Page 40 - Labelle Gramercy, Detective

Road Kill

Ostrich”—the new ambassador—“I’ll tell him about it tomorrow
morning. Raccoon over and out.”
The radio crackled and went silent. The paperwork would have to
wait.

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I gathered up my credentials and told Mamadou, my houseman
and cook, that I might be gone for a few hours. He nodded and went
back in the kitchen, crossing the tile floor soundlessly in bare feet.
My gardien, Pierre (an ancien combattant for the French in Indochina)
saluted as I pulled out of the driveway in my once-new Renault and
cautiously navigated the rutted muddy road leading from my house to
the Route de Lazaretto, the only paved road in the Quartier du
Fleuve. The rain had stopped in the early evening, but a heavy mist
remained in the air this close to the river. The neighborhood along
the banks of the Niger was the highest-class address in Falidougou,
despite the concentration of mosquitoes. I lived there, as did the
ambassador and most other senior Western diplomatic personnel.
The going was easier on Falidougou’s paved roads; unfortunately,
they constituted but a tiny fraction of the city’s streets. I headed
north up the main road from the only bridge spanning the river (and
the only access to the airport on the other side), my headlights
warning off pedestrians and my horn encouraging bicyclists to get
out of the center of the road. The roads were fairly clear at night in
Africa, however: only the sophisticated Westernized types ventured
forth to crude discos and bars after dark; the rest of the populace,
enmired in superstitious fear of nocturnal demons, preferred the
safety of their compounds, even to the point of locking themselves
up in suffocating mud-brick buildings in the height of summer. I
swung around the traffic circle at the Place des Héros, turned right at
the Grand Marché and proceeded east on the Route de Nyofolo.
This led to the Quartier Nouveau, where a few traditional African
extended-family enclosures sat cheek-by-jowl with newly-constructed
mansions for wealthy Westerners.
Cobra was Lon Durer, a USAID employee close to the end of his
tour of duty. I had heard through the embassy grapevine that he was
having a sort of farewell party that night—I say “sort of” because

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