely intuitive and inventive. The dance floor for her was a canvas that she filled with the same stylistic flair that she utilized moving around the room at a cocktail party. It appeared that nothing was left to chance, but her fluidity of motion and her ability to anticipate what I was about to do made the entire experience creative and sensorily delightful. Mostly it was her athleticism that allowed her to appear to float to the music, and there was, of course, a charisma about it that was characteristic of everything she did.

  I always looked back on that evening as the last time Melissa and I were happily together. It reminded me of our evening at Victoria Falls or on the train to Bulawayo. In all three instances we found an equilibrium, a balance, that allowed us to be more fully ourselves and more fully alive. Her secret was her ability to make anyone who was around her feel more alive. She had a positive energy flow that she was able to willfully regulate in its intensity, so that every situation, every circumstance of her life had an attractive vibrancy. To be part of that vibrancy for me became an obsession, so that I was willing to sacrifice almost anything not to lose it.

  The part of Melissa that remained a mystery to me was her inability to commit to any one person. The core of that inability may have been an insecurity that she was artfully able to mask. At its worst, that insecurity may have engendered a selfishness that never allowed her to open her heart fully to another person. Melissa cared for other people, but she was unable to give freely to others without expectation of return. She was interested in philosophy, but for her it was more an intellectual exercise than a true search for the meaning of life.

  The next morning I called David Fortran ostensibly to ask him about a report we had both been working on concerning capacity building in Mozambique. I decided to broach the road construction project in Bombay just so I could honestly tell Nisar that David and I had talked.

  “How are things going in Bombay?”

  “Do you mean the road construction project?”

  “I keep hearing rumors we are pulling out.”

  “There’s been no transparency from the transportation ministry. They keep promising the financials, but recently nothing’s coming out of Bombay.”

  “How patient will we continue to be?”

  “Hard to say. There’s a big meeting in two weeks when we look at all the Bank projects in western India. We’ll know more at that point.”

  As I hung up the phone, I realized that I essentially had no news for Nisar. I might get an update in two weeks, but knowing how slowly change of any kind occurred at the Bank, I suspected that the ministry would be granted yet another extension to deliver updates on their financials. Now the idea of getting David involved in a scheme to tilt the Bank’s decision regarding the loan seemed wildly preposterous. Even if he had the influence to make such a thing occur, it was highly unlikely that he would want to get involved.

  I picked up the phone and asked for an international operator. My only option at this point was to have my own $30,000 from Citibank wired to a bank in Nairobi. I thought about calling Nisar to tell him that the deal was off, but I still needed his help in arranging a meeting with a pliable judge, so I wanted to keep him thinking that I could be potentially helpful. I spent the next two days at AFREA catching up on paperwork that I should have completed two weeks ago.

  On Friday morning, there was a message at the front desk at The Norfolk that Mr. Malik was hoping to meet me at noon for lunch. I was sure that Nisar had told “the investors” that he could close the deal by Friday, and he wasn’t going to miss a beat. I instructed the concierge to reply to Mr. Malik in the affirmative and I headed upstairs to call Jenny. It had been over three weeks since we had talked, and I wanted to hear her voice. I knew it would be early evening in New York, which was always the best time to call.

  “Hi Papa.”

  “How did you know it was me?”

  “I saw the international number on caller ID, so who else do I know who would be calling from Africa?”

  “How are you, Jenny?”

  “Did you get my letter about spring break?”

  “Actually no, when did you mail it?”

  “Awhile ago, but I’m not sure it had enough postage to get to Africa.”

  “So, what’s up?”

  “I want to go to Sarasota with friends for spring break, but I need probably $400 to help pay for gas, meals, and a place to stay.”

  I had just drained my savings account at Citibank, but I still had a line of credit associated with my checking account.

  “Do you still have the Citibank card I gave you for emergencies?”

  “I think it’s somewhere in my purse.”

  “Take the card, go to Citibank, and withdraw $400. The code is 2019.”

  “Thanks, Papa. You’re the best.”

  “Are you doing any studying at NYU? How come I never saw your first semester grades?”

  “They send all that to Mom with both of your names on the address. And I guess she never forwarded you my grades. Anyway, one A and all the rest B’s. I’m giving it my best shot.”

  “I’m proud of you, Jenny. Can’t wait to see you this summer.”

  “I love you, Papa. I’ll send you a postcard from Florida. Hopefully it will make it to your office in Nairobi.”

  I hung up the phone and had a strange premonition that I wouldn’t talk to her again for a long time. I quickly dismissed it and headed down to the Delamere Terrace to meet Nisar.

  This time I found him standing next to the bar, and when I began to walk towards him he put down his drink and greeted me with a large smile.

  “James, it’s so good to see you.”

  I could already tell that he was assuming that our lunch would be somewhat of a celebration related to my agreeing to work with the investors. I didn’t want to let him down immediately, so as a waiter led us to a table, I made pleasant small talk about the phone call to Jenny and the delightful time Melissa and I had dancing under the stars.

  Nisar had a small satchel with him, and I wondered if he was expecting me to sign something related to the supposed agreement with the investors.

  “I had a wonderful meeting on Tuesday with a few of the lead investors. They will be the big money in this venture, and they are already planning how they will approach the government once the ministry has collapsed.”

  “That’s just it, Nisar. A lot would have to happen for the Bank to pull
the funding in the timetable that your friends seem to be envisioning.”

  “But that’s why you and Fortran are involved. You are expediting the process.”

  “I’m not so sure that David Fortran or I are willing to get that involved in the timing of the Bank’s decision.”

  Nisar stared across the table at me without saying a word. He was stunned by what I had just said. But because of his long history of negotiating deals and compromises, he moved into defense mode and looked directly at me as he spoke.

  “Do you know that I have $10,000 for you and $10,000 for Mr. Fortran that I am about to give you as a down payment for your help in this matter?”

  I briefly considered the idea of accepting the down payment and not following through, but I knew Nisar would exact a brutal revenge. Better to be completely candid now before I was in too deep.

  “That’s very generous of the investors, but I can’t accept the money.”

  “And you have spoken to Mr. Fortran, and he is in agreement with this?”

  “I know David. He would never accept money to influence a Bank decision.”

  “So you have spoken to him?”

  “I spoke with him on Tuesday morning.”

  “Do you have nothing else to report?”

  “There’s a Bank meeting in two weeks to discuss all of the projects in western India. Bombay will undoubtedly be on the agenda.”

  “You are placing me in an extremely awkward position with the investors. What am I supposed to tell them after you indicated on Monday night that you would help us?”

  “I think I said that I would consider the offer.”

  “You shouldn’t have given me that indication, if you were not going to deliver on what we had discussed.”

  “Saying that I would consider it was not a yes that I was definitely in.”

  Nisar had not smoked since we had arrived at the table, but now he carefully lit a cigarette and leaned back in his chair.