Ten Percent for the Table

The importer's name was Mr. Onyeka, and he had the look of a man who had not slept properly since his container landed.

It was sitting at the Tin Can Island port, a short drive from the estate: one steel box, forty feet long, full of ceramic floor tiles from overseas, waiting to be cleared. Clearing is the long walk of paperwork that every container takes before it is allowed out of the port. Mr. Onyeka's container was taking its time. Every day it sat, the port charged him storage fees, which the trade calls demurrage, and which Mr. Onyeka had begun calling other things.

A cousin of a friend had told him: Go to the Warden. At Prizm. He knows people.

So here he was, in his good suit, on a Thursday night, being shown past the dance floor by one of the boys in black, past the stage where the bass made his water glass shiver, past Natasha, who gave him a polite professional smile and pointedly did not follow him, to the carved wooden screen in the far corner and the horseshoe of leather behind it.

"My son!" The Warden rose halfway, which was as far as he rose for anybody. White linen, gold rings, the fly-whisk across his knee. "Sit, sit. You are welcome. You have eaten? You will eat."

Pepper soup arrived without anybody ordering it, and cold drinks, and a small plate of fried meat. Mr. Onyeka had not come to eat. He ate.

There was another man already at the table, a lean man in a cream kaftan with a phone in each hand. "This is Engineer," said the Warden. Nobody had ever established whether Engineer was an engineer. He was a clearing agent, one of the private businessmen who handle the paperwork for goods coming off the ships, and he was known up and down the port road as a man who knew a man.

"I know your container," Engineer said, before Mr. Onyeka had said anything about it. "Forty-foot. Tiles. You filled the form wrong."

Mr. Onyeka put down his spoon. "Can you help?"

"I can help," said Engineer. "I know people. I know the paperwork. I know which queue is short."

And that, as far as anybody at the table would ever say aloud, was the whole of it.

The Warden did not lean in. He leaned back. This was the part he loved, the part he had been born for, the part the stores had trained him for over thirty-one years of counting. He was not a party to anything. He was a host.

"I am only a witness," he said. He laid one ringed hand flat on the table, like a man swearing on a book. "The Scripture says, in the mouth of two or three witnesses shall every word be established. Mr. Onyeka has a problem. Engineer has a solution. I have a table." He smiled. "Tonight, my table is where the problem meets the solution. That is all."

"And for the table?" asked Mr. Onyeka, who was nervous but not a fool.

"Ten percent," said the Warden, gently, as if naming the price of a sausage roll.

"Ten percent of what?"

"Of what you would have lost." The Warden spread his hands. "My son, how many days has the box been sitting? Twelve? Fourteen? Every day the port eats. You came here because the port is eating you. Engineer will stop the eating. I made the introduction. A good introduction is worth ten percent. The laborer," he added, raising a finger, "is worthy of his hire. Luke, chapter ten."

Engineer, typing on both phones at once, said nothing. He had heard Luke chapter ten at this table many times.

Mr. Onyeka did a sum in his head. You could watch him do it, and watch him reach the same answer every man at that table reached sooner or later: it was cheaper to pay the Warden than to keep paying the port.

"There will be a contract?" he asked.

The Warden looked genuinely shocked. "A contract? Between friends?"

He never signed anything. That was the first of his rules. He never touched the goods, never visited the port, never carried an envelope himself, never wrote a number down. Engineer would do Engineer's business. Mr. Onyeka would pay Engineer for Engineer's work. Then, later, separately, through a boy in black or a cousin or a birthday "gift," ten percent would find its way back to the table. If anybody ever asked, the Warden had hosted a dinner. There was pepper soup. He could name the pepper.

And the ledger, the real one, lived where it had always lived, behind his eyes.

"Engineer," the Warden said, turning to him with great fondness, "you remember, in 2019, the generator business. You still owe the table on that."

Engineer stopped typing. "Warden, that one was settled."

"Half was settled. Half." The Warden recited the figure to the naira. Then the date. Then the name of the restaurant where Engineer had promised the other half. Then what Engineer had eaten there. Engineer laughed, the way people laughed at that table, and said he would send it. He would. Everybody always did.

Mr. Onyeka watched this and understood something about where he had come.

"And if a man forgets?" he asked, very lightly, the way you test ice.

The Warden's face did not change. That was the frightening part. It stayed warm and round and pleased with itself, and his voice stayed soft.

"There was a man," he said, "some years ago. He forgot me. Lovely man. Very busy." He reached for his drink. "He moved away. Very far. He says he likes it there." He drank. "Rule one of every gate I ever kept: nobody leaves until the count is correct."

Behind the carved screen, one of the boys in black shifted his weight. Probably his foot had gone to sleep. Probably.

Mr. Onyeka said that ten percent seemed very fair.

"Of course it is fair," said the Warden, beaming. "I am a fair man. Ask anybody on June 12 Street." He swatted at a fly with his fly-whisk. There was no fly. "Eat. The soup is getting cold."

It was after midnight when Mr. Onyeka left, lighter of heart and, in the near future, of wallet. Engineer left soon after, phones glowing. The Warden sat alone in his booth, listening to the show through the wall, tapping his rings on the table in time to the bass, adding a new line to the ledger in his head and enjoying the sound of the column getting longer.

That was when the boy in black came back from the gate.

He did not sit. He bent down and spoke quietly, close to the Warden's ear, and as he spoke, the Warden's rings stopped tapping.

"The policewoman," the boy said. "At the gate. Kemi. She sent back the envelope."