‘Do you think I had something to do with her death?’
‘What?’
‘The cops did. Worked me over pretty good. Only left bruises where I won’t show.’
I felt my stomach drop. Anger filled the empty inside.
‘Lightning Dilip?’
‘He sends his regards,’ she said.
The doors opened on a small crowd in the lobby. She stopped me in the doorway, blocking the people. Our faces were inches apart.
‘I didn’t have anything to do with it,’ she said. ‘I would never hurt Lisa. Or let anyone else hurt her.’
‘Of course not,’ I replied, but she was already gone.
I made my way to the desk, hurled the visitor tag across the counter, and bounced through people until I found Karla, unruffled, a little way from the front entrance.
We rode to the Bandra sea-face. She clung to my back, her face pressed into me, a ready-to-die passenger.
I could’ve gone to a dozen places closer, but I needed to ride. When we stopped, near the sea, I was as calm as the waves on the bay.
We walked that little smile of the coast in the midday heat, but we were comfortable: two foreigners who’d learned to love a sun-blessed city.
‘We had a date,’ she said, as we walked.
‘We had a date?’
‘No.’
I thought about it.
‘You and Lisa had a date?’
‘Yeah.’
We walked on for a while, and then I got it.
‘You mean, you and Lisa had a date-date?’
‘Kind of.’
‘Kind of?’
‘Kind of.’
‘There’s no kind-of date-date.’
‘There was always this . . . thing between us, you know –’
‘A thing, huh?’
‘On her side, sure.’
‘And this thing took you there that night?’
‘She said she wanted to have a little booze, and a lotta fun, or a lotta booze, and a little fun.’
‘I’m not understanding this.’
‘It was her plan.’
‘What plan?’
‘I said I’d go three or four drinks with her, and see what happened after that. She said you were cool with it.’
‘Really?’
‘Yeah,’ she frowned.
We walked on a few more steps in silence, our shadows clinging to us, hiding from the heat.
‘And with you, and the date-date? Was that serious?’
‘Not for me,’ she smiled, and then frowned her gaze at our feet. ‘Lisa was a flirt. She couldn’t help herself. I played along, because she liked it when I did.’
‘I’m sorry, Karla. I’m sorry I wasn’t here to stop this, and to stop you being the one to find her. If I could take that from you, I would.’
‘The only beauty the past has is that it can’t be changed. There was nothing you could’ve done, and there’s nothing you can do now.’
‘It . . . must’ve been . . . so hard, finding her.’
‘The door was open,’ she said, staring at her feet. ‘She was on the bed. I thought she was asleep. Then I saw how still she was, and the bag of pills. I shook her, but she was gone. Cold. I got the watchman to call the ambulance and the cops, but she was gone, Lin. She was long gone, poor baby.’
I put my arm around her, and she settled into me, as softly as married.
‘Who was with her?’ I asked. ‘Who gave her the stuff?’
‘I don’t know, yet. I’ve been trying to find out, but I haven’t mixed in those circles for a while.’
‘When the cops . . . worked you over, did they let anything slip?’
‘Only that they want your ass pretty bad,’ she said. ‘That came in clear as a boot on the spine. And I could see their point. Let’s face it, you vanish from the city, and your girlfriend dies. Or was it the other way around?’
‘Wait a minute,’ I asked, pulling my arm away from her to look into her eyes. ‘You can’t think I’d hurt Lisa? You can’t think that.’
She laughed. It was the first time she’d laughed since I’d seen her in Ranjit’s office, sitting behind the plants.
‘It’s good to see you laugh, Karla.’
‘It’s the first time since I found her. I’ve been uncomfortably numb for a while, and hazing purple most of the time. Of course you wouldn’t hurt her. I wouldn’t love you, if you could.’
She turned to the sea, the wind clearing her face for the sun. The breeze made lines of sea-foam music and frothy notes on parallel waves in the mouth of the bay.
‘Karla, what the hell happened? What do you think happened?’
‘I told you, I don’t know yet. Where the fuck were you, anyway?’
Where was I?
Click-clack. Severed head. Blue Hijab.
‘I had a job. Have you heard anything from Abdullah?’
‘No, but he has my number, and he always calls me when he gets back to town.’
‘Abdullah has your number?’
‘Of course.’
‘I don’t have your number.’
‘You don’t use phones, Shantaram.’
‘That’s not the point.’
‘And the point is?’
‘Well –’
‘I’m not going back to Ranjit,’ she said quickly, not smiling.
‘What? I mean, good, but what?’
‘I’m already checked in at the Taj.’
‘The Taj?’
‘My things will arrive by evening.’
‘You’re not going home, to Ranjit?’
‘Let me tell you, if you’re gonna make a move, Shantaram, this is your time.’
The worst part of being in love with a woman who’s smarter than you are, is that you can’t stop coming back for more, which, as it happens, is also the best part.
‘What?’
‘What did you tell me, once,’ she asked, not wanting an answer, ‘about before, and after?’
‘I . . . ah . . . ’
‘After just started, Lin. After started today. You can’t go home. I won’t go home. The only question is, are you in it with me, or in it without me?’
I felt stupid not understanding what she was telling me, and looking back now, I guess I was. But I didn’t know what decisions she’d made, or why she was telling me then.
Seconds fell, pollen in the wind. It was everything. It was nothing.
‘We just lost Lisa,’ I said. ‘We just lost Lisa.’
‘Lisa would –’
She cut herself off, laughed again, and gave me about eight unhappy queens.
‘Jesus!’ she said. ‘Am I . . . actually . . . trying to talk you . . . into coming with me?’
‘Well, I –’
‘Fuck you,’ she said.
‘Fuck . . . me?’
She stood quickly, and hailed a taxi.
‘Wait a minute, Karla.’
She got in the cab, and drove away.
I sprinted to the bike, and rode too fast and too loose until I found her cab. I followed her all the way back to the Taj hotel, riding around her cab and trying to catch her eye. She never turned to look.
I parked the bike, and watched her climb the wide steps and walk into the hotel. I went to the reservations desk, and left a note for her.
I rode away from the proud galleon of the Taj hotel through rivers of traffic, and questioned every man or woman I could still trust about Concannon. I checked gambling dens, opium parlours, country liquor bars, hash hangouts and numbers-racket corners. I didn’t learn much, but street voices confirmed that Concannon was running a heroin franchise for the Scorpion Company.
Everyone called them the Scorpion Company, rather than the Scorpion Gang: everyone recognis
ed their status as a full mafia Company.
I had to report to Sanjay. I had a standing appointment for two in the afternoon on the day after my return from Sri Lanka, whatever the date.
No doubt, Sanjay had expected me to report sooner. He wouldn’t be in a good mood. But that was okay. Since the death of his friend Salman, Sanjay didn’t have a good mood.
I parked the bike in a row of motorcycles outside KC College. I gave the parking attendant a hundred-rupee note, and asked him to keep his eyes open for dangerous types.
‘They’re college kids,’ he said in Hindi. ‘They’re all dangerous. Who knows what they’ll do next?’
‘More dangerous than the kids are.’
‘Oh, okay. You got it,’ he winked.
I walked the half-block to Sanjay’s mansion, and rang the bell. An armed Afghan guard opened the door, recognised me and ushered me inside.
I found Sanjay in the breakfast room, at the end of the house. A row of windows looked out on a distressed garden, bound by high walls. Sanjay was in his pyjamas and a dark blue dressing-gown with a monogrammed pocket.
A breakfast big enough for three big henchmen covered the table, but Sanjay was drinking tea, and smoking a cigarette.
There was only one chair in the room, and Sanjay didn’t rise from it.
‘Good work,’ he said, looking me up and down. ‘But then, you always did good work, didn’t you? Your money, for this job, will be delivered to you. All your things from the passport factory have been removed. They’re in that red case, near the front door. That leaves only goodbye. So, goodbye.’
‘How was the mission compromised? Why did I come home early?’
He stubbed out the cigarette, took a sip of tea, placed the cup very delicately on the saucer and leaned back in the chair.
‘You know why I’m glad to see you go, Lin?’ he asked.
‘Because you think I’m made for better things?’
He laughed. I’d known him for years, but I’d never heard that laugh before. It must’ve been one he saved for the right goodbye. Then he stopped laughing.
‘Because, you’re not a team player,’ he said grimly, ‘and you never will be. You’re a black sheep. Look around you. Everyone belongs to something or someone. You’re the odd man out. You don’t belong anywhere. You don’t belong to anyone. And now, you don’t belong here.’
‘Was it because Lisa died? Is that why you had a man at the airport?’
‘Like I said, you’re not a team player. There was no way to know how you’d react. You were in Madras, when it happened.’
‘When did you know?’
‘Five minutes after the cops, of course. But you had already started, and the job was too important to stop.’
‘Five minutes?’
‘You never use the phone, so I knew there was a good chance you wouldn’t come to know about it. It was my decision to keep it quiet until the job was complete, and it was my decision to have contacts for you, every step of the way.’
‘Your decision.’
‘Yes. If you don’t like it, well, you know, there’s always the fuck-you option.’
‘You didn’t tell me that my girlfriend died.’
‘You’re the one who wanted to keep her out of the family. It was your choice that we never met her, when we know the Mothers, sisters and wives of every brother in the Company.’
I looked at him, angry enough to fight him. My heart was thumping tribal music. I wondered how many times leaders lived through murderous seconds like those, without ever knowing that Death, Himself, had been lured into the room on a false alarm.
‘You still have a faint shadow of my protection,’ Sanjay said. ‘It covers you, because it would not look well for me, if a former employee was killed in the first two weeks that he left my service. But the clock is ticking. Don’t make me brush that shadow from your back sooner. Now, get the fuck out of here, and let me finish my breakfast in peace.’
I opened the door and was about to leave, but he spoke again. They always speak again: they always want the last word, even when they already had it.
‘I’m sorry about your girl,’ he said. ‘It’s a sad business. Must be hell for her family. But don’t let your feelings push you into hasty action. The Company will let you burn, the next time you fuck up.’
I left the mansion and rode to the food stands for office workers at Nariman Point. I was still angry, and hungry. Standing with dozens of others, I ate hot bread rolls, filled with eggs, fried potatoes and spiced vegetables, and drank a pint of milk.
I’d been skipping meals, and ducking sleep. I had to work out. I had to stay sharp. Every street guy in the south would know within hours that I was officially out of the Company. There were a few, with grudges, who’d only held back because I was a Company man. They could come out snapping, when they knew I was a lone wolf.
Half an hour’s ride away on that cold river of truth was a gym, in Worli. Some abandoned mill complexes had been transformed into beauty parlours and health centres. A retired gangster from the Sanjay Company, named Comanche, had set up a gym there as his home and place of business.
He was a friend, a stand-up gangster, and we’d fought with knives against rival gangs together, twice, and been cut both times. That’s stuff you don’t forget.
Comanche was a true independent, allowing members of any mafia Company to exercise in his gym, and cops as well, so long as no-one said a word against the Sanjay Company.
I stripped to jeans and boots, and pushed weight for an hour. Half an hour of shadow boxing gave me a cool-down.
The kids in the gym, all local and poor, were shy at first, although doing the young manhood thing of making sure I clearly understood they weren’t afraid. When they saw that I was okay, they joined in the shadow boxing with me, training hard.
Showered, dressed and refreshed, I looked in the spotted mirror.
My eyes were bright, and clear. Calm settled on me like flakes of autumn. When all else fails, the sign above the mirror said, steel it out.
‘You need a lat machine,’ I said to Comanche, passing him enough money to buy a new lat machine.
Comanche looked at the money.
‘That was an expensive training session,’ he said, frowning.
‘Loved every minute of it. But put a little window in there, yaar. If someone ever forces me to imagine what a snake’s asshole smells like, I now know where to start.’
‘Fuck you,’ he laughed. ‘Seriously, what’s the money for?’
‘I’m hoping you’ll consider it a membership fee.’
‘But Company men are free. You know that.’
‘I’m not with the Company any more, Comanche. I’m freelance, now.’
I hadn’t said it to anyone but a close friend, and after so long in the brotherhood it sounded strange, even in my own ears.
‘What?’
‘I’m out, Comanche.’
‘But, Lin, it’s –’
‘It’s okay. Sanjay’s good with it. Happy, in fact.’
‘Sanjay’s . . . Sanjay’s . . . good with it?’
‘I just came from there, man. He’s good with it.’
‘He is?’
‘My word.’
‘Okay.’
‘But, I’ll need a new place to train, now that I can’t use the Company gym. So, how about it? Will you have me as a member?’
He was confused and afraid, but he was a friend, and he trusted me. His face gradually softened, and he extended his hand.
‘Jarur,’ he said, shaking hands. ‘You’re welcome here. But I have to say, you’d be wiser to leave Bombay, man, under the circumstances.’
‘Maybe, brother,’ I said, walking away. ‘But would She let me go?’
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Karla will be pleased
t
o accept the company of Shantaram
at 8 pm, in her suite.
It was written in her hand: the precise, fluent script I liked more than any other calligraphic style I’d ever seen. I wanted to keep it, but I was trading punches with a dirty world: if an enemy put his fingers on the note, I’d want to beat him for it.
I sat on the bike, burned the note, and then rode slowly toward Afghan Church to meet with Naveen.
I parked the bike behind a nearby bus stand. When I was with the Sanjay Company, I parked on any footpath in town. As a freelancer, I parked my bike out of sight.
The commemoration nave in the church featured dusty flags and pennants, with stone inscriptions to soldiers lost in two Afghan wars.
It was a military church and a battle chapel, erected as a monument to the fallen. There were still grooves in the pews for unforgotten soldiers to rest their rifles when they prayed, before and after obeying the order to kill Afghans, a people whose language they couldn’t speak, and whose culture they couldn’t understand.
The mournful church was almost empty. An elderly lady was sitting in a rear pew, reading a novel. A man and a boy knelt on the approach to the altar. The circle of stained glass above the altar seemed to float above their heads.
Naveen Adair was examining the brass eagle supporting the Bible stand. He was young, but confident. His hands were behind his back, respectfully, but his step was strong as he paced back and forth: a young man, fully inhabiting the space of his life.
He saw me watching him, and followed me to the deserted garden behind the church.
We sat beneath a tree, on a support made of stone and cement.
It was quiet. The fading light of evening became the stained-glass light of the altar window above our heads, lighting the dark garden below with church-light.
‘I’m so sorry about Lisa, man,’ he said.
‘Me, too. Naveen, gimme a minute, will you?’
I had to be quiet, for a minute.
I had to think, for a minute.
I hadn’t stopped, to think. And now that I’d stopped to think, I was thinking.
Lisa. Lisa.
‘What did you say, Naveen?’
‘. . . and the police report, that’s what we know, so far,’ Naveen said.