‘The Irishman. Concannon.’
‘Ah, then you are too late. He is gone.’
‘He was here today, monsieur,’ Didier said quietly.
‘Yes, Mr Levy. But here today, gone tonight, that is the nature of our business, isn’t it? The Irishman left three hours ago. Where he went, or if I ever see him again, I don’t really care.’
‘Then, I’ll take my leave, and I apologise again, if I disturbed your wife.’
‘Is it true,’ he asked, waving me back into my seat, ‘that you’re no longer with the Sanjay Company?’
‘It is,’ I said.
‘If you will permit me, Vishnudada,’ Didier said, trying to change the subject, ‘you did not know this girl, who died. But I had the honour to know her. She was a jewel, a very rare human flower. Her loss is simply insupportable.’
‘And this intrusion is insupportable, Mr Levy. Order must be maintained. Rules must be obeyed.’
‘Regrettably so,’ Didier replied. ‘But love is a poor master, and a poorer slave.’
‘Shall I tell you something about the poor,’ Vishnu said, rising to top up our glasses, but keeping an eye on me.
‘With pleasure,’ Didier said, puffing the cigar.
‘If you build a nice house,’ Vishnu said, sitting again, ‘they break the floor, so they can sit in the dirt. If you build it up stronger, they bring dirt in from outside, so they can sit in the dirt again. I run a construction business. I know. What do you think, Shantaram?’
What did I think? You’re a megalomaniac, and you’ll die violently.
‘I think it sounds like you’re a man who hates the poor.’
‘Oh, come on,’ he protested. ‘Everyone hates the poor. Even the poor hate the poor. My point is that some are born to lead, and most are born to follow. You have taken a big step in the right direction.’
‘What step?’
‘Leaving the Sanjay Company. There is only one small step, now, between you and me. If you were to join me, and tell me everything you know about the Sanjay Company, you would be a leader, and not a follower. And I would make you richer than you can imagine.’
I stood up.
‘I apologise again for busting in on you. If I’d known you had family here, I wouldn’t have come. Will your men let us leave, without waking everyone upstairs?’
‘My men?’ Vishnu laughed.
‘Your men.’
‘My men won’t lay a finger on you,’ he said. ‘You have my word.’
I turned to leave, but he stopped me.
‘The Irishman isn’t the only one who knows,’ he said.
I faced him again. Didier was standing beside me.
‘There was a driver,’ he said. ‘My driver. The black car was one of mine.’
‘Yours?’
‘The Irishman borrowed it that night. He’d been shot the day before, I understand, but still insisted on going out. I let him have my driver.’
‘Where do I find this driver?’
‘He will not tell you anything,’ Vishnu said.
‘He might,’ I said through clenched teeth.
‘He’s dead. But, he did tell me everything he knew, before he died.’
‘What do you want, Vishnu?’
‘You know what I want. I want to stop the Sanjay Company from pumping weapons and bomb-makers from Pakistan into Bombay’s streets.’
‘That’s a little exaggerated –’ I began, but he cut me off, standing behind his desk with his fists on his hips.
‘You can’t deny it, because it’s happening everywhere,’ he said, raising his voice to a shout as he warmed to his theme. ‘Money from the Arabs, training in Pakistan, an army already on the move across the world. They’re about to take their first country, Afghanistan. It won’t be the last country the Islamic army takes, before this is over. If you can’t see what that means, you’re an idiot.’
‘Now you’re the one who’s disturbing your wife. I don’t want a political debate with you, Vishnu. I want the Irishman.’
‘Forget my wife, motherfucker, and forget the Irishman. Tell me what you think about all this. You’ve both been here long enough to feel the love of Mother India. Where do you stand?’
I looked at Didier. He shrugged.
‘The real fight,’ I replied, ‘is between Sunni and Shia Islam. Muslims are killing a hundred or more Muslims for every non-Muslim, one mosque and marketplace at a time. We don’t have a dog in that fight. We should stay out of it. And we definitely shouldn’t bomb or invade their countries, while they’re fighting that family feud. Or at any other time, for that matter.’
‘We Indians do have a dog in the fight,’ he said more seriously, his hands working. ‘Kashmir. That’s why they are hitting us, again and again. They want Kashmir as an independent Islamic State. Where do you stand on Kashmir?’
‘Kashmir is a war no-one can win. There should be blue United Nations helmets everywhere in Kashmir, protecting the people until it gets worked out.’
‘And would you feel the same way, if it was a state from your country?’
‘He has a point,’ Didier observed, gesturing with his cigar.
I looked at him, then back to Vishnu.
‘I don’t have a country. And I don’t have a girlfriend any more. Do you know anything that can help me find the man who killed her?’
He laughed, and his eyes flickered to the clock on the wall. It occurred to me, too late, that he was stalling.
The door opened behind us, and Lightning Dilip walked through. Six cops crowded into the room. Two cops grabbed me. Two cops grabbed Didier.
Lightning Dilip came to stand close to me, his belly bursting through his shirt.
‘I’ve been searching for you, Shantaram,’ he said. ‘I’ve got some unhappy questions to ask you.’
I looked at Vishnu. He was smiling. Lightning Dilip began to shove us toward the door.
‘Wait!’ Vishnu commanded, pointing at Didier. ‘I need Mr Levy. We have matters to discuss.’
‘Jarur!’ Lightning responded.
The cops released Didier. He looked at me, asking me with his eyes if we should fight and die, there and then. I shook my head, and he gave me a broken half-smile, sending courage into the prairie in my heart where fear was already running. It was okay. We’d both been in Lightning Dilip’s custodial care, and we both knew what to expect: the boot and the baton and exhaustion as the only mercy.
Chapter Forty
The cops dragged and shoved me out of the house. Scorpion gangsters jeered and mocked me from the stairwell. Danda kicked at me, as he slammed the door.
Eight hands and a few boots pushed me face down in the back of a jeep. They drove too fast to the Colaba police station, threw me out of the jeep, stomped on me a few times, and then dragged me into the stony courtyard.
They passed the row of offices where normal interrogations were held, and dragged me toward the under barrack, where abnormal interrogations were held.
I got up, and resisted arrest. I got in a couple of good shots, too. They didn’t like it. They slapped me around, and shoved me into one of the wide, dark cells.
There were four scared men in the cell, and I was one of them. The other three scared men, chained together in the far corner, were sitting on their haunches. Their faces were dirty, and their shirts were torn. They looked like they’d been there a while.
The cops chained me to the entry gate, low, forcing me to curl up in a ball on my knees.
Boom. A kick came out of nowhere. Hello, Lightning. Kick, punch, baton, punch, kick, kick, baton, kick, punch, punch, baton.
You beat Karla like this, you coward, I thought, finding an image I could use to lock my mind. Your karma’s waiting for you. Your karma’s waiting for you.
Then it stopped, like the last thunder, and I could hear the
thudding storm rolling away.
When I thought it was safe, I risked a look and caught a glimpse of Lightning Dilip. He was staring at the three men huddled in the corner. He was breathing hard. His face was all the wrong happiness.
I got it. I was the warm-up act. The guys in the corner were the main event.
The guys in the corner got it too, and started to beg. I had time to breathe and move and check to see the damage.
I was lucky. No bones broken, nothing ruptured, arms and legs still working. It could’ve been worse, and had been before.
When Lightning Dilip went to work on the chained men, two cops uncuffed me from the gate, and took me back to the duty sergeant’s office, to decide how much of my money to keep. They took it all, of course: it cost me all I had to buy back my clothes, personal effects and knives. They threw my stuff into the road, and threw me after it, dressed in my shorts.
I stood in the deserted, late-night street beside a traffic island, picking up my clothes, one by one, until I was dressed. For a while I stayed there, staring at the police station, as you do, sometimes, out of that stubbornness born of injustice.
I was bleeding, beat up, in the middle of the fluorescent street. I could hear the screams of Lightning Dilip’s new victims. The flashing light on the corner bathed me in red with a slow heartbeat. I stared at the place where the screaming came from.
A black Ambassador car pulled to a stop beside me. The windows were down. I saw Farid in the front seat, beside a Company driver, named Shah. Faisal, Amir and Andrew DaSilva were in the back seat.
DaSilva had his elbow on the window. He reached under the dashboard of the car, and I instinctively pulled one of the knives. The gangsters laughed.
‘Here’s your money,’ DaSilva said, passing a package through the window. ‘Thirty grand. Severance pay, for the Sri Lanka run.’
I reached out to take the package, but he wouldn’t release it.
‘Two weeks, you’ve got, of Sanjay’s protection,’ he said, grinning into my eyes. ‘After that, why don’t you try to kill me, huh? And we’ll see what happens.’
‘I don’t want to kill you, Andy,’ I said, grabbing the package from his hand. ‘I have too much fun making you look bad, in front of your friends.’
‘Good one!’ Amir laughed. ‘I’m going to miss you, Lin. Challo! Let’s go!’
The black Ambassador drove away, leaving blue smoke swirling in the fluorescent haze. I put the money inside my shirt, and heard the screaming, beginning again.
A headache said hello behind my right eye. There were bruises making themselves acquainted all along my back and shoulders.
I walked back under the wide arch at the entrance, climbed the steps to the long porch and stepped into Lightning Dilip’s office.
‘Call him,’ I said to the sleepy constable watching the desk.
‘Fuck you, Shantaram,’ he said, lounging in his chair. ‘You better not let him see you in here.’
I reached inside my shirt, pulled out a few hundred-dollar bills, and threw them on the desk.
‘Call him.’
The constable snatched the notes off the desk, and ran out of the office.
Lightning Dilip was back in seconds. He didn’t know whether I wanted to make trouble, or make up with a bribe, and he didn’t know which one he wanted more. He was oily with sadism, his bulging shirt stained with sweat.
‘This must be my lucky day,’ he said, the riding crop in his hand twirling.
‘I want to bail out three prisoners.’
‘What?’
‘I want to bail out three prisoners, with cash money.’
‘Which three?’ Lightning asked, suspicion pinching his face.
‘The three you’re kicking the shit out of.’
He laughed. Why do people laugh, when you’re not trying to be funny? Oh, yeah: when you’re the joke.
‘I’m happy to do it,’ he grinned. ‘For the right price. But will it make a difference to you, to know that one of those men has raped several little girls, and I don’t know which one of them it is yet, until I get a confession? Of course, the choice is yours.’
You try to do something right. My ears were ringing, and pain was waking my face. It was the kind of angry-pain that shivers in you, and won’t stop shivering until something very good or very bad happens. The bells wouldn’t stop ringing. A child molester? Fate is Solomon, forever.
‘I’d like,’ I croaked, and then cleared my throat. ‘I’d like to pay you to stop beating the three prisoners. Have we got a deal?’
‘We would have a deal for five hundred American,’ he said, ‘whenever you find it.’
He knew he’d cleaned me out. And the constable had wisely kept the hundred-dollar notes I’d given him to himself. Dilip gasped when I pulled the notes from my shirt and threw them on the table.
‘I have eighty more prisoners upstairs,’ he said. ‘Would you like to pay me not to beat them?’
At that moment, beat up and crazy, thinking that Lisa’s body had been at that police station, and that every cop in the place had seen her dead, and knowing that Lightning Dilip had beaten Karla, probably on the same gate he chained me to, I didn’t care. I just wanted the screaming to stop for a while.
I threw some more money on the desk.
‘Tonight, everybody,’ I said.
He laughed again, scooping the money from the desk. The cops in the doorway laughed.
‘This has been a profitable night,’ he said. ‘I should beat you more often.’
I walked out of the office, and along the white porch to the steps.
I passed under the archway, leading to the street, knowing that all I’d bought was silence for one night, but that they’d be beaten the following night, and others would be beaten after them, every night.
I hadn’t stopped anything, because all the money in the world can’t buy peace, and all the cruelty won’t stop until kindness is the only king.
A black limousine pulled up in front of me, and Karla got out with Didier and Naveen. My happiness was a cheetah, running free in a savannah of solace. And pain ran away, afraid of love.
They hugged me, and settled me in the car.
‘Are you okay?’ Karla asked, her hand cool on my face.
‘I’m okay. How did you know I was out?’
‘We’ve been waiting. Didier called us, and we’ve been waiting across the road, outside Leo’s. We saw you get thrown out of the station house, and we gave you a minute.’
‘That was Karla’s idea,’ Naveen added. ‘She said Let him get his pants on in peace. Then we were just coming toward you, when the black Ambassador stopped.’
‘And then, after it left, you went back inside,’ Didier said.
‘Which seemed a little brazen,’ Naveen smiled, ‘so we waited again, getting ready to bust you out, and then you came outside.’
‘We have news,’ Didier said.
‘What news.’
‘Vishnu talked to me, after you left,’ Didier said. ‘He told me who it was, that went with Concannon to see Lisa.’
‘Who?’
‘It was Ranjit,’ Karla said flatly, taking the cigarette back from Didier.
‘Your Ranjit?’
‘Matrimonially speaking,’ she said. ‘But it looks like I could be a widow, before a divorcee.’
Ranjit? I remembered how scared he’d been, when I’d gone to his office looking for Karla. He thought I knew. That’s why he was so afraid.
‘Where is he?’
‘He skipped town,’ Karla said. ‘I’ve called all his friends. I drove them nuts, but nobody’s seen him since yesterday evening. His secretary booked a flight for him, to Delhi. He disappeared completely after he landed there. He could be anywhere.’
‘We’ll find him,’ Naveen said. ‘He’s too successful to remain
discreet for long.’
Karla laughed.
‘You got that right. He’ll come up for bad air, sooner or later.’
‘You can relax now, Lin,’ Didier added, ‘for the mystery is solved.’
‘Thanks, Didier,’ I said, passing Karla her flask. ‘It’s not solved, but at least we know who can solve it.’
‘Exactly,’ Karla concluded. ‘And until we track Ranjit down, let’s focus on matters at hand. You look a little beat up, Shantaram.’
‘Sorry to intrude,’ the uniformed driver asked. ‘But may I offer you the first aid kit, sir?’
‘Is that you, Randall?’
‘It is indeed I, Mr Lin, sir. May I offer the kit, and perhaps a refreshing towel?’
‘You may, Randall,’ I said. ‘And how do you come to be steering this big, black bar around Bombay?’
‘Miss Karla offered me the opportunity to serve,’ Randall said, passing the first aid kit across the seat.
‘Knock it off, Randall,’ Karla laughed. ‘No-one serves anything but drinks and first aid in this car.’
I looked at Karla. She shrugged her shoulders, opened her hip flask, poured some vodka onto a swab of gauze, and passed the flask to me.
‘Drink up, Shantaram.’
‘Any opportunity to serve, Miss Karla,’ I said, smiling at her acquisition of the barman from the Mahesh hotel.
She cleaned up the few cuts on my face, head and wrists expertly, because she’d done it before, to a lot of soldiers. One of Karla’s best friends from the Khaderbhai Company days was a corner man, who kept fighters fighting. He’d taught her everything he knew, and she was a good corner man herself.
‘Where to, Miss Karla?’ Randall asked. ‘Although the destination is the journey, of course.’
‘Where do you want to go?’ Karla laughed, asking me.
Where did I want to go? I wanted to say goodbye to Lisa with my friends, and let a branch of grieving fall. Knowing that it was Ranjit who gave the pills to Lisa gave me the little peace that I needed for goodbye.
‘There’s something I’d like to do. And I’d like you all to do it with me, if you’re up for it.’