'What kind of marriage is that? How can they live so far apart?'

'Marriage? Hmm. The girl was a professional mistress before she finally settled down. What do you expect? She just generally eats his money and takes care of his children.'

'So do you people think I should go and ask him for the money?' I interrupted, trying to corner them back into action.

'I think so,' Aunty Dimma replied. 'This money that is causing you people sleepless nights is ordinary chewing gum money to some other people. At the end of the day, he's your flesh and blood.'

She gave me more details about where to find Uncle Boniface's office in Aba.

'Just ask anybody,' she said. 'Tell them you're looking for Cash Daddy.'

Eleven

The streets of Aba were flooded with refuse. The stinky dirt encroached on the roads and caused motorists to struggle through narrow strips of tar. Touts screamed at the tops of their voices and bullied commercial drivers into stopping so that they could extort small denominations from them towards bogus levies. A stark naked schizophrenic with a bundle of dirty rags on her head, danced merrily in the middle of a T-junction. As the okada snaked through the logjam of vehicles towards Unity Road, I nearly fell off the saddle when we rode past two charred human remains sitting upright by the main road.

'Why are you behaving like a woman?' the okada driver laughed.

Next to Onitsha, Aba was the hometown of jungle justice. The people of Aba did not want to depend on their government for everything. They had taken the nobleman's advice literally and asked themselves what they could do for their government instead of what their government could do for them. They had chosen to assist her with the execution of justice. Therefore, when a thief was caught red-handed - whether for picking a pocket or napping a kid - people in the streets would pursue him, overtake him, arrest him, strip him naked, secure him in an upright position, place an old tyre round his neck, saturate his body with fuel, and light a match. The tyre would ensure that the flames continued until all that remained of the felon was charcoal.

My aunty had not been wrong; the okada driver had known exactly where I could find Uncle Boniface.

'Oh, you mean Cash Daddy?' he asked. 'Is it his office or his hotel or his house that you want?'

'I'm going to the office,' I replied.

Being something of a celebrity in this part of the country, I knew more about my uncle from the grapevine and from tittle-tattle than I knew from his being my relative. It was still difficult to correlate the stories of immense wealth with the ne'er-do-well lad that lived with us all those years ago. But then, it was not today that Uncle Boniface started making grubby bucks.

Back in the day, my mother had come up with a novel idea. Tired of sending her girls out to buy drinks on behalf of thirsty customers while they waited to have their measurements taken, or to pick up ready clothes that were having finishing touches put on them, she bought a freezer for her shop so she could make soft drinks available for sale whenever her customers wanted. That idea turned into a major source of income since more and more people who lived on the street soon sought her out as their provider of cold drinks. My father then suggested that Uncle Boniface could go down to the shop after school, to help manage these extra customers.

Secretly, the boy soon perfected the art of opening the cloudy-green ginger ale bottles without distorting the metal corks. After selling the real contents to customers, Uncle Boniface preserved the corks and refilled the empty bottles with an ingenious brew of water and sugar and salt. Then he replaced the metal corks and sold the repackaged water. Sales from the improvised soft drinks naturally ended up in his pocket. Whenever the bottles were being served to those who wanted to drink right there in the shop, he yanked the corks with the opener and made a hissing sound from the corner of his lips at the same time.

My mother watched her customers' faces convert to confusion when they took a sip from their drinks. She listened as more and more people started complaining and tried to figure out the mystery. Then, in a moment of passion and infatuation, Uncle Boniface boasted about his exploits to one of the shop girls. This amorous Belle felt scorned when her beloved Beau diverted his attentions to another girl. In a bout of feminine fury, she squealed.

My mother returned home on the day of the shocking discovery and narrated the incident to my father.

'Are you sure this boy is a human being?' he asked with horror. 'Are you sure he's normal?'

'I flogged him in front of everybody in the shop,' my mother said. 'I'm sure he has learnt his lesson.'

'Flogging? Is it flogging that you use to cure evilness?'

'I think it's his age,' my mother excused her brother. 'Young people tend to play a lot of silly pranks.'

'The boy is wicked,' my father said with certainty. 'This is pure, undiluted Satanism. I'm very uncomfortable about him being around our children.'

To this day, the blame for the demise of that aspect of my mother's business had been piled totally on Uncle Boniface's head.

The okada stopped in front of an unassuming bungalow that was visible behind a high, wrought-iron gate.

'This is his office,' the driver said.

I dismounted and paid.

Seven men and two women were waiting in front. A security man in an army green uniform was leaning on the wrought-iron bars, with his back towards them. Inside the compound was a line up of five jeeps with uniformed men sitting in the drivers' seats. There were two Honda CR-Vs at each end and a Toyota Land Cruiser in the centre.

One of the waiting women walked closer to the gate and stood directly behind the security man.

'Please,' she begged. 'Please, I came all the way from Orlu. I can't go back without seeing him.'

The security man ignored her.

'I won't spend long at all,' one of the men begged. 'Just five minutes. I and Cash Daddy were classmates in secondary school. I'm sure he'll recognise me when he sees my face.'

The security man did not twitch.

'My brother,' the second woman beseeched him, stretching her hands within the bars and touching the security man gently on the shoulder. 'My brother, please, I've-'

Abruptly, the security man turned.

'All of you should get out and stop disturbing me!' he barked. 'Cash Daddy cannot see you!'

He was about to turn away when I moved forward.

'Excuse me,' I said.

'What is it?'

'Good afternoon. Please, I'm looking for Mr Boniface Mbamalu.'

The plebeian was clearly relishing his morsel of authority. He wrinkled his nose and screwed up his eyes, as if examining a splodge of mucus on the pavement.

'Who?'

'Mr Boniface Mbamalu. I'm his sister's son.'

'Cash Daddy?'

'Yes.'

He looked at me from top to bottom.

'Do you have an appointment?'

'No, I don't. But I'm his si-'

Suddenly, there was commotion. The security man forgot that I was standing there and rushed to unlock the gates. The five jeeps simultaneously growled into action. I turned towards the entrance to the bungalow and identified the reason for the commotion. Uncle Boniface, a.k.a. Cash Daddy, was on his way out.

Like my mother, Uncle Boniface was tall. But now that he bulged everywhere, the distance between his head and his feet appeared shorter. He was wearing a pair of dark glasses that covered almost half of his face. His belly drooped out of the cream linen shirt that he wore inside a distinguished grey jacket. He swaggered, looking straight ahead and swinging his buttocks from one side to the other each time he thrust an alligator skin-clad foot forward. Clearly, fortune had been smiling on him.

Five men in dark suits and dark glasses surrounded him. Two walked ahead, two behind, one beside him. When they were nearing the cars, the man beside him rushed ahead to open the back door of the Land Cruiser. Uncle Boniface heaved his bulkiness through the open door and adjusted himself in the back seat. The same man took his own place in the front passenger seat while the remaining four men hopped into the CR-Vs. The convoy glided through the now wide-open gates. Each car had a personalised number plate. The Land Cruiser bore 'Cash Daddy 1', while the first CR-V was 'Cash Daddy 2', the second 'Cash Daddy 3', and so forth. I watched this display in awestruck wonder.

All of a sudden, as if one driver were controlling all five cars, the convoy stopped just outside the gates. The tinted window of the middle jeep slid down. Uncle Boniface's head popped out. He looked back towards the gate, pointed at me, and shouted.

'Security! Allow that boy to go and wait for me inside my office! Right now!'

'Yes, sir! OK, sir!' the gateman replied.

The others waiting by the gate rushed towards the car. Cash Daddy's convoy zoomed on.

Inside the main building, the receptionist was chomping gum with wild movements of her mouth, as if she had three tongues.

'Please have a seat,' she said, and opened a gigantic refrigerator. 'Would you like something to drink?'

I looked at the assortment of drinks stacked into every single compartment.

'No, thank you,' I replied. I did not want to give the impression that I was from a home where we did not have access to such goodies.

There were four girls and three men waiting inside, some variety of drink or the other on a stool beside each of them. One man was gulping down a can of Heineken while his eyes were fixed on the wide television screen that covered almost half of the opposite wall. The television was set to MTV. Some men, whom the screen caption described as Outkast, were making a lot of noise. Despite the boulder of gum in her mouth, the receptionist was noising along. Incredibly, she seemed to know all the words.

Soon, a fresh bout of commotion heralded The Return of Cash Daddy. As soon as he stepped into the office, one of the dark-suited men produced a piece of cloth from somewhere and started wiping Cash Daddy's shoes. Uncle Boniface used the brief pause to look round at those waiting for him. He saw the man drinking the beer and glared.

'What are you doing here? Haven't I finished with you?'

The man stood up and approached him. Uncle Boniface turned away and pointed at one of the girls.

'Come,' he said.

She rose smugly and stiletto-ed along behind him. My uncle zoomed through a set of doors which led further inside the office. His jacket had 'Field Marshal' emblazoned in bold, gold-coloured letters on the back. Without looking back or addressing anybody in particular, he shouted: 'Get that man out of here. Right now!'

Three of the dark-suited escorts immediately went into action. On his way out, the man remembered to grab his Heineken and bring it along.

Twelve

Fortunately, it was not a 'first come, first served' affair. The receptionist announced that Cash Daddy was ready to see me right after the girl came out grinning. One of the dark-suited men escorted me to the same doors through which my uncle had disappeared. We walked down a narrow corridor and stopped at the last door on the right. Inside, the man who had sat in the Land Cruiser with my uncle stood up from behind a computer screen, tapped lightly on an inner door and pushed me inside.

The office was vast and uncluttered. There was a refrigerator in a corner, a large mahogany shelf filled with books that looked like they had never been read, a wide mahogany cabinet that housed several exotic vases, various awards that extolled my uncle's financial contributions to different organisations, and a bronze clock. Stealing most of the attention in the room, a large, framed photograph of Uncle Boniface hung centred on the wall. In it, he was wearing a long-sleeved isi-agu traditional outfit and a george wrapper. He had a beaded crown on his head, a horsetail in his right hand, and a leather fan in his left. Most likely, the photograph was taken during the conferment of a chieftaincy title by some traditional ruler or other who wanted to show appreciation for Uncle Boniface's contributions to his community. Cash Daddy was seated behind the mahogany desk in the centre of the room, which held three telephone sets, a computer, and a Bible.

'Good afternoon, Uncle Boniface,' I said.

'Kings, Kings,' he beamed. 'You're still the same . . . you haven't changed at all. I had to rush out like that because a girlfriend of mine is being chased by a student.'

He swivelled his grand leather chair from one 180-degree angle to the other.

'I heard that he was in her house so I wanted to go and make some noise. Let him know who he's dealing with. Any child who claims that he knows as many proverbs as his father should be prepared to pay as much tax as his father does. Is that not so?'

He swivelled to the left.

'Is that not so?'

'Yes.'

He swivelled to the right.

'Me, I don't play games. I went there with my convoy so that the small boy will be afraid and think twice. Me, I don't believe in film tricks; I believe in real, live action. If he knows what's good for him, he had better clear off. How are you?'

Before I could answer, he stopped swivelling and screamed.

'Aaaaargh!'

I was jolted.

'What is that on your legs?'

Involuntarily, I hopped from one foot to the other and looked downwards. I did not notice anything strange.

'What's that you're wearing on your legs?'

Again, I looked at my feet.

'Are those shoes?' He frowned and looked worried. 'I hope you didn't tell any of the people outside that you're my brother? I just hope you didn't.'

I stared back at him and down at my feet again. The shoes were a gift from Ola for my twenty-second birthday - one of the few items that had come into my possession in a brand new state. As yet, I had never questioned their respectability.

'Protocol Officer!' he yelled.

I was jolted again. It sounded as if he were summoning someone from the next street. The man in the outer office appeared.

'Get this man out of here!'

'Yes, sir,' Protocol Officer replied.

My important mission was about to be botched!