Nairobi Heat Read Online Free PDF Page B

is.’
    ‘I’ll pay you back when I change some money,’ I said, but he simply waved me on drunkenly.
    ‘Tonight no need for a hotel. Just crash at my place.’ He took a photograph out of his wallet. ‘Detective Ishmael, meet my wife,’ he announced.
    It was a rough photograph and I couldn’t make out herfeatures beyond a small Afro. ‘She’s beautiful,’ I said.
    I waved the bartender over and gave her the money, gesturing a beer for her and the guitarist. ‘Ten Tuskers?’ she asked, lifting up ten fingers.
    I laughed. ‘Why not?’
    As we were leaving, she was piling the bottles at the guitarist’s feet. ‘Goodbye, my black brother,’ the guitarist said, with a deep laugh, nodding his head back and forth to the music he was playing.
    I waved. ‘Goodbye, black brother,’ I repeated.
    Neither a tourist nor a visitor, but a detective in search of the truth – and not just any detective, a black American detective – I knew I was about to enter Africa’s underbelly. If lucky, I would see some beauty as well. But as we left The Hilton Hotel bar I knew I was not going to see Africa like some tourist staring at animals through a pair of binoculars.

WHERE DREAMS COME TO DIE
    We got to O’s place really late. He lived in Eastleigh Estate, which he described as a lower-middle class Nairobi suburb. Lit by the Land Rover’s headlights the houses all looked the same – narrow, two-storey dwellings with chain-link fences and fierce-looking dogs – and with all the twists and turns, it felt like we were tunnelling through a maze. Eventually we arrived at his house, where he showed me to an empty room. Within minutes I was fast asleep.
    O shook me awake just before dawn. After a cold shower I walked into the kitchen to find his wife sitting at the table grading hand-written papers – O hadn’t told me she was a high school teacher. Of medium height, and a little bit on the stocky side, she was wearing a long black-and-white polka-dotted dress and sported a huge Afro. She reminded me of photos I had seen of black women in the 1960s – the radical feminists with a fist always up in the air. She had a gap between her two front teeth, the only flaw in an otherwise perfect smile.
    ‘My name is Maria, Odhiambo’s wife,’ she said, pointingto O, who was busy making breakfast.
    I introduced myself and watched as she gathered her papers together, finished her cup of tea and kissed O goodbye.
    O was quite a chef – his omelette was superb. ‘It is because you Americans use frozen ingredients. Here it is straight from the garden,’ he said when I complimented him. Then he smiled. ‘And my wife cannot cook. She tries but she is not gifted that way.’
    ‘You are a rare breed, my friend,’ I said, much to his delight. ‘A black male feminist detective chef.’
    He took a joint from his shirt pocket. ‘Now I am a black male feminist detective chef with a joint,’ he said as he lit up.
    I don’t smoke weed, not because I’m a cop, it’s just that it gives me the giggles – hours of ridiculous, uncontrollable laughter – and I would rather not look stupid.
    ‘Today we will rattle the bushes,’ O said after I had declined a drag on his joint.
    He and I both knew that if the man who had told me to come to Nairobi was serious all we had to do was show up in the right places, make our presence known, and he would find us.
    The first bush we rattled was the Rwandan Consulate. The consulate was in Muthaiga Estate, where the houses were so huge that I felt like I was back in Maple Bluff. Nothing. Of course they knew Joshua. Without people like him there would be no Rwanda. Could he have been involved in any criminal activities? No, of course not. Enemies? Yes. Could they be more specific? It could be anyone.
    We went next to the Refugee Centre in Nairobi CBD, the charitable arm of the Never Again Foundation. The office wason the top floor with a magnificent view over the whole city. As we waited for the Director to