You dey Mad ?! Part 4
YOU DEY MAD
Mayowa Ojo
6/10/20264 min read
The DPO watched the phone ring as if he was waiting for it to pick itself up.
"Please let me pick it up. I swear it's my best friend. We usually pray at midnight together on Fridays."
On a whim, the DPO picked the call and placed it on speaker.
Larry was about to shout out his friend's name, Patrick, when he heard a chant on the phone.
The look on his face was a dead giveaway that it was not what he was expecting.
In the background was some music that Larry was unfamiliar with but it gave surreal vibes like if Enya and Jhené Aiko did a song together!
The DPO raised his head and looked at Larry who, though shocked, was about to defend the music when a voice spoke from the phone.
"Na die the man go die oh. In fact, the two of them. Dem no get choice. Give me your hand..." A voice said. The person sounded elderly.
"Patrick? PATRIIIIICK!!!" Larry shouted. Nothing he heard made sense.
"Who be that? Who dey talk?" the elderly man asked.
"Oh crap," someone else said and quickly ended the call quickly.
Larry and the DPO looked at each other, a thousand words exchanged in the silence between them.
"One piece of evidence down. Now, for the last time, what was your plan for the lady handcuffed in the reception?"
Larry started sweating all over again.
********
“WHY DO YOU KEEP LYING TO ME?” The DPO yelled and banged his hands on his table. He got up and paced his office in fury while Larry remained on his knees pleading.
In the last few minutes, Larry had yet again rehashed the events of the day from the second he picked Tasha till they arrived at the police station but the DPO was not buying it.
“You’re twenty six years old and you grew up in Lagos and you don’t know enough to not pick strangers on the road? Are you stupid?”
“I was just trying to help someone who looked stranded…”
“If na man, you for help am?”
Larry was hesitant.
“I didn’t think so, yet you have the nerve to sit in my office and lecture me about not judging a book by its cover. Ode!”
Larry bowed his head low in shame. He could see that he was not getting out of this easily and it worried him but he felt helpless.
“Then there’s the issue of Blood,” the DPO said, waited a second, then chuckled.
Larry started to chuckle too but a stern look from the DPO straightened him.
“How do you explain that?”
“He’s my best friend but we have become like brothers hence the name blood and we usually pray at midnight every Friday.”
The DPO laughed. “I’ll give you this much sha, you’re creative and consistent with your stories.”
Larry considered thanking him except that it really was all fact not fiction.
“And then there’s this red cloth on the table…”
Larry looked at the cloth wondering how else he could prove it was neither harmful nor his to start with.
The DPO paced a little more, hands clasped behind him and then suddenly he stopped short as though a light bulb came on over his head and he quickly grabbed his desk phone.
“Send one of those three idiots in,” the DPO yelled into his desk phone and dropped the receiver.
“I don’t know how else to prove that it’s not mine but…”
“Don’t worry. You’ll get your shot in a second.”
In seconds, there was a knock on the door before someone opened the door from outside the office. It was Osagie and with him was Tasha’s boyfriend with one partially swollen eye while the other eye was bloodshot; one cheekbone was swollen and there was some dried blood on his lower lip. He looked like dog had dragged him up a rocky mountain and back down!
Larry’s heart was torn between compassion and a sense of judgment, after all he was part of the mastermind behind their collective predicament.
“Okay, do your thing. Make him do something involuntary,” the DPO said to Larry.
“What?”
A hot slap landed across Larry’s face from the DPO. “Are we playing here?”
Larry was in shock and he could feel his heartbeat pick up faster than it had been before. He immediately remembered the Hulk and for a split second wished he could morph into the green giant going by his heartbeat rate but he knew better.
“I talk am? Na yeye guy. E no get any power,” Osagie was starting to drop unsolicited monologues.
DPO shot Osagie a look that shut him up.
Larry got up once the shock cleared from his face. He picked up the red cloth, stared at it while wishing he would feel some sort of electrical impulse. Nothing.
“Hurry up. We don’t have all night.”
Larry moved cautiously toward Tasha’s boyfriend and he could see the man shrink away in fear but Osagie was on hand to make sure he did not run.
Larry stood in front of him, cloth in hand, sweat bead gathering on his forehead like spectators at a gladiator show. He looked back at the DPO who had moved closer for a better view.
Help me Lord. What do I do?
Silence.
Perfect, he thought.
Larry started speaking in tongues under his breath, hoping for a miracle. He did his best to make it sound like incantations but he was sure he was not getting that right and he did not care.
After about a minute that really felt like an hour, the DPO spoke up.
“Do you need a microwave or gas burner to heat it up? Do something.”
“You know that if anything happens it implicates me…”
“And if nothing happens, you’re still a suspect and will be locked up until we can find a solution to the crazy lady out in the reception.”
“See your life bastard. Na because of you dem dey call my babe crazy. E no go better for your…”
“Hush!” Larry whispered as he began to feel his blood boil.
Tasha’s boyfriend fell silent, closed his eyes, collapsed to the floor and started to snore – evidence that he neither fainted nor died. He was just asleep.
Osagie’s eyes widened at the man on the floor, the DPO had one hand over his mouth in shock too and Larry’s eyes widened in disbelief as the red cloth fell rather theatrically to the floor.
All three men were collectively shocked but Larry was more shocked - the DPO's hand over his mouth was twice it's size.
The hand he slapped me with, Larry thought.
He felt the first tear drop run down his face because he knew his predicament had just been upgraded to Pro Max status.