“Mmm hmm. Researching one.”
“Sure you’re not just being paranoid?”
“No. Although, in a sense, that’s what I want to find out. That’s what I want you to help me with.”
“This is the ‘proposition’?”
“Yeah. It’s a strange request, in a way. You might laugh.”
“I might. But go ahead.”
“I’d like you to help me distract them.”
“These imagined tails.”
“For just a few minutes. Fifty minutes would do. I’d pay you generously, of course.”
Sam licked his lips once, sizing up Jon Mallory. “How much did you say?”
Jon laid a legal-size envelope on the table.
Sam lifted it and discreetly counted the notes—twenty-seven thousand Kenyan shillings, about $300. More than Jon could easily afford, but he was gambling it would pay off.
“Okay.” Sam shrugged. “Not bad, I suppose, for fifty minutes’ work.”
“Not even work, really. I just want you to walk. Up and down University Way and Koinange Street. Stop at a bistro, if you’d like, have another lager, maybe a bowl of chowder.”
Sullivan laughed. “Now you’re starting to sound a little deranged, mate.”
“Will you do it?”
“Of course I’ll do it,” he said, tucking the envelope into his pants pocket. Then he waved the waiter over for more lagers. “But would you mind telling me why this is worth twenty-seven thousand shillings to you?”
“I just want you to divert attention.”
“From you.”
“Right.”
Sullivan sized him up all over again, as if he were someone different now. He waited until the new bottles and coasters were on the table and the waiter was gone before speaking again.
“I won’t pry into your business, mate, but how do I know I can trust you? I mean, I’m not going to get killed, am I?”
“No, of course not. Stay on the main roads. Go to public places. No one wants to kill me. They just want to follow me. To see where I’m going.”
“Why?”
“Good question.”
“Yeah.” He drank from the new beer. “And here’s another one: How are we going to make them think I’m you?”
Mallory slid the bag across to him under the table. Sam peered inside.
“Stop in the men’s room by the entrance before you go out. Take the bag with you, and put on the sweatshirt and the hat. Then go out. Stay on the main roads, as I say. Return here in one hour. Go back in the rest room, leave the sweatshirt and hat in the bag, then join me back here in the bar.”
Sam’s smile turned to a hard, grim expression. “Well. If it’s worth twenty-seven thousand to you, I imagine it’d also be worth fifty thousand shillings. Considering the risks I’ll be taking.”
“Probably would,” Jon said. “Except I don’t have fifty thousand.” He sighed and pulled several bills from his pocket, leaving him with just a few hundred shillings.
Sam Sullivan took the money. Jon looked at his watch.
“Okay? So we meet back here at 8:15.”
“Okay.”
Sam took the bag and walked to the men’s room. Jon watched him as he emerged a few minutes later wearing the bright yellow sweatshirt and safari hat. He walked outside without a look back. Good. Jon signed for his bill and walked up the staircase to the second-floor landing, where he could see the street in front of the hotel. Sullivan crossed the road to the shadows on the other side. Moments later, the Renault started up and began to inch along a half block behind him. Jon returned to his room, dressed in a black T-shirt. He went to the back of the lobby and pushed the elevator button. Hurried down the hallway to a servants entrance and the night.
Outside, he stayed in the shadows—alleyways, awnings, tall buildings—walking past markets and shuttered apartments. The night sky was dark and cloudy. If it took ten minutes to reach 3C Garden Road, that gave him twenty-five minutes to find whatever had been left for him.
SIXTEEN
GARDEN ROAD WAS SOMETHING of a misnomer. At the east end was a well-worn dirt field, once a playground, apparently, with a single wood-plank bench and a rusted swing set and a broken whirly-go-round that probably hadn’t been used for years. The next block was a row of rundown apartment houses, some boarded up. Incongruously, a group of old men sat on rusted chairs in front of one, speaking loudly in Swahili as he passed across the street. Jon hugged the shadows and pretended not to notice.
No. 3 was in a five-unit, one-story building, toward the middle of a mostly abandoned block. The apartments were lettered: A, B, C, D, E. Jon opened the screen door to 3C. He tried the knob, felt flakes of rust under his fingers. Locked. He gazed up the street, listening to the hum of electrical wires, the now-distant voices of the men.
He examined the door frame carefully, top to bottom, right side then left. Found that there was a keypad on the left side at just above doorknob level.
Odd.
Or maybe not.
It almost made sense. A rundown, largely shuttered neighborhood. A place his brother wouldn’t have lived but might have been able to access. If this had been installed by his brother, what would he have used as a code? Something simple. Something he would know but other people wouldn’t. Jon Mallory stood in the cooling night air and tried their old house number: 13914. A guess. It didn’t work. Then he thought of another number, which had been their default code as children: 21209. Abraham Lincoln’s birthday.
He heard a click and pushed. The door gave. A simple remote radio transmitter device had been coded to trip the lock. The same principal as car fobs or garage-door openers.
Jon pulled the door closed, letting the lock click back into place. He felt the wall for a light switch, eventually found one. A lampshade cast a dusty yellow glow across the thin, dirty carpet and mishmash of old furnishings. It was musty and smelled faintly of urine.
On his right was a small kitchen. Jon looked in—dishes in the sink, a pile of papers on the counter. The New York Times and the Kenyan papers, all of them weeks old. Bugs scurried away when he lifted one.
In the next room, he found another light switch, lifted it. Nothing happened. Squinting in the darkness, he closed his eyes and then opened them, scanning the room, letting his pupils widen to let in more light, until he began to recognize objects. This was the bedroom: there was a bare mattress on the floor, a crude four-drawer chest beside it, drawers half pulled out, with clothes on the floor—T-shirts, a large pair of jeans. He heard a sound and his thoughts stopped. It came again: water in the pipes?
The bathroom was dark and smelled foul; the glass window was cracked. The porcelain sink and tub showed hard-water stains.
The last room seemed to be a study, with a beat-up antique desk, a dark lumpy armchair, an end table in the middle, and three cardboard boxes lined up against a wall. Jon tried the lamp. No luck. He sat at the desk, taking in the room, which was lit only by the living room lamp. He breathed the dusty air, realizing that the keypad code that had gained him entry to this apartment wasn’t a security measure—it was a breadcrumb, a message from his brother. Somewhere in this apartment there must be another one.
Jon opened the top drawer of the desk, focusing his thoughts on what was in front of him. His fingers traced the edges and found a grip. He lifted it. But there was nothing underneath. It was just a loose square of plywood.
He stood and carefully surveyed the room once more. The end table had a single drawer. He slid it open, found a clutter of newspaper clippings inside—yellowed articles, along with crumpled store receipts, most of them years old. A strange assortment. Could there be a message here? He skimmed through them—obituaries, wedding announcements, news stories, seemingly haphazard. Odd. He could take them and check later. But was that really what he was meant to find? As he set them on top of the table, he noticed several thick sheets of cardboard at the bottom of the drawer. Pulling the drawer out all the way, he saw a piece of cardboard taped over a corner. He lifted it, pulling up the tape. Flush against the wood was a small electronic keypad, this one with the twenty-six letters of the alphabet.