“I shot you?” He sounded genuinely surprised. “Hang on.” Botha accepted a tray loaded with food from the girl at the counter. “You was in the wrong place wrong time what I heard. You know, miss. Could I have his Aloha burger packed up separate to go? Thank you.” He turned to Klay. “Wasn’t me. But that oke was going to cut you was a real meat butcher. I got you the best doctor I could.”

“Say again?”

“I did what I could,” Botha said.

Klay stepped toward Botha. “Those were your people in Kenya. I know it.”

“Know? You know it? Knowledge is a very interesting thing. Thank you, sweet. Like I said, I did the best I could.” Botha handed Klay his sandwich.

Klay set the bag on the counter. Botha’s eyes lingered a moment on the bag; then he plucked napkins from a dispenser and grabbed a handful of ketchup packets.

“I see they put you up for a big award on that story,” he said. “You’ll look good in a tux. I got five tuxes. One I wore to Pablo Escobar’s wedding. You let me know when you’re ready to spend some time. We’ll share a cognac, two or three girls. Have ourselves a braai. We can do a little elephant hun—”

Klay grabbed Botha’s shirt front, driving him backwards along the counter, crushing the milkshakes into his chest. One dropped to the floor and splattered. People gasped. Merlin looked up. Klay saw the boy’s wide eyes and released Botha.

Botha laughed. “You a crazy motherfucker, Klay!”

A security guard was moving in their direction.

“You’ll find out,” Klay snarled. “I’ll see you again.”

Botha was still laughing, wiping milkshake off his shirt as Klay left the restaurant.

“Ya, okay,” Botha called after him. “You want me in prison. Okay. But remember, my bru, the cage you’re in is not always the cage you’re in.”

That night, on the long flight home, Klay closed his eyes and replayed the events following Bernard’s murder. There was a ball of sound, Bernard’s head pitched forward. Next he was lying in the back of a Land Rover on his way to Nanyuki army base, Moses the Green Guardian beside him, Goodson shouting into his phone, “From The Sovereign! A man from The Sovereign!” Then a helicopter ride. A room with pale green paint peeling off the wall and a sputtering fluorescent light. The smell of rubbing alcohol. A fat black man with jaundiced eyes and a small mustache leaning over him, sweat in the creases of his neck. The doctor rushing, barely examining him. More yelling. Bernard’s voice. No. Bernard was dead. Maybe his own voice. Then a boy on his bicycle. Crunching metal, screeching brakes. A thud in his chest. The red lights of an ambulance . . .