Sacred Games

  ‘No, far, it sounded like. The old man was making a big fuss about it the first time he came to see me. I told him he was lucky it was only one far cousin. In this country, if you look at any family long enough, you’ll find some far cousin whose luck turned bad. If not in this riot, then in some other one.’

  This was true. Sartaj had heard stories in his own family, about people fleeing homes in the middle of the night.

  ‘Come on, you two,’ Rehana called from inside. She had the familiar plastic bowl with its close-fitting top and red rose pattern in her hand. She had been making rotis in the kitchen. The khima would have been made earlier in the evening in collaboration with her all-purpose maidservant, and between the two of them they could produce delight or devastation. It was always a lottery, and Sartaj pulled up his chair glad of the whisky he had drunk. Imtiaz and Farah were elbowing each other as they settled in. He had known them since they had been toddlers, and now that they were almost grown up the small apartment seemed smaller.

  Imtiaz passed him a bowl. ‘Uncle, have you seen the CIA website?’ he said.

  ‘The CIA, like Americans?’ Sartaj said.

  ‘Yes, they have a site, and they let you look at their secret documents.’

  Farah was serving raita into a bowl for Sartaj. ‘If they let you read it, it’s not secret, idiot. Uncle, he spends hours finding weird articles and talking to girls on the internet.’

  ‘You shut up,’ Imtiaz said. ‘Nobody’s talking to you.’

  Majid was smiling. ‘For this I spent thousands and thousands of rupees, so my son can talk to girls in America?’

  ‘Europe,’ Farah said. ‘He has a girlfriend in Belgium, and another one in France.’

  ‘You have girlfriends?’ Sartaj said. ‘How old are you?’

  ‘Fifteen.’

  ‘Fourteen,’ Farah said. She was smiling. ‘I bet he’s told them he was eighteen.’

  ‘At least I sound like I’m eighteen. Not like some people who behave as if they’re eleven still.’

  Farah reached under the table, and Imtiaz winced. He held up his arm. ‘The fingernails of the female,’ he said, looking very pleased with himself, ‘are deadlier than the male.’

  ‘Stop it, you two,’ their mother said. ‘Let Uncle eat.’

  Sartaj ate and was relieved to find that this evening had somehow been saved from culinary havoc. ‘New haircut?’ he said to Farah.

  ‘Yes! You are the only man in the world who would notice. My dear Papa didn’t figure out for three days why I was looking different.’

  ‘Very nice,’ Sartaj said. She looked quite plumply pretty, and Sartaj wondered if she had boyfriends in Belgium, or even in Bandra. But he kept the question to himself, knowing that Majid was very liberal, but that his tolerance of light-hearted romance didn’t extend to his daughter. He might spend hard-won cash on a computer for his children, for his son, but that fierce cavalry moustache wasn’t just an affectation. Boys under the spell of Farah’s new look would have to be madly brave to climb up her castle wall eight floors tall. She was beaming now, and Sartaj was sure that there were lads whose fear had been banished by that glow. He himself had done some wall-climbing in long-ago days, and had braved fierce fathers for a lovely face.

  After dinner, Rehana brought Sartaj a cup of tea and sat next to him on the sofa. She had the same broad cheekbones as her children, and a comfortable heaviness. In the gold-framed photograph on the wall she was a slim, hennaed bride, but even then, even with the formally lowered head, she had had the same bright eyes. ‘So, Sartaj. Got a girlfriend?’

  ‘Yes,’ Sartaj said. ‘Yes.’

  ‘Who? Tell me.’

  ‘A girl.’

  ‘So what would a girlfriend be, a pineapple? Sartaj, for a policeman, you’re a very-very bad liar.’

  ‘It’s a boring topic, Bhabhi.’

  ‘My son doesn’t think so.’ Her son had walked down to the corner shop with her husband and daughter for ice-cream. ‘Sartaj, you’re not that old yet. How are you going to get through life like this? You need a family.’

  ‘You sound just like my mother.’

  ‘Because we’re both right. We both want you to be happy.’

  ‘I am.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Happy.’

  ‘Sartaj, anybody looking at you knows exactly how happy you are.’

  And looking at her in the haven of her contentment, Sartaj thought he could have said the same thing about her. He felt acutely now the sodden, sweaty weariness of his own body, the whisky misery of it. He was annoyed now, at having the professional momentum of the day dragged down into this useless discussion about happiness with happy Rehana. He was saved from further investigation of the nature of happiness by a knock on the door. ‘Ice-cream,’ he said. ‘Ice-cream.’

  He ate a bowl of the ice-cream, and fled.

  A violent buzzing woke Sartaj out of a dream about flying across oceans to meet foreign women. There was a very intricate plot involving watchful mothers and speeding jeeps, but it was gone as soon as his eyes opened. He propped himself up, baffled, and couldn’t think where the noise came from. For a moment he thought it was the doorbell gone wrong, but then he remembered the mobile phone. He groped for it on the bedside table, dropped it off the side and had to pull it back up by the charging wire. Finally he got it open.

  ‘Sartaj Saab?’

  ‘Who is this?’ Sartaj barked.

  ‘Bunty, saab. Somebody told me you wanted to talk to me.’

  ‘Bunty, yes, yes. Good that you called.’ Sartaj swung his feet to the ground and tried to collect himself, to recollect a strategy for talking to Gaitonde’s man. But he couldn’t remember if he had thought one through, and finally he just said, ‘I want to meet you.’

  ‘The rumour is that you shot Bhai.’

  ‘I didn’t shoot Gaitonde. Forget rumours. What do you think, Bunty?’

  ‘My information is that he was dead when you got in.’

  ‘You have good information, Bunty. It all was very strange. Why should a man like that kill himself?’

  ‘That’s what you want to talk about?’

  ‘That and other things. I’ll tell you when I see you.’

  ‘What do I know about why he killed himself?’

  ‘Listen, Bunty. I just want to talk to you. If you help me, I may be able to help you. Gaitonde is dead, Suleiman Isa’s boys will be looking for you. I’ve heard that some of your own people have split away already.’

  ‘That is a game I have played for years.’

  ‘True, but now? Alone? How far will you run?’

  ‘You mean in my wheelchair, saab?’ Bunty’s voice was gravelly, with a little hiss of effort at the end of each breath. Maybe it was how he had to sit, some constriction of the lungs. But he was not sad, only amused. ‘I can go faster in this thing than most men can run.’

  Sartaj sat up, glad of the chance to be curious and friendly. ‘Really? I’ve never seen a wheelchair like that.’

  ‘This is foreign, saab. It goes up and down stairs also. It can do all sorts of things.’

  ‘That is amazing. It must have been very expensive.’

  ‘Bhai gave it to me. He liked things like that, up to date.’

  ‘So he was a modern man?’

  ‘Yes, very modern. But it is very hard to keep this chair running, you know. Nobody knows how to repair it here, and spare parts and everything you have to bring from vilayat. It breaks down too much.’

  ‘Not built for Indian conditions.’

  ‘Yes. Like one of those new cars. They look good, but finally only an Ambassador can get you to any village you want to go.’

  ‘Meet me, Bunty. Maybe I can get you to your village safely.’

  ‘I was born here in Mumbai, in GTB Nagar only, saab. And you are too eager to meet me. Maybe Suleiman Isa has asked you to send me home.’

  ‘Bunty, you ask anyone. I have no connections to Suleiman Isa or any of his men.’

  ‘You are c
lose to Parulkar Saab.’

  ‘That may be. But I don’t do such work for him, Bunty. You know that. I am just a simple man.’ Sartaj stood up, walked around the bottom of the bed. He was pushing too hard, at a man who was trying to outmanoeuvre death on his speedy wheelchair. ‘Listen, you don’t want to meet, no problem. Just think about it, okay?’

  ‘Yes, saab. I have to be careful, especially now.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Saab, but I can help you over the phone. What did you want to know?’

  So Bunty was keeping his options open with Sartaj, in case he himself needed help later. He had problems of his own, after all, and he wanted to stay alive. Sartaj relaxed, shook his shoulders loose and stretched his neck. Now they had the possibility of a relationship. ‘Tell me, you really know nothing about why Gaitonde took his own wicket?’

  ‘No, saab. I don’t know. Really I don’t know.’

  ‘You knew he was back in Bombay?’

  ‘I knew. But I hadn’t seen him for weeks. We spoke only on the phone. He was hiding out in that thing.’

  ‘That house?’

  ‘Yes. He wouldn’t come out.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I don’t know. He was always careful.’

  ‘What did he sound like on the phone?’

  ‘Sound like? Like Bhai.’

  ‘Yes, but was he sad? Happy?’

  ‘He was a bit khiskela. But he was always like that.’

  ‘Khiskela how?’

  ‘Like his brain was full of things. Sometimes he would talk to me for an hour about something that had nothing to do with business, just talk and talk.’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘I don’t know. One day it was about computers in the old times. He said that there were computers and super-weapons in the Mahabharata, he went on and on about Ashwathamma. I didn’t listen. Even before, when he was on his boat, he liked to talk long on the phone. It was a big waste of money. But he was Bhai, so you just kept saying, haan, haan, and he went on.’

  ‘Who was that woman with him?’

  ‘Jojo. She sent him items.’

  ‘Sent him?’

  ‘Yes. First-class items for Bhai. He used to have them flown out to Thailand or wherever he was. Virgins. Jojo was the supplier.’

  ‘Virgins all the way from here?’

  ‘Yes, he liked Indian virgins.’

  ‘How many?’

  ‘I don’t know. Once a month maybe.’

  ‘And Jojo was his woman also?’

  ‘She was a bhadwi. He must have taken hers also. That was one of his hobbies.’

  ‘Why did he come back to Mumbai, Bunty?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘You were his main boss in Mumbai, Bunty. Of course you know.’

  ‘I was just one of his Number Twos.’

  ‘I was told you were the closest to him.’

  ‘I stayed with him.’

  ‘And the others left him? Why?’

  There was a thin crackling on the line, of cellophane and cardboard, and Sartaj waited as Bunty lit his cigarette and took in a drag.

  ‘Some left. Business was down,’ Bunty said.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘It doesn’t matter now.’

  This was the heart of the matter. Sartaj knew this from Bunty’s reluctance to give it away, from his studied casualness. Carefully, very slowly, Sartaj said, ‘You’re right, Bunty. It doesn’t matter now, so tell me.’

  Bunty drew on his cigarette. He let the smoke out, wheezed a little. Sartaj waited.

  ‘Saab, business is down for everyone.’

  ‘But more for the Gaitonde company than all others. Bunty, don’t be a chutiya. If you are honest with me, I can be straight with you. Tell me.’

  ‘Bhai wasn’t concentrating on business. He had us all running here, running there.’

  ‘After what?’

  Bunty laughed suddenly. ‘He had us chasing a sadhu. He said we had to find a wise man.’

  ‘What sadhu? Chasing where?’

  ‘Three sadhus altogether, and one was the leader. Really, saab, I can’t tell you more.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘I don’t know much more.’

  ‘Tell me what you know.’

  ‘Not like this, saab.’

  ‘So let us meet.’

  ‘Saab, you talk to Parulkar Saab.’

  ‘About what?’

  ‘I want to surrender. But they will do an encounter on me, saab.’

  It made sense, that Bunty wanted to come in. He would be safer in custody, and jail would shield him from his many enemies. But he was afraid of being executed before his name ever showed up on an arrest roster. ‘If you have something good to give us,’ Sartaj said, ‘I am sure Parulkar Saab will look after you.’

  ‘I have everything, saab. I was with Bhai for a long time.’

  ‘Okay. I’ll speak to Parulkar saab. Then I want to know who this sadhu was, this leader fellow.’

  ‘Once I am safe, saab, I will tell everything I know. I will give you his name. I am the only one who knows.’

  ‘All right. I will talk to Parulkar Saab, and tell you what he says. Give me a phone number.’

  ‘I am calling from a PCO, saab. And I am not in Mumbai. I will call you.’

  ‘Fine.’ Bunty must be very afraid, to be this careful even as he searched for a way to secure shelter. ‘When will you be back?’

  ‘Monday, saab.’

  ‘Call me on Monday evening, and I will tell you what Parulkar saab says.’

  ‘Yes, saab. I will put down now.’

  Bunty hung up, and Sartaj made chai and considered the vagaries of the gangster’s life. That death could come suddenly was a given, but what struck Sartaj as poignant was that Bunty was trying to trust Parulkar, his most feared predator. Parulkar had over the years been responsible for the hunting down of many G-Company men. He had used his many sources to obtain intelligence and fix the whereabouts of Gaitonde’s functionaries, and had sent out his teams to trap them and kill them. Unless the dead men were prime shooters or eminent Number Twos, the newspapers reported their deaths in one-paragraph stories at the bottom of back pages. Bunty might rate a front-page mention in the city sections, perhaps. For his special wheelchair, maybe, if not his death.

  Sartaj finished his chai, and then called the Delhi-walli, to tell her about Gaitonde’s search.

  ‘A sadhu was the leader of this group?’ Anjali Mathur said.

  ‘Yes, madam.’

  ‘What sadhu? Was there a name?’

  ‘No, madam. The source refused to release any other information at this time. I might know more in a few days.’

  ‘All right. This is very strange. We knew that Gaitonde was very religious, that he conducted pujas quite often. But we don’t know of any sadhus in connection with him. And why would he be looking for this man?’

  ‘I don’t know, madam.’

  ‘Yes.’

  She paused. Sartaj waited. He was getting used to Anjali Mathur’s slow deliberation.

  ‘I have an address for you,’ she said. ‘Write it down.’

  ‘The sister?’

  ‘Yes, the sister. She’s moved. She’s in Bandra now.’

  Before going to see the sister in Bandra, Sartaj made a stop at the station. He had to make a phone call. The piece of paper that Parulkar had given him with the S-Company contact on it had only a phone number, no name. Sartaj had to make an effort to remember. Iffat-bibi. Yes, that was it. Iffat-bibi, who was Suleiman Isa’s maternal aunt and criminal accomplice. Sartaj couldn’t conjure up a face for her as he dialled, but when she answered her phone and he heard her voice, he instantly thought of Begum Akhtar. There was the same roughened sweetness about the voice, that old-world heartbreak that floated off worn vinyl albums, full of pain but strong as the edge of a curving Avadhi dagger. ‘So you are Parulkar’s man?’ she said.

  ‘Yes, madam.’

  ‘Arre, don’t call me that, you can’t be so formal w
ith me. After all, you are Sardar Saab’s son.’

  ‘You knew him?’

  ‘Since when?’ Iffat-bibi said. ‘I knew him when he was a young rangroot, almost. He was so handsome, baap re.’

  Papa-ji had never told Sartaj about Iffat-bibi, but maybe she was the sort of woman fathers didn’t tell children about. ‘Yes, he was very keen about his clothes.’

  ‘Your father,’ Iffat-bibi said, ‘loved the reshmi kabab from a place we owned called Ashiana. But that restaurant no longer exists.’

  Sartaj remembered the kababs, but he didn’t know that Iffat-bibi had had anything to do with them. Iffat-bibi wanted to tell stories about Sardar Saab. She said he had once found a destitute twelve-year-old boy wandering around VT, and Sardar Saab had used his own money to buy him food and a reserved train ticket back to Punjab. ‘Sardar Saab was a good man,’ she sighed. ‘Very straight and simple.’

  Sartaj looked at his hand, at the steel kara on the wrist and the mark it had left over a lifetime, and nodded. ‘Yes.’ He waited.

  ‘You should come and visit us some time. I will give you better reshmi kababs than the ones from Ashiana.’

  ‘Yes, Iffat-bibi. I will come some time.’

  Iffat-bibi had observed the proprieties, and now she was willing to get down to business. ‘What can I do for you?’

  ‘I need information about Gaitonde.’

  ‘That maderchod?’ It was a shock to hear the word in that voice which promised song, and now Sartaj understood how she could be counsellor and helpmeet to a bhai, and not just an indulgent grandmother offering food. ‘For years he bothered us. Very good that you took care of him at last.’

  ‘I didn’t, Bibi,’ Sartaj said. ‘But tell me about him. What sort of man was he?’

  He was a conniving, cowardly cur, she said. He ran from a fight, and he betrayed his own men. He was a sinful lecher who used and destroyed young girls.

  ‘But he ran a big company, Bibi.’

  She allowed that he was a good manager, and he had made some money in his day. No, she didn’t know what he was doing back in the city. The last she had heard he was skulking off in Thailand or Indonesia, the bastard. She told stories about Gaitonde, about his perfidies. He had killed innocent people, saying they were Suleiman Isa’s friends. He was an insect.