by A. X. Ahmad
“She knows.” Leela gestures at her mother. “She won’t say anything, but she knows. She can see it on my face. Let alone yours.”
She turns from the window and looks directly at him, and her unasked question is clear.
“I talked to the cops yesterday,” he says, still chewing the toast. “They want Patel badly, they’re willing to cut a deal. They’ll protect all of you, but to close the deal, I need evidence. Hard evidence.”
She frowns. “Evidence? Like what? A brick of heroin?” She drinks the last of her tea, and puts the cup down.
“You’re sure Patel is bringing in drugs?”
She shrugs her slim shoulders. “What else could it be? He isn’t bringing over immigrants in shipping containers. That’s not his style. He likes things neat and tidy.”
“Okay, so say it’s drugs. How is he smuggling them in? I thought he was using Nataraj Imports, hiding them in the boxes of hair, but I was wrong. Do you have any idea, any idea at all, what Shabana found out?”
She looks out of the window: Dev, soaking wet now, is hugging Auntie.
“He’s never like that with me,” she says absently, then looks back at him. “Look, Shabana was coked out of her mind. People say shit when they’re high.” He can see a flicker of fear in her eyes. “Maybe she didn’t have any hard evidence, maybe she was just mouthing off, and she got herself killed for nothing.”
“I don’t think so.” Ranjit finishes his tea and pours himself a second cup. “Shabana was a smart woman, she survived in the Mumbai film industry for very long. These kinds of people weren’t new to her. From what Kikiben told me—”
“Who?”
“This woman I worked with at Nataraj, she knows everything about Bollywood. She said that back in the day, most films were financed by the Mumbai mob. Movie stars were involved with the mob all the time. No, I don’t think Shabana was bluffing. She knew something, I can feel it in my gut … What do you know about Lateef?”
At the mention of his name, Leela unconsciously touches her eye with her fingertips.
“He’s—at first he’s an attractive guy, he’s clean cut, he’s polite. But soon you realize that he behaves like a spoiled kid. The others—they seem sort of disgusted with him, but they put up with him. I’ve seen men like him before. Their fathers are powerful, rich, but they aren’t like their fathers, they’re weak, and they know it. It makes them nasty…”
Ranjit pours Leela another cup of tea, and she absently nods her thanks.
“… there was a boy like Lateef in Guyana. His uncle was the minister of something, he would just drive through the streets in his Mercedes, pick up girls, get them drunk, rape them. One girl in my neighborhood mocked him in front of a crowd of people, she said that he had a small penis. They found her dead in a rubbish heap, two weeks later. He had raped her and poured acid on her face. And I don’t know why. He was a handsome boy, he was rich, he could have dated any girl he wanted.”
The two men at the club had talked about Lateef as though he was a spoiled, willful child. As the Don’s nephew, he is clearly used to getting what he wants; even Patel is scared of him.
“Leela.” Ranjit reaches forward and puts his hand over hers. “I know you’re frightened, but … I was doing some thinking last night. I’m pretty sure that whatever evidence Shabana had is still out there. If Mohan had it, he would have used it to buy his freedom, he’s smart like that. So my guess is that it’s still hidden somewhere. It’s not at her apartment—Patel would have looked there—but where else could it be? You said Shabana had a dressing room at the club.”
Leela nods. “After she died, they gave it to me, but it’s a pigsty, shit everywhere, broken bottles of perfume, dried-up makeup. I haven’t had the time to clean it out, so I just use my old one. What are we looking for, anyway?”
“I don’t know. It would be something that stands out, something not part of the larger pattern … Are you going to work tonight?”
“Mondays are my night off. Sometimes they call me if someone important is throwing a private party, but otherwise, no.”
He squeezes her hand. “I need to search that dressing room tonight. Can you make some excuse to go back there, and take me in with you?”
Leela stares at Auntie out in the backyard, and frown lines appear on her smooth forehead.
“What did my mother say to you last night? She never talks directly to me, it’s like I have to read her mind. She’s ashamed of me, right?”
“Not ashamed. She feels guilty for having sent you here alone.” He does not mention that Auntie wants to take Dev and return to Guyana. “She’s worried about what Lateef is doing to you.”
“That’s not true. She hates me.”
Ranjit looks out of the window, but the old lady and the boy have disappeared from view.
“Your mother hates this country, not you. Look … back home, she was an elder, she was respected. Here, she’s an old woman cooped up in this house.”
“You have the answers to everything, don’t you?” Leela’s face hardens and she moves her hand from under his.
“No. I don’t have any of the answers. I came to this country with my wife and daughter—” He thinks of working in the Indian store in Boston, then taking Shanti and Preetam to live on Martha’s Vineyard. “—and my wife, she could never adjust. She was miserable, depressed, and I didn’t know how to deal with it. Instead of understanding what she was going through, I resented her—”
“Is that why you got divorced?”
“Yes. No. Other stuff happened … but that’s not my point. My point is that it’s hard for your mother, and hard for you, because you feel you’re responsible for her happiness. That’s a very heavy burden. Just be patient with her, and patient with Dev. It’s not his fault that he’s closer to her than you. He’s a kid, and Auntie’s the only security he’s ever known.”
Leela blinks angrily. “Is the lecture over?”
“I didn’t mean to lecture you. I don’t know much, but one of the things I’ve learned is that anger obscures things.”
Leela closes her eyes and is motionless. Out in the backyard, he hears the rhythmic chirping of the cicadas.
She opens her eyes and nods at him. “Okay, I’ll call the club, and say that I left my pocketbook behind. We can go around eight. I’ll let you in the back, but you must be quick.”
“Ten minutes, tops.”
“What if we don’t find anything?”
“One step at a time. And there is one more thing…” Her face becomes wary again. “I haven’t washed my hair in a while…”
She leans in and sniffs. “You do smell, a bit.”
“… and I need help combing it out. I can’t do it with one hand.”
Just then Dev rushes into the room. Auntie stops at the threshold and looks from her daughter to Ranjit: they are sitting at opposite ends of the table but their bodies are aligned toward each other. Even a stranger would know that they are involved.
* * *
After he washes his hair—his left arm wrapped in a plastic bag—he wears some clean clothes that Leela has brought him, a dark checked shirt with a frayed collar and blue polyester pants. Just from the look on her face, he knows that they were her father’s.
He sits on the edge of Leela’s bed, his wet hair hanging halfway down his back, and she kneels behind him, combing it out. Her comb catches in the snarls, but she doesn’t complain. She just tugs and pulls, and soon the comb slides smoothly through his hair.
“You have such great hair.” She laughs. “All this long hair, on a man. If I had hair like this, I wouldn’t have to use a glue-on weave.”
“I like you without it.”
“Without it? I would look just like every other girl. No man in the club would be interested in me.”
She dries his hair with a small pink hair dryer and then ties it into a topknot. He thanks her, and she nods and leaves the room, returning a few minutes later with Dev.
“We’re going to the su
permarket, can you watch him? Shouldn’t be gone for more than half an hour.”
Auntie and Leela gather cloth shopping bags and leave, and Dev takes Ranjit’s hand and pulls him outside into the backyard. Today the boy wears the collar of his red polo shirt flipped up, and with his pudgy knees and round cheeks, resembles a large teddy bear. He wants to play catch, but Ranjit explains that his arm is broken, and the boy looks up with concern.
“Who broke your arm? Is it always going to be broken?”
“It will get better soon. How about I tell you a story instead?”
This must be a foreign concept, but he agrees, shrugging his shoulders just like Leela. Ranjit sits on the metal chair in the cool shade of the huge tree, and Dev climbs into his lap and looks up expectantly.
It has been a long time since Ranjit has held a child, and a long time since he told Shanti a story. Thinking about her, he feels guilty: she’s sent him two text messages and wanted to talk, but he just texted back that he was too busy driving.
“So.” Dev tugs at his sleeve. “Are you going to tell me a story or not?”
“Yes, yes, of course. You know the one about the monkeys and the hat seller? No?”
The boy shakes his large head, and Ranjit begins, remembering as he goes along.
He tells a story about a hat seller in India, a topi-wallah, who went from village to village selling his hats. One afternoon, exhausted, he lowered the load of hats from his head and fell asleep under the shade of a giant banyan tree. He slept for a long time, and woke to find that all his hats were gone.
A tribe of monkeys, up in the tree, had taken all his hats, and were wearing them: red hats, yellow hats, pink hats, purple hats. The topi-wallah begged the monkeys to return his hats, but they just bared their teeth at him and imitated his pleading. Angered, he threw stones at the monkeys, who threw twigs and branches down at him. The topi-wallah was defeated, but then he realized that the monkeys would imitate whatever he did.
“So you know what he did?”
Dev’s eyes widen. “What? Tell me, what?”
“He took the hat from his own head and flung it to the ground. Imitating him, the monkeys took the hats from their heads, and flung them down, too. Laughing, the topi-wallah gathered up all his hats and left, saying that he would never sleep under that tree again.”
Dev giggles excitedly. “He was clever. The monkeys were stupid.”
“Sometimes clever people do stupid things.” Like, get involved with a woman half his age. Like, go back tonight to a place where he was almost killed.
Dev sees the shadow cross Ranjit’s face, and his own eyes narrow in alarm. Constantly responding to the moods of two warring women has made him very sensitive.
Ranjit smiles and holds the boy tighter. “Have you heard the one about the crocodile and the monkey?”
Dev shakes his head, and Ranjit begins another story, talking loudly to be heard above the buzzing of the cicadas.
* * *
All day the heat builds, till the air is crackling with a strange electricity.
That night, after Dev is put to bed, Leela calls a car service, and by the time it arrives, the night sky has clouded over. A wind gusts through the streets and it begins to drizzle.
They run toward the waiting car, and by the time Leela gets into the car, her short black cocktail dress is soaked, and the wet fabric outlines her breasts. The driver—a hawk-nosed man with a bushy beard—stares at her, then at Ranjit’s shabby clothes, before looking away.
Leela notices the man’s gaze and turns to Ranjit. Her eyes are sea-green again. “I have to dress up. My night off is when I go to other clubs, dance, meet prospective clients, put their numbers into my phone. Then, when I’m working, I text them and invite them to the club. If I was wearing anything else, the guys at Ghungroo would think it’s odd…”
As they drive through Richmond Hill, a jagged flash of lightning splits the sky, illuminating the steel structure of the elevated subway, and it stretches away into the gusting rain like some mythical beast.
Leela moves closer to him and shivers. “I hope Lateef doesn’t show up. He comes in at odd times and asks for me. If I’m not there, he throws a tantrum. Here…” She opens her small square handbag, and slides out the Glock. Using her bag to shield it from the cabbie’s gaze, she hands it to him.
“Didn’t your mother tell you, it’s empty? The guys at the club took the bullets—”
“Here you go.” She presses a heavy metal rectangle into his palm. “Glock 17, right? This will work?”
Ducking down, he slots in the magazine, and it fits. He looks at her wordlessly.
“I got it from those guys down the street when I went shopping. Apparently the Glock 17 is quite a common model.”
“Good thinking, thanks.”
He slides the gun into the waistband of his too-big pants and tightens the belt another notch. It presses into his skin, but it doesn’t make him feel better. If he pulls it out, he’ll have to use it, and that’s the last thing he wants.
Leela’s arms are crossed, and he sees from her stiff back that she is very scared. He wants to reach out and touch her, but he is conscious of the cabbie watching them in the rearview mirror.
“Don’t worry, nothing’s going to happen. In and out of there in ten minutes.”
“Ten minutes, you promise?”
“Just ten minutes,” he echoes. A part of him notices how badly the cabbie is driving, taking corners too wide, speeding up needlessly. Sloppy, stupid driving that will surely attract the attention of the cops.
“Hey, brother,” Ranjit says respectfully, “could you slow down? We’re in no hurry.”
The bearded driver glances at the two of them in the mirror. “You don’t tell me how to drive, and I won’t tell you how to run your business, okay?”
Ranjit stiffens. “And what business would that be?”
The driver snorts. “Okay, since you asked. A pimp and his girl heading into Manhattan to start work. She’s not that hot, you’re not going to need that gun.”
“You stupid fuck…” Ranjit leans forward, but Leela puts a restraining hand on his arm.
Her eyes are glittering with anger as she leans forward. “Drive the way we tell you to drive. Otherwise I’ll give your name and hack number to some of my friends in Little Guyana, and sometime in the next few days, your face will be bashed in. Understand?”
The driver’s face turns red. “I didn’t mean any disrespect, I—”
“Shut up and drive.”
The cabbie slows down, and for the rest of the trip he doesn’t say a word.
Ranjit is shocked by her response, but then he remembers what Ali had said: no pushover would have survived for so long in the brutal world of the nightclub.
It is raining harder as they come out of the Midtown Tunnel into Manhattan. The cabbie speeds down Thirty-seventh Street, sending up a spray of water that soaks the pedestrians waiting on the corner.
Chapter Twenty-Six
As soon as Leela lets Ranjit through the back door of Ghungroo, he shivers. He is soaked through, and the air-conditioning is freezing, but it is not just that: the air inside the club smells thin and used up, just like the air inside the Tombs.
The hallway is dark, and he hurries to keep up with Leela. They pass the room where the men beat him—he recognizes the dirty carpeting and dented lockers—and then climb up an enclosed concrete stairway. When they emerge, they are on a metal catwalk suspended high in the air. Leela hurries onward, but he stops and gapes.
Nothing about the exterior of Ghungroo prepared him for this: five or six floors of the interior have been gutted, creating a tall, vertical atrium. A network of beams crisscrosses the space at many levels, supporting what looks like a fleet of flying saucers. These are actually circular seating pods, upholstered in deep red leather, linked to each other by skywalks made out of perforated metal. Far down below is a frosted glass dance floor, flanked by two red semicircular bars glittering dully with
tiers of bottles.
Right now the whole vast space is empty, but Ranjit can imagine the club when it is full: the VIPs lounging in the red circular pods, suspended in space, gazing down loftily at the dance floor, while others stand on the skywalks, the whole atrium like a vertical hive of conversation and laugher and music.
“Ranjit. Come on. Come on.” Leela gestures frantically to him from the far end of the catwalk.
He follows her through a door that takes them back into the interior of the building. Gone is the red leather seating and shiny metal; this is clearly a service area of concrete-block walls and worn carpeting.
Leela unlocks a shabby white door, and they enter a darkened room. Locking the door, she clicks on the overhead light.
“It’s a fucking mess, isn’t it?”
Shabana’s dressing room has a plastic-topped dressing table along one wall, its large mirror surrounded by lightbulbs, most of which have burned out. A worn swivel chair has been pushed aside, and behind it is an open closet, hung with red, orange, and yellow silk saris. The small room is a mess, and Ranjit experiences a sudden sense of déjà vu: tissues blotted with lipstick are scattered across the floor, along with splayed Indian film magazines. There is a thick layer of dust on the mirror, and the dressing table is cluttered with dried-out tubes of mascara, a silver hairbrush clotted with long black hair, and a packet of human hair. He picks up the glossy skein of hair, and holds it, marveling at how alive it is.
Leela’s voice is urgent. “What are we looking for? Ten minutes, remember?”
“Let me look around.”
He picks up a small, silver-framed photograph from the dressing table and a young Shabana peers up at him. She wears a white salwar kameez, and must be fifteen or sixteen, her hair pulled back with a hairband and her brows thick and unplucked. He turns over the frame, but there is nothing stuck on the back.
Pulling open a drawer in the dressing table, he finds only more bottles of nail polish and sponge-tipped makeup applicators. In another drawer is a plastic pillbox, half full; he glances at the label and sees Halcion, a sleep medication, prescribed in Ruksana’s name, and dispensed by a pharmacy on the Upper East Side. There is also a key ring with a Mickey Mouse logo, holding what look like apartment and mailbox keys. He sets the pills and keys aside.