'Kings, please come and tell me what you think,' Ogbonna called out from his desk.

I went and studied the letter on his screen.

DEAR FRIEND IN CHRIST, CALVARY GREETINGS IN THE NAME OF OUR LORD.

I AM FORMER MRS MARIAM ABACHA AND NOW MRS MARY ABACHA A WIDOW TO LATE GENERAL ABACHA. I AM NOW A CHRISTIAN CONVERT. I INHERITED ALL MY HUSBAND'S WELTH WHICH I INTEND TO SHARE OUT PART OF IT AS MY CONTRIBUTION TO EVANGELISATION OF THE WORLD BECAUSE I KNOW NOW THAT WELTH WITHOUT CHRIST IS VANITY UPON VANITY.

YOUR CHURCH WAS SELECTED TOGETHER WITH OTHER- The grammatical errors stood up from the page and punched me right in the middle of my face.

'Please, move,' I said.

Ogbonna shifted away, allowing me space to take over his keyboard. Unlike Azuka and Buchi, he had never made it to university. The level of language in our emails did not matter, though. It was probably just the purist in me. Apparently, mugus were never really surprised to see an African emitting dented English.

When I finished with the corrections and returned to my desk, Mr Hooverson's reply was waiting. Perhaps it would simply be a 'Get lost, you orangutan! What a load of balderdash!' Well, life would simply go on to the next mugu. A new one was born every minute. With heart pounding against my teeth, I opened the email.

Dear Shehu, ALUTA CONTINUA!

My heart REALLY goes out to you people. I'm not going to pretend that I know what you're going through, though, but it's at times like this that I'm THANKFUL for the USA being such a free country where JUSTICE and the RULE OF LAW prevail. Like I said before, I'm WILLING to do whatever it takes to HELP.

You could not have made a BETTER CHOICE. I am a business EXPERT and can give you some PROPER ADVICE on how to invest your money. Along with copies of my passport and driving license, in my next email, I'll also send an attachment with some IDEAS I've come up with for INVESTING your money right here in the USA. I have INSIDE INFORMATION about a few business deals that should interest you especially if you have your eyes on REAL ESTATE. Let me know what you think after reading the document.

I do some business traveling, but I don't get to go to Europe very often. I am a part owner of LUMMOX UTILITIES and our offices are in Mississippi. It shouldn't be a problem for me to take some time off and do a SPECIAL TRIP to Europe on your behalf.

Don't forget to have a look at my business ideas and LETME KNOW what you think.

Best,Edgar Each word was as pleasant as the clinking of dishes on a tray. A fresh rush of that good old thrill coursed through my veins. No one could accuse me of being dishonest when I addressed Edgar Hooverson as 'my dear friend' in my next email.

MY DEAR FRIEND EDGAR, YOU SOUND LIKE A VERY TRUSTWORTHY FELLOW AND I'M HAPPY THAT I MADE THE RIGHT CHOICE. HOWEVER, I WANT YOU TO FURTHER ASSURE ME THAT YOU WILL NOT DEPRIVE ME OF MY SHARE OF THE FUNDS WHEN THE MONEY GETS INTO YOUR ACCOUNT. ON THAT NOTE, I HAVE ATTACHED AN AGREEMENT FORM. A SOUND BUSINESSMAN SUCH AS YOURSELF MUST KNOW THE UTMOST IMPORTANCE OF CONTRACTS, EVEN IN BUSINESS DEALINGS BETWEEN TWO CLOSE FRIENDS.

AS SOON AS I RECEIVE THE AGREEMENT, I SHALL IMMEDIATELY INSTRUCT MY ATTORNEY TO PERFECT THE CHANGE OF BENEFICIARY, AND WITHIN 4 WORKING DAYS, YOU SHALL BE CONTACTED BY THE SECURITY COMPANY FOR COLLECTION OF THE CONSIGNMENT IN AMSTERDAM.

THANKS ALSO FOR THE BUSINESS PROPOSALS. I WILL GO THROUGH THEM AS SOON AS POSSIBLE AND LET YOU KNOW WHAT I THINK.

PLEASE CALL ME ON MY CONFIDENTIAL CELLULAR PHONE FOR A BRIEF DISCUSSION (090 893456). I DON'T HAVE ENOUGH CALL TIME TO CALL YOU.

GOD BLESS AMERICA! GOD BLESS ALL OF US!

I AWAIT YOUR IMMEDIATE RESPONSE.

REGARDS,SHEHU MUSA ABACHAALUTA CONTINUA!

I was finetuning the email for the billionth time, when my intercom bleeped.

'Kings, Cash Daddy wants to see you,' Protocol Officer said. 'Now.'

I clicked Send before I went.

Cash Daddy had recently taken an excessive interest in newspapers. He had a vendor deliver ten different dailies every morning, which he perused page by page. He ran a commentary on and generated fresh topics from the headlines. He asked me to read lengthy opinion-editorials and give him a verbal summary of whatever the writers had said. Unlike my father, instead of throwing tantrums when he read something outrageous, he nodded his head and saw a new perspective on life.

'Well,' he once said after reading about a reform-minded gubernatorial aspirant who had been assassinated in Ekiti State, 'at least it will always be remembered that he died for the cause of democracy.'

Now, his eyes remained transfixed on whatever he was reading on the front page while I sat beside Protocol Officer and waited. At last, Cash Daddy snapped up his head.

'Government,' he said. 'That's where the real money is. Do you know how much money Nigeria makes from oil? Billions and billions of dollars. And it belongs to all of us. There's no reason why people like me should not be able to taste some of it. After all, we're all Nigerians.'

He tossed the newspaper on top of the thick, black Bible that was open to the book of Ecclesiastes on his desk. I glimpsed the bold front-page headline of the story he had been engrossed in.

SCOTLAND YARD ARRESTS NIGERIAN STATE GOVERNOR IN LONDON WITH 2 MILLION CASH 'Kings, you're no longer a little bird,' Cash Daddy continued. 'It's time for you to fly out of the nest. I'm having an important meeting with a mugu next month. Ask Dibia to start sorting out the documents for your UK visa. You're travelling to London with me.'

My heart jumped twice and somersaulted thrice. My intestines started tying themselves up into tight knots. I had always wondered what England, the celebrated land of my father's traveller's tales, was like. But for the first time ever, I was going to be face-to-face with one of our mugus.

'Why is your face like that?' Cash Daddy asked.

I must have looked as if I wanted to run up a tree and hide, then uproot the tree and pull it up after me.

'Kings, there's nothing to be afraid of. What can a white man do to you? Oyibo people are harmless. It's not today I started dealing with them. There's no reason why you should be afraid.'

Yes, I had reason to be afraid. The Columbine murderers and the Unabomber and Dr Harold Shipman. I forced my face to look less terrorised.

'Where are those documents?' Cash Daddy asked.

Protocol Officer whipped out a sheaf from a folder in front of him. This one must be big. Cash Daddy had boys working for him in Amsterdam, Houston, London. As a godfather, he hardly ever got directly involved in a job unless the dollar prospects were colossal - large enough to require a foreign bank account. He was the only one who knew the details and locations of these foreign accounts, the only one who dealt directly with the bankers.

'Kings, read them,' Cash Daddy said.

I started with the business proposal on top of the pile. The left corner of my mouth twitched slightly.

'What is it?' he asked.

'No . . . nothing.'

'Why were you laughing?'

'I wasn't-'

Protocol Officer chuckled. That gave me the confidence to tell the truth.

'Is that his real name?' I asked.

'No, no, no, no,' Cash Daddy reprimanded in a soft, serious voice. 'You people shouldn't laugh at him. Do you know that this is the man whose money is going to feed your children and your children's children and your children's children's children?'

On that note alone, the mugu could be forgiven. After all, his money was all that really counted. But what on earth had the man's ancestors been thinking when they took a name like Winterbottom upon themselves?

Twenty-three

Satellite TV bought me my freedom from the national prison sentence of having nothing else to watch at 9 p.m. every day, when all the local TV stations in the land switched to Lagos for the Network News. Occasionally, however, it made sense to touch base with home, irrespective of how doctored the local news might be. I reached for the remote control and flicked from BBC to NTA.

A disgruntled Senator from the thirty-third largest political party had decamped to form a brand new party of his own. Another billionaire had declared his intentions to join the presidential race. Exactly as I and my mother had warned Eugene, the Wild, Wild Western Nigeria was a-boiling. Apart from the usual riots and disruption of the voters' registration process, this morning, yet another House of Assembly aspirant in Oyo State had been assassinated. This recent killing brought the total number of politically motivated assassinations in the country to twenty three. Within this election period alone.

Different public awareness campaigns had been encouraging people to turn out for the voters' registration process. The posters, the announcements on radio and television, insisted that it was a civic responsibility and the only opportunity to make a change. Apparently, the public were responding well. A reporter had turned up at one of the voters' registration centres in Enugu and was interviewing the masses.

'How long have you been waiting here?' she asked.

In the background, a multitude was buzzing around.

'I've been here since 6 a.m.,' the man replied.

'That means you've been waiting for about ten hours.'

'It's my civic responsibility,' he replied proudly. The haggard man had my father's Nigeria-is-a-land-flowing-with-bottled-milk-and-jarred-honey tone of voice. 'This current regime has done nothing for us and it's time for change. I'm ready to pay any price to vote.'

Pity that such a well-spoken man had been taken in by all that hogwash. The only power to change anything that needed changing was the power of cash.

My cellular rang. I reached across the vast mattress and grabbed it from the edge of my sixth pillow. Real feathers. John Lewis, House of Fraser.

'Where are you?' Cash Daddy bellowed.

'I'm at home.'

'I'm just coming from the golf club,' he said. 'You know it's not everybody who wants to join that they allow. I'm going to see one girl . . . that beautiful girl from Liberia who's been begging to have a baby for me. Today's her birthday.'

He paused. I knew he could not have finished.

'Honestly, I won't mind allowing her to have a baby for me, but Liberia's too far. You know how these women behave. One day she'll just wake up and tell me she's taking my child back with her to Liberia and I don't want that type of rubbish. You know they all have one kind of funny accent. I won't spend long at the birthday. I just want to show my face and dash her some small pocket money. From there, I'll go straight home. Come and see me.'

At Cash Daddy's mansion, the gateman threw open the gates before I honked the horn. I parked my Grand Cherokee Jeep beside Cash Daddy's latest Acura. I strode inside and headed for the stairs. The four young men seated at the dining table greeted me fervently. I mumbled a reply and marched up, taking the stairs three at a time.

In Cash Daddy's bedroom, I glanced around. Then I pushed the door of the bathroom. He was scrubbing himself in the shower.

'Kings, Kings! How are you?'

'I'm fine, tha-'

'Have you heard from Dibia about the documents for your UK visa?'

'Yes. He said they'll be ready soon.'

'Very good, very good.' He looked me over from top to toe and wagged his finger at me. 'Make sure you buy some proper clothes before we go. You can't follow me around looking like this.'

Cash Daddy paused to scrub under his arms while I surveyed my shirt - new, but obviously not good enough. Well, truth be told, despite my Swatch and my Lexus, I had not yet completely relaxed into the habit of lavishing things like clothes on myself. Some of Wizard and Ogbonna's shirts could have funded my siblings' tuition for two whole semesters.

'As soon as we come back,' Cash Daddy continued, 'tell him to start working on documents for your US visa. Those ones might take a little longer. You know the Americans are much more difficult.'

I nodded. I had heard that the American was the one embassy where no officials agreed to have their palms greased in exchange for visas or for keeping closed eyes about spurious documents. Even booking an interview date with either of their embassies, in Abuja or Lagos, could take several months. But Dibia's skill was truly a gift from God. It had never failed.

'Honestly, America's the place,' Cash Daddy said. 'Not just that the people are very generous, you can't even say you've ever been abroad until you've been to America. Kai!'

He stopped scrubbing and jerked his head as if trying to contain the weight of the memories that had just come upon him.

'Is it the houses . . . is it the food . . . is it the roads . . . is it the women . . . ? You'll see all types of women with all types of complexions; you won't even know which one to choose. In America, you'll understand why it's good to have money, because you'll keep seeing things to spend it on.'

He stepped out of the shower and yanked a large towel to start drying his body. Once again, I wondered how the scrawny urchin who had lived with my family all those years ago, had metamorphosed into this fleshy edifice. Cash Daddy's cheeks were puffy, his neck was chunky, his five limbs were thick and long. I half expected his bloated belly to wriggle free of his body and start break-dancing on the tiled floor in front of us. It seemed to have a life of its own. He dropped the used towel on the floor and grabbed one of the many toothbrushes in a glass mug on the washbasin.

'Come and put some toothpaste for me,' he said.

I reached out for the tube of Colgate. Despite my extreme carefulness, his belly still brushed against my hand. He held out his toothbrush while I squeezed the white paste. When I had finished my task, I withdrew to a less discomforting distance.

'By the way,' he continued, in a more subdued and official tone. 'I have an emergency meeting with the police commissioner tomorrow and I want you to be there.'

'Do we have any problems?' I had never accompanied him to see the commissioner before.

Cash Daddy grated his throat twice and spat.

'One should remove the hand of the monkey from the soup before it becomes a human hand. The main reason for the meeting is for us to make sure that there's no problem. He didn't tell me much, but it looks like there are some places where we've made one or two mistakes and he wants us to take it easy.'

His cellular phone rang. I rushed to pick it up from the bathroom mat and held it out to him. Cash Daddy glanced at the screen and made a quick sign of the cross like a priest being pursued by the devil. I knew immediately that it was his wife calling. Something to do with the children. Conversing with his wife was one of those uncommon occurrences when Cash Daddy did more listening than talking.

When he finished, he chuckled, and asked if I had seen the latest photographs of his children. I had not.

'Ah. I just got them. Come let me show you.'

He led the way out of the bathroom, stopping briefly at the door to scratch the inside of his thigh. He opened his bedside drawer and extracted some photographs. He handed them to me with the sort of smile that you have when presenting a beloved friend with a priceless surprise gift. I tried to appear commensurately keen.

In the first one, the five cherubs and their mother were all dressed up - the two girls in long, flowing frocks, the three boys in black dinner jackets and red bow ties, their mother in a clingy, sparkly red dress that made her look like a tall goldfish. He explained that they had all attended some ceremony in the eldest child's school. This eldest son was enrolled in an exclusive boarding school in Oxford.

'He even won an award,' Cash Daddy beamed proudly. 'Anyway, I'm not surprised. Whatever the python gives birth to must eventually be long. I know that boy is going to be great in this world. Greater than me even.'

The children all looked like distant cousins of Princes William and Harry. Graceful and illustrious. There was not the slightest trace of that untamed look on their faces, the look that neither diverse currencies nor worldly comforts had quite erased from their father's countenance. I tried to imagine the distinguished accents that would come forth when they spoke.

Interesting - these offspring of Uncle Boniface, the money-miss-road, were the aristocrats of tomorrow.

Cash Daddy's voice smashed into my musings.