City of Saints & Thieves(15)

“No,” I say. “But I didn’t need to. The night before she was killed, I saw them together in the garden. They were arguing. My mother knew his secrets, and she threatened to expose him. And do you know what he said?”

Michael doesn’t move.

“He said, ‘Do that, Anju, and I’ll kill you.’” I pause, letting my words sink in. “She sent a message to a reporter the next day, asking him to meet her. And eight hours later, she was dead.”





EIGHT


Rule 9: Thieves and refugees don’t do police.

? ? ?

If I hadn’t seen them in the garden that night, maybe my whole life would be different. Maybe I could have put her death behind me, gone to school with Kiki, convinced myself it was a robbery gone wrong, like Mr. G said. I could have tried to forget.

But I did see them.

Their angry voices pulled me out of bed. I came upon them standing under the plumeria tree. Its blossoms pulsed in the dark like attendant stars. Greyhill had his hands around Mama’s throat. His threats were soft and intimate.

Seeing them, I tasted that old, familiar terror in the back of my mouth. And when I howled, Greyhill had broken away from her and slunk off.

Once he was gone, I went to Mama and she held me close. She told me to hush, that there was nothing to be afraid of. He didn’t mean what he’d said. Everything was going to be fine.

? ? ?

I could have tried going to the police. I could have told them what I’d seen and heard, let them investigate, waited for justice to prevail.

Sure.

Right.

And Kiki and I would live happily ever after in a castle made of rainbows and gumdrops.

No, here’s the thing with Sangui City (it’s pretty simple; take it to heart):

The police do not give a shit.

They certainly don’t if you’re a thief, and especially not if you’re a refugee from Congo. We are just walking ATMs to them, good for all sorts of “fees”: for walking down the street; for having a mole on your chin; for wearing red shoes. What a little refugee girl had or hadn’t seen in the mist was not going to interest them.

Nope. You have a problem, you deal with it yourself.

The cops came the next day to her murder scene, of course, to take photos and gawk at the famous Greyhill mansion and write up a few notes in terrible English. “Gunnshott too abnomen” was apparently the official cause of death. Says so right on the forms. I have them. Boyboy hacked the whole file out of the police server for me.

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.