Read Online Nairobi Heat by Mukoma Wa Ngugi - Free Book Online Page B

dead white girl to flash through my mind one last time before the young woman’s gun went off.
    For a moment I thought I was hit, but it was just the shock of landing hard on the floor. I looked up at her in surprise as her gun clattered to the floor and she sank to the ground with a look of incomprehension on her face – a thin trickle of blood running down her dress and onto her legs. Then I saw O standing behind her, bracing himself against the bathroom wall, a smoking gun in his hand.
    The man contemplated us – calculating his choices I suppose – but it was all over; he had played out his hand.
    I stood up and zipped up my pants. ‘Who sent you?’ I asked the man.
    ‘You, you
mzungu
tourist, we want money,’ he screamed back, trying to wipe my piss and whatever else was in theurinal out of his eyes.
    ‘Motherfucker, you call me a white man one more time and I’ll shoot you right here,’ I answered him. I was really tired of the
mzungu
shit.
    O carefully unbuttoned his jacket and shirt. I could see two bullets lodged neatly in his vest, over his heart. ‘She called my name, I turned and she shot me,’ he said, grimacing in pain. Even with a vest, you still get quite a knock and he would be lucky if he hadn’t broken a rib. He staggered over and stood over the young man, his gun trained on him.
    ‘I tell you who sent me, you let me go,’ the young man said. It was half a statement, half a question.
    ‘Who sent you?’ I asked him.
    ‘Tell us what we want to know and you live,’ O offered.
    ‘I tell you, I go?’ he asked with disbelief.
    ‘To prison you dumb piece of shit,’ I shouted at him.
    ‘No deal …’ He put his hand over his mouth to show he wasn’t willing to talk.
    ‘Pick her up!’ O ordered him.
    The young man hesitated and O shot at the wall just above his head.
    ‘Pick her up and put her on your shoulder,’ O shouted.
    The young man scrambled to his feet, grabbed the dead woman by the waist and with some trouble hoisted her to his shoulder.
    ‘You tell us what we want to know and we let you carry your dead. You are a soldier … Tell us who gave the order,’ O said gently, with the kind of patronising understanding that an officer might use when questioning an enemy soldier. I had never heard him speak like that before, but to my surprise itworked.
    ‘Lord Thompson …’ the man said, his legs beginning to tremble with the effort of keeping the woman slung over his shoulder. ‘We do works for him all the time. He call, we go to his place. He pay, we work.’
    ‘Did he tell you why?’ I asked him.
    ‘No, no, no … He use code: “Cut weed from garden”. He pay, we do. No questions,’ he said, his eyes darting from my face to O’s as he wondered which one of us had the power to let him go.
    ‘You can go,’ O finally said, holstering his gun.
    The man stumbled out of the bathroom and we followed – by now his back was covered in the woman’s blood and he left a trail of it in his wake. The bar was empty. Only the bartender remained.
    ‘Give me the money Lord Thompson paid you,’ I said to the man.
    He hesitated, looked at O and then with his free hand he reached into his pocket and took out a wad of notes. I walked to the bartender and gave him the money.
    Outside, in the street, the crowd from the bar – white and black, rich and poor – had formed itself into an angry mob, and as we emerged they started spitting and yelling at the man. We stood for a while and watched as he tried to carry the body of the woman through the throng, but it wasn’t long before they descended on him – punching and kicking. It was hard to believe this was the same crowd that was dancing just a few minutes ago. Finally, after what seemed like an eternity,he and the body he was carrying fell to the ground. Only then did O shoot several times into the air, and in the relative calm that followed tell the crowd to let the man go. By then the young man was sobbing, his legs