Bent over, dripping with sweat, holding his stomach in both hands, Catch-Fire left the toilet and closed the door. His bowels made a sound like water rushing through a pipe. Pain radiated up to his throat as he reached for the handle. He grabbed his belly and leaned forward. Alcohol, mashed-up food and blood gushed out of his mouth with the force of a firefighter’s hose.
The girls in the corridor backed away as vomit ricocheted off linoleum. Another wave passed through him, forcing tears from his eyes as he threw up again. He placed his hands on the wall.
‘It is Chief Amadi. He has poisoned me,’ he said, his head down, debris and saliva dangling from his chin. ‘He wants to kill me.’
The worst of the spasms shot through his body and forced him onto his hands and knees in his own vomit. He threw up blood.
‘My phone,’ he said.
Chief Amadi was eating lunch at the twenty-two chair dining table he had shipped from France. He checked to see who was calling, then he checked the time.
Catch-Fire looked up at the girls.
‘Chief has killed me,’ he said. ‘He has poisoned me. Catch-Fire must not die. Go and call Doctor. Catch-Fire must not die.’
Doctor raced ahead of the girls who had come to fetch him from his one-bedroom home and clinic where he diagnosed his neighbours with unpronounceable ailments and charged them whatever they could afford for his treatments.
He arrived in the corridor to find Catch-Fire, surrounded by worried onlookers, in a foetal position. He recognised the smell that greeted him.
‘Doctor, help me.’
Doctor bent close to the ground and sniffed to be sure, then turned and sprinted out the way he had come.
‘Ah, even Doctor has run away,’ one of the girls said.
Catch-Fire watched the man leave and he began to cry.
‘I am dead. Catch-Fire don die. Chief Amadi has killed me.’
Outside, Doctor searched for two weeds that grow side by side wherever there is vegetation. He found them and plucked a handful of each. He ran back to Catch-Fire’s side and began to rub the plants together in his palms, chanting incantations as he did, and spitting into the paste after each dose of spells.
Catch-Fire clenched his teeth as the paste was brought to his face. The girls and the men gripped him and forced his mouth open and Doctor put the medicine in his mouth.
‘Bring me water,’ Doctor said.
Catch-Fire struggled with the hands holding him down. The doctor pinched his nostrils closed and poured water down his mouth and Catch-Fire gagged.
‘Leave him.’
Catch-Fire, regaining his freedom, spat and spat again.
‘Don’t vomit it,’ Doctor said.
Catch-Fire looked at him and spat again.
Chief Amadi finished his meal. The last call from Catch-Fire had been over an hour ago. Maybe it was all over by now. Then the phone rang again. The caller withheld their number. He decided to answer it. If it was Catch-Fire, still alive, he would tell him he had been in the bathroom and he would invite him to a drink at his house.
‘Chief Amadi? Is this Chief Amadi?’
Amadi did not recognise the voice.
‘How may I help you?’
‘Chief, you do not know me but I know you.’
Strange introduction, he thought. It was likely someone about to beg for a loan that wouldn’t be repaid.
‘Who are you?’
‘My name is Kanayo, they call me Knockout. I am the gentleman that your boy, Catch-Fire, used guns to chase out of his house yesterday.’
Amadi shifted the phone to his better ear.
‘Yes?’
‘I brought business for the boy, but because his girls are making his head swell he chased me out like that.’
‘Yes? So, what can I do for you?’
‘Sir, I want to do business with you.’
‘What kind of business would that be?’
‘The kind of business you do with that boy, sir.’
‘I do not know what you are talking about, Kanayo. I think you have mistaken me for someone else.’
‘No, sir, no mistake at all. Please, call me Knockout – that is what my friends call me. I understand that you don’t want to talk on the phone but I assure you, I am very professional, unlike that pickpocket they call Catch-Fire.’
‘I don’t know what you are talking about, but perhaps if we meet in person, you can explain yourself to me better.’
‘I am near your house, sir.’
‘Near my house?’ Amadi walked to a window and parted the curtain. ‘How do you know where I live? How did you get this number?’
‘Don’t be afraid, sir, like I told you, I am very professional. I can get anybody’s number that I want to get in this Lagos.’
‘Is that so? You say you are near my house?’
‘Yes, sir. I am calling you from outside.’
‘Come to the gate.’
A short man approached the compound alone, holding a phone to his ear. It was the man from Catch-Fire’s house. Amadi rang the gatehouse and asked the guard to let his visitor in. He met Knockout outside in the compound.
‘What did Catch-Fire tell you?’
‘Sir, he told me everything. I came with a fresh heart that I took out myself but he did not want you to know. That is why he used his prostitutes to disgrace me in front of you like that. You should not be doing business with that kind of person, he is not professional. You and me, we can do better business together. Clean business.’
Amadi could have struck him with a blow to the head, confident that his guards would then finish him off. That would take care of one loose end.
‘And you are sure you have the stomach for my kind of business?’
‘I can do anything, sir.’
‘Do you know what I do?’
‘Do you know what kind of rituals?’
‘Money rituals.’
‘Do you know what we use for the rituals?’
‘Human beings.’
‘And you can do this?’
‘Yes. I brought one heart for you yesterday. Anything you want me to do, I will do, Chief. Tell me to bring ten hearts right now and I will go and come back with twenty.’
‘No, no. That is not how we do it. You don’t just kill people anyhow. The gods must choose their own meal. There is a lot you still have to learn.’
‘Teach me, sir.’
‘And you are sure you will not be like your friend, Catch-Fire? He has failed me several times. I’ve been trying to replace him.’
‘Never, sir, I am very professional, and that cockroach is not my friend.’
‘Can you keep a secret that even the maggots feeding on your dead body would never hear?’
‘For sure, sir.’
‘OK. But first you must do one thing for me. To prove yourself.’
‘Tell me, sir.’
‘You must eliminate Catch-Fire.’
‘Eliminate him?’
‘Yes.’
‘As in, kill him?’
‘Yes.’
‘Is that all?’
‘Today.’
‘Today, today?’
‘Is that a problem? You can’t do it?’
‘I can do it, sir. No problem at all.’
‘So, what are you waiting for? Kill him then call me and I will tell you where to meet me. And remember, if like Catch-Fire you fail me too, you will also be eliminated.’
‘There will be no need for that, sir. I will never fail you. Consider the boy eliminated.’
In his air-conditioned room, two of his girls took turns fanning him with a newspaper folded in two, while Catch-Fire sat exhausted and sweating, spitting each time he remembered Doctor’s saliva.
‘Let’s go and burn down the bastard’s house,’ one of his girls said. The others nodded.
‘If you go there, he will kill all of you, and then he will come back here and kill me too.’
‘Let us go to the police.’
‘And tell them what? They’ll arrest me and even report to him that I came to report him. He is a powerful man. The police are working for him.’
‘We cannot just let him go like that. What if he had killed you?’
‘But I am alive. Ordinary poison cannot kill Catch-Fire.’ He spat. ‘He will try to kill me again.’
‘Why does he want to kill you?’
‘That is what I don’t understand. Maybe the spirits that he worships have told him to kill me.’
‘We have to kill him before he kills you.’
‘Yes. Yes. Bring me my phone.’
He had been thinking about it and the two people he knew who could do the job were Go-Slow and Knockout. He would offer the one million naira under his bed to Go-Slow, the one he could trust.
He called Go-Slow and explained his predicament. He swore by the womb of his mother that it was not a trap. He begged Go-Slow to come to his house immediately, and he begged him not to tell Knockout.