Nairobi Heat

by Mukoma Wa Ngugi

  ‘Come on, Ishmael, we have to go,’ O said gently as smoke started to fill the room. ‘He was supposed to have died a long time ago.’

  But even as O turned to leave I fell to my knees and threw up. Having narrowly escaped being killed twice in the three short days I had been in Nairobi, I had wondered whether I was becoming blasé about the taking of a human life, but obviously a little piece of my conscience was still alive and well in this fucked-up place. I understood that in O’s world justice was long overdue, but that didn’t stop me from pitying the old man – there was something pitiable in him and perhaps, for that reason alone, we should have let him live.

  We heard a loud explosion as we finally made our way out of Lord Thompson’s room, and following the noise we soon found ourselves in what turned out to be a massive sitting room. The Africans who worked for Thompson had, using God knows what, blown up the wall safe and dollar bills and pound notes were floating in the air. I understood. They had to get what they could that night. Sure, the old white man was dead, but it wouldn’t be long before some rich African bastard ended up with the farm, and then they would be right back where they started. It was the way of the world everywhere.

  ‘Let us pay Samuel Alexander a visit,’ O said as we made our way out of Lord Thompson’s mansion.

  I watched the fire spread through the house as O called the station on the Land Rover’s radio. A few minutes later someone called back with an address.

  ‘What if the old man had more for us?’ I finally asked.

  ‘He didn’t,’ O said confidently.

  ‘How the fuck do you know?’

  ‘People like him have no loyalties … they protect nothing … would not die for anything. If he had something more, he would have spilled his guts,’ O reasoned calmly, ignoring my tone. ‘And, anyway, we got what we came for. We are making progress, no?’ he asked sounding a little like Joshua.

  I felt too exhausted to question his logic or interrogate what he was calling progress.

  ‘Ishmael, we are bad people too,’ O said as he started the Land Rover. ‘The only difference is that we fight on the side of the good. I hope you have no illusions about that.’

  Samuel Alexander, no surprises, lived in Muthaiga. We went through several heavily fortified gates before we got to his house, which itself was surrounded by a high wall topped with razor wire and broken glass. ‘This place is like a prison,’ I said to O as we rang the doorbell.

  Seeing a flicker behind the peephole, O showed his badge, explaining we were on urgent police business and we wanted to ask the boss a few routine questions. The man behind the door then asked that we slip both our badges under the door, which we did. Finally, he opened up – revealing himself to be an elderly African with a dignified face – and invited us into the house. He led us to the sitting room and told us to wait there while he ascertained whether Samuel was home.

  The man returned to say that his boss wasn’t answering his knock. Did he check the bedroom? He said no, he had just knocked. Was he sure Samuel Alexander was in? No, he wasn’t sure, sometimes he came home late. He started to protest as we made our way to the first floor, but O just pushed him aside.

  O knocked on what we guessed to be the bedroom. There was no answer. He tried the door and it opened. The bed was empty.

  O drew his weapon and I did the same. The housekeeper, who had followed us up, backed away and went quickly back down the stairs as we walked through the bedroom to the bathroom. I knocked on the bathroom door, but once again there was no answer. I opened the door. Samuel Alexander was in the bathtub, neck-deep in bloody water, his hands with slit wrists floating in the water.

  We didn’t have to look far for the note. It had been prominently placed on the bathroom sink. It was addressed to Joshua. It said: I AM SORRY. Nothing more. Sorry for what? Did Samuel Alexander have something to do with the white girl? Was he involved in setting Joshua up? If so, why? And, if not, then what was the connection?

  We searched the house, looking for anything that might help, but there was nothing that obviously tied Samuel Alexander to Joshua. Not even the housekeeper knew anything of use. Once again we had come to a dead end.

  Half an hour later we watched aimlessly as a Kenyan paramedic unplugged the tub so that he and his colleague could lift the body out. As the water drained, we made out a locket – he must have been holding it in his hand. The paramedic handed it to me, and I walked over to the sink where I opened it. Bloody water ran out, but to my pleasant surprise the twin photographs behind the glass were not wet. I dabbed the locket dry. On the left there was small photograph of Samuel. On the right there was black-and-white photograph of a black woman with long curly hair. In the photo she was smiling as if someone had just said something to her. She was beautiful.

  ‘Only an unspeakable thing would make a man commit suicide when he has a woman like her,’ O pronounced over my shoulder, and I nodded in agreement.

  One more piece to fit somewhere in the puzzle …

  We walked out of the bedroom behind the paramedics and watched as they manhandled the body down the stairs and out to the ambulance. In the sitting room we found Samuel Alexander’s housekeeper sitting in an armchair crying into a white apron. I tapped him on the shoulder and showed him the photograph. He stared at the woman. ‘It was her. He did it for her,’ he said, pointing a shaking finger at her.

  ‘Who is she?’ I asked.

  He didn’t know, only that he had not seen her around for a while now – a year or so. She and Samuel Alexander were lovers – she had slept over many times. And he didn’t know her name? Master – at last that word came out of his mouth – never told him anything. They walked in late at night, and left early in the morning.

  ‘Look here, old man, your master was not here to stay,’ O said to the housekeeper sarcastically. ‘He would have gone back to his country. What difference does it make to your sorry ass how he departs?’

  The old man looked at O. Even I was shocked at his callousness. ‘You are a cruel man, young man. Someday the sky will fall on you,’ the old man replied and spat on the clean floor.

  ‘Take what you can and go home to your grandchildren,’ O said, his voice emotionless.

  The bodies were piling up fast, I thought as we made our way outside. And I had the feeling that I would soon find myself on the top of the heap unless something gave.

  ‘If they came home late, it must have been from the bars …’ O said as we climbed into the Land Rover. ‘Tomorrow we’ll hit as many as we can. With her looks we will find her sooner or later.’

  When we got home around five we found Maria still up, she had curled herself up in the dining room, dressed in nothing but a sleeping gown, and was reading and sipping hot chocolate. She wasn’t raving mad like my ex – throwing a fit and threatening divorce. Instead she was reading a fun novel – ‘putting in a little me time’ before she went to work. O kissed her and went to take a shower, but I hung around.

  ‘Don’t you ever worry about O?’ I asked her when he was out of earshot.

  ‘Yes, I do worry,’ she said with feeling, ‘but we are what we do and you cannot take a human being in parts. Marriage doesn’t work like that. You take the good and the bad and hope for the best.’

  ‘I wish my ex was as philosophical,’ I said to her as I made a move towards the spare bedroom.

  ‘Philosophy has nothing to do with it,’ she said with a laugh. ‘We don’t ask for those that we love. Maybe I am just resigned to my lot?’ She paused. ‘And just so as you know, you are bleeding all over my floor.’

  I had no idea what she was talking about.

  She pointed to my shoulder. ‘If it is not as bad as it looks, there is an emergency kit in the bathroom cabinet,’ she said and took a sip of her hot chocolate.

  I couldn’t understand what was going on. Maria didn’t even pretend to want to know what had happened to my shoulder, or why I stank horribly. And O hadn’t explained. The American in me wanted to call it de
nial – but if it worked for them, it worked.

  O was leaving the bathroom as I walked in. I took a shower and washed the stab wounds with Dettol. They stung harshly but they weren’t deep. Having cleaned my wounds I bandaged my shoulder, found a cleaning cloth in the bathroom and went to the sitting room to wipe up the blood.

  Having cleaned up after myself I said goodnight to O and his wife, who were sitting on the couch, looking every bit the normal couple, and went to bed. Before I could fall asleep, they started making love. I sat there listening to them, thinking about the life my parents had mapped out for me. I missed it. I suppose we all miss some other kind of life, a parallel life.

  Finally, O and Maria left the sitting room and went to their bedroom. For a while all I could hear was the murmur of their voices, followed every now and then by laughter, and it was to this sound that I drifted off to sleep.

  I WOULD RATHER DRINK MUDDY WATERS

  I was sitting at my desk. Mo walked in naked, in high heels, but the other cops went about their business as if she wasn’t there. She came to me and unzipped my pants. As my penis slid into her, she took my gun and placed it on my forehead. Suddenly she had a huge basket of vanilla ice cream. With her bare hand, she started feeding it to me in bigger and bigger quantities until I felt like I was drowning. My stomach was getting bigger and bigger and my penis smaller and smaller until it slid out of her. And just when my stomach was about to burst from too much ice cream I woke up, belching and looking for my dick. I couldn’t help laughing. Who has a wet dream that is also a nightmare?

  I looked at the time – it was two in the afternoon. I dressed quickly and went to find O. He was in a cloud of smoke in the kitchen, smiling contentedly. This wasn’t the same man I had been with the day before and as I stared at his smiling face I realised that I was also in a better mood, in spite of everything – I was well rested, had made a little bit of progress, and had an assurance that I was looking in the right places.

  ‘Listen, you schizoid sonofabitch,’ I said to O half playfully, half annoyed that we had wasted a whole morning, ‘we have work to do.’

  ‘Yes, we do,’ he said, ‘but bars around here don’t open till four.’

  He had a point. The woman in the photograph was our only lead and if she worked in a bar it made more sense to go looking for her in the evening.

  O made his omelette for me and incredibly the masterpiece seemed to taste even better the third time around. ‘It needed a little less onion and a little more coriander,’ he explained as we were eating. Then he contemplated me for a while. Finally, he said, ‘Tell me, how does it feel to be black in your country? Tell me how it really feels …’

  ‘Don’t you ever just smoke in peace?’ I said, raising my hands up into the air.

  ‘I am a philosopher by nature, you know,’ O replied. ‘So, tell me.’

  ‘Look, O, I can’t say I know. How does it feel? When I am by myself I don’t feel black. I mean, how do you define yourself? What would you say you are?’

  ‘A Luo,’ O answered.

  ‘So, are you a Luo when you are by yourself or only when you are with non-Luos?’ I asked him.

  ‘But there are things that I do when I am by myself that only a Luo would do,’ he replied.

  ‘But do you wake up, look at yourself in the mirror, and say to yourself that the Luo looks tired this morning? I mean, I don’t go to bed black or wake up black. I don’t look at myself in the mirror and say I am black. Black is what white folk see. You’d better ask them.’

  ‘What do you think they would say?’ O asked, unwilling to give up his line of questioning.

  ‘How the fuck am I supposed to know, do I look white to you?’

  ‘Shit, man, take it easy, man. I just wanted to know,’ he said defensively. ‘Allow me, kind sir, to ask you another one.’

  ‘Go ahead, but it had better not be a question I can’t answer.’

  ‘How do you feel being here? I mean, here in Kenya … as a black man from America?’

  Now that was a tough question.

  ‘Look, man, I like to keep it simple,’ I began. ‘I like you, but I like your wife better. I like the food and the beer, but I detest Mathare and whatever it is that keeps people there. I hate your city, with its skyscrapers that are trying to reach the white man’s kingdom, and I sure as hell hate your justice system. How do I feel? I want to find my killer and bring him to justice … that’s all.’

  O kept quiet for a while. ‘I like your answer,’ he finally said and broke into laughter. ‘Very, very philosophical.’

  After brunch, O and I got ready to hit the town. Hoping not to attract attention, O was wearing a suit jacket, a black polo neck, brown pants and brown dress shoes. In the US he might have stood out, but in Nairobi he blended in with the middle class seamlessly. I, on the other hand, was dressed in a black suit and a white T-shirt, and though I was sure I would still stand out I didn’t feel as excessively American as I had a few days earlier. Perhaps, I thought, it had all been in my head.

  As we walked towards the Land Rover O threw the keys to me. ‘You drive,’ he said. ‘I think this time I am too high, for real.’

  In the US everyone complains about the traffic in New York, but in Nairobi it’s anarchy. There was only one thing to do and that was to use the siren. With it blaring O directed me around traffic circles and down one-way streets until we made it to the city centre.

  Once there we had a decision to make. Did we look for the girl in high-, middle-, or low-class joints? Judging from her photograph and what we knew about Samuel Alexander, a well-to-do expatriate, we figured they either patronised really high-class places or the kind of dives that would have given them an ‘authentic’ African experience. There was nothing in-between about the woman – either Samuel Alexander had found her as she was or he had picked her up in the gutter somewhere and cleaned her up. We decided to start with the hole in the walls – we could scare people into talking more easily there than in the upper-class joints.

  We took a matatu to the bottom end of River Road – from here we would work our way upwards. ‘River Road is a dangerous part of town. This was where the famous Mr Henderson was gunned down,’ O narrated as we climbed out of the matatu.

  O told me that Henderson had been a British colonial officer who had become head of the CID after independence. He was so mean that even the most hardened criminals feared him. A giant of a man, he was the only cop who could walk alone in River Road and no one would as much as look him in the eye. Well, what had worked well in colonial times didn’t work so well after twenty years of independence. ‘By then even the criminals were nationalists,’ O said with a laugh. ‘They wanted to be hunted down by black cops.’

  So, a notorious bank robber by the name of Koitalel followed Henderson to River Road, called him by his name, so that he turned around, and shot him twice in the chest with a shotgun. ‘For good measure,’ O said.

  But Henderson didn’t die right away, so Koitalel went over and introduced himself, and Henderson, ever the soldier, begged that he finish him off quick. Koitalel obliged, using Henderson’s colonial-era pistol. Everyone in River Road saw it happen, but no one dared to call the police, giving Koitalel plenty of time to make his escape. By the time the police were informed of what had happened Koitalel was nowhere to be found, and somehow, despite a protracted manhunt, he managed to slip through the net. Nobody knows what became of him, though some say he went for plastic surgery and became a politician – a rumour that O told me had at one time been banned. ‘My theory is that he was one of those thugs disciplined enough to stop after he had made enough,’ O said. ‘He’s probably somewhere in Uganda even as we speak.’

  ‘You sound like you admired the fucker,’ I said when he was done.

  ‘I hated Henderson. But I would have given anything to be the one to hunt Koitalel down. Those were the days when cops and thugs made each other heroes. Now it’s mostly just idiots: car thieves and rapists,’ he answered. ‘But your
Joshua, he might turn out to be one of the great ones, better even than your Random Killer.’

  We were now at Government Road and there was just one bar left. Someone had parked a new bright green BMW outside, but the joint itself was a dingy little place with Camel Lights posters plastered all over the place and a pool table without any felt. We sat at the counter and waited for the bartender to come over. When he finally acknowledged us O showed him the photograph, and he pointed to the corner of the counter. ‘Talk to the bossman, I have not been here a very long time,’ he said in heavily accented English.

  By then my eyes had adjusted to the darkness enough to make out the massive man sitting at the corner of the bar. Dressed in a green suit, he was reading the paper and sipping occasionally at a glass of water. That explains the green BMW outside, I thought to myself. He obviously liked to match his car.

  Leaving O at the counter I walked over to the man, greeted him and showed him the photograph. He looked at it, then at me and finally went back to reading his paper.

  ‘Ever seen her around?’ I asked him.

  ‘What do you think?’ he growled.

  ‘Just trying to find her,’ I explained, trying to keep my cool.

  ‘No, never seen her,’ he answered.

  I thanked him and started walking away. ‘Hey, listen … Don’t be hasty. Information here is not free,’ he called out after me.