Sacred Games

  ‘How much?’ Sartaj said.

  Katekar thumped the side of the cabinet gently, thoughtfully. ‘It’s full all the way down. That’s a lot of money. Fifty lakhs? More.’

  It was more money than either had ever seen in one place before. There was a decision to be made, and they looked at each other frankly, and Sartaj decided. He nudged the cabinet shut with his knee. ‘Too much money,’ he said.

  Katekar exhaled. He was unmistakably wistful for a second, that was all. But it had been him who had taught Sartaj this important lesson of survival, that to lunge for big prizes without enough information was to invite disaster. He shook himself loose now of the enchantment of big money with a huffing noise and a big grin. ‘The big people will take care of Gaitonde’s money,’ he said. ‘Now we wait?’

  ‘We wait.’

  The bunker was full. There were lab technicians and photographers, and senior officers from three zones and the Crime Branch. Gaitonde sat in the middle, well-lit and somehow shrunken. Sartaj watched as Parulkar leaned over Gaitonde, pointing something out to another zonal commissioner. Parulkar was in his element, discussing a successful operation with those who mattered, and Sartaj was grateful to him. He was sure that Parulkar would polish and improve the story, and give him more credit than he was due. This was a talent Parulkar had. Sartaj depended on him for it.

  Three men came down the staircase, moving fast. Sartaj had never seen them before. The one in the lead had his hair cut so close to the skull that Sartaj could see the scalp under the neat grey. This one spoke to Parulkar, and flashed an ID card. Parulkar listened, and although he didn’t give anything away, Sartaj saw him become very still. He nodded, and then led Flat-head and the other two over to Sartaj.

  ‘This is the officer,’ Parulkar said to Flat-head. ‘Inspector Sartaj Singh.’

  ‘I am SP Makand, CBI.’ Flat-head was very curt. ‘Did you find anything?’

  ‘The money,’ Sartaj said. ‘An album. We didn’t go through his pockets yet, we were waiting until…’

  ‘Good,’ Makand said. ‘We will take over now.’

  ‘Can we do anything?’

  ‘No. We will be in touch. Have your men clear the location.’ Makand’s two flankers were already moving around the room, telling the technicians to pack up.

  Sartaj nodded. That Gaitonde would be taken from him he had expected. That Gaitonde had appeared in Zone 13 was inexplicable, that his career had come to a sudden stop in Kailashpada was a professional gift altogether too perfect to be left to Sartaj alone. Life did not allow such undiluted felicities. But Makand’s dismissal – even coming from a man from an elite central agency – was altogether too abrupt. And yet here was Parulkar being as bland as desi butter, with not a protest or small objection. So Sartaj followed his lead, summoned Katekar and got out.

  It was evening. Sartaj stood in the lee of the metal door, in the shadows, and he could see the reporters waiting on the other side of the row of police jeeps. Parulkar was next to him, smartening himself up for the press. ‘Sir,’ Sartaj said, ‘why did they kick us out? The CBI doesn’t need local help any more?’

  Parulkar tucked his shirt in, and tugged at his belt. ‘They seemed very tense. My feeling was that they were afraid something in there would get exposed.’

  ‘They’re trying to cover something up?’

  Parulkar tilted his head and allowed himself to look canny. ‘Beta,’ he said, ‘when someone is willing to be that rude to us, it usually means they are trying to hide something. Come on. Let’s go and tell our friends from the press how you brought down the great don Ganesh Gaitonde.’

  So Sartaj stepped out into the flare of flashbulbs and told the journalists of his coup. He told them that he had talked to Gaitonde before they had knocked down the door, that Gaitonde had seemed unafraid and rational. He did not tell them Gaitonde’s story about gold. And he did not tell them, or Katekar or Parulkar, about the question he thought Gaitonde had asked, at the last. He wasn’t sure he had heard it, anyway. So he told the reporters about the anonymous tip that morning, and what had followed, and he said no, he had no idea why a mafia don would want to kill himself.

  But later, at home that night, he remembered Gaitonde’s grandiloquent voice, his rapid speech, his sadness. He had never met Ganesh Gaitonde, and now their lives had crossed and the man was dead. On the edge of sleep, Sartaj remembered all that he had heard and read about Gaitonde, the rumours and legends, the intelligence reports and the news-magazine interviews. He tried to connect the public image to the voice he had heard, and couldn’t. There had been the famous gangster, and there was the man this afternoon. But what did it matter, any of it? Gaitonde was dead. Sartaj turned over, thumped his pillows determinedly, arranged them, and lay down his head and slept.

  Ganesh Gaitonde Sells His Gold

  So, Sardar-ji, are you listening still? Are you somewhere in this world with me? I can feel you. What happened next, and what happened next, you want to know. I was walking under the whirling sky riven by clouds, with the unceasing tug of gold on my back and the city ahead. I was nineteen and I had gold on my back. Here I was, Ganesh Gaitonde, wearing a dirty blue shirt, brown pants, torn rubber-bottomed shoes and no socks, with forty-seven rupees in my pocket and a revolver in my belt and gold on my back. I had nowhere to go, because I couldn’t go back to the building in Dadar where I had space to sleep outside the spice-smelling storage room of a restaurant. If Salim Kaka’s people were going to look for me, or if anyone else was going to look for me, I would be gone, not found like a simpleton and given a dog’s death. Since I had found the gold I had lost trust. I had the problems of a rich man. I thought: in all the world I have only forty-seven rupees and a revolver and this gigantic weight of metal. Gold is no good on my back, I must sell it. Gold is of no consequence until I sell it. How to sell gold, so much of it? Where to sell it? Until I sell it I am a poor man. A poor man with a rich man’s problems.

  I grinned, and then I laughed. There was a need to find a stash, now, quickly, but the situation was also funny. I sang: ‘Mere desh ki dharti sona ugle, ugle heere moti.’ But ten-thirty in the morning was no time to be walking around the outer edges of Borivali with a loaded ghoda and gold, bent by the weight and very tired. There were far fields and thickets of trees and buildings only here and there, small cottages clustered together very village-like, but sooner or later somebody was going to notice, to ask, to want. I had only three bullets left. Thirty or three hundred bullets wouldn’t make a difference if someone found out what I was carrying.

  There was a barbed-wire fence to the right, guarding a stand of trees. I looked behind, ahead, and my decision was made. I slipped under the lowest strand, pulled the sack after and walked fast, no running, a fast walk to the trees. In the shade I squatted and settled into a wait. I flexed my hands, trying to work off the cramp that came from clutching my sack, from carrying its heavy burden. If anything happened it would happen now. I was enveloped all at once by tiny flying insects, and was willing to take the bites, but they moved in a shivering cloud around my shoulders, a tremble in the air. In the shimmering circle I was remembering the slope of a mountain seen through a window, a schoolbook fluttering in the breeze, my mother’s endless weeping in the next room. Endless. Enough – I waved a hand in front of my face and came out of it. I moved forward in a crouch, through the dark under the branches, towards a sheet of water I could see now. A small pond, held in a saucerlike depression, edged around with yellowing weeds. I sat again, squatting with the sack in front. There were no footprints in the soft mud around the pond, no paths through the coarse grass, no man or woman all the way to the barbed wire on the far side of the water, or even beyond, on the road. But I wanted to give it another half an hour. I held firmly on to the smooth rectangle of the bar in my pocket and breathed in, out. I followed the quick iridescent dip of dragonflies on the water. I was determined not to slip again, never to fall gently into the slow whirlpool of the past. There had been a life, I had l
eft it. For Ganesh Gaitonde there was only this day, this day’s night and every day ahead.

  When it was time, I backed away into the trees, into the darkest shade. I chose a tree and began to dig. The earth was loose, but dry, and it was slow going, and soon my fingers were raw. I should have first found something to dig with, a piece of tin, something. Bad planning. But it was started now, and I went on, moving the dirt in fistfuls. When I reached the harder layer under the topsoil I sat back and scraped at it with my heels until I had loosened it. The work was hard, and I was sweating, and when I stopped it wasn’t really a hole, just a shallow depression really, under the dark trunk. I was tired, and hungry, and it would have to be enough. My chest was heaving. I tugged at the drawstring on the sack, and took out two biscuits of gold, and lost a minute or two in the soft bronze burn of them, under the dappled shadows. Then the sack went into the cranny, and I scraped earth back over it. It looked like a small mound, and I scurried about under the trees, finding tufts of grass to pat down over it, leaves and twigs. I stood back and looked down at the arrangement. It looked like an incidental rise under a tree, any tree, and in the dimness it would pass, unless somebody sat down on it maybe. But why would anyone come here, why wander, why sit? It was safe. I felt sure of it. But from the fence I had to come back once, just to make sure I could find my way back. But only once. After that I made myself roll under the fence, walk down the road, take the corner firmly, despite the plunging fall of loss in my stomach, a plummet that hurt so hard I had to hold my belly with both hands. Risk is risk and so comes profit. If it’s gone it’s gone. You have to make a deal. Make the deal.

  All I had was a name: Paritosh Shah. I had heard it twice, once from a man named Azam Sheikh, who had just returned from a four-year sentence for burglary. He came out of prison and executed another clean job within two days, a daytime break-and-enter-and-grab on a newly-wed couple’s apartment in Santa Cruz East. ‘The good little wife went to the market to buy vegetables for her husband’s dinner,’ Azam said, ‘and we got her gold necklace, and her bangles, and her earrings, and her nose-ring, everything except the mangalsutra, and Paritosh Shah cut us a good price for the lot.’ I had been standing behind the kitchen door in the restaurant where I worked as a waiter, taking a break and listening to the boasting, and when Azam saw my feet under the door he cursed me and shut up. I moved away. Afterwards, his waiter told me Azam Sheikh had left a tip of three rupees, after an hour and a half of tangdis and shammi kebabs and beer, but within a month I had the satisfaction of hearing that Azam Sheikh was back in jail, caught in another Santa Cruz East job when a sleeping maidservant woke up and screamed. He was caught by neighbours and beaten bloody. Azam Sheikh walked funny now, there was that satisfaction – that and the name of Paritosh Shah.

  Which I had heard again, after I had become close to Salim Kaka, after I had gained Kaka’s trust. We had gone out, Mathu and Salim Kaka and me, to Borivali, for shooting practice. In a clearing in the jungle, Mathu and I had fired six shots each, and Salim Kaka had shown us the stance, the grip, and we had loaded and reloaded until it was fast and easy and I could do it without looking. That had pleased Salim Kaka, and he had thumped me on the shoulder. He let us fire two shots more each. The eruptions rolled along my forearms, louder than I had ever imagined, and down my spine, and I exulted, and the birds billowed above. ‘Don’t clutch your samaan,’ Salim Kaka said. ‘Hold it smooth, hold it firm, hold it with love.’ There was a chalked target on a tree trunk, and I exploded the chips from its very centre. ‘With love,’ I said, and Salim Kaka laughed with me. On the long walk out of the jungle, under the bare brown branches, through the enveloping thorn bushes, Salim Kaka scared us with tales of leopards. A girl gathering wood had been killed in this very jungle not ten days ago. ‘The leopard comes so fast you can’t see him, all you feel is his teeth in your neck,’ he said. ‘I’ll blow his eyes out,’ I said, and twirled my revolver. Mathu said, ‘Of course, maderchod, you’re a gold-medal shooter after all.’ I spat, and said, ‘There’d be money from the leopard skin. I’d skin the bhenchod and sell it.’ ‘To whom, chutiya?’ Mathu wanted to know. I pointed to Salim Kaka: ‘To Kaka’s receiver.’ ‘No,’ Salim Kaka said. ‘He’s only interested in jewellery, diamonds, gold, high-price electronics.’ ‘Not your mangy leopard skin,’ Mathu said, and laughed. Afterwards Mathu stood by the highway and waited for an auto-rickshaw, his arm up, and Salim Kaka squatted next to me, we hunkered side-by-side next to a wall, pissing. I stared at the wall, holding myself, impatient suddenly with the long train ride ahead, then the bus and walk to home and sleep. ‘What’s the matter, yaara?’ Salim Kaka said. ‘Still thinking about your leopard skin?’ Salim Kaka’s teeth were stained brown from tobacco, and they were strong and solid. ‘Don’t worry, you can take the skin to that Paritosh Shah, he’ll take anything, I hear.’ ‘Who?’ I said. ‘Some new receiver in Goregaon. He’s ambitious,’ Salim Kaka said. Then Mathu had an auto-rickshaw stopped, and Salim Kaka shook himself and stood up, and I stood and zipped up, and Salim Kaka grinned at me and we walked over, rubbing shoulders. In the bouncing and jerking auto we were all squeezed together and Salim Kaka in the centre held the black bag containing the revolvers. They were his, belonged to him. He held the bag close.

  So now I went to Goregaon, which was easy enough, but Paritosh Shah was one man in this locality of lakhs, and he was not advertised among the billboards for sex doctors and real-estate agents and cement dealers at the station. I bought a newspaper, found a vadapau-wallah outside the station and ate and considered the problem. With a glass of tea from the chai-wallah one booth down I began to see a possible solution. ‘Bhidu,’ I said to the chai-wallah, ‘where’s the police station here?’

  I walked to the station, through narrow roads lined with shops and thelas on either side. I slipped through fast, bending and sliding shoulder-first through the crowds, revived by the tea and eager for the next turn. I found the station, and leaned against the bonnet of a car, facing the long, low, brown façade. I could actually see, even from this distance, through the front door into the receiving room with its long desks, and I knew what lay beyond, the crowded offices, the prisoners squatting in rows, the bare cells at the very back. The small crowd in front shifted and wandered and re-formed but was always there, and I flipped through the newspaper and watched. I could pick out the cops, even the plain-clothes ones, from the coil of their necks and a backward leaning, something like a cobra sprung straight in the middle of fresh furrows, hood fanned, quivering with power and arrogance. They had that glittery belligerence in their eyes. I was looking for something else.

  It took until two-thirty and two false starts before I found my informant. There was one narrow-hipped man who sidled out of the side of the gate and angled down the road with the oily reticence of a born pickpocket, and I followed him for half a mile, and finally came to mistrust his long hands, which flexed and relaxed in hungry, doglike greediness. Back at the station, I watched again, and fixed on an older man, perhaps of fifty or so, who came out of the front doors, stood just outside the gate and opened a cigarette pack with a flick of his thumb. He tapped a cigarette on the pack three times, precise and deliberate, and then lit it and pulled at it all with the same unhurried confidence. I walked behind him and liked the neat curve of the white hair across the back of his neck, and the inconspicuous grey bush-shirt. But at the street crossing, when I came around him and asked for a cigarette, please, the man looked at me with such open friendliness, with such lack of suspicion that I knew he was completely respectable. He was some office-goer who had come to the station to report a stolen bicycle, or loud neighbours, he would have no idea who Paritosh Shah was. I took a cigarette and thanked him and came back to my post.

  I was crushing the cigarette butt with my heel when I heard her. It was a deep voice, unmistakably a woman’s but bass and resonant, she was arguing with the auto-rickshaw driver, telling him she did the same trip every week and his meter was off and he could expect
twelve-sixty from some chutiya fresh from UP, not her. I couldn’t see much of her past the auto-rickshaw and the driver, only plump arms and a tight yellow blouse, and when the driver screeched off with nine rupees, I had a glimpse of a deep red sari, a fleshy back and plump waist, a quick and rolling stride, all of it somehow wholly disreputable. Now I was impatient. I no longer bothered to examine the others who went in and out, I was waiting for her. When she emerged forty-five minutes later I was rehearsed and ready.

  She crossed the road and stood waiting for an auto-rickshaw, one large hand on her hip and the other waving imperiously at every blaring one that passed. I took a breath and stepped closer, and saw under the sweep of hennaed hair her pouchy cheeks, strong eyebrows, large lotus-shaped gold earrings. She was old, older, marked by time, forty years or fifty, far from youth. I liked her tubby, forward-leaning stance, her feet wide apart and strong. Her pallu hung carelessly from her shoulder, not very modest at all.

  ‘The rickshaws are all full at this time,’ I said.

  ‘Go away, boy. I’m not a randi,’ she growled. ‘Although you don’t look like you could afford one.’

  I hadn’t thought she had looked at me yet. ‘I’m not looking for a randi.’

  ‘So you say.’ Now she turned her face to me, and her eyes bulged slightly out, not ugly but unusual, it made her face precarious, ready to fall on the world with some jolting surprise. ‘What do you want, then?’

  ‘I have a question to ask you.’

  ‘Why would I answer?’

  ‘I need help.’

  ‘You look as if you do. You can’t get your pants open and you want me to pull it out for you. Why should I get my hands dirty? Do I look like your mother to you?’