The Missing American Read online

  Gordon was surprised, if not disturbed, by the desire he was experiencing for Josephine. It was the kind of fanged lust that could eat a man alive. He wanted to invite her somewhere for coffee or a drink or dinner—anything, but his sensible side warned him not to begin what he could not finish. Josephine was a married woman, and in a few days, she would be returning to Ghana.

  But she had a surprise for Gordon. As they were about to part ways, she offered to give him her contact information in Ghana. “You must visit soon,” she said as he fumbled with his phone too eagerly. “So much has changed since you were last there.”

  He handed her his phone and she put in her digits. “Actually,” she said, as if the idea had just occurred to her, “I might as well give you my US number while I’m at it.”

  Gordon felt a rush of heady excitement, like a teenager becoming smitten. “Thank you,” he said. “Don’t be surprised if I call sooner than expected.” He tried to pull it off as a little joke, but it seemed to fall flat.

  She humored him, however. “But I would love such a surprise. It would be wonderful.”

  She was smiling and meeting his eyes. There it is, he thought. She is flirting with me. His heart did a somersault.

  THIRTEEN

  January 20

  In the evening, Gordon stopped by for a drink with Casper “Cas” Guttenberg, his oldest and best friend from college. They sat and drank wine in Cas’s luxurious apartment at The Wharf with his old dog dozing at his feet. Cas, who had been a chain-smoker as long as Gordon could remember, was small, frail, and brittle, like a parched twig. His name befitted his completely white hair and ghostly pale skin. He and Gordon were close in age, but Cas was the older—and in Gordon’s respectful opinion, the wiser—of the two. For decades up until retirement, he had been an investigative reporter of note for the Washington Observer. Now he did episodic freelance work for them at his leisure. Crippling arthritis of the hands made typing near impossible, so Cas used a voice recognition system to write his articles. Gordon would never forget that he owed a great deal of his success in DC to Cas’s support and guidance.

  The two men talked politics—both having the inside track of the Washington game—and then family. Gordon admired his friend for his breadth of knowledge, but the awkward truth that no one said out loud was that Casper hadn’t produced a captivating newspaper piece—paper or online—in more than a year. Gordon, wanting to help his friend in some way without appearing patronizing, was always on the lookout for some unique story that could potentially rocket Cas to prominence again, but beyond the usual insanity of politics inside the Beltway, there seemed to be nothing extraordinary. Gordon had the feeling that Casper, too, was waiting for something special to come along—but what, though?

  “How are those fingers holding up these days?” Gordon asked.

  Casper shrugged. “Winter nights are the worst. I hate going anywhere in the evenings.”

  Gordon nodded in sympathy. “I hear ya.”

  “And you?” Cas asked. “Hey, how was the event at the Ghana Embassy yesterday?”

  “Very nice,” Gordon said. “Met a wonderful Ghanaian lady there.”

  “Is that right,” Cas said, eyes dancing a bit. “Name?”

  “Josephine. She’s in DC for a few more days. Married to the inspector general of police in Ghana.”

  “So,” Cas said, “romance in the air?”

  “Did I mention she was married?” Gordon said dryly.

  “What’s your point?”

  Gordon laughed.

  “You going to see her before she leaves?” Cas asked.

  “Thinking ‘bout it. I guess I’d like to. Maybe take her to dinner or something. No sex or anything like that.”

  Cas seemed amused. “Hey, I’m not the damn Pope. No moral judgments here.”

  Gordon chuckled and took a healthy sip of wine. “But speaking of marriage,” he went on, “I wanted to share something with you—see what you think. I’ve been chatting online with a woman who really intrigues me.”

  “Do tell.”

  “She’s Ghanaian, actually.”

  Cas raised his eyebrows. “Two Ghanaian women in a row. You’re on a roll, pal.”

  “Yeah, whatever. Her name is Helena—she lives in Ghana, not in the States. Back in November, just before Thanksgiving, she came to the Widows & Widowers Facebook page and requested to friend me, as they say. She lost her husband four years ago.”

  “Oh. What’s she like?”

  “Well, gorgeous, to start. She’s forty-nine, although her voice sounds younger on the phone. She manages a restaurant in Accra.”

  Cas nodded. “You must enjoy talking to her. Your face lit up just now.”

  Gordon smiled. “I do, I really do. But she’s been struck by misfortune. About three weeks ago, her sister Stella was in a car crash with one fatality. Stella was in the ICU for ten days and then went to a step-down unit.”

  “So, she survived,” Casper said. “Thank God for that. More wine?”

  “Just a little.”

  Cas poured him some. “What’s the health care like over there?”

  “It’s good if you can afford a private hospital.”

  “Helena have money?”

  “Not that kind. I’ve had to help her out.”

  “Well, that’s good of you. What has it run you so far?”

  “Going on three thousand dollars, but I’ll need to send some more. It’s not just the ICU costs, Helena has to buy a lot of the medicines in town and take them to the hospital herself. That includes IV meds.”

  “Really?” Casper said, rubbing his chin. “Imagine our having to do that in the States. Literally go shopping on behalf of the hospital and your loved one.”

  “Yes.”

  There was a brief silence between them. “What’s bugging you about the whole thing?” Cas asked. “I’m reading something in your demeanor.”

  “I don’t know,” Gordon said, blowing air through his cheeks. “I’ve been feeling like I should go to Ghana. To support Helena, and also because it will make things financially much easier if I take some dollars and open a bank account there that we can draw from as needed.”

  “Well, why not?” Cas said with enthusiasm. “I think that would be admirable of you—to render that kind of support to someone in need.”

  “Really?”

  “Absolutely! Why do you seem so surprised?”

  “Not surprised as such. More like happy you feel that way.”

  “Look, you’ve been to Ghana before. You’re no stranger, and who knows?” Cas grinned. “You might get lucky again and marry another Ghanaian woman.”

  Gordon laughed, but the idea stirred him. Cas’s support felt good, and Gordon was closer to making up his mind to make the trip to Ghana. The prospect of meeting Helena in person was heady.

  Cas got up and put his winter coat on. “Where you going?” Gordon asked.

  “Balcony,” Cas said. “Gotta have a smoke.”

  FOURTEEN

  January 21, Accra, Ghana

  The tro-tro’s final stop was Tudu Station. As Emma and fifteen-or-so other passengers got off, she took a breath, relieved to have left the crammed minivan, only to cough from a lungful of tro-tro exhaust.

  Tudu Road, part of old town Accra, was all industry and commerce: warehouses, loading docks, banks, electronics stores, and sidewalk stalls. Emma passed a man haggling with a merchant in front of a tower of cheap, China-made toys. Near Zenith Bank, she sidestepped a menacing motorcycle circumventing traffic by riding on the verge. Ghanaian pedestrians have eyes in the sides and the backs of their heads.

  She turned west, walking into the midafternoon sun. At the double-laned Nkrumah Avenue, Emma waited for a break in the traffic to run across to the old Cocoa Marketing Board building people called Cocobod. It had been impressive in its d
ay, but was no match now for the modern, glossy, glass high-rises dotting Accra’s new and growing skyline: a showy kind of development while many old societal values remained the same as in the forgoing centuries.

  Meters down from Cocobod, Emma entered the slum of the same name. You wouldn’t want to be found dead there, but you could. It was its own small city with crime packed within its walls like a cancerous brain slowly swelling inside its skull—fights with broken-bottle shards, knifings, rapes, and sometimes murders. Most of these took place at night, so Emma was watchful but not afraid. For safety, though, she kept her folded jackknife in the right front pocket of her jeans, as she did whenever she went to a hazardous area of town, and there were quite a few of those. No man attempting to assault her would escape with anything less than a slashed face or a punctured throat. Her father had shown Emma how to fight off a man—just as he had done with Commissioner Andoh—and how to use a knife effectively for her protection.

  Emma didn’t like coming to this part of town, but to see her stepbrother Bruno, she had no choice. He had lived—thrived, really—in Cocobod for years. Each time she visited him, she hoped Bruno had decided to turn his life around. Even before he was a teenager, he had been prone to truancy and mischief. Daddy couldn’t stand Bruno. He threw the boy out of the house and into the jaws of Accra’s streets where Bruno learned to steal, rob, swindle, fight, and use drugs. Now twenty-two, he had had more than his share of trouble with the law.

  While Daddy regarded Bruno as a “bad seed,” Emma had never hated her stepbrother and he had always loved her as his sister. He was physically powerful and could even be dangerous, but toward her he was as sweet as honey straight from the hive.

  Just like everyone else going to and fro, Emma negotiated the unpaved, meandering, narrow pathways between illegally and badly constructed wooden shacks. If a blaze broke out now and burned most of the place down, it wouldn’t be the first time. The stench of a choked sewage gutter blended with the delicious aroma of tatale being fried somewhere. Emma realized, again, that she had barely eaten the whole day.

  She arrived at Bruno’s shack. The door was padlocked, meaning he was out somewhere, which Emma had been afraid of. She had texted him earlier and he had told her he would be home, but Bruno was flaky much of the time. She looked around. A woman with a baby secured to her back was throwing dirty dishwater from a pan into the gutter. Emma approached her. “Good afternoon, Madam. Please, do you know Bruno?”

  The woman had a dead, milky eye on the left and the pinched face of a grasscutter. “Bruno?” she said. “Yes, I know him.”

  “Have you seen him today?”

  “I saw him going that way,” she said, pointing vaguely. Emma followed the woman’s direction more or less, wandering into a spot with a crumbling brick wall, from behind which wafted the sharp, unmistakable smell of wee—marijuana. Perhaps Bruno is here, she thought wryly, because Bruno and the drug were as inseparable as best friends. She circled the wall and found a grimy gap to squeeze through into the compound within. The marijuana in the air hit her airways and she coughed a few times.

  About six guys sat around the perimeter of the compound, some sharing joints. Emma spotted Bruno reclining against the wall in a spot of shade next to a young man he appeared to know. Bruno sat up as he saw her and furtively pocketed his smoke after extinguishing it with his fingertips.

  “Ei, sis!” he exclaimed, jumping up. “What are you doing here?”

  “Looking for you,” she said, dusting off her clothes.

  He bent to embrace her with his six-foot frame of dense musculature. He had a diagonal scar across his forehead from a knife fight when he was sixteen or seventeen. He wasn’t handsome until he smiled, and then he appeared a different man. “Who told you I was here?” he asked.

  “A woman back there,” she said. “How are you, Bruno?”

  “I’m good, sis,” he said, his voice softening. “But I’ve missed you, paa.”

  “Don’t lie,” she teased him. “You don’t even think about me.”

  “Ohh, sis!” he said, flashing that smile. “How can you say that?” He followed her glance at the guy he had been sitting beside. “That’s my boy. Hey, Nii Kwei, moddafocka, make you stop smoking and greet my sister Emma.”

  “Sorry, oo!” Nii Kwei got to his feet and approached. “Good afternoon, Emma.”

  Nii Kwei had coarse Ga features and was slight in physique—Bruno’s exact opposite. Emma shook hands, saying little as she took him in quickly. He had a gold loop in his ear and two gold chains around his neck hanging low over his exposed chest. His black-and-red checkered shirt matched with tight black jeans, which stopped at his bare ankles above apparently brand new red and white Nike trainers.

  “Can I talk to you outside?” she said to Bruno.

  He accompanied her out of the compound. “So watup, sis?”

  She caught an odd inflection and frowned. “What is this American boy accent you’re trying to do?”

  He laughed with some embarrassment. “Come on, sis.”

  “What have you been up to?”

  “Well, you know, I dey here, that’s all.”

  “Did you manage to get a job yet?”

  Bruno crossed his big arms over his chest. “I get construction job last month.”

  “Congrats!” Emma said.

  He shook his head. “But they said they don’t need me anymore.”

  “Oh,” she said with disappointment. “So, what are you planning now? If anything?”

  He hesitated. “I want to go into Internet business with Nii Kwei.”

  Alarms raised in Emma’s head. “What Internet business? Look, don’t think I don’t know what that Nii Kwei is all about. He’s a sakawa boy, right?”

  “No,” Bruno said, too indignantly.

  “What no? Look at his clothes. What kind of car does he drive?” Bruno looked at the ground and muttered something.

  “What?” Emma said. “I didn’t hear you.”

  “Range Rover.”

  “Range Rover!” Emma exclaimed. “What did I tell you? How old is he? Twenty-seven?”

  “Yeah,” Bruno said, squirming.

  “And what normal guy his age can afford a Range Rover except a sakawa boy? Don’t get involved with him, Bruno. Please, I beg you.”

  “It’s okay, Emma,” Bruno said, chewing on the inside of his cheek. “Don’t worry, okay? Nothing bad go happen.”

  “Get a legitimate job, Bruno,” she pleaded, putting her hand on his forearm. “Try to settle down into something honest for a change, eh?”

  He flipped over his palm. “Which job are you talking about? There are none in Ghana.” Bruno’s statement wasn’t far from the truth, but that wasn’t the discussion.

  “I just want you to turn your life around,” she said, staying on topic.

  “I will, I will. It’s just that . . .”

  “That what?”

  Bruno released a big breath. “I don’t know. Let’s talk about you for a while. You’re giving me too much tough time.”

  She laughed.

  “How is your work with the police?” he asked, determined to change the focus.

  Emma turned the corners of her mouth down. “They sacked me.”

  Bruno’s mouth dropped open. “What? When? Why?”

  “Two weeks now. Long story.”

  For a moment, Commissioner Andoh’s assault played in her mind, but she forced it out. “Oh, sorry, sis,” Bruno said with sympathy. He took her hand. “Are you okay?”

  Emma shrugged.

  “I know what that means,” Bruno said. “You’re not really okay.”

  “I will be,” Emma said with a sigh. “Anyway, I’ve managed to get a part-time job at the Accra Mall in the Apple store. I start next week.”

  “Ah, cool. At least you have that.”

 
Emma didn’t mention that she had been hoping to hear from DCOP Laryea’s friend, Yemo Sowah. She was beginning to lose hope. Wouldn’t he have called by now?

  “Come with me and let’s chop waakye, your favorite,” Bruno said, brightening. “I’m hungry.”

  “Of course you are,” she said with a snort. “It’s all that wee.”

  He giggled all the way to the waakye stand.

  FIFTEEN

  January 22, Washington, DC

  It was the night before Josephine was to leave. Gordon had begged her not to do so without his treating her to dinner, at least. “Who knows?” he had told her on the phone. “I may not see you again for a long time. Or ever, even.”

  He knew she would accept. Her initial bashfulness was all a cute act. It made their interaction more interesting—exciting, even. They both enjoyed it.

  At first, Gordon suggested going to one of the highly sought-after restaurants in Georgetown, but from his subconscious came another idea. “Or you could try my fufu and groundnut stew,” he suggested.

  “Are you serious?” Josephine said. “You can make that?”

  “I can. My late wife, Regina, taught me, so I learned from the best.”

  “How could I possibly resist?” Josephine said.

  In truth, it had been a long time since Gordon had made groundnut stew and he had to look up some recipes on the Internet to refresh his memory. The most important first step was to buy the least-processed peanut butter possible. The fufu wasn’t an issue since one could easily buy the powdered, just-add-water version. Real fufu involved strenuous pounding with mortar and pestle. He ran over to Afrik International Food Market in Hyattsville, MD, for the plantain fufu flour. There was more traffic than Gordon had anticipated and when he returned to begin cooking in his recently renovated kitchen, he found himself short on time.