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?”