The Carnivorous City Read online

  The inspector had been held up so he had called to ask for Santos’ number. They exchanged details and then Abel and Santos headed to the car. As Santos pulled out of the station, he turned to Abel.

  ‘Bros, no vex o but I want to tell you something.’

  ‘Sure. What?’

  ‘Nothing much bros, it is just that you have become Lagos Big Boy now so it’s not pure for you to be chopping gala like that for street.’

  Abel looked at Santos, with his afro, neatly ironed polo shirt, well-fitted jeans and bright red canvas shoes, and smiled. He was beginning to feel something for this crazy, peculiar city called Lagos.

  ‘I hear you Santos. I hear you,’ Abel said tapping him on the shoulder.

  THE BEAST WITH BARED FANGS

  Lagos is a beast with bared fangs and a voracious appetite for human flesh. Walk through its neighbourhoods, from the gated communities of Ikoyi and Victoria Island to Lekki and beyond, to the riotous warrens of streets and alleyways on the mainland, and you can tell that this is a carnivorous city. Life is not just brutish – it is short.

  In Lagos, one is sometimes struck by the scary fact that some crazed evil genius may have invented a million quick, sad ways for people to die: fall off a molue, fall prey to ritual killers, be pushed out of a moving danfo by one-chance robbers, fall into an open gutter in the rain, be electrocuted in your shop, be killed by your domestic staff, jump off the Third Mainland Bridge, get shot by armed robbers, get hit by a stray bullet from a policeman extorting motorists, get rammed by a vehicle that veers off the road into the pedestrian’s walkway, die in a fire, get crushed in a collapsing building. You could count the ways and there would still be many others.

  Yet, like crazed moths disdaining the rage of the flame, we keep gravitating towards Lagos, compelled by some centrifugal force that defies reason and willpower. We come, take our chances, hoping that we will be luckier than the next man, willing ourselves to believe that while our fortune lies here, the myriad evils that traverse the streets of Lagos will never meet us with bared fangs.

  Abel and Santos were in Mushin when Lagos bared its fangs. There are no quiet streets in Mushin. It crackles with electric intensity and ripples with animosity. It is as if everyone, from shifty-eyed men to paranoid women, feels you are out to get them.

  Mushin is a tough land with serious turf wars. Rivals from different gangs and factions – especially of the National Union of Road Transport Workers – prowl the streets at midday with pump-action guns, wild looks and well-smoked joints stuck between fat, black lips.

  Loud music blares out of speakers; boisterous, energetic music from the likes of Pasuma, Saheed Osupa, Wande Coal and even zanga master Durella. These are young men who once prowled these streets, who got their start in life here before success ferried them out to safer locales. Now, the young men and women left behind play their music as talismans of hope that one day the ships of their destiny will berth at a good port and their luck would also turn.

  Abel came with Santos, who now passed for his PA and driver. Santos had chosen for them to go in a Toyota Camry.

  ‘Mushin no be better place,’ he told Abel in the morning. ‘Make we no carry big motor.’

  They had come to meet a man whom Santos called Bros but whose name, Abel learnt, was Raimi. To Santos, everyone was Bros.

  Raimi worked at the post office in Onipanu. He’d had a run-in with Soni in the early days, but they’d made their peace and become friends. He helped Soni with his waybills while Soni, in appreciation and his usual large-hearted way, had settled him well: built him a small house on the land he inherited from his father and gained his trust.

  But in Lagos, especially in a place like Mushin, trust is a shape-shifter, a mercurial being with ever-shifting allegiances. Trust is not a boulder one leans on with confidence. It is quicksand at best: neither terra nor wholly firma.

  It was a few minutes past noon on a Saturday, but you wouldn’t have known it from the bottles of beer scattered all over the table set outside a small bar. It seemed as if they had been drinking and partying from the night before.

  ‘That your brother na bad spirit,’ Raimi said as they shook hands. Two of his friends made way for them to sit. From the way he called Soni a bad spirit, Abel could tell it was a compliment.

  ‘Mama Risi, bring drinks for my friends,’ Raimi said to the owner of the shop. ‘Na my better friends be dis. Bring peppered chicken too.’

  ‘Wetin bros go drink?’ a wisp of a girl asked, wiping her wet hands on her dirty apron.

  They placed their orders and Abel smiled his thanks to Raimi.

  ‘Dat your brother na better person,’ Raimi said, shushing Abel’s thanks with a wave of his hand as he started to roll a big fat joint. ‘If I am a woman, he will fuck me till I die.’ Abel smiled and nodded. This, he knew, was another compliment.

  ‘Soni has been missing now for twenty-nine days. Nobody don see am since,’ Abel told him, sure that he already knew.

  ‘I hear and e pain me,’ Raimi said, reaching for his matchbox. ‘Wetin police dem dey talk?’ He struck a match to light his joint, pulled on it and extended it to Abel. Abel shook his head.

  ‘Santos, dis your egbon na gentleman o. I surprise say e dey even drink stout sef.’ Raimi laughed. The laughter grew into a cough that rattled on for a while.

  ‘E dey drink stout,’ Santos said, puffing on the joint that had just been passed to him and ignoring Abel’s look of disapproval.

  ‘E resemble Sabato for face but ah,’ Raimi said, rising and pounding his fist against his chest like King Kong. ‘Nobody fit be like Sabato Rabato. Sabato Rabato na ogbologbo. Nowhere we e no fit enter, nothing wey e no fit drink, no woman wey e no fit chop. Ah, Sabato Rabato, e no go better for dem.’

  His friends chorused, ‘Ase!’ and snapped their fingers above their heads to ward off evil.

  ‘So, wetin you say you wan show me?’ Raimi asked, all business now as he settled back in his seat.

  ‘I hear say you and Soni were supposed to meet the day he disappeared. E tell Santos say e dey come see you,’ Abel said, see-sawing between English and pidgin.

  He had rehearsed this opening for days, trying to find the right words to express his intentions and concerns without giving offence or making Raimi feel that they were accusing him. They were on his turf and it wouldn’t do to antagonise him in his own backyard.

  Raimi didn’t answer. He took a long drag and held the smoke, eyes bulging. When he spoke, smoke escaped from his nose and ears.

  ‘My broda, I get small house for yonder,’ he said eventually, pointing behind Abel. ‘Two rooms. Na my own. I am a landlord for this Mushin. I don’t pay rent to any gaddem landlord. My house get DSTV. E get borehole. Last year, when I celebrate fifty years, Sabato dash me tokunbo motor, drop-top Golf GTI. Na the money wey e dey dash me na im I take build dat house. Why you think say I go spoil something wey dey pay my life, eh?’ Abel opened his mouth to say he was not accusing him, but Raimi signalled for him to be quiet.

  ‘I no follow you vex. Woman looking for her missing pikin does not have time to say “excuse me, sah, excuse me, sah”. No be so?’ His friends nodded. ‘Sabato get appointment with me dat Saturday. E suppose bring one waybill come. I wait for am, e no show. I call Santos, Santos say Sabato send am go see one olopa for Agege police station, abi?’ Santos nodded in agreement. ‘So, na only Sabato comot from house. E no reach our post office and e no come here.’

  ‘I see one waybill inside one envelope for Soni room,’ Abel said. ‘Sabato write your name on the envelope. Santos, please get it from the briefcase.’

  As Santos rose, a group of five people walked into view. They had formed a ring around a young man. His young but wizened face was a collage of emotions: fear, defiance and something old and mean. He was sweating and saying ‘Na my money I come for. After person do freedom, oga suppose settle am.’

  ‘Oga say make you come back next week,’ a voice told him.

  ‘Every time, co
me back next week, come back next week. One year don pass now. Na my money I want.’

  Abel was not paying attention. He was looking across at Santos and also trying to pay attention to whatever it was Raimi was saying, but Raimi was mixing his words with Yoruba and Abel was lost.

  He sipped his drink and looked up again to see what Santos, who had the boot open, was doing.

  The argument was raging now. Voices were raised, threats were whistling above their heads. They were speaking rapid-fire pidgin and Yoruba.

  Abel was suddenly distracted by Santos, who ran back to whisper that he couldn’t open the Echolac briefcase and didn’t want to bring it out because of the money inside.

  ‘Excuse me,’ Abel said to Raimi, and walked back to the car, leaving Santos at the table. He popped open the boot and was typing in the combination when he heard a slap and sharp cry.

  ‘You. Iwo. You think you have strong head, abi.’ A new man had appeared and slapped the boy who had been demanding his money. He must be the master, the Oga the boy has come to see, Abel thought. He watched him kick at the boy, who staggered back into a fence. Cornered, he reached for a long metal pole and brandished it like a spear. The crowd jumped back each time he swung it. His former master’s face glistened with sweat, his pot belly heaving and shiny from perspiration. His crowd gathered behind him, booing the boy but jumping back out of harm’s way.

  ‘Oho, you don grow now, abi?’ The master lunged at the boy, who ducked and swung the pole in a fine arc. Then there was silence.

  The master stood there with a surprised look on his face, his mouth half open, his hand on his stomach. Then Abel saw the red seeping through his fingers. The pole had sliced his belly open. As he staggered back, his intestines escaped his fingers and spilled out of his gut.

  ‘Santos! Santos!’ Abel heard himself scream as he slammed the boot shut and got into the car.

  His scream seemed to have broken the spell and set everyone free from some cosmic grip. The boy tried to run but was tackled to the ground. He screamed as someone stabbed him with the pole, then staggered up and began to run, the pole impaled in his side, blood trailing behind him.

  The street was alive. Men and boys were exiting houses armed with dangerous things. Santos dodged a blow as he crossed the street to the car. Abel’s hands were shaking badly but he finally managed to get the key in the ignition and turn on the engine. He engaged a gear and drove off, yelling at Santos to jump in. A rod smashed into their windscreen, which exploded, showering him with shards of glass like hailstones.

  Abel stepped on the gas pedal and knocked two guys off the road as he tried to see through the shattered glass. Santos was half inside the car, his legs sticking out of the window. He screamed as someone slashed him with a dagger. Abel turned to look – a bad move. When he turned back to the road, they were heading straight for a car that seemed to have appeared out of nowhere. They collided at 60 miles per hour. Santos was screaming and men were approaching. Abel was stunned by the crash but his adrenaline was pumping. He shook the blur away and looked around. They were in a dead end.

  ‘Bros, make we run,’ Santos said, scrambling out of the car. He yanked Abel’s door open, pulled him out and then they ran. When Abel looked back, three guys were in hot pursuit.

  They scaled the fence behind a house and headed into another street. The commotion had reached there too and there was rage in the air.

  Abel looked back. The three were still chasing them. One had a limp. He was one of the guys he had knocked out of their path, which explained why they were giving chase.

  ‘Bros, oya turn, enter here,’ Santos said pulling Abel into a corner.

  A young woman was spreading clothes on a line and was surprised to see them.

  ‘Santos, what are you looking for in the afternoon? My mother is at home o,’ she said with a shy smile.

  ‘Hide us, abeg, hide us,’ Santos said. She opened the door to their house in one swift move and pushed them in.

  Abel did not leave Soni’s house for two weeks, until the money he left with Ada ran out and he was compelled to go to the bank. Santos reported to the house every day, but Abel just ignored him and the itinerary he presented. Losing the Toyota Camry, his Echolac briefcase, the documents inside, the cash – all six hundred thousand of it – and escaping death by the whiskers had left him petrified.

  They hadn’t left Mushin until late at night and when they did it was in the back of a pickup truck that smelled badly of stale beer. Celina, the girl who had given them cover, had arranged for a cousin to help them leave. They had hidden at the back of his rickety pickup under a tattered tarpaulin.

  Now, too scared to venture out, Abel sat at home and watched CNN.

  ‘Sonny has paid for a DSTV subscription for five years so we don’t have any problems with cable TV,’ Ada told him.

  He couldn’t afford cable TV in Asaba, but after two weeks he knew all the programmes as well as the anchors and correspondents. He liked Isha Sesay the best. He was always surprised by her baby face. Abel loved listening to her.

  When he was not watching CNN, he played with his nephew, whom he was beginning to feel thought Abel was his daddy. They played with his toys and Abel read to him from the over one hundred books Soni had left him.

  ‘How come Soni bought him all these books?’ Abel asked Ada one evening after reading to Zeal. ‘He didn’t even like to read.’

  Ada didn’t speak for a while. She regarded her brother-in-law for a moment, then said, ‘You know, Soni thought you were the best thing since sliced bread.’ Her beautiful lips curled up into a smile as she watched Abel’s shocked expression. ‘He always wondered what you would think or say. He said you were well read and knew everything about everything. He worshipped you.’

  ‘Really?’ Abel blurted out the word before he could stop himself.

  ‘Really,’ she said, and walked away.

  When Abel finally summoned up courage to leave the house, he decided he would not go beyond the island and the bank. He had, at the back of his mind, the irrational fear that he could run into one of the boys from Mushin on the mainland.

  Their first trip was to Ikoyi to visit a woman he had spoken to on the phone and whom Santos introduced first as Soni’s customer then later as Soni’s lover.

  ‘You say Soni was sleeping with her?’

  ‘Yes, o. She is a widow. Her husband die for that Ejigbo plane crash and na bros dey service am since.’

  In 1992, a military C-130H aircraft conveying an elite class of military officers had gone down in the swamps of Ejigbo. Many suspected that the plane had been rigged by the then military president, who was afraid of being overthrown. The crash decimated an entire corps of future military leaders.

  ‘How come you know that?’ Abel asked.

  ‘Haba, bros,’ Santos said. ‘I am not a small boy. Bros no dey let me enter with am and when he come out he will be smelling like someone who has done something.’

  ‘Done what thing?’ Abel asked and Santos laughed.

  ‘Bros, you are not a small boy, haba! What does a man and woman do inside the room, ah ah, you should know? The way Iyawo is looking at you sef, it looks like she is liking you small-small.’

  ‘Santos, keep driving.’

  The house was a lovely mansion in Parkview Estate, Ikoyi where, Santos told Abel, a plot of land sold for about $2 million, even though the roads were potholed and filled with water.

  The woman welcomed them in a flowing gown reminiscent of Stevie Nicks of Fleetwood Mac. Abel could see that she wasn’t wearing any panties as she stood silhouetted in the doorway, waving them in.

  ‘You are Abel, abi?’ she asked as she settled at the head of an expansive dining table with twelve chairs.

  ‘Yes,’ Abel replied, intimidated by the grandeur. Though not nearly as grand as Soni’s, the woman’s house still spoke of affluence and wealth.

  ‘Your brother thought you were the salt of the earth. Are you ten inches?

  Abe
l shook his head. ‘I have never measured it,’ he said with a smile.

  ‘You don’t have to. It doesn’t help anyone. I told Soni he was nothing without his dick. I made a big mistake. I told my friends about him, nine inches and all. They rushed after him and he thought he had arrived. They were all married. I was the widow. I honoured my husband for seven years before I met Soni. He was smart, funny, good-looking, fun to have around and very ambitious.’ She suddenly turned to look at Santos. ‘Hey, who is this smiling monkey?’

  ‘My cousin,’ Abel said.

  ‘Tell him to wait outside,’ the woman said, as if Santos was not there. Abel waved at Santos to leave.

  ‘Are you married?’ she asked. Abel shook his head. ‘Are you fucking his wife?’

  ‘Of course not!’ Abel shouted and she laughed.

  ‘She is a lovely girl, so did you mean of course not or not yet?’ Abel had no answer. ‘Let’s eat,’ she said, and they did.

  The meal was excellent. Quail and salmon, snail and gizzard with jollof and Chinese rice, all washed down with red wine.

  ‘Come to the garden,’ she said pushing back her chair and leading the way.

  The garden was a part of the house. It had real grass on the floor, flowers on the side, and a transparent roof that gave it a cool greenhouse effect.

  ‘If it gets too hot, we retract the roof,’ she told him, following his gaze. ‘Do you smoke?’ She pulled a pack of cigarettes from her handbag.

  Abel shook his head.

  She lit the slim cigarette, inhaled deeply and held the smoke.

  ‘I have two kids. They were in senior secondary when my husband died. I saw them through the university and finished this house before I looked at any man and it wasn’t even a man that I found but a boy – your brother.’