Tough Lessons Page 3

  “I do,” said Joseph, and he did. He would be interviewed by someone who knew the job but would rather be anywhere but there, and somebody who had no idea what the job entailed but still considered himself an expert. Joseph managed to hide his scepticism. He had to. Since his arrival in America, his burning ambition had been to join the NYPD, on the lowest rung if that’s what it took to become a police officer again. Then he could steadily work his way up the ranks, using his investigative experience from his homeland to good effect, until he was finally back to his former rank of detective. But it hadn’t been easy. His first application had become stalled by bureaucracy and the intervening months had been filled with endless hours at the wheel of a cab.

  “I’m pleased to say you performed well in your previous interview and you had some very strong results on both your aptitude and attitudinal tests,” said Karl.

  Was Joseph mistaken or was there just the slightest hint of surprise in his interviewer’s voice?

  “Let’s assume that nothing untoward comes back from your pee test, shall we,” and he grinned self-consciously, as if he expected both men to laugh at this but they did not. “Yes,” he said. “I think we’ll take that as a given,” and he nodded reassuringly. “There are just a few more questions we have to put to you now.”

  “Like why you want to be a cop?” asked the detective abruptly.

  Joseph thought for a moment, then said, “I can’t remember a time when I didn’t want to be a cop. It was just something that was always there from a very early age. I always had this clear view of what a cop was.”

  “And what was that?” asked the suit from HR.

  “Someone who made a difference. I didn’t want to be somebody who got up every morning and went off to work only to kill time in meetings until the end of the day, talking about rivets or paperclips.” In other words, someone like you, Karl, he could have added. “I needed more than that. I wanted a job where I could go home at night, every night, and feel like I made a difference. As soon as I was old enough I applied to join the NPF. I was a police officer in Lagos for twenty years, and I did the job well, if you don’t mind my saying so.”

  “Still think you made a difference?” asked the veteran cop.

  “Yes,” answered Joseph immediately. “It wasn’t always easy, but yes.”

  “Every day?” continued the old cop.

  “Not every day, no. That only happens on TV, when things are wrapped up nicely at the end of each episode. Real life isn’t like that.”

  “There is the matter of your age,” said the HR guy. “We don’t normally solicit applications from anyone over thirty-five.”

  “Really? I’d have thought you might be more open-minded. There’s no substitute for experience in police work. Thirty-five is hardly retirement age, after all.” The veteran cop’s eyes seemed to twinkle, as if he were stifling a smile. The young HR guy carried on regardless. “I was going to add that in your case the age limit is of less importance, as your previous experience is highly relevant. Your physical examination revealed you to be in pretty good shape for a man of your age,” he added, as if he were a junior doctor addressing a geriatric patient in his ward.

  Joseph surveyed the slick HR man for a moment and silently counted to ten in his head before replying. Even then he couldn’t resist it. “Police work is pretty active. Sometimes the bad guys run away,” he said, as if he was explaining the hidden nature of the job to his interviewer, who watched him with only the slightest furrowing of the brow. Clearly Karl didn’t know for sure if he was being mocked. Moreno, meanwhile, looked away and smothered a laugh.

  Joseph continued. “I’ve tried to keep myself in good shape. I run, lift weights…”

  Karl was nodding supportively. “Good,” he said, as if he himself had lifted anything heavier than a pen and clipboard all week.

  “In many ways,” said Joseph dryly, “I consider myself in better shape than a man of twenty-five with a desk job.” There was a moment, just a moment, when Joseph feared he might have gone too far. Karl would surely realize he was being derided by the older man. Moreno was faking a coughing fit to contain his laughter, but Karl missed the connection between them. Joseph managed to stare the desk man down, as if every word had been part of a plain and simple answer to a reasonable question.

  The uncomprehending HR man continued. “We do have one or two other concerns however, chief among them the small matter of references from your previous employment with the Nigerian Police Force.” He spoke the words like he expected to be congratulated for remembering those complex facts about Joseph’s previous life.

  Joseph’s heart sank when the references were mentioned. “Is there something wrong with my references?”

  “The fact that we didn’t receive any,” said the experienced, serving detective without disguising his suspicion. There was no trace of a smile now.

  “Well, I thought that had been cleared up,” said Joseph, already fearing the worst. “My former superiors didn’t send them off in time for my first application so you turned me down but that was nearly a year ago and I was under the impression it had all been addressed.” It should have been addressed. It had taken Joseph numerous phone calls and a couple of blatant lies, spread over several days, before he had finally been able to get Opara to take his call. When cornered, his former captain had been unduly evasive. This was the same man who had promised him every assistance with his application for a new job in a police force in America, as long as Joseph agreed to leave Lagos immediately, before his enemies in high places made the captain’s life intolerable. Besides, as he had painstakingly explained to Joseph, he could no longer guarantee the safety of his star detective, or that of his son. He didn’t need to remind Joseph about Apara.

  “You made every effort to contact this captain of yours, did you?” asked Karl.

  “I spoke to him, yes, and he swore to me he would send you a reference, confirming my faultless service record and years of good conduct.” At least that is what the captain had said on the telephone, as he had squirmed and apologized and then blamed it all on the bloated bureaucracy around him. Clearly he never had any intention of actually delivering on this promise.

  “Mmm, well, I’m afraid that reference has not actually been forthcoming,” said the man from HR. His smile had faded to just below forty watts now.

  “Why do you think that was?” asked Detective Moreno, evidently forgetting that Joseph was not the suspect in one of his investigations.

  “I have no idea,” answered Joseph, because he didn’t want to explain to these strangers the true extent of the corruption he had encountered during his career with the NPF. It was like turning over a stone in a beautiful garden only to find something foul wriggling underneath. Joseph had been asked to police the police, watch the detectives, and root out the corrupt officers in the Nigerian Police Force. He had been promised it all: total cooperation, resources, funding, access to the great and good, who were all pinning their hopes on him to clean out the cesspit.

  “Roam the country, Detective Soyinka. Pluck the rotten apples from the tree,” he had been urged by Captain Opara. “Bring the big men the results they are looking for, Joseph. End the stench of corruption that has been beneath our noses for too long.”

  Unfortunately Joseph proved to be too able an investigator for the big men’s liking. They had been hoping for a couple of token arrests: a detective constable on the take in Victoria, a detective sergeant who accepts drug money to turn a blind eye when a drop is going down in Abuja. Instead, he had done his job far too diligently and unearthed a complex web of corruption that went right up through the senior ranks of the NPF, to the politicians and senior officials of the ministries. This they had not bargained for. Joseph’s investigation had begun to threaten pension plans and undeclared second incomes delivered to banks in far-flung locations, beyond the prying eyes of the tax collectors. Men in positions of great power began to feel nervous. Joseph wasn’t s
o much removing rotten apples from the branches as threatening to uproot the whole damn tree and bring it crashing to the ground forever.

  Joseph had been forced to accept he would never know who hired the hit man who came looking for him that night. All he was left with in the morning were the charred remains of his timber home and the memories of the poor, dear wife who had been inside the building when they calmly poured gasoline through his door and set it alight. How many times had he gone over it in his mind since? If only he had been there that day instead of chasing down a lead in Abuja, perhaps he could have saved her. If Yomi had not been at his grandmother’s that night he would have lost him, too. He would have been robbed of everything: home, wife, and son in one terrible night but Yomi had been spared. Joseph had learned to wrap his whole life around that small mercy.

  Any chance Joseph might have had of finding the man who gave the order died, along with the hit man, who was himself cut down in a hail of bullets seconds after his brand-new Mercedes was run off the road by a person or persons unknown. Oba Matusa’s bullet-riddled corpse had barely turned cold before Captain Opara was summoning his department’s untouchable detective to offer him a simple choice: exile from his home forever or the strong likelihood that his body would be the next one on the slab in the mortuary.

  How could Joseph explain that sequence of events to a New York cop and a young man in a gray suit who thought police work was a matter of references, psychometric tests, and the ability to successfully pass a pee test.

  “Only Captain Opara can answer for his actions,” he said finally, knowing full well there and then that it was over.

  Karl from the HR department was nodding sympathetically. I see, he seemed to be saying. Joseph wondered if he had recently read a book on empathizing. Joseph knew he would never be able to convince these two white Westerners that not every detective from Nigeria took dirty money, that not all of them were in the pay of the big Lagos gangsters, because that was exactly what they were thinking right now. He could tell this from the barely concealed contempt in the eyes of the veteran detective and the slowly dimming smile of the man from human resources.

  4

  Joseph pressed down firmly on the accelerator, keen to beat the lights before they turned red, so he could get back on the Cross Bronx Expressway, as far away from that damned office as possible. At the last moment, they changed and he was forced to hit the brake hard. He banged his palm against the steering wheel in frustration. It wasn’t the long wait at the worst synchronized set of lights in the city that had him cursing, or even the parking ticket that had almost inevitably been waiting for him when he finally emerged from his wasted appointment with the New York City Police Department. Instead, it was the helplessness he felt about his current situation that had got to him. The interview he had just been through was a microcosm of his whole damned world. They were so understanding, so reasonable, so not telling him the truth. His test results and interview feedback would rest on file, they had assured him, and Joseph was perfectly free to apply again, once the small issue of his references had been tidied up. He had, of course, thanked them for their flexibility and for freeing the time they had spared in their busy schedules to see him. He promised them faithfully that he would solve the problem with the references and they would certainly see him again in the next round of applicants, some months down the line. However, he could tell they were not expecting to see his face again and, if he was forced to admit it, they were probably right in their assumption.

  It was a bitter irony that his potential employers in the NYPD viewed him as someone who was so corrupt he had been forced to flee his country and was unable to obtain a reference from his own captain, when it was the reverse that was true. The New York City Police Department would probably rather die than let such a man wear a badge and carry a gun, mingling with the gangsters and drug dealers on the streets of their fine city. Who knew what outrageous corruption might then ensue?

  So that left Joseph driving a dilapidated taxi round the streets of the South Bronx, eking out a living as a cab driver, when he should have been solving crimes as a detective, and later he would have to go home and confront his own son over the business of concealing a weapon. As Eddie always said, it was a fucked-up world.

  The dishes were washed and stacked on the draining board in an unruly pile. Joseph’s attempt at a chili had been passable enough and none of his fellow diners had complained or shown any sign of illness, which was always a relief. Four clean plates told their own story. Eddie had refilled his with seconds and polished off that plate, too. He probably hadn’t eaten anything decent since his last meal at their apartment, thought Joseph.

  The small room they were in doubled as kitchen-diner and living room. Joseph steered Eddie from the table into one of the two battered armchairs by the window, so they could look down at the lights of the city below. Yomi and his friend FJ were playing nearby. Only a year ago he had been known as Freddie, but then the boy had solemnly announced to Joseph that he should now be referred to only as FJ. These were not just his initials, he had explained, but his true identity. Joseph had stifled a smile, nodded seriously, and honored the boy’s wishes from then on. The retired cop from Jersey was a different matter, however. He usually greeted Yomi’s friend with the words, “Say, if it isn’t the artist formerly known as Freddie!” before chuckling manically at his own joke.

  “We are gonna miss Lopez,” said FJ, sounding like a weary fifty-year-old man, not a twelve-year-old boy. He was sitting cross-legged on the floor, looking through a box of Yomi’s baseball memorabilia. “He even made math interesting, at least some of the time. I tell you, man, that dude was way cooler than Geller when he stood in for him.”

  The subject had inevitably come round to the murdered teacher, as Joseph had known it would.

  “We sure are,” agreed Yomi, and he slouched down on the floor next to his friend. “I wish he had taken football practice every week. He was nowhere near such a hard-ass. I’d say he was about the only nice one there.” Then he added quickly, “Except Miss De Moyne,” and he looked guiltily up at his father, leaving Joseph to wonder why his son had been so quick to exclude Brigitte from his list of hated teachers.

  “Oooh,” said FJ. “Yomi loves Miss De Moyne.”

  “No, I don’t.”

  “Yeah, you do,” and FJ began to sing, “Yomi and Brigitte, sitting in a tree, K.I.S.S.I.N.G.!”

  “Shut up,” Yomi whined, after FJ had spelled out the letters of the most terrifying word in his vocabulary. “She’s just interesting, that’s all.”

  “You mean she’s fly.”

  “No, I don’t,” snapped Yomi.

  “Fly?” asked Eddie. “What in the name of…is ‘fly’? Don’t sound like a compliment to me to be compared to an insect.”

  “Fly,” said FJ again, as if Eddie were hard of hearing. “You know, ‘fly,’ like she’s hot. You know what I’m saying?”

  “I know what you saying, white boy,” answered Eddie, mocking FJ’s gangsta mannerisms. “You mean she’s a doll. That’s what you mean.”

  “Whatever,” said FJ, who did not appreciate being mocked by his elders. Then he turned his attention back to Yomi. “Yep, Brigitte’s fly all right. Almost as fly as Laura Williams…Ow!” Joseph was shocked to see his son suddenly punch the other boy on the shoulder with some force.

  “Cut it out, Yomi,” said Joseph.

  “But he was saying stuff,” protested the boy.

  “I don’t care what he was saying. There’s no need for hitting. Do you see me hitting Uncle Eddie when he teases me?”

  “No.” The reply was sulky.

  “Good job, too,” said Eddie with a smile. “Or I’d kick your ass.”

  “I’m going down to the frame,” announced FJ, as if the punch in the arm was the final straw. “You coming?” The last words were a surly olive branch, like he knew he’d been a little out of line teasing his friend and he was trying to be c
onciliatory.

  Yomi looked to his dad for approval.

  “I don’t know, Yomi. It’s dark already.” Joseph meant he wasn’t so keen on Yomi hanging round with the types who stood by the kid’s climbing frame after dark.

  “So?” asked his son as if that was an irrelevance.

  “Can’t keep a dog in its kennel forever, Joseph,” said Eddie.

  “Who you calling a dog?” asked Yomi, but he seemed buoyed that the old man was on his side.

  “One hour, you hear?” ruled Joseph and the boys nodded their agreement before tearing off.

  “He’ll be okay,” said Eddie. “He has to learn to survive round here on his own. You can’t be with him every hour of the day.” Joseph knew Eddie was right, but it still filled him with dread to think of his son hanging out in the project at night. “And that was nothing by the way. It wasn’t really a fight. All boys have fights,” continued Eddie. “Me? I grew up fighting. First my brothers, then my friends, I didn’t have any time left to fight no enemies. You worry too much about Yomi. He’s a good kid.”

  “Oh yeah?” Joseph asked doubtfully.

  “What? You been butting heads with him again? What is it this time?”

  Joseph hadn’t intended to discuss the subject with Eddie, but it had been eating away at him all day and he felt like he had to tell somebody. “It’s just, I found out he’s been carrying a knife.”

  “Get the fuck out…You serious?” Eddie shook his head. “Yomi? Are you certain?”

  “No.”

  “Well, then. What makes you think?”

  Joseph explained about the toilet cistern and the blade that had been ditched there. Eddie listened intently and then he said, “It could have been there, how long? Who knows?”

  “Didn’t look rusty to me and there was a fresh imprint from a boot just like Yomi’s on the toilet seat.”