Tough Lessons Read online

  “Well, I can’t say I know anything about that,” she said, “but there’s usually pretty much only two motives for killing someone, according to what I seen on the TV.”

  “And what are they?”

  “Money and fucking.”

  Joseph laughed. “Is that what it all boils down to, do you think, Marjorie? Simple as that, huh?”

  “Yep, ’bout as simple as that. Nearly every killing you can name basically been caused because of money and fucking.” She thought for a time. “Oh, and religion, but that there is a whole different thing all together. Someone loves his god so much he just has to go and kill you for loving a different one, well that is almost as fucked up as them serial killers. It ain’t a real reason.” She hauled herself to her feet and went off to fetch a plate of Oreos she had left on the countertop. “Normal people, though, when they kill, well, like I say, you don’t usually got to look too far beyond money and fucking to find the reason why.”

  13

  The Internet café had opened up just a few doors along from the Impala, with a ready eye on its clientele. There were a number of small businesses in the same street that had all sprung up at roughly the same time primarily to service the growing band of migrant workers who craved a link to their homeland. The same workers who came here for the Impala’s authentic food were now tempted by a store that sold traditional ingredients for African meals, a broker who could arrange the transfer of money to foreign bank accounts, and a business that sold international time on its phones so you could call home to loved ones, a service Joseph knew he would never need.

  The café had brightly lit, orange-painted walls and four rows of computers lined up in front of an espresso machine, which sat behind a long counter filled with plates of cakes and brownies that had cheap plastic domes over them to protect their produce. Joseph purchased some credit, politely declined the opportunity to buy some coffee and a muffin—the blueberry was on special—then chose a computer in a quiet corner of the room. The handful of other users ignored him as he passed between them. They all had their heads down over their keyboards, typing out e-mails that were for the most part destined for Hotmail accounts in Africa and East Asia. He chose a computer and switched it on, opened up a search-engine page from Google and typed in the words “McIndoe Campaign.”

  Joseph ignored the references to US corporations of the same name and he passed over the amateur blogs from similar-sounding high school girls, who assumed the world was interested in their adolescent musings. Instead, he went straight to the home page of the McIndoe campaign’s founder and read the blurb that accompanied a photograph, to satisfy himself that this was indeed what he was looking for. It was all as he had remembered it from reports in the media. Joseph took out a pen and jotted the contact phone number onto a piece of scrap paper and then carefully folded it and put it in his pocket. He would make the call later, in private, where no one could overhear his plan. This was a move he would not take lightly. In America they would probably call it tough love.

  “Come in, Yomi,” said Joseph as his son entered their apartment. “There’s someone I’d like you to meet.”

  “Hello, Yomi,” said the middle-aged black lady kindly. “Why don’t you come over here and sit down. She had dressed smartly for their appointment and was obviously not expecting it to be a long one, because she had kept on her immaculate coat, with its shiny gold brooch shaped like a gecko, that was pinned to one of its big lapels. She had on a pair of new gloves, which she finally took off as she spoke, neatly folding them and placing them on top of her handbag.

  “What’s going on?” asked Yomi, immediately suspicious of this newcomer.

  “Your daddy asked me to come here for a little talk with you after school,” she said, in a voice that personified calm.

  “Who are you?” demanded Yomi, his anxiety betrayed by the slightly higher than normal pitch of his voice. “Dad, who is this?”

  Joseph stayed silent and the woman said, “My name is Eloise McIndoe but that won’t mean anything to you.”

  “You some kind of social worker, come down here to scare me? Is that what this is?” asked Yomi. Once again he sounded far older than his years. Joseph found himself wondering where his son was getting his ideas from lately.

  “I’m not a social worker, no.” She said it so placidly that Joseph couldn’t help but marvel at this woman’s strength and resolve.

  “Psychiatrist then,” taunted Yomi, “come to see one of the bad kids? I’ve heard about that, too.” He said it sullenly and his father was close to intervening now but Eloise simply gave Yomi a disarming little smile, as if he had said something quite unimportant in the scheme of things.

  “No, I’m just a nobody really. My name was in all the papers once, but only for a short while and not for anything I did.”

  That seemed to intrigue Yomi. “Why was that?” he asked.

  “Would you like to see a picture of my son?” She smiled pleasantly, ignoring his question. “From when he was around your age?”

  Yomi shrugged, trying to look as if he really didn’t care one way or another, but he was already finding it hard to act coldly toward this lady. Needing no further bidding, she opened up the clip on her handbag and drew out a handful of photographs and then placed them face down on her knee. Then she paused and looked up again, giving Yomi a questioning look, as if to say, You don’t really expect a lady to get up and bring them over do you?

  God, she was good, thought Joseph. She could convey all that in the merest glance and Yomi was already moving, like he was compelled to go to her. He sat on the threadbare couch next to her.

  “That’s Francis just after his thirteenth birthday,” and she handed him the first picture. From where Joseph was standing, he could just see the image of the smiling boy in his school photograph, bashful but carefree. It was the same picture Eloise McIndoe used on her Web site.

  Yomi took the photo uncertainly, not knowing what he was supposed to make of it but Eloise was not waiting for a response; she was already on to the next photograph. “And this is Francis a year or so later with his daddy and his granddaddy. They off to the ball game together.”

  Yomi surveyed the picture of three generations of the McIndoe clan and, in the absence of anything else to say, he settled on a softly spoken “cool” in deference to the other boy’s obvious love of baseball.

  “He and his daddy were real close.”

  Yomi looked a little alarmed there, for he couldn’t fail to pick up on her use of the past tense. You could see him praying that it was the father or the granddaddy, who was no longer with them and not the son.

  Then, with no obvious change of pace or inflection, Eloise dropped the bombshell. “And this is a photograph of my little boy’s gravestone. He was fifteen years old when he died.”

  She didn’t hand the picture to Yomi this time—that would have been too much—but she had definitely got his full attention now. His eyes widened and he froze, a picture of discomfort. Joseph could tell he was trying to work out what to say in reply that wouldn’t offend this poor lady, but he needn’t have worried. Eloise was content to do all of the talking. “I go down there most days. I guess some of my friends and neighbors must think that’s a little strange or morbid and maybe it is, but to tell you the truth Yomi, when you have lost your only child like I did, well there ain’t much more to life anymore than tending to his grave and being as close to him as I can. So I go down there and I sit on the bench by his grave and I talk to my boy, tell him how much I miss him.”

  “Sorry,” mumbled Yomi, his head down, unable to look her in the eye.

  “You don’t have to be sorry, son,” she said, still using the same calm and measured tone. “Weren’t your fault he died,” and with that she put her photographs back together and placed them carefully in the handbag and did up the clasp. “You won’t have heard of my boy. He wasn’t around long enough to make that much of a mark on the world, but he was a
real nice kid with a good heart and he sure loved his momma. I know it and I take some comfort from that.” Yomi looked like he hardly dared to breathe. “His grades were okay and I think he’d have made his way if he’d graduated from high school like we planned. Thing is he never got the chance. Do you know what happened to him?”

  “No.” The word was barely a whisper.

  “His friend killed him.”

  “His friend?” asked Yomi incredulously.

  “Uh-huh, you see they had a fight, like young boys do. You’ve had fights with your friends, ain’t ya?”

  “I guess, sometimes.”

  “Trouble was, when they had their fight, Francis’s friend, he had a knife. He also had a temper and he stabbed my poor little boy right through the heart before he had time to even think about what he was doing. My Francis died right there in the street. By the time I reached him, he was lying there lifeless on the pavement. I didn’t even get to hold him before he passed away.”

  Yomi’s face told Joseph everything he needed to know. His mouth fell open and his eyes were glued to Eloise. She was still talking in that same cool, calm, and measured tone, like she could have been describing her bus journey over to their apartment. “The judge said it was a heat-of-the-moment thing, like his friend snapped without thinking of the consequences. Just like that.” She snapped her fingers and Yomi visibly jumped. “He said it was a tragedy for two families and I know he was right because I saw my son’s friend’s momma weeping in the dock when they sent him to the penitentiary. I never want to see another woman crying like that again as long as I live. Francis’s friend is called Edward. He was the same age as my boy, and they say, if he is real lucky, he may get out of the state correctional facility—that’s a fancy word for prison—when he is just over thirty years old. I try not to think about the unspeakable things they are probably doing to that boy in there. Most of all, I try every day not to wish them on him. Revenge is a very human thing to want, Yomi, but it has a way of eating you up inside, consuming the person you used to be, you understand me? Anyways, I guess there’s two young boys whose lives were ended right there and then when that knife came out.”

  Yomi was rigid, unblinking. “Know what I do now?” she asked. “’Part from tending my poor little boy’s grave? Well, I’ll tell you. I go round the schools in the neighborhood with my project, which is to tell all the children what happened to my Francis and how easy it was for him to die on account of how his friend was carrying a knife when they had a stupid argument about nothing.” Yomi looked terrified; he knew what was coming next. It was all the more chilling for the way in which Eloise voice never faltered, never left the slight singsong, reasonable-as-hell tone of a mother who sounded as if she was asking her son if he had been a naughty boy and eaten an extra cookie from the jar without asking. “Your daddy called me up this morning and he asked if I’d come over and speak to you, Yomi. He says you been carrying a knife lately. Is that true?” Tears welled up in Yomi’s eyes then, and he nodded miserably. “Well I hope after our little talk you’ll do me a very great personal favor. Would you do that for me, sugar?”

  He looked up and asked, “What?”

  “Promise me you won’t do that again, will you? It would mean a lot to me to know it ’cos I’d hate to hear one day about your daddy getting a call like the one I got, telling him you’d been killed like my little boy. It’d be no consolation to him if he got to spend the next fifteen years counting the days till they release you from a growed-up man’s prison for killing some other boy, neither. I don’t want to imagine what that poor boy’s momma is going through. After all, she didn’t do nothing to me or my poor boy, yet she suffers, every day, too, just the same as me. Will you look me in the eye and promise me you won’t pick up a knife again, honey?”

  And Yomi did look her in the eye and he did promise and this time Joseph was sure that he meant it.

  “Thank you, sugar,” she said simply and she rose to her feet. “I’ll see myself out, Joseph,” and she waved her hand at him when he tried to thank her. “Oh, shush now. I’m here for my own benefit, too. Only thing gets me to the end of each day is the thought that someone might listen to what I got to say from time to time and maybe even do something about it afterward. Good-bye, Yomi, it was nice meeting you. You be a good boy for your daddy, you hear.” And with that she was gone.

  Yomi was very quiet that night and he went to bed early. Only a few words had passed between them by the time Joseph drove his son back to Antoinette Irving the next morning. Before they reached the old school building, his son finally spoke.

  “Could we pull over here?”

  “You got something you want to say to me?” asked Joseph.

  When Yomi nodded, his father drew up the car by the side of the road a few hundred meters from the school gates.

  “I’m not ashamed of you, you know?” Yomi said.

  “What?”

  “For being a cab driver. I’m sorry if I made it sound like that.” He was looking straight ahead. “I’m proud.”

  “Okay, then,” said his father. Yomi nodded slowly. It didn’t look as if he needed to discuss it further.

  “Shall we get going then?” asked Joseph.

  “Would you mind if I get out here and walk the rest of the way?”

  “Why do you want to do that?” Joseph would have been tempted to ask if Yomi was ashamed of his old man, had it not been for the fact he had just told him the opposite. Yomi just shrugged like it was no big deal either way, so his father acquiesced. “Okay.”

  Without another word, Yomi eased himself out of the cab and went quietly off toward the school. Joseph stayed behind the wheel of his car and watched his son go. It had been a relief to hear his son say it, but the words that passed between them that morning had not entirely put his mind at rest. Joseph was sure Yomi meant it when he had promised never to carry a knife again, but this getting out of the cab a few blocks from school for no apparent reason was strange behavior and it made Joseph feel uneasy. He watched as Yomi selected a side street and turned down it and, before he could rationalize the act, Joseph found that he was climbing out of the cab and had begun to follow his son.

  Joseph wasn’t too worried about being spotted. After all, he had tailed professional criminals all over Lagos without being compromised, but he did feel a smattering of guilt distrusting his son like this. Still, he needed to get to the bottom of Yomi’s odd behavior. On the surface it looked like a simple case of truancy, albeit a blatant one.

  Yomi wasn’t hard to follow, for he never looked back, even once. Instead, he ambled along the side road near the school until he reached a concrete walkway, which dissected the two playing fields. It was there that he stopped and waited, watched by his father who had taken up a position that afforded him a perfect view of his son’s movements. Thanks to the fortuitous positioning of a large advertising hoarding, which towered above him and overlooked the major road nearby, he remained unseen. Joseph stood behind a large metal stanchion and watched as his son suddenly turned and gave a shy wave to an unseen friend. His father waited to see who was going to join Yomi and, more important, whether they would be going in to school together or heading off in the opposite direction.

  Joseph expected to see FJ come round the corner, so he was completely taken aback when the blurred figure in the middle distance turned out to have long brown hair and was wearing a skirt. A girl. Joseph peered intently at the two of them and was pretty sure that it was Merve Williams’s youngest girl who was walking toward Yomi. Yep, it was Laura all right and if his eyes hadn’t deceived him, his son had just greeted the girl with a kiss. Now she was kissing his boy back. Joseph immediately felt like he shouldn’t be watching this display of private, tender affection and he took a step back, intending to walk away. The last he saw of Laura and Yomi, the two of them were happily holding hands and walking off to school together.

  So that’s why Yomi had been so keen to get out of the ca
r early. Joseph shook his head. Cyrus had tried to tell him, Marjorie knew it would happen, but Joseph couldn’t see it coming at all, and he was supposed to be the detective. As he returned to the cab, he decided to give Yomi a break. There would be no teasing, no questions, and no pressure from his father. As far as he was concerned, Yomi could get out of the car early every morning, if all he was doing was meeting a nice girl like Laura. In his view, girls were usually a damn sight less dangerous than knives.

  Joseph stared intently at the figure lying beneath him on the cold, hard floor. The dirty, scuffed boots were all that could be seen of the man and they had not moved for some time. Joseph was worried. Suddenly there was a clang and a sharp metallic ring from beneath the vehicle, as a spanner slipped and hit something hard, immediately followed by a muffled curse. Selwyn Wray slid out from under the jacked-up taxi with a frown across his face and a small stripe of fresh blood on his finger.

  “Cocksuckin’ motherfuckin’ whore,’ he said with some conviction, staring at the car accusingly as he wedged his hand under an armpit and winced in pain. Selwyn examined his finger and, satisfied that the damage was minor, wiped the blood onto his filthy overalls before turning his attention back to the yellow cab. Selwyn then fell into the kind of silent contemplation that would have impressed a Buddhist monk, continuing to stare at the offending vehicle, as if the answer to his conundrum was written across its bonnet.

  “Well?” asked Joseph when he could take the silence no more.

  “If she was a horse, I’d shoot her,” said Selwyn in disgust.

  “Please don’t say that.”

  “Okay,” conceded the mechanic reasonably. “If she was my wife I’d kick her scrawny ass out the door,” and he wiped the grease from his hands with a cloth. “Sound any better to ya?”