The shop had changed. It didn't look different. The walls were still concrete. The lights were still off. The smell of vinegar and kerosene still hung in the air. But the air pressure had shifted.
We were no longer a retail store. We were a Clinic.
I sat at the counter, sorting through a pile of broken things. The civil servant with the Casio watch had talked. He had told his colleagues in the Ministry. Who told their cousins in the Council. Who told their wives.
They came at twilight, when the shadows were long. They didn't bring radios or irons. They brought the things they couldn't trust to the open market.
Item 1: A digital blood pressure monitor. Owner: A nervous man who didn't want his wife to know he had hypertension. Status: Corroded battery terminal. Fix: Scraped and plated. Price: 1,500 Francs.
Item 2: A "Brick Game" (Handheld Tetris). Owner: A mother whose child had dropped it in the toilet. Status: Short circuit. Fix: Cleaned with rubbing alcohol. Dried over the kerosene lamp. Price: 500 Francs.
Tashi stood at the door. He was the Bouncer. He turned people away. "No televisions," Tashi told a man with a heavy CRT on his head. "We don't have the voltage." "No fridges," he told another.
He only let in the small things. The desperate things.
"We are not a repair shop," Tashi whispered to me as he locked the door after the last customer. "We are a Confessional. They bring us their secrets because they know we are rats. And rats don't talk to the police."
Wednesday, September 30, 1999 04:30 PM
We were working on a batch of bolts for Massa Joe (the bread and butter) when the car pulled up. It wasn't a taxi. It wasn't a wreck. It was a maroon Toyota Cressida.
A woman stepped out. She was dressed in a sharp business suit. She held a leather folder. She looked terrified.
She knocked on the shutter. Rap-rap-rap. Tashi peered through the crack. He unlocked the door.
She stepped in. She looked at the dark shop. She looked at Collins sweating on the bicycle rig. She looked at my bandaged arm. She didn't flinch. Desperation makes you blind to aesthetics.
"Mr. Tashi?"
"Yes, Madame."
"I am Madame Eposi," she said. "I am the Clerk of the City Council."
The Council. The enemy. The people who cut the water. The people who sent Fomara. I stiffened.
"How can we help you, Madame?" Tashi asked, his voice neutral.
She placed a small black object on the counter. It was a Sony Micro-Cassette Recorder.
The kind used by journalists and secretaries.
"It is jammed," she whispered. "I pressed Eject, and it... it ate the tape."
"Did you pull it?" I asked.
"I tried," she said, her hands shaking. "But it is stuck. If I pull harder, it will snap."
She looked at Tashi. "The recording is... vital. It is the minutes of the Budget Committee meeting. There is no other copy. If I lose this..."
She didn't finish. She didn't have to. In 1999, losing the official minutes of a Council meeting wasn't an error. It was a firing offense. Or worse, if the budget was "sensitive."
"We can extract it," Tashi said. "But magnetic tape is fragile. There is a risk."
"No risk," she pleaded. "I heard you fixed the Databank watch. They say you perform surgery."
"5,000 francs," Tashi said. "Upfront. For the risk."
She opened her purse. She put a 5,000 note on the counter. "Please."
Tashi nodded to me. "Collins. Power."
Collins climbed onto the bicycle. Whirrrr. The generator whined. The 12V light bulb over my workbench glowed a dull orange. It wasn't bright, but it was better than shadows.
I sat down. I put on my loupe. Madame Eposi stood right behind me. I could smell her fear—it smelled like stale perfume and cold sweat.
I picked up the recorder. She was right. The tape had spooled off the reels and wrapped itself around the capstan the spinning metal rod that moves the tape. It was a "tape salad."
"Screwdriver," I whispered.
I unscrewed the back casing. I couldn't just pull the tape. It would stretch. And stretched tape distorts the voice. I had to dismantle the drive mechanism.
"Steady, Collins," I warned. "No voltage spikes."
"I steady," Collins grunted. The flywheel hummed.
I used a pair of tweezers plated German Spec to lift the drive belt. I manually rotated the capstan in reverse. Click. Click.
The black ribbon of tape began to loosen. It was crinkled. Folded like an accordion. But it wasn't snapped.
"Is it broken?" Eposi gasped.
"It is bruised," I said. "But alive."
I spent twenty minutes gently teasing the tape back into the plastic cassette shell. I used a hexagonal pencil to wind the spool manually.
Finally, the cassette popped out. I held it up. The tape was wrinkled in one section, about ten seconds' worth.
"We need to test it," I said. "To be sure the audio survived the crunch."
"Test it," Eposi breathed.
I put the cassette back in. I checked the batteries. They were weak. I wired the recorder to our DC power supply (powered by Collins).
I pressed Play.
Hiss... Crackle... The speaker was tinny.
"...budget allocation for the new road..." A man's voice. Boring. Bureaucratic. "...approved..."
Then the tape hit the crinkled section. Warble... distort... click.
Then it cleared. And the voice changed. It wasn't a bureaucrat. It was a voice I knew. Deep. Gravelly.
"...tell the Governor I don't care about the tender process..."
My blood ran cold. It was The Bookman. The Chairman. Junior's uncle.
"...The contract goes to Delta Construction," the Bookman's voice continued. "Or the Council gets no fuel allocation next month. You decide, Mayor. Do you want to walk to work?"
Click. Madame Eposi slammed her hand down on the Stop button.
The silence in the shop was absolute. Collins had stopped pedaling. The flywheel spun down with a dying whine.
Madame Eposi was pale. She looked at me. She looked at Tashi. She realized what she had done. She hadn't just brought us a broken machine. She had brought us evidence of extortion.
"The tape," she whispered. "Is it fixed?"
"It played," I said. My voice sounded far away.
She grabbed the recorder. She fumbled with the cassette, ejecting it. She put it in her purse.
She looked at Tashi. She looked terrified. Not of the broken tape anymore. But of us.
"You heard nothing," she said.
"We heard static," Tashi said calmly. "We fix machines, Madame. We don't listen to content."
She stared at him. She was assessing him. Was he a blackmailer? A spy? Or just a technician?
She reached into her purse again. She pulled out another note. 2,000 Francs. She put it on the counter.
"For the... express service," she said.
It wasn't a tip. It was hush money.
"Thank you, Madame," Tashi said.
She turned and walked out. She hurried to her car. The Toyota Cressida sped away.
We stood in the dark. The flywheel stopped.
"That was him," Collins whispered. "The Bookman."
"Yes," Tashi said.
"He is threatening the Mayor," I said. "Delta Construction. That is his shell company. He is stealing the road contract."
"We know," Tashi said. "Everyone knows. But now... we have heard the voice."
Tashi picked up the money. 7,000 Francs total. He looked at it with disgust.
"This is dangerous money," Tashi said. "She will be afraid of us now. And fear makes people do stupid things."
"She won't talk," Liyen said from the shadows. "Because if she talks, she admits she let outsiders hear the tape. She is trapped in the secret with us."
Liyen walked into the light. "But now we know something," she said. "We know the Bookman is squeezing the Council for the road. That means the Council is desperate."
"So?"
"So," Liyen said. "When the Council is desperate, they squeeze the small people. Expect more fines. Expect more water cuts. The Bookman squeezes the Mayor, the Mayor squeezes the town."
She looked at me.
"You fixed the tape, Nkem. You saved her job."
"I did."
"Good," Liyen said. "One day, we might need a friend in the Council. Even a terrified one."
I sat at the counter. I opened the ledger. I wrote the date.
Income: 7,000 Francs. Service: Data Recovery.
I paused. I thought about the Asset list. Trust. Union. Reputation.
I added a new line. Liability: Knowledge.
We weren't just rats scavenging for food anymore. We were rats sitting in the walls, listening to the lions plot. It gave us an advantage. But it also meant that if they ever tore the walls down... we would be the first to die.
I closed the book. "Collins," I said. "Start the bike. We have bolts to plate."
"Again?" Collins groaned. "We rich now."
"We aren't rich," I said. "We are targets. Spin the wheel."