‘No,’ I laughed, ‘it’s not funny at all, but it’s really, really funny at the same time. I know this guy. I know Concannon. It’s his version of a practical joke. It’s a gangster joke, to see if I can make it through. That’s why the contract expires in twenty-four hours. He’s fucking with me.’
I couldn’t explain it more, because I was laughing too much, and then the guys understood, all but Abdullah, and they laughed. Every time they tried to straighten up, they reminded themselves how much they wished they’d thought of it first. Then they started exchanging the names of paranoid friends they’d love to do it to, and fell helpless again.
‘I love this guy,’ Ravi said. ‘I’ve gotta meet him. I mean, we’ll kill him, of course, but I’ve gotta meet him, before we do.’
‘Me, too,’ Tall Tony said. ‘Is this the guy Abdullah shot in the leg?’
‘The same.’
‘Twice,’ Abdullah corrected, ‘in the same leg. And now, you can see that mercy is a virtue best reserved for the virtuous, and not for a demon, like this man.’
The guys laughed harder. It was a good sign, in a way. One of our men had been murdered, a man we all loved, and I’d been threatened with murder, but we weren’t so afraid that we couldn’t laugh. The young street soldiers composed themselves under Abdullah’s stern eye, and we completed the walk to the shore.
The walk to Haji Ali’s tomb before war was an insult to the saint whose coffin rode miracle-waves back to the Island City, blessing it forever, and we knew it.
But we also knew, or willed ourselves to believe, that saints forgive what the world shuns. And we were sure in those moments of the walk, despite our sacrilege, that he knew we loved him: the eternally patient saint, who listened to our gangster prayer as he slept on the sea.
Chapter Fifty-Four
Concannon’s practical joke was a blessing, after I survived it, because it flushed assassin-minded snakes out of the long grass of Colaba’s unconformable jungle. Abdullah and Didier visited every thug who’d asked about the reward for my life, and slapped him around in case the reward was offered again.
I hunted Concannon across the city, following every slender lead. Some of the searches took me to distant suburbs, on rough roads. I spent a lot of time in the saddle, most of it thinking about him. But the Irishman was always a ghost, a rumour, an echo of a taunting laugh, and I finally had to be satisfied, for a while, that if he couldn’t be found, he wasn’t a threat.
Karla was still mad. She froze me out, and was invisible for days. I tried to stay mad at her, but couldn’t pull it off. I thought it was wrong of her to withhold the letter, especially after the writer had paid to have me killed. I felt aggrieved, but I missed her too much. Those days we spent together, connected and happy, were most of the good I knew.
You wanna know a sure sign that you’re with your soul mate? a Nigerian smuggler once told me. You just can’t stay mad at her. Am I right?
He was right, and he was wrong: soul mates can stay mad, for a while, and Karla was still mad. But at least the glacial distance meant that I didn’t have to talk about Concannon’s joke. I knew she’d heard about it. I knew she’d find it funny, and find a dozen clever ways to tease me about it.
Madame Zhou was still at large. No-one had seen or heard from her in weeks. The word acid was burning my mind, every time I thought of it. I didn’t want to pester Karla, and I didn’t care who she wanted to see. But I wanted to know that she was safe, until she decided to have breakfast with me again, so I kept a discreet watch over her, whenever time allowed.
She spent a lot of her time with Kavita Singh at the newspaper office, and at Lisa’s art gallery. I knew where she was at any time of the day or night, but I couldn’t talk to her. It was driving me crazy, and I got a little short-tempered.
My money changers were throwing bundles of money at me, instead of passing them to me. People started suggesting anger management remedies, after my third argument in as many days. They ranged from prostitutes, to drugs, to gang fighting, and ended with explosions.
‘Blowing shit up is the surest way to get a woman out of your mind,’ a friend confided. ‘I’ve blown up lots of stuff. People think it’s terrorists, but it’s just me, getting a woman out of my mind.’
I didn’t want to explode things, but I was still tetchy, and love-confused, so I consulted a professional.
‘You ever blow anything up for love?’ I asked my barber, Ahmed.
‘Recently?’ Ahmed replied.
Ahmed’s House of Style barber shop was one of the last to resist modernisation into a hairdressing salon. It had three red leather and chromium chairs. They were man-chairs, endowed with hypnotic powers, and no guy I knew could resist them for long.
The mirrors you faced, when you sat in those chairs, were covered with mug shots of previous victims, none of them happy. They were customers who’d agreed to have their photograph posted, in exchange for a free haircut. They were up there as a warning not to ask for, or accept, a free haircut at the House of Style.
Ahmed had a dark sense of humour, which is something you don’t search hard for in a barber, but Ahmed was a blood-in-the-bone democrat, and we rated him for that. He tolerated every opinion, and absolute freedom of speech was guaranteed in his barber shop. It was the only place I knew, in the whole city, where Muslims could call Hindus fanatics, and Hindus could call Muslims fanatics, and get all that stuff out of their systems without riots.
It was addictive. It was a bigotry bazaar, and customers seized it by the biased lapels. It was as though everyone in Ahmed’s House of Style was on truth serum. And all of it was forgiven and forgotten by everyone, as soon as a customer walked out into the street.
Ahmed shaved me with a razor as sharp as a Cycle Killer’s moustache. When you live on the wrong side of the legal tracks, the number of people you trust to shave you with a straight razor dwindles to not many. Ahmed was trustworthy, because he was so true to his craft that he couldn’t possibly kill me with a straight razor. It was against the barbers’ code.
If he wanted to kill me, he’d have to use one of his guns, like the gun he’d sold me a few months before, which was in Tito’s vault. Safe in the laws of his guild, I opened my throat to his honour and relaxed in absolute trust, and got myself shaved.
He wrapped my freshly skinned face in towels hot enough to force confessions. Satisfied that the punishment fit the crime, he whipped off the towels, and removed the shroud with a bullfighter’s flourish.
He brushed me off skilfully, powdered my neck where he’d shaved it, then offered me the entire range of his only aftershave, Ambrosia de Ahmed.
I was calm. I was cosseted by Ahmed’s professionalism. I was healed, and feeling serene. And I was just rubbing my face down with Ahmed’s ambrosia, when Danda walked in the door, calling me a motherfucker.
Danda: and me with aftershave.
I didn’t let him finish his tirade. I didn’t care what he called me, or why he called me it. I didn’t care what he wanted, or why he wanted it. I grabbed his shirt and slapped a cologne-wet palm at his red ear, and kept on slapping it until he broke free and ran away, taking a fair portion of my testiness with him.
I opened the door of the barber shop, and waved goodbye.
‘Allah hafiz, Ahmedbhai.’
‘Wait!’ Ahmed said, coming to join me at the door.
He turned up the collar of my sleeveless denim vest, and curled it into place.
‘That’s better.’
I walked outside and met Gemini George, on the step. He grabbed me by my carefully arranged vest.
‘Thank God, mate,’ Gemini said, coughing, panting and falling into a hug. ‘I’ve been looking everywhere for you.’
‘How’d you find me?’
Gemini George knew it was a professional question.
‘A pimp, in First Pasta Lane. He’s been follo
wing you around. They say you’re acting testy. He’s been betting you won’t last another two days, without visiting a girl.’
‘I’m fine,’ I said. ‘I just got cured.’
‘Good,’ he said nervously.
‘What’s the problem?’
‘It’s Scorpio,’ he replied quickly. ‘He’s gone crazy. You’ve gotta help me.’
‘Slow down. Scorpio can’t go crazy. Scorpio’s already crazy.’
‘Way, way crazier than Scorpio crazy. Twilight Zone crazy. He’s freaked out, man.’
‘Maybe we should talk about this somewhere.’
We sat in the Madras Café. We had idli sambar, followed by two rounds of strong, sweet tea. Gemini was a street guy, even though his friend was a millionaire: he ate first, and talked later.
When he sipped at his tea, washing down the last flavour of chilli and coconut, he told me the story. It began, as so many stories in India do, with a parade of saints.
The previous day there’d been a procession through the streets to venerate the memory of a local saint, who happened to be a lover of hashish. The streets were filled with devout holy men. It was the only day in the year when the cops couldn’t bust anyone for smoking, because most of the people smoking were holy men.
It was a festival designed for the Zodiac Georges, and Gemini had used it to lure Scorpio from his eagle’s nest at the Mahesh, and get out in the fresh air. It went well, at first, Gemini said. Scorpio found his street-shuffle walk again, remembering the rhythm of the road as Gemini walked beside him. He even got talkative. He began to tell his four bodyguards, hired from the hotel by the hour, about the doorways and alleyways they passed, and the adventures that he and Gemini had experienced in each one of them.
Then they turned a corner and found a sadhu, a holy man, barring their path. His hands were raised, one holding a knotted staff, and the other stained sacred red.
‘What happened?’ I asked him.
‘I said, Namaste, ji. Like to swap dope? I’ve got some Manali.’
‘Did he smoke with you?’
‘He didn’t get a chance. Before he could reply, Scorpio tried to step away, but the sadhu stopped him.’
‘What did he want?’
‘He said, Give me a thousand dollars.’
‘How much?’
‘A thousand dollars.’
‘What did Scorpio say?’
‘He said, Are you crazy?’
‘Did he have a thousand dollars in his pocket?’
‘That’s exactly what the sadhu asked him,’ Gemini said. ‘Do you have a thousand dollars in your pocket?’
‘Did he?’
‘He had twenty-five thousand on him, Lin. He showed it to me, to explain why we had to have four security guards from the hotel with us.’
‘What did Scorpio say?’
‘Scorpio, you know, he was getting angry, and he said, Nobody gives a thousand dollars to a complete stranger. I’ll give you a hundred dollars, but just so you leave me alone.’
‘Not very polite,’ I said. ‘How did the guru take it?’
‘He was calm and cool, you know, guru-like, and he said, If you gave me a thousand dollars, would you even notice its absence from your fortune?’
‘What did Scorpio say?’
‘He said, That isn’t the point.’
‘And the sadhu?’
‘He said, Your weakness is greed. And that awakening, itself, is worth a thousand dollars. I’ll remember those words, Lin, until the day I die.’
‘He had a point,’ I said.
‘That he did,’ Gemini replied, glancing at the doorway, needing a cigarette. ‘And he smiled, as he said it. I’ll never forget that smile. It was a spiritual poker face, like. And it might’ve been that smile, you know, what set Scorpio off. Just that smile.’
‘What happened?’
‘He tried to push past the holy man, and they kind of struggled. The bodyguards shouted for him to stop. Next thing, the holy man falls down, and bangs his head on the corner of a wall. It was a bad cut. There was a flap of skin missing from his forehead, above the eyebrow. The bodyguards ran to help him. I offered him my handkerchief, and told him we had to call the hotel doctor.’
Gemini stopped. He looked at the street. He wanted to be back out there, in the tide of trick and talent that had carried him so safely, for so long.
‘We’ll have a cigarette after the story, Gemini,’ I said. ‘I know you on the street, man. You walk out that door now, you’ll be gone in sixty seconds. So chase to the cut, and tell me what happened.’
‘Don’t you mean cut to the chase?’
‘Gemini.’
‘The holy man cursed him,’ Gemini said, shivering.
He was suddenly scared, and I didn’t like it, because I liked him.
‘And?’
‘That’s it.’
There’s no patience as pure as the patience we spend on loved ones, who make things harder than they need to be. I gave him a patient smile.
‘What, exactly, happened?’
‘The holy man cursed him. He said that his greed would become his murder weapon. He said that from the day his blood was spilled, Scorpio’s money was cursed, and would only bring him sorrow and regret.’
‘What happened then?’
‘The bodyguards bailed out, right there on the spot.’
‘And Scorpio?’
‘He ran away. I found him at the hotel, later.’
‘And the holy man?’
‘I waited with him. I tried to get him to come into the hotel with me. But then some more holy men came, and he told me to run, because they’d be so angry they’d kill me. So, I ran. You know how dangerous holy men are.’
‘And Scorpio thinks he’s cursed?’
‘He kind of is cursed,’ Gemini moaned. ‘I mean, the hotel staff have left our floor. They all think he’s cursed, and they won’t service his room.’
‘How are you getting on, at the hotel?’
‘Scorpio talked to the hotel, and hired new people, today. They come from Lithuania, I think. Nice people. Can’t understand a word they say. His new bodyguards are Russian. Can’t understand them either, and they’re speakin’ English, and all. He’s locked up in the penthouse suite again, but I mean really locked up, this time.’
‘Drop the poker game for a while,’ I said. ‘I’ll square it with Didier. Let’s find the sadhu, and have the curse lifted.’
I was thinking that the sadhu probably wasn’t a rich man. I was thinking that we could find him, ask him to forgive the fool who’d touched him without respect, and accept a substantial payment to lift the curse.
The sadhus I knew, and I knew quite a few, would accept the offer without hesitation. It would’ve worked. I was sure. I couldn’t know then that for Gemini, my innocent, loving friend, it would lead to rivers long forbidden, for good reason.
‘Fantastic! Lin, you’re a genius. This curse thing is rippin’ Scorpio to bits. I don’t mind tellin’ you, I’m not comfortable with it, meself. In my book, you should stand as clear of a holy man’s curse as you do from a hand grenade. I was in the spiritual radiation zone, so to speak, and I’d like this cleared up, as much as Scorp.’
‘You could ask Naveen Adair for help,’ I suggested, opening my suggesting mouth. ‘He’s running the Lost Love Bureau from the Amritsar, in the rooms next to me.’
‘Great idea! I’ll ask around, at first, and hand it to Naveen if I can’t find him. We’ll have Scorpio right as rain in no time.’
‘Good,’ I said. ‘Can I offer you a ride?’
He looked out through the open doorway to my bike, parked illegally at the kerb.
‘No, thanks all the same,’ he smiled. ‘Never was much of a one for motorbikes. I’ll scoot back to the hotel in a taxi. Thanks, Lin. I knew I’d f
eel better, if I talked to you.’
I rode through the southern boulevards, doing my rounds, being seen, and thinking of the Zodiac Georges and how happy they’d been, before an elegant emissary of Fate in a dark suit made one of them rich.
Like Scorpio, I didn’t have to stay in Bombay. I knew some parts of Africa pretty well, from my passport smuggling missions. I had contacts in Lagos and Kinshasa. They always had room in their operations for a good passport forger.
I had friends in Singapore. They’d invited me to be the white face for an Indo-Chinese currency ring. It was good money, in a safe city, where everyone left you alone if you respected the local rules, and didn’t hurt anybody.
I thought about it, often. But sooner or later, I looked away from every option. And I couldn’t decide if it was the city or the woman who wouldn’t let me go.
Solemn in the saddle, I rode to the Amritsar hotel, hoping that Karla was there. My touts had tipped me off that she’d left the art gallery an hour before. I had a peacemaker present for her.
Some friends who played in a jazz band had told me they were bringing their acoustic instruments for a jam, by the sea, on the Colaba Back Bay. It was a unique experience: her favourite gift.
‘You just missed her,’ Didier said, looking up from his cluttered desk. ‘She was here for a few minutes, only. She was not alone. She was with Taj.’
‘Who the fuck is Taj?’
‘A tall artist, rather good looking, with long black hair. He sculpted the Enkidu that stands in the entrance to Jehangir, this month. He’s very talented.’
‘Artists,’ I said, remembering the sculptor.
‘Indeed,’ Didier agreed. ‘Why do we flock to musicians and painters?’
‘It’s sexy,’ I said. ‘Painters make them take their clothes off, and musicians make them come.’
‘Artist pricks,’ Didier hissed.
‘Indeed. Did she say when she’d be back?’
‘Well . . . ’
‘What?’
‘Well . . . ’
‘Why don’t I want to know this, Didier?’
‘She said . . . that she will return . . . in two days, Lin. And I think she meant it. She took her gun. And the tall artist, Taj.’