City of Saints & Thieves(42)

“Don’t worry,” Boyboy pipes up, “we’ve got it. And what I’ve seen so far isn’t pretty. Gold laundering, arms deals. Your dad’s up to his eyeballs in very dirty dirt.”

Michael swallows. “Let me see.”

Boyboy sucks in a breath and cringes back.

“Not yet,” I say, trying not to show how nervous I suddenly am. What have I done, letting Mr. Greyhill’s son up here? “That’s not the deal. If you prove your dad didn’t kill Mama, then you can have it all back. But until then, hands off.”

Michael looks from me to Boyboy again. He’s bigger and stronger than both of us, and I’m not sure I can stop him if he decides to chuck the computer—or Boyboy, for that matter—off the roof.

“What if there’s something in there that can help us find your mom’s killer?” Michael asks.

“Boyboy will let me know if he finds anything, won’t you, Boyboy?”

I feel myself rising to my toes, ready to pounce if it looks like Michael’s going to make a move. I will not let him take Boyboy’s computer or hurt him. But then, right before my eyes, Michael’s angry, calculating expression melts away until all that’s left is his mask. He looks past Boyboy, out at the city. “You’re right, Tina, we should go.” He turns and walks to the elevator shaft.

I release my breath. “I’ll see you soon,” I say to Boyboy. I watch Michael lower himself in. I’m still tingling with adrenaline.

Boyboy gives me a look and mouths, Be careful.

I nod and follow Michael down.





NINETEEN


By the time we get back to the Greyhills’, it’s late afternoon. Michael tells me to go ahead upstairs while he gets a tongue-lashing from his mother. Fine by me. The less time I spend under Mrs. G’s eye, the better. I’m sure she’d love to blame Michael’s disappearance on my bad influence. Besides, I need to make a call.

I close myself in my bathroom again and pull out my phone. I had noticed three missed calls and five texts from Ketchup before Michael and I left my roof. Now there are six missed calls—four from Ketchup and two from Donatien. I dial Bug Eye’s number with a sick feeling in my stomach.

“Heard you were in town today,” Bug Eye says, low and calm in my ear, without preamble.

“You did?” I ask, trying to keep my voice from squeaking.

“Ketchup saw you on a fancy bike heading toward Old Town.”

I bang my fist on my leg. “I . . . All part of the plan. I had to go get a new adapter from Boyboy.” I tell myself to calm down, make my voice sound right. You didn’t do anything wrong, Tina. “He told me we didn’t get everything off Greyhill’s hard drive. I need to go back in tonight to finish the job.” I hesitate. “Can you drive him up to do the tech stuff?”

I wait for an answer that doesn’t come.

“I’m sorry, Bug Eye, I couldn’t get away from Michael until now to tell you what was going on.”

Bug Eye is quiet. It’s a game of chicken; he’s trying to make sure I’m being straight with him. “Fine. I’ll drive him,” he finally says.

“Thank you. Um. And no Ketchup.”

“Why?” Bug Eye asks, suspicious.

“Because you know how he is with Boyboy. Ketchup says stuff that makes him twitchy. We don’t need our IT guy twitchy.”

Bug Eye sighs. “All right. But this time you get in and get this done. No screw-ups.”

“No screw-ups.” I count the seconds while I wait for him to respond.

“And no more running around without permission, right, Tiny Girl? Mdosi Omoko’s not a man used to being kept out of the loop. Get down to business. Get him what he wants.”

“I will.”

“Or, Tiny?”

“Yeah?”

“Don’t come back.”

? ? ?

I push the borrowed green shirt under the guest-room bed with my other clothes and find something else to wear. When I’m cleaned up, I wander listlessly back downstairs, but I can still hear Michael’s mother letting him have it in the living room. I go outside and dangle my feet in the pool.

From here, on the Greyhills’ patio with a distant view of the city and the ocean, you can’t see the staff cottages. They’re hidden by thevetia and plumeria trees. But I know our old home is there, at the end of the compound. I want to go down and look at it, but other people live there now, new servants. I can picture the narrow bed I shared with Kiki, our sagging love seat under the gaze of a tiny framed picture of Saint Catherine, the packed dirt out back where Mama and the other maids would cook and hang our laundry. I wonder if the “house” I made under the bougainvillea vines for Kiki and me to play in is still there. Maybe her rag doll, the one Kiki cried over, the one I wouldn’t go back for when we left, is still rotting under the leaves.

Kiki was born in our little cottage. Other than the convent school, it’s the only home she’s known. If it was odd that none of the other servants were allowed to bring their children, leaving them instead with relatives back in villages or down in Sangui, no one said anything about it to me. It didn’t occur to me to ask until there was no one around to ask.

I wonder what Mrs. Greyhill had to say when it became obvious that Mama was going to have another baby, just as fatherless as me. I wonder if she had already started to notice the way her husband looked at my mother. I wonder what she thought when Kiki emerged, scrubbed pink, and if Mrs. G had pulled out her own daughter’s baby photos and stared at them, comparing, trying to convince herself that her husband could not possibly be that stupid, or that cruel.