PAY DAY FOR THE GIGOLO

It is difficult to understand why women call a young man who sleeps with sugar mummies, Ben 10. The incomprehension comes about because these toy boys have absolutely nothing in common with the heroic cartoon figure. All the same, they still dub any such young men, a Ben 10. Amayenda nka Ben 10, that’s what they say. Weird, but that’s the fact.

And it is exactly for this reason that women gave Charley Kadale the moniker Ben 10. The male prostitute was the most popular consort of old ladies in the city of Lilongwe who enjoyed the company of young men in bed.

Charley was one of those ambitious young men who want to have all the good things in life without having to work for them. Blessed with good looks but meagre talents, he saw sleeping with old women as a way of achieving his dreams.

It was not surprising to see him in the company of rich old ladies under his favourite guise of being their driver. He preferred this disguise because it gave him an opportunity to drive their opulent cars without overly exposing himself as a gigolo. He was always flamboyantly dressed and gallivanted around town in sumptuous cars.

His extravagant lifestyle attracted girls to him the way a beautiful flower attracts butterflies. So he had a bevy of girls he went out with but made sure neither the girls nor the women knew of each other. He did not love the old women. To him they were only a source of money. As for the girls, he did not love them either. They were only a source of fun to him.

“There’s no love involved. I whisper sweet nothings to the old ladies, do anything they want, just to get them around my little finger so that I can milk them of their money. I go out with the girls just for the fun of it,” he had once confided to his close friend, Robert.

But that was before he met Jennifer, a stunningly beautiful girl with whom he madly fell in love with. And Jennifer was demanding that he should marry her.

“Why don’t we wait for, say a year, so that I can set everything for us?” he begged her.

“You’re already set, Charley. You’ve got a good business, several cars and houses. What else do you want?”

How could he tell her that the business, several cars and houses she was talking about belonged to Aunt Mada, an old lady he was currently dating? And the more he dilly dallied, the more she became suspicious that maybe he was dating other girls. He knew this would only make her start digging into his past and if she discovered the true source of his wealth she would dump him like a poisonous insect.

He had to find a way of emancipating himself from Aunt Mada without losing her money. An idea crossed his crooked mind. He had found a way of inheriting the old girl’s money.

He began to drop hints that if her husband died, not that he was going to die, she would not only be free to marry whoever she wanted but would also inherit his wealth. He also made it clear that he himself would be available to move in with her if her husband was out of the way.

Aunt Mada quickly caught on to the idea. The suggestion actually came from her one afternoon as she caressed his hairy chest. “If my husband died, there’d be no reason why you shouldn’t move into this house.”

Charley hungrily grabbed at the idea. “Then why don’t we arrange something that’d hasten his journey to meet his creator?” he offered.

The sugar mummy seemed to have a plan already. They discussed it several times, perfecting it each time they met, until they were satisfied that it would work.

“Here’s how it will go. You’ll knock on the front door. My husband will let you in. Once in the house, you’ll stab him to death and then bind me and leave me on the floor. Then you’ll pick the money that’ll be in a briefcase on this table and go straight to your house in Chinsapo. Is that clear, darling?”

“It’s been crystal clear since you explained the plan to me the first time,” Charley, dressed in a blue suit and shiny black shoes, replied absent-mindedly.

She gave him a hard glance. “Once you arrive at your house, stay there until I give you a call. Under no circumstances, Charley, are you going to leave the house or dispose of the murder weapon. Improperly disposed, the knife could give us away. I’ll make arrangements for its disposal.”

“I’ll stick to the plan the way a baby monkey sticks to its mother’s belly,” the gigolo assured her, his greedy eyes hungrily taking in the big, airy lounge furnished with expensive furniture and ornaments. The room contained everything he wanted except the archaic lady curled in the sofa sipping orange juice while casually explaining a murder plan as if it was a game. “The big question is: will it work?”

Aunt Mada smiled at him. “We’ll get away with it. The plan is fireproof as long as you stick to what I’ve told you.”

The toy boy took a deep ub breath. If the plan worked, he was going to make the break he desperately needed to make it in his life. Now thirty, he was still dependent on old women for a living. They allowed him drive their cars, sleep in their plush houses, bought him expensive clothes but never gave him enough money for him to stand on his own. It was as if they all knew they held him on the leash by not giving him enough money.

But Aunt Mada was different. A small woman of sixty and in good health, he had met her six months ago on one rainy afternoon. He had been standing by the roadside at his usual spot at Bwandilo where women used to come to pick him up  to render them services in bed when the when big black Mercedes Benz appeared. The vehicle hit a pothole and splashed him with muddy water.

The car stopped, reversed and came to a halt by where he stood. The tinted window rolled down and an old woman stuck out her head.

“I’m sorry about the mud,” she apologized. “I didn’t see the pothole.”

He flashed a smile. “It’s my fault. One shouldn’t be out in this miserable weather.”

She smiled back at him. “And why are you out, to borrow your words, in this miserable weather?”

Charley laughed. “Hard times sometimes fall on a man. Wanted to go see a friend. Didn’t have money to pay for a taxi,” he lied.

The woman gazed at Charley’s face the way someone trying to identify a person does. She dug out a cellphone from her handbag, dialed a number, spoke to someone briefly, then cut the call. Satisfaction gleamed in her eyes.

“Hop in, young man,” she offered.

Charley quickly climbed in. “You know what, young man? You look smart to me and you’re also handsome,” the woman said when he was comfortably settled in the car. She broke off and winked at him. “One endowed with such charms must be daft to lack money in this city.”

How could the ancient woman know? But if there was something that fired Charley was money. Money attracted Charley the way a fly is attracted to bad smell. He was immediately alert.

“Madam, you wouldn’t know,” Charley said. “I’ve tried everything to make money and failed.”

“Call me, Aunt Mada,” she said winking at him. “Are you sure you’ve tried everything?”

There was something in the tone of the question that made Charley look at her. What it was, he could not place.  

“Well, maybe there’s something you’ve not tried yet,” she went on without waiting for his answer. “Let’s go to my house.”

Her house was a mansion set in the middle of a beautiful garden in Area 12. “Young man, I’ll not beat about the bush,” she said seriously when they were seated inside the house. “I’m a rich but lonely woman. I took your fancy the moment I saw you at Bwandilo. If you can agree to be my boyfriend, I’ll make you a rich man.”

Charley almost laughed. Making love to a sixty year old woman, she had by now became an expert at judging women’s age, for money was nothing to him. In fact, that was his livelihood. It was like employing a cat to catch a mouse. This was something he was going to enjoy immensely.

“What about your husband? Your children?”

She smiled conspiratorially at him. “My husband is too busy chasing girls. I want to hit back.” A sad note crept in her voice. “We’d two children. They both died.”

Charley did not allow emotions creep into his business. His manhood was for coining money and nothing else. This was a proposal he could not refuse. After all, the money he would get from her would enable him date other girls.

Aunt Mada dipped her hand into her handbag. She pulled out a thick ward of money. Charley looked like a mouse eyeing groundnuts. Here was his chance to make his dreams come true. He could already feel his minting machine begin to stir in his trousers in readiness for action.

Outside, the rain stopped suddenly. Charley. The ladies’ man. What else did he want? He scooped her up and lowered her on the sofa.

And that is how their relationship began. To cover up their clandestine affair, she employed him as her driver. Even her husband came to know of him as ‘that young man who drives for us’.

And now, as she explained the plan to him for the last time, his mind was elsewhere. The sugar mummy was in for a nasty surprise. There was no way he would allow the old witch waste his life. Yes, he would murder her husband and marry her. But she would also kick the bucket sooner than later and he would inherit her wealth, marry Jennifer and live happily ever after.

The next night, they put their plan into action. All went exactly as planned except for one addition. After he had killed her husband, Aunt Mada told him to sleep with her. “We’ll make it look like after murdering my husband, the killer raped me. It’ll make everything look more authentic.”

So, he made love to her and then tied her. He escaped with the briefcase full of cash. As agreed with Aunt Mada, he went to hole up in his house. He hid the knife in the briefcase.

The plan was really foolproof, he told himself. There was no way anyone would link him with the robbery and murder at Aunt Mada’s house. After a safe period, he would marry the old hag. And after another safe period, he would also murder her. The murderous crone deserved nothing less than a cozy spot six feet under. Contented, that night he slept like a baby.

A knock on the door awakened him the next morning. It must be one of his friends, he thought. He must act normal, he told himself. Whistling, he opened the door. To his horror, two uniformed policemen stood outside. They searched the house and found the money and the bloody knife.

“Mr. Charley Kadale, you are under arrest for armed robbery, murder and rape,” one of the policemen told him.

As they handcuffed him and led him to the police station, he wondered how they had discovered him so quickly. He would get the answer during his trial.

Aunt Mada was the principal witness. She explained with feigned regret how Charley, who usually came to do piece work at their house had taken advantage of her husband’s trust to gain access into their house and not only murder him but also rape her.

Charley tried desperately to defend himself, exposing himself as Aunt Mada’s secret lover. But it was as useless as the efforts of a hanged man trying to save himself after the trap door has been kicked down. The more he tried to prove himself innocent, the more the judge became convinced of his guilt. Aunt Mada was a respectable member of the community, happily married and the leader of the women’s guild at her church. To accuse her of going out with a man half her age was not only ridiculous but impossible.

The gigolo was found guilty and sentenced to death. Dead, he would never know that he had simply been used by Aunt Mada to commit a crime of passion. Her seventy-year-old husband had been having an affair with a twenty-year old girl. Athough the family looked normal from outside, her instincts told her that soon he was going to leave her for the girl. Threatened, that’s when she had decided to kill him. And the greedy fancy man who prided himself as the best gigolo in the city had proved to be the perfect cat’s paw in her plan.

End