8

She called me a good twenty times in the following days, but I wouldn’t allow myself to answer. The calls stopped on the fourth day. I surrendered to the routine of my investigations. More specifically, I tackled my case involving the insensitive husband who allegedly wanted to take a second wife. I quickly identified the mistress: his secretary. I have to admit the young woman was spectacular. She could make celibates drool with lust. Obviously, she wasn’t hired for her typing skills. I succeeded in spotting them together in a maquis, one of those bars where lovers feel free to express themselves. I sat down at a table next to theirs, ordered a Castel, and while pretending to send a text message took their picture. The image was blurry, but you could make out enough to understand the true nature of their relationship. With my eyes glued to the screen, I eavesdropped. I learned the young woman’s name was Aïssata, and she was from the Ivory Coast.

Satisfied, I finished my beer, got up, and left the bar. Once outside, I checked my watch. It was seven thirty. I called Drissa to tell him not to wait up, then got in my old Toyota. I was hungry. I decided to go eat at Milo’s pizzeria and knock back a few glasses of Scotch with him. Chez Milo was on a dirt road in the Niarela neighborhood. As I was parking along the cracked wall of the pizza place, a crippled man with a makeshift crutch came up to my car and used hand gestures to guide my maneuvering. When I got out and shut the creaky door, he greeted me enthusiastically.

“Good evening, boss. Want me to keep an eye on your car?”

I glanced at my dented heap of junk. “You really think it’s worth the trouble?”

“I really do. It’s a nice car. None better in all of Mali,” he said cheekily.

I said okay, and as I entered the pizzeria, he gave me a friendly wave to reassure me of his vigilance. I walked through the restaurant and out to the terrace, where half a dozen couples were dining. Heating coils, whose smoke was meant to shoo away the mosquitoes, were burning near the tables. Milo was sitting at the outside bar, sipping a Jack Daniels and telling off his head chef, as he often did.

“Fuck! How did I get saddled with a cook like you? Pay a little attention, dammit! Pizzas deserve our respect.”

I sat down next to him.

“Hey, Camara. The usual?” he asked, extending his large paw, which I shook.

I handed him my pack of cigarillos. He helped himself, and we lit our little cigars with the flame of my Zippo. According to legend, the Serb had served ten years in the French Foreign Legion as a nurse or a sharpshooter. I didn’t really know which. He never talked about it, even when he got drunk, which happened a lot.

Milo Stojakovic was not a very tall guy—five feet seven at the most. His broad shoulders and thick forearms bulging underneath one of the dreadful Hawaiian shirts he had a habit of wearing discouraged even the rowdiest customer looking for a fight. But the most impressive thing about him was his intense blue eyes in a large face with deep wrinkles. You could see an animalistic violence in him. I had been his friend for years, but he could still give me the jitters. No one knew how long he had been knocking around in Africa, and no one even knew his actual age. If I had to guess, I would have said anywhere between forty-five and sixty.

A waitress placed a Macallan, neat, and an ashtray in front of me. Milo had some Lebanese pals who provided him with stuff that was hard to find in this country, like good single malt. I savored a sip of the nectar. So there we sat, enjoying our drinks and smokes.

“You eating with me?” he asked eventually, putting out the smoking butt of his cigarillo.

The waitress seated us beneath an arbor. Silently, we ate our two four-seasons pizzas—olives for summer, mushrooms for fall, prosciutto for winter, and artichokes for spring—while gazing at the Bamako sky. At the end of the meal, he presented two Cohiba Esplendidos acquired from Cuban friends who worked at the Gabriel Touré Hospital. You could definitely say that Milo Stojakovic had a solid network of suppliers.

We smoked and drank our whiskeys, which the waitress had replenished. By the time I left, I was staggering a bit and feeling pretty good. When I walked up to my car, the man with a crutch joined me and held out his hand. Feeling charitable, I gave him a thousand-franc bill. He smiled and held the door as I got into my vehicle. I was about to start the engine when he tapped the hood.

“Boss, I don’t know if this is important…”

“Say it anyway,” I instructed.

“When you got here, there were two guys in an SUV behind you, a black Land Cruiser.”

I felt my heart beating faster.

“Where are they now?”

“Still there, on the street.”

“What do they look like? Are they toubabs?”

He shook his head.

“No, they’re falafi.”

They were black. I glanced in the rearview and spotted the Land Cruiser, whose shiny exterior glistened in the light of an old rusty streetlamp. Not very subtle. I couldn’t get a look inside because of the lamp’s reflection on the windshield. I thanked my informant with the crutch and slipped him a second bill—a two-thousand bill this time. As I turned the key, the Land Cruiser’s headlight went on. I pulled out, and the Land Cruiser pulled out behind me.