“It’s a kind of sacrifice,” she said. “Traditional. But I’m a traditional Indian woman.”
“But you don’t have to do it,” he said, “whatever it is.”
“Where are we now?” she asked.
“Samuel P. Taylor State Park.”
“There’s a creek, isn’t that the American word for it? It’s beautiful.”
“There’s steelhead in there now. They swim up from the ocean every year. We aren’t far from the ocean. Only a few miles, really. Tomales Bay is close, too.”
“Pull over, for just a moment, I want to see. Please, can we? Please.”
O’Higgins pulled over into the campground. He showed his badge, and the young female ranger at the entrance booth waved him through. The campground was empty because of a storm the night before, so they had the place to themselves. He stopped the car. She got out immediately. It was raining very slightly, the way it had been the night of the murder — so lightly you could barely see it, but you could feel it on your face.
He watched her. She walked toward the swollen creek. He knew the place. He’d taken girlfriends here in high school before it was gated; and before the State had made it a park with rules and rangers and asphalt parking lots and uniforms. The windshield started to fill up with tiny rain dots and obscure the scene.
He got the full sense of time as he slid out of the car. The movement of it: time as some kind of magic. The high school locker room after football practice, noisy and happy. His Irish and Italian-looking pals pulling their rifles out of the trunk of his old Mustang, getting ready to hunt. The girls he’d brought wide-eyed to this place, college’s marijuana clouds and library hallways, a painting of a blue-period “Saltimbanque” by Picasso that he liked for unknown reasons. Signing up for the Marine Corps at the post office as soon as he graduated from college. The war. Finally walking into a random Starbucks and seeing Jennifer pretend to stare into her laptop as he walked by her, heading to the counter to order. He couldn’t keep his eyes off her. He waited for his name to be called by a barista, trying not to stare at her.
“I don’t want to bother you, but I think that guy over there is going to come over and ask you out, so I thought I’d better do it first. He looks creepy. Be ahead of the curve,” he’d said, sitting next to Jennifer at the “bar” with its view of Valencia Street. He was in his patrol uniform bristling with radio and weapons, customers looking at him.
“You’re a policeman,” she’d said.
“Yes. It’s not a costume.”
He got a smile out of her. “My brother is a Hells Angel, so I know a lot about the police,” she said. “They were always coming to our house.”
He found out later it was true. Her brother was a career criminal and a biker.
“All good experiences, I hope,” he’d said.
She laughed. “Okay, that’s twice you’ve made me smile. That’s a good sign.”
They went out that night. It was easy to be with her from the moment they met. It was his wife who really cured him of his PTSD, not the group sessions at the VA. She took the disease on, went mano-a-mano with it and won by simply listening to him tell her about the war.
He looked at his phone. It was almost 3:30 in the afternoon. He had decided that morning he was going to fight them when he got there. He’d brought his Glock and the backup revolver. He didn’t want to just let it happen, some anonymous bullet. Something about his training, something about his spirit, just would not let him surrender without a fight.
He closed the car door and walked to where Asha had found the wooden pedestrian bridge over the creek. He didn’t know what sati was exactly, but he realized she was ready to die too, and it was shocking. Her embracing it that way; her acceptance of everything that had happened to her in the space of a week. How could she?
He thought again of running and taking her and Rebecca somewhere. They would be a family, a strange one, but a family. Her two little girls, too. Why the hell not? Why shouldn’t he be happy as he’d once been?
He walked up behind her and held her around the waist. What should he do? Fight or die?
“I’m in love with you,” he said. “I can’t let this happen to us.”
“We have to accept. The guru told me that life is all an illusion, everything. I believe that now. I didn’t before. The world seemed so real to me. Maybe love, too? Is that one more illusion? Could it be? I thought I was in love with Rishi, but I wasn’t, not the way I am with you. Not really. I just realized that now. But it wasn’t my fault really. Perhaps it was — if we hadn’t married, maybe —”
She stood looking down at the creek, which was chock-a-block with Steelhead trout, some battered from their journey from the ocean. Their speckled backs were beautiful in the dark, thick water that rushed around them, the water seeming not to move at all. For some it would be their last journey. Their home in the ocean was behind them, and death waited further along the creek at some spot that smelled of eucalyptus and fog where it would all end for them in silence. Would some kind of God be witness? Something, perhaps just a shimmer on the surface of the water when it ended.
“What is sati?” he said, still behind her, holding her tightly, leaning down, his cheek on hers.
“Suicide,” she said. “Suicide.”
***
Marvin Lee walked down the quay, lined with odd houseboats, and toward Gilbert’s “office” in Sausalito’s Gate Five. He’d called ahead. Paul Gilbert sounded affable on the phone, and was expecting him.
Marvin stopped to admire the view. The bay was like glass, its surface reflecting a dying winter. March’s usual scud broke in spots. The clouds, here and there, were backlit by a weak sun. Spring was coming, he thought. You could tell about spring in the Bay Area by the great show of heavy cumulus clouds that patrolled the skies for a week or two, biblical looking, making it seem that Judgment Day had arrived until April’s change.
Marvin adjusted his tie, looked down at his shoes that were shined and clean. It was important, he thought, to always look your best. It made him feel secure to look sharp.
Detective Marvin Lee’s father had owned a pool hall and shoeshine parlor in West Oakland in the Seventies, called O-Town Pool. His mother had died from a heroin overdose when he was just six. She’d been a prostitute working the Powell Street “corridor,” west of downtown Oakland. His dad’s place had been a well-known underworld hangout: ex-Black Panthers, big time pimps, whom he’d admired because of their flash and cash and big cars, and drug dealers of every stripe and color.
His father had been a felon whom the LA mob used as a front, someone who would clean up their cash. Italians came from San Francisco with sacks of cash on a regular basis, leaving the money on a pool table next to them while they caught a game, or a blow job in the “cigar room.”
The Italians were nice to him, called him kid, showed him their weapons and gave him sips of beer. The Italians, often dark-complected themselves, were not racist; he’d felt that about them instinctively, and liked them because of it.
Marvin looked down the quay. The man he was going to meet was not any different, he decided. He was just another hustler. Yes, he was white and, no doubt, came from some tony suburb where kids rode their expensive bikes down leafy streets. But he was no different from the men and women he’d known as a boy.
He leaned over and spit in the water and decided he would do exactly what he and O’Higgins had discussed with Neel Roa. Fuck this guy.
He considered O’Higgins a brother, and had no problem with what he was going to do. His psychology had a dark side that made it easier. This dark side had always troubled him, even frightened him. It had driven him to church, to try to scare that part of him into obedience. He’d fought “the other” since he was a boy, but it was easy to call on when he needed it.
Marvin headed down the quay looking into the different kinds of rain-soaked
houseboats as he passed, all of them so different and strange to a kid from Oakland. Who in God’s name would want to live in a place like this?
“Nice office,” Marvin said. The luxurious houseboat, brand new looking, had been converted into an office suite with a sunken living room that had views of Alcatraz. Paul Gilbert’s chippy was making coffee. She was one of the hundreds of thousands of young women who were selling themselves in exchange for some sugar daddy paying off their student loans. Gilbert had found her on line on a site called Sugar D.
The girl was fine, with a hundred-dollar high ass, as far as Marvin could tell. She was working at the sink in the kitchen, wearing short shorts that did nothing but shout “Fuck me.” She was a mixed race girl, her hair Afro-styled, kinky and reddish, her skin the color of coffee and milk. She was what the pimps in Oakland called a Bottom Girl, denoting their importance in a pimp’s hierarchy of his stable of women. Bottom Girls were the last girls you’d get rid of. She was that fine, Marvin thought. He’d called Gilbert from the parking lot. He hadn’t had time to hide the girl, which was what Marvin had planned on.
“Thank you,” Gilbert said. He’d obviously just gotten laid, the kind of sex that left his face red, all the kinks out. He was as relaxed as a man his age ever got. He was fifty, so he was never completely relaxed, the way a younger man might get after sex. Nothing about Paul Gilbert was carefree, Marvin thought.
“Hey, honey,” Marvin said. “Could you do us a favor?”
The girl walked out of the galley. She was blowing on a cup of coffee. She was even prettier from the front, her face freckled. Jesus, Marvin thought looking at her. Now that’s a hard-on maker.
“Could you give us a moment?” Marvin said. He smiled. It wasn’t his easy-going smile, it was another one he kept for street people designed to signal authority. It was this: You-chump-that’s-who-I’m-talking-to smile.
“Excuse me,” Gilbert said.
“Yeah, I need to speak to you and I think your friend will understand. Take a walk, honey,” Marvin said.
“Paul?” The girl looked at her man as if to say, who is this nigger?
“Yeah, okay. Alicia, could you go maybe get my briefcase out of the car? This is Alicia. She helps me around the office,” Gilbert said, expecting him to believe it. He actually did believe blacks were stupid.
“Okay, sure, baby,” the girl said. The “baby” was for his benefit, Marvin thought. She looked at the big detective, perhaps letting him know that she was for hire, or perhaps that he was just another asshole in her life. He couldn’t tell.
They’d spoken on the phone, Marvin questioning her about Gilbert. He’d made it clear to her who was the boss, speaking to her like a pimp in a bad mood. Neel Roa had found out about the girl and passed on her number. It was all part of Neel’s game plan, designed to save his sister from Nirad and a murder sentence.
“What’s this about, detective?” Gilbert said, watching the girl leave. He was trying to dress like a hipster when he was away from the ball and chain. The ex-banker was wearing a black hoodie with a loud design on its front, and blue jeans—no undershirt.
“It’s about Nirad Chaundhry,” Marvin said. He got up closer to Gilbert, the way he’d seen his father do to some guy who was late with the vig, as the Italians his father worked for ran a loan-shark business, too.
“I think we’ve told you everything we can about that awful day,” Gilbert said, noticing that the detective had entered his personal space.
“You’re going to have to do me a favor,” Marvin said.
“I don’t understand,” Gilbert said.
“I want you to call the DA’s office, after I’ve left here, and explain to them that Nirad Chaundhry sent you a large sum of money in order to keep quiet about his affair with Bharti Kumar.”
“Now? I really don’t understand,” Gilbert said, smiling fatuously.
“Well, it doesn’t really matter if you understand or not—asshole,” Marvin said. “You’re going to tell the DA that you received this large sum of money from Nirad Chaundhry to keep quiet about having seen photos of Nirad Chaundhry and Bharti Kumar that were mistakenly emailed to your wife’s phone. They’re on your wife’s phone now. You are going to confess to blackmailing Mr. Nirad Chaundhry. You’re also going to say you lied to the police about the time Mr. Nirad Chaundhry arrived at your home to pick up his grandchildren the day of the murders. You’re going to tell the truth and say he arrived at 5:45.”
“I will do no such thing,” Gilbert said.
“You will do as you’re told or we will drag your wife into this. And you will both be arrested for lying to police, which would make you both accomplices to murder. Do you want the mother of your children to go to jail, too?”
“I’ll call the — police,” Gilbert said.
He could see Gilbert was frightened, stunned that he was being threatened. He’d obviously never bumped up against the pointy-end of life. Like most people, he didn’t understand that the police could lie like anyone else.
“Chaundhry won’t like it,” Gilbert said, the color draining from his face. “He might —”
“Blame you for this? He might,” Marvin said. “Does your wife know what you do up in here?”
“No,” Gilbert said.
“Okay, then,” Marvin said. “Have a nice day.”
It was strange. As soon as he’d walked off the houseboat, he dropped the cold hoodlum expression and became the “pleasant black man” and well-dressed police detective again, someone who would never cross the line. The kind man that his neighbors in the Marina District, knew and waved to while he walked the family’s dog. The other guy was dangerous, brought up in a West Oakland pool hall during the COINTELPRO years. He put that person away as quickly as he’d taken him out. He belonged to the streets.
His father had disappeared one day in June 1970, with a man named Albert in a Lincoln Town car with a missing front fender. Had there been a problem with the count? No one knew. Was it the FBI, who’d he’d been informing for? He never knew what happened to his father. The pool hall was taken over by another black man, an ex-Oakland Raiders lineman with a thick neck and small porcine eyes, who walked in one day, handed Marvin a fifty-dollar bill and told him, “Shoot your last game boy, and then don’t come back.”
He’d gone to live with his grandmother after that in the Acorn Projects, some of the roughest projects in the country. It was his grandmother who had kept him from going bad, making sure he stayed in at night. She’d been a sweet church-going woman from Jamaica who never really understood America and kept to herself. When she’d died, he’d gone down to the “swings” and cried. It was one of the few times he ever cried about anything. He tried to pretend she was alive for months afterwards. He often dreamed about her. She had a kind face and had called him her “little man.”
CHAPTER 23
The rough, serpentine, pothole-filled road to Limantour Beach ran up from Point Reyes Station and was bordered by craggy burnt-out ravines, steep and charred from a recent fire. Point Reyes was visible to the north as soon as they crested the mountain. A marine layer, diaphanous, sat over the fifteen-mile long beach below. The road felt empty, a far cry from the way it was in high summer.
“We came here as a family,” O’Higgins said.
“They’re waiting for us? Colonel Das?” Asha asked.
“Yes,” he said. “They wanted you too. They want us both.”
“I don’t understand. Nirad said that if I came, that would be enough,” Asha said. “He told me he would have the girls brought to my mother’s. He promised me that.”
“Did you kill Rishi?” O’Higgins said. “You can tell me if you did. It won’t change how I feel about you.”
“No. I’ve told you. I loved Rishi.”
“Okay. I won’t ever ask again. I never believed you did. What did he tell you? Nirad. About me.”
<
br /> “I was to prove that you and I were involved. He hates you. Something you said to him. I don’t know what, but he wants to ruin you, personally. He’s angry. That’s the way he is. Vicious.”
“Why does he want you here?” O’Higgins said.
“He wants me to do sati. He chose this place, I don’t know why. He said I must do sati here.”
“Why would he want his grandchildren’s —” O’Higgins said.
“Because it’s what he believes Hindu wives are supposed to do. He’s a Hindu fundamentalist. He believes wives should not continue on if their husbands die,” she said. “I’m to leave a note. In the note I confess to killing Rishi. I left it at the hotel. If I do what Nirad says, he will send the girls to my mother’s house. He gave me his word.
“You can’t stop him. You must understand that. I have to do this, for my girls. They can’t — they can’t be around him. Live in his house.”
“It’s crazy,” he said.
“Do you love me?”
“Yes. I told you,” he said.
“If your wife was sitting here … and it was your daughter? Don’t you think she would do it? Jennifer.”
He didn’t answer. He wanted to stop the car. He wanted to pull over and pretend again that it was all different. But he understood that love was a kind of insanity. It was as if someone opened up a door, and he saw through it. Love didn’t make any sense, and yet it made all the sense in the world. You would kill for it, sacrifice yourself for it. It was the most human part of us.
“Tell me about the beach in summer,” she said. “What was it like? Please.”
“I can’t.”
“Please.” She reached for his hand. “It’s not your fault, Michael.”
“It was always cool in the morning when we would get here. July, usually. When Jen was pregnant, she liked to feel the sand. Walk barefoot in the surf. We came a lot that summer she was pregnant. I was working nights.” He turned and looked at her.
“What did she do — Jennifer?”
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