44

On the street, I took out the small piece of paper with the number Yacouba had given me. I told the guy who answered that I was a businessman who needed a taxi driver for the rest of the day. He sounded hesitant. Most likely, he was doing the math. I quickly offered him twenty thousand CFA francs for five hours of work, enough to be appealing. It took him no time to accept. The guy asked for my location. I had been waiting a quarter of an hour when an old canary-yellow Renault 12 pulled up in front of me. The driver, a big Rasta with a pockmarked face and cardboard-stiff dreads, asked if I was, indeed, the person who had called. I got into the Renault. The driver started the car and slid his antique into the traffic.

“Where we going, boss?” he asked.

“Are you, in fact, Adama Samaké?”

The guy adjusted his rearview mirror and looked at me suspiciously. “Who are you?”

“Solo Camara. Yacouba gave me your name.”

Samaké relaxed.

“That’s right. I remember now. Yacou told me you wanted to ask a few questions about the little French woman…”

“Bahia Tebessi.”

“That’s it, Bahia! It’s terrible, what happened to her, really terrible.”

“Tell me what you know.”

Samaké pulled onto a side street, where he could drive slowly and recall how the night had unfolded.

“A friend asked me to go pick her up at the police station.”

“Stéphane Humbert.”

He glanced at me through the rearview.

“You knew that?”

“Where did you take her?”

“Lafiabougou, to a big house near the hills.”

Lafiabougou was a working-class neighborhood in northern Bamako, near the Mandingues hills.

“It seemed important. I told her she should avoid that area at night. But she insisted, and I dropped her off there. She couldn’t stop crying the entire ride. It really upset me when I read in the paper that she—”

“Take me there, please.”

Samaké sped off. Lost in my thoughts, I gazed through the dirty window at the streets of the big city, so full of wretched inertia and wonderful vitality. I felt a sort of exhilaration—me, a half-dead, half-alive man. As I headed toward my destination, a strange dizziness overtook me. I had the sensation of reaching the top of a roller coaster right before plummeting down the other side. I fiddled nervously with my chèche.

We were now in Lafiabougou. The sun had begun its descent, bathing both the makeshift stalls run by street peddlers and the more solidly built shops in a soft, hot light. Samaké drove until we reached a big cube-shaped villa just off Lafiabougou’s main road. A tall wall made of what looked like reclaimed rubble surrounded the structure.

“This is it,” he said, parking in front of the gate.

I got out of the taxi and gazed at the building, whose fortresslike appearance did not inspire confidence. I leaned in the window to give Samaké his instructions.

“Wait for me here.”

The cab driver agreed and stuck a reggae cassette in the ancient Renault’s dusty tape player. I walked toward the gate to the tune of Bob Marley’s “No Woman, No Cry.”

I walked in without knocking. The house appeared abandoned, but it wasn’t. On the hunt for something—anything—that could confirm my developing theory about Bahia’s slaying, I wandered the hallways and deserted rooms. I ended up in a large living room. They were there, waiting for me: two African guys, scrawny as stray cats, in filthy T-shirts and torn jeans. They were holding knives with long blades. They got up to welcome me. On the floor beneath their patched-up flip-flops was a huge dark stain. It looked like a brownish rug that the men had carelessly trampled.

“That’s where you killed her,” I said.

They didn’t respond. They were flashing wide grins, their knives aimed at my chest. The bigger one made a move. His blade whipped the air inches from my throat. I dodged at the last second and drew the Glock from the back of my belt. Like a cowboy straight out of an old American movie, I shot from the hip. Two poppy-red spots of blood appeared on the guy’s T-shirt as he collapsed. I was about to finish off the second guy when a blow to the back of my neck sent me to the ground. My weapon slid across the floor, out of range. It took me a second to regain my senses, my face buried in a thin layer of dust.

“Morons!” I heard someone shout. “I told you to be careful with the mongrel.”

With a club in his hand, Samaké—my cab driver—was telling off the man who was still standing. The other one was on the floor next to me, bobbing his head weakly while bloody foam dribbled out of his mouth. He wouldn’t be getting up any time soon.

“I’m starting to get sick of this shit,” I said as I rose to my feet.

Samaké had picked up the blade belonging to the guy sharing the bed of dust with me.

“Oh yeah? Sick of what, exactly?” he asked, sniggering.

“Sick of getting clocked. Ever since this adventure began, everyone’s been trying to kill me or smash my face in. It’s tiring,” I said, rubbing my injured neck.

Samaké was looking at my gleefully.

“I heard you’d be hard to kill, that you were a tough cookie, and all that…”

I was wobbling in front of him, too out of it to defend myself against what would come next. The reggae-loving taxi driver sank his weapon deep in my thigh. I shrieked like a madman as blade met bone. My eyes full of tears, I tumbled to the floor, holding my leg. Blood was already flooding my pants.

“I have to say it’s easier than I thought it would be,” Samaké continued. “Now I’m going to bleed you like a pig.”

He leaned down and grabbed me by the ear, prepared to slit my throat. Like Bahia, I was going to end up in the river.