by A. X. Ahmad
“Ah, there you are,” he says brightly. “Pho? I highly recommend the brisket.”
“I’m a Sikh. We don’t eat beef. And I need some tea.”
“Fish balls, then? Hey, Pham, one large fish ball, and a green tea.”
The man in the doorway nods and scurries off.
“Mr. Thompson, what are my chances here? I need to know. My daughter—”
Thompson holds his finger up. “Eat first. We’ll talk after.”
Pham sets a mug of tea and a large bowl of steaming broth in front of him, full of noodles and round white fish balls. Next to it is a plate piled high with bean sprouts and fresh basil leaves.
The green tea isn’t chai, but at least it is strong and fragrant, and the soup is delicious. As the warm liquid fills his stomach, Ranjit’s nausea eases, and he begins to feel very sleepy.
“Nothing like some pho to settle your stomach after a night in the Tombs. Plus, Pham keeps his mouth shut, so we can talk in here. I have twenty minutes, then I have another arraignment in Brooklyn.”
“Mr. Thompson, I assure you, I had nothing to do with this—”
The lawyer holds up a finger, a habit that Ranjit is beginning to dislike.
“Here’s the most important thing. I don’t care what you did or didn’t do. Let’s get that out of the way—”
Ranjit feels a sudden rush of anger and bites into a fish ball, splitting it cleanly in two.
“As I was saying, accessory to murder is a Class Two felony, which means that you go in front of a grand jury, and they decide if there is enough evidence for a case. The cops have to prove that you knew the murder was taking place, but didn’t report it. They’re not naming you as a principal, or getting at you for ‘aiding and abetting,’ so I think they really don’t know what happened. It’s a pressure tactic for you to give up your friend. If you do know where he is, we should tell them. There’s no reason for you to take the heat on this thing.”
“I have no fucking idea where Mohan is.”
“Okay. So you want to tell me what happened that night?”
Thompson takes out his yellow pad and looks up expectantly. Ranjit pushes away his bowl of half-eaten soup, wipes his mouth, and begins to talk, his voice trembling with anger.
* * *
His soup has grown cold, and the bean sprouts sit in a soggy pile at the bottom of his bowl. Thompson has been scribbling steadily for the last twenty minutes. Now he looks up, and his pale eyes are distant.
“So let’s see. They can establish a link between the two of you lasting one day. You were ID’d dropping Shabana off, then returning that evening. No one saw you leave, since you went out the back way. You guys ate dinner at her apartment. You touched the statue. You forgot your bag in his apartment, with her dress in it…”
He taps his pencil against his pad. “This Mohan. In their minds, he did it, no doubt. He’s been intimate with the actress for some time now. Real ladies’ man, huh?”
Ranjit nods. “He was at the Academy with me. Always had a girlfriend. He used to meet women everywhere—in the bazaar, on the bus. He’s a seducer, that’s how he gets his thrills. I don’t think he’s capable of killing.”
Thompson’s gaze is piercing. “People change, Mr. Singh. This is a guy who’s been living off his wits for years. He got the job at the Dakota because of her; he was at her beck and call. Anything else?”
“As I said, we were friends a long time ago. All I know is what he told me last night.”
“Let’s look at the facts, Mr. Singh. Mohan beat Shabana’s face in with a statue. If you plan on killing someone, there are easier ways to do it. Which makes it a spontaneous act of passion. Which means you couldn’t have helped plan it. That’s our best argument.” Thompson hands Ranjit a business card, then gets up and shrugs on his jacket. “Look, I gotta go. Call my secretary, set up a retainer. I’m going to start with ten thousand, okay?”
“Wait. Mr. Thompson—what are my chances? My daughter is coming to visit me in three weeks, and I need to know—”
“What can I tell you? There are no guarantees in this business.”
Seeing Ranjit stare at him, he pauses.
“What? Do I have food in my beard?”
“No. Your shirt.” Ranjit points to the brown food stain on Thompson’s white shirtfront.
“Crap. I have a clean one in the car. Now, remember, you’re out on bail. So you don’t drive a cab, you don’t talk to anyone, you just sit at home and watch TV. And one more thing. You think you could lose the beard and the turban? Juries these days, they hear about terrorism, the Taliban, all that stuff.”
“I’m a Sikh. This is part of my religion.”
“Yeah, yeah, but think about it, okay?”
Thompson leaves, and Ranjit stares at his bowl of cold soup. A retainer of ten thousand dollars. As soon as he pays the lawyer, all the money he has scraped together will be gone. What if Thompson needs more money after that?
The slim Vietnamese man appears. “You want something else? Mr. Thompson will pay.”
“No thanks.” Ranjit rises. “Tell me, is Thompson a good customer? Is he here a lot?”
“Oh yes, almost every day.” The man gestures across the road at the Tombs. “People come from there.”
Ranjit thanks the man and heads out of the door. At eight in the morning Canal Street is already bustling with traffic and people. As he walks west, he has to weave past sidewalk vegetable stands and stores selling live fish that flop about in metal tubs of water.
A familiar figure is standing on the corner, his hand held out. Hector’s faded jean jacket looks even shabbier in daylight, and all his bravado seems to have evaporated.
Seeing Ranjit, he quickly smiles and extends his fist for a fist bump. “Hey, bad boy, you out? Cool, cool. They didn’t have Cocoa Puffs today. I think they only have Cocoa Puffs on Sunday morning.”
“Yes, I got out. Now don’t go jumping any more turnstiles, okay?”
He attempts to walk past, but Hector holds out his hand, blocking Ranjit’s path.
“Yo, I hate to ask, but I got to get to work. You got a buck or so for the train?” Ranjit digs into his jeans and peels off a twenty. “Here you go.”
“Wow. Thanks, man, you a prince. Hey, you ever need any help, you need anything, you come and see me, okay? I’m in Central Park, you know Strawberry Fields?”
“The John Lennon memorial? You work for the Parks Department?”
“No, man, I work for myself. That’s my spot up there. Come by, okay?”
Hector dances to the side, raises a hand in farewell, and dives into the crowd. Ranjit walks on, his head now swimming with tiredness. He needs a hot shower, and then some sleep. He has to think through this situation with a clear mind.
The R train to Queens is packed at this time. A man swaying three inches away reads a newspaper New York–style, having folded the pages vertically into thirds.
On the front page is a large headline, GARBAGEMEN TO GO ON STRIKE. In the sidebar, a smaller headline says, RATS IN THE CITY VENTURE OUT. Farther down the page, almost swallowed up in the fold, is the word MURDERED. Below it, the smiling, elfin face of a much younger Shabana Shah stares up at him.
Ranjit forces himself to look away, but her dark eyes seem to follow him.
Chapter Eight
An hour later, Ranjit is in his darkened apartment in Jackson Heights, hovering on the edge of sleep, when the laptop in the corner of his room begins to trill. It is Shanti, calling him on video-chat from India.
Bleary-eyed, he checks his watch: ten thirty A.M. here, eight in the evening in India. He has to talk to Shanti: the last two times they were supposed to video-chat, he had to work, and ended up canceling.
Picking up the laptop, he sits on the bed and switches on his webcam.
“Hello? Hello, Papaji?”
A fuzz of static clears, and his daughter’s face appears on the screen. For a few seconds he is too choked up to talk, taking in Shanti’s face—so like her
mother, with her mother’s high forehead and hazel eyes. But she is already taller than Preetam, and there is something wary about her that she has inherited from him.
“Papaji, are you okay? You look terrible.”
“Oh, I’m fine. Just worked all night, that’s all. What are you up to?”
Shanti wears an old T-shirt and jeans and holds a chewed pencil. He sees the ceiling fan turning above her, and glimpses a window to one side, filled with the dark outline of a gulmohar tree. He can imagine the rest of Preetam’s parents’ house: high-ceilinged rooms and a wide, open veranda that looks out onto a sweep of manicured lawn.
She shrugs her thin shoulders. “Just doing my homework. There’s a math test tomorrow. I hate school here. I can’t wait till I come and live with you.”
He knows that after returning from America, she’s never really adjusted to the Indian school system. The math is hard for her, and she hates memorizing facts for exams. It doesn’t help that she’s the only girl in her grade with divorced parents.
“Now, remember the deal, Shanti. If you like it here, you can stay on with me. That’s what your mother and I agreed.”
“Of course I’ll like it. And Mama won’t even notice that I’m gone. All she does is go to the movies, or go out with Mr. Big.”
He pauses. Mr. Big is code for Preetam’s new boyfriend, a rich businessman with a leather export business.
“Beti, your mom needs … friends. Don’t be so hard on her. You’ll just end up fighting with her, and that’s no use.”
“Friends, okay. But this is so embarrassing. She’s all lovey-dovey. I swear, if she marries this guy, I’ll go crazy.”
“Look.” He tries to conceal his own turbulent emotions. “Just hang in there. It’s just three more weeks.”
Her eyes become dreamy. “New York. I can’t wait. What clothes should I bring? Because I’ve been watching TV, and I saw that kids there wear…”
Shanti chatters on, and soon he feels sick with guilt. What if he’s in jail three weeks from now?
“… Oh. Mama’s back now.” Shanti looks over her shoulder. “And Mr. Big is with her here. I hope he hasn’t brought me any presents. I hate it when he brings me presents. Like I don’t know he just gave his secretary a thousand rupees and told her to go out and buy something shiny.”
There is the sound of Preetam’s voice, drawing closer, and Shanti looks over her shoulder again. “Okay, Papaji. Why don’t we talk again tomorrow?”
“I might be driving, beti,” he lies. “But I’ll call you.”
“Okay.”
He can’t bring himself to say I love you, like all the American parents do, automatically, as easily as sneezing. In any case, that phrase cannot express the tortured mix of affection and loss that he feels for her.
“Take care of yourself, beti. And don’t fight with your mother, okay?”
“Yes, okay. You take care, too. Drive carefully.”
He puts his palm flat against the screen, and she reaches forward and does the same, trying to connect across the space of eight thousand miles.
Reaching out, he hits the log-off button and the screen turns black.
* * *
Sleep. He must get some sleep.
But his tiny room is stiflingly hot, and when he closes his eyes he thinks of Shabana’s bloodied corpse. He breathes deeply, imagining the Golden Temple: he is a boy again, slipping off his shoes and washing his feet in a pool of water before passing through the darkness of the Eastern Gate.
Entering the vast temple compound he sees the golden dome of the Harmandir Sahib, floating in the waters of the sacred lake. He does a circuit of the lake, and the noise of the city fades away, replaced by a serene silence. Old learned men sit under the shade of the sacred trees, and as he passes each one, he hears a snatch of prayers, words that enter his brain and stay there.
His anxiety drains away, and soon he is hovering at the edge of sleep, the darkness he so desperately craves.
Bzzzt, bzzzt, bzzzzzzzt. The harsh ringing of his buzzer jolts him awake.
The darkness withdraws its promise of oblivion, and he curses.
Bzzzzzzzzzzzzzt.
Getting out of bed, he presses the intercom button. “Who is it?”
“Ranjit Singh?” A man’s voice, one he does not recognize. “I have a car outside. Jay Patel sent me. He wants to see you.”
With a sick feeling, he remembers that he was supposed to be at Nataraj Imports last night.
“Tell Mr. Patel that I’m not well, I’ll be back at work tonight.”
“I said, Patel wants to see you. Let’s go. He doesn’t like to be kept waiting.”
Ranjit slumps against the wall, his head fogged with exhaustion. He remembers all the questions that Case had asked him about Nataraj Imports. How often did shipments come in? How many boxes? Who delivered them? How many people worked there?
What the hell was that all about?
Bzzzzzzzzzzzzzzt.
He presses the intercom button again. “Hang on, I’m coming.”
* * *
“Hey. Where are we going?”
The driver, a bullet-headed white man, is cut off by a smoked glass partition. Either he does not hear, or he chooses not to answer.
The black Lincoln Town Car heads across the Triboro, connects to the Deegan, and slides across to the Cross Bronx. Soon they are heading across the George Washington Bridge to New Jersey, and Ranjit sinks back into the plush leather seat and watches the massive cables of the bridge flash by, the water far below sparkling with sunlight.
Jersey. Patel Sahib has sent a car to take him all the way there, not to the Nataraj Imports office downtown. It doesn’t make sense. There is no way that Patel could have known about his arrest: getting off the train in Jackson Heights this morning, he’d stopped at a newsstand and flipped through all the newspapers—Shabana’s death was told in gory detail, and Mohan was mentioned as a “person of interest,” but there was no mention of his own name. Yet he feels a sick foreboding, and wishes he could think more clearly, but the desperate need for sleep clouds his brain.
The bridge ends and they hurtle down a wide highway that has been carved into the earth, with blasted brown cliffs on either side. This is a no-man’s-land, lined with gas stations and cheap motels. Even the green of a few trees and the baby-blue sky overhead cannot disguise its ugliness.
The limo takes one exit amongst the tangle of signs, and drives along a road parallel to the highway. The Paradise Motel flashes by, followed by the misnamed Riverview and the Skyline, all of them offering day and night rates. One look at their parking lots—rusty Fords and Chevys mingle with new Mercedes and Beemers—tells Ranjit that the haves and the have-nots are mingling here, engaged in the only activities that cut across class lines: drugs and purchased sex.
The limo turns in toward a motel just like all the others, but cleaner, painted a saffron color, its exterior walkways devoid of loitering men. Despite the empty parking lot, the neon sign that says PATEL MOTEL has been switched off, and as if to underscore that message, a smaller lit sign says NO VACANCY.
The driver heads to the back of the lot, overshadowed by a rocky cliff face. He lowers the glass partition and points wordlessly to a door at the end of the motel.
Walking toward it, Ranjit feels the adrenaline beginning to kick in: whatever Patel throws at him, he can handle.
The door is ajar, and he enters a darkened room with soft music playing. As his eyes adjust to the darkness, he sees that this is the living room of a larger suite, with heavy silk drapes pulled across the windows, Persian rugs covering the floor, and, instead of chairs, there are large silk cushions. In one corner is the blue light of an expensive stereo system; the music playing is a bhajan, a chant to the elephant god Ganesh.
A pair of leather sandals lies by the door, the soles deeply eroded by the imprint of large feet—Patel Sahib’s, no doubt—and Ranjit slips off his own boots before walking onto the plush silk carpet. He waits, the melodic w
ords of the bhajan familiar to him:
“Shuklaambara dharam vishnum, shashi varnam chaturbhujam, prasanna vadanam…” He who is attired in white, who has the complexion of the moon, who has four arms and a smiling face, upon him we meditate to remove all obstacles …
Jay Patel walks through a doorway, dressed as usual in his white shirt and trousers, and clutching his slim metal laptop.
“Ranjit. You have arrived. Aao, come, sit with me.”
He gestures to the silk cushions, and Ranjit sits awkwardly on one.
Patel sinks easily to the floor and sits cross-legged, placing the computer beside him. He does not speak, and the music swells around them. “To the elephant-faced one, with trunk and lotus body and eyes, we pray day and night. To the one with the single tusk who grants boons to his many devotees, we pray day and night.”
Ranjit is the one who breaks the silence. “Sir, you wanted to see me? I apologize for not coming to work yesterday. I’m sorry, I was not well. I was going to check in with you today.”
Patel smiles, baring his teeth. “That’s not exactly true, Ranjit. You were arrested, and let out on bail a few hours ago.”
Ranjit’s face betrays his surprise. “How … how did you know?”
The Cheshire cat smile remains. “That does not matter. When one of my employees is given the hospitality of the NYPD, I make it my business to know. What matters is that you just chose to lie. That pains me.”
“Sir, I assure you, the police are mistaken. I had nothing to do with the murder. This Mohan Kumar, I knew him many years ago in India, and I—”
“Ranjit, of course I believe you. You are an honorable man, you are ashamed of what happened, it is natural that you try to hide it. But from now on, you need to tell me the truth.”
“Yes, sir. Of course.”
“Mohan Kumar.” Patel’s smile is replaced by an expression of disgust. “I’m surprised that you would know a lowlife like him. What he has done is despicable. He has blackened the name of our community. The Americans will think we are animals, killing each other.
“I know—used to know—Shabana very well, she was a customer of ours. A very fine actress, and more than that, a fine, fine lady. To die like that … it is unthinkable.” Patel’s voice thickens, and he pulls a snowy white handkerchief from his pocket to wipe his eyes. “Now. Ranjit. You will tell me everything that happened. Leave nothing out.”