City of Saints & Thieves

by Natalie C. Anderson

  “Why?”

  He doesn’t answer.

  After a while I say, “They were lovers, you know. My mom and your dad.” Now I’m just being mean. It feels good. “Yep. Your dad used her, knocked her up, and when he was finished with her, he killed her.”

  “You’re wrong. He wouldn’t have killed her. He’s not like that.”

  “I’m sorry, have you met your father? He’s not exactly in line for sainthood.”

  “You don’t know what you’re talking about,” Michael says. “Everyone assumes he’s this terrible person because he’s in mining, but it’s not true. And besides . . . he told me that he didn’t kill your mother.”

  “He told you.”

  “Yes,” Michael says stubbornly, still not looking at me. “I asked him.”

  I watch him type. “You poor thing,” I say, shaking my head. “You still worship him, don’t you?”

  He twitches. “Shut up.”

  “You still believe all the lies he’s told you, about what a good provider and protector he is, how he’s just working hard to feed his family. Don’t you wonder what it costs? Don’t you know who he really is? All the lives he’s ruined so you can live like a prince? He doesn’t care about little people like my mom. And he’s not afraid to lie to you about it.”

  “I said shut up!” Michael says, in my face now, breathing hard, grabbing me by the shoulders like he wants to shake me. “Just shut up about him!”

  I almost laugh. He’s his father’s son all right. I lean into his anger, relishing it, and wait for him to hit me. But he lets go, like I’m not worth the effort, and I sink back into the cot.

  He swivels and paces, collecting himself. On the other side of the room, with his back to me, he takes a deep breath. “What were you doing in his office?”

  I consider. “Hunting.”

  He eyes me over his shoulder. “For what?”

  “For everything. I was hunting for everything.”

  “What ‘everything’? Stop playing. Say what you mean.”

  “I mean everything. Bank records, proof he’s working with terrorists, that he’s selling them arms, buying their blood gold. Who he’s working with, where. Every dirty little secret. And you know what? I got them. I got them all.”

  Dirt. Then money. Then blood.

  Maybe it’s just the light, but Michael’s pale face seems to go a funny grayish color. He looks at me, then down at the USB adapter plugged into his laptop. He yanks it out, drops it to the ground, and stomps on it with his heel like it’s a cockroach.

  I smile at the broken pieces and lean back, my cuffed hands cradling my head. “That’s not going to help. That thing was just a tool. I used it to send your dad’s files to my partner. Crush it. Hit me. It’s only a matter of time before every nasty, illegal thing your father’s ever done is out there in the public eye.”

  “That’s what you want to do? Drag his name through the mud?”

  “Yep,” I say.

  That and so much more.

  “Well, you’re too late,” Michael says bitterly. “All those lies have been paraded around in the press and he’s still standing. No one has any proof. And that’s because it’s not true. Extracta’s mines all pass their health and safety checks, every time. The miners get good wages. No one’s a slave.”

  “I’m impressed, Mikey. You know more about Daddy’s company than I would have thought. Too bad all your intel is wrong. Where did you get it? Oh, let me guess, Extracta Mining Company’s head of East African operations, Mr. Roland Greyhill, aka Daddy?” I shake my head in mock sympathy. “My money’s on his hard drive telling a different story. It’s true that Extracta’s already under scrutiny, though. And they’re going to need a scapegoat when this all comes out. Guess who that’s going to be?”

  “How do you know what’s on his hard drive? Did you look at the files?”

  “It—I just do.”

  “No,” he says, shaking his head slowly. “You didn’t have time. You weren’t in there that long. You didn’t see anything. He doesn’t have slaves. He doesn’t work with terrorists.”

  I suck my teeth in impatience. Does Michael live under a Swiss rock? “Don’t you know how it works in Congo? Allow me to educate you. Militias and the Congolese army are fighting, and to keep fighting they need money and weapons. They use slave labor to mine gold, and your dad buys it on the cheap from them. Then he launders that gold through Extracta’s mines, acting like it’s all shiny and conflict free.”

  Michael’s brow is furrowed. “No. You’re crazy. Where are you getting all this?”

  “I have my sources.”

  “It’s all lies. He’s bringing jobs and industry to the Congo.”

  He sounds like he’s quoting someone, like he’s memorized this speech and given it before.

  “Come on, Michael.” I almost feel sorry for the poor guy. “You’re brainwashed. You don’t get as rich as your dad is playing by the rules.” I wave my handcuffed wrists around the room. “You’ve got me in a torture chamber, for God’s sake!”

  “It’s not a torture chamber! It’s a panic room.”

  I shake my handcuffs at him. “And these? Are these to keep me from panicking?” I watch him struggle to respond.

  A sickish feeling has started creeping up in my stomach, and I don’t like it. It’s not my problem if pretty boy is in denial. Don’t think about Michael, think about Mama, I tell myself. Think about all the bad things Greyhill’s done. He has to pay for them. I have a plan, and I’m sticking to it. I can’t be bothered with the feelings of spoiled rich boys. “It doesn’t matter what you think,” I say. “It’s all going to be out there soon. You’ll see.”

  Michael looks like he’s fighting some sort of internal battle. Finally he asks, almost to himself, “Can you stop it? If it’s even there, I mean. Can you stop this so-called proof from getting out?”

  I don’t answer right away. What is he asking? Is he trying to threaten me? “Listen, whatever you do, torture me, kill me, it isn’t going to change things. The stuff is out of my hands now. It’s going to be released.”

  Which, to be honest, isn’t exactly true, but Michael doesn’t need to know the details. Giving the dirt to Donatien is on me. I’m sure Omoko could trash Mr. Greyhill’s name some other way, but I want it to be Donatien who writes all the bad stuff up and publishes it. He can get it in the big papers. He’s got a stake in bringing Greyhill down and he will do it right.

  Just like Boyboy will then hack Mr. Greyhill’s bank accounts the right way.

  And like I will do blood.

  Just right.

  Michael lifts his chin. “What if I can prove my dad didn’t kill your mom? Would you be able to stop it?”

  I frown. Normally, I feel like I’m pretty good at knowing when someone else is full of it, but Michael’s got hard to read since we were kids. “What do you mean?”

  He doesn’t respond.

  “Do you know something?”

  He still doesn’t move, just keeps watching me.

  I’m on my feet, lunging for him. Only the cuffs and the chain stop me. “Don’t play with me, Michael! Do you know something about my mother’s murder?” I can’t quite reach him. “Is it the video from that night? From the camera in the office? Do you have it? Do you?”

  His nostrils flare. “No.”

  I tell myself to calm down, to let the numbness I’ve worked so hard to cultivate sweep me under. I do not exist. I will not exist, not for him. “Then you don’t know anything,” I say finally, backing up.

  “You’re going to ruin my father—ruin all of us—because you think he killed your mother. You don’t even know for sure!”

  “I do know! You know it too, or you wouldn’t have asked him if he did it!”

  “He said he didn’t kill her, and I believe him!” Michael shouts.

>   Why do you care whether Michael believes it or not? I ask myself. He doesn’t matter. Leave it.

  But I can’t. “I saw them,” I say.

  Michael freezes. “You saw him . . . kill her?”

  “No,” I say. “But I didn’t need to. The night before she was killed, I saw them together in the garden. They were arguing. My mother knew his secrets, and she threatened to expose him. And do you know what he said?”

  Michael doesn’t move.

  “He said, ‘Do that, Anju, and I’ll kill you.’” I pause, letting my words sink in. “She sent a message to a reporter the next day, asking him to meet her. And eight hours later, she was dead.”

  EIGHT

  Rule 9: Thieves and refugees don’t do police.

  • • •

  If I hadn’t seen them in the garden that night, maybe my whole life would be different. Maybe I could have put her death behind me, gone to school with Kiki, convinced myself it was a robbery gone wrong, like Mr. G said. I could have tried to forget.

  But I did see them.

  Their angry voices pulled me out of bed. I came upon them standing under the plumeria tree. Its blossoms pulsed in the dark like attendant stars. Greyhill had his hands around Mama’s throat. His threats were soft and intimate.

  Seeing them, I tasted that old, familiar terror in the back of my mouth. And when I howled, Greyhill had broken away from her and slunk off.

  Once he was gone, I went to Mama and she held me close. She told me to hush, that there was nothing to be afraid of. He didn’t mean what he’d said. Everything was going to be fine.

  • • •

  I could have tried going to the police. I could have told them what I’d seen and heard, let them investigate, waited for justice to prevail.

  Sure.

  Right.

  And Kiki and I would live happily ever after in a castle made of rainbows and gumdrops.

  No, here’s the thing with Sangui City (it’s pretty simple; take it to heart):

  The police do not give a shit.

  They certainly don’t if you’re a thief, and especially not if you’re a refugee from Congo. We are just walking ATMs to them, good for all sorts of “fees”: for walking down the street; for having a mole on your chin; for wearing red shoes. What a little refugee girl had or hadn’t seen in the mist was not going to interest them.

  Nope. You have a problem, you deal with it yourself.

  The cops came the next day to her murder scene, of course, to take photos and gawk at the famous Greyhill mansion and write up a few notes in terrible English. “Gunnshott too abnomen” was apparently the official cause of death. Says so right on the forms. I have them. Boyboy hacked the whole file out of the police server for me.

  The notes explain that no one was home except for Bwana Greyhill and a few staff, all of whom were accounted for. Mrs. Greyhill and the two children were at the beach house several hours’ drive away. Mr. G heard a noise in his office. He went in, found the maid already dead. She must have startled a robber. The thief/murderer was long gone. These things happen. Open and shut.

  I can just imagine how the polisi told it later: See, they said, Mr. Greyhill is what we call a King Midas. He brings the minerals out of the dark places in distant lands we otherwise don’t like to think about. Greyhill profits and Sangui profits, and if you and I are smart, we polisi will profit too. After all, Mr. Greyhill’s hands may not be clean, but there is gold dust mixed in with the dirt and blood.

  All death is tragic. But who was this maid, anyway? Some paperless refugee from Congo, part of the refuse that washes down the mountains from the mines and ends up on the streets of our city. They bring bad morals. They steal our jobs. And really, between you and me, what was this maid doing in that office in the first place? We don’t want to gossip, but it’s true: Nine times out of ten, staff are behind these robberies. Good, honest maids are so hard to come by.

  Heads shake sympathetically. Hands shake firmly. Cases are closed.

  NINE

  When I wake in the torture chamber, I figure it’s morning. I have no way of knowing, what with no windows or phone. I can’t believe I even fell asleep. The last thing I remember was staring at the winged-elephant stain on the ceiling after Michael left, wondering if I was going to die down here, and if so, how many Fridays it would take before Kiki realized I wasn’t coming back.

  I wash my face, use the toilet, then sit back down on my cot. My wrists are getting raw, and I rub them under the cuffs.

  “A book would be nice,” I grumble, my foot starting to tap.

  Michael didn’t say anything after I told him what I’d seen. He just picked up his computer and left. He didn’t even respond when I yelled after him, calling him names, cursing at him. He shut the door and left me here to sit and wonder what happens next.

  At first, I just wanted to kill Mr. Greyhill. If I was going to be all eye-for-an-eye about it, I would have killed someone he loved. That would have been fair. But I’m not a villain; I’m not him.

  A few months after joining the Goondas, when I was stronger, I started going to watch Mr. G in my spare time. I would hide in an alleyway near his office, see him go in and out, in and out, day after day, like everything was fine. Like the whole world hadn’t stopped making sense. I thought about getting a gun from Bug Eye and doing it right there on the street, walking up to him, letting his bodyguards have me after. I would have, if not for one thing. One small, huge thing: Kiki.

  If I died like that, I realized, I couldn’t keep my promise to Mama. I couldn’t guarantee what would happen to her. It all played out in my mind. Maybe she could stay on scholarship, but who knows? And if they took that away, what then? Who takes care of her? All of her family would be dead. She would never survive on the streets. Never. Just the thought of her trying made me shake.

  I went back to the Goondas, adrift.

  I knew Mr. Greyhill had to pay, but I didn’t know how. I told Bug Eye my story—what I wanted and why I couldn’t have it. I shouldn’t have talked, but I didn’t know better then. I hadn’t learned the rule about valuing secrets yet. But maybe it’s like Mama used to say, that everything happens for a reason, even the bad things and mistakes.

  Bug Eye told our boss, Mr. Omoko.

  Ezra Omoko is a quiet, middle-aged man, Sangui City born and bred. Not very tall, graying at his temples, no tattoos. He dresses like a schoolteacher in slacks and golf shirts. But don’t be fooled. Among the Goondas, he is king. He takes care of those who serve him well. He is generous with the spoils. But I’ve seen him eat a double-crossing Goonda’s liver for breakfast. And he keeps a collection of his former enemies’ eyeteeth in a bag in his pocket like an amulet.

  He found me alone in the Goondas’ makeshift gym a few days after I blubbered to Bug Eye. I was practicing my left hook on a shredded tire, long after all the other Goondas in training had called it a day.

  “So you want to kill Roland Greyhill?” Mr. Omoko asked, standing hidden in the dark.

  I turned around. I had never talked to the big boss himself before. There was no sense in asking who’d told him. That was obvious. So I just took a deep breath and said, “Yes.”

  “And why would you want to do a silly thing like that?” Omoko wanted to know.

  I shrunk before him. Only two days before I’d heard a story that as a boy Mr. Omoko used to bite the heads off live snakes. He was immune to their poison. The punch line to the story was that if he bit you, you died.

  I screwed up my courage to respond, but before I could, he continued, “Why do that, kijana, when you can ruin him first, and then kill him?”

  Omoko emerged from the shadows, put a fatherly arm around me, walked me back to his office. We had a little chat. He gave me a book, The Count of Monte Cristo, and told me to find him when I finished it.

  It took a month and the help of a stolen
dictionary, but I did it. When I came back, Mr. Omoko asked what I’d learned. “A lot of big words,” I said. Then, “I’m not sure. The count got revenge, but I don’t know if it made him happy.”

  Omoko regarded me thoughtfully. “Happy or sad isn’t the point. People don’t look for revenge to make them happy. They do it because they must. Do you understand?”

  I thought about it. I did.

  “What I’d hoped you would learn,” Mr. Omoko went on, “is that if you decide to take revenge, you have to think of it as a vocation, a calling. Like a priest is called to serve. It isn’t something you do once. It is something you do every day, like learning a dance. Before you can dance, you must put your time in. You must learn the rules of the dance, its rhythms, and be sure not to step too soon. If you want to master it, you must also put in your blood and your sweat. That is what the count learned, that his calling was revenge, but that to get it he had to have discipline. You have to want it deep in your gut like he did, more than anything.

  “You have to be patient. You have to rid yourself of distraction: friends, hobbies, other ambitions. You must be able to wait for the right moment. You will have to starve yourself, to be willing to break your own bones and reshape them to make it happen. It takes sacrifice like you’ve never imagined possible. You practice at it every day, until there is no distinction between you and it. It is you. Do you have that in you?”

  “I-I think so.”

  He regarded me coolly. “It won’t work if you just think so. You have to be sure,” he said. “You can kill him now. That would be the easy way. But know that if you do, people will mourn. Sure, they’ll remember him as a Big Man and maybe even a businessman of, shall we say, questionable ethics. But around here a Big Man is as good as royalty. He’ll still die revered, feared, and admired. He killed your mother, child. Is that what you want?”

  “No.”

  Of course it wasn’t.

  Mr. Omoko told me to wait, and be patient. To make myself strong in the meantime, to build my own set of rules to live by, to master the practice of revenge. I was small, but I was already on the road to becoming a thief with clever hands and silent feet, and he could work with that. If I was to be a thief, though, I should be a good one.