The Last Taxi Ride

by A. X. Ahmad

  “Stop. That’s not what happened…”

  “So tell me what happened.”

  Ranjit waits, the hot sun beating down on his neck. When she speaks, her voice is faint.

  “I don’t know exactly. But Shabana knew something, and Patel killed her for it. They think that Mohan knows whatever she knew. That’s why they want to find him.”

  “What did Shabana know? Something about Patel’s business?”

  “She had a dressing room next to mine…” Leela’s voice cracks with tiredness, with the exhaustion that comes after revealing a long-hidden secret. “… I used to see her getting ready to go to the sky-booths. The rest of us wore cocktail dresses, but Lateef wanted her to wear a sari. Sometimes I’d help her get the drape right.

  “She got quieter and quieter. I think she was taking some pills—antidepressants, maybe. She was definitely using coke, a lot of it, I could see the red around her nostrils. And she used more and more makeup, too: Lateef was taking her back to his hotel, and he likes to beat girls … you’re right, that’s how he gets his kicks.

  “About a week before Shabana died, I was helping her with her sari. She was pretty high, she started rambling, saying I can’t take it anymore, I have to get out. She said that Lateef and his crew talked freely around her, that she had found out what he was doing in New York. Patel had started some kind of operation, something big, and it was making lots of money, and now the Mumbai people wanted in. That’s why Don Hajji Mustafa sent Lateef over, to keep an eye on things.”

  Ranjit thinks of the shipments that arrived at Nataraj Imports, growing in size and value, and the “special” boxes that Patel told him to set aside.

  “Shabana said—she said this over and over again—I have evidence about what they are doing. I’ll nail those bastards. I’ll go to the cops. I’m a star, I’ll be a star again, as soon as I get out of here. I thought she was just raving, you know? But a week later, she was dead. That’s all I know, Ranjit. And now I really have to get back.”

  She gets to her feet. When Ranjit struggles to rise, one-handed, she offers him a hand and pulls him up, much stronger than she looks.

  They walk along the hot sand, toward the tiny yellow cab parked by the bridge.

  “Did Shabana say what kind of evidence she found?”

  “No, she was pretty high when she told me, she was rambling, hard to understand.”

  “Now that Shabana’s dead, they think that Mohan has this evidence? Or knows where it is?”

  Leela shrugs. Her head is held higher now, made lighter by the confession.

  “Can you find out more from the other girls at work? Ask them if Shabana blabbed to them?” He swallows hard. “Do you have to keep seeing Lateef?”

  “I’ll see what I can find out. And don’t worry, I can handle him.”

  They walk in silence past the spot where the couple had been pouring saffron milk into the ocean.

  “Does it work?” He gestures out at Jamaica Bay. “The offerings?”

  “You have to believe in it. I know this is not the real Ganges, but all the oceans and rivers of the world are connected, aren’t they? Water is water.” Her glasses have slipped down her nose and he sees her bruised face again. “You’re a Sikh, right? What do you believe in?”

  “Us? We don’t believe in sacrifices, or pilgrimages.” He waves a hand at the trash littering the beach. “We believe in right action, in living the right way.”

  “Right action?” Leela laughs. “You sound so superior. So that’s how you ended up divorced, living alone in New York?”

  He stops in his tracks and his face turns red.

  “Hey, I’m sorry, that was mean.”

  “It’s … it’s okay, you’re right. I’m not the best example of how to live.”

  She puts a small hand on his shoulder. “You’re a good man, okay? I felt it the first time I met you.”

  To his surprise, she stands on tiptoe and kisses him. It is the briefest of kisses, like the brush of a butterfly’s wing, but he feels the wet softness of her lips.

  Stunned, he turns toward her, but she just skips ahead to the cab, reaching it before he does.

  Ali has pushed the driver’s seat back and is fast asleep, his baggy Hawaiian shirt drenched with sweat. Ranjit shakes his shoulder, and he wakes with a grunt.

  They drive back to Richmond Hill, and Leela asks to be dropped off three blocks from her house.

  “Leela … those men. The ones I ran into Friday night. What if I have to return here?”

  She laughs, a low, musical laugh. “Those boys? They really don’t like you—you broke the big guy’s nose. But they’re friends of mine, I’ll talk to them. You won’t have a problem.”

  Ali’s face is still bloated with sleep when the cab stops on 107th Avenue.

  Leela is halfway out of the cab when she turns to Ranjit.

  “I said that I could handle Lateef, but I don’t know for how long. It’s getting worse and worse. Whatever you’re going to do, please hurry.”

  Before he can answer, she is out of the cab and walking briskly down the deserted street.

  * * *

  Ali turns onto Liberty Avenue and they drive under a giant billboard that stretches across the elevated station, advertising cheap flights to Guyana. It is decorated with the outline of waves, and a cluster of palm trees, outlined in brown. Ranjit thinks of what he’s just promised Leela, and feels again the sickness in the pit of his stomach, mixed in with the throbbing pain in his arm.

  Taking another Percocet from his pocket, he dry-swallows it.

  “So that was the girl who ran away from you.” Ali purses his lips and lets out a low whistle. “I have to hand it to you, Sardar, you have a way with women. What did she tell you?”

  “Not enough.”

  “What do you mean, not enough? You were on that beach for an hour. What exactly were you doing?”

  “You have a one-track mind, Ali.” Ranjit leans back and waits for the Percocet to kick in. “She said that Shabana used to work at the club, she overheard the mobsters talking about some operation. Apparently she threatened to call the cops … so Patel had her killed.”

  “Fuck.” Ali slams on his brakes as a long-nosed Buick cuts in front of him. “Watch where you’re going, asshole!” He glances over at Ranjit, a frown creasing his wide forehead. “You’re sure that Patel killed the actress, not the doorman? Do you believe her?”

  Ranjit thinks of Leela’s soft lips on his. “Yes, I do.”

  “How can you trust her? You don’t even know her.”

  “I have a gut feeling about her.”

  “Gut feeling? To hell with your gut feelings. If she’s right, Patel is too dangerous to mess with. You need to run as far away as you can—”

  “We’re going to Twenty-ninth and Broadway. Best way is the Van Wyck to the L.I.E.”

  “I know how to get there … wait a minute, Twenty-ninth and Broadway, that’s your night job, right? Nataraj Imports?”

  “Patel has been getting shipments from India for a year, and there are these boxes he told me to set aside. I’m going to find out what is in them.”

  “You’re crazy. People like Patel don’t play around. Why don’t I just take you to the Bronx Zoo? You can put your head into the lion’s mouth—”

  Ignoring Ali, Ranjit pulls a creased business card from his wallet and clumsily dials the number on it.

  Detective Case’s cool voice answers almost immediately. “Ranjit Singh. What a pleasant surprise. What can I do for you?”

  He remembers her cropped gray hair, hawklike nose, and icy gray eyes. Her name is definitely an Anglicization of something Eastern European, Cassowitz or Cassinski.

  “I have some information about my previous employer, Nataraj Imports. I thought you would be interested in it.”

  “Jay Patel?” Her voice doesn’t change inflection, but there is a slight pause, and he wishes he could see her face. “Why don’t you come by the precinct?”

  “I don�
�t think that’s the best idea. Patel is very well informed about what happens at your precinct.”

  A definite pause now. “How interesting. What exactly do you mean?”

  “As soon as I was arrested, Patel knew. He knew that you interrogated me. How about meeting in Chinatown instead? Pham’s Pho, it’s on Baxter Street. I’ll see you there, in the back room, at four o’clock?”

  “This better be good. I hope you’re not wasting our time, Mr. Singh.” Case sighs and hangs up.

  Ali is driving aggressively down the highway, speeding up and changing lanes, the cab jerking forward, then slowing down.

  “Are you mad or what? You want to go to Patel’s, then meet the cops?” Ali peers into Ranjit’s face, then looks back at the road. “This Leela, she really got to you, right? What did she do, play the damsel in distress?”

  Ranjit thinks of Leela’s angry fists corkscrewing into the sand. “No, that’s not it at all.”

  “She is playing you, my friend. Girls like that, girls who work in clubs, they manipulate men for a living. They seduce men, and if that fails, they’ll come at you and rip your face to shreds. How do you think she’s survived so long? If she was helpless, this city would have eaten her up and spit her out.”

  “And you know all this how? As a married man with three daughters, you’re an expert on club girls?”

  “I’ve been driving a cab here for eight years. I know.”

  Ranjit doesn’t want to argue with his friend. The Percocet has kicked in, and the sudden absence of pain is making him light and buoyant.

  “Ali, I can handle this, I have a plan. Look, I’m sorry, I know that all this upsets you. Just drop me off at Nataraj, and you can split, okay?”

  “Oh. So you refuse to take my advice and now you call me a coward. But that’s all okay, because you have a plan. You’re delusional, you know. You’re not a captain in the army anymore, you have no troops. You’re a fucking taxi driver.”

  “That’s the second time today that someone has pointed that out to me.”

  “Fine.” Ali throws up his hands, and the cab swerves for an instant. “Don’t call me when Patel’s goons break your other arm. This time, though, they probably won’t bother with it: you’ll go straight into the river.”

  Ali points downward—they are crossing the Queensboro Bridge over the East River, and the water, far below, is brown and sluggish.

  Ranjit hears the truth in Ali’s words, but he doesn’t care. The pain in his arm is gone, and he feels a strange elation: he is so close to cracking this thing wide open.

  Chapter Twenty

  MUMBAI, SEPTEMBER 2001

  The daylight was fading when Shabana emerged from her gym on Nariman Point, wearing a tracksuit and no makeup, her hair pulled back into a ponytail. In the four years since Sanjeev disappeared, the pollution had worsened, making the sunsets spectacular, and she paused to look up at the orange-streaked sky. Her bodyguard moved quickly to her side, and waited till she was inside the chauffeur-driven Nissan Pajero, then sat up front, next to the chauffeur.

  The car drove along the curve of Marine Drive, the sea to their left, roaring up and splattering against the sea wall. Shabana tried to lower the tinted window, but found it locked.

  “Windows down. I need air.” Her voice was curt.

  “Madam.” The bodyguard twisted in his seat. “Not safe here. Very crowded.”

  “I don’t care.” Her gym had been freezing, and she needed to feel the warm sea air. “Put the damn windows down.”

  With a sigh, the bodyguard lowered the back windows halfway, and Shabana breathed in the briny air.

  In the four years since the kidnapping, she’d had a series of bodyguards, but this lumbering, long-haired man was the worst. His feet smelled, and he was violent, brutally pushing aside persistent autograph seekers. She’d complained to the Don, but he just reminded her patiently that she was his “prized jewel,” and needed to be protected.

  Traffic was heavy, and the car jerked to a stop halfway down Marine Drive. Shabana settled back in her seat and rubbed her thighs, which ached after her vigorous two-hour workout. At thirty-four, she easily put on weight, and had to compete with twenty-two-year-old actresses with lean, perfect bodies. After coming back under the Don’s protection, she had cancelled the remake of Pakeezah, and now only acted in frothy romantic films.

  During the months after her kidnapping, she was convinced that Ruksana had conspired with the Don to get rid of her lover. Instigating her kidnapping and blaming it on Sanjeev would have been a typical Don Hajji Mustafa move: it brought her back into the fold, and gave the Don an excuse to go to war with the Hammer.

  But Shabana had no evidence to support her accusations, and the Don was so kind and patient with her that she had gradually come to believe his version of the truth, and they resumed their old relationship. Now she took two sleeping pills each night, washed down with vodka, but Sanjeev still appeared in her dreams, and stared at her pleadingly from under his dark brows. Most mornings she woke up crying, and had to mask her puffy eyes with makeup.

  Now, to distract herself, Shabana watched the crowds on Marine Drive. People walked along its long curve, sat on the seawall, and walked on the filthy beach, snacking at the food stalls and drinking coconut water. Religious devotees waded thigh-deep into the ocean and prayed to the setting sun, their palms crossed together. No matter what disasters befell Mumbai—the stock exchange bombings, bloody religious riots, labor strikes—its citizens always returned to this life-giving strip, to breathe in the ocean air and dream of a better future.

  Just looking out of the window made Shabana feel better. Forgetting her aching body, she let the orange orb of the setting sun fill her vision.

  She was so lost in the spectacle that it took her a while to recognize the familiar low rumble.

  Turning her head, she looked across the car and out the opposite window. A Royal Enfield motorcycle had slowed to a halt in the next lane, its rider’s face masked by a black helmet with a smoked visor. There were so many of these bikes in the city that at first she ignored it, but then the rider gunned his engine and moved closer, and Shabana gasped.

  The rider wore a padded black leather jacket with a red stripe across its chest: the same jacket that Sanjeev had worn, down to the tear on its elbow, mended with black duct tape.

  She waved cautiously at the rider, and when he raised two fingers to his brow in salute—one of Sanjeev’s characteristic gestures—she could hardly breathe. It was as though she had been punched in her stomach.

  The motorcycle pulled away slowly, and began weaving through the lanes of traffic, headed toward a parking area by the beach. Sanjeev wanted to meet her there, away from the car, away from the bodyguard!

  Shabana glanced at her bodyguard, who was slumped in the front seat, his eyes closed. Up ahead, she saw the black top of Sanjeev’s helmet enter the parking lot and come to a halt.

  Jerking open the car door, she jumped out onto the footpath and took off like a bullet.

  “Madam Shabana! What the fuck…” Behind her a door opened.

  Shabana was a blur, her sneakers pounding on the concrete, heading for the parking lot. The bodyguard thundered behind her and she heard the Oof of someone being elbowed in the stomach.

  She dodged through the crowd, found the cracks between bodies, gained distance. She saw the parking lot, saw Sanjeev take off his helmet and walk onto the beach, heading for the food stalls. Aha, he was heading for the safety of the most crowded part.

  Her feet crunched across the parking lot and onto the filthy brown sand, and she slowed to a walk, gasping for air. My God, here Sanjeev was, after four years, and she was all sweaty, clad in her tracksuit. But he wouldn’t care, and she could already feel the stubble on his cheek as he kissed her.

  Sanjeev moved behind a bhelpuri stand and stood looking out at the sky, streaked now with shreds of orange and mauve.

  “Sanjeev. It’s you.” She clasped him from behind, feeling the leathe
r jacket against her cheek. “I knew you’d return. But quickly, my bodyguard, he works for the Don—”

  “Aare. Aaap kya bol rahey hai?” What are you talking about?

  The man turned and pushed her away roughly. He had Sanjeev’s build, but a feminine face, with long-lashed eyes and a small mouth.

  She stepped back in shock. It was not Sanjeev, yet the jacket … she recognized the tear in the elbow, the broken zipper on the left-hand pocket.

  “You … why are you wearing Sanjeev’s jacket?”

  “Who is Sanjeev? This is mine.” The man gripped his lapels in a gesture of ownership.

  “Madam Shabana!” The bodyguard ran up, red-faced and gasping. “You cannot do this, you cannot leave the car—”

  The man wearing Sanjeev’s jacket shrugged and began to walk away.

  Shabana turned to the bodyguard. “Stop him. He’s wearing a stolen jacket.”

  The bodyguard looked disbelievingly at the man, who started walking faster.

  “Stop him, now! I’ll tell the Don you disobeyed.”

  The Don’s name was a tonic. The bodyguard sprinted forward and grabbed the man’s arm.

  “Oi! Let me go! You crazy chutiya!” The man struggled to get away.

  Shabana walked up. “Where did you get that jacket?”

  “You crazy bitch, it’s mine…”

  “He’s lying.” She gestured to the bodyguard. “Hit him.”

  The bodyguard’s fist came up, once, right in the man’s mouth, and he staggered back, blood pouring from a split lip.

  Shabana advanced toward him like a wide-eyed demon. “Where did you get the jacket? Tell me, or he will break your face.”

  “Crazy bitch! Help! Anyone, help!”

  “Hit him again. Hard.”

  The man screamed with the second blow and spat out a froth of blood and teeth.

  “I bought it at Chor Bazaar! There’s a man there who sells secondhand clothes! Meere Ma ke kassam!” I swear on my mother!

  “Madam Shabana. We have to go, right now.”

  A crowd was beginning to form around them: bodybuilders with oiled torsos, a group of old men, and grinning street urchins.