The Missing American

by Kwei Quartey

  So, Mr. Tilson had met Nii Kwei! Emma would like to know more about that. And who was this Susan who facilitated the meeting? The net Mr. Tilson had cast was much wider than Emma had thought. It included Kweku Ponsu, Josephine Akrofi (and therefore, possibly James Akrofi), Nii Kwei, and Sana, not to mention everyone he was in touch with at CID—Detective Inspector Damptey and the rest. How much of a nuisance, or threat, was Mr. Tilson posing to people on that list?

  Emma needed to get this information about the emails to the right place, of course, and she should start with the man she trusted the most—her boss. He was out of the office now, however, so Emma would have to meet him the following day. For the time being, she wanted to talk to Bruno, who was becoming a kind of bridge to everyone and everything.

  When she reached him on the phone a few minutes later, she asked when next he would see Nii Kwei and whether she could go with him. Bruno immediately made an insinuating noise.

  “No,” Emma said flatly. “I’m not interested in him like that.”

  “Are you sure? I think he likes you too. He always asks of you.”

  “Just answer my question. When will you be going to see him?”

  “Maybe even tonight. I will call him and let you know.”

  “Don’t mention I’m coming, okay? I want it to be a surprise.”

  “Oh, is that so? Hmm.”

  “Shut up,” Emma snapped. “It’s not that.”

  SEVENTY-SEVEN

  Nii was happy to entertain Bruno and Emma that evening—it was a chance to show off his new Audi and the sprawling house he shared with two other guys in upper-middle-class Dzorwulu.

  The sitting room, three times the size of Emma’s entire living space, had bright red leather chairs and a gigantic wide-screen TV—the kind she had only seen at the mall. Despite all the space, boys would be boys, she recognized. There was no tasteful decoration of any kind anywhere, and as large as the kitchen was, it was a mess with dirty dishes in the sink and an overflowing rubbish can, which by the smell of it, needed disposal.

  Nevertheless, Emma laid on the praise thick, showering Nii with expressions of awe and admiration. He was clearly flattered and very pleased. Emma imagined he was not unaccustomed to admiration of young women, many a lot more glamorous than her.

  Nii’s housemates had moved to the den to play video games, leaving Emma, Bruno, and Nii in the sitting room. The two men had a bottle of beer each while Emma had fruit punch. The evening news was on TV in the background.

  “Emma,” Nii said, smiling at her. “How are you? Do you still work at the mall?”

  Apparently, Bruno had not told Nii that Emma was now with a detective agency. She wasn’t about to tell Nii either.

  “No, I moved from there,” she said. “Now I’m at an agency.”

  “Ah, okay. Travel agency?”

  “Something like that.”

  The sports segment of the news showed a soccer clip, which inevitably brought up the traditional soccer rivalry between Accra’s Hearts of Oak and Kumasi’s Asante Kotoko and who would win the next big match.

  Emma listened to the banter between Bruno and Nii for a while until she interjected bluntly, “But Sana Sana has already shown us that these referees are corrupt and have been fixing the games, so what’s the point of all this argument?”

  Nii Kwei sucked his teeth. “Stupid Sana. That man will die. They are trying to kill him and one day they will succeed.”

  “Who is trying to kill him?” Emma asked.

  Nii Kwei shrugged. “Take any of his enemies. They’re too many to count. Sana goes out and deliberately offers money to people and when they take it, he says they’re corrupt.”

  “They wouldn’t take it if they weren’t corrupt, would they?” Emma said.

  “But maybe they never accepted anything like that before and in a weak moment they succumbed to the temptation,” Nii argued. “It doesn’t mean they have been corrupt up until now, and to this day, Sana has not made any definite connection between the referees taking money and the outcomes of the match. So, it’s a failure of his investigation. The problem is he is too arrogant to admit it.” Nii looked at Bruno. “What do you think?”

  Bruno shrugged, said nothing, and Nii winked at Emma. “He doesn’t want to disagree with you, so he won’t say anything, but I know he hates Sana.”

  “And so, when Sana comes out with his new report about sakawa,” Emma said, “aren’t you afraid of how it will affect you?”

  “What report?” Nii said, his expression and tone changing.

  “Don’t pretend you don’t know,” Emma said kindly. “It’s all over GhanaWeb.com that he’s working on finding out all the police and government officials who are benefitting from sakawa.”

  Nii shook his head. “He can’t prove anything.”

  Emma studied him. “Really? So, it won’t affect you?”

  “Not at all. Maybe he’ll expose one or two people, but it won’t make much difference.”

  “Okay,” Emma said, feigning relief. “I was worried about you and this sakawa thing.”

  “Is that so?” Nii said, his eyes softening with appreciation. “Thanks.”

  “And so, are there sakawa girls too?” Emma asked.

  “Of course,” Nii said. “Just not that many. But they are becoming more and more now. We guys want more of them because we often depend on women to help us attract the mugus.”

  “What is a mugu?” Emma asked, aware that Bruno was eyeing her. What was her sudden curiosity surrounding sakawa all about?

  “The person we target for the money in Europe or the States or wherever,” Nii said, in answer to Emma’s question.

  “So, then, if for example I was a sakawa girl,” Emma said, “how would you use me with a mugu?”

  “Why?” Nii said. “Are you interested?”

  Emma nodded. “Chaley, I need to make some extra money just like everyone else.”

  Nii sat back and looked authoritative. “For example, if I’m doing a romance scam, I can use your picture for it, or use you to answer the phone or Skype with the mugu.”

  “Oh, I see.” Emma became as wide-eyed as possible. “Have you had one like that before?”

  “But of course,” Nii said smoothly. “Many of them.”

  “And you made a lot of money?”

  “Anyway, somehow,” he said cagily.

  “So, when can I do one?”

  Nii winked at Bruno. “Will your sister make a good sakawa girl?”

  Bruno nodded. “Yes, of course. You can trust her and mugus will like her paa. Like, we should make a company, the three of us.”

  “Yeah,” Nii said as the idea immediately began to grow on him. “It’s true.” He looked at Emma. “What do you think?”

  “I’m in. What should we call it?”

  “Our initials, NBE,” Nii suggested.

  “No, why not NEB?” Emma said. “Or BEN. The BEN Company.”

  Nii nodded his approval. “Nice. Then let’s shake hands.”

  After that little ceremony, the sakawa entity of BEN was born.

  SEVENTY-EIGHT

  After Emma and Bruno had left Nii, they walked in silence for a while toward the closest tro-tro stop. Their footfall crunched rhythmically along the unpaved sidewalk. Somewhere, a nightclub was blaring music.

  Then Bruno said, “Are you investigating something for Mr. Sowah? Because I know you really have no desire to be a sakawa girl. You’re trying to find something out. What is it?”

  Emma looked at him and then at the ground before answering. “Yes, you’re right. I’m trying to find out what, if anything, Nii knows about the death of that American man, Gordon Tilson, last April. Nii met Tilson at a sports bar sometime in March.”

  “Oh, really. That I didn’t know. I see you’ve been working diligently on this case.”

&nbs
p; “To be honest with you,” Emma confessed, “Mr. Sowah told me to drop it, now that Tilson’s body has been found.”

  “Then why are you disobeying him?”

  Emma blew out her breath through her cheeks. “I don’t know. I can’t let it go.”

  “My stubborn sister,” Bruno said knowingly. “You get something inside your mind, and you won’t let go of it. You’ve always been like that.”

  “I used to annoy you when we were kids, right?” Emma said with a laugh.

  “Yes!” Bruno exclaimed, affecting abject despair. “Very much. But it’s okay. You’re still my girl. Let’s sit here for a while.”

  Outside a Stanbic Bank, they sat on a low wall after acknowledging the night security guard patrolling the grounds. Security guards don’t like to be ignored. Traffic sped by. The aroma of kelewele wafted over from somewhere, reminding Emma she hadn’t had much to eat all day.

  “Look, I know my looking into Nii and the sakawa thing might be a problem for you,” Emma said.

  Bruno’s gaze was fixed ahead of him. “Well, not really.”

  “How do you mean?”

  “You can keep a secret, right?”

  “Of course.”

  “I’m working for Sana Sana.”

  Emma jumped to her feet. “What?”

  “Yes. That’s why I didn’t say anything about Sana when Nii was talking about him.”

  “No, Bruno. Are you serious?”

  “Yes.”

  “How long have you been working for him?”

  “Almost two years.”

  “Oh, my God.” Emma said. She walked away a few paces shaking her head and then returned. “I wish I’d known.”

  “Sometimes I’ve felt like I should tell you,” Bruno said, “but the fewer people who know, the better. Not just for me, but for others as well.”

  “So, is your friendship with Nii part of Sana’s probe into sakawa?”

  “It is. That’s the way I found out that Nii is the one who scammed Mr. Tilson.”

  “Wait a minute. Nii did that?” Another shock for Emma. “Then the meeting between them at the sports bar—was that for Tilson to confront Nii? Maybe he discovered Nii was responsible for duping him.”

  “Maybe,” Bruno agreed, “but how would Tilson have found out?”

  “I don’t know,” Emma said, reflecting. “There is a woman, Susan, an American who apparently set up the meeting. Do you know anything about her?”

  “I think that’s the lady Nii was having a love affair with,” Bruno said. “He mentioned her a couple of times when he was training me.”

  “Can you find out more about her from Nii?” Emma asked. “And also, the meeting at the sports bar?”

  “Yes, I can do that for you the next time I see him, which will be soon. We are setting up for Nii and myself to meet Godfather, the man on top of this whole sakawa empire. I will expose his identity by secretly recording him accepting money from us.”

  “Oh,” Emma said, alarmed. “That could be dangerous. Are you sure you want to do that?”

  “It’s not whether I want to or not. It has to be done.”

  That gave Emma very little comfort. “Then be careful. That’s all I’m saying.”

  “I appreciate that.”

  A thought struck Emma. “By the way, did you ever meet the American man?”

  Bruno shook his head. “No, but Sana told me that Mr. Tilson came to consult him. He and Sana had a quarrel and went their separate ways.”

  A thought entered Emma’s head from a side door. Could the acrimony between Tilson and the journalist have been so bad that Sana might have wanted to get rid of him? She put the notion in her back pocket for now.

  “What about Kweku Ponsu?” she asked Bruno. “What have you found out about him?”

  “Besides how much I hate him? Well, he controls the destinies of a lot of sakawa boys and on the other side, MP’s and top policemen and so on. Some people say even President Bannerman consulted him and participated in a ritual that made him win the election.”

  “Really,” Emma said, not sure whether or not to believe that. “Well, whatever the case, now that someone has shot Evans-Aidoo, looks like Bannerman will take the presidency again.”

  Emma and Bruno looked at each other, reading each other’s minds. An assassination organized by the president and/or his henchmen was not an impossible scenario to imagine.

  Something struck Emma at that moment. “Bruno, have you been tempted to do sakawa on the real? Tell the truth.”

  “No,” he said without hesitation, “and do you know why? These boys and girls who go into it find themselves trapped. If you happen not to be successful, and you want to get out, it’s very tough. If you make a mistake or woe betide you, you have conflict with the fetish priest, you can suffer badly. When you live by spiritual powers, you can also die by them. So, no—I will not go inside, even if I wasn’t working for Sana Sana.”

  Emma nodded. “Because I don’t want you to do it.”

  He put his hand on her shoulder. “I know you don’t.”

  Bruno’s phone rang. “Nii, watsup?” He listened for a moment. “Thursday, right? Okay, no problem.” He ended the call and looked at Emma. “Nii and I will meet Godfather tomorrow night.”

  SEVENTY-NINE

  On Thursday morning, Nii reflected he might have rushed into this so-called BEN partnership a little too quickly. Maybe Emma had charmed him so much that he had lost his head? Technically, Nii should have told Ponsu about Emma so he could vouch for her by spiritual means. Ponsu would need to see a picture of her and fortunately Nii had snapped a selfie with her and Bruno. But with the all-important Godfather meeting looming that evening, the Emma question could wait a couple of days.

  Like any major hotel in Accra, the Mövenpick Ambassador Hotel where Bruno and Nii were to meet Godfather was already revving up for a weekend of parties, weddings, and conferences.

  Beautiful people dressed to kill swarmed the lobby with its high ceilings and glistening marble floor. A live band accompanied the laughter and clink of champagne glasses. Bruno took it all in with envy keen as a knife. Look at all these people enjoying life.

  “Come on,” Nii said. “This way to the lifts.”

  They took one to the top floor where Godfather’s suite was guarded by an armed police officer.

  “Good evening, boss,” Nii greeted him.

  “Your identification,” he said, deadpan.

  He looked at their IDs, and then up again at them before handing the cards back. “Remove your backpacks. Stand there, arms up and legs apart.”

  He patted them both down, searched their packs, and when he was satisfied, he picked up his phone.

  “Good evening, sir. Mr. Bruno and Mr. Nii Kwei here. Yes, sir.”

  Bruno, nervous as the officer opened the door, quickly and surreptitiously checked his watch that the tiny LED video recorder indicator was on. The door shut behind Bruno and Nii and they took in the view. It was a vast room with a bar, dining area, and sitting room. The floor and the furniture gleamed. Bruno had never seen anything quite like it. The surroundings were impressive and overwhelming.

  A baby-faced man in a dark suit appeared. “Good evening.” He gestured to the sofa in the sitting room. “Please have a seat. My boss will be with you shortly to speak to you.”

  Bruno and Nii sat down meekly, almost not daring to move. A movement from the corner of the room caught their attention. A man, tall, well-built and bulky around his midsection, appeared. He wore glasses and a royal blue silk caftan with cream-colored pants. This was Godfather? Bruno didn’t recognize him. He and Nii stood up.

  He sat opposite them without a word, and then raised his hand at the man in the suit, signaling he could leave. When the front door closed softly, Godfather looked at the two young men.

  “
Good evening, gentlemen.”

  “Good evening, sir,” they chorused. Bruno, sweating a little bit and still edgy, unobtrusively rested his left forearm on his lap with the watch aimed in Godfather’s direction.

  “How are you, Nii?” Godfather said. “I see you have brought your protégé with you.”

  “Yes please. This is Bruno.”

  “High praise about you from Mr. Ponsu,” Godfather said to the protégé. “You are very dedicated and have shown a lot of courage in your rituals.”

  “Thank you, sir,” Bruno said.

  “But you know this is not the end, this is the beginning. Now that you are wrapped in spiritual power, you must use it to gain riches with the aid of Priest Ponsu and your mentor Nii. Do you understand?”

  “Yes please.”

  “You must follow the example of Nii Kwei, who makes a lot of money every day, every month, every year. Through Kweku Ponsu, I will monitor how well you are doing. Listen to Mr. Ponsu, do all his rituals as he tells you, and you will be showered with blessings and live well.

  “I’m expecting great things from you. The consequences of failure are great. You can ask Nii about that.”

  “Yes please.”

  “One final thing,” Godfather said, “I think you already know that you don’t talk about anything that happens here to anyone outside. You do not speak about me; you do not mention me or describe me. If you do that, you will be sorry. My people are everywhere. You get it?”

  Bruno’s heart was pounding. He felt a little sick. “Yes please.”

  “Very good,” Godfather said. “I think you have something for me, not so?”

  The two young men went into their backpacks and took out a bundle of cash each. There was a moment of uncertainty as to who should offer the money to Godfather first. Thinking on his feet, Bruno gave his share to Nii, who handed over the combined portions. That way, Bruno would have a clear video of the transaction taking place. They could produce multiple stills from the clip.

  Godfather nodded and put the cash down on the table beside him. “Come, both of you. Kneel here.” They knelt before him and he touched their heads. “You are now both my sons. God bless you. You may go now.”