Chapter Thirty

Henry sat frozen on the chair in his office, his eyes staring at the glowing computer screen before him, his fingers entwined, his mind awash with dark thoughts. It was a cool day in September, a day that was meant for lunch outdoors with Richard Oke and some of their friends from the Mainland, but here he was, trapped in his office, his eyes glued to the picture of Phoenix that was glowing there on the computer monitor.

It was a black-and-white shot of the actor seated cross-legged on a low stool beside the vanity table in a small dressing room. And he was nude, right as the day he was born, and it was the actor as a very young person. It was the actor during the phase of his life when he had sweated out his days at the Drummer Club with the Ali’s snakes. Beneath the photo was a caption that was printed in block letters:

T. O. PHOENIX STARTED OUT AS AN EXOTIC DANCER IN A NIGHT CLUB.

Henry felt the fury rising within him, bubbling to the surface as he minimized the screen window and the offending picture shrank out of sight. The picture had given him an erection, as he was sure that it had given a lot of other gay men hard-ons across the country. There was already more than seventy thousand views of it on the internet, and more than three thousand comments, and so many of them were full of derision for the actor and severe criticisms for his antics.

Phoenix really will be the end of me, he thought savagely, his balled fist slamming into the palm of his left hand, his face contorted with rage. The rage he felt was against the bastard who had done this to the actor out of spite due to the fact that he had been rejected and cast aside.

He had to confront the bastard, perhaps give him a bigger doze of what he had given to that bloody reporter, and so, late that evening, after he had supped with the heavily pregnant Fiona and played with the twins, he got into one of his many cars, a black Honda, and then he drove to the Island. He drove past the compound where he knew that the Northerner lived in, searching for a parking space; he found one at the end of the street, parked there, and then he retraced his steps back to the house.

The house was dark because as usual, the NEPA had not deigned to bring the light, but there was a yellow glow in one of the front windows; a paraffin lamp was burning. He was walking towards the front door when he heard the voices arguing, so he stopped short, turned to the left and hurried away to the window that was emanating the light.

He peered in through the open window, and there stood Ali Hassan, his long, lean body trembling with fury, a dagger clutched in his left hand, his body poised to attack. Before him, pinned with his back to the wall, was Phoenix, an ice pick in his hand. He was breathing heavily, and on his stunning face was a look of grim determination; there was fear there, and there was pain, with hope, and the unmistakable flash of pure excitement that was pure maniac. It was as if he was watching a movie scene with Phoenix and the other man as the star players, but this was real. It was the real deal.

Henry felt long slivers of fear digging into his spine as he watched them, knowing that the scene unfolding before him was not a game. And then he watched, paralyzed with fear and horror as the older man advanced slowly upon the actor, coiled and ready to strike with his dagger, and Phoenix’s brown face was clenched, but there was a small smile curling at the corners of his lips. That smile is evil, Henry thought, sweat trickling into his eyes.

The guy looked ready for whatever was coming to him, his pupils dilated with expectation and the adrenalin pulse of the moment, his face clenched shut like a fist. His chest was heaving with exertion and effort, as if he was doing a fitness routine that was tasking to his endurance.

He mouthed the name of his lover, but he was still rooted to the spot, numb and paralyzed, his muscles refusing to respond to the command of his brain that he should do something. But he could do nothing. And it was then that he understood what it meant when a rat was said to be cornered to the wall.

*

HENRY WALKED INTO the room, and Phoenix was standing facing the window. Henry went to him and hugged him from the back, and he could smell the fresh soap that still clung to his body. Then Phoenix turned to face him, and the light from the rechargeable fluorescent light in the room was shining on his face. His eyes were bright and shiny, giving away nothing, like a moon-washed pool casting off the light of the moon. They soaked in all and gave away nothing, the eyes of the classic actor at his best.

He smiled at Henry, gave him that slow, heart-stopping smile of his that always melted his heart, and Henry felt revulsion coursing through him, and with it came a desperate longing for this angel-faced monster who he felt that he did not know anymore. Those bewitching eyes of the actor was watching him closely, giving nothing away and yet sucking all in.

‘Where have you been tonight?’ Henry asked, and the thought crossed his mind that he was crossing words with an actor, so he knew he had to tread carefully. The other guy was already a master at this game of words, so he had to be very careful of what he said and how he said it.

‘I’ve been here all night, reading through a torn copy of The Great Gatsby,’ Phoenix replied softly, so softly in fact that the words felt almost like a caress to Henry’s overheated skin.

Henry felt his smile spread a barn wide, but he was thinking in his mind: you are a bloody liar, you beautiful bastard.

Phoenix turned and flopped down into the nearest chair. He was looking up at Henry with those earnest eyes of his that often made Henry to lose his senses. ‘Have you seen the pictures that Ali had posted to the internet about you?’ Henry asked, at a loss for a better thing to say to his lover.

‘Yes, I have, and they were really annoying.’

‘Have you spoken to the man?’ Henry questioned, and he could feel his heart pounding in his chest. The test had begun now; the moment of truth had arrived. Now, he would know what Phoenix was really made of.

‘The man is real psycho bastard,’ Phoenix snapped, and the venom that was loaded into those few words shocked Henry beyond words. ‘He’s become obsessed with me, and when he found out that he could not have me, he decided to wage a very big war against me. Well, that’s his problem, because people are already seeing him for what he is－ an attention whore.’

Henry nodded thoughtfully, his right fingers stroking his chin. He wondered how the young actor could be acting so calm and so sure when he was supposed to be falling apart with guilt. ‘Well, have you seen him lately?’ Henry asked.

At the question Phoenix frowned as if in deep thought, then he waved one hand dismissively. ‘Oh, Ali Hassan, you mean? No, I have not seen the bastard, and I have no wish to see him again.’

And then Henry felt the blood in his veins freeze as the thought struck him that this guy he thought he knew, this man he felt he loved, was a total stranger to him. The guy had nothing but ice running through his veins, with a calculating mind that was capable of great evil, and he was also the best liar ever to walk the streets of Lagos. But he was also incredibly beautiful, and it was the love he had for the owner of that beauty that had made him to come here tonight because he wanted his lover to come apart at the seams with remorse and tell him the truth, to confess what he had done.

And in spite of the anger and the revulsion he felt, there was the desire hammering at him, hitting at him with crushing force, and he knew that he had to take Phoenix there so he could release the sexual tension that was building up within him. And the actor was not helping matters, sitting down there with that saucy smile playing on his lips and the secret knowledge that seemed to burn in his brown eyes. Phoenix stood up and touched him, and he felt himself almost flying apart at the touch with the intensity of the feelings that swept through him.

As if he had somehow clued in to the thoughts racing through his mind, Phoenix kissed him. That kiss sent his mind spinning out of control, and he gripped the guy, crushing the strong thin body to his own muscular wall of muscle, his breaths almost slamming out of his chest as he gasped for air. He ripped Phoenix’s clothes away, thinking that the guy had the most beautiful body that was made for sex. He then divested himself of his own clothes, and he held the body of his lover, and he felt that he could not get enough of the kiss.

Then he was pulling Phoenix down because the pain in his loins was a trifle too great for him to endure; he wanted to have the guy so badly, it was all he could do not to go slowly and devour the guy whole so that they could never be apart again. Then he was rubbing at the naturally taut body, kissing at the lips that many women had fantasized about kissing and many men had kissed before him－ how many had dared to kiss those lips again after him? He was lost in that beautiful body, and when he finally took the guy, there was the explosion of stars before his eyes, and he felt that he could not get enough, never get enough.

When he finally found his release, he still held Phoenix, because there was this irrational fear in him that he could have lost the guy to Ali, that he had almost lost the guy to Ali. He pleasured the actor with his mouth, and he could see that Phoenix was a bit surprised, though he hid it well; in their relationship, it was Phoenix who was the giver of pure pleasure, and he the taker of the same, but tonight, he wanted to pay back.

Tonight was the night of payback for what had been going on between them for the past years. And it should have been a night for confessions too, but no, the actor would never get off his high pedestal in order to come clean about the sordid details of his life.

They had sex over and over again, and it was wild sex, hard and fast and furious. Henry drove into the guy hard, almost savagely. When he was spent, he felt the anger for his lover coming back again, and with it came the revulsion, so he dressed up and left the apartment to drive back to his house in VI. He could not stay there with the guy, for he felt that if he stayed, then he would put his hands around the neck of his lover and kill him.

The following morning, he went to work as usual, but something was dead in him; there was a leaden weight in his chest. Over a cup of coffee with his mother, they discussed some pressing matters pertaining to their business empire, appended their signatures jointly to some documents, and then he went to his office and tackled his work with an angry vengeance.

The hours flew by, and at 2 pm, his phone rang, and it was Rosalie. ‘Mother, what’s wrong?’ he asked without a greeting. He was short with her, as he sometimes was when he was in a foul mood.

‘I got a call from someone who said his name was Lawrence, and he told me that Phoenix has been arrested.’

I was expecting to hear this, Henry thought, his shoulders sagging. ‘What happened?’ he asked numbly, but he knew what had happened, after all, he had been there.

‘The police had come over to their place this afternoon, and, without a warrant, they had asked him to accompany them to the station for questioning with regards to the death of Ali Hassan. The man was stabbed to death last night.’

Henry had already picked up his car keys and was heading for the door as he spoke. ‘Where are you now, mother?’

‘I am there at the station,’ she replied. ‘Are you coming? It’s the Area A Police Station, Ahmadu Bello Way, by Oceanography School. You can’t miss it.’

Henry hurried out in the afternoon heat, got into his car, and then he was off. Thankfully, the roads of VI were usually traffic-free at this time of the day when the executives were deeply ensconced in their offices, going about their daily work. He envisioned his lover sitting leg-shackled to a chair in some seedy police cell, with some pot-bellied police officer trying to beat the truth out of him, and he felt sick. As he sped towards his destination, he phoned Pat Atani, the attorney who usually handled the highest criminal matters and who had been a dear friend of his father when the old bag was still alive, and the man told him that he was already on his way there from the Bonny Camp where he had gone to see a friend who had just gotten back from Siberia; he was close to the station, so no need to worry. Obviously, Rosalie had called him.

The woman seemed to have wasted no time in getting the powers that be alerted to the fact that her pet boy needed to be saved. And that was the power of money and influence.

When he got to the station, Henry packed the car beside the glittering red BMW that belonged to Rosalie and stepped down, the breeze from the Bar Beach fanning at his face. Then he saw his mother coming towards him, and the wind was whipping at her hair. She smiled at him just as a glittering chauffeur-driven Land Cruiser Prado drove up and a distinguished-looking man stepped down from it. He was dressed in a blue pin-striped suit that must have cost a bomb, and, like most high-profile Lagosians who worked in VI and Ikoyi and earned the highest paychecks, he looked trim and glowed with good health, his skin light from little exposure to the sun.

They all converged together and after a few moments of quick dialogue, they matched into the station, with Rosalie at the lead, the wind still whipping at her hair, and Pat Atani bringing up the rear, his sleek mobile pressed to his ear. They got past the riff raffs at the front desk with astonishing speed, and then they were going in to the office of the ASP in charge. The man was an intimidating-looking fellow with a towering figure who rose for them as they entered.

‘Chief Okon, thank you for seeing us,’ Rosalie said, flashing one of her famous smiles. ‘Now that the attorney is here, I think that we had better wrap this up. I hear that he has refused to say something?’

The chief nodded; he was a man of few words and deadly action. He smiled back at the stunning woman, however. There was no person alive that could resist Rosalie when she turned on the charm offensive. ‘There was no need for the lawyer to have come; we merely invited the actor to come for a brief chat, that’s all.’

‘An invitation by the police to a civilian in this country is a clear order, and a friendly chat, as you so nonchalantly put it, can put a man behind bars because he could trip up and say something that he would not otherwise have said if he had his Legal Practitioner present.’ It was Pat Atani that spoke now, exuding authority.

Chief Okon frowned slightly, a player bested at his own game. ‘Well, if you say so, I agree with you totally,’ he said. ‘Last night, a man died in his home on the Island, not so far from here, as you all know. His chest was pierced cleanly with an ice pick. To all our knowledge, there seemed to be some kind of feud going on between him and your celebrity actor over here, so we have to know where he was last night.’

Rosalie chuckled as if they were discussing the weather and not the murder of a man. ‘That’s ridiculous! Phoenix would never do such a despicable thing!’

‘That’s what we’re going to find out,’ Chief Okon said coldly, his expression deadpan. ‘If you’ll come with me, Sir?’

He led them out of the office and down a sloping hallway lined with holding cells which held wretched person who were doomed for one thing or the other. At the end of the corridor was an interrogation room that reeked of sweat and blood and urine; the paint on the walls was peeling off from all angles, and it looked terribly gloomy. Henry fought down the urge not to gag, but the others, his mother included, kept their expressions deadpan. The room was bare of furniture, save for a stool whose legs had been sawed off so that any creature unfortunate enough to sit on it would be forced into a vulnerable squat.

On that stool sat Phoenix, dressed all in Goth black, his back bent taut, his face looking up at those entering the room with a glassy, hooded expression. Four men were standing around, a solid wall of harsh menace around him. At that particular moment Henry felt a very strong pull of emotion tug at him, so strong that he almost choked. He knew that in such conditions even the hardest criminals broke down, and the delicate actor was no criminal.

It was no secret that the Nigerian Police Force was ready to use any means necessary to get the necessary information out of anybody they had trapped in their clutches without the fear of reprisals from the Law since the Judiciary was lax about matters pertaining to the breach of the fundamental human rights of the country’s citizens.

‘Phoenix, I have some questions I would like to ask you, and please I need very urgent answers from you,’ Chief Okon said, and Henry shuddered at the tremble he’d head in his voice. ‘No more nonsensical ramblings about the fact that you know your rights and that you can choose to keep silent until your lawyer gets here. If you don’t talk, believe me, these men go make you talk true. Shebi you dey hear me so?’

‘What do you want to talk to me about?’ Phoenix asked in his low voice.

‘Last night, one Mr. Abubakar Hussein received a call from Ali Hassan, and the man had told him that he’d been stabbed, that he was dying. There was no time for him to verify the statement, for the phone died in his hand. So, this afternoon, he went there.’

‘Was Ali Hassan all right?’ Phoenix asked.

‘No, he was dead. His chest had been pierced through with an ice pick, and as you know, we’re not so technologically advanced, so there’s no way to start analyzing the DNA on the weapon and checking for fingerprints. Nobody has admitted seeing anybody going into the house last night, and even if they had seen something, nobody’s saying anything. What we found at the place are numerous pictures of you in his house, and they were all very compromising pictures.’

‘The man was a homo,’ Phoenix said with a sigh. ‘And what you’re trying to say is that I had killed him. But please, let me clear up a fact with you. Maybe Ali had called this his friend and told him something about me, but even if that was true, it does not amount to a dying declaration of the deceased, the reason being that there was no way for Hussein or whatever you say his name is could have found  out that the man was really dying. He could have been setting up to die, and he wanted to pin his death on me, so what better way to do that other than to call this friend and heap his death on me? Besides that, whatever Hussein had said he’d heard is nothing other than hearsay, because there is nobody to corroborate what he’d said.’

Chief Okon now looked ready to commit murder. ‘I’m trying to find out the killer of a fine man who was murdered in his home, and believe me, I will find out. Did you kill him?’

Pat Atani spoke. ‘You will not put words into the mouth of my client so you can trap him into admitting to something he knows nothing about. Now let me also remind you that my client has his rights as guaranteed under the constitution of Nigeria, so he has the right to remain silent. You cannot goad him into making admissions that will be self-incriminating and will be used against him in a trial.’

‘He is not under arrest!’ Chief Okon snapped.

‘Yes he isn’t,’ the lawyer replied coldly. ‘At least, not yet. But the moment he says what you want him to say, you will get him hurled off to prison and have him prosecuted for the murder.’

Chief Okon nodded, bested once again at his own game. He looked towards the actor, who met the gaze unblinkingly. ‘Last night, a man was murdered in his house, and before he died, let me believe that he had told somebody that you were the one that had done it. Hussein is willing to put it under oath that the name the dead man tried to mention was your name, so that makes you the prime suspect.’

‘I did not do it,’ Phoenix said. He looked to Rosalie, and there was a pleading look in his eyes. ‘Tell them I did not do it.’

Henry watched his mother’s lips curl into a smile.

She seemed to straighten as she spoke. ‘Phoenix was with me last night, so I do not think there was a way for him to be at Ikoyi with me and also at the Lagos Island killing a man. Or perhaps like he’s said, the man committed suicide, and he’s only trying to finger this young man here as his killer because he’d tried to get him into bed and he’d refused him. Everyone knows what he has been saying about Phoenix.’

Chief Okon sighed. ‘Are you aware of the fact that if I find out that you’re lying to me, I can have you arrested and charged as an accessory to murder?’ he asked the ex-beauty queen. ‘Or that I may get the court to have you prosecuted for obstruction of justice? You are a smart woman and a very beautiful one at that. You should not be getting mixed up in things like this.’

Rosalie nodded, and Henry shook his head and looked away, heading towards the door. It was only when he was outside again, that the horror and the intensity of last night’s occurrences came rushing back to him. The images came, fast and strong.

There they were, Ali with his glittering dagger, talking slowly but intensely, and then he had lunged at Phoenix, the dagger slashing through the air. Phoenix had dodged the blow quickly and expertly, shifting to the far end of the wall, and still, Ali came at him. Phoenix had slipped right into his arms as if he was stepping into an embrace. When they came apart Ali Hassan had dropped to his knees, and Phoenix had stood over him, his face clenched as tight as a fist.  And there was the ice pick itself, buried to the hilt right in Ali’s chest.

Sweet Mary, what have you done? Henry had thought, then he had whirled round and fled from the scene. Thirty minutes later, he had summoned the will to drive over and see the guy, and the guy had acted all strangely calm and sure of himself, as if nothing had happened. And he had been the one with Phoenix, not Rosalie. Or had Phoenix really driven to Ikoyi last night to be with her? After Henry had left, had Phoenix called Rosalie, then driven over to her house to see her in order to stock up his alibi? Could he have been that cold and calculating? Maybe he was, if what he was discovering about the actor currently was any indication of what he was capable of doing.

He was the only one who had witnessed what had transpired between Phoenix and Hassan, so he was the one who could really break Phoenix, who could make the guy to serve a very stretch in prison for manslaughter; because Ali Hassan had really been trying to kill him. But could he do that to Phoenix? Could he do that to the one man who had taken his sanity? The one who meant more to him than anything else?

He was the sole witness to a murder, and it was his testimony that was needed to get the actor hanged by the neck if found guilty until he was dead. But could he do it?

Then he heard the voices, and Henry lifted his face up to see that they had concluded whatever business they had in the station for the trio had stepped out now. The lawyer got into his car and the sleek machine zoomed off. As the car pulled away, the remaining two waved, and then the older woman and the younger man spoke for a few minutes, their voices low and intimate, and then they clasped each other in a hug before Rosalie got into her sports car. She had the roof retracted, and then she started the car and drove off with a screech of tires, heading down in the direction of the National Open University, which road also linked Lagos Island with Victoria Island.

For the very first time in his entire life Henry felt that he hated his mother. How dare the woman touch his lover like that? Who was Phoenix to her that she would dare to look at him with that puppy look on her face? And how was she involved?

For he knew that she was in some way involved in what had happened. She was covering up the acts of her young friend, and she had the heart to do it.

Then Phoenix came over, a smile on his lips. ‘So you came here,’ he said. ‘Why did you bother? And when your mother had said that we had been together last night, I felt it at the tip of your tongue to say that she was lying for me; that you were the one who had come to see me and had fucked me half the night before you stole away like a thief. But I had really gone to see your mother.’

‘If I had said that like you had thought I would, then you would have gone to prison.’ Henry kept his voice cold, but even now, with all he knew about this guy, he still felt strongly affected by the sight of him. Then he remembered something. ‘What is your relationship with Rosalie?’

‘Oh, so it’s Rosalie now instead of mother, isn’t it?’ Phoenix asked, and his lips curled up in a sneer. ‘My relationship with your mother is none of your business.’

‘Damn you!’ Henry snarled, grabbing Phoenix by the collar of his shirt and slamming his back against the door of his car. But Phoenix being who and what he was, merely laughed at him. It was as if the guy was enjoying it, the rough-handling. The bastard would never fight back, would never hit back to defend himself.

‘You’re jealous; aren’t you, Henry? You do not want to share me with your beautiful mother. Does it make you angry? You don’t want your mum to kiss the lips you’ve kissed, to touch the body you’ve touched, and please don’t let me get down to the other part of it. You don’t want your mother to touch or suck or feel the texture of the same penis you have sucked.’

Henry released him, panting heavily. He felt the anger surging through him at the way this guy was toying with him, and he could feel an erection coming on, but he had to clamp it firmly down because the actor was a dangerous thing, and it would do him a world of good to steer clear. If he was not careful, the guy would do him in. Phoenix was that kind of person. Phoenix would not hesitate to cut his lights out.

Henry drew back. ‘Good day to you, Phoenix.’

‘I think you meant good-bye; didn’t you, Henry?’Phoenix said, and he was smiling, grinning from ear to ear like someone who had won the lottery.

Henry said nothing but just opened the car and slid inside it. He then looked up and smiled at Phoenix and the guy smiled back. It had been a quid pro quo: there had been the need for him to have the body of Phoenix in return for helping to shove his career into the light. Now, he had to go in order to retain his silence about what he had seen the actor do, because if he decided to break that silence, then Phoenix was a done guy. He would either be hanged to death or he could spend the rest of his life in prison.

For, the truth of the matter was the Phoenix was a murderer, and Henry wanted to have nothing to do with someone that had the guts and the gutter strength to kill another human being.

But then there was this small voice speaking to him at the back of his mind, telling him that if only he had done something when he had seen what was transpiring then that night, then perhaps the death of Ali Hassan could have been avoided entirely.