TWENTY-SEVEN

April 18

Emma had been apprehensive she might feel the sting of male supremacy from her five male coworkers, but Yemo Sowah set the tone in which gender didn’t determine status: only experience, knowledge, and hard work. In any case, Sowah protected her from any bad treatment whatsoever. Nailed to the wall was a code of conduct that included respect, kindness, patience, honesty, willingness to be corrected, and taking responsibility for one’s mistakes.

Barring emergencies, Sowah held a briefing every morning at eight for updates on old cases and assignments of new. He started Emma off with a standard background check on a man a branch of Zenith Bank was interested in hiring.

The Sowah Agency had a Toyota sedan for office use, and if needed, Sowah’s Kia SUV. This ratio of vehicles to investigators was a thousand times better than that of the Ghana Police Service. Sowah more or less promptly reimbursed his investigators’ out-of-pocket travel expenses if they didn’t have an official vehicle available.

Seven forty-five Monday morning, Emma got down from the tro-tro at her stop on Paradise Street two blocks from work. She stopped a paperboy and got the Daily Graphic and The Ghanaian Chronicle, the latter the more radical and outspoken of the two, the former still the best-selling paper in the country. She glanced at its front page as she walked the last few meters to work, looked again, and froze in place. The headline, war on sakawa accompanied a picture of a group of disgraced young men.

“Oh, no,” Emma whispered. “Bruno.”

He was the second from the left, scowling at the camera in defiance.

Emma began to read the article through, but she didn’t want to be a second late to work, so she hurried the last few steps to the staff room and sat down to read it there. The raid was part of President J.K. Bannerman’s ambitious and sweeping initiative to cut out Ghana’s cancer of fraud and corruption. Clearly, he was enlisting the help of the papers and other media to get the word out. This group of sakawa boys had been taken to Dansoman Police Station to be charged and jailed.

As Emma dived into the Chronicle’s piece, the other investigators straggled in. She smiled and greeted them cordially, but inside she was thinking about Bruno and was furious. This was exactly what she had been warning him about: stay out of trouble, get a legit job.

Emma wasn’t the only one who had seen the item on the raid. Jojo, the youngest of the other investigators, was reading a copy of the Ghanaian Times, which had also front-paged the news. “Catch five or six of these worthless guys and you say you’re fighting the evil of sakawa,” he said in disdain.

It wasn’t until six that evening that Emma was able to get to Dansoman Police Station. It was a two-story building painted in the GPS’s signature yellow and blue. A miscellaneous crowd hung around the front. Emma went to the small charge office, where the desk sergeant was a cordial but businesslike woman. “Yes, we have Bruno Asare here,” she said, checking her logbook in response to Emma’s inquiry. “You want to see him?”

“Yes please, madam.”

“And who are you?”

“His sister.”

The sergeant shot her a doubtful look but didn’t probe further. Instead, she turned and yelled back to the jail officer, who marched out a few minutes later with a sullen Bruno.

“You can talk to him over there,” the sergeant said to Emma, indicating the end of the counter.

“Sis, what are you doing here?” Bruno said in an undertone as she came up to him.

“That’s not the right question,” Emma said angrily, trying to keep her voice down. “The question should be what you are doing here?”

Bruno was deadpan. “I haven’t done anything.”

“Don’t lie to me. It was all in the papers today—pictures of you and those sakawa boys. Didn’t I tell you they would get you in trouble?”

Glumly, Bruno looked away.

“Were you with that Nii Kwei I met the other day?” Emma asked.

Bruno nodded.

“Is he also at this station?”

“No, I’ve not seen him,” Bruno said. “Maybe they took him to somewhere else. I’m not sure. But the rest of us are here.”

It was possible that this station’s jail was at capacity, Emma reasoned, although that normally never stopped anyone packing in a few more prisoners.

“Can you get me out?” Bruno asked her, making sad eyes at her.

Emma bristled. “No! I will not. You got yourself into this trouble, and you’ll have to get yourself out. Maybe you’ll finally learn your lesson. It serves you right, Bruno.”

Emma noticed the desk sergeant staring at Bruno as she talked to someone on the phone. At intervals, she nodded and said, “Yes, madam.” After ending the call, she beckoned to Bruno. “Come.”

The sergeant opened a large ledger. “Sign here,” she said, pressing her index finger to a space down the column.

Puzzled, Bruno signed.

“You may go,” the sergeant said, looking at him with both offhandedness and distaste.

“Please, you say?”

She raised her voice. “You may go! Are you deaf?”

“Yes, madam. No, madam. Thank you.”

A corporal lifted the barrier at the counter and incredibly, Bruno walked out scot-free.