City of Saints & Thieves

by Natalie C. Anderson

  So I looked at myself and thought about how to take advantage of being a tiny girl. I began working on my own variation on the bump and wrist flick that is a pickpocket’s bread and butter. I’d be way better than Ketchup could ever dream of being. I spent hours every day forcing my body into insane postures so I’d be able to squeeze through barred windows. I decided to show Bug Eye what I could do. Maybe he could think of a better way to use me?

  The first place I broke into was the home of a loan shark. My job wasn’t to steal anything, but to leave him a message in black paint on his living room wall: “Hi family, tell Baba to pay up. Love, the Goondas.” It worked. He paid. The very next day. Delivered the cash himself to the warehouse. I’d found my niche. There were enough Goondas who could break arms and shatter windows. I would be a scalpel. Let the other guys be clubs.

  I got better and better at thievery, moving on to actually stealing cash, jewelry, electronics. And soon, when I was creeping into a dark shop or a merchant’s plush home, or bumping with choreographed precision through a crowd toward a mark, I found that I was more myself than at any other time. I was a new person. A thief. Solid, strong. Unbroken.

  When it came time to get tattoos, there was no question. The very first thing I asked for was a wheel on one arm, sword on the other, just like the ones on Mama’s Saint Catherine prayer card. I got others later on, but those were the only two that ever really mattered.

  I still had to do the exercises with the other guys. We ran, we climbed, we fought one another. Sometimes Mr. Omoko would drop by and watch us. When he did, all the boys would show off. Omoko had an elite squad of bodyguards, and they all wanted to grow up to be one. There were a million stories of all the money and cars and girls the guys in Omoko’s inner circle got, but he would take only the best.

  Bug Eye would make us spar in front of him. I hated it. I could hold my own against the boys, but it still made me feel like a monkey on a string being told to dance. The other Goondas thought I was crazy for not kissing up to Omoko, but I didn’t care. He knew I didn’t want to be his bodyguard. We’d had our chat. My destiny was shaping out in a different direction.

  Mr. Omoko rarely spoke to me after that first year. But I didn’t mind. His silence was approval, and that was all I needed. I was in dress rehearsal. Once I’d established what I could do, Omoko started assigning specific jobs to me. Bug Eye would relay them. Easy ones at first: breaking into an unguarded shop at night. Tailing and pickpocketing. Then harder ones: getting into homes with security, human and electronic. Cracking safes. Stealing not just things but information. When his IT guy got stumped trying to hack into a politician’s email account, I said, Let me try—I know a boy who’s a tech genius and owes me a favor.

  I never got caught. Not once.

  Not until now.

  FIFTEEN

  While his parents are at church, Michael and I look through everything we’ve got, hoping that with fresh eyes, we’ll find some new detail about Mama’s murder. The day is bright and sunny, but we lock ourselves in Michael’s room and close the shades. It’s overkill, but better than maids popping in or gardeners seeing us through the windows. I bet they think we’re in here making out, especially after Michael’s performance in front of the guards last night, but whatever. People thinking I’m bonking the boy of the house is the least of my problems.

  I’ve checked the ferry schedule and know I’m supposed to meet Boyboy at three o’clock. I’m not worried about being able to get out of here, only that disappearing on my own for a few hours so soon isn’t going to go over real well.

  “We should set the scene,” Michael says, after a while. “Like we’re staging a play.”

  When I don’t respond, he prompts, “The killer must come in through the tunnel. None of the other cameras inside show anyone but Dad and your mom in the house that night. So how does he or she get in?”

  “Good question. Probably he got in through the front door because he’s your dad.”

  “Tina . . .”

  “Fine. I don’t know how the mystery killer got in. But magically he does, then he kills my mom.” I tilt my head. “Or she does. A jealous lover, perhaps? How many does your father have, exactly?”

  Michael’s eyebrows pinch. “This isn’t a joke.”

  “Believe me, I know. Okay, jealous lover-slash-murderer does the deed. Bang. Then what?”

  “He—or she—goes back out the tunnel.”

  “And then? Does the killer jump over the wall?”

  “You did,” Michael points out.

  I have to give him that. “But I had a ladder. And someone to turn off your electric perimeter fence.”

  “So it can be done,” Michael says, with an annoyingly smug look on his face.

  “Okay, fine. But a gunshot is loud. Once the gun went off, the guards should have come running, right? How do they not catch him?”

  “Well, that’s what I—”

  “Could be they did get him. And then your dad killed him. Or her. Chopped the killer up into little pieces and fed him to the sharks. That’s a possibility.”

  Michael scowls at me.

  “Not that it does my mother much good, but that’s better for you and your dad as far as you’re concerned, right?”

  “He doesn’t chop people up.”

  “No,” I say, “he just pays people to do it. Sharks gotta eat, right?”

  “Maybe we should think about motives, not body disposal.”

  “Just trying to be helpful.”

  Michael sighs. “Okay, let’s figure out possible suspects. Who were your mom’s enemies?”

  My smirk fades. “Your father.”

  Michael takes a deep breath but keeps his voice level. “What about in Congo?”

  “Like I said, your dad.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  I narrow my eyes at him. “They met there. She knew him from before.”

  Michael frowns. “Wait. So you’re saying they were enemies in Congo?”

  “She knew stuff about Extracta. Bad stuff. That’s what she was saying she was going to go to the press with when he threatened to kill her.”

  “But if they were enemies, why would she come here, all the way from Congo, and ask him for a job? And why would he be like, ‘Yeah, sure. Come on in’?”

  “I . . .” I shake my head. “She came here because . . . Look, I don’t know why we ended up here. Maybe he forced her to work for him.”

  “That doesn’t make sense. She wouldn’t have brought you here if it wasn’t safe, right? And he didn’t force her to . . . you know . . . Kiki . . .” Michael looks at his hands.

  “He didn’t force her to have sex with him? You can say it.”

  Michael fidgets. “I mean, I saw them together too—kissing and stuff. He didn’t have a bunch of other women. They . . . liked each other.”

  I squeeze my hands under my armpits, practically crawling out of my skin with how much I hate discussing this.

  “Anyone else?” Michael asks. He doesn’t look any less uncomfortable. “Enemies,” he adds quickly.

  I give him a tense shrug. “I don’t know. I don’t think so.”

  “What did she do before she came to Sangui? Was she in trouble, or . . .”

  “She was a nurse. She helped people.”

  “Nurses can have enemies. No ideas?”

  “No. I don’t know.” I stand up and start to pace. How would I know if she had enemies or not? Only Donatien, the reporter, has been able to tell me about her life there. But he just knows bits and pieces. Important bits, but not enough. And Mama herself certainly never talked about Congo to me. When I think back on it, it seems like as far as she was concerned there was nothing to think or talk about.

  Michael writes, Anju Yvette’s past in Congo? on a list of questions he’s making. “Do you know anyone you coul
d ask about her?”

  I don’t answer right away. “Yeah, maybe.”

  “Who?”

  I hesitate. Would Donatien recognize Michael? Probably not. Michael is always in Switzerland, and Mrs. G is notoriously fierce about keeping her kids out of the papers. I barely recognized the guy. “I’ll send him a text. Maybe he’ll meet us.”

  As I’m typing, Michael asks, “What about the girl in the photo with your mom?”

  I shake my head. “I told you, I don’t know who she is.”

  My mother looked so happy in that photo. They must have been friends. But how would I even begin to find her? Would Donatien know her?

  “Should we go through the police file?” Michael asks.

  I make a face. “Okay. But I’ve looked at it a hundred times and I swear it gets less useful every time.”

  I use his computer to get into my online files and pull it up. I hand him the laptop, letting him scroll through.

  “This is it?” Michael asks, after a few seconds.

  “Astonishing, isn’t it? Don’t you have a whole new depth of faith in Sangui City’s justice system?”

  “They didn’t even spell ‘report’ right. It has an l in it.”

  “Just wait until you see the analysis page,” I say. “Completely blank.”

  I walk to the window to peek through the shades. I can’t look at the police file. It makes me too angry. The notes from the officer’s conversation with Mr. G and David Mwika barely fill a page. The forms are worse. Most are left half blank. Signatures from supervisors are missing. There are three photos: my mother’s body; a close-up shot of the wound; and for some weird reason the buffalo head above the mantel in Mr. G’s office.

  “Maybe the buffalo did it,” I say darkly.

  “These two names you’ve highlighted here—who are they?”

  I walk back to see what Michael is looking at. “The only two people besides Mr. G and staff who were at your house that day, according to Mwika and your dad. I looked them both up. Joseph Gicanda is a Rwandan army general. And Ali Abdirahman is a rich Somali dude who owns a shipping company. Extracta uses them to get minerals from Sangui City to China and Dubai.”

  “Any connection to your mom?” Michael asks.

  “Not that I can find.”

  “Maybe she overheard something about one of them,” Michael says. “And that person found out. We should do more digging.” He writes their names on his list and taps his pen on his chin. “Who were the staff working that day?”

  “You think another maid or a gardener or someone did it?”

  Michael considers this. “Probably not. Dad definitely wouldn’t cover for one of them. He would have turned them over to the police.”

  “Maybe he killed whoever it was and got rid of the body.”

  Michael drops his pen onto the paper. “Ngai, you really do think my dad’s a monster, don’t you?”

  I don’t answer. “I don’t know who on staff it would have been, anyway. She didn’t really have much to do with the other staff, that I remember.”

  “You never saw her talking to anyone? A gardener? One of the security guys?”

  I shake my head. “Maybe one or two of the other maids, but not any of the men.”

  “You were young; maybe you just didn’t notice.”

  I scowl at him. “Ngai, you really do think my mom was a slut, don’t you?”

  “I didn’t mean—”

  “Whatever.”

  I stand up to stalk back to the window and nudge the shades aside again. Still looks like a garden out there. Michael continues to pore through the file, but I don’t bother. I’ve got it memorized.

  On the next page he’ll see the full list of all the people who were at the Greyhills that day: Mr. Greyhill; Mwika; the cook, who was about a hundred then. Two other maids, a gardener, a driver, and four security guards. Everyone else had the night off. Kiki and I are not included, even though we were there. I guess maids’ illegitimate children don’t count. The officer noted on the list that Mrs. Greyhill and the kids had left the day before to spend the night at their beach house up the coast. The cook confirmed it.

  Then come the officer’s notes. In the scantiest detail possible, he relays Mr. G’s version of what happened: Mr. G heard a shot, but it took him a few minutes to make his way through the house to check on it. The officer asks why Mr. G didn’t notify security first, to which Mr. G replied that he doesn’t know. Even the doofus police officer must have thought that was weird, because there’s a little question mark beside Mr. G’s answer.

  Mr. G finds my mother already dead. No mention of the tunnel. No mention of what may have happened to the killer. The murder weapon is the gun that was already in Greyhill’s desk. He thinks a robber did it, but nothing was stolen and there’s no footage of an intruder. Does the officer question this? Of course not.

  Mwika basically says the same thing, but adds a detail. I wait for Michael to get to it.

  Sure enough, his head soon pops up. “According to Mwika, the power went out a few minutes before the murder,” he tells me.

  I nod. “And the surveillance cameras were interrupted. But they come back on just in time to place Mwika in the guardhouse at the time your dad says he hears the gunshot.”

  “Very convenient for Mwika, don’t you think?” Michael asks.

  “You’re the one keeping me from him,” I say. “I’d love to ask him a couple hundred questions.”

  Michael scowls. “I’m working on it.”

  “Well, work harder.”

  My phone buzzes with a text. Donatien has written me back.

  Meet me at Samaki Joint in an hour.

  Perfect. We’ll go see him, and then I can make a break and find Boyboy.

  “Come on,” I say, wiggling into my shoes. “We’re never going to figure anything out just sitting here in the dark.”

  “I told you, I’m grounded,” Michael says, not moving. “My parents are going to be back any minute.” He glances at his watch. I wonder idly how much I could get for it at the Go-Downs.

  “Do you want my help or not?” I ask. “The guy who knew my mom can meet, but we’ve got to go now.”

  Michael looks around at the papers on the floor and his laptop. There’s nothing else to look at. He knows that until we get more information we’re at a dead end.

  “I am going to be in so much trouble,” he mutters, but by then he’s already following me out the door.

  SIXTEEN

  Where are we going?” Michael asks as we step outside the mansion. “Who are we going to see?”

  “We need to get a taxi to town,” I say, walking across the driveway toward the gate.

  “I’ve got a driver.”

  “But do you trust him? Is he going to tell your dad where we went?”

  Michael frowns, answering my question. He looks around and seems to make some sort of decision. “Okay, then. Wait here.”

  I check the time on my phone as he walks away. I’m not sure how I’m going to manage to shake Michael to meet Boyboy. There’s no way I’m taking him with me. Maybe I can send him on an errand? Tell him I’ll meet him back here? Somehow I doubt he’ll go for any of that . . .

  My thoughts are interrupted by a roar. I look up and my jaw drops. “You’re joking, right?”

  Michael rolls forward astride a motorcycle, his face hidden under a helmet. The bike is bright red, a European brand, and huge. Nothing like the little Chinese-made piki-piki that shuttle people and goods throughout the city.

  “Your parents actually let you ride that thing?”

  Michael takes the helmet off. “I won’t tell if you don’t. It’s Dad’s. He bought it in a moment of midlife crisis or something. Never uses it. He’d kill me if he knew I took it out. He doesn’t even know I can ride.”

  “Can you?”


  “Of course.”

  “The guards going to tell on you?” I ask.

  “I bribe them.”

  “Of course you do. Maybe you can just bribe your driver?”

  He smirks. “You scared?”

  “No. Give me that,” I say, and take the helmet he’s offering me.

  It’s like wearing a cooking pot on my head. No one wears them on the piki-piki. Michael motions me closer and buckles something under my chin, which makes it feel more like a helmet and less like a pot, but not much. Then he flips a switch on his own helmet. I can hear his voice as clearly as though his mouth is against my ear. “It’s just like a piki-piki. Only . . . faster.”

  “I’m not worried.” I swing on behind him. Just like a piki-piki, I tell myself.

  Michael nudges us forward a few inches. “Gotta hang on tight.”

  I scoot up until I’m right against Michael’s back. I can grip a side handle with one hand, but the other has to go around Michael’s waist. I am keenly aware of all the places where my body touches his. He shows me where to put my feet and then looks back. Our helmets bump.

  “Ready?”

  My stomach clenches. I’m afraid of what my voice will sound like, so instead I give him a firm nod.

  And then we’re blistering out of the gate and down the road.

  I grab him around the waist with both hands. It goes so fast, I think stupidly.

  Piki-piki have motors that sound like bumblebees and can barely outpace bicycles. This thing is like a cheetah after prey, and I don’t care about anything but hanging on. We come up to our first bend in the road, and I clench my thighs, no longer caring about touching Michael.

  “Lean into the curve!” Michael shouts, and I try to follow his movements. We’re tilted so far over I could reach out and touch the pavement, but the last thing I would do right now is let go.

  The mansions of the Ring whip past us in a blur. I scream a little when Michael rockets around a car that’s going too slow. I can hear him laughing. “You okay back there?”

  “Fine!” I say, my voice high. I clear my throat.

  The road down from the Ring twists and winds, but it’s at least free of the potholes that cover most of Sangui City’s streets. After a few minutes I start to get used to the speed and even feel my racing heart switch from fear to exhilaration. I realize I’ve been gripping so hard that my hands have fallen asleep. I loosen them and Michael takes a deep breath, like maybe I’ve been crushing his lungs.