'Is there anybody you can send to me this evening?' I asked.

'What time?' she replied.

'As soon as possible. I'm leaving work soon.'

'The notice is quite short but I'll see.'

Over time, Camille had done quite well for herself. She was now the recognised mistress of one of the state governors. Last time I spoke with her, she was on her way to Paris to shop for her birthday party. But she still made some extra income on the side by being helpful with organising girls for busy men like us as and when needed. Even when it was impromptu, like now.

'Is it the same place as the last time?' she asked.

'Yes. Same place, same room number.'

As a personal policy, because my siblings popped in and out of my house from school whenever they pleased, I never brought any strange girl back home. I had a permanent reservation at Cash Daddy's hotel. On his advice, for security reasons, I switched rooms after every few weeks.

'OK. I'll get back to you,' she said. 'I'll let you know if there's any problem.'

I knew there would be no problem. There never was with Camille.

Ninety-five minutes and some hgs of blood pressure later, the fax eventually went.

Afterwards, the girl had started watching The Jerry Springer Show. So far, I had stomached the transvestite dwarf and the ragamuffin playboy. But now, the 400kg black American woman was yanking the brassiere off the anorexic peroxide blonde.

'Could you please change the channel?' I said to her.

'Oh, sure, sure,' she chanted, and reached for the remote control. 'What channel do you want?'

'Anything else,' I replied.

She started flicking through. She hovered too long on MTV.

'Put it on CNN,' I suggested. The Daily Show should be on about this time.

It turned out that I was wrong. Instead of The Daily Show, Christiane Amanpour was telling the story of yet another man-made calamity that had erupted somewhere in East Africa. My cellular phone rang.

'Kings, hurry down to the house,' Protocol Officer whispered urgently. 'Come quickly.'

'Is everyth-?'

He hung up.

As I turned the doorknob, the girl switched back to Jerry Springer.

My driver was making the turn into Cash Daddy's street when I noticed the police cars parked in front of the gate. It was not the usual nonchalant policemen that hung around checkpoints extorting money. This posse patrolled decisively, like they actually had some work to do.

'Reverse!' I yelled. 'Turn! Quick! Quick!'

My driver obeyed and fled so fast that anyone would have thought the car was running on rocket engines.

'Just keep driving,' I said. I did not care if we went as far as Ouagadougou.

When I was certain that we were far away enough from danger, I collected myself and resumed the normal thinking processes that set man apart from the beasts of the field.

'Find somewhere to park the car,' I said.

We had found ourselves on the kind of street that was largely populated by dried maize husks, torn pure water wrappers, and straggling youngsters. My driver parked in front of an uncompleted building with a bold warning painted in red on the front wall: 'BUYER BEWARE OF 419! THIS BUILDING IS NOT FOR SALE!'

My driver looked at me in the rearview mirror.

'Oga, the policemen there were plenty,' he said.

He looked in the rearview mirror again.

'There must have been about twenty of them,' he added.

I was not in the mood for chin-wagging. This could be the very end of me. I could just imagine my mother's face when she heard that I had been arrested. What would happen to Godfrey and Eugene and Charity if I went to jail? I rang Protocol Officer and insisted.

'Tell me. What exactly is going on?'

'They're taking Cash Daddy to the station for questioning,' Protocol Officer whispered. 'But I just spoke with Police Commissioner and he said it's just routine. Hurry up because we'll be leaving soon.'

Back at Cash Daddy's house, some policemen who wore pot-bellies beneath their black uniforms were sitting with an almost empty bottle of Irish Cream and some wine glasses. I greeted them and strode past to join Protocol Officer, who was standing by the staircase in the dining area. He was flanked by the otimkpu and about seven of Cash Daddy's campaign team bigwigs, all muttering indignantly.

'Where's Cash Daddy?' I whispered to Protocol Officer.

'He's having a bath.'

I jerked my head furtively in the direction of the police officers.

'Do they know he's upstairs?'

'He told them to wait,' Protocol Officer replied impatiently, and returned his full attention to the group.

I turned to go upstairs and saw Cash Daddy on his way down. The policemen all stood and greeted him.

'I hope they took care of you people?' he asked.

'Yes, sir,' replied the officer who looked like he was in charge.

'Very good, very good.'

'Are you ready to go, sir?' the same man inquired.

'Let's go,' Cash Daddy replied.

The policemen allowed him to walk ahead and followed at a respectful distance. One of them rushed to open the back door of one of their vans. We watched Cash Daddy settle uncomfortably into the backseat before we jumped into our different cars and followed behind. On the way, my cellular rang. It was my house phone.

'Kings, are you back to Aba, yet?' It was Charity.

'Yes. I'm still at the office. I'm working a bit late today. I didn't know you were at home.'

'I just came in today. I'll be going back first thing tomorrow but there's something important I want to discuss with you.'

'What's the matter? Is everything OK?'

'Everything is fine. It's just something we need to discuss face-to-face. '

Face-to-face? I died with fear. Was she having problems in school? Were her girlfriends gossiping about me seeing strange girls? Had my mother been complaining about my lifestyle? It would be very unfair if she transferred her misgivings to my siblings. Whatever my mother felt about me was her business alone.

'Charity, I'll see you soon, OK? I'm just finishing up something urgent at the office.'

Cash Daddy's campaign manager was waiting at the police station, muttering into a cellular phone. Cash Daddy's lawyer was with him. The notable human rights activist accompanied his client inside for questioning. On the way, Cash Daddy stopped suddenly.

'Ah!' he said. 'I almost forgot.'

He removed the watch from his wrist, the phone from his pocket, the belt from his trousers, and handed them to Protocol Officer.

'Kings, let me give you some advice,' he said. 'Never take anything with you into the police station if you're not ready to part with it forever.'

God forbid. I, Kingsley Onyeaghalanwanneya Ibe, was being given advice for a trip to jail.

Soon, the lawyer emerged from the bowels of the station. Without Cash Daddy.

We panicked.

'Where's Cash Daddy?'

'They decided to keep him,' the lawyer replied. 'But they can't hold him for too long because they don't really have any evidence.'

'Evidence of what?' one of the campaign team asked.

'Money laundering. The allegation was made at the Zonal Command in Calabar, so the police here have to pretend as if they're really doing something serious about it.'

'Who made the allegation?' I asked.

'It's politics,' the campaign manager answered. 'They just want to get Cash Daddy out of the way. They know he's definitely going to win the elections.'

'These are the dangers I warned him to expect right from the beginning,' the human-rights-activist lawyer added. 'Nigerian politics is a dirty game.'

'They're wasting their time,' Protocol Officer said with flames in his voice.

'They've been writing all sorts of rubbish about Cash Daddy in the newspapers,' another one added indignantly, 'but thank God the people of Abia State are not foolish enough to believe everything they read.'

'No matter what they do,' yet another one added, 'Cash Daddy is still going to win.'

'Of course,' they all responded.

'Cash Daddy is our man.'

Back at home, I saw that in my absence Charity had once again arranged my shoes according to their colours. Wondering for how long I would be able to maintain the order this time, I unbuckled the Prada shoes I was wearing and placed them carefully in the caramel row. Then I sat beside her on the bed, where she had been waiting for me. Seeing the gravity of her facial expression, I became more deeply immersed in dread.

'Kings,' she began. 'There's this very close friend of mine I met through one of my friends in school.'

I swallowed a hard lump of fear.

'Kings,' she looked up at me with shy eyes, 'he asked me to marry him and I told him yes.'

Because of how serious she looked, I immediately resisted the temptation to burst out laughing. Truly, the idea of marriage makes girls suddenly behave strangely. I had never seen my sister like this before.

'What's his name?' I asked, strictly for want of speech.

'His name is Johnny,' she replied. 'But he's Igbo,' she added quickly. 'His Igbo name is Nwokeoma. Nwokeoma Nwabekee.'

Naturally, I would not want my sister to marry someone who was not Igbo, but right now, that was the least of my concerns. Throughout that night, I tossed and turned in bed, tormented by various fears. What would become of my family - what would become of my sister - if anything were to happen to me? Losing a father was bad enough. But losing their source of life and sustenance would bring unimaginable disaster.

And what would happen to me, their source of life and sustenance, if anything were to happen to Cash Daddy?

It was not until five in the morning that I remembered the girl waiting for me at the hotel.

Thirty-six

Cash Daddy was released by 9 a.m. He came out of the police cell looking dishevelled and disoriented, like a hermit who had just been discovered in a cave. On his way out of the station, he took some cash from Protocol Officer and distributed the hundred-dollar notes amongst the officers on duty. They thanked him profusely and saw him off to the waiting car. Protocol Officer had arrived in a Jaguar that bore 'Cash Daddy 47'. He came alone, with just a driver and without the usual convoy. Cash Daddy chatted briefly with his political cronies, dismissed them, and turned to me.

'Enter my car,' he said.

From the backseat of my Audi, I took the carrier bag with the books I had purchased in Lagos and instructed my driver to ride behind us. Protocol Officer took his usual position in the front passenger seat, I sat next to my uncle in the back.

We drove past a police checkpoint without stopping. This checkpoint had not been here yesterday. As usual, when the men-in-black saw the number plate on the car, they shifted from the roadblock, genuflected, and waved. Sometimes Cash Daddy threw cash out of the window at them. Today, he did not even look in their direction.