The Mountain Shadow

Chapter Eighteen

Ruling a criminal enterprise requires an instinct for fear, a

flair for ruthless caprice, and a talent for herding your men into that lush minion-pasture between awe and envy. Running a criminal enterprise, on the other hand, is all hard work.

I woke early after the night of the red archer, feeling that an arrow had passed through me leaving a red emptiness inside. I was at my desk in the passport factory before nine.

Three hours of detailed work with Krishna and Villu brought my counterfeit passports up to date. After a call to my contact at the Bombay Municipal Corporation, asking him to deliver copies of

the permit documents for Farzad’s treasure-hunting family, I headed

to the Colaba Causeway for a working lunch.

Most of the five-, four- and three-star hotels in South Bombay were within a three-kilometre radius of the Gateway of India monument. Ninety per cent of Bombay’s tourists could be found within the same arc of the peninsula, along with ninety-five per cent of the illegal passport trade, and eighty-five per cent of the drug trafficking.

Most businesses in the south paid protection money, called hafta, meaning a week, to the Sanjay Company. The Company exempted the owners of seven restaurants and bars in the same area. The owners of those bars allowed touts, pimps, tourist guides, pickpockets, drug dealers and black market traders connected with the Sanjay Company to use their premises as convenient drop-off points for goods, documents and information.

My passport forgery and counterfeiting unit had to monitor those seven drop-off centres for usable documents. For the most part, that job fell to me. To keep enemies and potential rivals guessing, I changed the order of the bars and restaurants every day, rotating between them often enough to confuse any sense of routine.

I started, on that day, at the Trafalgar Restaurant, only a good knife’s throw from Lightning Dilip’s desk in the Colaba police station. At the door of the corner-facing restaurant, below the three steep steps leading inside, I paused to shake hands with a Memory Man named Hrishikesh.

Memory Men were a criminal sub-caste in those years: men who lacked the foolhardiness to risk prison time by actually committing crimes, but whose intelligence and prodigious memories allowed them to make a modest living, serving the fearless fools who did.

Taking up positions in high criminal traffic areas, such as the causeway, they made it their business to know the latest figures for the day’s gold prices, the current black and white market exchange rates for six major currencies, the carat price for white diamonds, rubies, emeralds, and sapphires, and half-hour fluctuations in the price of every illicit drug, from cannabis to cocaine.

‘What’s up, Kesh?’ I asked, shaking his hand.

‘No problem, baba,’ he grinned, raising his eyes to the sky for a moment. ‘Ooperwale.’

The word he’d used was a reference to God, and one of my favourites. More often used in the singular, Ooperwala, it could be roughly translated as The Person Upstairs. Used in the plural, the term meant The People Upstairs.

‘Ooperwale,’ I replied. ‘Let’s go.’

‘Okay,’ he said, becoming serious as he launched into his iterations of the latest prices and rates.

I only needed the gold and currency exchange rates, but I let Kesh run through the whole of his repertoire. I liked him, and admired the subtle genius that allowed him to hold hundreds of facts in his current memory, adjusting them as often as three times in a single day, without a decimal point of error.

Most gangsters held fringe dwellers like Kesh in contempt. I never understood it. The small-scale street outlaws were harmless people, surviving through cleverness and adapted skills in a hostile environment that sometimes didn’t treat them well. I also had a soft spot for independent outlaws: men and women who refused to join the ranks of law-abiding citizens, no less resolutely than they rejected the violence of hardcore criminals.

When his recitation ended, I paid him twice the going rate for a Memory Man’s mantra, and he gave me a smile like sunlight streaming off the sea.

Inside the restaurant I sat with my back to a wall. I had a clear view of the street. A waiter nudged my shoulder with his belly. I ordered a vegetable sandwich and a coffee.

I didn’t have to signal anyone: I only had to wait. I knew that the information network of the street was already at work. One or more of the endlessly drifting street guys roaming the tourist beat would’ve seen me park my motorcycle, talk with Kesh, and enter the restaurant. Word would already be spreading through neighbouring lanes and dens: Linbaba is sitting at Trafalgar.

Before I finished my sandwich, the first contact arrived. It was Billy Bhasu. Hesitating close to my table, he glanced around nervously, and spoke very softly.

‘Hello, Mr Lin. My name is Billy Bhasu. I am working with Dennis, the Sleeping Baba. You might be remembering me?’

‘Sit down. You’re making the boss nervous.’

He glanced at the restaurant boss, leaning on the counter, his hand playing in the trays of change as if they were pebbles in a stream. Billy Bhasu sat down.

A waiter appeared immediately, slapping a grimy vinyl menu booklet in front of Billy. The rules in all the drop-off bars and restaurants were simple: no fighting or disturbances that might upset the civilians, and everyone buys lunch, whether they eat it or not.

I ordered tea and a takeaway sandwich parcel for Billy. When the waiter left us, Billy came to the point quickly.

‘I have a chain,’ he said, reaching into his pocket. ‘Solid gold it is, with a picture locket attached.’

He put the gold locket and chain on the table. I picked it up, running my thumb over the links of the chain, and then prised open the locket. I found two photographs: a young man and a young woman, facing each other and smiling happily across the hinge of their little world: a world that had found its way into my hand.

‘I don’t take stolen goods, Billy.’

‘What stolen, baba?’ he demanded indignantly. ‘This was a trade, a fair trade, the locket for dope. And good quality. Almost fifty per cent pure. All square and fair!’

I looked at the photographs of the young couple again. They were northern Europeans, bright-eyed and healthy; from the kind of social background that put perfect teeth in untroubled smiles. They looked about twenty years old.

‘How much do you want?’

‘Oh, baba,’ he grinned, beginning the Indian bargaining ritual. ‘That is for you to say, not me.’

‘I’ll give you five dollars American.’

‘But,’ he spluttered, ‘it’s much too less, for such a piece!’

‘You said it was for me to say.’

‘Yes, baba, but it is for you to say a fair price!’

‘I’ll give you sixty per cent of the gram weight price. Do you agree it’s eighteen carat gold?

‘It’s… it’s maybe twenty-two carats, baba. No?’

‘It’s eighteen. Sixty per cent. Or try your luck with the Marwaris, at Zaveri Bazaar.’

‘Oh, no, baba!’ he said quickly. ‘If I deal with the Marwaris, I’ll end up owing them money. They’re too smart. I’d rather deal with you. No offence.’

‘None taken. Fifty per cent.’

‘Done at sixty.’

I called the waiter, passed him the locket and chain, and told him to ask the manager to weigh it on his jewellery scale. The waiter slouched over to a desk, and handed over the chain.

Using a fine scale that he kept under the counter, the manager weighed the locket and chain, wrote the gram weight on a piece of paper, and handed them back to the waiter.

The waiter passed the paper to me, hefted the chain and locket in the bowl of his hand for a moment as if checking the accuracy of the scale, and then dropped them into my upturned palm.

I glanced at the figure on the paper, and then showed it to Billy Bhasu. He nodded. Using Kesh’s figure for the current rate, I rounded the amount to the nearest ten rupees, and wrote the figure on the same sheet of paper, showing it to Billy. He nodded again.

‘You know, baba,’ he said, as he put away the money, ‘I saw that Naveen Adair before, that Anglo detective fellow. He gave me a message, if I see you in any place today.’

‘As it happens, I’m in any place right now.’

‘Yes,’ he replied earnestly. ‘So, I can give you his message.’

There was a pause.

‘Would you like another sandwich parcel, Billy?’

‘Actually, yes, Linbaba. Jamal is waiting outside.’

I waved for another parcel.

‘Are we good for the message, now?’

‘Oh, yes. Naveen said, let me be exactly sure, Tell Linbaba, if you see him, that I have nothing new about the man in the suit.’

‘That’s it? That’s the message?’

‘Yes, baba. It’s important, no?’

‘Critical. Let me ask you something, Billy.’

‘Yes, baba?’

‘If I didn’t buy your chain, were you gonna give me the message?’

‘Of course, baba,’ he grinned, ‘but for more than just two sandwiches.’

The sandwich parcels arrived. Billy Bhasu put his hand on them.

‘So… so now… I’ll take my leave?’

‘Sure.’

When he left the restaurant, I looked again at the photographs of the smiling young couple. I closed the locket, and dropped it into my shirt pocket.

For the next four hours, I worked my way through the other six drop-off restaurants and bars in my district, spending about forty minutes in each one.

It was an average day. I bought a passport, three pieces of jewellery, seven hundred and fifty US dollars in cash, an assortment of other currencies, and a fine watch.

That last item, in the last trade of the day, in the last of the bars, involved me in an angry dispute with two of the street guys.

The man who brought the watch to me, Deepak, settled the price quickly. It was a price far below the actual value of the watch, but far more than he could expect to receive from the professional buyers in the Fort area.

At the moment of the handover, a second man, Ishtiaq, entered the bar, shouting for a share of the money. Ishtiaq’s strategy was simple: make a big enough fuss to force a concession from Deepak, before the latter had the chance to slip away in the crowded street.

In other circumstances I’d have taken my money back, shoved both men out of the bar, and forgotten about them. My long-standing relationship with the bar’s owner was more important than any one transaction.

But when I’d put the watch to my ear, I’d heard the reassuring trip-click movement, twitching toward its rundown cycle: the mechanical heart beating its rhythm reward for the daily winding fidelity of its owner. It was, as it happened, my favourite watch.

Ignoring my instincts, I tried to placate Ishtiaq. The momentary weakness ignited impudence, and he shouted all the harder. Diners at other tables began to stare at us, and it wasn’t a big place.

Speaking quickly, I soothed Ishtiaq, pulled some money from my pocket and paid him off. He snatched at the notes, snarled at Deepak, and left the bar. Deepak gave me an apologetic shrug, and slipped out onto the street.

I slid the metal bracelet of the watch over my hand, onto my wrist. I snapped the catch shut. It was a perfect fit. Then I looked up to see the manager and his waiters staring at me. The short story written in their eyes was clear: I’d lost face. Men in my position didn’t placate street touts like Ishtiaq.

I glanced again at the watch on my wrist. My greed had weakened me. Greed is human Kryptonite, Karla once said to me, as she pocketed all of the commission we’d just made together on a deal.

I needed to work out, and swung the bike through traffic, heading for the mafia boxing gym at Ballard Pier.

The manager of the gym, Hussein, was a veteran gangster who’d lost an arm to a machete blow in a battle with another gang. His long, scarred face found its way into a biblical beard that rested on the prodigious mound of his chest. He was brave, kind, funny, tough, and a match for any of the young gangsters who trained at the gym. Every time I looked into his laughing, dangerous eyes I wondered what he and Khaderbhai must’ve been like: the young fighters who created a gang that became a mafia Company.

Let my enemy see the tiger, they used to say, before he dies.

There was no doubt that Hussein and Khaderbhai had shown the tiger many times, as they’d prowled the city, young and fearless, all those years before. And something of that striped menace lingered in the burnt-clay eyes of the gym master.

‘Wah, wah, Linbaba,’ he said, as I entered the gym. ‘Salaam aleikum.’

‘Wa aleikum salaam, One Hussein.’

Because another Hussein joined Khaderbhai in those early years, and went on to hold a position on the Council, they were sometimes known as One Hussein and Two Hussein, for the number of arms they possessed.

‘Kya hal hain?’ How are you going?

‘Busier than a one-armed man in a bar fight,’ I replied in Hindi.

It was an old joke between us, but he laughed every time.

‘How are you, One Husseinbhai?’

‘Still swinging the punches, Linbaba. If you keep punching, you stay hard. If you stop the windmill, there’s no flour.’

‘You got that right.’

‘Are you training full session, Lin?’

‘No, One Husseinbhai, just loading the guns.’

Loading the guns was gangster slang for a workout that pumped the biceps and triceps in the same session of supersets.

‘Damn good!’ he laughed. ‘Keep the guns loaded, yaar. You know the two rules of combat. Make sure they know they’ve been hit, and -’

‘Make sure they stay hit,’ I finished for him.

‘Jarur!’

He handed me a towel as I walked past into the main training room. The gym, which at first had been a small, dirty space where large, dirty gangsters learned the arts of street fighting, had proven so popular with the young men of the Sanjay Company that it had been expanded to include the whole of the neighbouring warehouse.

In the foreground there was an assortment of weight-training equipment: benches, lat and rowing machines, incline and decline presses, squat bars, chin-up and dip bars, and stacks of heavy plates and dumbbells. Beyond that area, lined with mirrors, was the blood-stained boxing ring.

Further into the newly created space was a wrestling and judo mat. Lining the far wall were heavy body bags and suspended speedballs. In the corner leading back toward the entrance was a corridor, two men wide, formed with vinyl-padded walls. The corridor was the training space for knife fighting.

It was hot in the gym. Grunts, moans and shouts of pain pierced humid air that was sweating adrenaline and that high, scrape-bone smell of testosterone.

I’ve spent a large part of my life in the company of men. Ten years of my life in prisons, seven years in gangs, twenty years in gyms, karate schools, boxing clubs, rugby teams, motorcycle groups, and all my growing years in a boys’ school: more than half of my life in exclusively male societies. And I’ve always felt comfortable there. It’s a simple world. You only need one key to every locked heart: confidence.

Nodding to the other young men in the weight-training area, I took the long knife-scabbards from their tucks in the back of my jeans, and folded them with my money, keys, the watch and my shirt on a wide wooden stool.

Strapping on a thick leather weight belt, I slapped the towel on an empty bench, and began my alternate sets of reclining tricep extensions and standing bicep curls. After thirty minutes, my arms were at the peak of their pump. I collected my things, and made my way to the knife-training corridor.

In those years before every handbag thief carried a gun, the techniques of knife fighting were a serious business. The masters who taught their knife skills were cult heroes for young gangsters, and treated with as much deference as members of the Sanjay Council themselves.

Hathoda, the man who’d taught me for two years, had also taught Ishmeet, the leader of the Cycle Killers, who’d passed on the skills to his own men. The knife master was just leaving the corridor with a young street fighter named Tricky as I approached.

They both greeted me with smiles and warm handshakes. The young gangster, exhausted but happy, excused himself quickly, and headed for the shower.

‘A good kid,’ Hathoda said in Hindi, as we watched him leave. ‘And a natural with the knife, may he never use it in shame.’

The last phrase was a kind of incantation that Hathoda taught his students. I repeated it instinctively, as we all did, in the plural.

‘May we never use it in shame.’

Hathoda was a Sikh, from the holy city of Amritsar. As a young man, he’d fallen in with a tough crowd. Eventually, he’d abandoned his studies, and spent almost all of his time with the local gang. When a violent robbery led to conflict with community leaders, Hathoda’s family disowned him. As part of the price of peace, his gang had been compelled to cast him out as well.

Alone and penniless, he made his way to Bombay, and was recruited by Khaderbhai. He apprenticed the young Sikh to Ganeshbhai, the last of the master knife fighters, who’d started with Khaderbhai in the early 1960s.

Hathoda never left the master’s side, and through years of study became a master himself. He was, in fact, the last knife teacher in South Bombay, but none of us knew that then, in those years before the glamour of the gun.

He was a tall man, something of a disadvantage for a knife fighter, with a thick mane of oiled hair coiled into a permanent topknot. His almond-shaped eyes, the same Punjabi eyes that with a single, smouldering stare, had seduced travellers to India for centuries, glowed with fearlessness and honour.

His name, the one that everyone in South Bombay knew him by, Hathoda, meant Hammer in Hindi.

‘So, Lin, you want to practise with me? I was just leaving, but I’m happy to stay for another session, if your reflexes are up to it?’

‘I don’t want to put you out, master-ji,’ I demurred.

‘It’s no trouble,’ he insisted. ‘I’ll just drink water, and we’ll begin.’

‘I’ll train with him,’ a voice from behind me said, speaking in Hindi. ‘The gora can work out with me.’

It was Andrew DaSilva, the young Goan member of the Sanjay Company Council. His use of the term gora, meaning white man, though very common in Bombay, was insulting in the context. He knew it, of course, and leered at me, his mouth open and his lower jaw thrust out.

It was also a strange thing to say. Andrew was very fair-skinned, his part-Portuguese ancestry evident in his reddish-brown hair and honey-coloured eyes. Because I spent so much time riding my motorcycle in the sunlight, without a helmet, my face and arms were darker than his.

‘That is,’ Andrew added, when I didn’t respond, ‘if the gora isn’t afraid that I might embarrass him.’

It was the right moment, on the wrong day.

‘What level do you want?’ I asked, returning his stare.

‘Level four,’ Andrew said, his leer widening.

‘Four it is,’ I agreed.

All training in the knife-fighting arts was done with hammer handles: the reason for Hathoda’s enduring nickname. The wooden handles, without their hammerheads, approximated the hilt and heft of a knife, and could be used for practice, without causing the grievous injuries of real knives.

Level one used the blunt end of a basic hammer handle. Level four training used handles shaved to points, sharp enough to draw blood.

Training bouts were usually conducted in five one-minute rounds, with a thirty-second recovery period between them. Stripped down to jeans and bare chests, we entered the training corridor. Hathoda, standing in the entrance to referee the session, handed us one sharpened handle each.

The space was tight, with only a few centimetres of movement possible to left or right. The aim was to teach men how to fight in close quarters, surrounded by enemies. The end of the padded corridor was blocked off: the way in, was the only way out.

Andrew held his sharpened handle in the underhand grip, as if he was holding the hilt of a sword. I held mine with the blade downward, and adopted a boxer’s stance. Hathoda nodded to check that we were ready, glanced at the stopwatch hanging around his neck, and gave the signal.

‘Begin!’

Andrew rushed at me, trying for a surprise early strike. It was an easy sidestep. He stumbled past me, and I gave him a shove that sent him into Hathoda at the open end of the corridor.

A young gangster watching from behind the master began to laugh, but the master silenced him.

Andrew spun around, and stepped toward me more cautiously. I closed the gap between us quickly, and we exchanged a flurry of jabs, thrusts and counter-moves.

For a moment we were locked in a tight clinch, heads knocking together. Using some main strength, I shoved Andrew off balance, and he lurched backward into the closed end of the corridor to regain his footing.

Attacking again, Andrew feinted jabs, lunging at me. Each time I arched my back, pulling out of range, and slapped at his face with my free left hand.

Several of the young gangsters training in the gym had gathered near the entrance to the corridor to watch. They laughed with each slap, infuriating Andrew. He was a full member of the Sanjay Company Council, and the position, if not the man, demanded respect.

‘Shut the fuck up!’ Andrew screamed at the onlookers.

They fell silent at once.

Andrew glared at me, his teeth clenched on the hatred he felt for me. His shoulders arched around the anger pumping outward from his heart. The muscles stiffened in his arms, and he began to shiver with the strain of suppressing his rage.

It hurt him not to win. He thought he was good with a knife, and I was making him realise that he wasn’t.

I should’ve let him win. It would’ve cost me nothing. And he was my boss, in a sense. But I couldn’t do it. There’s a corner of contempt we reserve for those who hate us, when we’ve done them no wrong: those who resent us without cause, and revile us without reason. Andrew was corralled into that corner of my disdain as surely as he was trapped in the dead end of the training corridor. And contempt almost always conquers caution.

He lunged. I swung around, avoiding the blow, and brought my pointed handle down into his back, between the shoulder blades.

‘Three points!’ Hathoda called.

Andrew lashed out with his handle, swinging round to face me. He was off balance again, and a sweep of my foot brought him down beside me. Landing heavily on top of him, I jabbed the hammer handle into his chest and kidneys.

‘Six more points!’ Hathoda called out. ‘And stop! Time to rest!’

I stepped back from Andrew. Ignoring Hathoda’s command, he stood and rushed at me, jabbing with his wooden blade.

‘Stop!’ Hathoda shouted. ‘Rest period!’

Andrew pressed on, slashing at me, trying to draw blood. Against the rules of training, he was trying to stab me in the throat and the face.

I parried and protected myself, stepping further into the dead-end corridor. Countering with my fists and handle, I struck back at him through every opening. Within seconds our hands and forearms were bleeding. Strikes against our chests and shoulders sent thin streams of blood down our bodies.

We bounced off the padded walls and into one another, fists and handles flashing, breathing hard and fast as our feet began to slip on the stone floor, until the wrestling struggle sent us both to the ground.

Luckier in the fall, I closed an arm around Andrew’s neck, locking him in a chokehold. His back was to my chest. As he tried to wriggle free I wrapped my legs around his thighs, holding him immobile. He thrashed around, making us slither on the slippery stone, but my grip on his throat was solid, and he couldn’t shake me off or twist himself free.

‘Do you quit?’

‘Fuck you!’ he spluttered.

A voice spoke from a place of ancient instinct.

This is a wolf in a trap. If you let it go, sooner or later, it’ll come back.

‘Lin!’ a different voice said. ‘Lin brother! Let him go!’

It was Abdullah. The strength drained from my arms and legs, and I let Andrew slide away from me, onto his side. He gasped, choking and coughing, as Hathoda and several young gangsters crowded into the corridor to assist him.

Abdullah reached out and pulled me to my feet. Breathing hard, I followed him to the rows of hooks where I’d left my things.

‘Salaam aleikum,’ I greeted him. ‘Where the fuck did you come from?’

‘Wa aleikum salaam. From heaven, it seems, and just in time.’

‘Heaven?’

‘It would certainly have been hell, if you had finished him, Lin. They would have sent someone like me to kill you for it.’

I gathered my shirt, knives, money and watch. In the entrance to the gym I used a wet towel to wipe down my face, chest and back. Strapping on the knives, I threw the shirt over my shoulders, and nodded to Abdullah.

‘Let us ride, my brother,’ he said softly, ‘and clear our minds.’

Andrew DaSilva approached me, stopping two paces away.

‘This isn’t over,’ he said.

I stepped in close and whispered, so that no-one else could hear.

‘You know what, Andy, there’s a lane at the back of this gym. Let’s get it over with, right now. Just nod your head, and we’ll get it done. No witnesses. Just us. Nod your head, big mouth.’

I leaned back to look at his face. He didn’t move or speak. I leaned in again.

‘I didn’t think so. And now we both know. So back the fuck off, and leave me alone.’

I gathered my things, and left the gym with Abdullah, knowing that it was a foolish thing to humiliate Andrew DaSilva, even privately. A wolf had escaped: a wolf that would probably return, when the moon was bad enough.

Chapter Nineteen

We rode together in silence to Leopold’s. Breaking with the discipline that usually kept him out of any place that served alcohol, Abdullah parked his bike next to mine, and walked inside with me.

We found Didier at his usual table near the small northern door, facing the two wide entrance arches, showing the busy causeway.

‘Lin!’ he cried, as we approached. ‘I was so alone here! And drinking alone is like making love alone, don’t you think so?’

‘Don’t take me there, Didier,’ I said.

‘You are an unordained priest of denied pleasures, my friend,’ he laughed.

He gave me a hug, shook hands with Abdullah, and called for the waiter.

‘Beer! Two glasses! And a pomegranate juice, for our Iranian friend! No ice! Hurry!’

‘Oh, yes sir, I’ll rush, and give myself a heart attack just to serve you,’ Sweetie growled, slouching away.

He was on my list of top five waiters, and I knew some good ones. He ran the black market franchise in goods that moved through one door at Leopold’s and went out the other, without the owners knowing. He took franchise fees from every store on the street, hustled a couple of pimps, and ran a small betting ring. And somehow, he drove the whole thing on nothing more than surliness and pessimism.

Didier, Abdullah and I sat side by side with our backs to the wall, watching the wide bar and the crowded street beyond.

‘So, how are you, Abdullah?’ Didier asked. ‘It has been too long since I’ve seen your fearsome, handsome face.’

‘Alhamdulillah,’ Abdullah replied, using the expression that meant Thanks and praise to God. ‘And how goes it with you?’

‘I never complain,’ Didier sighed. ‘It is one of my sterling qualities, as the English say. Mind you, if I did complain, I could be a master of the complaining arts.’

‘So… ’ Abdullah frowned. ‘It means… you are well?’

‘Yes, my friend,’ Didier smiled. ‘I am well.’

The drinks arrived. Sweetie slammed the beers in front of us, but carefully wiped every trace of moisture from Abdullah’s glass of juice, placing it in front of him with a generous portion of paper napkins to the side.

As Sweetie backed away from Abdullah he bowed, slightly, with each backward step, as if he were leaving the tomb of a saint.

Didier’s mouth wrinkled with irritation. He caught my eye, and I laughed, spluttering beer foam from the top of my glass.

‘Really, Lin, these people are insupportable! I sit here every day, and every night, year after year. I have urinated rivers in the lavatories here, and subjected myself to food so miserable, for a Frenchman, that you cannot imagine, and all in the cause of a dedicated, and I think it not too immodest to say, magnificent, decadence. Me, they treat like a tourist. Abdullah comes only once in a year, and they are dying of love for him. It is infuriating!’

‘In the years that you have been here,’ Abdullah said, sipping his fresh juice, ‘they have come to know the limit of your tolerance. They do not know the limit of what I will do. That is the only difference.’

‘And if you stopped coming here, Didier,’ I added, ‘they’d miss you more than anyone else in the place.’

Didier smiled, mollified, and reached for his glass.

‘Well, you are right, of course, Lin. I have been told, more than once, that I have an unforgettable character. Let us make a toast! To those who will weep, when we are gone!’

‘May they laugh instead!’ I said, clinking glasses with him.

As I sipped my beer, a street tout named Saleh flopped into a chair across from me, knocking Abdullah’s glass, and spilling juice on the table.

‘What a fucking idiot that foreign guy is,’ he said.

‘Stand up,’ Abdullah said.

‘What?’

‘Stand up, or I will break your arms.’

Saleh looked at Didier and me. Didier flapped his fingers at him, suggesting that he stand. Saleh looked at Abdullah again, and slowly stood.

‘Who are you?’ Abdullah demanded.

‘Saleh, boss,’ Saleh answered nervously. ‘My name is Saleh.’

‘Are you a Muslim?’

‘Yes, boss.’

‘Is this how a Muslim greets people?’

‘What?’

‘If you say what again, I will break your arms.’

‘Sorry, boss. Salaam aleikum. My name is Saleh.’

‘Wa aleikum salaam,’ Abdullah replied. ‘What is your business here?’

‘I… I… but… ’

He wanted to say what again, and I hoped he wouldn’t.

‘Tell him, Saleh,’ I said.

‘Okay, okay, I’ve got this camera,’ he said, putting an expensive camera on the table.

‘I do not understand,’ Abdullah frowned. ‘We are sitting here to take refreshment. Why do you tell us this?’

‘He wants to sell it, Abdullah,’ I said. ‘Where did you get it, Saleh?’

‘From those fucking idiot backpackers behind me,’ he said. ‘The two skinny blonde guys. I was hoping you’d want to buy it, Lin. I need money quick, you see.’

‘I do not see,’ Abdullah said.

‘He cheated the backpackers out of their camera, and wants to cash in here,’ I said.

‘They totally fell for my story,’ he said. ‘Fucking idiots.’

‘If you swear again in my company,’ Abdullah said. ‘I will throw you into the traffic.’

Saleh, like any street guy in the same circumstances, wanted to escape. He reached out to take the camera, but Abdullah raised a forbidding finger.

‘Leave it there,’ he said, and Saleh withdrew his hand. ‘By what right do you disturb the peace of other men with your commerce?’

‘R-right?’ Saleh stammered, mystified.

‘It’s okay,’ I said. ‘People come up to me with business all the time, Abdullah.’

‘It is unacceptable,’ he grumbled. ‘How can you do business with men like this, who have no respect, or honour?’

‘Honour?’ Saleh mumbled.

‘See, Saleh, it’s like this,’ I said. ‘You see backpackers as victims, ripe for victiming, but we don’t see them that way. We see them as emissaries of empathy.’

‘What?’

Abdullah grabbed his wrist.

‘I’m sorry, boss! I didn’t mean to say it!’

Abdullah released him.

‘What’s the furthest you’ve been from Colaba in your life, Saleh?’

‘I went to see Taj Mahal at Agra once,’ he said. ‘That’s far.’

‘Who went with you?’

‘My wife.’

‘Just your wife?’

‘No, Linbaba, my wife’s sister also, and my parents, and my cousin-brother and his wife, and all the children.’

‘See, Saleh, those guys sitting over there, they’ve got more guts than you have. They put their world on their backs, go into wild places alone, and sleep under the protection of people they only met a few hours before.’

‘They’re just backpackers, man. Meat on the hoof.’

‘The Buddha was a backpacker, travelling around with what he carried. Jesus was a backpacker, lost to the world for years in travelling. We’re all backpackers, Saleh. We come in with nothing, carry our stuff for a while, and go out with nothing. And when you kill a backpacker’s happiness, you kill mine.’

‘I’m… I’m a businessman,’ he mumbled.

‘How much did you pay them, Saleh?’

‘I can’t tell you that,’ Saleh demurred, his face dissolving in sly. ‘But I can say that it wasn’t more than twenty per cent. I’ll take twenty-five, if you’ve got it.’

Abdullah seized him by the wrist again. I knew the grip. It started out bad, and got worse.

‘Are you refusing to tell the truth?’ Abdullah demanded.

He turned to me.

‘Is this how you do your business, Lin brother? With untruthful men? I will give you this man’s tongue, in your hand.’

‘My tongue?’ Saleh squeaked.

‘I have been told,’ Didier recollected, ‘that a certain loathsome woman, named Madame Zhou, uses a human tongue as her powder puff.’

Saleh pulled his hand free and ran, leaving the camera. There was a pause, while we hummed the incident in silence.

‘Please, Abdullah,’ I said after a while, ‘don’t cut out his tongue.’

‘Something more lenient?’

‘No. Let it go.’

‘I always say,’ Didier observed, ‘if you can’t say something nice about someone, rob him and shoot him.’

‘Sage words,’ Abdullah mused.

‘Sage words?’

‘It is self-evident, Lin,’ Didier said.

Abdullah nodded agreement.

‘Just because you can’t find something nice to say about someone?’

‘Certainly, Lin. I mean, if you cannot find even one nice thing to say about a man, he must be an absolute swine. And all of us, who have experience of life, know that sooner or later, an absolute swine will cause you grief, or regret, or both. It is simply a prudent precaution to beat and rob negative people, before they beat and rob you. Self-defence, it seems to me.’

‘If these waiters knew you as we do, Didier,’ Abdullah said, ‘they would treat you with more respect.’

‘That is undoubtedly true,’ Didier concurred. ‘The more one knows Didier, the more one loves and respects Didier.’

I stood, leaving my glass.

‘But, you’re not going?’ Didier protested.

‘I just came in to give you something. I’ve gotta get home, and get changed. We’re going out to dinner tonight, with Ranjit and Karla.’

I unsnapped the stainless steel bracelet from my wrist, and slid the watch off over my hand. For a moment I felt the little clench of regret in losing something that I’d wanted too much. I handed the watch to Didier.

He examined it, turning it over to read the text on the back, and then held it to his ear, listening to the click-whirr of the mechanism.

‘But… it is a fine watch!’ Didier gasped. ‘A beautiful instrument. Is it… is it really for me?’

‘Sure, it is. Try it on.’

Didier snapped the bracelet shut on his wrist, and turned his hand up and down, left and right, to admire the watch.

‘It suits you,’ I said, standing to leave. ‘You coming, Abdullah?’

‘In fact, my brother, there is a beautiful woman, sitting in the corner,’ Abdullah said gravely, his eyes fixed to mine. ‘She has been staring at me, for the last fifteen minutes.’

‘I noticed.’

‘I think I will remain here with Didier, for some time.’

‘Waiter!’ Didier called out quickly. ‘Another pomegranate juice! No ice!’

I scooped up the camera and took a step away from the table, but Didier stood as well, and rushed to stop me.

‘You will see Karla tonight?’ he asked, leaning in close to me.

‘That’s the plan.’

‘This is your idea?’

‘No.’

‘It is Karla’s idea?’

‘No.’

‘Then, who would do such a diabolical thing?’

‘Lisa set it up. Kind of a short notice thing. I only heard about it an hour ago. I got a note, while I was sitting at Edward’s bar. What’s the problem?’

‘Can you not find some excuse? Some way not to be there?’

‘I don’t think so. I don’t know what she has in mind, but Lisa’s note said she wants me to be there.’

‘Lin, it has been almost two years since you have seen Karla.’

‘I know.’

‘But… in matters of the heart, of love -’

‘I know.’

‘- those two years are simply two heartbeats.’

‘I -’

‘No, please! Let me say it. Lin… you are… you are in a darker place than you were two years ago. You are a darker man that you were when you first arrived in Bombay. I have never said this to you. I am ashamed to say that a part of me was glad to see it, at first. It was comforting. I was glad of the company, you might say.’

He was almost whispering, and speaking in a fluid rush of syllables so swift that it was more like a prayer, or incantation, than a shared confidence.

‘What are you talking about, Didier?’

‘I feel for Karla, perhaps as much as you do, in my way. But being away from her did this to you. Loving her and losing her sent you into this shadow, and made you a darker man than God intended you to be.’

‘God?’

‘I worry, Lin. I worry about what will open, inside you, if you see her again. Some bridges, they should remain burned. Some rivers, they should not be crossed.’

‘It’s okay.’

‘Perhaps, if I were to accompany you? I’m more than a match for her wit, as the world knows.’

‘It’s okay.’

‘Then, if you are determined to see her, perhaps I should arrange a rather inconvenient accident for Ranjit? One that prevents him from attending?’

‘No accidents.’

‘An unfortunate delay, then?’

‘How about we let nature take its course, Didier.’

‘That is exactly my fear,’ he sighed, ‘if you see Karla again.’

‘It’s okay.’

‘Well… ’ he murmured, lowering his eyes, and glancing at the watch I’d given him. ‘Thank you for the watch. I will always treasure it.’

‘Look after Abdullah, with that pretty girl in the corner.’

‘I know. We tough guys, we fall fast, and we fall hard. Alas, it is the story of my life. I remember the time -’

‘So do I, brother,’ I laughed, turning to leave. ‘So do I.’

I passed by the two thin backpackers, who were eating for four, with four hands. I put the camera on the table.

‘It’s worth a grand, US, in the stores here,’ I said, ‘and any street guy in Bombay will get six for it, and an honest one will give you five back.’

‘He gave us a hundred, and promised to get more,’ one of the men said.

‘He’ll be hanging around,’ I said. ‘And he’ll want his hundred back. There’s a waiter here, named Sweetie. He does a little on the side. He’s a surly motherfucker, but you can trust him. You can do the deal, give Saleh his money back, and be in front. Be safe.’

‘Thank you,’ they both said.

They looked like brothers, and wherever they’d been in India, it had hungered them.

‘Will you join us?’

‘I’m on my way to dinner,’ I smiled. ‘Thanks all the same.’

I walked outside to the bike. Abdullah and Didier raised their hands in farewell, Didier holding an imaginary camera, and sarcastically taking my photo, for helping out two strangers.

I turned away, watching the traffic shuffle beside the bullying shoulder of a bus. Didier and Abdullah: men so different, and yet brothers, in so many ways. I thought of the things we three unwise men had done, together and alone, since we’d met as exiles in the Island City. There were things we regretted, and things buried. But there were also things of triumph, and light. When love cut one of us, the others cauterised with sarcasm. When one had to become two, the others brought their guns. When hope faltered in one, the others filled the hollowness with loyalty. And I felt that loyalty like a hand on my chest, as I looked back at them, and I hoped hard for them, and for myself.

Fear is a wolf on a chain, only dangerous when you set it free. Sorrow exhausts itself in the net of forgetting. Anger, for all its fury, can be killed by a smile. Only hope goes on forever, because hope doesn’t belong to us: it belongs to our ancestors, the first of our kind, whose brave love for one another gave us most of the good that we are.

And hope, that ancient seed, redeems the heart it feeds. The heartbeat of any conscious now is poised on the same choice that hope gives all of us, between shadows of the past, and the bright, blank page of any new day.

Chapter Twenty

The past is a novel, written by Fate, weaving the same themes: love and its glory, hate and its prisoners, the soul and its price. Our decisions become narratives: fated choices that unknowably change the course of the living river. In the present, where decisions and connections are made, Fate waits on the riverbank of Story, leaving us to our mistakes and miracles, because it’s our will alone that leads us to one or the other.

Pausing beside my bike that day, I marked the faces on the street. One face held my eyes. It was a young woman, blonde, blue-eyed and nervous. She was standing on the footpath outside Leopold’s, waiting for someone. She was fearful but determined, somehow: brave and afraid, in equal measure.

I took out the locket that I’d bought from Billy Bhasu. Prising it open, I looked at the photograph. It was the same girl.

There are a hundred good girls on every bad street, waiting for a guy who usually isn’t worth it. The girl was waiting for her boyfriend to return with dope. She wasn’t a user: she was thin, but still too healthy, and too aware of the world. Her boyfriend was the user, I guessed, and she’d sold her locket to Billy Bhasu, a street tout, so that the boyfriend could buy drugs.

I’d been on the street long enough to know the signs of somebody’s desperate habit, even expressed second-hand. I’d been that habit myself, and I’d seen it in the eyes of everyone who loved me.

The fact that the girl in the locket was waiting outside Leopold’s, and not inside, meant that she and her boyfriend were past the early tourist phase, with cold drinks and hot food, and sitting in a restaurant all day long. The fact that she was on the street, and not in a hotel room, meant that they were probably behind on the rent.

She was waiting until the boyfriend came back with the drugs he’d bought with their love locket, and some change to spare for the room.

I’d seen girls like the girl in the locket leave the Island City as ashes, spilled from reluctant hands, not long after they arrived. They were beautiful, as every girl is, and there was always a not so beautiful guy who wrote that part of their story for them.

I could’ve ridden away without a word. I did it every day: rode past sadness, neglect and futility. You can’t jump through every hoop that Fate puts in front of you.

But the locket came to life on the street, imitating art, and I walked over to her.

‘I think this is yours,’ I said, holding the locket in my open palm.

She stared at it, her eyes wide with fear, but didn’t move.

‘Go ahead. Take it.’

Hesitantly, she reached out and scooped the locket and chain from my palm.

‘What… what do you -’

‘I don’t want anything,’ I said, cutting her off. ‘This came across my desk, so to speak. That’s all.’

The girl smiled awkwardly.

‘All the best,’ I said.

I turned to leave.

‘I must have lost it,’ she said quickly, defending herself with a lie.

I hesitated.

‘When my boyfriend comes back, we’ll give you a reward,’ she said, trying on a smile she hadn’t used in a while.

‘You didn’t lose it,’ I said. ‘You sold it.’

‘I what?’

‘And the fact that you sold it with your pictures still in it, means your boyfriend did it in a hurry. The fact he did it in a hurry means he did it under pressure. The only pressure that works on people like us, in this city, is drugs.’

She flinched, as if I’d threatened her.

‘People like us… ’ she said, a Scandinavian accent bumping the words from her lips with a pleasant little music that didn’t match the sadness in her eyes.

I walked away.

I looked back. She was still cringing in that shocked flinch, her shoulders curved inwards.

I went back.

‘Look,’ I said more softly, glancing around in both directions to check the street. ‘Forget it.’

I handed her a roll of notes, the profit I’d made that day, and began to leave, but she stopped me. She held the money in her closed hand.

‘What… what are you talking about?’

‘Forget it,’ I said again, taking a step backwards. ‘Keep the money. Forget I said anything.’

‘No!’ she pleaded, folding her arms in on herself protectively. ‘Tell me what you’re talking about.’

I stopped, and sighed again.

‘You have to leave this guy behind, whoever he is,’ I said at last. ‘I know how this plays out. I’ve seen it a hundred times. I don’t care how much you love him, or how nice a guy he is -’

‘You don’t know anything.’

What I knew was that the next picture she’d sell to someone would be the one in her passport. I knew she still had her passport, because it hadn’t come to me yet. But she’d sell it, I was pretty sure, if her boyfriend asked her to. She’d sell everything, and when there was nothing left to sell, she’ll sell herself.

And her boyfriend would feel bad, but he’d take the money she made from selling her body, and he’d buy dope with it. I knew that, just like every street tout, shopkeeper and pimp around us knew it. It was the truth of addiction, waiting to happen, and they were the truth of the street, waiting to use her.

‘You’re right,’ I said. ‘I don’t know anything.’

I walked to the bike, and rode away. Sometimes you buy in, sometimes you don’t: sometimes you try, and sometimes you ride past. A gold chain and a photograph connected me to the girl, somehow, but there were too many girls, in too much trouble, waiting somewhere for troubled boyfriends. And anyway, I was a troubled boyfriend myself.

I wished the girl in the locket well, and stopped thinking about her by the time I parked my bike at home.

Lisa was preoccupied and quiet as I shaved, showered and dressed. I was glad. I didn’t want to talk. The dinner with Ranjit and Karla hadn’t been my idea.

Although we both lived in the narrow peninsula of the Island City, I hadn’t seen Karla in person since I’d been living with Lisa. I saw pictures of her and Ranjit from time to time, in Ranjit’s newspapers, but Fate never crossed our paths.

Karla haunts the mansion of my life, too, Lisa said. I understood what she meant, but Karla wasn’t a ghost. Karla was more dangerous.

‘How do I look?’ Lisa asked me, standing near the front door of the apartment.

She was wearing a very short, sleeveless blue silk dress. She had a shell necklace, the shell bracelet I’d given her, and her Roman-style sandals laced all the way up to the knees.

Her make-up was more elaborate than usual, but it suited her: sky-blue eyes in a black aurora. Her thick, blonde curls were as loose and free as ever, but she’d cut the fringe of her hair herself with a pair of kitchen scissors. It was irregular, haphazard, and brilliant.

‘You look great,’ I smiled. ‘Love what you did to your hair. Did you put my throwing knife back, when you were finished with it?’

‘Let me show you where to put your throwing knife, buster!’ she laughed, punching me hard in the chest.

‘Are you serious, about seeing other people?’ I seriously asked her.

‘Yes,’ she said quickly. ‘I am. And you should, too.’

‘Is that what this sudden dinner party is about?’

‘In a way. We can talk about it later.’

‘I think we should talk about it now. And about other things.’

‘First, talk to Karla.’

‘What?’

‘She’ll be there tonight. Talk to her. Find out what she’s thinking, and then we’ll talk about what you’re thinking.’

‘I don’t see -’

‘Exactly. Let’s ride, cowboy, or we’ll be late.’

We rode to the Mahesh hotel during a lull in the rain, arriving at the covered entrance just as a new shower began. I parked the bike in an alcove, away from the main entrance. It was strictly forbidden to park there, so it cost me fifty rupees.

At the bank of entry doors Lisa stopped me, her hand in mine.

‘Are you ready for this?’ she asked.

‘Ready for what?’

‘Karla,’ she said, her lips a bright, brave smile. ‘What else?’

We found Ranjit sitting at a table set for ten. Two mutual acquaintances, Cliff De Souza and Chandra Mehta, were with him. The men were partners in a Bollywood film production company. My association with them had begun a few years before, when they’d approached me to help them dump some of their undeclared, untaxed rupees, in exchange for black market dollars, with which they could bribe taxation department officials, because the taxmen only accepted dollars.

Lisa had worked with them for several months when she was running a small talent agency, sourcing foreigners to work as extras in Indian films. When she’d segued from the agency into work at the art gallery, she’d kept up contact with Cliff and Chandra.

Their films had been hits in recent years. The producers had established a banner that attracted some of the biggest stars in the city. It was a measure of their success that Chandra and Cliff, who’d always adorned themselves on public occasions with a young starlet, had four pretty girls with them for the dinner that night.

We greeted one another, met the four girls – Monica, Mallika, Simple, and Sneha – and took our seats at the table. Ranjit sat us on either side of him, Lisa on his right, and me on the left. There was no place set for Karla.

‘Isn’t Karla coming?’ Lisa asked.

‘No, I’m sorry,’ Ranjit said, pressing his lips together in a rueful smile. ‘She’s… she’s not feeling a hundred per cent. She asks you all to excuse her, and she sends her best wishes.’

‘It’s nothing serious, I hope? Should I call her?’

‘No, she’s fine, Lisa,’ Ranjit said. ‘She’s just been overdoing it a bit lately. That’s all.’

‘Please be sure to give her my love.’

‘I will, Lisa. I will.’

Lisa glanced at me, but quickly turned away.

‘Are you all actresses, Mallika?’ Lisa asked, turning to the girl sitting nearest her.

The girls all giggled and nodded.

‘Yes, we are,’ Mallika said shyly.

‘It’s a hard crawl to the top,’ Cliff De Souza said, slurring his speech a little, beginning drunk. ‘We don’t know which one of you will make it to the next level, yaar, and which ones will fail, and never be seen again.’

The girls giggled nervously. Chandra Mehta moved in to mitigate.

‘You’ll all get your shot,’ he assured the girls. ‘You’ll all get face-on-screen. Guaranteed. In the bank. But like Cliff says, there’s no way to know which of you will have that special magic with the camera, the It factor that moves you onwards and upwards, so to speak.’

‘I’ll drink to that!’ Cliff shouted, raising his glass. ‘Onwards and upwards!’

‘Have you been acting long?’ Lisa asked Simple, when the glasses hit the table again.

‘Oh, yes,’ Simple replied.

‘We started months ago,’ Monica added.

‘Veterans already,’ Cliff slurred. ‘Another toast! To the business that makes us rich!’

‘To show business!’ Chandra agreed.

‘To creative accounting!’ Cliff corrected him.

‘I’ll certainly drink to that,’ Chandra laughed, clinking glasses.

Baskets of pakodas and narrow strips of Kashmiri parathas arrived at the table.

‘I took the liberty of ordering for us,’ Ranjit announced. ‘There’s some non-veg for Cliff, Lin and Lisa, and a wide selection of veg dishes for everybody else. Please, begin!’

‘Chandra,’ Ranjit continued, as we began to eat. ‘Did you happen to see the article in my paper last week? The one about the young gay dancer, who was murdered near your studio?’

‘He doesn’t read anything but contracts,’ Cliff replied, pouring another glass of red wine. ‘But I saw it. Actually, it was my secretary who saw it. She was blubbering like a baby, crying her eyes out, and when I asked her what was going on, she read the article out to me. What about it?’

‘I was thinking that it might make a good story line for a movie,’ Ranjit said, passing a basket of pakodas to Lisa. ‘My paper would get behind it, if you did it. And I’d put money in it.’

‘Damn good idea!’ Lisa agreed.

‘So that’s what this dinner’s about,’ Chandra said.

‘And if it is?’ Ranjit asked, smiling charmingly.

‘Forget it!’ Chandra spluttered, gasping on a mouthful of food. ‘You think we’re crazy?’

‘Hear me out,’ Ranjit insisted. ‘One of my columnists, he’s a pretty fair writer, and he’s written a few screenplays already, for your competitors -’

‘We don’t have any competitors,’ Cliff cut in. ‘We’re at the top of the cinema food chain, hurling coconuts at the others far below!’

‘Anyway,’ Ranjit persisted, ‘this young writer is hot for the story. He’s already begun to write a screenplay.’

‘That dancer fellow was foolish,’ Cliff said.

‘That dancer fellow had a name,’ Lisa said quietly.

Her manner was calm, but I knew she was angry.

‘Yes, of course he -’

‘His name was Avinash. He was a brilliant dancer, before a mob of drunken thugs beat him unconscious, poured kerosene on him, and tossed matches at him.’

‘Like I said -’ Cliff began, but his production partner silenced him.

‘Look, Ranjit,’ Chandra said nervously. ‘You can play the hero in the pages of your newspapers, writing about that poor young fellow -’

‘Avinash,’ Lisa said.

‘Yes, yes, Avinash. You can write about him, and take the risks, and get away with it. But be realistic. If we put that story in a movie, they’d come after us. They’d close down the cinemas.’

‘They’d burn down the bloody cinemas,’ Cliff added. ‘And we’d lose buckets of money, for nothing at all.’

‘Some stories, it seems to me,’ Ranjit said gently, ‘are so important that we should take the risks involved in telling them.’

‘It’s not just the risks to ourselves,’ Chandra replied reasonably. ‘Think about it. If we did such a picture, there’d be riots. Cinemas could get attacked. As Cliff says, there could even be fires. People could die. Is it worth a risk like that, just to tell a story?’

‘Somebody already died,’ Lisa said through almost clenched teeth. ‘A dancer. A wonderfully gifted dancer. Did you ever see him at the NCPA?’

Cliff spluttered a mouthful of wine on the table.

‘The National Centre for the Performing Arts?’ he scoffed. ‘The only performing that Chandra’s interested in is what pretty girls do when the lights are low, isn’t that right, brother?’

Chandra Mehta wriggled uncomfortably.

‘You should slow down on the booze, Cliff. You started too early tonight.’

‘Speak for yourself,’ his partner said, glaring at him and pouring another glass of wine. ‘Are you worried that I’m going to tell Ranjit I think his phoney campaign is more about his political ambitions than it is about Avinash, the dead dancer? Ranjit should be the one to worry, not us. We buy pages of his newspapers every day.’

‘Why don’t we leave business in the office?’ Ranjit said, through a thin smile.

‘You’re the one who brought it up,’ Cliff replied, waving his glass and spilling a little wine on Sneha’s coloured bangles.

‘Do you have any personal opinion on what happened to Avinash?’ Lisa asked Cliff. ‘Considering that it happened five hundred feet from your movie studio, and Avinash danced in three of your movies?’

‘Lin,’ Chandra cut in quickly. ‘Help me out here. What do you think? I’m right, na? If we did a movie like this, there’d be blood on the seats. We shouldn’t needlessly offend the sensibilities, and the… the feelings, you know, of any community, isn’t that so?’

‘It’s your subject, guys, not mine. You two own the movies, Ranjit owns the newspapers, and neither of them have anything to do with me.’

‘Oh, come on,’ Ranjit said, glancing at Lisa. ‘Let’s hear what you honestly think about this, Lin.’

‘I already gave you an honest answer, Ranjit.’

‘Please, Lin,’ Lisa urged me.

‘Okay. Someone once said that the sophistication of any community of people is inversely proportionate to their capacity to be aroused to violence by what people say in public, or do in private.’

‘I have… absolutely… no idea… what the fuck that means,’ Cliff said, his mouth gaping open.

‘It means,’ Ranjit said, ‘that sophisticated people don’t get upset by what people say in public, or do in the privacy of their own homes. It’s the unsophisticated that do.’

‘But… what does that mean for me?’ Chandra asked me.

‘It means that I agree with you, Chandra. You shouldn’t do the story.’

‘What?’ Lisa gasped.

‘See?’ Cliff said, waving his glass. ‘I’m right.’

‘Why not, Lin?’ Ranjit asked, his charming smile fading.

‘It’s not their fight.’

‘I told you!’ Cliff sneered.

‘But it’s important, don’t you agree, Lin?’ Ranjit asked me, but directing his frown at Lisa.

‘Of course it’s important. A man was killed, murdered, and not for something he did, but for something he was. But it’s not their fight, Ranjit. They don’t believe in it, and Avinash deserves believers.’

‘Last week it was Avinash,’ Lisa said, glaring at me. ‘Next week it could be Muslims or Jews or Christians or women they’re beating up, and setting on fire. Or it could be movie producers. That makes it everybody’s business.’

‘You should only do it, if you believe in it,’ I said. ‘Cliff and Chandra don’t. They don’t really care a damn about Avinash, no offence. It’s not their fight.’

‘Exactly!’ Cliff protested. ‘I just want to make lots of money, maybe win a few awards now and then, and live a happy life on the red carpet. Is that so bad?’

The first course arrived, it was impossible to talk, and everyone turned their attention to the small swarm of waiters serving a flowerbed of food.

A messenger from the concierge desk approached as the food was being served. He bowed to the guests, and then bent to whisper in my ear.

‘There is a Mr Naveen at the reception, sir. He says it is rather urgent that he speak to you.’

I excused myself, and made my way to the lobby. I had no trouble finding Naveen and Divya: anyone within ten metres could hear them fighting.

‘I won’t!’ Divya shouted.

‘You’re being so -’

‘Forget it!’ she snapped. ‘I’m not doing it!’

‘Hey, man,’ Naveen sighed, as I joined him. ‘Sorry to bust into your dinner.’

‘No problem,’ I replied, shaking hands with him, and nodding to the sulky socialite. ‘What’s up?’

‘We were coming down from a private party on the eighteenth floor -’

‘A party that was just getting good!’ Divya pouted.

‘A party that was about to get busted for rioting,’ Naveen corrected her, ‘which was why we were leaving. And who gets into the lift, on the way down? None other than our mystery man -’

‘Mr Wilson.’

‘The same.’

‘Did you talk to him?’

‘I couldn’t resist it. I know we agreed to wait until we could talk to him together, but it seemed like a God-given opportunity, so I thought I’d play the hand.’

‘What did you say?’

‘I told him Scorpio George was a friend of mine, and I knew he was looking for him. I asked what it was all about, and why he was dogging my friend.’

‘And?’

‘He’s a lawyer,’ Divya cut in.

‘Will you let me tell it, please?’ Naveen grumbled, grinding his teeth. ‘He says he’s a lawyer, and that he has an important message for Scorpio, only he calls him Mr George Bradley. Is that Scorpio’s last name?’

‘Yeah. Did Wilson say what the message was about?’

‘He keeps the lid screwed down pretty tight, this guy. I’d like him for my lawyer. But he did say it wasn’t anything that could harm Scorpio.’

‘It was me who got him to tell you that!’ Divya hissed.

‘Yeah, by threatening to rip your blouse and shout that he attacked you in the lift. A little over the top, if you ask me.’

‘That’s what the top is for, stupid! It’s for going over. What else would the top be for?’

‘He say anything else?’ I asked.

‘No. He won’t say anything more. Professional ethics, he said.’

‘If you’d just let me scream,’ Divya said, ‘you’d know it all by now. But oh, no! Screaming isn’t an acceptable tactic, for the great detective!’

‘And if you screamed your way into a police cell, would I be doing my job?’ Naveen demanded.

‘How come you guys are still together?’ I asked. ‘Didn’t you sort out the wannabe Bollywood actor guy already?’

‘We did,’ Naveen sighed. ‘But her father has this big business deal going down -’

‘Mukesh Devnani doesn’t do big deals, chamcha,’ Divya interrupted. ‘My father does huge, humungous deals.’

‘Her father has this huge, humungous deal going down,’ Naveen continued, ‘and apparently there’s been some bad blood among the parties who aren’t party to the deal. There’ve been some threats. Nasty stuff. Her dad’s playing safe. He asked me to stay on with this brat for a couple of weeks, until the deal’s done.’

‘I’m not a brat!’ Divya snapped, sticking out her tongue. ‘And the end of this arrangement can’t come fast enough for me, I’m telling you!’

‘Did you just stick your tongue out at me?’ Naveen asked, astounded.

‘It’s a legitimate response,’ she pouted.

‘Sure, if you’re four years old.’

‘So… ’ I cut in. ‘What happened with Wilson?’

‘I knew you were here,’ Naveen said quickly. ‘One of the guests at the party upstairs said he saw you, on the way up. He said you were having dinner with Ranjit Choudry. I thought this might be the only chance to bring this thing to a conclusion, so I told Wilson to meet us outside, on the sea wall. He’s waiting there now. What do you think?’

‘I think we should talk with this guy. If he’s what he says he is, we should take him to the Zodiac Georges. Divya, will you stay here with my girlfriend, Lisa?’

‘Don’t you start!’ she growled.

‘That’s what we were fighting about, before,’ Naveen explained. ‘I told her if you wanted to go with me to see the Georges with this guy Wilson, she should stay here at the hotel, in safety. She won’t buy it.’

‘Are you kidding?’ she snapped. ‘The most interesting thing to happen for like, a grillion years, going with this mystery man to see these Zodiac guys, whoever the fuck they are, and you want me to sit it out like a good little girl? No way. I’m a bad girl. I’m coming with.’

I glanced at Naveen. His half-smile and resigned shrug told me how much he’d become accustomed to giving in to the girl, in the days they’d been together.

‘Okay. Wait here. I’ll tell Lisa.’

I went back to the table, put my hands on the back of her chair, and leaned in close to whisper in her ear. I told her the situation, and then made an apology to the table.

‘Ladies and gentlemen, I’m sorry to say that I’ve been called to an emergency, involving a friend. Please excuse me.’

‘We agreed to have dinner with Ranjit,’ Lisa said, furious and loud.

‘Lisa -’

‘And if you haven’t noticed, that’s what we’re in the middle of doing.’

‘Yeah, but -’

‘It’s just rude,’ she said flatly.

‘It’s an emergency. It’s Scorpio, Lisa.’

‘Is that why you’re leaving?’ she demanded angrily. ‘Or is it because Karla isn’t here?’

I stared at her, feeling hurt without knowing exactly why. Scorpio and Gemini were our friends, and it was important for them.

She stared back at me evenly, her eyes betraying nothing but anger. Ranjit broke the silence.

‘Well, we’ll be very sorry to see you leave, Lin. But rest assured, Lisa will be in good hands. And perhaps you’ll return from your… pressing matter… in time for dessert. I dare say we’ll be here for a while yet.’

He looked at me, his smile as open and ingenuous as ever. Lisa didn’t move.

‘Really,’ Ranjit said, putting his hand over Lisa’s on the table. ‘We’ll do our best to keep Lisa entertained. Don’t worry.’

‘Just go!’ Lisa said. ‘If it’s so important, just go.’

I stared at them for a moment; stared at Ranjit, and their hands together on the table. A perverse and completely honest instinct made me want to hit Ranjit hard. Anywhere would do.

I said goodbye, and I walked away. I know now that if I’d followed that instinct, if I’d dragged Ranjit from the hotel, slapped him around and put him back in his box of snakes, all of our lives would’ve been better, and safer, maybe even his.

But I didn’t. I rose above. I did the right thing. I was the better man I sometimes am. And Fate wrote a new chapter for all of us that night, on starred pages, and dark.

Chapter Twenty-One

Outside, fitful gusts caressed a fine mist off the bay, drifting across the wide road in glittering veils of delicate moisture. The monsoon, brooding for another assault on the city, paced its clouds horizon-wide over the sea.

The lawyer, Mr Wilson, was leaning casually against the hip-high sea wall. He wore a dark blue suit, and carried an umbrella and a fedora in his long, pale fingers. A banded tie was strangling his crisp white shirt. Despondent lawyers sometimes hang themselves with their business ties. Looking at Wilson, I wondered at a profession that wears its own noose.

As I approached him I realised that his hair was actually silver-white, beyond the thirty-five or so years of his thin, unlined face. His eyes were a soft blue that seemed to suffuse the white surrounding them: blue everywhere. They glittered with what might’ve been courage, or just good humour. Either way, I liked the look of him.

‘This is Lin, Mr Wilson,’ Naveen introduced us. ‘They also call him Shantaram.’

‘How do you do,’ Wilson said, offering me a card.

The card, bearing the name E. C. Wilson, announced that he worked for a partnered law firm, with offices in Ottawa and New York.

‘I understand, from Mr Adair, that you can take me to meet Mr Bradley, Mr George Bradley,’ Wilson said when I pocketed the card.

‘I understand that you can tell me what the hell you want with him,’ I replied calmly.

‘That’s telling him!’ Divya laughed.

‘Please, shut up!’ Naveen hissed.

‘If you are indeed friends of Mr Bradley -’

‘Are you calling me a liar, Mr Wilson?’ Naveen asked.

‘It’s Evan,’ Wilson responded calmly. ‘Evan Wilson. And I’m certainly not doubting your word. I’m merely saying that you will understand, as friends of Mr Bradley, that whatever business I have with him is his private business.’

‘And it’ll stay private,’ I agreed. ‘So private that you’ll never see him, if you don’t give me some idea of what you want with him. Scorpio George has a nervous disposition. We like him that way. We don’t disturb him without a reason. You see that, right?’

Wilson stared back at me, unruffled and resolute. A few strollers braving the wind and imminent rain passed us on the wide footpath. Two taxis pulled up near us, hoping for a fare. Other than that, the street was quiet.

‘I repeat,’ Wilson said at last, equably but firmly, ‘This a private -’

‘That’s it!’ Divya snapped. ‘Why don’t you two just kick the shit out of him? He’ll talk soon enough, if you give him a solid pasting.’

Wilson, Naveen and I turned to look at the small, slim socialite.

‘What?’ she demanded. ‘Go on! Fuck him up!’

‘I should warn you,’ Wilson said quickly, ‘that I took the precaution of hiring the services of a security officer, from the hotel. He is watching us now, near that parked car.’

Naveen and I turned. There was a black-suited bouncer from the hotel, standing in the shadows, five metres away. I knew the man. His name was Manav.

Mr Evan Wilson had made a mistake, because he didn’t know the local rules. When you needed private security, in those years, you hired a professional, which means either a gangster, or an off-duty cop.

Guys like Manav weren’t paid enough to take real risks. As working men, on low salaries, they had no protection if things got messy. If they got hurt, they had no insurance, and couldn’t sue anyone. If they hurt someone else, and got charged for it, they went to prison.

More to the point, Manav was a big, well-muscled guy, and like a lot of big, well-muscled guys, he knew that a broken bone would put a dent in his training routine: he’d lose half a year of sculptured gains. Setbacks like that make most bodybuilders take a long, hard look in the wall mirror at the gym.

‘It’s okay, Manav,’ I called out to him. ‘You can go back to the hotel now. We’ll call you, if we need you.’

‘Yes, sir, Linbaba!’ he said, visibly relieved. ‘Goodnight, Mr Wilson, sir.’

The bodyguard trundled back to the hotel, jogging a bow-legged trot. Wilson watched. To his credit, the lawyer smiled and remained calm.

‘It would seem, gentlemen,’ he said gently, ‘that you have suddenly moved rather closer into the circle of Mr George Bradley’s confidentiality.’

‘You got that right, you damn honky!’ Divya spat at him.

‘Will you please shut up!’ Naveen spluttered. ‘And what does that mean? Honky? What are you, from Harlem now, or what?’

‘I’m from the famous nation of Fuck You,’ she retorted. ‘Would you like to hear our national anthem?’

‘You were getting more confidential, Mr Wilson,’ I said.

‘It’s Evan. I can reveal that Mr Bradley is the recipient of a legacy. As the only living relative of Josiah Bradley, recently deceased owner of the Aeneas Trust, registered in Ottawa, he stands to gain a substantial sum, if I can find him and make the appropriate declarations before duly authorised notary officers.’

‘How substantial?’ Naveen asked.

‘If you will permit me, I will leave that to Mr Bradley’s discretion. I rather think it is his business to tell you the full amount of his inheritance, or not, as the case may be.’

Wilson needn’t have worried about Scorpio George telling us. When we took Wilson in a taxi to the Frantic hotel, enticed the Zodiac Georges to come down to a meeting, and left them alone with him on the street, it was fifteen seconds before Gemini George shouted out the sum.

‘Thirty-five million! Holy Croesus-Christ! Thirty-five million! Dollars, for Chrissakes!’

‘Tell the whole damn street, why don’t you?’ Scorpio scolded, glancing around nervously.

‘What are you scared of, Scorp? We don’t have the money yet! They won’t kill us in our beds for money we don’t have.’

‘They could kidnap us,’ Scorpio insisted, waving for us to join them and Wilson. ‘Isn’t that right, Lin? There are people who could kidnap us, and demand a ransom. They could cut off an ear, or a finger, and send it in the post.’

‘The Bombay post?’ Gemini scoffed. ‘Good luck.’

‘They’re probably planning the kidnapping right now,’ Scorpio whined.

‘Christ, Scorpio!’ Gemini protested, dancing a little with delight. ‘Five minutes ago you were freakin’ out about bein’ mind-controlled by the friggin’ CIA. Now, you’re blubberin’ on about bein’ kidnapped. Can’t you just sit back for once and smell the good karma?’

‘I rather think that Mr Bradley has a point, however,’ Wilson remarked.

‘Mr Bradley?’ Gemini scoffed. ‘Mr Fuckin’ Bradley! That’s worth a million, right there, just to hear that! Scorpio, give Wilson a million dollars.’

‘One thing is certain, Mr Bradley,’ Wilson continued. ‘You cannot stay in this hotel. Not when such a significant change in your financial circumstances has shifted you into a, shall we say, more significant income bracket?’

‘He means a more vulnerable income bracket,’ Scorpio mumbled. ‘He’s already talking kidnapping, Gemini. D’you hear that?’

‘Calm down, Scorpio,’ I said.

‘He’s right, actually,’ Divya chipped in.

‘You see?’ Scorpio hissed.

‘My dad, he’s an expert in kidnapping security,’ Divya said. ‘I’ve been trained in it since I was five years old. All rich people are. Now that you’re rich, you’ll have to learn counter-kidnapping techniques, and have all your friends carefully vetted by the police. You’ll need to stay in a safe place, too, and have an armoured limousine. No doubt about it. Bodyguards and money go together like handbags and shoes.’

‘Oh, no,’ Scorpio moaned.

‘And you’re right about the fingers and ears,’ Divya added. ‘But kidnappers use couriers, not the post.’

‘Oh, no.’

‘One case I know, they cut all the fingers but one, before the family paid the ransom.’

‘Oh… ’

‘Divya, please,’ Naveen sighed.

‘In another case, they cut off both ears. Tragic. Had to give away his collection of designer sunglasses.’

‘Oh… ’

‘Divya.’

‘And hats never looked quite the same,’ Divya mused, ‘but at least they got him back. And he’s still rich.’

‘Divya, you’re not helping!’ Naveen snapped.

‘Excuse me?’ she retorted. ‘Far as I can see, there are only two millionaires involved in this conversation, Mr Bradley and Miss Me. Hello? So, I’m the only one qualified to talk about rich kidnapping victims, na?’

‘Oh, no,’ Scorpio moaned.

‘Where’s the party?’ Gemini laughed, still dancing.

‘I have taken the liberty of reserving suites at the Mahesh hotel, on my floor,’ Wilson announced. ‘I was hoping that sooner or later I would be successful in locating you, and that I would be able to extend a measure of hospitality. My firm has also arranged for a line of credit to be opened for you immediately, Mr Bradley, for you to use until the legal matters are all resolved and you can receive your full inheritance.’

‘That’s… that’s amazing,’ Scorpio stammered uncertainly. ‘A line of credit?’

‘How much credit?’ Gemini asked.

‘I lodged a hundred thousand dollars in your discretionary account. You have immediate access to it.’

‘I like this guy,’ Gemini said softly. ‘Give him another million dollars, Scorpio.’

‘We are hoping that you will retain our services, Mr Bradley,’ Wilson said. ‘Just as your departed great-uncle Josiah Bradley did for so many years. We’re fully prepared to offer you the best possible professional advice, on the management of your legacy. We are at your complete service.’

‘What are we waitin’ for?’ Gemini George cried. ‘Let’s go!’

‘What about our stuff?’ Scorpio George asked, glancing back at the Frantic hotel.

‘Trust me,’ Divya said, taking Scorpio’s arm, and leading him toward the waiting taxis. ‘You’ll send a servant to do that. From now on, your servants will do everything that isn’t fun.’

‘Whiskey!’ Gemini said, falling into step behind them, and leaning over Divya’s shoulder.

‘And a long shower,’ Divya said.

‘And champagne!’

‘And a second shower.’

‘And cocaine! Hey, I know! Let’s mix the cocaine in the champagne!’

‘I’m beginning to like you,’ Divya said.

‘And I already like you,’ Gemini said. ‘Let’s get that party started!’

‘You’ll join us, of course, Mr Wilson?’ Divya asked, taking his arm as well.

‘If you’ll pardon the indiscretion, Miss…?’

‘Devnani. Divya Devnani. Call me Diva. Everyone does.’

‘If you’ll pardon the indiscretion, Miss Devnani,’ Wilson said, smiling and making no move to disengage his arm from hers, ‘didn’t you advise your friends, not half an hour ago, to kick the shit out of me?’

‘Silly boy,’ she chided. ‘That was before I knew you were administering thirty-five million dollar estates. And it’s Diva, remember?’

‘Very well, Miss Diva. I’d be delighted to share a glass in celebration.’

After the short ride back to the Mahesh hotel, Wilson collected the room keys and arranged to have the desk manager visit Scorpio George’s suite in an hour, to sign in the new guests.

As he was about to leave the reception area, I put a hand on his arm.

‘Are you planning to make a complaint?’ I asked him quietly.

‘A complaint?’

‘About Manav.’

‘Manav?’

‘Your security guard.’

‘Oh, him,’ he smiled. ‘He was rather derelict in his duty. But… I think that was because he knew I was in safe hands, with you and young Mr Naveen, even if he did expose me to the risk of Miss Diva.’

‘Is that a no?’

‘It is indeed a no, sir. I will not make a complaint against him.’

‘Thanks,’ I said, shaking hands with him.

I liked Evan Wilson. He was calm, discreet and resolute. He’d shown courage when we’d confronted him. He had a sense of humour, was professional but pragmatic, and seemed to be a good judge of flawed characters, in life’s tight corners.

‘Don’t mention it,’ he said. ‘Shall we join the others?’

‘No, I’ve got somewhere I already had to be,’ I replied, looking at the laughing group, Naveen, Divya, and the Zodiac Georges, waiting by the doors to the elevators.

I looked back to the silver-haired Canadian lawyer.

‘Good luck, Mr Wilson.’

I watched him walk away, and then made my way back to the ground-floor restaurant. Ranjit’s table was empty, and had been cleared and prepared for a new setting.

I signalled the manager.

‘When did they leave?’

‘Some time ago, Mr Lin. Miss Lisa left a note for you.’

He fished the note from his vest pocket and handed it to me. It was written in the red ink she preferred.

Gone to a party with Ranjit, the note said. Don’t wait up.

I gave the manager a tip, and took a few steps, before a thought made me turn and call back.

‘Did they have dessert?’ I asked.

‘Ah… no, sir. No. They left immediately after the first course.’

I pushed through the main doors of the hotel. Outside in the warm night air I saw Manav, the hotel bodyguard, standing on duty with another security officer. He noticed me, and searched my eyes expectantly.

He was a good kid, with a nice combination: big, strong and kind. He was worried that Mr Wilson would make a complaint for abandoning a guest of the hotel. It would cost him his job, and end any hope of a better career in the hospitality industry. I signalled him to come over.

‘Kya hal hain, Manav?’ I asked, shaking hands. How are you doing?

There was a tip rolled into the palm of my hand, but he closed his huge hands over mine and resisted the offer of money.

‘No, no, Linbaba,’ he whispered. ‘I don’t… I can’t take anything.’

‘Sure you can,’ I smiled, forcing him to clutch at the money or let it fall to the ground.

‘That’s just what Mr Wilson would’ve given you, if you’d finished your shift with him tonight.’

‘M-Mr Wilson… ’

‘It’s okay. I just spoke to him.’

‘Yes, Linbaba. I saw you coming inside, before. I was waiting here, but I didn’t have the guts to talk to him.’

‘He won’t make a complaint.’

‘It’s sure, Linbaba? Really?’

‘It’s sure. He told me. It’s okay.’

The gleam in Manav’s black-brown eyes followed me as I collected my bike and rode along Marine Drive to the peak of Malabar Hill.

I stopped at a vantage point looking down on the windowed jewels of light lining the bay-wide smile of Marine Drive. I rolled myself a hash joint and began to smoke it.

A beggar, who made the long, winding climb to the summit every night for a safe place to sleep, came to sit nearby. I handed him the joint. He grinned and puffed at it happily, using his hand as a chillum to draw the smoke without touching it to his lips.

‘Mast mal!’ he muttered, smoke streaming out through his nostrils. Great stuff!

Nodding sagely, he puffed again, and passed the joint back to me.

I took the piece of hash I’d used to make the joint, and gave it to him. The man became suddenly serious, looking from the large piece of hashish in his palm to my eyes, and back again.

‘Go home,’ he said at last in Hindi. ‘Go home.’

I rode back through storming rain, parked my bike in the shelter beneath my building, slipped a damp twenty-rupee note into the shirt pocket of the sleeping watchman, and entered my apartment.

Lisa wasn’t there. I stripped off the wet clothes and boots, showered, ate some bread and fruit, drank a mug of coffee, and lay back on the bed.

The electric fan turned overhead just fast enough to send a cooling flourish into the humid air. A new downpour drummed against the metal gable over the bedroom window, sending rivulets as silver as mercury streaming past the half-open window.

I smoked a joint in the dark, and waited. It was after three when Lisa returned, her footsteps tapping the dissonant dance of the drunk on the marble floor tiles of the entry hall.

She tumbled into the room, throwing her handbag against a chair. It missed, and rolled off onto the floor. She kicked one loose, untied sandal off, and hop-stumbled out of the other.

Turning in struggling little circles, she wriggled out of her dress and panties, trailing them from one ankle as she thumped onto the bed.

I couldn’t see her pupils, in the darkened room. One look at them would’ve told me what she’d taken: all drugs live and die in the eyes. I reached out to switch on the bedside lamp, but she stopped me.

‘Leave it off! I want to be Cleopatra.’

When she was deep in sleep I took a wet towel and cooled her down. I dried her off, and she rolled onto her side of the bed, and settled into blameless sleep.

I lay back in the darkness, beside her. Bats chittered past the open window, seeking shelter from the dawn. The watchman, who’d woken from his nap to do rounds of the building, tapped his bamboo stick against the ground to warn away foraging rats. The sound faded, and the room was still and quiet. Her breathing was waves on a gentle shore.

I was happy for the Zodiac Georges, sudden millionaires, and happy to see that Naveen and Divya were still together, no matter how much they fought. And I was glad that Lisa was home and safe.

But I was sick inside. I didn’t know what Lisa wanted, but I was sure it wasn’t me. There were times, I think, when I wanted her to want me, and love me, and let me love her in return. There were times when I hoped that it would happen. But wanting more was a sign of how little we had. We were friends who didn’t try hard enough to make it more.

My eyes began to close. In a half-dream I saw Ranjit, his face contorted, a fiend, a malignant thing. I started awake, and listened for a while to the soft echo of the sea, Lisa’s breath, until my eyes closed again.

And we slept, together and alone, as rains washed the city cleaner than the kneeling stone in a prison confessional.

Chapter Twenty-Two

The filthy Georges, as many had called them, were filthy rich. The whole of South Bombay babbled, marvelling at the fate that allowed the meekest of the city’s meek foreigners to become inheritors of the earth. The once-shunned beggars were suddenly shunted into social acceptability. How the fallen are mighty, Didier laughed happily.

For three weeks the door of the Zodiac Georges’ suite opened, day and night, to admit a promissory of experts, devoting their talents to squeezing the square-peg street dwellers into the round holes of sudden wealth: tailors, barbers, podiatrists, jewellers, numerologists, watchmakers, yoga instructors, manicurists, stylists, meditation masters, astrologers, accountants, legal representatives, personal servants, and a frenzy of stress counsellors.

Securing the essential services of those professionals, and driving their fees to vulture leavings, was a task that Divya Devnani applied herself to with considerable energy, and no little flair. She took a suite at the hotel for those weeks, and was almost constantly in the company of the fledgling millionaires. Reinventing Scorpio and Gemini was a duty, she told me.

‘I was right there when the Georges came into their money,’ she said. ‘Me, who just happens to be the richest girl in Bombay, and a girl of supernaturally good taste. This is karma. This is kismet. Who am I to snub my nose? It’s my duty to help them rise from the ashes.’

The Zodiac Georges, for all their loving friendship, had completely different strategies for coping with the move from ashes to A-listers.

Gemini George suggested that they should give most of the money away. The Georges never lied, never cheated their customers, and never raised a hand to anyone. Life in the slums and back alleys of Bombay had given them a long list of friends and deserving recipients: people who’d helped them, managers of cheap restaurants and little shops who’d extended them life-saving lines of credit, a shuffle of beggars and street touts whose kindness had kept them afloat, and even a few cops, who’d always looked the other way.

With what remained of the money, Gemini enthused, they could have a long, unforgettable season of parties, and then put a modest amount into an interest-bearing account, paid monthly, and go back to living happily, and more comfortably, on the street.

Scorpio wasn’t tempted. Although he was horrified by the responsibilities and moral burdens of his sudden wealth, and he talked about it to everyone not skilled in the art of escaping pessimists, he couldn’t bring himself to part with it.

The first weeks of his prosperity were a nightmare, he said. Money is another word for misery, he said. Money is the ruin of peace, he said. But he wouldn’t embrace Gemini’s plan, and give the burden away.

He fretted, paced, moaned and mumbled. Shaved and trimmed, exfoliated and massaged, manicured and moisturised, the tall Canadian wandered back and forth in the luxurious suite, prosperously uneasy.

‘It will end badly, Lin,’ he said to me, when I dropped in to visit.

‘Everything ends badly, for everyone. That’s why we have art.’

‘I guess,’ he agreed vaguely, not consoled. ‘Did you see Gemini, when you came in? Is he still playing cards?’

‘I didn’t see him. A Sikh guy let me in. He called himself your major-domo.’

‘Oh, yeah. That’s Singh. He kinda runs the place. Him and Diva together. He’s got a schnozz on him, that guy. If your main job is looking down your nose at people, it helps to have a long one, I guess.’

‘He also has a short list, to go with that long nose.’

‘That’s… that’s because we had to put a limit on who gets in here, Lin. You wouldn’t believe how it’s been, since people started hearing about how I’ve got all this money.’

‘Uh-huh.’

‘They’re hittin’ on us, day and night. The hotel had to double its security staff on this floor to cope. And people still managed to get up here. One of them was banging on the door, asking for money, while I was taking a dump.’

‘Uh-huh.’

‘I haven’t been on the street for three days. People were crawlin’ outta the shadows, man, all of them with their hands out for money.’

I recalled that the Zodiac Georges had themselves emerged from a shoal of shadows over the years, and always brandishing the shell of an upturned palm.

‘Uh-huh.’

‘But don’t worry, Lin,’ Scorpio added hastily. ‘You’ll always be on the short list.’

‘Uh-huh.’

‘No, I mean it, man. You always did right by us. And I’ll never forget it. Hey! Speaking of which, do you… do you need any -’

‘No, I’m good,’ I smiled. ‘Thanks anyway.’

‘Okay. Okay. Let’s go find Gemini. I want to tell him about the new security arrangements.’

We found the Londoner in an annex to the suite, designed for use as a guest’s temporary business office. Gemini George had covered the large desk with a tablecloth, and had converted the office into a gambling den.

He was playing poker with a selection of off-duty service personnel from the hotel. The litter of several meals, drinks and snacks indicated that the game had been running for a while.

‘Hey, Scorp! Hey, Lin!’ Gemini smiled happily, as we entered. ‘Pull up a chair. The game’s just hotting up.’

‘Too hot for me, Gemini.’

Gemini George was a skilful cheat, but he never took large sums of money off people, and he sometimes deliberately lost hands that he could’ve won. For him, the thrill was in not being detected, no matter how he played the hand.

‘Come on, Lin, push your luck.’

‘I prefer my luck to do the pushing. I’ll watch a couple of hands.’

‘Suit yourself,’ he said, winking at me and throwing a chip on the table to raise a bet. ‘Scorpio, did you get our guest a drink?’

‘I’m sorry, Lin.’

He whirled on the hotel staff, playing cards.

‘C’mon, you guys! You’re supposed to be working in this hotel. Fetch our guest a drink. Get him a… what, Lin?’

‘I’m good, Scorpio.’

‘No, please, have something.’

‘Okay. A fresh lime soda, no ice.’

One of the players wearing room service livery threw his cards into the pot, and left the table to get the juice.

There was a shout, coming from the main door of the suite. As we looked up, Didier entered the office, dragging the major-domo by the length of his prominent nose.

‘This imbecile insists that my name does not appear on the list of permitted guests,’ Didier huffed and puffed.

‘What an outrage,’ I said. ‘Like, say, pulling someone’s nose, for no reason.’

‘No reason? When I explained that such an oversight is quite impossible, because my name appears on every list, from Interpol to the Bombay Cricket Club, even though I abhor the game of cricket, he actually tried to shut the door in my face.’

‘Can I suggest, Didier, that you let go of his face?’

‘Oh, Lin!’ Didier protested, squeezing the man’s nose harder in his closed fist.

The major-domo squealed.

‘He’s only doing his job, Didier.’

‘It is his job to welcome me, Lin, not to exclude me.’

‘I quit this job!’ the major-domo quacked.

‘Another thing,’ I tried, ‘is that you don’t know where that nose you’re squeezing has been.’

‘You’re right,’ Didier agreed, his lip curling in distaste as he released the major-domo’s nose. ‘Where can I wash my hands?’

‘Through there,’ Scorpio said, nodding through the doorway. ‘Second door on the right.’

Didier glowered at the major-domo, and left the room. The major-domo looked at me. I have no idea why people look at me when I have absolutely nothing to do with anything.

‘Might be a good idea to put Didier on your short list, Scorpio,’ I said, reaching out to pick up a small bundle of notes from the pile of winnings in front of Gemini George.

‘But, Lin,’ Scorpio whined. ‘Didier grabbed my major-domo by the nose.’

‘You’re lucky it was only your man’s nose he got hold of.’

‘Damn right about that!’ Gemini laughed. ‘Singh! Put Mr Didier Levy on the short list, right away.’

‘I quit this job,’ Singh mumbled again, clutching at his nose.

‘That’s your right,’ I said, handing him the money I’d taken from the table. ‘But if you do, you’ll get drummed out of the Guild of Major-Domos. If you’ll accept our sincere apology, on behalf of our friend, and this money for your trouble, we can put this behind us.’

The man held his nose with one hand, fondled the notes with the other, and then wagged his head, moving back to his position near the door.

‘Are you sure it’s major-domos?’ Gemini asked mischievously. ‘Isn’t it majors-domo?’

‘Say, Lin,’ Scorpio remarked, brightening suddenly. ‘D’ya think… maybe… you could stay on with us here for a while? We got plenty of room. We’re thinking of taking the whole floor, and you’d be a real help in getting the hang of this being rich thing.’

‘Great idea,’ Gemini agreed. ‘Stay here, Lin. Ask Lisa to move in, too. Liven up the place.’

‘Nice offer, guys.’

‘Is that a no?’ Scorpio asked.

‘You’ve got Divya on the case,’ I said. ‘From what I can see, she’s doing a pretty good job.’

‘She scares the crap outta me,’ Scorpio complained.

‘Everyone scares the crap outta you,’ Gemini commented. ‘That’s one of the reasons why we love you. What are you doin’ here, anyway, Scorp? You never come in here. You hate poker.’

‘I don’t hate poker.’

‘Okay then, Maverick, what’s up?’

‘It’s serious.’

‘It can’t be more serious than the next hand, Scorp. Lin just gave away all my winnings to your majors-domo, because Didier pulled his nose.’

‘Quite rightly,’ Didier added, rejoining us.

‘Can’t argue there,’ Gemini agreed. ‘I’ve wanted to do it myself, occasionally, but I thought Singh would hit me. Now, gentlemen, I intend to win back all me previous winnings, so let’s play.’

‘I mean it, Gemini,’ Scorpio said. ‘It’s serious stuff.’

‘I’m playin’ against Didier. He’s a shark. He’ll gut me, if I so much as wink. How can it be more serious than that, Scorpio?’

‘I wanted to talk to you about the new security arrangements.’

‘The what?’

‘The new security arrangements.’

‘It’s a five-star hotel,’ Gemini replied. ‘We’re safe as ’ouses, Scorp.’

‘No, we’re totally and completely unsafe,’ Scorpio said. ‘A kidnapper could hide in a food trolley, or even disguise himself as a concierge. Then we’re finished. Everybody trusts the concierge. We’re vulnerable to attack here, Gemini.’

‘Attack? What are you, Scorp, an evil warlord?’

‘We’re vulnerable. I mean it, Gemini.’

‘Well, if it’s so important, get it off your chest, then. Go on.’

‘But… I can’t talk about security in front of other people.’

‘Why not?’

‘It wouldn’t be… secure.’

‘Don’t we want our friends to be secure, too?’

‘But there are employees of the hotel here.’

‘And if our bein’ ’ere poses some kind of risk to them,’ Gemini said, shuffling the cards, ‘wouldn’t it be fair to include the ’otel employees in our security arrangements, especially the ones gambling with me, so that they can stay safe, too?’

‘What?’ Scorpio said, shaking his head.

Didier cut the deck, and Gemini paused, the cards in his hand.

‘How about this, Scorpio,’ he said, smiling at the friend he loved more than anyone or anything in the world. ‘Let’s just invite all of our friends and all their families to live ’ere with us. Everybody. We’ll rent three floors of the ’otel, bring in everyone, and all their families, to stay for as long as they like, and shower them with generosity and happy fun, and spend lots and lots of money at the ’otel, so they’re ’appy, and we’ll be safe. See? That’s your new security arrangement, right there, innit?’

He turned from his bewildered friend to me, the smile all hearts and diamonds.

‘Last chance, Lin,’ Gemini said, waiting to deal the cards. ‘Are you in?’

‘No, I’m gone,’ I replied, pressing my hand onto Didier’s shoulder to say goodbye.

When I left them, Gemini was dealing the cards expertly, a wicked gleam in his eyes. Didier Levy was the only man I knew who was a better card cheat than Gemini George. I didn’t want to stay long enough to see one of them lose.

In the corridor outside the suite, I found Naveen and Divya.

‘Hey, Lin,’ Naveen greeted me, a happy smile moving across his handsome face. ‘Are you leaving just now?’

‘Yeah. Hey, Divya.’

‘It’s Diva, sweetheart,’ she corrected, smiling and pressing her small hand against my forearm. ‘What’s the rush?’

‘Stuff to do,’ I answered, smiling back at them.

We stood there in silence for a moment. We were still smiling.

‘What?’ Divya asked at last.

‘Nothing,’ I laughed. ‘It’s just, you two seem to be getting on better.’

‘Well,’ Divya sighed, ‘he’s not such a chudh, when you get to know him.’

‘Thank you,’ Naveen said.

‘I mean, elements of the chudh are still there,’ Divya clarified. ‘And they’ll probably always be. You can’t make a silk tie from a pig’s ear, after all.’

‘That’s a silk purse,’ Naveen corrected.

‘What?’

‘A silk purse, not a silk tie,’ Naveen insisted.

‘What’s this? You’re going to start carrying a purse now, or what?’

‘No, of course not. The saying is You can’t make a silk purse from a sow’s ear. It doesn’t mention silk ties.’

‘What are you, the prince of fucking proverbs, all of a sudden?’

‘I’m just saying -’

‘I need a licence from you to change a proverb? Is that it?’

‘So, anyway, bye,’ I said, pressing the button for the elevator.

I stepped inside. They were still arguing furiously. The doors closed, and the elevator descended, but it seemed that I could still hear them through several floors.

On the ground floor I discovered that they’d actually stepped into a neighbouring elevator, and had argued all the way down beside me. They spilled out into the lobby, squabbling still.

‘Hello, again.’

‘Sorry, Lin,’ Naveen said, detaching himself from Divya. ‘I realised that I forgot to tell you something.’

‘Uh-huh?’

‘It’s about your friend Vikram,’ Naveen said quietly. ‘He’s moved into Dennis’s place. He’s sleeping there, on the floor, and he’s hitting the smack pretty hard. I haven’t been there myself, in a while, but I heard from Vinson that he’s in a bad way. Vinson doesn’t go there any more, and neither do I, much. I thought… maybe you didn’t know.’

‘You’re right. I didn’t. Thanks.’

I glanced at Divya, who was waiting near the bank of elevators. Until that moment I hadn’t really noticed how pretty she was. Her wide-set eyes tapered gently to almond-shaped points, where the long lashes were born. Her fine nose curled at the edges to meet the bow of her smile in lines that descended along a scimitar curve to the corners of her mouth.

I glanced at Naveen, and he was staring adoration at her.

And then, in that strange little moment of staring at Naveen and Divya, I felt a shadow pass through me. I shivered. I shifted my gaze to meet Naveen’s eyes, hoping that he’d felt it too.

My heart was beating fast, and the sudden sense of dread was so strong that I could feel it in my throat. I searched Naveen’s eyes, but there was nothing. He smiled back at me.

‘Listen,’ I said, taking half a step away from them. ‘Stay together.’

‘Ah, well… ’ Divya grinned, about to make some joke.

‘Don’t stop arguing,’ I said quickly, taking another step away. ‘But stay together. Look after each other, okay?’

‘Okay,’ Naveen laughed. ‘But -’

I fled, making my way quickly to my parked bike and wrestling it out onto the main road. A few hundred metres away I stopped the bike suddenly, and glanced back over my shoulder at the windowed tower of the Mahesh hotel. I rode away, fast.

I parked the bike outside the house where Dennis lived. The concertina of folding French doors was open on the long veranda. I stepped up onto the veranda, and tapped on the open doors.

Sandal-slap footsteps approached quickly. A curtain was drawn aside, and I saw Jamal, the One Man Show. He beckoned me inside, motioning for me to be silent.

I entered the room, squinting my eyes to adjust to the gloom. Hashish scented the air, mixed with a powerful drift from a large wad of incense sticks, burning in an empty vase.

Dennis was in his customary pose, stretched out in the centre of the large bed, with his hands folded over one another on his chest. He wore pale blue silk pyjamas, and his feet were bare.

I heard a rattling cough to my right and saw Vikram, stretched out on a piece of carpet. Billy Bhasu was sitting on the floor beside him. He was preparing another chillum.

A voice spoke from a darkened corner of the room. It was Concannon’s.

‘Look what the grimalkin dragged in,’ he said. ‘I hope you’ve come to join my little gang, boyo. I’m not in a mood for disappointing drugs, or disappointing men.’

Ignoring him, I went to Vikram’s side. Billy Bhasu crab-walked out of the way, and continued preparing the chillum. I pushed at Vikram to rouse him.

‘Vikram! Vik! Wake up, man!’

His eyes opened slowly, and then fell shut.

‘Last chance, Shantaram,’ Concannon said softly. ‘Are you with me, or against me?’

I shook Vikram again.

‘Wake up, Vik. We’re going, man.’

‘Leave him alone,’ Concannon chided. ‘Can’t you see the man’s happy?’

‘It’s not happiness, if you can’t feel it.’

I shook Vikram’s shoulder again.

‘Vikram! Wake up!’

He opened his eyes, looked at me, and smiled a sloppy grin.

‘Lin! How are you, man?’

‘How are you, man?’

‘Nothing to worry,’ he replied sleepily, his eyes drooping and closing. ‘It’s all cool, man. It’s all… cool… ’

He began to snore. His face was dirty. He was a shrinking form inside the clothes of a healthier man.

‘Vik! Wake up, man!’

‘Leave him the fuck alone,’ Concannon said aggressively.

‘Mind your own business, Concannon,’ I said, not looking at him.

‘Why don’t you make me?’

It’s childish, and we all know it, but it often works.

‘Why don’t I?’ I replied, facing him for the first time.

I could just make out the cold fire in his ice-blue eyes.

‘How about this?’ I suggested. ‘I’ll take my friend home to his parents, and then I’ll come back here, and we’ll meet outside. Sound okay?’

He stood up and approached me, standing close.

‘There’s two things that I hold sacred. A man’s right to crush his enemies, and a man’s right to destroy himself in any way he sees fit. We’re all goin’ down. All of us. We’re all on the same road. Vikram’s just a little way further down the road than you and me, that’s all. That’s his natural born right. And you’re not stoppin’ him.’

It was an angry speech, and every word became just a little angrier.

‘Rights have duties,’ I answered him, staring back into the fury. ‘A friend has a duty to help a friend.’

‘I don’t have any friends,’ he said evenly. ‘Nobody does. There’s no such thing. Friendship’s a fairy story, like Father fuckin’ Christmas. And what kind of a cunt did that fat bastard turn out to be? A fuckin’ lie, that’s what he is. There are no friends in this world. There’s allies and there’s enemies in this life, and any one of them can change their coat as soon as look at you. That’s the truth of it.’

‘I’m gonna take Vikram outta here.’

‘The fuck you are!’

He watched me for a moment, for five heartbeats, and slid his right foot backwards on the floor, shaping up for a fight. Not wanting to be caught flat-footed, I did the same. His hands slowly rose, stopping opposite his face, left fist forward. I raised my hands in response, my heart beating hard.

Stupid. Men. We were going to fight, for nothing. You can’t fight for anything, of course: you can only fight against something. If you’re fighting, the part of you that was for something has already been forgotten, replaced by a part that’s violently against something. And in that minute, I was violently against Concannon.

‘One Man Show!’ the One Man Show said suddenly.

‘Shut the fuck up,’ Concannon growled.

‘Guys!’ Dennis said from the bed, his eyes still closed. ‘My high! You’re killing my high!’

‘Go back to sleep, Dennis lad,’ Concannon said, watching my face. ‘This won’t take but a minute or two.’

‘Please, guys,’ Dennis pleaded, in his soft, sonorous voice. ‘Concannon! Come over here, at once, my wild son. Come and smoke a legendary chillum with me. Help me get my high back, man. And Lin, take Vikram with you. He’s been here for a week. Unlike the rest of us in this happy little tomb, he actually has a family to go back to. Take him with you.’

Concannon slowly let his fists fall to his sides.

‘Whatever you say, Dennis, me old reprobate,’ he grinned. ‘It’s no skin off my nose.’

He went to sit beside Dennis on the huge bed.

‘Concannon,’ Dennis said, his eyes beginning to close again. ‘You’re the most alive human being I ever met. I can feel your energy, even when I’m dead. And that’s why I love you. But you’re killing my high.’

‘Settle down, Dennis me darlin’,’ Concannon said, his hand on Dennis’s shoulder. ‘There’ll be no more trouble.’

I roused Vikram quickly, and forced him to stand. As we reached the doors, Concannon spoke again.

‘I won’t forget this, Shantaram,’ he said, his teeth showing in a furious grin.

I took Vikram home in a taxi. He spoke only once.

‘She was a great chick,’ he said, as if to himself. ‘She really was. If she loved me, as much as I love her, she’d be perfect, you know what I mean?’

I helped his sister put him to bed, drank three cups of tea with his worried parents, and then took a taxi back to my parked bike.

I’d arranged to meet Lisa for lunch at Kayani’s, near the Metro Junction, and I rode there slowly, drifting at a walking pace on the long, leafy avenue of extravagantly coloured clothing stalls called Fashion Street. I was thinking about Concannon and Vikram and his parents, and my thoughts were wolves.

Vikram’s father was an older man, long retired, whose youngest son had been born into the autumn of his life. The self-defeating disarray of Vikram’s addiction bewildered him.

His handsome young son, who’d been something of a dandy, dressing himself in the black silk and silver buckles of his obsession with Sergio Leone’s movies, suddenly wore dirty clothes. His hair, which had once been coiffed to a millimetre’s perfection by his barber, hung in drifts, pressed flat where he’d slept. He didn’t wash himself or shave, sometimes for days at a time. He didn’t eat or speak to anyone at home. And the eyes that occasionally rose to meet his worried father’s were drained of light and life, as though the soul had already deserted the man, and was waiting for the body to fall.

Filled with the avalanchine power of love for his English rose, Vikram, the rich boy who never worked, had created a business on the edge of the movie industry. He supplied foreign tourists to play non-speaking parts in Bollywood movies.

It was a daring commercial venture. He had no experience in the industry, and was working with borrowed funds. But Vikram’s charm and belief in himself made it a success. Lisa, his first business partner, had begun to discover her talents in their work together.

When the English rose left Vikram without warning or explanation, the confidence that had seen him dance on the top of a moving train, to propose to her, drained from his life like blood from a whittled vein.

‘And he’s begun to take things,’ Vikram’s father had whispered, while Vikram slept. ‘Little things. His mother’s pearl brooch, and one of my pens, the good one, presented to me by the company, when I retired. When we asked him about it, he flew into a rage and blamed the servants. But it’s him. We know. He is selling the things he is stealing, to feed his habit for this drug.’

I nodded.

‘It’s a shame,’ the elderly man had sighed, his eyes filling with tears. ‘It’s a damn shame.’

It was sorrow and dread as well, because love had become a stranger in their home. I was that stranger, once. I was addicted to heroin: so addicted that I stole money to feed my habit. I stopped, twenty-five years ago, and I despise the drug more every year. I feel heart-crushing compassion every time I see or hear of someone still addicted: still shooting in a war against themselves. But I was that stranger in my parents’ house of love. I know how hard it is to find the line between helping someone out, and helping someone in. I know that all suffer and die inside, again and again, from the addiction of one. And I know that sometimes, if love doesn’t harden itself, love doesn’t survive at all.

And that day, in that runaway year before I knew what cards Fate would throw at me, I prayed for all of us: for Vikram and his family and all the slaves of oblivion.

Chapter Twenty-Three

I parked the bike opposite Kayani’s to meet Lisa. Watching the signal, I took two deep breaths and surfed my second-favourite pedestrian-killer Bombay traffic. Madness machines rushed at me, turning and weaving unpredictably. If you don’t dance in that, you die.

Across the suicide road I used the hanging rope in the doorway of the restaurant to assist me on the steep marble steps, and entered the café. Perhaps the most famous of Bombay’s deservedly famous Parsi tea and coffee houses, Kayani’s offered hot chilli omelettes, meat and vegetable pasties, toasted sandwiches, and the largest selection of home-baked cakes and biscuits in the area.

Lisa was waiting at the table she preferred, toward the back of the ground-floor space, with a view of the busy kitchen, seven steps away beyond a serving counter.

Several waiters smiled and nodded as I made my way to her table. Kayani’s was one of our places: in the two years since we’d been a couple, we’d had lunch or afternoon tea there every couple of weeks.

I kissed her, and sat close to her on a corner of the table, our legs touching.

‘Bun musca?’ I asked her, not looking at the menu.

It was her favourite snack at Kayani’s: a freshly made buttered bun, cut into three slices that can be neatly dunked into a cup of hot, sweet tea. She nodded.

‘Do bun musca, do chai,’ I said to the waiter. Two buttered buns, and two cups of tea.

The waiter, named Atif, collected the unused menus and shuffled away toward the serving counter, shouting the order.

‘Sorry I’m late, Lisa. I got this message about Vikram, so I went to Dennis’s place, and took him home.’

‘Dennis? Is that the Sleeping Baba?’

‘Yeah.’

‘I’d like to meet him. I’ve heard a lot about him. He’s getting kind of a cult status. Rish was talking about making an installation, based around his trance.’

‘I can take you there, but you don’t actually meet him, unless you’re lucky. You sort of stand there, trying not to kill his high.’

‘Not killing his high?’

‘That’s about it.’

‘I like this guy,’ she laughed.

I knew her sense of humour, and her quick love for unusual people who did unusual things.

‘Oh, yeah. Dennis is a very Lisa kind of guy.’

‘If you’re gonna do something, make an art of it,’ she replied.

The tea and buttered buns arrived. We took chunks of the bread, dipped them into our tea until the butter began to run, and ate them hungrily.

‘So, how was Vikram?’

‘He’s not good.’

‘That not good?’

‘That not good.’

She frowned. We both knew addiction, and its python grip.

‘D’you think we should do an intervention?’

‘I don’t know. Maybe. I told his parents they should pay for him to stay at a private clinic for a while. They’re gonna try it.’

‘Can they afford it?’

‘Can they afford not to?’

‘Point,’ she agreed.

‘Problem is, even if he goes there, he’s not ready for help yet. Not even close.’

She thought for a moment.

‘We’re not good, you and me, are we?’

‘Where did that come from?’

‘You and me,’ she repeated softly. ‘We’re not good, are we?’

‘Define good.’

I tried smiling, but it didn’t work.

‘Good is more,’ she said.

‘Okay,’ I said softly. ‘Let’s do more.’

‘You’re nuts, you know that?’

I was lost, and not sure I wanted to know where we were going.

‘When I was arrested,’ I said, ‘I had to undergo a psychiatric evaluation. So, I’ve actually been certified sane enough to stand trial, which is more than I can say for most of the people I know, including the psychiatrist who certified me. In fact, to get convicted in a court of law, you’ve gotta be declared sane. Which means that every convict in the world, in a jail cell, is sane, A-Grade and Certified. And with so many people on the outside seeing therapists and counsellors and all, pretty soon the only people who’ll be able to prove they’re sane will be the people behind bars.’

She looked up at me. The searchlight smile in her eyes tried to cut through.

‘Pretty heavy conversation,’ she said, ‘with a buttered bun in your hand.’

‘These days, Lisa, even when I try to make you laugh, it’s a heavy conversation.’

‘Are you saying it’s my fault?’ she demanded fiercely.

‘No. I was just -’

‘It’s not always about you,’ she snapped.

‘Okay. Okay.’

Atif arrived to clear the dishes and take the next order. When we had a lot to discuss, we had two or even three buns with tea, but I told him just to bring the tea.

‘No bun musca?’ Atif asked.

‘No bun musca. Sirf chai.’ Only tea.

‘Maybe, you’ll be having, just one bun musca?’ Atif tempted, waggling his shaggy eyebrows. ‘To be sharing?’

‘No bun musca. Just chai.’

‘Thik,’ he mumbled, deeply concerned.

He took a deep breath, and shouted to the staff in the kitchen.

‘Do chai! Do chai lao! No bun musca! Repeating, no bun musca!’

‘No bun musca?’ a voice called back from the kitchen.

I looked at Lisa, and then at Atif, then at Vishal the fast-food cook, glowering from the serving window. I raised my hand, one finger extended.

‘One bun musca!’ I shouted.

‘Yes!’ Atif shouted triumphantly. ‘Ek bun musca, do chai!’

Vishal wagged his head in the serving widow enthusiastically, his wide grin revealing pearl-white teeth.

‘Ek bun musca, do chai!’ he shouted happily, banging his saucepan of boiling chai on its gas-ring fire.

‘I’m glad we got that settled,’ I said, trying to shake Lisa happy.

It was the kind of silly, lovely thing that Bombay does every day, and normally we would’ve enjoyed it together.

‘You know, it’s kinda weird,’ Lisa said.

‘Not really. Atif is -’

‘I was here yesterday,’ she said. ‘With Karla.’

‘You… what?’

‘And exactly the same thing happened with that waiter.’

‘Wait a minute. You were here with Karla, yesterday, and you didn’t say anything?’

‘Why would I? Do you tell me who you see, and who you fight with?’

‘There’s a reason for that, and you know it.’

‘Anyway, when I was here with Karla, the same thing happened with that waiter -’

‘Atif?’

‘See? She knew his name, too.’

‘He’s my favourite waiter here. Not surprised she likes him. He should be running the place.’

‘No, you’re not getting me.’

‘Do we have to talk about Karla?’

‘Talk about her,’ she said quietly, ‘or think about her?’

‘Are you thinking about her? Because I’m not. I’m thinking about you, and us. What there is of us.’

She flicked a frown at me, and then went back to folding and refolding the napkin.

The bun musca and chai arrived at the table. I ignored it for a moment, but Atif lingered near my elbow, watching me, so I picked up a piece of the bread and took a bite. He wagged his head approvingly, and walked away.

‘I guess it’s just my busted-up life, you know?’ Lisa said, creasing lines in the napkin with her fingers.

I did know. I’d heard her story many times. It was always differently the same, and I always wanted her to tell it again.

‘I wasn’t, you know, mistreated, or anything. It wasn’t anything like that. My parents are kinda great, you know. They really are. The fault is in me. You know that.’

‘There’s no fault in you, Lisa.’

‘Yes, there is.’

‘Even if there was, there’s no fault that can’t be loved away.’

She paused, sipped at the chai, and found another way into whatever it was she was trying to tell me.

‘Did I ever tell you about the parade?’

‘Not at Kayani’s,’ I smiled. ‘Tell me again.’

‘We used to have this Founders’ Day Parade every year, right down the whole of Main Street. Everybody for fifty miles around got involved, or came to watch the show. My high school band marched in the parade, and we had this big barge -’

‘A float.’

‘Yeah, the school had this big float that the parents’ committee made, with a different theme every year. One year, they picked me to be the one sitting high up on a kind of throne, as the central attraction. The theme that year was The Fruits of Liberty, and the barge -’

‘The float.’

‘The float was filled with produce from the local farms. I was the Liberty Belle, get it?’

‘You must’ve looked damn cute.’

She smiled.

‘I had to sit on the top, while the whole mountain of fruit and potatoes and beets and all rolled along between the crowds. And I had to wave, regally, like this, all the way down Main Street.’

She waved her hand gently, palm upwards, her fingers curved around the majestic memory.

Atif cleared the table again. He looked at me, posing the question with one raised eyebrow. I held my hand over the table palm downwards, and gestured toward the table twice. It was the signal to wait for a time. He wagged his head from side to side, and checked on the neighbouring tables.

‘It was really something. Kind of a big honour, if you know what I mean. Everybody said so. Everybody kept on saying so, over and over again. You know how irritating it is, when people keep telling you how honoured you should be?’

‘I know the dishonoured version, but I get your drift.’

‘The thing was, I didn’t really feel honoured, you know? I was kinda glad, of course, when they picked me from all the other girls, some of them way prettier than me. And I didn’t even do anything to get picked. Some of the girls tried every devious trick they could think of. You don’t know how many tricks a girl can find up her sleeve, until you see a bunch of them trying to get picked to be on top of the truck in the Founders’ Day Parade.’

‘What kind of tricks?’ I asked hopefully.

‘Me, I didn’t do anything,’ she said. ‘And I was as surprised as anyone when the committee picked me. But… I didn’t really feel anything. I waved my hand, as regal as Marie Antoinette, getting a little drunk on the smell of those apples heating up in the sun, but I looked at all the faces smiling at me, and all those hands clapping me, and I didn’t feel anything at all.’

Shafts of sunlight pierced the subdued monsoon shade of Kayani’s. One ray of light crossed our table, striking her face and dividing it between the sky-blue eyes in shadow and the lips, wet with white light.

‘I just didn’t feel anything at all,’ the light-struck lips said. ‘And I never did. I never felt like I belonged there, in that town, or in that school, or even with my own family. I never did. I never have.’

‘Lisa -’

‘You don’t feel like that,’ she said flatly. ‘You and Karla. You belong where you are. I finally get it, and it took the waiter to show it to me. I finally get it.’

She looked up from the wrinkled napkin to stare into my eyes, her face emptied of expression.

‘I never do,’ she said flatly. ‘I never belong anywhere. Not even with you. I like you, Lin. I’ve had a thing for you for a long time. But I never felt anything more than that. Did you know that? I never felt anything for you.’

There’d always been a knife in my chest when I tried to love Lisa. The knife was those words, when she spoke them, because she spoke them for both of us.

‘People don’t belong to one another,’ I said softly. ‘They can’t. That’s the first rule of freedom.’

She tried to smile. She didn’t make it.

‘Why do people fall apart?’ she asked, frowning into a truth.

‘Why do people fall in?’

‘What are you, a psychiatrist now, answering a question with a question?’

‘Fair enough. Okay. If you really want me to say it, I think people fall apart when they weren’t really together in the first place.’

‘Well,’ she continued, her eyes drifting down to the table, ‘what if you’re afraid of being together with someone? Or with everyone?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Lately I feel like the committee picked me for the parade all over again, and I didn’t even try. Do you see?’

‘No, Lisa.’

‘You don’t?’

‘Whatever we are, or we’re not, all I know is that you beat the curse, and got back on your feet. That’s something to be proud of, Lisa. You’re doing what you love, working with artists you respect. And I’m your friend, no matter what happens. It’s good, Lisa. You’re good.’

She looked up again. She wanted to speak. Her mouth opened. Her lips twitched, tricked into movement by flickering thoughts.

‘I gotta go,’ she said quickly, standing to leave. ‘There’s a new show. A new artist. He’s… he’s pretty good. We’re mounting it in a couple of days.’

‘Okay. We’ll -’

‘No. I’ll get a cab.’

‘I’m faster than any cab in this city,’ I smiled.

‘That you are, and cheaper too, cowboy, but I’ll get a cab.’

I paid and walked out with her, descending to the sun-streaked street. There were taxis parked opposite, and we made for the first in line. She stooped to enter the cab, but I held her back.

She met my eyes for a moment, and then threw her glance away again.

‘Don’t wait up for me tonight,’ she said. ‘This new installation we’re setting up, it’s pretty complicated. We’re gonna work around the clock for a couple days, to -’

‘A couple of days?’

‘Yeah. I… I’ll probably sleep there tonight, and tomorrow, just… just to bring the show in on time, you know?’

‘What’s happening here, Lisa?’

‘Nothing’s happening here,’ she said, and got into the cab.

It took off at once. She turned to look at me as the taxi pulled away, staring back at me until I lost her.

The rapture, born in seconds, is a frail thing. And when rapture dies, no power can restore it to a lover’s eye. Lisa and I were staring at one another from a deeper place: the place where rapture lands when it falls.

A light had dimmed, and a shadow moved across the garden of what was. I waited on the footpath for half an hour, thinking hard.

I was missing something, a conflict more fundamental than Lisa’s objection to my life on the edge of the Sanjay Company, or even her desire to be with others. Something else was happening, and I couldn’t see it right or even feel it right, of course, because it was happening to me.

Chapter Twenty-Four

The street was happily larcenous as I parked my bike outside Leopold’s beside a lounge of street touts, their salamander eyes roving for business. I looked left, slowly, and then right, taking in every threat or opportunity on the street around me. I’d begun to turn my thoughts away from that shadow, Lisa’s shadow, moving across the garden of what was, when I heard a voice.

‘Lin! This is great, man! I’ve been trying to find you.’

It was Stuart Vinson, and he was agitated. That was good. After the talk with Lisa that I didn’t understand, agitation from a man I almost never understood seemed like the right distraction.

‘Vinson. What’s up?’

‘There’s this girl. She’s… I need your help. You’ve got some pull with the Colaba cops, right?’

‘Define pull.’

‘You can get things done, man. That’s right?’

‘I know who’s first and last in line, if you’re handing out money.’

‘That’s it! That’s great! Can you come with me? Right now?’

‘I -’

‘Please, Lin. There’s this girl. She’s in a lotta trouble.’

He read my frown.

‘What? No! She hasn’t done anything wrong. Fact is, far as I can figure it, it’s just that her boyfriend’s dead. He OD’d, like, just last night, and -’

‘Wait a minute. Slow down. Who’s this girl?’

‘I… I don’t know her name.’

‘Uh-huh.’

‘I mean, I haven’t heard it yet. I haven’t seen her passport, either. I don’t even know where she comes from. But I know I’ve got to save her, and maybe I’m the only one who can, you know? She’s got these eyes, like, it’s too weird, man. I mean, it’s like the universe is tellin’ me to save her. It’s mystical. It’s magical. It’s fated, or something. But every time I ask the cops about her, they tell me to shut up.’

‘Shut up, Vinson, or talk sense.’

‘Wait! Let me explain. I was in the police station, paying a fine for my driver, you know, because he got in this fight with another driver, on Kemps Corner, near the Breach Candy turnoff, and he -’

‘Vinson. The girl.’

‘Yeah, man, I finished up with the cops, and I saw this girl sitting there. You gotta see her, man. Those eyes. Her eyes… they’re… they’re fire and ice at the same time. You’ve gotta see it to believe it. What is it about the eyes that gets you so fucked up, man?’

‘Connection. Back to the girl.’

‘Like I said, her boyfriend died of an overdose some time, like, last night or early this morning. Best as I can make out, she woke up and found him like that, stiff as a two-by-four, and long gone. She was stayin’ at the Frantic.’

‘Go on.’

‘Those Frantic guys run a tight ship, and they know how to keep their mouths shut. I’ve done some deals there. But, like, dead bodies? They draw the line, you know?’

‘I know the Frantic. They held the girl, called the cops, and handed her over.’

‘Yeah, the fuckers.’

‘They were just trying to stay outta jail, like you should be, Vinson. It’s not safe to play Good Samaritan in a police station, when you’re a drug dealer. It’s not ever safe in a police station.’

‘I… I know. I know. But this girl, man, it’s mystical, I tell ya. I tried to get the cops to open up about her. The only thing they told me was that she did the identification of the body at the morgue, like they wanted. That must’ve been hell for her, man. And she made a statement, like they asked her. But she didn’t do anything, and they won’t let her go.’

‘It’s about money.’

‘I figured. But they won’t talk to me. That’s why I need you.’

‘Who’s on duty?’

‘Dilip. The duty sergeant. He’s on top of it all. She’s sitting in his office.’

‘That’s good.’

‘I can pay him, to let the girl go?’

‘He’d sell his gun and badge, if you offered enough.’

‘That’s great!’

‘But then he’d find you, and beat you up to get them back.’

‘That’s not great.’

‘He likes fear. Fill your eyes with just enough simulated fear to make him smile, then give him money.’

‘Is that what you do?’

‘Lightning Dilip and I are past simulated fear.’

‘If you go in there with me, will he let us pay, and get the girl out of there?’

‘Sure. I think so. But… ’

‘But what?’

I exhaled a long, exhausted breath, and frowned my reservations into his worried eyes.

I liked Stuart Vinson. His lean, handsome face, tanned by six years of Asian sunlight, always carried the kind of brave, earnest, determined expression that might’ve graced a polar explorer, leading others on a noble adventure, even though he was in fact a wily, lucky drug dealer, who lived lavish in a city where hunger was a constituency. I couldn’t read his motive.

‘Are you sure you wanna get involved? You don’t know this girl. You don’t even know her name.’

‘Please don’t, like, say anything bad about this girl,’ he said softly, but with surprising force. ‘It will make me not like you. If you don’t want to help me, that’s cool. But me, I already know everything I need to know about her.’

‘Jesus.’

‘I’m sorry,’ he said, hanging his head for an instant.

Just as quickly he raised his pleading eyes again.

‘I know it sounds crazy, but I’ve been there in Dilip’s office for the last two hours, trying to help her. She didn’t say anything. Not a word. But this one time she looked up at me, and she gave me this, like, little smile. I felt it in my heart, Lin. I can’t explain it. And I… I smiled back at her. And she felt it, too. I know it. I’m sure of it. Sure as anything I’ve ever known in my life. I don’t know if you know what it’s like to love someone for no reason you can understand, but all I’m asking is that you help me.’

I knew what it was like: everybody in love does. We walked across the street to the Colaba police station, and into Lightning Dilip’s office.

The duty sergeant looked me up and down, looked at the girl sitting across the desk from him, and then looked back to me.

‘A friend of yours?’ Lightning asked, nodding at the girl.

I looked at her, and something curled inside me, like ferns closing. It was the girl whose photograph was in the locket, the girl who’d sold the locket, the girl I’d tried to warn, when I returned the locket to her.

Fate, I thought, get off my back.

Her greasy hair was tangled and clinging to the sweat on her neck. She wore a royal blue T-shirt, faded from over-washing, and tight enough to reveal her small, frail physique. Her jeans seemed too large for her: a thin belt gathered them in bunches around her narrow waist.

She was wearing the locket. She recognised me.

‘Yes,’ I replied. ‘A friend. Please, Sergeant-ji, turn on the fan.’

Lightning Dilip glanced at the unmoving fan over her head, and almost imperceptibly lifted his eyes to the fan over his own head, rotating swiftly to banish the monsoon smother.

He shifted his eyes to me again, the irises set in honey-coloured hatred.

‘Punkah!’ he bellowed at a subordinate.

The constable hastily switched on the fan over the girl’s head, and cooling air streamed onto the sweat bathing her slender neck.

‘So, she is your friend, Shantaram?’ Dilip asked cunningly.

‘Yes, Lightning-ji.’

‘Very well then, what is her name?’

‘What name did she give you?’

Dilip laughed. I turned to the girl.

‘What’s your name?’ I asked.

‘Rannveig,’ she replied flatly, her hand drifting to the locket around her neck, as her eyes met mine. ‘Rannveig Larsen.’

‘Her name’s Rannveig,’ I said. ‘Rannveig Larsen.’

Dilip laughed again.

‘That’s not the name I have written in front of me,’ he said, still smiling.

‘It’s Norwegian,’ the girl said. ‘You write it like R-a-n-n-v-e-i-g, but you pronounce it Runway – like the thing at the airport.’

‘Her name’s Rannveig,’ I said. ‘Like the thing at the airport.’

‘What do you want, Shantaram?’ Dilip asked.

‘I’d like to escort Miss Larsen home. She’s had a pretty rough day.’

‘Miss Larsen tells me that she has no home,’ Dilip retorted. ‘She was thrown out of the Frantic hotel this morning.’

‘She can stay at my place,’ Vinson said quickly.

Everyone looked at Vinson.

‘It’s… it’s a big place, my place,’ Vinson stammered, looking from one to another of us. ‘There’s plenty of room. And I have a live-in servant. She’ll take good care of her. That is… if… if she wants to come to my place.’

Lightning Dilip turned to me.

‘Who the fuck is this idiot?’ he asked in Hindi.

‘This is Mr Vinson,’ I said.

‘I’m Stuart Vinson,’ he said. ‘I was here, like, ten minutes ago.’

‘Shut up,’ Lightning said.

‘We’d like to escort Miss Larsen home, Lightning-ji,’ I said. ‘That is, if she’s free to leave.’

‘Free,’ Dilip repeated, drawing out the word. ‘It’s such a little word, but with so many conditions attached to it.’

‘I’d be happy to meet those conditions,’ I said, ‘depending, of course, on just how many conditions there are, and how firmly they’re attached.’

‘I can think of at least ten conditions,’ Lightning said, a sly grin sliding off the edge of his irritability.

I counted out ten thousand rupees, and put the money on the desk. As I slid it across, he reached out to cover my hand in both of his.

‘What interest does the Sanjay Company have in this girl?’

‘This isn’t Sanjay Company business. This is personal. She’s a friend.’

Still holding my hand against the desk, he glanced at the girl, looking her up and down.

‘Ah, of course,’ he said, his lips twitching around an oily grin.

‘Wait a minute -’ Vinson began, but I cut him off, pulling my hand free.

‘Mister Vinson would like to thank you, Lightning-ji, for your kind and compassionate understanding.’

‘Always happy to help,’ Dilip snarled. ‘The girl must be back here in two days, to sign the papers.’

‘What papers?’ Vinson demanded.

Dilip looked at him. I knew the look: he was thinking about which part of Vinson’s body he would start kicking, after he had his men chain him to a gate.

‘She’ll be here, Sergeant-ji,’ I said. ‘And exactly what papers will she be required to sign?’

‘The transfer of the body,’ Dilip replied, picking up a file from his desk. ‘The body of the unfortunate young man goes back to Norway, in three days. But she must sign the forms in two days. Now get out of here, before I start adding more conditions to her release.’

I held my hand out to the girl. She took it, stood up, and walked a few steps. She was unsteady on her feet. As she neared Vinson she stumbled, and he reached out to put an arm around her shoulder.

Vinson walked her to the street, helped her into the back seat of his car, and climbed in beside her. The driver started the engine, but I leaned against the open window.

‘What happened, Rannveig, like the thing at the airport?’ I asked her.

‘What?’

‘Your boyfriend. What happened?’

‘You don’t have to worry about me,’ she said abstractedly. ‘I’m okay. I’m okay.’

‘Right now, I’m worried about him,’ I said, nodding toward Vinson. ‘And if I’m gonna go back in there and deal with that cop, I need to know what happened.’

‘I… I wasn’t,’ she began, staring at the cloth bag cradled in her lap.

I guessed that it held everything she owned.

‘Tell me.’

‘He… he couldn’t stop. And things got crazier and crazier. Then, just yesterday, just last night, I told him I was leaving him, and going back to Oslo. But he begged me to stay one more night. Just one more night. And… and then… He did it on purpose. I saw it in his face. He did it on purpose. I can’t go back home. I can’t see anyone from there.’

The fierce, electric blue of her eyes glazed over, and she slithered into an exhausted silence. I knew the look: staring at the dead. She was staring at the face of her dead boyfriend.

‘Have you got anyone in Bombay?’ I asked.

She shook her head slowly.

‘Do you want your consulate involved?’

She shook her head more quickly.

‘Why not?’ I asked.

‘I told you. I can’t face anyone now.’

‘She’s beat,’ Vinson said softly. ‘I’ll take her home. She’ll be safe with me, until she decides what she wants to do.’

‘Okay. Okay. I’ll talk to Lightning Dilip.’

‘You have to do more?’ Vinson asked. ‘I thought that was it.’

‘He didn’t give back her passport. He’s holding out for more money, but he didn’t want to go into that. Not with you in the office. I’ll handle it.’

‘Thanks, man,’ Vinson nodded. ‘I’ll make sure she gets back to sign the forms. Hey, let me give you that money!’

‘It’s only cool to hand over money inside a police station, Vinson, not outside. We’ll settle it later. If I get the passport back, I’ll leave it with Didier, at Leo’s.’

Vinson turned to the girl, speaking to her softly.

‘You’ll be okay. My maid will look after you. She’s tough, but she’s all bark and no bite. A hot bath, some fresh, clean clothes, something to eat, and some sleep. You’ll be fine. I promise.’

He gave instructions to his driver, and the car moved off. The girl turned quickly, found me on the street, and mouthed something at me. I couldn’t understand what she was trying to say. I watched the car until it disappeared, and then went back to talk with Lightning Dilip.

There wasn’t a lot to learn. The girl’s story was that she’d woken to find her boyfriend dead in the bed beside her. There was a syringe stuck in his arm. She’d called the manager for help, and he’d called the police and an ambulance.

Lightning Dilip was satisfied that it was a simple overdose. The kid had track marks on the veins in his arms, hands and feet, and the hotel manager testified that no-one had entered Rannveig’s room but the couple.

It cost me five thousand rupees to buy back the girl’s passport, and another ten thousand to have the name Rannveig Larsen removed from the account of the boy’s death.

In the revised version of the official record, it was the hotel manager who’d found the body, and Rannveig vanished from the narrative.

It was a lot of money in those days, and I planned to recover it from Vinson soon. As I was leaving Lightning Dilip’s office, slipping the Norwegian passport into my pocket, the duty sergeant stopped me.

‘Tell the Sanjay Company that this case raises the stakes.’

‘What are you talking about?’

‘DaSilva,’ he said, almost spitting the word at me. ‘Andrew DaSilva. It was his heroin that killed this boy. It’s the third heroin death this week. The Sanjay Company is selling some very strong, very bad shit on the street. I’m getting trouble for it.’

‘How can you be sure of that?’

It wasn’t a polite question, and he didn’t have a polite answer.

‘Fuck you, and fuck dead junkies. I don’t give a shit. The two local kids are a minor problem. But when a foreigner dies in my zone, it leaves a big stain on my desk. I like a clean desk. I told DaSilva he would have to pay me double this month, for the two deaths. Now that it’s three deaths, the price is triple.’

‘Tell Sanjay yourself, Lightning. You see him more often than I do.’

I left the station house, moved through the traffic, and walked to the narrow cement-block and metal rail divider that separated the lanes moving south and north along the busy causeway.

Standing in a gap in the steel fence, I felt the traffic swirl around me: densely packed red commuter buses, scooters carrying five-member families, handcarts, motorcycles and bicycles, black-and-yellow taxis, fish-market trucks, private cars and military transports moving to and from the large naval base at the spear-tip of the Island City’s peninsula.

Words cut through the jungle of thoughts.

Our dope. Sanjay Company dope. The girl in the locket, Rannveig, like the thing at the airport. Her boyfriend. The girl in the locket. Our dope.

Horns, bicycle bells, music from radios, the cries of stallholders and beggars rose up everywhere, echoing from covered walkways and the elegantly sagging stones of buildings that supported them.

Our dope. Sanjay Company dope. The girl. The locket. Her boyfriend. Our dope.

The smells of the street punished me, making me dizzy: fresh catches of fish and prawns from Sassoon Dock, diesel and petrol fumes, and the heavy wet-linen smell of monsoon mould, creeping across the brow of every building in the city.

Our dope. Our dope.

I stood on the road divider. Traffic rivers ran in front of me, heading north, and behind me, heading south, along the arm of the peninsula.

Khaderbhai had refused to allow anyone in the Company to deal heroin in South Bombay, or to profit from prostitution. Since his death, more than half of the new Sanjay Company’s funds came from both sources, and Sanjay sanctioned more dealers and brothels every month.

It was a new world, not braver but much richer than the one I’d discovered, when Khaderbhai saved me from prison and recruited me. And it was no use telling myself that I didn’t sell the drugs or the girls: that I worked in counterfeiting and passports. I was up to the thin silver chain around my neck in it.

As a soldier with the Sanjay Company I’d fought other gangs, and could be called to protect Andrew, Amir, Faisal and their operations at any time, and with no explanation for the blood to be spilled, and no right to refuse.

Our dope.

I felt a touch in the centre of my back, and as I began to turn there was another touch, and another. Three of the Cycle Killers raced away into the flow of traffic on their chrome bicycles.

I looked back quickly to greet Pankaj, second in charge of the Cycle Killers, as he skidded his bicycle to a stop beside me. He rested against the metal rail of the road divider. Traffic eddied around him, and he looked mischief at me, his eyes bright.

‘That’s how easy it is, brother!’ he grinned, wagging his head energetically. ‘Not counting me, you are three times dead already, if my boys were using their knives, instead of their fingers.’

He jabbed two hard fingers into my chest, directly under my heart.

‘So glad we never fight, brother,’ I said.

‘You take your hand off the knife at your back,’ he said, ‘and I’ll take my hand off mine.’

We laughed, and shook hands.

‘Your Company is keeping us busy,’ he said, spinning the pedal of his bicycle backwards as he held the concrete and steel road divider. ‘I’ll be able to retire, if this keeps up.’

‘If your work ever brings you south of Flora Fountain, I’d appreciate a heads-up.’

‘You will have it, my brother. Goodbye!’

Pankaj wheeled his chrome bicycle back into the road. I watched him thread his way through the traffic expertly.

And before I lost sight of him, in the time it took me to lift my eyes to the sky, I was done. It was over. I was finished with the Sanjay Company, and I knew it.

I was done. I quit. I’d had enough.

Faith. Faith is in everything, in every minute of life, even in sleep. Faith in Mother, sister, brother, or friend: faith that others will stop at the red light, faith in the pilot of the plane and the engineers who signed it into the air, faith in the teachers who guard children for hours every day, faith in cops and firemen and your mechanic, and faith that love will still be waiting for you when you return home.

But faith, unlike hope, can die. And when faith dies, the two friends that always die with it are constancy and commitment.

I’d had enough. I lost the little faith I’d had in Sanjay’s leadership, and couldn’t respect myself any more for submitting to it.

Leaving wouldn’t be easy, I knew. Sanjay didn’t like loose ends. But it was done. I was done. I knew that Sanjay would be at home late. I decided to ride to his house before the night was out, and tell him that I quit.

I looked up at the banner of Leopold’s, and remembered something Karla once said, when we drank too much and talked too much, too long after the doors were closed. Living alone as a freelancer in Bombay, like Didier, she laughed, is a cold river of truth.

I’d been staring into a splintered mirror, and it was a while since I’d faced alone. I was walking away from a small army, pledged to defend me as a brother in arms. I was losing quasi-immunity from the law, protected by quasi-ethical Company lawyers, just a billable minute away from quasi-ethical judges.

I was leaving behind close friends who’d faced down enemies with me: men who’d known Khaderbhai, and knew his imperfections, and loved him as I did.

It was tough. I was trying to walk away from guilt and shame, and it wasn’t easy: guilt and shame had more guns than I did.

But fear lies, hiding self-disgust in self-justification, and sometimes you don’t know how afraid you were, until you leave all your fearful friends.

I felt things that I’d justified and rationalised for too long fall like leaves, washed from my body by a waterfall. Alone is a current in truth’s river, like togetherness. Alone has its own fidelity. But when you navigate that closer view of the shore, it often seems that the faith you have in yourself is all the faith there is.

I took a deep breath, put my heart in the decision, and made a mental note to clean and load my gun.

Chapter Twenty-Five

Kavita Singh, the journalist who was earning a reputation for good writing about bad things people did, leaned back with her chair tipped against the wall. Beside her was a young woman I’d never seen before. Naveen and Divya were on Didier’s left. Vikram was with Jamal, the One Man Show, and Billy Bhasu, both from Dennis’s tomb.

The fact that Vikram was up and around again after two hours of sleep betrayed the depth of his habit. When you first start on the drug, a high can last twelve hours. When your tolerance crawls into addiction, you need to fix, or search for one, every three to four.

They were all laughing about something, when I approached the table.

‘Hey, Lin!’ Naveen called out. ‘We’re talking about our favourite crime. We all had to nominate one. What’s your favourite crime?’

‘Mutiny.’

‘An anarchist!’ Naveen laughed. ‘An argument in search of a reason!’

‘A reasoned argument,’ I countered, ‘in search of a future.’

‘Bravo!’ Didier cried, waving to the waiter for a new round of drinks.

He moved aside to let me sit. I took the seat next to him, and took the opportunity to pass him Rannveig’s Norwegian passport.

‘Vinson will collect it from you, in the next day or two,’ I said quietly.

I turned my attention to Vikram. He avoided my eyes, and played with a smudge of beer on the table in front of him. I motioned for him to lean close to me.

‘What are you doing, Vikram?’ I whispered.

‘What do you mean?’

‘You were out cold two hours ago, Vik.’

‘I woke up, man,’ he said. ‘It happens.’

‘And these guys, who buy dope, just happen to be with you?’

He drew away, leaning back in his chair, and spoke to the table.

‘You know, Lin, I think you’re mistaking me for someone who gives a shit. But I don’t. And I think I’m not alone. Didier, do you give a shit?’

‘Reluctantly,’ Didier replied. ‘And infrequently.’

‘How about you, Kavita?’ Vikram asked.

‘Actually,’ she replied, ‘I give more than a shit, about a lot of things. And -’

‘You know, Lin,’ Vikram said. ‘You used to be a pretty cool guy, yaar. Don’t become just another foreigner in India.’

I thought about his father’s fear, and how they had to hide their precious things from him, but didn’t respond.

‘We’re all foreigners in Bombay, aren’t we?’ Kavita said. ‘I -’

Vikram cut her off again, reaching out to grasp at Didier’s arm.

‘Can we do it now?’

Didier was shocked. He never did business in Leopold’s. But he took a prepared wad of notes from his pocket, and gave it to Vikram. My proud friend snatched at the money and rose quickly, almost toppling his chair. One Man Show steadied the chair and rose with him. Billy Bhasu was a beat behind them.

‘Well… I’ll… I’ll take my leave,’ Vikram said, backing away and avoiding my eye.

Billy Bhasu waved a goodbye, and left with Vikram. One Man Show wagged his head, jangling the assembly of gods hanging around his thin neck.

‘One Man Show,’ I said.

‘One Man Show,’ he replied, and followed the others out of the restaurant.

‘What is it, my friend?’ Didier asked me softly.

‘I give Vikram money, too. But I always ask myself if I just gave him the shot that kills him.’

‘It could also be the one that saves him,’ Didier responded just as quietly. ‘Vikram is sick, Lin. But sick is just another way of saying still alive, and still possible to save. Without help from someone, he might not survive the night. While he’s alive, there’s always a chance for him. Let it go, and relax with us.’

I glanced around at the others, and shrugged myself into their game.

‘So, what about you, Kavita?’ I asked. ‘What’s your favourite crime?’

‘Lust,’ she said forcefully.

‘Lust is a sin,’ I said. ‘It isn’t a crime.’

‘I told her that,’ Naveen said.

‘It is the way I do it,’ she retorted.

Divya broke into helpless giggles, setting the table to laughing with her.

‘What about you, Didier?’

‘Perjury is the most likeable crime, of course,’ he said, with finality.

‘Can I believe you?’ I asked.

‘Do you swear?’ Naveen added.

‘Because,’ Didier continued, ‘it’s only lying that saves the world from being permanently miserable.’

‘But isn’t honesty just spoken truth?’ Naveen goaded.

‘No, no! Honesty is a choice about the truth. There is nothing in the world more destructive to truth, or infuriating to the intellect, than a person who insists on being completely and entirely honest about everything.’

‘I completely and entirely agree with you,’ Divya said, raising her glass in salute. ‘When I want honesty, I see my doctor.’

Didier warmed with the encouragement.

‘They slink up beside you, and whisper I thought you should know. Then they proceed to destroy your confidence, and trust, and even the quality of your life with their disgusting fragment of the truth. Some scrap of repugnant knowledge that they insist on being honest with you about. Something you’d rather not know. Something you could hate them for telling you. Something you actually do hate them for telling you. And why do they do it? Honesty! Their poisonous honesty makes them do it! No! Give me creative lying, any day, over the ugliness of honesty.’

‘Honestly, Didier!’ Kavita mocked.

‘You, Kavita, of all people, should see the wisdom of what I am saying. Journalists, lawyers and politicians are people whose professions demand that they almost never tell the whole of the truth. If they did, if they were completely honest about every secret thing they know, civilisation would collapse in a month. Day after day, drink after drink, program after program, it is the lie that keeps us going, not the truth.’

‘I love you, Didier!’ Divya shouted. ‘You’re my hero!’

‘I’d like to believe you, Didier,’ Naveen remarked, straight-faced. ‘But that perjury thing, it kinda kicks the stool out from under your credibility, you know?’

‘Perjury is being honest with your heart,’ Didier responded.

‘So, honesty’s a good thing,’ Kavita observed, her finger aimed at Didier’s heart.

‘Alas, even Didier is not immune,’ Didier sighed. ‘I am heroic, in the matter of lying. Just ask any policeman in South Bombay. But I am only human, after all, and from time to time I lapse into appalling acts of honesty. I am being honest with you now, and I am ashamed to admit it, by advising you to lie as often as you can, until you can lie with complete honesty, as I do.’

‘You love the truth,’ Kavita observed. ‘It’s honesty you hate.’

‘You are quite right,’ Didier agreed. ‘Believe me, if you honestly tell the whole of the truth, about anyone at all, someone will want to harm you for it.’

The group broke up into smaller conversations, Didier agreeing with Kavita, and Naveen arguing with Divya. I spoke to the young woman sitting near me.

‘We haven’t met. My name’s Lin.’

‘I know,’ she answered shyly. ‘I’m Sunita. I’m a friend of Kavita. Well, actually, I’m working with Kavita. I’m a cadet journalist.’

‘How do you like it, so far?’

‘It’s great. I mean, it’s a really great opportunity and all. But I’m hoping to be a writer, like you.’

‘Like me?’ I laughed, bewildered.

‘I’ve read your short stories.’

‘My stories?’

‘All five of them. I really like them, but I was too shy to tell you.’

‘Just how did you get hold of these stories?’

‘Well,’ she faltered, confused. ‘Ranjit gave me – I mean, Mr Ranjit – he gave me your stories to proofread. I searched them for typos, and such.’

I stared, not wanting to take it out on her, but too angry and confused to hide my feelings. Ranjit had my stories? How? Had Lisa given them to him, behind my back, and against my wishes? I couldn’t understand it.

‘I’ve got them right here,’ Sunita said. ‘I was going to have my lunch alone today, and continue proofing, but Miss Kavita asked me to join her.’

‘Give them to me, please.’

She fished around in a large cloth bag, and gave me a folder.

It was red. I’d filed all of my stories by coloured theme. Red was the file colour I’d chosen for some short stories about urban holy men.

‘I didn’t give permission for these stories to be printed,’ I said, checking to see that all five stories were included in the file.

‘But -’

‘It’s not your fault,’ I said softly, ‘and nothing will happen to you. I’ll write a note for Ranjit, and you’ll give it to him, and everything will be okay.’

‘But -’

‘Got a pen?’

‘I -’

‘Just kidding,’ I said, pulling a pen from my vest pocket.

The last page, on the last story, had only two lines on it.

Arrogance is pride’s calling card, and crowds everything with Self. Gratitude is humility’s calling card, and is the space left inside for love.

It seemed appropriate, as notepaper for Ranjit. I pulled the typed page from the story, wrote the lines again in hand on the new last page, and closed the file.

‘Lin!’ Didier cantankered. ‘You are not drinking! Put down that pen at once.’

‘What are you doing?’ Kavita asked.

‘If it’s a will,’ Naveen said, ‘there’s probably a way.’

‘If you must know,’ I said, glancing at Kavita, ‘I’m writing a note, to your boss.’

‘A love letter?’ Kavita asked, sitting up straight.

‘Kinda.’

I wrote the note, folded it, and gave it to Sunita.

‘But no, Lin!’ Didier protested. ‘It is insupportable! You simply must read the note out loud.’

‘What?’

‘There are rules, Lin,’ Didier riposted. ‘And we must break them at every opportunity.’

‘That’s crazier than I am, Didier.’

‘You must read it to us, Lin.’

‘It’s a private note, man.’

‘Written in a public place,’ Kavita said, snatching the note from Sunita.

‘Hey,’ I said, trying to grab the note back.

Kavita jumped up quickly and stood a table-width away. She had a raspy voice, the kind of voice that’s interesting because of how much it keeps inside, as it speaks.

She spoke my note.

Let me be clear, Ranjit. I think your tycoon model of media baron is an insult to the Fourth Estate, and I wouldn’t let you publish my death notice.

If you touch any of my work again I’ll visit you, and rearrange you.

The girl who’s bringing this note has my number. If you take this out on her, if you fire her, or in any way hurt the messenger, she’ll call me, and I’ll visit you, and rearrange you. Stay away from me.

‘I love it!’ Kavita laughed. ‘I want to be the one who passes it on.’

A shout, then the sound of broken glass shattering on the marble floor made us look with others toward the large entrance arch. Concannon was there, locked in a scuffle with several of the Leopold’s waiters.

He wasn’t alone. There were Scorpion gang men with him. The big guy, Hanuman, was behind Concannon and a few other faces I remembered from that red hour in the warehouse.

The last to push his way into the doorway was Danda, the torturer with the pencil moustache. There was a leather ear-patch strapped across his left ear.

Concannon was carrying a sap, a lead weight wrapped in a sewn leather pouch, and fastened by a cord around the wrist. He lashed out with it, striking the Sikh chief of Leopold’s security on the temple. Gasps and cries of horror rose up from all those who witnessed it.

The tall Sikh waiter crumpled and fell, his legs melting beneath him. Other waiters scrambled to help. Concannon swung at them while they were trying to support their comrade, drawing blood, and felling men.

The Scorpions burst into the restaurant, pushing tables aside and scattering frightened patrons. Bottles, glasses and plates smashed on the floor, shattering in frothy puddles. Tables rocked and tumbled over. Chairs skittered away from the brawling mass of men. Customers scrambled, falling over the chairs, and slipping on the messy floor.

Kavita, Naveen and I stood quickly.

‘Gonna get messy,’ I said.

‘Good,’ Kavita said.

I flicked a glance at her, and saw that she had an empty bottle in one hand and a handbag in the other.

The nearest exit was blocked with people. There was a corner behind us. If we pushed the table back, Divya and the young girl, Sunita, could get behind it and be safe. I looked at Naveen, and he spoke my thought.

‘Divya, get in the corner,’ he said, pointing behind him, his eyes on the fighting.

For once, the socialite didn’t fight. She grabbed Sunita with her into the corner. I looked at Kavita.

‘In there?’ she scoffed. ‘Fuck you.’

Whatever their reasons for the wild attack, Concannon and the Scorpions had chosen their moment well. It was the dozy half of the afternoon, long before the evening rush of patrons. Half of the Leopold’s waiters were upstairs, catching up on sleep.

Caught by surprise, the working staff put up a valiant resistance, but they were outnumbered. The struggling, fighting mass of men surged through the restaurant toward us. It had to be slowed, before it could be stopped.

‘Let’s fuck these guys up,’ Kavita growled.

We ran at the gangsters in the mob, trying to move the fight back toward the entrance. A few customers joined us, pushing at the thugs.

Naveen thumped out punches, precision quick. I pulled one man off a semi-conscious waiter. He lost his balance and fell backwards. Kavita swung her empty beer bottle, slamming it against the man’s head. Other customers kicked at him, as he fell again.

The sleeping waiters of the night shift, awakened by the owner of Leopold’s, began streaming down the narrow staircase behind us. The forward momentum of the Scorpion thugs stopped. The tide turned. The Scorpions began to stumble backwards.

Naveen and I were pushed and dragged toward the street with them, caught between enemies and reinforcements. As we neared the door, I found myself face to face with Concannon.

If he knew he was losing the fight, his eyes didn’t show it. They gleamed like the scales of a fish in shallow water, aflame with cold light. He was smiling. He was happy.

He raised the lead sap slowly, until it was level with his shoulder, and spoke to me.

‘The devil’s got a crush on you, boy!’ he said, and then lashed out with the sap.

I ducked quickly to my right. The sap hit the back of my left shoulder. I felt the bone beneath the muscle shudder under the blow. Coming up fast, I swung out with an over-hand right. It hit him square on the side of the head, making solid contact. It had everything in it. It wasn’t enough.

Concannon shook his head and grinned. He raised the sap again and I grabbed at him, shoving him backwards onto the street.

In the movies, men fight for long minutes, taking turns to hit one another. In a real street fight, everything happens much faster. Everyone swings at anything they can, and if you’re knocked to the floor, most of the time you stay there.

Sometimes, of course, the floor is the safest place to be.

Bunching my fists against my forehead, waiting for an opportunity, I stared through my knuckles at Concannon. He was trying to hit me with the sap. I ducked, dodging and weaving, but taking blows as I parried.

As I stepped back, keeping my balance, I came up against Naveen. We glanced at one another quickly, and stood back to back.

We were alone, between Leopold’s and the row of street stalls. The waiters hesitated in the large doorway arch. They were holding the line. What happened on the street was none of their business. They were making sure that the fight didn’t spill back inside the restaurant.

The Scorpions moved in. Naveen faced four men alone, his back to mine. I couldn’t help him. I had Concannon.

I saw an opening, and snapped lefts and rights at the tall Irishman, but for every punch I landed, he replied with a hit from the sap. The deadly weight connected with my face, drawing fast blood. And no matter how hard or how well I connected with my punches, I couldn’t put him down.

Words came into my mind, shawls of snow in the wind.

So, this is it…

As suddenly as it had started, the brawl stopped. The Scorpions pulled away from us, circling around Concannon.

Naveen and I looked backwards for a second. We saw Didier. He had a gun in his hand. I was very glad to see him. He was smiling, just as Concannon had smiled. Standing beside him was Abdullah.

As we stepped away from the muzzle of Didier’s automatic pistol, Abdullah reached out with his left hand, placed it over Didier’s hand, and slowly lowered it until the handgun was at Didier’s side.

There was a moment of silence. The Scorpions stared hard, stranded on the wet-red footprint between fight and flight. Witnesses hiding behind stalls were breathing fast. Even the ceaseless traffic, it seemed, was softened.

Concannon spoke. It was a mistake.

‘You fuckin’ ugly, long-haired Iranian cunt,’ he said, showing all of his yellow teeth, and advancing on Abdullah. ‘You and I both know what you are. Why don’t you speak?’

Abdullah had a gun. He shot Concannon in the thigh. People screamed, shouted and scrambled out of the way.

The Irishman staggered, still fighting, wanting to hit Abdullah with the sap. Abdullah shot him again, in the same leg. Concannon fell.

Abdullah fired twice more, faster than my eye could follow. When Hanuman and Danda reeled backwards, I realised that the big Scorpion and his thin friend had been shot in the leg too.

The Scorpions who could still run, ran. Concannon, a born survivor, was crawling away, using his elbows to drag himself between the souvenir stalls toward the road.

Abdullah took two steps, and put his foot down hard on the Irishman’s back. Didier was at his side.

‘You… fuckin’… coward… ’ Concannon spluttered. ‘Go on! Do it! You’re nothing!’

There was a lot of blood coming from the two wounds in his leg. Abdullah held the pistol over the back of Concannon’s head, and prepared to fire. The few people still close enough to see what was happening screamed.

‘Enough, brother!’ I shouted. ‘Stop!’

It was Didier’s turn to put a hand on Abdullah’s arm, gently pushing the handgun to Abdullah’s side.

‘Too many witnesses, my friend.’ He said. ‘Dommage. Go now. Go fast.’

Abdullah hesitated. There was an instinct working in him. I knew it. I’d heard the voice of that instinct, behind the wall. In that moment he wanted to kill Concannon more than he wanted to live. I stepped in beside him, as men had stepped in for me in prison, guarding my heart as much as my life.

‘The only reason the cops aren’t here,’ I said, ‘is because the Scorpions must’ve paid them to stay away while they attacked the place. That won’t last much longer. We’ve gotta go.’

He took his foot off Concannon’s back. The Irishman immediately began to drag himself toward the road.

Two cars pulled up. Scorpion men loaded Concannon and the wounded gangsters into the back. They sped away, knocking a taxi full of tourists out of the way.

Naveen Adair had his arm around Divya. Sunita, the cadet journalist, was with them.

‘Are you okay?’ I asked Divya.

‘Fucking men,’ she replied. ‘You’re all idiots.’

‘Are you okay?’ I asked Sunita.

She was clutching the red folder of my stories, hugging them to her chest. She was trembling.

‘I’m fine,’ she replied. ‘But, I have a request, and I don’t want to ask it, while you are bleeding. Your face is bleeding, do you know?’

‘O… kay. Can we make it quick?’

She handed me back my short stories, and held up the note I’d written to Ranjit.

‘Please let me deliver your note,’ she said.

‘Ah… ’

‘Please. You have no idea how much this man has harassed me, sexually, and I’m almost fainting with the pleasure of thinking about giving this note to him. I didn’t have lunch, also, so maybe I’m a little hypoglycaemic, but it feels like a really terrific holiday for me, so, sorry for your face, but please let me give him this note.’

Didier and Kavita joined me.

‘Didier, will you give Sunita your phone number, and escort her to Ranjit’s office?’

‘Certainly, but you must leave now, Lin.’

There was the sound of a gunshot, from not far away.

‘Listen,’ I said to Didier quickly. ‘Lisa’s staying at the gallery, on Carmichael Road. Can you go there?’

‘Of course.’

‘Make sure she’s alright. Stay with her, or keep her with you for a couple of days.’

‘Bien sûr,’ he replied. ‘What will you do?’

‘Stay out of sight. I don’t know yet. Take these stories, and keep them for me.’

I handed him the folder, and ran back to find Abdullah ready to ride, his bike beside mine.

‘Who’s doing the shooting?’

‘Our man,’ Abdullah replied, gunning the engine of his bike.

‘Where are the cops?’ I asked, starting my bike.

‘They were coming, but Ravi fired a shot in the air,’ he replied. ‘They have gone for body armour and machine guns. We must leave now.’

Heading into the afternoon traffic, Abdullah and I threaded our way through creeping vines of cars. From time to time we took short cuts on empty sidewalks, or through petrol station driveways. In minutes we descended the long hill at Pedder Road and were beside the juice centre, in sight of the island monument of Haji Ali’s tomb.

‘We should report to Sanjay,’ I said, when we stopped at the signal.

‘Agreed.’

We pulled into the parking bays at the juice centre. Leaving the bikes with the attendants, we called the mafia boss. He sounded sleepy, as if we’d roused him from a siesta.

He woke up fast.

‘What the fuck? Where are you fucks now?’

‘At Haji Ali,’ Abdullah replied, holding the phone between us so that I could hear.

‘You can’t come back. The cops will be here in minutes, for sure, and I don’t want them asking questions you can’t answer. Stay away, and stay quiet for a couple of days for fuck’s sake, you motherfuckers. Tell me the truth, were any civilians shot?’

Abdullah bristled at the phrase Tell me the truth. Gritting his teeth in disgust, he handed me the phone.

‘No civilians, Sanjaybhai,’ I replied.

The term civilians referred to anyone who wasn’t involved in the criminal underworld: anyone other than judges, lawyers, gangsters, prison guards and the police.

‘Two Scorpions took it in the leg, and a freelancer named Concannon. He got it twice, in the same leg, but I wouldn’t count him out. There were a lot of witnesses. Most of them were street guys, or waiters at Leo’s.’

‘You made this fucking mess, Lin, and you’re telling me how to clean it up? Fuck you, motherfucker.’

‘If memory serves me right,’ I said calmly, ‘you shot someone outside Leo’s, once.’

Abdullah held up two fingers, waggling them at me.

‘Twice, in fact,’ I said. ‘And I didn’t start this mess, Sanjaybhai. The Scorpions started it, and that was a while ago. They’ve hit us nine times in the last month. They hit Leo’s, because it’s a place we all love, and it’s in the heart of Company land. The foreigner, Concannon, just wants Sanjay Company and the Scorpions to kill each other, because he’s starting his own gang. That’s as much as I know. I can’t tell you what to do, and I wouldn’t try. I can only tell you what I know. That’s for you, not against you.’

‘Madachudh! Bahinchudh!’ Sanjay shouted, and then calmed himself again. ‘This will cost a fortune to cover up. Who do you think set it up with the Colaba cops?’

‘Lightning Dilip was on duty. But I think this is too ambitious for him. He likes his enemies alive, and tied up.’

‘There’s a sub-inspector, Matre by name, who’s been on my back for a while,’ Sanjay mused. ‘Motherfucker! This has got his sweat all over it. Thik. I’ll handle everything at this end. You two stay out of sight for a couple of days. Check in with me again tomorrow. Put Abdullah back on the phone.’

I handed the phone back to Abdullah. He glared at me for a moment. I shrugged my shoulders. He listened.

‘Yes,’ he said twice, and hung up.

‘What’s the deal?’

‘Did he ask you if you were injured?’ Abdullah asked me.

‘He’s not the affectionate kind. He’s the disaffectionate kind.’

‘He did not ask,’ Abdullah snarled, frowning hard.

There was a small, brooding silence, and then he came back to the moment.

‘Your face. You are bleeding. We should see one of our doctors.’

‘I checked it in the mirror. It’s not that bad.’

I tied a handkerchief across the places on my forehead and eye socket where Concannon’s sap had drawn blood.

‘Right now,’ I said, ‘our problem is that Sanjay’s not going to war for us, and we’re on our own.’

‘I could force him to war.’

‘No, Abdullah. Sanjay let me dangle in the wind, and now he’s letting you swing with me. He’ll never go to war, until the war’s over.’

‘I repeat, I can make him go to war.’

‘Why is war even an option, Abdullah? I’m not complaining that Sanjay won’t go to war. I’m glad he won’t go to war. I’m glad that nobody else will get involved in this. We can handle payback on our own.’

‘And we will, Inshallah.’

‘But since we are alone, as we seem to be, we gotta work out a strategy, and the tactics to achieve it, because you just shot three people. One of them twice. What do you want to do?’

He looked away from me, checking the surrounding junction of major arterial avenues, cars streaming gleaming metal from one current or the other.

He looked at me again and half-opened his mouth, but there were no words for the experience: he was alone, and his comrades weren’t riding to his rescue. He was a soldier behind enemy lines, told that the escape route had just closed.

‘I think we should put as much distance as we can between us and them, for a while,’ I said, filling the dissonant gap. ‘Maybe Goa. We can ride there overnight. But don’t tell anyone. Every time I tell someone I’m going to Goa, they ask me to collect their dirty laundry.’

I’d tried to raise a smile, in the sierra of his doubt. It didn’t work.

Abdullah glanced back in the direction of South Bombay. He was wrestling with the desire to return, and kill every Scorpion that ever crawled out from under a rock. I waited for a few moments.

‘So, what’s the deal?’

He wrenched himself into the minute, and let out two long breaths, charging his will.

‘I came to Leopold’s to invite you to come with me to a special place. It is a lucky thing, perhaps, that I came when I did, but let us wait, until we see what the consequences of this day are, for each of us.’

‘What special place?’

He looked again to the horizon.

‘I was not expecting that we would be going there with such a dark shadow following us to the mountain, but, will you come with me, now?’

‘And, again, where might that be?’

‘To see the teacher of teachers, the master who taught his wisdom to Khaderbhai. Idriss is his name.’

I tasted the name of the fabled teacher.

‘Idriss.’

‘He is there,’ Abdullah said, pointing to a range of hills on the northern horizon. ‘He is in a cave, on that mountain. We will buy water, here, to carry with us. It is a long climb, to the summit of wisdom.’