BANKS, COPS AND ROBBERS 3

It had been 3 months since the man who had hid in his bus had given him a bundle of money.

Johnny had counted the notes the strange man who had threatened to kill him had tossed at him.

A hundred thousand Naira! It was too good to be true!

The next day, he went to get a room in a block of rooms close to the park. It cost him 40,000 Naira for a year. He also bought a 6 spring mattress and some cooking utensils. He had to share a communal toilet and bath but it was a small price to pay for finally being able to get a roof over his head. As far as he was concerned, he was living like a king compared to where he was just the day before. He still had 35,000 Naira left so he went to open an account with it. It was the first account he ever opened and it felt good. For the first time since he had run away from home, he actually felt as if he was making progress of a sort.

Now three months after he opened the account, he had 120,000 Naira. He had gotten into the habit of saving a portion of what he got from his job as a conductor weekly.

He had gone to make another deposit and was walking out of the bank thinking of all the things he could do with the money he now had and any more he would be able to save when he bumped into someone. He had been daydreaming and wasn't looking where he was going. When he looked up and saw who it was he had bumped into, he felt such a mix of emotions it felt as if his heart was going to explode. It was the man who had hid in his bus that night 3 months ago. At first he was just surprised, and then fear settled in when the memory of all that had happened that night came flooding back. The people chasing this man who was now smiling at him had been shouting Ole! Ole! Ole! (Thief! Thief! Thief!). He started to walk past praying he had not recognized him when he felt a hand on his shoulder.

"You are the guy who hid me in your bus, aren't you?" he asked. "Walk with me. I need to talk to you". He had been going into the bank but now he turned and headed towards the gate in the same direction Johnny was going.

"You got me out of a really tight spot that day", he was saying. To Johnny everything was happening in slow motion. He considered making a break for it and then thought of kneeling and asking that the man not kill him. He thought of a thousand other things he could do all of which involved getting as far away from that spot as possible.

 "My name is Marcus", he was saying, "and I would like to show some appreciation for your help". He had that disarming smile on his face again.

"It's alright sir. What you gave me the other time sir, was more than enough sir", Johnny stammered and then realized how foolish he must have sounded saying sir so many times in one sentence. He had also begun to sweat profusely. He kept on walking by Marcus' side as he walked towards a Mercedes Benz SLR.

Marcus kept on walking towards his car as though he had not heard what Johnny said. He walked to the front passenger door, opened it and looked around in the glove compartment for a while.

When he looked back up, Johnny saw that he had a wad of notes in his hands.

Dollar notes.

He had stared at the notes for a full minute before he realized that Marcus was talking.

"…just a little something extra to show you how much I appreciate what you did for me the other time", he was saying.

Everything inside of him was screaming for him not to take the money but Johnny saw himself stretching out his hands to collect it from Marcus.

Looking back now, he always thought that was the moment when he crossed a line he never had any business being close to in the first place. He still wondered what would have happened if he had turned down Marcus' offer that day and had just walked away. But he would never know.

Marcus had written an address down on a piece of paper and asked him to come and visit that weekend.

"I'm a very busy man and I don't have much time on my hands", he had said, "and I need you to help me run some errands".

Instinctively, Johhny was going to say his boss wouldn't let him off work but then it occurred to him that with the money Marcus had given him, he never again had to work as a conductor. He did the figures in his head and came up with over 1.5million naira. He felt weak in the knees. A million and a half was more money than he had seen his entire life!

Johnny was done polishing his Makarov SP Pistol and was half way through with the AR15 assault rifle when Marcus and the rest of the boys showed up. He glanced at his watch and saw it was 11am. Marcus was always a stickler for punctuality. He had scheduled the hit on the bank for noon. They had agreed to rendezvous at Johnny's place because the bank was about 30 minutes away from Johnny's house. They would spend 30 minutes tying up any loose ends in their plans.

At 11:30am, they left the house in two cars, a Peugeot 406 and a Toyota 4runner Jeep. As they drove to the bank, Johnny looked around the car. He was sitting in the back on the passenger side of the Peugeot and Jenny was driving. She had been a hooker on the streets of Abuja before she met Marcus. She had a level headedness that even Marcus confessed scared him sometimes. Marcus always told Johnny about the time when an op went terribly wrong. Marcus had been shot and their escape plan had gone up in smoke. The rest of the guys had panicked but Jenny had maintained her cool and gotten them all out of a situation that could have cost them their lives.

Jamiu was in front with Jenny. He was literally a monster and Johnny was always careful not to get him angry. At 6 feet 8 inches, skin the colour or burnt clay, with rippling muscles and a slight stoop, he reminded Johnny of an enraged bull about to charge. His reputation for viciousness was well known and whenever Marcus needed to "strong-arm" anyone, he always got Jamiu involved.

Dare who was beside Johnny in the back was the complete opposite of Jamiu. He was soft spoken and the voice of reason whenever tempers were flaring. It still baffled Johnny that a man like Dare could end up an armed bandit. Thinking about it, it occurred to him that Dare had never fired a single shot on any of their Ops or even exhibited any show of force.

Marcus was in the 4runner Jeep with Chinedu who was next in the line of command after him. He was a kind of consigliere for the gang. He was Marcus' right hand man and he was the one with a head for business. He knew everyone there was to know and had all the right connections. Marcus always used to say Chinedu could find you an amala (local Yoruba* meal made from Yam flour) joint on the moon in just one hour of his arriving there. He was the kind of guy who could get you anything; the kind who always knew somebody that knew somebody.

As they got closer to the bank, Johnny got tense. It always happened before they were to make any hit. His mouth went dry and he started to sweat in his palms. He could feel his heart pounding and soon, it was the only thing he was aware of. He could hear the thump of his heart beating as loud as if he had a stethoscope to his chest. He looked around again and everything was a haze. Jenny was talking to Jamiu who was laughing. She must have told a joke or said something funny because Jamiu was laughing but to Johnny it sounded like he was hearing Jamiu's from under water.

He blinked, trying to clear his head but when he opened his eyes he was back in time on the day of his first errand for Marcus.

The Saturday after he had run into Marcus at the bank, he had gone to look for the address Marcus had written down on the piece of paper for him. It was off Bourdillon road in Ikoyi and very easy to find. He had stood in front of the house for nearly ten minutes, afraid to knock. He had never seen a house so big all his life. Finally, he had summoned enough courage to walk up to the gate and ring the bell. The guard who opened the gate had asked him to wait when he had told him his name and that he was there to see Marcus. About five minutes later, the guard had returned and taken him into the house.

When he stepped into the house, his jaw had literally hung open. Never in his life had he seen such opulence and display of wealth. Marcus welcomed him with his usual disarming smile which Johnny was beginning to get used to and slapped him on the back.

"I see you came", he said, "That's good because I have something for you to do for me right now and it's urgent. You just saved me the trouble of having to find someone to do it for me".

Half an hour later, Johnny was on his way to Ojota in a cab. Marcus needed him to pick up a refrigerator from a friend. It was an easy enough errand to run because the address had been easy to find and Marcus' friend had been waiting. When he got back, Marcus had thanked him and they had talked extensively. He had asked a lot of questions. Was Johnny still sleeping at the motor park? Did he have family? Were they in Lagos? He had wanted to know everything.

Johnny was brought back to the present by Dare's hand on his shoulder. They had arrived at the bank and were just pulling into the parking lot. Johnny released the safety from his AR15 assault rifle as the car came to a stop. The guard who was parking cars for customers started to walk towards Johnny's side of the car. Johnny took a deep breath, pushed the door open, and shot the guard. The customers who were at the ATM started screaming and running, trying to get away from him. He turned in their direction and fired a volley of shots into the crowd. He saw a guard trying to jump over the wall. He shot the man in the back and saw him topple from the fence. Just then, Marcus and Chinedu pulled into the parking lot in the 4runner jeep. Marcus remained in the car while Chinedu joined them as they walked towards the entrance of the bank. This was always Marcus' way. He always used to say, "Strike fear into the hearts of people and no one would be dumb or brave enough to do anything stupid until you were done with a hit"

Jenny was already at the entrance of the bank. Johnny saw her go down on one knee and aim the rocket propelled grenade launcher she was carrying at the security door and the next instant the whole door went up in flames.

When the dust settled, there was a big hole where the security door was. Jenny stepped into the banking hall with Johnny and Jamiu right behind her while Dare and Chinedu stood sentry at what used to be the door.

TO BE CONTINUED….

IT WAS LOVE

IT WAS LOVE

It was love.
 
 He was very sure of it.
 
Ok, maybe now he was.
 
Back then he didn't know what it was. And he had paid dearly for it.
 
All he knew was that it was a wonderful feeling. And he never wanted it to end. But it had.
 
He had been an introvert before he met her. He had just one friend all through his first year in secondary school up till that day in SS2. He was so introverted he couldn't even walk across the quadrangle in the block of classrooms where his class was. His friend knew his timetable and always came to walk him to the laboratory whenever he had a lab class.
 
Maybe it was fate.
 
Or was it?
 
Well, whatever it was he had heard that she had been involved in an accident over the holidays. So when he saw her sister at dinner that evening, he had asked after her as a matter of courtesy. Her sister had said she was much better and would be back before the week ended.

And that was how it all started. She had walked into his class the week after. She said her sister told her he had asked after her. From that day on, there wasn't a day which went by without her coming to his class to see him. They would talk for hours on end and not even notice the time go by. There was this particular day he still remembered vividly. The principal had announced that their mid-term break would start that day during morning assembly. They had both decided not to travel till the next day and had gone to sit in his class to talk. They had talked from about 8am till well past 6pm. They had talked about everything and nothing. Time had virtually stood still.

What they had was unspoken. He never asked her out and they never talked about a relationship but they both knew that they were a very important part of each other's lives.

What they had was innocent, and that was the beauty of it. He couldn't even remember holding hands with her. The connection they had didn't need any physical forms of expression. So while the rest of their mates in school were sleeping with their girlfriends, he wrote her poems and told her about his family.
 
And then adolescence happened. That crazy time in your life when you didn't know who you were or who you wanted to be for that matter. And with adolescence came the mood swings and depression.

He began to push her away. It wasn't because he didn't care about her anymore. It was just that he needed time to figure out a lot of things. But he never told her that. He just kept on withdrawing day by day until a chasm had grown between them. Maybe if he had told her where he was at that point and what he was going through, she would have understood why he needed the space he was putting between them. But now he would never know.

And then she had written him "the" poem. The last they would ever exchange. Years later when they were in the university she had showed him that poem again and he had felt a stab of pain and regret that almost brought tears to his eyes. He realized that the day she wrote him that poem was the day he had lost her. He could not remember all the words but one phrase had kept on ringing in his head even up till this very moment. "Goodbye is the hardest word…"
 
By a jape of fate, they ended up sitting side by side during their final exams. She finally opened up to him about how hard it had been for her watching him slip away. He wasn't one given to tears (had never been and still wasn't even now) but he had come very close to them that day when he realized what he had lost.
"I used to see you when I looked in my mirror during holidays". "I could never wait to get back to school just so I could see you again". "Everyone in my house wonders why I don't talk about you anymore and I just tell them you are fine"
Each of those words struck him like a hammer blow. It had taken everything in him for him to focus well enough to write the paper they had for that day.
 
But fate had not had enough. They ended up in the same university where he spent the greater part of four years trying to get back what he had so stupidly thrown away. His friends from secondary school never failed to remind him how stupid he had been to let her out of his life. His new friends in the university were of the opinion that they had to invent a new word for a new kind of stupid to describe him. And he agreed with all of them.
He could still talk with her for hours on end. He still had so much fun whenever he spent time with her, but he knew he had lost her heart.
 
He had it, and he had lost it.
 
"It can never be the way it was", she would say. "You hurt me too much for me to trust you again. And even if I did, I could just decide to break your heart one day just to get back at you for all that happened".
He had told her he was ready to risk her hurting him as penance for what he had done if only she would give him another chance but she hadn't.
 
Now he looks back and wonders if he didn't try hard enough.
 
Had he given up too easily?
 
She had someone else in her life now. A friend of his actually.
 
The only comfort he has now is that he knows she's with someone who'll treat her right. Someone who'll never hurt her. Someone who knows what she's worth.
 
But it also leaves him with a question which never seems to go away: If everyone deserves a second chance, how come he never got his?
 
True story? Fiction? A mixture of both? Guess correctly and win N1,000 airtime on any network of your choice. Send your answers to jamesikuku@gmail.com (First correct response wins the prize).
Please read and share with your friends!
Ikuku A. James

BANKS COPS AND ROBBERS 2

Then he heard footsteps. Someone was running in his direction, and then he heard other footsteps right behind the first. His first thought was to keep quiet and lie very still. After all, this was Lagos, and poking your nose where it didn’t belong especially in the middle of the night could get you killed. He had decided he wouldn’t move and just let whoever it was run past him when the door of the bus swung open. That was the moment he had met Marcus and that was when his life changed forever. Marcus had climbed into the bus and held a knife to his throat, threatening to kill him if he so much as made a sound. They had both laid on the floor of the bus until Marcus’ pursuers were gone. A few minutes after the last footsteps had receded, Marcus climbed down from the bus, smiled at him and thanked him for saving his life. He pulled out a wad of 1000 Naira notes and tossed them at him calm as you like, as if he did not just threaten to slit his throat. That was the first and last he saw of Marcus until their paths crossed three months later. *********************************************************************************Emeka had just finished talking to one of the branch’s high net worth customers and was walking him to the door of his office when he saw the commotion at the counter. At that point it had deteriorated into a three sided shouting match between Sanni, John and the cashier. Emeka put on his ‘’how-may-I-help-you-today’’ smile and walked to the counter.
 ‘’Hello young man, I’m the manager of this branch. My name is Emeka. It seems you have a problem they haven’t been able to help you with, right?’’, he said to John. ‘’I most certainly do’’, John threw back at him. ‘’I don’t understand why you charge me for everything and when I ask for my money all this young lady can tell me is that there are procedures to follow to get my own money. Please just close the account and give me my money right now’’.
 Emeka turned his smile up a few watts. ‘’You don’t have to close your account. I’m sure we can work something out. Please come into my office’’. Emeka walked John to his office and after offering him a seat, brought out a bottle of wine from the refrigerator beside his desk and poured a glass for him. ‘’You know, we don’t just close accounts like that. There’s a lot of paper work to be done and we also have to explain to our head office why the account was closed. They see it as a failure to properly manage our customers and that doesn’t look good on my appraisal’’. The minute John heard that, he knew he had leverage. Maybe it was only a little but he was going to hold on to it with all he had. ‘’Well, the only thing I am interested in now is the fact that I don’t have enough money to go home’’, John said sipping from his glass of wine and trying to look as gloomy as possible. ‘’How much will it cost you to get home?’’, Emeka asked. ‘’Five thousand Naira’’. Emeka reached into the bottom drawer of his desk and pulled out a bundle of notes. He counted out five thousand naira and handed them over to John. ‘’I’ll just instruct the cashier to debit your account for the 4,400 Naira you have. Have a wonderful trip back home and enjoy your holidays’’. Emeka leaned across his desk to shake hands with John and that was when all hell broke loose. *********************************************************************************Sanni had left the banking hall and was back outside supervising the parking of vehicles when he saw the tinted Peugeot 406 salon car. At first, he thought it was a government official because it didn’t have any number plates. He started to walk towards the car. These government people had money and they liked it when you deferred to them. The last thought that crossed his mind was that he could probably get a very good tip if he played his cards right. He was only about two meters from the car when the back door on the passenger’s side opened and the young man with the AR15 assault rifle stepped out. The bullets threw him halfway across the parking lot and he was dead before he hit the ground. There was a space of about three seconds when time seemed to stand still and then it was utter mayhem. The customers at the ATM scattered in different directions all screaming and shouting and falling over one another. The man with the gun turned and fired at them as they ran away. Three of those running were hit in the head and died instantly a few more were wounded and lay on the ground moaning or screaming. One man had his intestines hanging out and was still crawling along the ground trying to get away. One of the two remaining guards was trying to scale the fence when the gunman turned and sprayed a volley of shots into his back. He flipped from the wall like a rag doll and fell face down on the other side of the fence. He twitched a couple of times and then stopped moving. The mobile policeman attached to the branch was at the back having lunch under the shade of a tree when he heard the first shots. He grabbed his rifle and dove for cover behind the branch’s bullion van which was parked next to where he was sitting. He crawled from there to the wall from where he could see what was happening in front.
 The scene that greeted him made him sick to his stomach. There were four men and a woman all armed with high powered rifles walking towards the entrance of the branch. They stopped briefly and spoke in low tones and then two of the men began to walk towards him, while one of the others put a bullet in the head of a customer who had been shot in the stomach and was crawling with his intestines hanging out trying to get away. It dawned on him they were going to block off the rear exit. He scrambled away from his position behind the wall, sprinted for the fence at the back and vaulted over it without breaking stride. There was nothing he could do here on his own and he dared not use his radio to call in for help for fear that they might hear him. He just hoped the situation did not deteriorate any further before he got help. *********************************************************************************John was reaching out his hand to shake Emeka when he heard the first few shots go off. When the screaming and shouting started he immediately knew it was a robbery. It dawned on him that he had to get out of the branch manager’s office. He was most likely the first person the robbers would look for when they got into the bank. He ran out of the office and into the banking hall. Some of the customers were already lying flat on their faces with their hands over their heads. He was just going to do the same when there was a deafening explosion and the security doors erupted in flames and tangled metal. John looked up and through all the smoke and debris saw a woman lowering a rocket propelled grenade launcher. His next thought was a prayer. ‘’Baba God, abeg I no wan die today’’ (Dear God, please I don’t want to die today)

TO BE CONTINUED

BANKS COPS AND ROBBERS 1

It was an exceptionally busy day. The banking hall was full and a few customers even had to stand outside. This was a typical scenario whenever students were going home on vacation. They all came to withdraw their transport fares. The few who had ATM debit cards were the lucky ones because the queues at the machines were shorter and moved faster. Better still, it took less time to complete transactions. To make matters worse, the split unit air conditioning systems had packed up; the last of them, just the week before. The crowd that afternoon was one impatient, sweating mass of people. So it was quite understandable that John Akporoghene was in a foul state of mind.

But that was not the only reason. He had been writing his first semester 300 level examinations over the past week and they were not the best exams he had written in his short sojourn on the planet. Then there was the issue of his transport fare to Warri. It would cost him 4,500NGN to get to Warri and he had 5,000NGN in his account. However, the bank had a nasty habit of deducting 600NGN as transaction charges every month. He hoped they had not done that already. Travelling from Abuja to Warri on an empty stomach was bad; but being stranded without transport fare? He didn't even want to think about it.

 It was also understandable that Sanni Mai-Angwa,a day guard at the bank was not in his best of moods. His job became a whole lot more difficult during these periods when the bank was crowded. There were two other day guards but Sanni had been on the job for eight years. So in a way, you could say he was head of security. He had to make sure every customer entering the bank was frisked with a metal detector. He also had to make sure those customers who came in cars were parked properly and he had to keep an eye out for anything suspicious. Emeka Obazie had been branch manager for three months and this was the first time he was experiencing the end of semester rush. Already, he was beginning to feel the strain. Previously, he had been in the Maitama branch of the bank where there was virtually no commercial banking. All the customers he had handled before now were people who had platinum master cards, members of the mile high club, men who had cash delivered to them in their homes and offices by bullion vans. Now he was here in Gwagwalada where even fish selling market women demanded to be accorded the respect due customers. But he could deal with that because he was on his way up the corporate ladder. Back in Maitama, he had been a banking officer; and here he was, a branch manager. He considered all the stress a necessary part of his climb to the top. After all, nothing good came easy.

John Akporoghene was at the counter just about then. The last thought that had crossed his mind before the cashier told him he didn't have enough in his account to withdraw the amount he wanted, was that he should have checked his account balance first. ''I'm sorry but you have to withdraw a lesser amount'', the cashier was saying. John knew this wasn't going to be an easy one, but he wasn't going to go back on his motto; ''Warri boy no dey carry last!'' (*Boys from the town of Warri in the Niger Delta region of Nigeria can never be cheated).
 ''Madam you see ehn, (*ehn is a word used in Nigerian English for emphasis) I need the money for an emergency and any amount less than that just won't do'', he started. ''You really have to help me here''.
''I'd really love to help, but I’m just doing my job'', she replied.
It was at that moment that John had what he later told his friends was the best idea he had ever come up with in a tight spot. An epiphany, if you like.
''Okay, I want to close the account''. The cashier at first did not understand exactly what he meant. ''You want to do what?'', she asked. ''I said I want to close the account''. ''Now'', he added for emphasis. ''Well, I’m sorry I can't help you with that right now''. ''I'm asking for my money, and you are telling me you can't help me with that right now? Who put you in a position to decide when I can or can't have my money?'' ''Look young man, there are channels you have to go through. I can't just count out money and hand it to you over the counter because you want to close your account. It’s not done that way''.
''I want my money now oh! And I don't want to hear anything about channels'', John said, beginning to raise his voice. ''Just give me my money right now. Do I have to go and see your board of directors before I can get my money?''.

Sanni was at the door at that moment and he heard John arguing with the cashier. This was a scenario he had to handle every time the bank was full of students. They always had one problem or the other which they expected the cashier to be able to deal with over the counter. They never seemed to understand that some of these problems were administrative ones. This was only going to take a moment. All he had to do was calm the young man down and get him to agree to see someone in administration. Personally, he would kick them out of the premises, but the manager had this principle of making sure the customers were always shown respect.
''Kai ! Aboki ! (*Hey! Young man!) Na wetin dey haffun por hia ?,(*What is going on here?) Sanni asked John in his heavily accented mix of Hausa and broken English. ''This is none of your business'', John replied. Yes, Sanni thought; they were also very arrogant, disrespectful and full of self importance. ''Any frovlem wen you get, na only ogah por inside go pit helf you'',(*Whatever the problem is, only the boss inside can help you) Sanni tried another approach. ''Look, just leave me alone. I am not going to see any oga (*boss) inside. I just want my money right now''. John looked around and noticed that a few people were beginning to look in their direction. That was good. All he had to do was cause enough trouble to embarrass the bank. Then they would want to solve his problem just to get rid of him. There was always the possibility that they would get him arrested, but that was a chance he was willing to take. After all what he was doing could not exactly be called a criminal offense.

*********************************************************************************The night before the operation, Johnny was nervous. It was only his second time out with the guys. The first had not been an experience he would want to relive. He had been shot at and Hakeem had been killed on that day. Marcus had told him it was just part of the hazards one had to face on the job. He would give anything for the opportunity to get drunk, but Marcus had strictly told him when he first joined the gang that there was to be no drinking, snorting or smoking the night before an operation. He looked at the bedside clock next to him and saw that it was 2 a.m. He lay there staring at it and then his mind began to drift. He was just nine when his father died. He saw it all flash before him; his mom passing out when his uncle had broken the news to her, the endless days of tears and having to finally stop school a year and a half later. After dropping out, he had gotten menial jobs to help support his mum and his baby sister, Karen. Karen had continued schooling up till her fourth year in Secondary School when she had been impregnated by a boy in his final year in the same school. Johnny remembered waiting for the boy on his usual route back home from school; beating him up so badly he had passed out and continuously stepping on his face until he thought he heard something crack. He hadn’t gone back home for a whole week. And when he finally did, his mom had told him with tears that the boy had died the day before and that the cops had come looking for him. He left home that night and he had not returned since. The last image he saw in his flashback was his mum’s crying face, and then he was finally asleep.

*********************************************************************************Three and a half hours later, he was awake. He took a quick shower and had three slices of bread and a glass of water. He went back into his room after breakfast and opened his closet. He took out both boxes lying on the floor of the closet and moved aside the wooden panel. In the space below was a flat metal box. He took it out, laid it on the bed, and opened it up. Inside it were two guns; a Makarov SP Pistol and an AR15 assault rifle. He reached into the box and pulled out the assault rifle and the irony of it all struck him. Back when he was a kid, he used to play a game called ‘’Police and Thief’’ with his friends and everyone always wanted to be on the police side. Now, here he was being a real life armed robber. Again he flashed back and this time, it was to the day he had met Marcus. It was about a month and a half after he had run away from home. He had taken odd jobs to keep body and soul together until finally, he had ended up as a bus conductor for a guy who ran the Ojuelegba-Ketu route in Lagos. He would work till 9pm and then sleep in the bus when it was finally parked in Ojuelegba till the next morning. There was a public bathroom in the park where he took his bath; and what little possession he had, was in the trunk of the bus in a plastic bag. That night, he had just laid down when he heard gunshots. At first they sounded distant. A few minutes later, he heard the shots again. This time, they sounded really close.

To be continued...