Amaka turned onto Oyinkan Abayomi Drive and her headlights illuminated a police van parked across the road. Two police officers armed with assault rifles shielded their eyes. She dipped the lights and waited for them to walk up to her car.
‘Good evening, madam,’ the officer by her window said. ‘The road is blocked.’
‘My name is Amaka Mbadiwe. I live here. Ambassador Mbadiwe’s residence.’
‘Can I see your identification?’
‘Identification. My handbag was stolen today. The guards can identify me.’
‘I see. We are not allowing any vehicles in or out till tomorrow.’
‘Can I leave my car here and walk? I just want to pick up some stuff.’
‘Madam, we are not allowing anybody to pass.’
Amaka pulled up in front of Bogobiri House on Maitama Sule Street. The road was dark as there were no streetlights. Cables from electricity and telephone poles criss-crossed above. Generators rumbled behind fences. The gate of the boutique hotel was shut. She left the car running and got out to knock. A sleepy night guard peered through the iron poles of the gate. After Amaka asked about accommodation, he excused himself to fetch the night manager.
‘Do you have any rooms available tonight?’ Amaka asked the young man who looked like he’d been woken from sleep.
The guard began to open the gates at the night manager’s bidding but Amaka stopped them. ‘I just want to know if you have a room available,’ she said.
‘Yes ma, we do.’
‘How much is it?’
‘Twenty-eight thousand, ma.’
‘OK. I’ll be back.’
Amaka got into her car while the employees watched from the poles of the gate.
Amaka slowed down to turn onto Sanusi Fafunwa Street. As she did, a woman in a tight, black miniskirt and tube top, standing alone at the top of the road, tried to wave her down. On Sanusi Fafunwa Amaka drove past more women, standing alone or in twos, beckoning motorists looking to buy sex.
She came to a stretch with cars parked on both sides of the road. Here, in front of clubs, bars, casinos, and late-night shawarma spots, the women were concentrated and shared the road with hawkers of cigarettes, sweets, and condoms, and beggars soliciting only from the male customers going in or coming out of the many establishments.
Amaka pulled into an empty spot. A woman in bum-shorts and a studded bra squeezed between the Bora and the adjacent Range Rover and only turned back when she saw that it was a woman at the wheel.
Amaka ran her palms over her clothes before she walked towards Y-Not. The bouncer looked her over once, stared into her eyes for a few seconds then let her through. Amaka walked into the smoke-filled bar, stood at the doorway and looked around. She pushed her way through to the bar and sat facing the crowd. Most of the men inside where white, all the women were black and younger than the men, and they were younger than the women standing on the road outside, and better dressed, too. In time, as age eroded their youth, they too might end up on the sidewalk, beckoning to strange men in the night and hoping they did not wave down a killer and end up with their breasts cut off like the girl who’d been dumped in a gutter just yards from where other women now stood.
Amaka turned her back to the waiter and concentrated on the pool tables where a group of four white men were enjoying the attention of eight girls gathered round them at a table to watch a game. One of the men was chalking up while a tall, slender, light-skinned girl in a black slip-on dress lay half across the table aiming to take a shot. The man looked up and saw Amaka watching. He smiled and winked. Amaka winked back.