NOTE: This is part of a continuing online novel. Here is the Table of Contents.

The America Diaspora is a sequel to The Chinese Century.

“What do you mean, he’s a con artist?”

“Care to read the report?” Chief Williams held up a four page dossier, fresh off his printer. “He’s wanted in three countries for crimes ranging from their equivalent of grand larceny and petty theft to embezzlement. Claimed to own an oil concession for Sao Tome.”

My shoulders slumped. “His name isn’t Samson Olajuwon, either,” Chief Williams added. “He’s not even a Nigerian national. He’s Congolese.”

I straightened my shoulders. “But without him I might have died. That was certainly the intention of the American soldiers who left me in Abuja.”

Williams nodded. “Maybe. But the fact is that Abuzeki fled practically as soon as the plane landed. That’s his name, or the oldest one we can trace. Yosuvi Abuzeki. Originally from the eastern Congo, then called Zaire. Started his career as a very young man, scamming UN missionaries in Rwanda investigating the genocide. Got out claiming his parents were victims. Went on from there. Sure you don’t want the rap sheet? I used the heavy stock paper on it.”

I took it from him.

Williams saw my downcast look. “Look, that doesn’t matter. He’s small potatoes. There are more people like him on this continent than there are any other kind. It’s how you survive this nightmare of a continent. It’s like the Dickens play, ‘Oliver.’”

“That’s a twist.”

Williams frowned. “We’ve got bigger problems. Some of the people you pulled in with your contest are turning out to be no better than the natives. Not worse than natives, and in many ways not as sophisticated. But they’ve got our fingerprints on their visas. Actually, your fingerprints. And those of your family.”

“Oy.”

“Oy is about right. By the numbers you did pretty well. Only about 3% of these people are dirty. Criminal records back in the states. We can deport them for lying on the equivalent of a visa application, if we can find them. It’s these other dozen or so we’re having real trouble with.” He practically tossed the report to me, thicker than what he had on Samson (or whoever), with a nice red cover.

“This is just stuff we know about, from people with no criminal records back in the states. I want you to have a ‘Come to Jesus’ meeting with them, alongside a local deputy.”

I nodded. Williams continued. “We’re going to bring them in for questioning. Not here. To the local jail. Give them a taste of how they do things here in Gautang. Makes Louisiana look like a picnic, I’ll tell you. Then you talk to them. We’ll release or remand on your say-so.”

“My say so?”

“Yeah, make it a good one.”

A few days later, I sat in a yellow, windowless room, wearing a buttoned-down shirt and slacks, alongside a matronly woman recommended to me by Mma Ramosawa. Mma Mathilda Mbutu (yes, I’d told her that was my mother’s name) was also of the traditional Motswana shape, broad of beam and with a self-imposed dignity. She wore a plain cotton dress with heavy, flat-soled shoes. She fanned herself with a big hat. None of these people would know that she was, in fact, one of the best criminal psychologists in Gautang. I was paying her retainer out of my own pocket. Some 2,000 Rand might have seened a lot to me a year ago, now it was cheap insurance, barely $250.

The idea was simple. I would play the good cop. I would ask leading questions, and I would feign great sympathy. I would introduce Mma Mbutu as a local churchwoman, a friend of my family here, and she would proceed to play the bad cop, berating the New Orleanians until she could see, she claimed, their very souls.

Just to kick the fear up a notch, I had a camera trained on them. Any lies could be treated as perjury, as perverting the course of justice.

These kids were passed the soiling the pants stage, way past it. I hadn’t asked for anyone to be brutalized, but I did want them given an honest introduction to the South African criminal justice system. The system hadn’t changed nearly as much as you might think since Apartheid. Only the faces of most jailors, and some lawyers, had changed. The power here was on a black foot, but it was usually an honest one, and with a crime rate which would have shamed any American city, I’d seen it was necessary.
“
The first victim, to my surprise, was a white man. The paper said his name was David Bradlee. He’d been a waiter in the Grand Hyatt when the floodwaters came. He said he’d been victimized by some cops who were stealing rooms and goods for a party that lasted some two weeks. He said he’d lived in Gretna, and was beaten when the cops found out he knew what they were up to.

A likely story, I thought. But Mma Mbutu passed on him.

We continued on to Atravious Birch, a teenager whose family had lived in the Ninth Ward. After a few minutes, Mma shook her head on him. I sighed…since he’d come with his family how could we push them all out for the potential sins of the son?

So it went, all that day. I don’t know how well we did. Mma Mbutu said the souls of 7 were black as dirt, the souls of 2 were clean, and she was unclear about Bradlee. “I can answer that one,” I replied. “Throw him back. When in doubt chuck ‘em out.

“There are plenty of hungry people in the world. I don’t have time to waste on the bad ones.”

God, I’ve become a capitalist.