A police van with its siren blaring drove ahead of Ojo’s car. Police officers sat in the open back of the van with their guns pointed at motorists.
‘Lagos is truly the only place in the world where you can go to bed a pauper and wake up a billionaire,’ Ojo said. Shehu listened by his side in the back seat of the Mercedes. ‘Look at me. Just yesterday I was no more than a joke to all those people, and today they are calling me Excellency. Imagine. Lagos na wa o.’
‘You were not really a pauper though, to be honest.’
‘No. But you get my point. In Lagos you can go from zero to hero in less time than it takes to…to… I don’t know. You know what I mean.’
‘A girl I know puts it differently. She says in Lagos you never know whose bed you’ll wake up in. One morning you’re on your tattered single mattress, plagued with lice, on the bare floor of your rat-infested face-me-I-face-you room, and the next day you’re waking up on one-thousand-thread Egyptian cotton sheets in the Intercontinental Hotel next to some senator who’s about to sign a five-million-dollar contract for you. My friend, you have woken up in the right bed this morning.’
Ojo stared out the window watching the low-rise towers of Dolphin Estate fly past. He heaved. ‘Shehu, I have a problem.’ He paused, then added, ‘Do you remember the girl that was with me at Eko Hotel?’
‘That pretty chick you picked from Soul Lounge?’
‘She stole something from me.’
‘That girl? What did she take?’
‘The memory card from my phone.’
‘She stole a memory card from you?’
‘Yes.’
‘What for? What’s on it?’
Ojo looked at Shehu. He checked on the driver. ‘Videos,’ he whispered.
‘Videos? What kind of videos?’
Ojo stared into his friend’s eyes.
‘Oh. I see,’ Shehu said, nodding.
‘No. It’s worse. Some of the…’ Ojo checked on Abiodun again. ‘Some of the girls are young.’
‘How young?’
‘I don’t know. Really young.’
‘Eighteen? Nineteen?’
‘Younger.’
‘How young?’
‘One girl said she was…twelve.’
‘Bura ubanka. Twelve. Olabisi. Twelve. Why?’
Ojo looked out his window.
‘If you want girls, I get you girls, but not kids, Bisi. Not kids. It is haram. And you recorded them. Why?’
‘What can we do, Shehu?’
‘We must find the girl.’
‘I know. Baba said I should tell him any skeletons I have so he can take care of it. I should tell him about this, do you think?’
‘No.’
‘No?’
‘No. Let me take care of it. This is…this is criminal. Twelve? Olabisi Ojo, twelve. Why?’
Ojo turned to look out the window. ‘Please, help me make this go away.’