The Best American Mystery Stories 2010

Mike Wiecek The Shipbreaker from Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine

At dawn, the monsoon rains eased, and the long shantytown of Bhatiary grumbled to life. Low voices in the hostels, feet slopping through mud, occasional clanks from teapots on firebrick, all subdued in the damp, heavy air. Trucks groaned along the frontage road. Later the clanging and shouting and commerce would raise a constant roar along the beach, overcome only by the heaviest lashings of rain. But for now, a certain peace.

Mohit Kadir walked lightly, cheerfully. He smiled at the murky sunrise; glanced affectionately at poisonously bright chemicals in the runoff ditches. A day or two longer as a gang laborer, and then he was out, advancing to apprentice cutter — a promotion so difficult and so rare that strangers had come up and murmured their envious congratulations. Today, Mohit felt like he could haul a ton of steel singlehanded and go back for more.

The foreman, Syed Abdul Farid, yawned at his door.

“As-salaamu alaykum, Mohit.” He had gray hair and the solid build of a more-than-adequate diet. “You appear happy this morning.”

“Yes, saheb.” Mohit felt himself grinning. “A fine day.”

They walked through the slum, collecting other members of the crew. Most lived together, six or seven men in scavenged huts. All came from the same town, Ghorarchar, in the far north of Bangladesh, a region of famine and desperate poverty. Mohit nodded greetings.

“Kamon achhen?”

“Bhalo achhi.”

The men wore similar lungis and cheap shirts, the thin garments uniformly tattered and stained, little more than rags. Their faces were gaunt, their arms thin to emaciation despite the appallingly heavy labor of their days. And they knew they were the lucky ones, the chosen. Ghorarchar offered nothing but slow starvation. Here on the long, trampled beach of Chittagong, they could earn sixty takas a day breaking ships, and be glad for it.

The ships! Five years since Mohit first saw them, colossal hulks of rust and steel, driven onto the strand and looming like mountains overhead. Half-dismembered, in the mist and rain of the monsoons, the dead ships seemed too massive, too huge to have ever been built by men. But now they were scrap, worth nothing but their metal, and other men were slowly taking them apart. For ten kilometers up and down the beach they sat one by the next, thirty at a time, slowly cut down with hand torches and carried away by barefoot gangs.

“How do you feel, Mohit?” Farid said as they crossed the frontage road, a brief pleasure of asphalt before their feet sank back into endless mud.

“Feel, bhaiya?” Mohit could be more familiar now, but Farid was still fifteen years older, and his boss.

“I’ll be sorry to lose you, my best of workers.”

“I will not lie.” Mohit raised his eyes to the hull before them, leaning his head so far back, to see the top of the forepeak, that he stopped walking. “Once I’m up there, my only memories will be of my friends. I am happy to leave this behind.”

“Cutting is dangerous work.”

Mohit laughed. Five years he had worked like a Gulf-states slave; five years he had painstakingly put aside fifteen takas a day; five years he had deprived himself of the occasional glass of tari, or carrom wager, or bit of meat. He had saved 25,000 takas, a fortune by anyone’s standards, all to buy his way into a cutter’s crew. Tomorrow he would be free of the mud, slung high among the beams and steel, with a torch, a tolerable wage — and a better life.

“Pay close attention to Hasan.” Farid was still in his role, father-figure to the young men of Ghorarchar. “He has agreed to take you as his apprentice, and he will teach, but you must learn. Remember, you want to drop the plates onto the beach — not onto your head.”

“Nor yours.”

Mohit, orphaned at three years old, could not say he’d been a lucky child. But unlike so many other men in Bhatiary, he did not have to send money home to his family, for he had none. As a boy he had not a single toy; as a youth he survived by catching small fish from the rice paddies. Conditions that destroyed so many others had somehow granted him, instead, a determination to better himself. Today he was almost there. He had a plan: the cutter’s job would let him save real money. Someday, by the will of God, he would have enough to buy a truck! — and then he would be a rich man, an independent operator ferrying scrap to the rolling mills. His cab would have the finest decorations, the best paint, the most brilliant chrome. Perhaps even... a house of his own. Such dreams were painful, and Mohit did not let himself imagine them often; but they drove him all the same.

Rain spattered lightly, pock-pock on the ship’s hull, a vast, riveted wall before them. The vessel had been driven aground three weeks earlier, and the scavenging crews were just finishing the easy salvage — furniture and fittings and anything loose they could find inside.

“Cables,” said Farid, and a sigh rustled through the men. Hauling the monstrously heavy steel plates, nearly a metric ton on fifteen shoulders, was hard enough. Dragging the metal hawsers up the beach, one man every four meters along the cables — which could be a kilometer long — was agony, as the sharp, pointy bits of galvanized wire shredded their skin.

“Soonest started, soonest done.” Farid began to chivvy them into a line, beginning where the first cable descended from far above, so distant it disappeared threadlike into the mist.

But Mohit’s mood could not be broken. He took his place cheerfully, glancing around while the others trudged into position.

Far down the ship’s length he saw a trio of cutters examining the base of the stern. Squinting in the rain, Mohit thought he recognized Hasan, which made sense. Before dismantling could begin, the enormous fuel tanks had to be vented. They’d been almost empty when the ship grounded, naturally, and reclamation crews had pumped out the remainder for recycling, but sludge remained. If the fumes weren’t released, someone’s torch would ignite an explosion.

Of course, the vents had to be opened somehow, and even chisels could strike a spark. The experienced cutters knew how to do so safely, their years of knowledge allowing them to avoid nooks and joints where the gas accumulated. Hasan was the best, the most skilled, so Mohit was not surprised to see him leading the task. He felt a surge of pride — he would be working with Hasan, working with the finest cutter in all Chittagong.

“Aste,” said Farid, calling from down the line, and Mohit bent to grasp the cable, ready to heave it up with the others. He shifted his feet in the mud, seeking stable purchase.

CRUNNK!

The blast sounded like the ship collapsing on itself, a hammer blow and a scream of metal. Voices cried out. Mohit spun around to see the dark hull buckle slightly, an enormous rent in the side. Torn steel gaped outward, a dark tangle littering the strand before it.

The cutters were gone, shredded in an instant. Mohit stared for a moment, before the shock hit him and he dropped to his knees and vomited into the mud.

Work halted. Men converged, uselessly, and stopped at the edge of the destruction, where gore spattered the twisted metal. Mohit, weak on his feet and wiping his mouth, stepped up. He saw a shoe atop a jagged piece of steel wreckage — he looked more closely and realized the foot was still inside, bone and skin sticking out. Then the rain sluiced it away.

Mohit had seen death before. Not so often as he’d imagined, but fatalities were inevitable in the breaking yards. Men fell from heights, were crushed beneath their loads, died instantly when towline cables snapped and whipped viciously across the beach, severing anything in their paths. The essential fragility of the human body was no surprise to him.

But this was Hasan — senior among the elite cutters, who had agreed to take Mohit on, and who, most importantly, had received his 25,000 takas.

And now... nausea rolled over Mohit again.

The deal was undocumented, of course. Bhatiary had no banks with stone pillars and armed guards, nor bureaucratic functionaries to seal and file the terms, in careful typewritten copies. Farid had arranged the negotiations, Mohit standing straight as he and Hasan talked. Hasan spoke quietly, soberly, then he smiled at Mohit and they bowed and called for a blessing from God, and no more was necessary. Farid had transferred the money later, discreetly.

Now Mohit had, quite possibly, nothing at all — no cutter’s job, no position, no money. All gone, incinerated in the flash of one errant spark.

“Go,” said Farid. “We will not work this morning. Recover yourself.”

“But I—”

“We will stay and help.” Farid nodded toward the road, where trucks had slowed and a desultory police flasher could be seen in the distance. “The master will be here soon, he’ll handle it.”

“Yes. All right.”

Farid’s shoulders slumped. “He’ll need to find a new cutting team,” he said softly. “I’m sorry, bhai.”

Mohit said no more. He trudged up the beach, drenched in sheeting rain. Voices called to him, the curious and the idle wanting details to repeat, but he ignored them all.

Though it was still early, a few tea sellers were setting up at the roadway’s edge, blackened pots under flimsy plastic awnings. For five years Mohit had passed them by, unwilling to spend a single taka that could be put toward his future instead. Now he slowed. What did it matter, now? What did anything matter? Abruptly he sat down, jerking his head at the vendor, and when the tea came he drank the cup off, hot and so sweet it stung his throat.

“Dhonnobad, saheb,” said the tea seller. He was younger than Mohit, but one arm hung useless and twisted at his side, half his hand missing. He’d probably been a breaker, before. “The ship — the tanks exploded?”

“Yes.”

“You were there?”

Mohit looked at him. “It is bad.”

“I am sorry.” The man accepted his cup back, and rinsed it in a pan of rain-water. “What will you do now?”

Ah, thought Mohit.

A truck roared past, horn blaring, water spraying off its massive load of black metal. The splash spattered the tea stall, causing the vendor to mutter and glare.

“Go back,” Mohit said finally, answering the question for himself. “What else?”

But when he rose he turned away from the sea and the beach and the ships, and continued on into the shantytown. He had one more stop. One last possibility, before he abandoned the shining life he’d almost, almost achieved.

As a senior cutter, Hasan had been able to afford that most extraordinary of luxuries, his own house. It sat at the far edge of Bhatiary, where the encroaching sprawl of shacks was still tentative, and open fields began. The paddies were worked by the very old and the very young — men in their prime went off to the factories, or the beach, or the city. Glancing at the fields of water, where people in straw hats waded and tended the new plantings entirely by hand, Mohit thought he might be looking back a thousand years.

Or at Ghorarchar. A wave of despair flowed over him.

A group of schoolgirls went past, blue-and-white uniforms under plastic umbrellas, faces concealed by black veils. Mohit counted alleys and waded up the rushing torrent that had replaced a pathway to the street. Closer, he could hear a high, keening wail, even over the rainfall’s din. The door to Hasan’s house hung slack.

“Maf korun,” he called. “Hasan bhabi? Are you home?”

Hasan’s widow sat in the room’s single chair, leaning on the table, sobbing. The sparse furnishings were in disorder. A shelf was pulled loose from the wall, with clay cups on the hardpack dirt floor below; a pack of Star cigarettes lay torn open on the table; and several photographs on the wall hung crooked, in broken frames.

“Who are you?” A teenaged boy held the woman, one protective arm around her shoulders. Two older men stood assertively on either side, glaring.

Mohit explained, with as much deference as he was capable. “Perhaps Hasan saheb mentioned me...”

“Your sympathy is welcome,” said one of the men brusquely. “One more tragedy granted us today.”

“I’m sorry?”

“As if it was not enough that Hasan—” he broke off. “Some gunda heard what happened, and decided to take advantage. He broke in here, so soon he must have run over straight from Hasan’s death.”

His widow raised her face to Mohit, and he saw a dark, swollen bruise from one cheekbone to her nose.

“Keno?” she cried. “Why?”

“He did not—” Mohit stuttered. “What did he do?”

“He took,” said the man bitterly, “everything Hasan had saved. His life and his livelihood, and all his money too.”

“You!” The woman shouted at Mohit. “It was your fault!”

Shocked, Mohit said nothing, standing with his mouth open. The boy turned his mother away. The men looked at each other, uncomfortable, and the talker beckoned Mohit to the next room. It was the kitchen, cramped under a low ceiling, with walls of woven bamboo darkened by smoke and soot.

“The money, she means,” the man said.

“I had just paid him,” said Mohit. “To become his apprentice. It was—”

“I know. So much... the thief came for the money, of course. She thinks, perhaps you told too many people, and he heard of it.”

“No.” But Mohit had talked, among his friends, in the streets. How could he not, after such an accomplishment?

“It is unbearable,” the man said. “The gunda burst in even before she had heard herself, only minutes before we arrived. But it was long enough for him to uncover Hasan’s lockbox and flee.” He hesitated. “She had to tell him.”

“Yes.”

“It is gone. All of it. Nothing remains.”

Mohit thought he might fall, dizzy and weak. He forced himself straight. “Who was it?”

“She does not know, and no one else saw him. But he surely worked at the beach.” The man eyed Mohit’s scars and ragged clothing. “She says his left hand was missing four fingers, only the thumb remaining. He used rough language.”

“Dukkhito,” Mohit whispered. “I’m sorry.”

“And I.” The man’s face sagged. “It is an awful day for us all.”

An hour before dusk Mohit returned to the room he shared with another laborer. In the afternoon, with no money and nothing else to do, he’d gone back to the beach to haul cable. Life went on. A government inspector had come by, picking an annoyed path through the mud, to frown at the blast debris and threaten the master. Mohit had watched them talk, too far away to hear, as they left together, an assistant following five steps behind with the inspector’s document case. The master seemed to be telling jokes; the inspector laughed. Money would be passed, the discreet transaction as natural as the rains bucketing down. Mohit had felt numb, glad he wasn’t carrying steel plates, where a missed step could mean death rather than a little more cable burn.

At the hostel he squatted outside with his roommate, beneath an overhang of corrugated roofing. Sohel shared out the khichari he’d prepared. Usually they were so hungry that the dish was a feast, even when reduced by necessity to nothing but rice, dal, chili and salt. Today Mohit let it go cold.

“An accident, yes, naturally, that is what they say.” Sohel talked more than anyone and still finished his food first. “Was not Hasan the best cutter from here to Patenga? Had he not opened the tanks of twenty-five ships with never even a flare? How likely that he would slip, this once?”

Mohit looked up slowly. “Cutters are well paid not just for their skill. The torches are dangerous.”

“And the weather — rain! Mohit, it was pouring down, no?”

“Yes,” he said. “Yes, it was raining.”

“So,” said Sohel with satisfaction, always keen to find plots and conspiracy in any event. “How, then, could the spark ignite?”

Mohit glanced at the charcoal fire, now extinguished to conserve fuel, and raised an eyebrow.

“Yes, yes, surely, with a match.” Sohel ran his fingers around his bowl, cleaning it, and nodded. “Are you even listening? I think you need to ask questions.”

Mohit considered. “Why?”

“Not of me! Ask, who gained by Hasan’s death?”

“No one.” Mohit sank back. “But many lost.”

“No.” Sohel raised a finger. “Someone has Hasan’s money.” He paused. “Your money.”

“My money,” Mohit repeated. He felt again the accusing glare of Hasan’s widow.

Darkness came with its accustomed quickness. The men rinsed their plates in streams of water coursing off the corrugated iron and entered their room, five square meters of packed dirt and a rough, splintery platform on which they slept. A murmur of other tenants came through the woven mats that served as interior partitions.

Standing, taking a few steps — the movement had stirred something inside Mohit. He looked at his bare pallet for a long moment, then turned back to the door.

“Where are you going?” Sohel sounded surprised.

“You are right.” Mohit acknowledged Sohel’s gratified expression, just visible in the murk. “The dacoit who robbed Hasan’s house — perhaps he simply took advantage of the opportunity. Perhaps it was organized, somehow. Either way, he took what is mine.”

“But... how will you find him?”

Mohit hesitated. Men drifted through Bhatiary by the tens of thousands, and missing fingers distinguished someone no more uniquely than missing teeth.

“I don’t know,” he said finally. A sense of resolution grew within him, at first faint and now increasing. “But I have nothing else to do.”

Sohel reached out to hold his arm, a light, hesitant gesture. “You are — I am sorry to say this, but you are behaving oddly. I know, the shock, Hasan’s death, your money, yes. Please.” He paused. “Do not make this worse for yourself. I should not have suggested absurd theories.”

Mohit grunted and pulled away. He felt Sohel watching him as he stepped back out into the rain.

It’s my life, he felt like saying. It’s not the money, it’s my life.

When Mohit first arrived at Chittagong, he would sometimes spend a few takas gambling — a casual wager on a kabaddi match, or maybe a numbers bet, bought from the same fellow who sold Bangla Mad moonshine. He stopped after seeing another Ghorarchari, a few years older, lose his entire savings on a national cricket test. The man disappeared two days later, either just ahead of his Thuggee creditors or a few unfortunate steps behind. Conveniently, the fasting month of Ramadan had just begun, and Mohit foreswore all games as well as the usual food and drink. He was not often tempted after that.

But he knew where to go. In the jammed lanes of Bhatiary no one had privacy or secrets. Organized vice was run out of a shack alongside the “cinema,” where members of the same gang screened Bollywood DVDs on a television screen before roughmade wooden benches. Along with others too poor to pay the admission, Mohit occasionally loitered in the lane alongside, underneath a bedraggled string of colored lights illuminated when the generator was running. Sometimes a gap might appear in the blackout plastic tied to the walls. When the police were absent, pornographic videos slipped into the schedule, their indistinct soundtracks both fascinating and embarrassing to the eavesdroppers.

Tonight Mohit ignored the moviehouse and went straight to the entrance next-door, which was overseen by a well-fed thug who nodded him to the door.

“I would see Chauhan saheb,” Mohit said.

The man’s gaze, which had wandered away, flicked back. “Would he know you, then?”

“No.”

“Well.” The man shrugged.

Yesterday Mohit would have retreated; yesterday he would never have come this far. Now, in the dark, his future demolished as thoroughly as one of the broken ships themselves, he found himself not just emboldened but reckless.

“It is about the men who died,” he said.

The gunda frowned. “Dead men,” he said. “So many of them, no?”

“The cutter, Hasan.”

“Ah.” After a long pause, the man stepped back and pushed open the door with one hand.

“At the carrom table,” he said. “Don’t interrupt the game.”

Inside benzene lamps cast dull light on a scattering of tables and perhaps twenty men. Several sat along one wall, drinking tari from unlabeled, recycled bottles. Rain pattered on the metal roof, eased, came down hard again. A roistering group in the corner laughed loudly, arms around each other’s shoulders. Mohit smelled sweat and oil and faint, bitter smoke.

A battery-powered lantern hung above the carrom table, spotlighting the meter-square surface and its black and white stones. As Mohit approached, one player flicked his striker, and a piece flew across the board to land cleanly in the pocket. His opponent grunted. Two more stones went in, and the men gathered around the table made noises of appreciation or dismay.

Chauhan would have been unmistakable even if Mohit were straight off the bus from Ghorarchar. Short and broad, he stood at brooding ease, arms crossed, watchful. But it was the obvious respect of the others around him — distance, deference, careful glances — that made his status clear.

The match ended when one player ran five consecutive tiles, then pushed back from the table with a broad smile. The loser looked away and scratched under one arm.

Mohit stepped forward. “Chauhan saheb, ektu somoy hobe?”

“Apni ke?”

“I am Mohit Kadir, a gang laborer for Syed Abdul Farid. I have... an inquiry.”

“Ki?”

Chauhan did not sound impatient or aloof, as Mohit had expected from someone whose name was always mentioned in low and wary tones. The carrom players were setting up another round, while spectators drifted away. Two men in polo shirts appeared at Mohit’s side. He tried to ignore them.

“You have heard of the explosion today, and the death of three workers. I was there, and I later visited Hasan-mia’s house.” Chauhan said nothing, and Mohit explained his arrangement with Hasan. “But a thief had already arrived, taking by violence all of Hasan’s worth.”

“We know.” Chauhan nodded once.

“They said he was — that he had a bad arm, and missing fingers.” Mohit swallowed. “I wonder... do you know who he might be?”

Chauhan’s gaze narrowed, though his voice remained quiet. “Why would you ask me?”

“He might have come here, to spend his new riches.” Mohit paused. “He might have done similar things before, and boasted of them. Perhaps rumors started. Perhaps you have heard something.”

Hilarity rose from the party in the corner, and one man lurched off the bench to land on the dirt floor. His mates thought this even funnier, hauling him back up and reseating him. His shirt was now crusted with a swath of mud, which he didn’t notice.

Chauhan looked at them for a moment, then back to Mohit.

“Do you know who that is?”

“I’m not sure... perhaps I have seen him on the beach.”

“He will be taking Hasan’s place tomorrow, as senior cutter on the ship. The sorrow of Hasan’s family means great opportunity for him.”

“But his hand—” Mohit stopped. “He is not crippled.”

“No, of course not.” Chauhan frowned.

“I’m sorry, saheb. I do not follow your meaning.”

“Life is complicated, that’s all. Actions and results may not be what one would expect.” Chauhan sighed and took a glass from a shelf beside him. “We don’t know the dacoit. He has probably fled, gone back to the country.” He drank, replaced the glass, and regarded Mohit, who had not responded. “Your ghush is surely gone also. You will not recover your money.”

“Five years,” said Mohit softly. “Five years breaking my back for it.”

Chauhan shrugged. “You are still young.”

Another downpour rattled the roof. Two men came in, soaking wet, and a draft fluttered the lamps; the carrom players settled themselves and began again; Chauhan’s attention moved on to other matters.

“Thank you, saheb.” Mohit backed away.

“Go with God, mashai.”

Although it was not late, the alleys were dark and empty, only a few people still out. Mohit stumbled through muck, feeling it splash up his legs. He pulled his lungi higher. Somewhere a generator chugged, probably for the grinding machines of a piecework reclamation shop, but the buildings and hovels all around were unlit. Candles were too dear; anyway, most of the inhabitants would be up before dawn for another day of toil.

In the dark, and distracted by his concerns, Mohit lost his way. He stopped, leaning against a wall of boards stripped from container pallets. He remembered his first nights in Bhatiary, arms too exhausted to lift, shoulders in raw agony, but thrilled simply to be among so many people. So many marvels to see. He never considered going back, though others did — perhaps because he had no family. He would make his way, or die.

The rattling sounds of trucks sharpened as the rainfall relented, and Mohit oriented himself to the main road. Once there, the passing headlamps illuminated his course, flickering across the shuttered stalls and tiny salvage yards along the verge.

Closer to his hostel, Mohit passed the concrete block housing elite employees from his breaking yard. He slowed. Farid’s window was still lit, thin yellow light through the screen, and on sudden impulse Mohit went over and tapped at his door.

“Mohit, ashen! Come in!” Farid wore only a lungi, his torso bare in the sticky humidity. The cinder-block walls of his room were damp, and cooler night air entered sluggishly, if at all, through the small window’s shutters. “You are out late.”

“I am tired, but I cannot sleep.”

“I understand. Hasan — it is difficult.”

“Ji.”

Farid gestured him to sit in the only chair, a stool before an ancient wooden desk that had once served in a sea officer’s cabin. A decorated reed mat covered part of the cement floor. “I’m sorry, I cannot offer cha, the kettle is empty.”

Mohit shook his head, it did not matter. Farid lowered himself onto his charpoy rope bed and they sat in silence for a time.

“You are, of course, welcome to continue in the carrying team,” Farid said eventually. “Indeed, I would be grateful.”

“Dhonnobad.” Mohit nodded his thanks. He looked at the photographs on the wall — studio snapshots of Farid’s daughter, posed against painted backgrounds of gardens and villas.

“She is well,” Farid said, following his gaze. “In the madrassa already. I have trouble believing she has grown so fast.”

“It is hard, being away from your family?”

“Of course.” Farid lifted his shoulders, just a bit. “But how am I to support them, otherwise? School fees alone take nearly everything, forget food. It has been another difficult year. Aii, you know.”

“Yes.” Ghorarchar, like the rest of the northeast, had suffered even more than usual during the season known simply as Hunger.

“Bhaiya, I went to the jua shala just now.”

Farid frowned. “You did not gamble, did you?”

“No. I spoke with Chauhan.”

Farid coughed in surprise.

“Yes.” Mohit described his earlier visit to Hasan’s widow, and how he’d gone for help in seeking the housebreaker.

“But I fear he is escaped, with my money, and all of Hasan’s.”

“Insha Allah.” Farid looked sad. “It is God’s will.”

Mohit started to brush off the mud streaking his legs, then remembered he was inside. He looked up at Farid. “Bhaiya, is it possible that the explosion was... arranged, somehow?”

“Arranged?”

“Not an accident. Set up. How else could Hasan, the most able of cutters, have made such a mistake?”

Farid considered. They heard a pair of men go by outside, fading voices complaining of the rain, their awful luck, the labor awaiting them in the morning.

“The gunda who robbed Hasan’s family, I doubt he would have had the ability,” Farid said. “It would be complex. To guess where Hasan would begin his vent, to place an incendiary of some sort — too much for a common thug.”

“Perhaps not him.” Mohit thought of the drunken cutter, celebrating his promotion.

“I don’t know.” Farid made an unsure gesture with one hand. “Possible, yes, by someone with much knowledge and luck. But to what end, I cannot see.”

Mohit looked down again and said nothing.

“It was a terrible misfortune,” Farid said. “For us all. You need not make it worse.”

“Perhaps.”

“Go home, Mohit. Sleep. Life goes on.”

“Does it?”

Farid’s lamp guttered, and Mohit noticed the tang of burnt kerosene.

“Do you remember when I recruited you?” Farid said. “In Ghorarchar, I needed just four men that spring, though thirty at least had already asked me, and more came every hour. You were young. Many others were stronger, or older, or, to be honest, more desperate. But I could see that you had the more important quality — you had courage. In five minutes I could see that.”

Mohit shook his head, embarrassed.

“It was true,” Farid continued. “Anyone can lift steel for a day or a week. Some endure long enough to become accustomed to the work, and fewer still can make a living of it. But the rare ones, they can look beyond, and plan for another life.”

“Hmm.”

Farid sighed. “You are still strong, Mohit. This is an enormous reversal, I can barely imagine how you must feel. But I know you will come through.” He gestured — at the room, at the rain, at the shanties and mud and broken ships and tens of thousands of men of Chittagong. “You are better than this,” he said.

After a while Mohit nodded and stood, feet and back aching, his shirt scraping painfully where the cable had wounded his shoulders.

“I wish you were right,” he said.

Friday the rains stopped, the sun broke through for a few minutes, and Bhatiary took on a tenuous holiday feel, almost giddy. It was the week’s day of rest. Most people wore their best clothes, shirts scrubbed clean and white, the breaking yards put out of mind for a few hours. Men stood in the open air, cheerful and dry, talking with friends. Some were the worse for alcohol, of course, and others squinted in the morning brightness, weary already. But most ambled along, glad to be out and free on a pleasant day.

Mohit, though not particularly religious, had gone to services that morning. He hadn’t paid attention to the imam’s long sermon, but the chants were nostalgic and comforting, and when he’d stretched out his arms and placed his head to the carpet — damp, yes, and suffused with the faint, inevitable reek of the beach — he’d felt more at peace than he could remember.

“Khodahafez,” said one of the mosque’s acolytes as he left. “Thank you for coming this morning.”

“It was a pleasure,” said Mohit, and he meant it.

Outside he stood in the lane, glancing at the sky to see if the overcast might clear again. Perhaps. He lowered his gaze to the street and wondered, where now?

A crowd formed down the road, a cluster of onlookers suddenly achieving the critical number that drew more and more in, irresistibly. All right, thought Mohit, and followed the rest.

As he approached, he heard the flashover of rumor through the crowd: “A dead man — head smashed in, right here, can you believe it? Lying in the street, and no one saw him! Where are the authorities? Where is Chauhan?”

Mohit’s mood collapsed. He hesitated, then pushed ahead, working his way to the front with muttered apologies.

The body was as described, a man facedown at the mouth of an alley — a narrow walkway, really, dark, between shuttered industrial shanties. A police officer had already appeared, tired and sweat-stained in his gray uniform, but a figure of uncontested authority nonetheless. He pushed back at the onlookers, snapping at two men so close they seemed about to roll the victim over for a better look.

Mohit stared. The dead man’s arms were flung out, suggesting he’d been struck with great force from behind and fallen immediately. He’d come to rest on gravel spilling from a heap alongside one factory’s wall, the back of his head a mass of gore and hair and bone. Blood pooled darkly on the damp stones.

His left arm ended in a stump, all four fingers missing. The thumb alone stuck out, pointed directly at Mohit like an accusation.

“We don’t know who he was. How could we? Are we the police? Do we keep track of every single man in Chittagong? Solve every crime? Bah.”

Chauhan stood outside the cinema, glaring. The sky had closed in again, and a slow drizzle showed no inclination to diminish.

“I’m only asking, saheb,” said Mohit, glancing at the muscled cohort around him.

“People get hit on the head every day. Every night. This is a world of violence. Two gadah have a falling out over some woman or a game oftash, and you come to me? Why is that?”

“Dukkhito. I’m sorry.”

“Thhik achhey.” Chauhan abruptly calmed down. “Never mind, mashai.”

Twenty or thirty men had lined up under a long eave of corrugated roof, waiting for the cinema’s next showing, and they were watching with open fascination. Chauhan swung his gaze past them, cowing several, then turned away.

“Come,” he said. “We’ll talk inside.”

The jua shala was still and damp, a sour smell of tari hanging in the unmoving air. Some of the crew began to straighten up, brushing off tables and opening windows.

“I know as little as you, truly,” Chauhan said.

“People think you are on top of everything.” Mohit felt oddly disconnected from the situation, able to talk to the most dangerous man in Chittagong like he was the next laborer in the carrying gang.

Chauhan barked a short, grunting laugh. “And that’s a useful reputation, to be sure.”

“I’m sorry,” said Mohit again.

“Insha Allah.”

Someone called from behind the hammered plank that served as a bar, asking about inventory, and when was that layabout bringing over more Bangla Mad, anyhow? Chauhan started to shout back, then paused, returning to Mohit for a moment.

“I don’t say that I know him.” His voice was quiet. “I don’t say that I know anything about how he came to his end, or who did it, or why. But I will tell you one thing.”

Mohit watched him, waiting.

“He had no money when he died,” said Chauhan. “And if one were to follow back all the places he’d been recently, he was not spending much. A little extra than usual, perhaps. No more.”

“But Hasan—”

Chauhan held up one hand. “I say nothing of Hasan. I only tell you what I know.” Then he turned away, and Mohit knew he was dismissed.

With nowhere to go, Mohit wandered around until he encountered Sohel, who was waiting in a long queue for the telephone stall. The government offered cheaper service, but that was a half-hour away in Chittagong proper. As for the post, even if both the sender and recipient could read and write, it could take six months for a letter to make its way across the country. Most of Bhatiary’s inhabitants kept in touch with their families at the stall, where an entrepreneur kept a cell phone available twenty hours every day. Friday, naturally, was the busiest time.

“It’s been three weeks since I called,” said Sohel. “And that time I only reached a neighbor. He’ll have passed on the news, of course, but I miss talking to my family.”

“They are well?”

“By God’s will. We hope the next harvest will be better.”

A boy walked down the queue, hawking fried groundnuts from a folded palm leaf. Mohit shook his head at the solicitation, but other men bought small handfuls, perhaps more from boredom than hunger. The drizzle sputtered on.

“The dead man — you heard?”

Sohel nodded vigorously. “I went by, but the poolish had already taken him away. Typical of the police, so efficient only after the crime is over.”

“He was the thief, the one who robbed Hasan’s house.” Mohit described what he’d learned.

“You spoke to Chauhan?” Sohel tilted his head and raised his eyebrows. “So directly? And he answered you?”

“He speaks straightforwardly,” said Mohit.

“And why not?” Sohel decided. “He is too powerful to be concerned what you and I might think. He says what he knows, and then goes on with his business. Did you believe him?”

“Yes — about the money, I mean.”

“Hen.”

“I don’t understand, though.”

“Perhaps Hasan’s wife had taken it already... or the thief didn’t find the real stash.”

Mohit remembered the widow, sobbing in grief and anger, and the grim-faced relatives surrounding her. “No,” he said. “I don’t think so.”

“A conundrum, then,” said Sohel with the satisfaction of one who knows the world runs on secret plans and hidden motivations.

“Perhaps there is nothing to understand.” Mohit stepped forward as the line advanced, gaining some shelter by the wall. “An accident, no more, and a crime of opportunity. Then the thief meets another blackguard. Just bad luck all around — as simple as that.”

“No, no, no. Life is never simple. All events have reasons, or causes.”

“Not always,” said Mohit. “Not here.”

When they reached the stall, Sohel retrieved several takas from a small cloth sack, holding the worn bills in his fist.

“Where are you calling?” the vendor asked. He sat bored under an awning of plastic, one wire running up to an aerial overhead and two others down to an automobile battery under the table. The current customer was still talking, rapidly now that he saw the vendor indicating his time was up, trying to say far more than the last few seconds could hold.

“Ghorarchar, in Rajshahi,” said Sohel. He recited the number.

“Wait, wait,” grumbled the vendor. “Here now — five minutes, ten takas.”

“When he’s done. What if the battery expires?”

The vendor shrugged. “Then you get your payment back. But why worry? I charged it fully this morning.”

Neither man took it seriously, but they argued while the current caller finished up. Mohit watched. Finally the caller stood and left, Sohel sat down, and the vendor collected his fee.

“It will take a few moments to connect,” he said, tucking the cash into his belt.

The money, thought Mohit.

A damp breeze ruffled the plastic sheet. The vendor glanced up as he finished dialing and put the phone to his ear.

Mohit put his hand on Sohel’s shoulder. “I have to go.”

“What?”

“Tell your wife — I don’t know.” And he left, almost running, as the wind increased and a smell of smoke and rain rolled over everything.

By the time he arrived at the row of concrete housing, the monsoons had burst again, a downpour slashing the muddy alleys and flimsy walls. A hundred meters away he came across another group of men, still out though most everyone had sought shelter. Mohit stopped long enough to exchange a few words, then ran on ahead.

He hammered the door with his fist and it swung open, unlatched. Farid, dozing on his charpoy, sat up in surprise.

“Ki? Mohit? What is happening?”

“Aii, saheb.” He stood dripping rainwater onto the reed mat and panting. “Why? Why?”

Farid rubbed sleep from his eyes and pushed his hair back. “Bhai?”

“You never gave Hasan the money.” Mohit thought he might cry. “That’s why the thief was still here in Bhatiary — he didn’t gain enough to leave, only enough to get himself killed.”

“What are you saying?”

“Did you arrange that too?” Mohit stepped forward to stand above Farid, staring down at him. “Because he might tell?”

“No, no.” Farid shook his head.

“You told me yourself — only someone with long experience and deep knowledge of the ships could have rigged the explosion. And who here has longer experience than yourself?”

“You don’t know what you’re saying!”

“Just tell me—” Mohit’s voice broke. “I’ve known you my entire life, saheb. You are the hero of Ghorarchar, the only reason the village did not starve years ago. When you selected me to come to Chittagong, I was so proud, I could have floated off the ground. And now...”

A long pause. Farid’s head dipped, and he mumbled something Mohit could not understand.

“What?” Mohit sank to one knee, to look Farid in the eyes.

“My daughter,” Farid whispered. “I told you, the school fees — she would have had to leave.” He hesitated. “She is not strong, like you. I would do anything for her.”

Rain gusted in through the open doorway, spattering the floor and desk. Mohit looked at the pictures on the wall, and felt the tears finally run down his face.

“What now?” said Farid, slowly.

“It is too late.” Mohit stood, stiff and aching. “I’m sorry, saheb. They figured it out, I guess, and they were already arriving. I came just before, but they’ll be along now. They gave me only a few minutes.”

“Who?” But Farid didn’t need or want the answer.

“Badai,” said Mohit, and he backed to the door. “Farewell, saheb.”

As he stepped out, the rain fell even harder, hammering with painful force on his head and shoulders. The world was a blur, and he stumbled, to be caught and held up by a strong hand.

“Careful, mashai.” Chauhan made sure Mohit was upright, then let go. They looked at each other for a moment. Finally Mohit nodded, once. Chauhan stepped past, up to Farid’s door, followed by several of his men. None had any more attention for Mohit.

You are still young, Chauhan had said.

Mohit walked away, not looking back, into the darkening rain and his life, to start over.