Settle Us

Officer Sola held his phone in one hand and AJ's future in the other, and he was paying a lot more attention to the phone.

The two of them were where they always were, just inside the north gate of the estate: Sola, phone up, holster on his hip, scrolling with the steady concentration of a man reading a contract; and Officer Tunde, in his vest, leaning on the barrier. Tunde leaned on everything. He leaned on the barrier, the gatepost, the parked patrol car with GROVE PATROL along its side, the wall, the afternoon. AJ suspected that if you took away everything Tunde leaned on, he would simply lie down.

"AJ!" said Sola, without looking up. "Desert traveler, come settle us before you try that gate."

"Settle you." In Lagos, AJ had learned, to settle someone is to pay them off, politely, so that everybody can pretend it is a favor.

"Easy, AJ," said Tunde, from the barrier. "Settle us first. That gate stays shut until the full amount is paid."

"And the full amount is?"

Sola finally looked up, the way a man looks up when the good part of the film is coming. "Two million, five hundred thousand naira."

AJ laughed. Then he saw that nobody else was laughing, and stopped.

"₦2,500,000," he said. "To walk out of a gate."

"To walk out of this gate," said Sola, as if that settled it. "Other gates have their own prices. We are not responsible for other gates."

Beyond the bars, the road ran north toward the rest of Lagos: the buses, the markets, the offices that might one day hire a man with a London accent and no papers, his uncle in Benin City, everything. On this side there was June 12 Street, a coal pot, a borrowed phone and ₦2,000 from the football.

The desert

The Libya story had been born on AJ's very first afternoon, when Sola looked at his laceless shoes and his ruined arms and decided, in the time it takes to read a text message, that this man had walked home across the Sahara. It had been growing ever since. Every time AJ came near the gate it had a new chapter, and Tunde wrote most of them.

"And the army you dodged?" said Tunde now, settling more comfortably against the barrier. "They searched the dunes while you found the bus."

"There was no army," said AJ. "There was no bus. There were no dunes."

"You see how he talks?" said Sola to Tunde. "Like a man who has seen dunes."

"How many guns did you sell over there, AJ?" Tunde asked. "One suitcase, two? With that serious face, even a water bottle looks classified."

"Zero. I sold my patience, and you are using the last of it. Put the spy movie down."

"All right, traveler," said Sola, grinning, back on his phone. "Save the speech. Settle us, and we can retire the desert jokes."

AJ looked at the two of them for a while. Somewhere along the way, he realized, he had stopped being angry and started being entertained, and he was not sure which of them had planned that. He thought of the old man in the cell. Laugh small. They will get tired.

He sighed and looked down at his sneakers, still wet from the drain. "The desert took plenty," he said. "These shoes are doing their best. You two charge more than the sand."

Tunde slapped the barrier with joy. Even Sola looked up. For a second, all three of them were just men at a gate, laughing at a terrible joke in the heat.

Then Sola held out his hand. "Little by little is fine. Settle us."

AJ counted out ₦1,000 of his football money and put it in the hand.

"You don pay ₦1,000," said Tunde, writing in a small notebook. You have paid. "Remain ₦2,499,000."

"Don't round it, then."

"We never round. Rounding is how a man gets confused."

From somewhere behind AJ came the brisk footsteps of a man with good shoes and bad news. Dozie, phone in hand, stopped beside him and counted a single note into his palm as if handing over the deed to a house.

"Here. ₦50. First installment," said Dozie. "Write it down so history remembers that Chidozie pays his debts."

AJ looked at the ₦50. He looked at Dozie, who was already walking away, phone at his ear, saying "Boss, boss, I'm listening." Then he held the note out to Sola.

Sola looked at it. "Fifty naira? Is this a payment or an apology?"

"It's a historic payment," said AJ. "Write it down."

Tunde wrote it down. "Remain ₦2,498,950."

Sarge

Beside the main gate stood a small gatehouse with a hatch in the wall and a hand-painted sign: MALLAM GARBA / SARGE. Behind the hatch sat a lean, gray-bearded man with a radio, a shelf of biscuits and painkillers and mosquito coils, and the straight back of somebody who had stood to attention for thirty years and saw no reason to stop.

"Sannu, AJ." Hello, in Hausa. "Back again? This window is becoming your second address."

"I've just paid the gate a thousand and fifty naira," said AJ. "I have two million, four hundred and ninety-eight thousand, nine hundred and fifty to go."

"Ah." Sarge passed him a cold sachet of water without being asked. "That London accent cannot negotiate with hunger. Have some water and take your time."

AJ drank it in one go. "It's impossible."

"It is large," Sarge corrected him. "That is different. In the army we said a soldier eats an elephant one bite at a time." He thought about it. "Also, he does not tell the elephant his plan."

"I'm earning a thousand a break as a ball boy."

"Then you will be a very good ball boy." Sarge folded his arms on the counter. "Listen. They will take anything you bring: a thousand, five thousand, twenty thousand. Do not be ashamed of small money. Pay a little, often, and always when they can see you. Then they know you are serious, and a serious man gets fewer jokes." He paused. "Fewer. Not none. Planning ahead kept me alive in the army. It will keep you alive here."

"Do not be ashamed of small money. Pay a little, often, and always when they can see you."

"Thank you, Sarge."

"The gate officers call me Sarge when they want advice," said the old soldier, "and Mallam when they want snacks on credit. You, I think, will want both."

The sun was going down over Navy Town, and the cranes at the port caught the last of it. Over Kirikiri's long wall, the watchtower lights came on one by one. And up June 12 Street, at the very end, a sign AJ had not noticed flickered and lit, a deep, cool purple, over a tall house with a pool deck and a rooftop full of fairy lights. The number on the gate read 1145.

Sarge saw it too. Something in his face closed, the way a hatch closes.

"That place belongs to the Warden," he said. "Prizm, he calls it. When a man in white linen calls you 'my son,' AJ, count your fingers after you shake his hand."

"Who's the Warden?"

Sarge turned up his radio, which was the end of the conversation. "Tonight is Friday," he said. "You will see."