No sooner had he finished eating than she returned from taking his thali to the kitchen holding in front of her a piece evidently torn from a newspaper.
Without a word she placed it on the table. He looked down at it.
“What it is?” he said. “It is seeming to be some ‘For Sale’ advertisements only.”
“Yes, yes. Read. Read where it is marked.”
Feeling a prickle of suspicion, he nevertheless did as he had been asked. A small pencil line had been put against one of the advertisements in the column.
It was for a secondhand home computer.
Rage, fueled by the residue of his tiredness, sprang up in him.
“Home computer, home computer!” he barked. “Have I not said and said such a thing is not to be mentioned in this house?”
“But I am not mentioning,” Protima answered with a infuriating little smile. “I am showing you newspaper ad only.”
“And who was marking this?” he demanded. “Who? Who? If it is Ved, I would—I would …”
“Of course, it was Ved,” Protima answered. “Are you thinking I would notice such an ad itself? But the poor boy is wanting and wanting still to have home computer, and I was just only finding this newspaper he had marked.”
“What if he is wanting and wanting? Home computer is one hundred percent too expensive, and I do not wish to see such a thing under my roof ever.”
“But, husbandji, it is no longer very much expensive. Look at what that advertiser is asking.”
Ghote glared at the figure, hardly seeing it.
“Oh,” he snapped, “and are you thinking I am able to lay down such a sum at any minute? Am I Mr. Tata himself that I should have crores and lakhs to throw?”
“Husbandji, it is not crores and lakhs. It is rupees three thousand only. A good sum, I am granting. But perhaps not too much for us to find. And the boy has been so good. He has not once tried to trick you into getting him what he is so much wanting, not after you were ordering him to silence. And—and—”
“Yes? What and? What more now?”
“And it would be very, very good for him to have such a thing, I am thinking. It would help him to learn to use these computer-tooters. And even now he is always mugging and mugging at physics. This would give him one very good career in future.”
For long, long seconds Ghote glared down at the ragged strip of newsprint in front of him. Then he found that he was thinking, with a sharp pang of regret, about the new scooter—he had seen a Bajaj advertised at sixteen thousand rupees—which he had dimly contemplated possessing. It was this that did it. When it came to it, he knew he would almost certainly not feel able to buy for himself something hardly absolutely necessary in place of an object a good deal less costly that Ved had set his heart on.
And, besides, the boy had been good. He had never again tried his blackmailing tactic after the time he had so narrowly escaped a beating. And if perhaps now he had practiced a little cunning, a little chalak, in the way he had let his mother come upon the advertisement he had marked, well, that showed only how much this twenty-first-century object meant to him. Then to have a son who was a computer engineer …
“We would see,” he grunted out.
And, lying in bed that night, he began working out a sort of account of how much he was saving by not having to pay Ranchod. Then he started calculating how far away that total was from the three thousand rupees needed for the secondhand home computer, though before he had managed to bring the two columns together sleep overtook him.
Early next morning, however, he was to discover, disastrously, that all his mental arithmetic had been so much waste of effort.
He was setting off for headquarters, standing in the road attempting to fire the motor of his scooter, seemingly yet more troublesome than usual, kicking and kicking ever more vengefully at its starting lever. Then, just as the motor did at last give out two gun-shot splutters before fading into sullen silence once more, a voice spoke from behind him.
“You should have one altogether new.”
He felt a dart of fury, all the more bitter for his hardly yet taken resolution not to save for a new machine in favor of getting Ved the home computer.
Who was this damn stranger to tell him what or what not he was needing?
He swung angrily around.
And found out who the stranger was. A man he had never met, but one who had been carefully pointed out to him from a distance. Mama Chiplunkar.
There could be no mistaking him. A chubbily fat fellow, dressed in a creamy-white silk kurta and pyjama, with a round face and scanty hair, well-oiled, spread across his skull. He was smiling grinningly, a splay of big teeth, red-stained from much paan-chewing, bright in the fresh morning light.
Ghote was astonished. What was this man doing here now? This kingpin and mastermind who had been in his official thoughts almost ever since that terrible Freddy Kersasp business had come to an end?
“What?” he shot out. “It is Mama Chiplunkar. Mama Chiplunkar.”
Mama Chiplunkar’s big smile widened even farther.
“So glad you are knowing,” he said. “Because there is some business I am wanting to talk.”
“Business? Business? What business can you be having with me?”
“Well, Inspector,” Chiplunkar replied easily, a new smile splitting his round face, “I suppose you might call it blackmail business.”
TWELVE
Astonishment hit Ghote like a giant monsoon wave. He took an involuntary step backward. Behind him his scooter crashed to the ground. He ignored it.
“What it is you are saying?” he challenged the chubby, smiling gang boss. “You are saying you are intending to blackmail me?”
Mama Chiplunkar smiled yet more broadly.
“Yes, yes, Inspector,” he said. “Listen, if I am telling what I am wanting you to do for me, in one moment you would be shouting, ‘But that is blackmail only.’ So why not say that out loud now, first of all? You would be calling it blackmail. I would call it business only. But whatever it is called is same thing.”
Ghote stiffened himself up.
“And I am able to tell you,” he said, “business or blackmail, call it what you are liking, I want nothing to do with same.”
“Oh, but Inspectorji,” Mama Chiplunkar replied, unperturbed, “you are not having any choice.”
“But I am. I choose to say to you no.”
Mama Chiplunkar wagged his head cheerfully.
“No, no, Inspector. Let me tell you, I would not have gone to trouble of finding out where you stay and of coming here early-early in the day itself if I was not certain you must be doing what I ask.”
“No. You have wasted your time only.”
But the brown-sugar kingpin’s unvarying assurance had set up in Ghote an inner dismay that made that answer something only a little less than bluster.
What could a man like this possibly know about him that would allow him to think he could exercise blackmail over him? There was nothing in his life, thank God, that made him open to—
Then he thought of Dr. Commissariat.
But how could Mama Chiplunkar possibly know anything about those few terrible minutes in Dolly Daruwala’s flat? Even Ranchod, now disappeared for good if not dead, had been able to do no more than work out that there had been somebody in that flat at the time of the murder, somebody unknown he himself was protecting. No, there could be nothing, nothing, to give this swine a hold over him.
Mama Chiplunkar’s face broke into another wide horseshoe smile.
“Inspector,” he said. “Let me say one name only, Inspector: Ranchod.”
At once Ghote knew that, altogether unlikely though it seemed, Mama Chiplunkar must have been an acquaintance of Mr. Z. R. Mistry’s servant. And, worse, far worse, he must have learned from him what he had seen on the stairs of Marzban Apartments the night Dr. Commissariat had put an end to the existence of vermin, pest, and snake Dolly Daruwala.
But, aware t
hat the situation was for whatever reason hopeless, he yet tried to show himself as uncomprehending.
“Ranchod? Ranchod?” he jabbered. “That is one common name. What should it be to me that you are mentioning some Ranchod?”
“Oh, come, Inspector. This is one business matter we have to talk. Kindly treat it as such only.”
“But I am knowing nothing of any Ranchods.”
Mama Chiplunkar sighed.
“And yet this same Ranchod, until some weeks ago the servant of one Mr. Z. R. Mistry in a posh flat in Marzban Apartments on Malabar Hill, was visiting you month by month and you were handing over to him the sum of rupees one hundred each time.”
The final tatters of Ghote’s hope went streaming away in that cold wind.
“What—what are you wanting?” he heard himself ask.
“That is much-much better,” Mama Chiplunkar replied. “Now we can be discussing business-business.”
“Yes?”
For a moment Ghote thought how, hardly two minutes earlier, he had said so defiantly that he wanted nothing to do with any business or blackmail proposition Mama Chiplunkar might make. But what could he do now, in face of even the little the fellow had shown he knew? Nothing but kowtow to the man’s superiority and hear what he had to say.
“Let me tell you first what it is you are wanting,” Mama Chiplunkar went on smoothly. “In business it is always best for each side to know what is wanted by the other. Then matters can be finished with no lyings and trickeries.”
He actually waited, apparently for Ghote to agree.
“Go on. Yes, yes.”
“Good. Now you are seeing things the right way, Inspector, just as I was hoping.”
A tiny spark of revolt flew up in Ghote at this assumption that he would be such easy prey. Flew up, and died in the air.
“Yes, let me tell you,” the gang boss continued, giving a quick glance up and down the road, beginning not to be busy with the earliest office-goers. “That Ranchod was a great liker of card-playing. But a great fool at it also. So he was losing and losing money, to many friends of mine. But, foolish, foolish fellow, when he was owing so much he was resorting to, first, charas to forget all his troubles, and after some time when charas was seeming too mild to him he was going to brown sugar itself. Then when he was, by one great piece of luck, getting steady extra income—”
He leaned forward and stuck a pudgy forefinger into Ghote’s ribs.
“Then when he was getting this nice-nice extra income, what was he doing but deciding he could take more of brown sugar. Very, very catching habit brown sugar, yes, Inspector?”
Ghote knew that he had to agree with the blatant hypocrisy, even if it was only by so much as a nod. But it hurt to give that nod. Hurt savagely.
“Yes. So quite soon that foolish Ranchod was needing-needing more and more of brown sugar. And more and more of money to pay for same. And then—oh, toba, toba—whoever was giving his extra income said finish. So what was he to do? He was so badly and badly needing. You have seen addicts when they cannot get their supply, Inspector?”
Ghote thought of the people he had occasionally come across in the worst distress of deprivation of the drug. The shaking, shivering, and sickness, the slobbering and drooling, the dagger pains that so plainly afflicted them.
“Yes,” he grated out. “I have seen.”
“So what was the poor fellow to do but to come to me, a known and famous social worker?”
Mama Chiplunkar’s smile broke widely over his face more.
“And to me,” he went on, “Ranchod was telling his each and every trouble. What he had seen one night in Marzban Apartments, the police inspector who was keeping a big-big secret, all, all. So what must I do? Out of kindness of heart itself, I am keeping the poor fellow safe and sound in a place I have got. How could I let him go into the streets only when he is so addicted?”
The smile left his face like a light switched off.
“Now this is what it is you are wanting, Inspector,” he said. “Silence, yes? And what am I wanting as my price for same? It is very simple. You see, just only some weeks back a very, very good friend of mine was suddenly dying, a man who was a colleague to you, Inspector, though not of such high rank. A clerk only, but so much a friend to me that he was sometimes telling me one or two things I was wanting to know, yes?”
So that is who it was, Ghote thought, light flooding in. The informant we all suspected to be there. And that is why not so long ago we were nearly nabbing this damn kingpin in that raid on the beer bar. His informant had died.
He had known the man quite well, a good old, fat-bellied constable, three long-service stripes on his arm, who had managed to squeeze himself at last into an easy job as a clerk at headquarters. A nice fellow, if somewhat heavy-going. A family man. Too much inclined sometimes to lay down the law, to shake his head over “the modern generation.”
And all along he had been the informant, the goinda, supplying Mama Chiplunkar with his tip-offs. And, yes, he had fallen dead one day as he had plodded about filing documents, misfiling a good many of them, too. The sudden event had caused a lot of talk, and no little commiseration. And all the time …
Then, riding on that thought like an evil arrows-shooting demon on a shambling, knock-kneed horse, came the realization of what Mama Chiplunkar must want as his price now. Quite simply he himself was expected to take over from that fat, old clerk-constable.
“No,” he burst out. “No, no. I cannot do it. I will not do it.”
Mama Chiplunkar just grinned.
“Yes, yes,” he said. “That was what they told me you would say. But, come, think only. A small matter of business. I have something you are wanting, you have something I am wanting. It is no more than that. This is how things are done, Inspector.”
He leaned forward earnestly.
“When I was a young man,” he said, “coming from my village in the Konkan to Bombay itself and working-working in the docks, carrying, sweating, paining, sometimes a little-little smuggling, yes, or helping some crate only to smash and picking up one or two of whatsoever was inside, one day I was suddenly understanding about the way business must be done. Let me tell you how it was.”
He paused and took another easy look up and down the road.
“Politician was coming down to docks,” he continued, still smiling. “Election on way. I had what he was wanting. One vote. He was offering-offering what he was thinking I was wanting, rise in pay-rate, tomorrow. But by then I had learned I was wanting something more than just only promise. I was wanting rupees in the hand. And that I was telling him, and that I was getting because I was able to give him more of votes than just only mine. How? you are asking. I will tell. I could give him votes one hundred, two hundred, because those fellows were wanting what I had to give. No broken bones, yes? No heads banged up and down on stones of dockside, bang, bang, bang, yes? So I was making nice-nice deal. With them, with that politician. His name you are knowing, I am sure, but I am not saying, yes?”
Ghote thought he almost certainly did know the name, and the method. But he was not going to yield his assent to Mama Chiplunkar’s greasy plea. At least he could preserve that much dignity.
“Come—” he began sharply.
But the gang boss was in too full a flow to be halted.
“Inspector,” he went on, voice all honey, “ever since that day in docks I have known how this world is running. It is just only this: I have something somebody is wanting, he has something I am wanting. We do a deal.”
“No!” Ghote burst out at last. “No. You are trying to make your shamelessness into something that is deserving of respect and admiration. But it is not so. No.”
Mama Chiplunkar’s head wagged in gentle negation.
“But it is, Inspectorji, it is. Look, how else was I myself rising up from dock laborer to famous social worker, houses and flats two-three, cars also? So let the two of us, you and I, just only make our deal, make it and shake hands.”
“Shake hands with you? You blackmailer. You—you snake. Never. I will never do it.”
The grin, big paan-stained teeth glinting, did not leave Mama Chiplunkar’s round face for an instant.
“Well, if you are not wanting to shake-shake,” he said, “I am not at all minding. So long as deal is done.”
“Never.”
The gang kingpin gave a fat chuckle.
“Well, perhaps tomorrow. I am not in so much of hurry. Tomorrow I would be here at this time only. And then we agree, hands shaking or not hands shaking.”
He turned away. Some hundred yards farther along the road a gleaming black Ambassador, which Ghote had not till now realized was one of the kingpin’s cars, began moving smoothly forward.
Mama Chiplunkar gave a quick glance back as he waddled toward it.
“And I would throw in one new scooter also,” he called.
Bitterly Ghote stooped to heave up his old, unreliable machine from the side of the road where it had lain all the time he and the gang boss had been talking. Wearily, because he could think of nothing else to do, he put himself astride it and gave a kick to the starter lever. The motor fired at once.
He got little work done that morning. He ought, he knew, to be out and about once more attempting to track down that hanger-on of Mama Chiplunkar’s the Assistant Commissioner believed might be the single drop that added to others would make eventually a milestone.
But what would be the good, he thought. If I am finding him only and if we are getting out of him some good information about where we could catch Chiplunkar red-handed with brown sugar on him, then it will be up to me to warn the man himself. And if I am not doing it, he will be taking that damn Ranchod and forcing him to make a full statement. Then it will be Arjun Singh or some other Vigilance Branch fellow coming to interview me, and going after to Dr. Commissariat.
He could not allow that to happen. For himself, though it would be the end of everything he had ever seen as his purpose in life, it would be bearable or something that had to be borne. If disaster struck, it struck. But Dr. Commissariat was another matter altogether. If Dr. Commissariat was arrested as Dolly Daruwala’s murderer, a good man would be shown up before one and all as a sham and a hypocrite. His work for all the millions of India’s downtrodden would almost certainly be lost. Whatever was good would be made into a laughingstock.
The Iciest Sin Page 14