Her Beautiful Monster

by Adi Tantimedh

  “So you gonna quit?” Ariel asked, eyebrow raised.

  “I’m following Arjuna’s story, remember?” I said. “I’m going to stay in the job, because it’s what I do. I have a duty to do the right thing and try to keep things from going completely pear-shaped. Julia was right. I have an obligation to bear witness.”

  I squeezed Julia’s hand.

  And I’m not part of your Plan, Collins, you fucking madman.

  Benjamin arrived in a Tesla, on loan from the company he was working with that day. Thankfully, he was driving it rather than using the autopilot. He smiled tightly and greeted Ariel and Jarrod.

  “Ready to go?” he asked.

  “Let me get my jacket,” I said.

  I walked over to the SUV and opened the door. As I reached in to grab my jacket, I released the hand brake. I shut the door and put my jacket on as I walked towards Julia and Benjamin. Behind me, I could hear the SUV starting to slowly roll forward. Ariel, Jarrod, and the other men had their backs to it and hadn’t noticed.

  “See ya around, brother,” Jarrod said curtly.

  “I hope not,” I said, and got into the Tesla. Julia was already in the back.

  “Don’t say anything,” I said to Benjamin. “Just fucking drive. Step on it.”

  “Ravi, what did you do?” Julia said. In the rearview mirror, I saw her lips curl into a smile.

  “Benjamin, just drive,” I said.

  He stepped on the accelerator and we started to speed away. In the widening distance behind us, Jarrod and the men were slowly turning around to see the SUV roll away from them and over the hill.

  “How high do you reckon is the drop off that hill?” I asked.

  Benjamin started laughing hysterically.

  “At least a thousand feet,” he said. “Roger’s going to love this!”

  Julia looked out the back window at Jarrod and the men running after the SUV, but it was too late. It was already over the edge.

  She started laughing as well.

  Nobody was going to be using those guns.

  Ariel didn’t run after the SUV. She just watched it and the guns inside it disappear. I imagine she must have smiled to herself and shrugged. Everything was a cosmic joke to her. She was that type of sociopath.

  I didn’t laugh. I didn’t feel the urge.

  When we got back to Benjamin’s hotel, he started up his laptop and showed us the raw video footage that one of his satellite drones had filmed from the hills. It was a perfectly framed video of the SUV rolling right over the edge of the hill and plummeting down the ravine. The crumpling destruction of the car as it rolled down the ravine, losing pieces of itself and the gun parts getting mangled and falling out, was grimly satisfying to me. This was a fitting end to my LA adventure.

  DEBRIEFING IN BLIGHTY

  I watched the city move away from me out of the car window while Julia drove. Benjamin sat in the back editing the footage of the SUV going over the hills and crumpling into the trees. He was slowing it down in glacial, graceful slow motion, and adding Strauss’s Blue Danube over it.

  “And there we go,” Benjamin said. “One for Roger’s private collection. Other people have porn, Roger has footage of his enemies coming a cropper. I bet he’ll kick back at the end of a long day with a glass of his most expensive whiskey to replay this over and over again, reveling in his frenemy Laird Collins losing a result.”

  “Did Roger know this was going to be the outcome?” I asked.

  “Nah, mate,” Benjamin said. “Roger would have to be bloody psychic to predict all this. No, he trusted you to be you. You always give him an interesting and entertaining result.”

  “Him and the gods both,” I muttered.

  The gods, the whole lot of them, didn’t need to be riding in the car with us. They were gods, after all, so they could just fly alongside us on clouds, happily commiserating with one another on the latest show they’d just seen, like a miniseries about me and Julia and our exploits in Los Angeles, one of those special event programs of a TV series. Was that what I was to the gods now? Their favorite reality TV show? Arrgh! They’re expressions of my own turmoil, but this doesn’t make it less galling. My own mind was out to make fun of me.

  “So, kiddies,” Benjamin said. “Have we had enough of our Californian adventure? Shall we get on the first Virgin Atlantic flight back to the familiar gloom of London, where nutters don’t run around with guns?”

  “Good way of summing it up,” Julia said happily. Her thirst for dangerous thrills was satiated for now. “I’d say yes.”

  “LAX, here we come,” Benjamin declared. “Wa-hey!”

  Cheryl had used the firm’s corporate account and points to get us seats in business class, so we got to sleep in horizontal cots. Thank God for small rewards. I loaded up my system with booze so that I would be knocked straight out after takeoff. It would be days after we were safely back in London that I would find out what went down after we left.

  Marcie told me. Rather than just legging it and getting out of town, Jarrod and Ariel met with the military attaché who was going to collect the guns for the militia group. No surprise that he was not well pleased. What I dreaded might happen did: a firefight ensued. With hardcases like Jarrod, Ariel, Reyes, and Mikkelford against a hot-tempered foreign military attaché and his men, there was no contest. There were plenty of places deep in the woods in the Hollywood Hills to bury bodies, and if no one knew where to look, they would never be found. I didn’t want to weigh up the sheer amount of chaos we had left in our wake in Los Angeles. Ariel texted me a selfie of her winking and holding up two fingers in a peace sign. Julia and I never believed it would ever be easy to get rid of her.

  “No hard feelings,” Ariel’s caption read. “Besides, I got all this bitchin’ new leather gear that Julia wore.”

  Back at Golden Sentinels, Marcie didn’t even seem terribly upset about that failed operation. As far as she was concerned, losing that military attaché and his men was just a bit of a setback.

  “Oh, those guys were a major pain in the ass anyway,” she said. “Always making demands, changing their minds, changing plans, running up their tabs. Interzone did us a favor and got rid of them, and we’ll just find new liaisons, make a new deal to sell them new guns. The world keeps turning.”

  Roger told me that Chuck and the Los Angeles office was very impressed with Julia and me.

  “Tell Ravi he’ll always be welcome in LA,” Chuck had told Roger. “We’ll have a place for him here if he needs one.”

  “Good result,” Roger said. “Better than I could have hoped.”

  “Roger laughed for days when he heard what you did with the guns at the end,” Cheryl said. “The first time in ages anyone managed to queer a deal for Laird Collins.”

  Was that approval in her voice? I couldn’t read Cheryl’s expression, but she didn’t say anything to contradict Roger or his general demeanor. The gods were lounging on Roger’s sofa and happily applauding me. Deeper and deeper I sank into this world of gray karmic debts. Marcie beamed as if proud that her prize protégé was proving to be the right investment. Julia thought it fascinating the way I seemed to fall upwards whenever I was sinking deeper into the moral depths. None of it made me happier. I wonder if Collins suspected I had deliberately sabotaged the arms delivery deal, and if he might want payback down the line. He had, after all, killed people for less. Or was I reprieved for the time being because he still wanted to glean the secrets he was convinced I held?

  “Get this,” Benjamin announced to everyone when we went to the roof to smoke one of Mark’s spliffs. “Ravi was all sad-face because he had a threesome. Seriously. I need to get planning permission before Olivia lets me touch her bra! Sorry, mate. No sympathy from me.”

  Olivia punched Benjamin in the arm. Hard.

  My ritual humiliation done with, I checked in with Olivia. She had gotten back a few days before Julia and I.

  “That’s sweet of you, darling,” she said. “Roger was tempted
to let word get out that this was a Golden Sentinels Hong Kong Limited investigation. Cheryl talked him out of it. She didn’t think we’d want Golden Sentinels to be known publicly for exposing Chinese government corruption. I have a feeling Roger will let it slip to prospective clients just to show off how far we can reach.”

  “So what happens to the husbands now they’re nicked?” I asked.

  “They face a humiliating trial, and might even be executed. Perhaps not, though. The government might want to present themselves to the international community as becoming more merciful in the future. Perhaps they’ll just be in prison for a long time.”

  “Do you feel bad about that?”

  “Not particularly.” She shrugged.

  Unlike me, Olivia did not have a problem with her karma. She was a great believer in retribution and the justice of revenge. She was also perfectly comfortable with carrying it out. She was certainly much harsher than Quan Yin, the patron goddess of mercy she prayed to.

  Julia and I settled back into the usual caseloads of helping celebrities with secrets they needed hidden, hunting down stalkers, proving infidelity in expensive divorce cases, and having celebratory drinks down the local pub whenever we closed a case. Ken and Clive were a bit nicer to me. They seemed to like that I owed them one. David was relieved to have me back. He said I was his oasis from the madness that went on in the office and the types of things he had to draft legal paperwork to protect the agency from.

  “And how are things at home, Mark?” I asked.

  “Which home?” he asked coyly.

  “You have more than one?”

  “Well, I’ve been thinking about giving up my flat, mate,” he said. “Been going around with some mates of mine, part of an anarchist collective. We’re breaking into posh empty buildings all over Knightsbridge, Belgravia, Mayfair, and setting up squats there to house the homeless.”

  “Bloody hell. How long have you been up to this?” I asked.

  “About a year. Takes ages for the owners and courts to get round to issuing summonses and court orders to kick everyone out. And when they do, we just move on to another property. Plenty to pick from all over London.”

  “It’s a trip,” Marcie said. “I’ve been on some of these outings with him.”

  “What could the CIA want with anarchist collectivist squats in London?” I asked.

  “Keeping an ear to the ground,” she said. “And you never know where the next assets are going to come from.”

  “By my reckoning,” Mark said, “I’ll have over six places to live in the poshest parts of Central London by next month. It’s a great laugh.”

  “And potential safe houses,” Marcie said.

  “You really like having a finger in everything, don’t you?” I said.

  “We’re only as good as our networks,” she said with a smile.

  I suddenly remembered the dream I had in Los Angeles. How did I know about Mark and the squats? Did the gods send me that dream?

  In the corner of my eye, Lord Vishnu kicked back on the office sofa and whistled, looking coy.

  Of course the gods knew. They knew everything.

  EPILOGUE

  Sunday dinner at my parents’. How we settled into the old routine like a comfortable coat. Los Angeles already felt like a distant dream, a past life, and a short and temporary one I was glad to see the back of. The normal routine still felt unreal to me, though, as if I was going through the motions, swimming in a new dream.

  “I bet with Sanji you were going to up sticks and just move there,” Vivek said.

  “Yeah,” Sanjita said. “Why didn’t you just go the Sunny California route, leave all this behind?”

  “And leave you lot behind?” I said. “What would you do without me? Mum and Dad would just drive you mad.”

  “That’s a fine thing to say about us,” Dad said, not entirely seriously.

  “We were doing perfectly well without you,” Mum said.

  “Mum, I’m crushed.”

  Julia smiled. My family was in an uncharacteristically good mood. I suppose Mum and Dad bonking regularly again was helping. I suddenly felt queasy at the thought and wished it hadn’t come to me.

  “No, really,” Mum said. “Your two colleagues, Ken and Clive, they looked after us very nicely.”

  “We offered to pay them for their services,” Dad said.

  “Christ, you didn’t!” I cried.

  “They put themselves above and beyond to keep us safe,” Mum said. “And they turned down our money. I made them dinner instead. They seemed quite pleased with that. It was quite the adventure,” Mum added, eyes twinkling.

  I wasn’t sure how much of this cheeriness from my parents I could take.

  “Mum, Dad, what exactly happened?”

  “Oh, not much.” Dad was uncharacteristically coy. Was he even my father? Who replaced the grumpy old curmudgeon with this guy?

  “We had our own little adventure while you were away.” Mum was being equally coy. I was screaming inside.

  Julia looked amused, but then she related to people who kept their little secrets, since the big secrets were the ones we needed to watch out for.

  “Mum and Dad went all Batman on that gang with the help of your colleagues,” Sanjita said.

  “Hunted them down and everything,” Vivek said with some glee.

  “How can you be so cheerful about this?” I asked.

  “There was no harm done,” Dad said. “They won’t be coming to this part of town anytime soon.”

  “Not with Dad and his cricket bat around,” Vivek said.

  “Or Mum gave them a stern talking to,” Sanji said.

  Yeah, Mum gave them a tongue-lashing with Ken and Clive looming over them like golems. I was sure Ken and Clive were happy to get some punching and kicking in, and getting a nice little earner from Mrs. Dhewan. They found another side gig here. Win-win for everyone.

  “All right,” Sanjita said. “Vivek and I have kept this quiet long enough. We have an announcement to make. Since Mum and the aunties have finally stopped nagging us, we were able to get on with it, and I can announce now that I’m pregnant.”

  Cue cries of joy from Mum. Dad smiled and expressed satisfaction that life was moving forward as it should. Sanji exchanged a look with me: Can you believe this shit? Vivek beamed. Julia hugged Sanji.

  In the days that followed, things would go as I anticipated: The gang at Golden Sentinels would have a whip-round and buy Sanjita and Vivek a pushchair from Mothercare. Roger would send a check for £2,000 for Sanji and Vivek to put towards the baby, which would shock them again. Mum would start planning for the baby shower, Godh Bharai, even though that wouldn’t be until Sanji was seven months gone. Once again, Sanjita would have to bite her tongue and be fussed over by Mum and the older ladies bringing gifts and food. Mrs. Dhewan would stop by with a gift of silk she’d had sent in from Mumbai. Dad would even manage not to resent her presence in the house, probably because of his adventure with her and Mum that restored his masculine pride and his sex life.

  Later, Dad and I had a chat in the garden.

  “It’s been an interesting few months,” he said.

  “You seem different,” I said.

  “Your colleagues, Ken and Clive, they’re interesting men. I wouldn’t say they were necessarily good men, but they think they’re doing the right thing. They follow a code. They think highly of you. They seemed to feel obligated to you, which is why they came to look after your mother and me.”

  “Really? I was afraid they would take things too far.”

  “Things were already going a bit far by the time you left for the States and they knocked on our door. Your mother and I were already deep into whatever it was Mrs. Dhewan was embroiled in. If anything, Ken and Clive put things in perspective for me.”

  “Dad, what exactly happened while I was away?”

  “Oh, this and that.” His tone was unusually light and breezy.

  “Dad—”

  “Your
mother and I had our own adventure, Ravi. Let us have that. You don’t need to know everything.”

  “Is it over? Are you safe?”

  “Oh, yes. Ken and Clive made sure of that. They bent over backwards to reassure us. And I managed on my own with my cricket bat.”

  “Did you feel young again?”

  “That’s a simplistic way of looking at it, boy,” Dad said, irritated. “But yes, I suppose I did. Your mother seemed to enjoy that.”

  “Enjoy tangling with gangsters?”

  “She needed to feel useful, and threw herself into this. I couldn’t very well let her go into this alone, could I?”

  “Just promise me the two of you aren’t going to do this sort of thing again,” I said.

  “You know,” Dad said, “I think I’m beginning to understand why you’re in your current job. The thrill and the sense that you might be making a difference in the world.”

  “I wouldn’t say the difference I make is exactly a good thing,” I said.

  “And what do the gods say about it?” Dad asked. “I imagine they had an opinion?”

  “They’re enjoying themselves watching me make an utter prat of myself,” I said. “But something’s changing. I had at least one instance where someone else saw them, too.”

  Dad raised an eyebrow.

  “He wasn’t even Indian or Hindu, and he saw Kali in the same place I did, and heard what she said the same way I did.”

  “Interesting,” Dad said.

  “And then there’s another thing,” I said, not sure if I should spill it all, but who else could I talk to about this than my professor father? “Kali told me to do something and I avoided a big disaster. Rudra may have rained vengeance on some people right before my eyes. A sinkhole opened and swallowed them up. There was no way I could have foreseen any of that.”

  Dad looked at me for a moment with utter calm.

  “Remember what I said about you perhaps being a shaman?” he asked.

  “I preferred not to think about that.”

  “These could be the first signs. You’ve been seeing gods since you were young, just like your uncle. He didn’t even get this far because he couldn’t cope and he died from it. You’re still here and in one piece.”