JOINED

Tolu bought moi moi and bread for lunch at the café by the beach that afternoon. We stuffed ourselves with it and drank lots of water. Tolu left after the meal, saying he had to return his uncle's car before he gets home after the day's work. 

'What's with him?' I asked Eric when we returned to the room. 'Why is he into this? Didn't you say his uncle is rich or something? Why is he scamming people?'

'He wants to go to England,' Eric said. 'His uncle is rich alright, but he is as stingy as a needle with a short thread. All his children are abroad, but he has refused to send Tolu there, saying he didn't have the money to do it. I think he wants Tolu to remain here so he could keep running errands and do the house chores.' 

'What about his wife?'

'She lives in New York. She comes once a year. Tolu's uncle goes to see her most of the time.'

'So, they don't want Tolu to go there?'

Eric chuckled. 'You know how rich people are; their children can have all the advantages in life but other children staying with them are only good for errands. Tolu is trying to find his own way out of the country; that's why he is into scams. He wants to use his share of the ransom to travel out to the United Kingdom or the United States.'

I nodded. 'Every youth I know wants to leave the country.'

'I don't blame them. The money in this country circulates only with the politician and their counterparts in the civil service.' He turned to face me. 'What do you think of the plan? Will it work?'

'I don't know,' I said. 'Kidnapping is a risky business; probably riskier than robbing a bank—since you have to carry a human being around instead of a bag of cash.' I sneezed. 'The fact that the victim is a white guy makes it doubly difficult. Every eye that sees him will remember him and that will help the police.' 

Eric stared at the spider crawling at the corner of the ceiling. 

 'Another thing,' I said. 'How are you going to get his people to pay the ransom?'

'We will get his people's contacts—wife, mother, relatives, et cetera. We will call them to pay up and warn them not to involve the police if they want to get him back alive.' 

'Yes; but how do you get the actual payment? And how can you avoid it being traced back to you?'

'We are not getting it through the bank,' Eric said. 'They will send it through DHL with a post office address and we will go there and pick it up. We will give instructions to the relatives to hide the money in the packages.'

'Is that possible? I don't think DHL or Fedex ship money and I doubt it if you can conceal anything in their packages without their knowledge.'

'We have thought about that. If they cannot use DHL or Fedex, they can use ordinary mails. They can send as many letters as possible to cover the required sum of a hundred thousand pounds.'

'A hundred thousand pounds?' I said. 'Is that what you intend to ask? That's about forty—five million Naira! That will definitely be up to a hundred letters or even a thousand. If you have to collect a hundred letters from the post office, don't you think it will draw attention to you?'

'I don't care if it's a thousand letters,' Eric said. 'It's the relatives' headache to try and find the best way to get the money to us. Our headache is to figure out how to collect the money without being caught.'

I nodded. 'But you may need some kind of identification to access anything they sent via mail.'

Eric smiled. 'That's taken care of. I have a cousin who makes fake driver's licenses. He's been in jail twice for it but he hasn't stopped. He said that's the only job he has and if he leaves it, it's armed robbery.' Eric chuckled. 'He will make some ID cards for us.'

I nodded and cleaned the sweat from my face. 

'So you are in?' he asked. 

My hand fiddled with my phone but my gaze stayed on Eric. In that split second, two thoughts ran and fought each other in my mind. I thought about going to jail and I shivered. Then I thought about taking Talatu and my mom to Dubai—leaving the doctor heartbroken—and a warm feeling ran all over me. It would be nice for the doctor to feel a bit of what I am feeling now.

I stretched out my hand to Eric. 'I am in.'

He took it with a smile. 'Good decision, man.'

I hope so, I thought. I really hope so.