I hadn’t heard any of it but the last words.
‘Sorry, Naveen. I’m not really with it. You’ll have to run that by me again.’
He smiled at me, a good friend, feeling bad.
‘Okay. But, listen, stand up first.’
‘Come again?’
‘Stand up, man.’
‘What for?’
‘Stand up, for fuck’s sake.’
He stood up, pulling me up with him.
‘Give me a hug,’ he said.
‘No, I’m good.’
‘All the more reason. Come on, give me a hug.’
‘I’m really, really good.’
‘Fuck it, man, your girlfriend died a week ago. Give me a hug, yaar.’
‘Naveen –’
‘Either you hug the Indian in me, or you fight the Irishman in me,’ he said. ‘There’s no other way, in a situation like this.’
He was holding his arms out. There was no other way.
He hugged me like a brother, like my brother in Australia, and it was bad.
‘Let it go,’ he said, as my tears fell on his shoulder. ‘Let it go.’
Tears, in a garden of stained light: tears on the shoulder of a volunteer brother.
‘Fuck you, Naveen.’
‘Let it go.’
I let it go, and then I let him go.
‘You feel better?’ Naveen asked.
‘Fuck you, Naveen. And yeah, I do.’
We sat down again, and he told me the little that he knew. It didn’t add much.
‘Where’s Concannon running the dope gig?’
‘I don’t know,’ he said, smiling for the first time. ‘Do you want him?’
‘I want to talk to him.’
‘Talk?’
‘Talk, then listen, while he tells me who went with him to Lisa’s that night.’
‘You don’t think it was Concannon who gave Lisa the drugs?’
‘He left, according to the watchman, after fifteen minutes. The second man was there for almost an hour. I want to know who the second man was.’
‘Okay. I’ll get on it.’
‘The watchman gave me the number of the black car they came in that night,’ I said, handing him the number I’d jotted down. ‘If you could detective out the owner for me, it would help.’
‘I’ll have the owner for you tomorrow, but it might not help. Lots of people have cars registered under other people’s names.’
‘Didier set up a place for me at the Amritsar hotel, on Metro. You can leave a message there, or I’ll be at Kayani’s, tomorrow, between one and two. Okay?’
‘You left your place?’
‘I did. And I’m not going back.’
‘Where are you going now?’
‘I have to meet Karla, at eight. I’m gonna buy a shirt, and check in at the Amritsar. What are you doing?’
‘I have to pick up Diva, at seven thirty. I’m free till then. Mind if I come along?’
‘I’d be glad of the company.’
We rolled the bike out from behind the bus stop, I kicked the engine happy, and he climbed on behind me.
‘I’ve been learning how to ride,’ he said.
‘Uh-huh.’
‘I’ve got my eye on this tricked-out vintage 350. It’s damn cool, and really fast.’
‘Uh-huh.’
‘And the racer boys have been teaching me how to stunt ride.’
‘The racer boys, huh?’
‘Yeah. Rich kids on imported Japanese bikes. They’re Diva’s friends. And good riders.’
‘Uh-huh.’
‘Would you like me to show you what I can do on your bike?’
‘Naveen, don’t ever talk about my motorcycle that way again.’
‘Got it,’ he laughed. ‘But just wait till you see mine!’
We rode along Fashion Street, where a stallholder in a drive-by-shirt-shop brought a new shirt and a couple of T-shirts to the bike, and then we rolled on to the Metro Junction.
I parked the bike in an alleyway behind the hotel’s façade, which passed beneath an arch, connecting the second to fourth floors of the whole block.
The Amritsar was in a curved building that faced the junction like a cliff-face, rising from pelagian traffic swirling around the vast intersection.
At ground level, there were sporting goods shops, office supply outlets, a music store, and Kayani’s restaurant, served by the alley behind the hotel’s façade.
At the second floor and up, the whole building was connected by a network of corridors and hidden stairways, leading from shuttered street balconies to the last private apartment, at the end of a city block. If you knew your way, you could be in another postal code, in the same building, while the cops or other bad guys were still banging on the door.
It was rumoured that the Amritsar had twenty-one exits. I was happy with three. The first thing that a man on the run does in any new place is find the exits. Before I went to the desk, I explored the building with Naveen. I found three suitable hasty exits, leading to three different places on surrounding streets. Nice.
When Naveen and I reached the reception desk we found Didier, rolling dice with the hotel manager. He rose to hug me.
‘Lin,’ he whispered in the hug. ‘I am about to win a discount on your rent, before you are even a registered guest.’
‘Let’s pay the rent first,’ I whispered back, ‘and you can win the discount later.’
‘Shrewd,’ he said, pulling apart again.
I checked in with one of my false passports, and took a look at my new rooms.
There was a large living room, with a bedroom and bathroom leading from it through high, wooden doors. A kitchenette filled one corner alcove.
At the far end of the room there was an archway of French doors, leading to a shadowed balcony. I walked through, opened the shutters, and looked out at the busy junction below.
The view was superb: a giant child’s toy, wound up and whirling through its cycle of light, sound and movement. Beyond were the trees of the Bombay Gymkhana, their leafy shadows making a tunnel of the road.
I looked around me and saw that there were only short, flimsy partitions between my balcony and the two sets of rooms beside it. The rooms looked deserted.
The hotel manager was standing beside me.
‘Anyone in the next rooms?’ I asked.
‘Not at the moment, but we’ve got two parties coming tomorrow.’
‘Tomorrow never comes,’ I said in Hindi. ‘We’re here now, and we’d like to take all three of these front-facing suites for a year, cash in advance.’
‘Suites?’ the manager and Didier said, at the same time.
‘Suites,’ I said. ‘All three. From tonight. A year in advance. Are we good?’
‘Hold on a minute,’ the manager said. ‘I just have to check with my greed.’
He paused, for a bit, with a thinking face, and then made up his mind.
‘What do you know,’ he said, ‘we’re suddenly unbooked.’
You’ve got to like a man who anthropomorphises his own greed: at the very least, it’s a conversation.
‘What’s your name, sir?’
‘Jaswant,’ he said. ‘Jaswant Singh. And how shall I call you, sir?’
‘Just call me baba. Is that okay?’
‘Sure, sure, baba. No problem. A year, you said? In advance?’
I paid the money, and he left us alone to go through the rooms.
We took down the temporary barriers between balconies, and walked all the way around, from hotel room to hotel room.
‘Why do you need three of these rooms, Lin? I refuse to call them suites.’
‘The walls at the ends of these balconies are sealed, Didier. If I have all three suites to mysel
f, nobody can sneak up that way.’
‘I see,’ he said.
‘But I only need two of them. The other one is for you, Naveen, if you want it.’
‘For me?’ Naveen asked.
‘You haven’t got an office yet, have you?’
‘No. I work from my apartment.’
‘Well, now you have an office, detective, if you want it.’
He looked at Didier, who shrugged a smile.
‘This just occurred to you now?’ Naveen asked.
‘Yeah.’
‘Because you have an extra room?’
‘Yeah.’
‘I love it. You’re on,’ Naveen said, shaking my hand. ‘Nice to have you at the other end of the balcony.’
Didier joined us, placing his hands on ours.
‘This is the beginning of something very –’
‘Shit!’ Naveen said, breaking away. ‘She’ll kill me!’
‘Who will kill a detective?’ Didier demanded.
‘Diva. If I don’t pick the spoilt brat up on time, she’ll give me hell for two days. I have to run. I’ll grab a key on the way out, Lin. The room on the right, okay with you?’
It was exactly the room that I wanted him to take.
‘You got it, Naveen.’
‘You’re going to meet Karla?’ Didier asked me, as we watched him leave.
‘At eight.’
‘I have some things to do, my friend, so I will leave now. But I will be available for you later, and I will wait in the Taj for some time, if I discover any news.’
‘Thanks, Didier.’
‘It is nothing.’
‘No, I mean it. The owner of this building is your friend, and this is one of your areas, because the local don is your friend, and that’s why I’m safe here. Thanks, for everything.’
‘I love you, Lin. Please, do not suffer that I say it. We French have no chains on the heart. I love you. We will solve the mystery of sad, sweet Lisa, and then we will march on.’
He left, and I stood in each of the strange, new rooms I’d just rented for a year, on instinct. It was my first home, after the home I’d made with Lisa. I was trying to live again: trying to plant a new tree, in a new place.
I walked back to the balcony, folded my arms on the rail and watched the wheel of lights, red-yellow-white, making slow fireworks where five avenues met and dispersed.
A crow landed on my balcony for a moment, inspected me, ruffled its feathers and flew away. A group of teenagers crossed with the signal, laughing and happy, on their way to the budget shops on Fashion Street.
A distant temple bell sounded, followed by chanting. Then the Azaan rang out from somewhere nearby, clear and beautifully sung.
Is this the place? I asked myself. I wanted a place. Any place. I wanted a home.
Is this where I find it? I wanted connection. I wanted to give everything I had to one love, and be loved in return.
Is it here? I stared at the crossroad, hoping for an answer, as white, red and yellow lights made dragons from weaving lines of cars.
Chapter Thirty-Eight
I was early, and so were the stars arriving at the Taj in limousines for a gala to promote a new movie. I parked the bike beneath a palm tree, across from the hotel, waiting for snail minutes to make the long creep to eight and my appointment with Karla.
Through the wide doors of the lobby I saw the sponsor wall, with special guests posing for photographs in front of brand names that had paid them by the second. Flash, flash, turn this way, turn that way: the mug shots of the privileged, caught in the act.
The limousines stopped, the photographers hurried to other headlines, and the sponsor wall was dismantled. The spacious, gracious lobby, where great thinkers had discussed great ideas on rainy Bombay afternoons, for rainy decades, was barren and businesslike again.
To hell with early. I walked around the hotel to a back door, guarded by a man I knew, and climbed the promenade stairs to Karla’s door. I knocked, and she opened it.
Her feet were bare. She wore a black silk lounging suit. It was trousers and top all in one, sleeveless, with zip pockets, and a zip front.
Her hair was tied up in a knot behind her head. There was a thin, silver letter opener, in the shape of a Damascan sword keeping the knot together. Karla.
‘You’re early,’ she said, smiling but not inviting me in.
‘I’m always early, or late.’
‘That’s a talent, for a man in your line of not-working. You wanna come in?’
‘Sure.’
‘Rish!’ she called, over her shoulder. ‘Our interview is over.’
She pushed the door wide, and I saw Rish, one of Lisa’s partners at the gallery. He rushed forward.
‘I’m so sorry, Lin,’ he said, holding my hand in both of his. ‘It’s a terrible shock. Dear Lisa. A terrible loss. I’m . . . I’m just beside myself with grief.’
He squeezed past Karla, sidestepped me and scuttled away down the corridor. It was a long corridor.
‘A man who’s beside himself,’ Karla said, as Rish scuttled, ‘usually has a fool for company. Come in, Shantaram. It’s been a long day.’
She walked back into the suite and sat on the window-seat couch.
‘Make me a drink, please,’ she said, when I’d closed and locked the door. ‘I love it when I don’t make the drink.’
‘What’ll it be?’
‘I’ll have a Happy Mary.’
‘A Happy Mary?’
‘It’s a Bloody Mary, without the red corpuscles. And rocks. Lots of rocks.’
I made the drinks and brought them to sit with her.
‘Shall we toast?’ she asked.
‘To running away angry?’ I suggested.
She laughed.
‘How about to old times, Shantaram?’
‘To fallen friends,’ I countered.
‘To fallen friends,’ she agreed, clashing glasses with me.
‘You’ve gotta snap out of it,’ she said, taking a long sip of her drink, before putting it down.
‘I’m okay.’
‘Bullshit. I just gave you four leads – fool, happy, blood, and rock – and you didn’t go for any of them. That’s not you. That’s not you and me.’
‘You and me?’
She saw my mind working, and smiled.
‘Why are you so determined to find out who gave Lisa the dope?’
‘Aren’t you?’
She picked up her glass again, studied it for a while, drank off a coalminer’s finger, and turned all the queens on me.
‘If I find out who did it, or if you do, I’ll probably want to kill whoever it is. It’s the kind of true that makes people kill people. You really wanna go there?’
‘I just want to find out what happened to Lisa, that’s all. I owe her that, Karla.’
She put her palms on her thighs, let out a gasp of air, and quickly stood up.
She crossed the room to the escritoire, opened her handbag, and took out a brass cigarette case exactly like Didier’s.
With her back to me she lit a joint, and smoked it doggedly.
‘I didn’t think I’d need this, tonight,’ she muttered, between deep breaths.
My eyes moved down her body, bowing to her. Her silhouette, wrapped in black: love was shouting inside me.
‘It was either this,’ Karla said, her back still turned to me, ‘or breaking a bottle over your head.’
‘Right . . . what was that?’
She stubbed out the joint, took two more joints from the case, snapped it shut, dropped it into her handbag and returned to the couch.
‘Here,’ she said, shoving the two joints at me. ‘Catch up.’
‘I’m kinda high already.’
‘Fuck you, Shantaram. Smoke the fucking
joints.’
‘O . . . kay.’
I smoked. Every time I made to say something, she pushed the joint at me again gently.
‘You know,’ I said, when she let me, ‘that’s twice you’ve said Fuck you to me, in the same day.’
‘If it’ll make you feel any better,’ she drawled, ‘say Fuck you to me, right now.’
‘No, I –’
‘Come on, get it off your chest. You’ll feel better. Say Fuck you, Karla. Say Stop fucking with me, Karla. Go on. Try it. Fuck . . . you . . . Karla.’
I looked at her.
‘I can’t,’ I said.
‘I bet you can, if you try.’
‘Can I say Fuck you to a sunset? Can I say Fuck you to a galaxy?’
She smiled at me again, but her eyes were fierce. I had no idea what she was thinking.
‘Look,’ I said, ‘let’s get something straight. I just want to know what happened to Lisa. I want some kind of resolution, for Lisa, and for us. Don’t you see that?’
‘It’s a steep slide from resolution to retribution,’ she said. ‘And a lotta people rush off that cliff.’
‘I’m not the cliff-rusher type.’
She laughed. ‘I know everything about you, Lin.’
‘Everything?’
‘Pretty much.’
‘You do, huh?’
‘Test me,’ she purred.
I laughed, and then realised that she wasn’t kidding.
‘Really?’
‘Smoke the fucking joint,’ she said.
I smoked.
‘Favourite colour,’ she began, ‘blue, with green: leaves against the sky.’
‘Damn. Okay, favourite season?’
‘Monsoon.’
‘Favourite –’
‘Hollywood movie, Casablanca, favourite Bollywood movie, Prem Qaidi, favourite food, gelato, favourite Hindi song, “Yeh Duniya Yeh Mehfil”, favourite motorcycle . . . your current motorcycle, blessings be upon her, your favourite perfume –’
‘Yours,’ I said, holding up my hands in surrender. ‘My favourite perfume is yours. You’re damn good.’
‘Of course I am. I’m born for you, and you’re born for me. We both know that.’
A breeze from the sea ruffled through the room, announcing itself with a flourish of sheer, silk curtains. It suddenly occurred to me that I’d been in the neighbouring suite, years before, visiting Lisa.