Twisted Times: Son of Man (Twisted Times Trilogy Book 1) Page 6

  “I already know…”

  “Forget it, Kennedy. Many of the accidents that happen daily are not what we see, there’s more to accidents than it catches the eye.”

  “Are you trying to threaten me? Because I don’t respond to threats.”

  “Threaten you? Sweet Jesus. I’ve got better things to say than threaten you. It’s just a precaution.”

  We went back to where Arnold was waiting for us. I resented Arnold for all what he had done. I vowed to even never talk to him again. Never. It were better the friendship be no more.

  A week later I ended up telling Arnold to arrange a meeting for me with Urbanas.

  CHAPTER 29

  Just do it.

  Don’t even think about it.

  Just do it.

  Do it.

  It was unerringly 11:55 p.m. when Arnold dimmed the headlights of the Datsun pick-up van. We were four of us less Urbanas. Urbanas was the boss, he took care of the obstacles that might hinder our operations. The authorities listened to him. They always listened to student leaders of state universities.

  The gate to the cemetery was un-manned and Arnold got out of the car and pushed it open. The pick-up took the murram road into the dark derelict compound. It was a dark moonless night, and so we had the guarantee of being unseen. The congenital human fear of such places gripped me, and I trembled with trepidation.

  The whole aura of such places engrossed us, or rather me for I was feeling ghosts all around reaching out to touch me. Just do it. Don’t even think about it.

  We set to work on the fresh grave that I showed them. We shovelled quickly in turns, and within few minutes, the coffin became visible. It was golden featuring a silver medallion all round.

  “Such a waste!” it was one of the other guys whom I was introduced to when I joined the fold. He was Jackson Muiruri from Naivasha. “How can we let this go to waste in the polluted soil of Nairobi?”

  Arnold smiled sardonically, and I thought what he was thinking was what I was thinking – the money from tonight’s raid.

  We took a five-minute respite and then prepared to haul up the casket. The task proved to be more easily said than done than I had anticipated. It was eminently heavy and we heaved and tugged for a quarter an hour before it rested higgledy-piggledy atop the mould of earth.

  The sight of the dead almost made me throw up. He was a man, undoubtedly who had had some exotic blood flowing through his veins during his earthly days. Once the coffin was no longer his he was tossed back to the grave and given a primitive burial.

  “May the soul of our brother rest in peace,” Arnold said as he threw the last spade full of soil on the grave. The deceased had had the privilege of getting two obsequies. Not many got the chance.

  As I climbed at the back with the other guy, a rogue from Kibera whom I knew as Dickson, famously known as Dick as in dick especially to the girls, I took in a deep breath and stared into the dark home of the faithful departed. What a travesty?

  “Wait for your cheque, Son of Man,” it was Arnold as he rounded the car to take the co-driver’s seat.

  I had completed my first job.

  CHAPTER 30

  It was a Sunday morning. I was feeling as though I had been run over by a truck. I couldn’t be feeling better after the previous night’s hard labour without strokes of the cane. I was preparing to go to church. That’s when she called.

  “What are your plans after the service?” she asked.

  “I don’t know.”

  “Come on, brother. Don’t always be the hard to get type of person. I just…” she paused. “Forget I asked.”

  “To forget is very easy for me,” I said indifferently. “What bowls me over is the fact that I never knew I had a sister this big.”

  “Son of Man, you’ve got a very dry sense of humour yet I find you indulging.”

  I said nothing.

  “Tell me something I don’t know Ken, or you like SOM better?”

  “Whichever, but if you don’t want to hurt me stick to Ken. So, what don’t you know?”

  “You.”

  “I never knew I was something.”

  There was an awkward silence from her side before she said, “I don’t know anything about you.”

  “My plans were to tell you about myself today after the service, if there’re no those prayer meetings of yours after the service.” I lied.

  “You are not making that up… tell me you are serious.”

  “Remember I do have a very dry sense of humour.”

  Well, the after service, prayer meeting was there, but she promised to boycott. Sounded like a plan to me, though I was cornered. I did not expect her to miss a prayer meeting to be with me. I had hoped it would be an excuse for me not to go to church with her, but guess I was going to make a trip to the Nashville University chapel for the service simply because I felt I owed it to Terry.

  She was clad in those church gowns her Christian group had bought for everybody in the group. They wore them on Sundays and when attending other church related functions.

  From that day she saw me sleeping and hypothetically talking in my sleep she had become more attached to me. She asked me to be attending their prayer meetings at the chapel if, and when, I had the time. It was just two weeks since then, and I was feeling that she was getting fixated with me to the extend of doubting her motives.

  At the chapel, as usual, they read both the old and new testaments with two readings from the New Testament, the Catholic Church tradition, and as usual I slept during the sermon. It was almost one o’clock in the afternoon when the Mass was over. She invited me over for lunch at her place.

  “What do you think of an evening together? I would very much appreciate.”

  She’s damn famished… “Maybe, maybe not.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Nothing. Forget I said.”

  “I don’t know how to forget.”

  “It’s not what I meant… I would like to, but I don’t know what to say.”

  “I’ll do everything, even the talking. You just sit there and let everything happen.”

  And I was of the opinion that OTTYs had working class men whom they had every week? I wondered what she really wanted from me. God, let it be not what I am thinking.

  A rather sadistic thought crossed my mind; not just sadistic but carnal. If what I was thinking was what she was really thinking I felt as though I was in some kind of a porn movie.

  Terry’s room was adorned with flowers and pictures of Jesus, the Virgin Mary, the Holy Family, and saints. There was a statue of the Virgin Mary dressed in white and pale blue on her study table.

  “Ken, this is my...”

  “I can see,” I said before she could say what she wanted.

  “So, feel at home. I will be back in five minutes.”

  She put the stereo on and the cool and snooze RnBs from Easy FM played. I felt at home. She shimmered away after pouring some juice in a wineglass for me. Five minutes or so later, she came back in black hipster pants and a sleeveless top. The church girl was erased, no longer looking like Mother Theresa. She sat opposite me, and looked at me straight in the eyes. She’s beautiful. She likes me.

  She wanted to know me better according to her, how come I called myself Son of Man, my family background and generally my life.

  “From the time you told me that you are called SOM I’ve wanted to know more about you. Could you be Jesus?” she asked jokingly.

  Terry was jolly, chaffy, good-humoured and loquacious. All what she wanted was to have me in her Christian Union Society. Seriously! What a waste of my precious time. She said that she just liked me, I seemed to be a good guy, and she wanted to help me. Her help involved pulling me to her Christian club. I could not. My religious penchant by a long way changed when I left seminary.

  I was sorry that I couldn’t. I just told her that I could not be actively involved.

  Terry was a staunch Roman Catholic from the outskirts of Nairobi, from
a family of four. Her father was a lawyer by profession and working in the Ministry of Finance, and her mother a business lady. She was the last born, the only girl.

  She called me her brother and although I did not join her Christian encampment, she was good to me. She introduced me to her friends, but I was smart enough to put on my mask effectively. Could they know that I was a criminal?

  She said, “Brother, if you need anything just tell me. I’m terribly sorry about what happened to you.”

  “No. Do not fret yourself about me. I’m just fine.”

  “Sure you are fine. How fine if you don’t even have a home to go to?”

  “Believe me. I am fine.”

  She did not buy it. She wanted to reach out and help. I officially became her benefactor, probably her charity programme, and her younger brother.

  CHAPTER 31

  His friends saw him through when Grace left. He almost lost hope, but in the middle of nowhere he saw how friends could be of help. They gave him his life back.

  For the umpteenth time Job remembered the events of that fateful day with resentment. It was his friends who introduced Grace to him. He fell in love, forever he said, with her. He did everything to have Grace, and it was barely three months after their meeting when they tied the knot. It was the wedding of the year – and the Bridal Wedding Show of the decade.

  The bliss of marriage faded even before the honeymoon ended. He had businesses to do. She too had her businesses. They were always travelling, no time to start a family. He to the US, South Africa, the Middle East, and all other countries where his businesses took him to; her to Dubai, Pakistan, China, and all places that guaranteed her perpetual gallivanting.

  It was in one of those days when they bumped in to each other at the Amsterdam airport – unexpected yet pleasant surprise. He was glad to see her. He never made it to even shaking her hand, though. He wanted to hug her, give her the kiss of the decade when another man occupied the space by her side. The events of that day never left him – the hurt, the betrayal, the disappointment.

  More was waiting for him when he got back home. He had no employees, and no business premises. All had been reduced to cinders – courtesy of Grace as he came to know later. It was Edna who told him what Grace exactly did with her Nigerian lover – Oga had used juju on Grace. Though Edna stood by Job those dismal days, he never trusted women again.

  From the blue, Samson Ndolo from Kitui promised to raise him up to walk on the stormy sea. The two forged a business relationship, and became inseparable friends. Job got his life back, but trod more carefully. Within three years he was far much ahead from a single wholesale and retail trader. Sam saw to it, talked to his friends. Job always did what Sam and his friends told him to do, what they advised him to do. He never questioned them, nor stood one single time to prove a point; he trusted only them and no one else. His was a story of from grace to grass to grace. He owned several chain stores and supermarkets, Naiville Holdings.

  Events of the previous month at the airport flashbulbed on Job’s mind mixed with the grotesque images of Grace – the hurt, the betrayal, the disappointment. He couldn’t help thinking that somebody close to him was behind the mess he was in.

  Somebody was setting him up. Somebody wanted him down.

  The air around was full of people’s whispers promulgated by the press. The press knew of the shipment that Sam had told him about. His friends could, and would, not allow the press to publish their conjecture, and they could not afford an investigation. They needed a diversion. Job ran the scenario in his mind and saw the whole plan. At the moment the news were full of him and Edna. A businessman and his secretary arrested at the airport and detained for drug trafficking.

  But Job had crucial information that could sell like hot cake, and set him free – he knew what was happening at the heart of drug trafficking, knew the elusive, ghostly drug lords; the origin and point of sale, and how the narcotics left the country. All what he had to do was to seek a meeting with the new kid on the block of the Kenya Police, the celebrated incorruptible Kenya Police’s Anti-Narcotics Unit boss or NACADA. Then he would be enrolled on the WITSEC. Witness Security would then give him a new faceless life. Then the drug trafficking bubble would be burst.

  After their arrest at JKIA, Job paid an insurmountable amount of money to bail Edna and him out while police carried out their investigation. He could not help thinking that he was being sacrificed.

  Just then, the day’s dailies were delivered. It was on the front page of the two dailies; Kenyans sentenced to death over drugs in China.

  Drugs again.

  He hated the mention of the word leave alone reading about it. Since the airport incidence he tried as much as possible not to know more about drugs, but out of curiosity he read the story.

  Grace was amongst those to face the hangman’s noose in China.

  CHAPTER 32

  Samson’s house was a well-cared-for mansion on a three-acre piece of land in Muthaiga, Nairobi. Exotic trees surrounded the compound rendering the place an obstructed view from passers-by. His house was the rendezvous for his secret business meetings. Only few people came to this house. He was very strict with his territoriality. He would instruct the guards that he had P.E. and he should not be disturbed. Private Evening meant that unless one had an official invitation could not enter his compound.

  This day, in a small cosy room a group of seven men and a woman met. Everything discussed never left the sound-proof room – they had sworn each other to secrecy.

  But from a reliable source something was leaked out of the room by someone amongst them that they had something to do with the recent death of the minister for finance, and something else that would shock the country was coming up at the coast. Somebody had spoken to the press…

  The press already knew.

  It was one of them, or someone closer. The question was, who?

  That’s why they were meeting.

  CHAPTER 33

  2003;

  The fallen children of darkness, that’s what we were. Vampires. Ghosts only heard in the darkness of the night whistling by the unlucky few.

  At night we would go to rob the dead of their last signs of love and affection from their families, their last possessions in their transience. It was almost a year now since I joined the Mavis gang and I was changed. The inborn human fear of the places we visited at night to steal coffins was long gone. To us it was a waste of resources for caskets costing hundreds of thousands going to waste in the polluted soils of this world.

  We used to work in cahoots with the right people – coffin merchants, morgue attendants, and undertakers. They were very reliable, and after a successful business they always got a tip. All we had to do was trail the hearse, mourn the dead with the bereaved yet be conducting reconnaissance, earmark the exact place of the grave and leave with everyone else whether it was at a public cemetery or private home.

  At night we would go back to pay a visit to the dead, retrieve the coffin and leave. However, even though our conscience had long died and decomposed, there were some things I saw being done I strongly repulsed – necrophilia. I could not imagine how a dead woman, no matter how beautiful and sensuous she was even in death, could arouse me. But it happened. Some of the gang members had sex with the corpses, as though on dictate by evil powers to perform the macabre acts for initiation into the occult world of money. I wondered how he could tumescent, force himself inside the frozen pudenda and enjoy the act, even ejaculate inside.

  We would take the coffin to a certain coffin dealer in town who would pay well depending on the condition of the casket. He would then make necessary modifications and resell it. Unless we had more clients the same coffin could be sold and resold even seven times.

  For a year now I had navigated through the murky waters of university life. My secret life gave me what I wanted – money, women, and booze.

  Then came the time we expanded our business.

  The guru and masterm
ind, Urbanas the philosopher and thinker, boss of the underground, always came up with business policies and strategies. We graduated to highway robbers, but it was just a cover. We were to be used as a ragtag militia of someone whom up to date is still unknown, a mystery. Urbanas never went into the details, he said the less we knew the better. We had to devise ways on how to execute our missions on the highways, without blowbacks. It was fine with us so long as we got paid.

  The best thing was that Terry never knew about me, or so I believed.

  CHAPTER 34

  Terry and I had a purely platonic relationship. As I was her brother she did not hesitate to warn me against activities profane, epicurean, unbridled hedonism and sex, drugs and whatever else she felt would endanger my life. I did not try to argue with her or show her in the slightest that I was a totally opposite side of the whole quirk of fate. I was a mask, a beautiful mask. I did not want to hurt her she who thought that I was living under her auspices.

  I had an array of lovers Kate topping the list. At the university I had Trizzer, a third year student of accounts, and the other two were working whom we met only when they called for the regular oiling of joints.

  A Strictly No-Strings-Attached sex relationship, the other was a lecturer. I wondered how many young men she had lured to her web and trapped with her charm. But this I must give her – she scooped the gold in bedmington.

  The last of them was a banker working with a leading bank, an MBA, married but available. She never knew of the spinster lecturer, Trizzer and Kate. The good thing about this whole thing was that there was a stipend. But I had to break up with Trizzer. According to her she had observed me over a long period of time and found out that I could not keep away from the skirts, and my hands couldn’t get off titties.