“Listen, don't take this the wrong way, but I'm not your social worker. I know you probably feel like you've been through the eighteenth circle of hell or whatever, but you can't count on me for this kind of shit. Okay? I don't mean to be harsh. But that's the way it is here these days. There's a lot going on right now.”

He tipped a Camel Light out of a pack, lit it, and blew twin streams of smoke through his nostrils. “You can call them from the hotel. Your family.”

“I'm moved by your compassion.”

He grinned straight ahead. I guess we understood each other. Mine was obviously not the saddest or worst story Ian Flaherty had heard in Lagos. Probably not by a long shot.

“You have any food in this car?” I asked him.

He reached over and popped the glove compartment. There was a chocolate protein drink in a can. It was warm and a little gritty, and nothing had ever tasted better to me.

I threw my head back, closed my eyes, and tried for the first time in three days to relax and, maybe, think in straight lines about the murder investigation and what had just happened to me.

Chapter 45

A HEAVY THUD woke me from a hot, sweaty, and unpleasant sleep.

Maybe only a few minutes had passed. My eyes jerked open just in time to see an old Adidas sneaker bounce off the roof and onto the hood of the Peugeot.

“What the fuck?” Flaherty craned his head around.

We were caught in a bad traffic jam, with cars as far as I could see in front or behind us. “Area Boys. I should have guessed.” He frowned and pointed.

I saw them in the side mirror first. There were at least half a dozen of them. Teenagers, it looked like. They were going from car to car, passing some and stopping at others, robbing drivers and passengers.

“Area Boys?” I asked.

“Like gangbangers, without the bling. Just cockroach thugs. Don't worry about them.”

Two cars back, a flat-faced boy in an old Chicago Bulls jersey reached into someone's driver's-side window and threw a punch. Then his hand came out holding a briefcase.

“We should do something, shouldn't we?” I reached for the door handle, but Flaherty pulled me back.

“Do what? Arrest all of them? Put 'em in the trunk? Just let me handle this.”

Another kid, shirtless with a shaved head and an angry spray of zits across his face, ambled up alongside our car. He leaned halfway into Flaherty's window and raised his fist.

“Give me ya fuckin' wallet, oyinbo man,” he yelled at the top of his voice. “Give it now!”

Flaherty's hand was already reaching down under the seat. He pulled out a Clock and pointed it at the kid from his lap.