The Superman Project

by A. E. Roman

  “What happened to your grandfather?”

  “Trujillo disagreed that my grandfather should keep breathing. He was marked as undesirable and died in a prison. So my grandmother escaped D.R. with her three children and the clothes on her back, and landed in Washington Heights. Those were hard times, but simpler. I’m like my mother. I’m Sanchez. We didn’t belong in Santo Domingo. We don’t belong in New York. None of us belong. We never have. We never will. Why didn’t I see it coming, Chico?”

  “See what?”

  “You think Elvis killed my mother?” said Pablo Sanchez for the first time. “You think Joey did it?”

  “Too easy,” I said. “Elvis killed your mother because she refused to help him in his run for TSP president. Joey killed your mother because she refused him shelter and he even drops his old business card at the scene of the crime. Too easy. I don’t like easy. Why would Joey hurt your mom? Your mother was on his side.”

  Pablo shook his head. “It doesn’t make sense.”

  “No,” I said. “It doesn’t. Elvis doesn’t strike me as the type and Joey’s been real good at avoiding the police and TSP and then he does something as dumb as dropping his business card at the scene of a crime?”

  “I used to just mop floors at TSP,” said Pablo, shaking his head. “I think I wish I had just kept mopping floors.”

  “Do you know where Joey is now?” I said.

  “No,” Pablo said, getting out his asthma pump. “He hasn’t called back since that night.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me about Joey calling you to hide out?”

  “I didn’t want to get Joey in more trouble,” he said. “I knew what they would think. The cops made me tell.”

  “Let me ask you something,” I said. “You didn’t really turn Joey down the night he called and asked to stay at your place, did you?”

  “No,” said Pablo and inhaled. “How did you know?”

  “Some things I know.”

  We got in the car and didn’t say one more word all the way back.

  After the funeral, I didn’t go to India. Well, not exactly. I went to Indian row on East 6th and 1st Avenue to be more precise. I went to meet her.

  I went past a black Porsche with plates that read DESI into the Madame Curry restaurant and walked over to where Chase Gupta—an Indian girl (not Native American but Indian-Indian), a little diamond stud in her nose, short of stature, short of limbs, thick, jet-black hair, rings that looked like giant chunks of golden popcorn, diamond-encrusted watch—was seated before a giant bowl of lentils and a large plate heaped with fluffy bread and shrimp.

  Kelly Diaz had told me all about the third of the four daughters born to Father Ravi. As far as Kelly could tell from investigating various Internet social networking sites, Chase Gupta was twenty-six years old, college educated, and her hobbies included henna tattoos, younger men, wearing fifty shades of eye shadow, and blowing daddy’s money on shoes and clothes. All the Gupta girls were thin, like their father. But unlike the other three Gupta sisters, Chase Gupta was fat.

  Lovely and fat.

  Chase Gupta waved and I saw that she wore a short skirt wrapped around her enormous legs, red sandals, and bright red lipstick for our meeting.

  Chase popped up and kissed me hello on the mouth and held the kiss a little too long before she dropped back down.

  I would regret anything I did with Chase Gupta, I thought as she kissed me. But that never stopped Chico Santana. No, as much as he tried, it never did. I sat.

  She said, “You must be Chico. Elvis told me all about you. You’re like a little too dark for my taste but cute. How old are you?”

  “Over nineteen.”

  “You don’t look too much over nineteen.”

  “That’s because I’m very immature.”

  “Well, you and me got like a lot in common,” Chase said and laughed and jiggled like brown pudding.

  I like brown pudding.

  But this is not your night, kid.

  Concentrate, Santana!

  “Yeah,” she said, adjusting her big, round, brown, and I must say, quite solid breasts.

  She asked the waiter to bring out two wineglasses and pulled a bottle of Masseto from her Coach bag, a two-hundred-dollar wine, she said.

  Then she held up a brown box of cigarettes marked Djarum and said, “Do you like cloves?”

  “Only on salad,” I said. “And I hate salad.”

  “Please take them,” she almost pleaded, holding out the brown and white box of cigarettes. “I can’t bring myself to throw them away. I’m trying to throw away a pack a day. I have like twenty cartons stashed in my apartment.”

  “Why don’t you throw away all twenty cartons?”

  “I’m trying to quit,” she said. “Not commit suicide.”

  I took them and shoved them in my pocket like a ticking time bomb. I know. I know. I know.

  “So.” I scooped up a shrimp.

  “So.” She smiled. “How was the funeral?”

  “Dead.”

  “Did you tell Pablo about my calling?”

  “No.”

  “Thanks.”

  “What do you love so much about Elvis?” I asked, hoping to soften her up by talking about her favorite subject.

  “I don’t know,” said Chase Gupta, spilling. “He’s like too young for me and not very educated, and then there’s that awful black SUV he drives with the green cooler in the back full of Budweiser beer and those stupid cartoons he draws and that horrible comic-book collection that takes up every wall in his room. Comic books and cartoons are for children, don’t you think?”

  “I just got back from a funeral,” I said. “I’m thinking about other things.”

  “I like totally understand,” she said, and continued. “Well, I guess Elvis, he’s exciting to be around, and a big talker. He only listens to rap and top forty. But I’m no snob about music. He’s a city boy; he loves to explore, and to sit and people-watch all day. He’s artistic. Not the most smartest. Arrogant, proud and passionate, not about what he does at his father’s bodega, but about who he is. Elvis is not a grocer. Elvis knows who he is. He’s good-looking and he can be suave when he wants to be. Maybe that’s what I love about him.”

  “What’s up with you and Pablo?”

  “Pablo?”

  “I think he’s in love with you.”

  “Pablo and me were like just friends.”

  “Not what it sounds like to me.”

  “Well,” she confessed. “He thought like because he took me out to the movies at Imaginasian and dinner here and ice cream at Serendipity sometimes that we had something.”

  “That’s usually called dating.”

  “I never like led him on, if that’s what you mean.”

  “Why let him like pay for movies and dinners and ice cream?”

  “He wanted to.”

  “Because he cared for you.”

  “I never asked for it.”

  “You must have known.”

  “I couldn’t tell him how to spend his money. If he wanted to spend it on me, that’s his business. What?”

  “It’s not nice to use people.”

  “I didn’t use him. Pablo is like so not in my league.”

  “You play baseball?”

  “No.”

  “Then what league are you talking about?”

  “You know,” she said. “Pablo is fat.”

  I opened my eyes wide and leaned back to get a better look at her wide hips, which hung off her sides like saddlebags—not that I minded that sort of thing.

  “What? Oh. Yes. I’m a big, beautiful woman. But I have a pretty face. Pablo is just fat. I like thin, athletic guys, tall guys. Like Elvis.”

  “He’s too short?”

  “Short and like fat. That’s not my type.”

  “What about tall and fat?”

  “I don’t do fat,” she said and stuffed shrimp, dripping with some kind of green sauce, in her mouth. “Have you seen Elvis? He’s
prettier than I am. He’s beautiful.”

  So Chase Gupta loved Elvis Hernandez because he was, for her, a symbol of ideal beauty; because in her mind Elvis carried a gun, a sword, and an impenetrable shield, a license to kill, to punish and to save.

  People never ceased to amaze me. Here was a woman who weighed at least 220 pounds, flesh spilling everywhere, and she didn’t “do fat.” Pablo, seemingly one of the sweetest, most decent people who has ever lived, was not in her league. She wasn’t against letting him spend his money on her, the little he had. But a kiss, a hug, a touch, some lovin’, that was out of the question.

  “When Elvis and I walk down the street, people turn their heads to look at us, and I know they’re thinking, there goes a beautiful couple. When Pablo and I walked down the street, people never turned their heads—or when they did, I know they were thinking, what’s she doing with him?”

  “You really care about what people think, don’t you?”

  She snorted. “Don’t you?”

  “Depends on how much they’re paying.”

  “Well,” she said, “sometimes things like don’t work out with couples. But Elvis and I will. We are getting married as soon as this horrible nightmare is over. I’m going to lose weight. We’re going to take our share of TSP, and we’re going to be very comfortable. I know I’m fat. I’m a fat Indian chick. I’m chubby or chunky or whatever you wanna call it. But I don’t mind being fat so much. In fact, I sometimes feel so sexy I could burst.”

  “What do you think happened to Pablo’s mother?” I asked. “If Elvis had nothing to do with it?”

  “I almost can’t even tell you what Elvis and I suspect,” Chase Gupta said. “First Joey, now Elvis. I can’t like almost say it.”

  “Say it,” I said. “You can trust me. I’m from the Bronx.”

  “I like can’t,” she said. “It’s like too evil.”

  “Okay,” I said, rising. “Don’t tell me.”

  “I want whoever took Gabby caught as much as you do,” she said. “I’m her little sister. More, even.”

  I sat back down. “Talk to me.”

  “You’re looking for the truth,” Chase Gupta said. “I need the truth, but we have to tread carefully. There’s too much at stake. We can’t like run around accusing people without proof, and we don’t need any outside attention destroying what my father has worked so hard to build.”

  “Your sister is missing!” I snapped.

  “Hari,” she said. “Hari Lachan.”

  “Hari?”

  “Hari Lachan’s family was Untouchable.”

  “Untouchable?”

  “Hari was born into the Mahar caste of Maharashtra. Untouchable. Do you know about the Untouchables?”

  “TV show. 1960s. Produced by the Cuban bandleader Desi Arnaz, who was married to comedian Lucille Ball. They did a movie with Kevin Costner, Sean Connery, Andy Garcia, and Robert De Niro in the eighties.”

  “The Untouchables of India.”

  “Oh, those Untouchables,” I said. “Sorry. No.”

  “As many as three thousand castes exist in India today,” said Chase Gupta, switching from out-there girl and airhead to historian with surprising ease. “They are Hindu. Hindus didn’t like become Untouchables by chance. Their activities and occupations made them considered being so filthy that they were unable to be touched. There are certain jobs and behaviors that make a person an Untouchable. If a Hindu has like the occupation of taking life for a living, like fishing, killing, or disposing of carcasses, then he or she is considered an Untouchable. If a person’s job involves any contact with things like sweat, urine, feces, or saliva, then they’re considered to be Untouchables. Also, the activities of people that include eating meats like cattle, pigs, and chickens make them Untouchables.”

  “I guess that would make most of the people I know way Untouchable,” I said.

  “The total number of Untouchables in India,” continued Chase Gupta, “is like one hundred million. Being considered an Untouchable makes you part of this large group that has almost no rights.”

  “Sounds familiar,” I said. “Was your father an Untouchable in India?”

  “God no!” said Chase and laughed. “The Gupta family was higher caste. We were a family of lawyers and doctors and writers and teachers and engineers.”

  “Of course.”

  “Hari Lachan’s a nothing,” Chase said, “whose main interest in life is making and collecting cuckoo clocks. He’s milquetoast. What I liked about him in the beginning, when my father first introduced him to us, was that he knew it. But now, though, he thinks, since Joey is gone, that he really is the next Father Ravi.”

  “Where is your Father Ravi?”

  “Can I trust you?”

  “You want me to help Elvis or not?”

  “My father has Alzheimer’s. He hardly knows where he is most of the time.”

  “Where is he when he doesn’t know where he is?”

  “My older sister Mara has him staying somewhere safe. His current condition doesn’t quite fit The Superman image.”

  I thought about Chase Gupta and how she could possibly fit The Superman image.

  “My older sister Mara is coordinating like the forthcoming worldwide publication of my father’s book Wrestling with The Superman. There’s like a lot at stake.”

  “Money?” I said.

  “Yeah,” said Chase.

  “So this whole Gabby and Joey thing has everybody by the neck, huh?”

  “Stressed,” said Chase, nodding. “That we could lose everything. Especially Mara.”

  “What about Hari Lachan?”

  “I despise Hari Lachan,” said Chase. “He plays Mr. Calm-Soft-Voice-Spiritual-Vegetarian-Pacifist, but I know the truth about him.”

  “What’s the truth?”

  “He pretends to be Joey’s best friend but I think Hari feels he got screwed because of Joey. He was once my father’s favorite member, he was with TSP from the start, and then my father started talking about making Joey president of TSP after he retired.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “The truth,” Chase said, stretching a thick arm and pointing at the map of India over her head. “All the stuff happening at TSP is like India in 1947 with the nonviolent resistance to British colonialism led by Gandhi and Nehru that brought independence to India. Do you know the history of India?”

  “I’m more of a geology buff,” I said. “I know tons of stuff about slate; Indian history, not so much. You seem to know more than you pretend.”

  “No man likes a know-it-all.” Chase Gupta smiled coquettishly and leaned her enormous bosom on the table. “I actually have a degree in history and I’m head of the archive unit at TSP but more flies with sugar and all that.”

  “Back to the vinegar,” I said.

  Chase dropped the act and shook her head. “India was like divided into the secular state of India and the smaller Muslim state of Pakistan. There was like so much killing. One million Indian people were killed by other Indian people. Then there was like even more killing between the two divided countries of Pakistan and India in 1971. This like resulted in East Pakistan becoming the separate nation of Bangladesh.”

  “So three separate countries came out of India?”

  “Three countries,” said Chase. “That’s what we’re dealing with at TSP now, three countries. Hari is one. My older sister Mara is another. And Joey was the third. With Joey and now Elvis gone, Hari has a fifty percent shot against my sister Mara at becoming president.”

  “What has this got to do with Esther Sanchez?”

  “We think Hari may have been involved with why Esther was killed,” said Chase. “Elvis says that Esther was always going on about the secrets she knew. We think she knew something about Hari, something that would destroy his chances of winning the presidency.”

  Chase Gupta nodded as if the case was all wrapped up, and all there was left to do was trap Hari Lachan.

  “Hari did it,” said Chase, “because
of what Esther like knew or to scare Pablo off because he found out that Pablo was working on Joey’s behalf to find Gabby and bring Joey back. I’m not saying Hari killed Esther personally or took Gabby, but he had something to do with it.”

  Chase nodded and sneered. “It was Hari or somebody working for him. My sister Mara’s probably next. Or any one of us. Hari Lachan did this. To take it all. Gabby. Joey. Esther. Now Elvis. Hari Lachan, Chico. It’s Hari Lachan you want.”

  EIGHT

  The TSP building on West 47th Street was five stories high with three short steps and a handicapped ramp, opposite what looked like an abandoned building. It was a stunning white neoclassical mansion with a row of small white columns and tall, beckoning, polished, green doors. There was a storefront marked TSP Artist’s League Gallery (products for a new age) where The Superman Project sold and displayed original art, clothing, crystals, candles, tapes, videos, tanning booth, skin lightening cream, yoga mats, and new age self-help books. There was signage in the window marked PREMISES UNDER SURVEILLANCE.

  Where’s the trust, baby?

  That’s some new age.

  A gold plaque under the green doorway read:

  The Superman Project was established by

  the honorable and beloved

  Father Ravi

  I went through the tall green doors and was greeted by three massive security guards who looked like bodybuilders, two white and one black, standing before a red-carpeted spiral staircase was flanked by a cuckoo clock—probably courtesy of Hari Lachan. One short and bald white guard sat on a wooden high chair, and the other two guards stood beside him, hands crossed in front of them. They all wore slick red blazers, blue slacks, and yellow silk ties; they were handsome and smiling and perfumed, and looked more like bouncers for the Copacabana.

  The sitting guard had a gold badge that read DOYLE. He smiled at me.

  “Just sign right in, pardner,” Doyle said with a strong Texas drawl and an officious-prick smirk on his face like a math teacher I had once at St. Mary’s but worse. He pointed to a reception desk about twenty feet from the front door.