The Last Taxi Ride

by A. X. Ahmad

  “Mr. Singh, you promised us some evidence, but I haven’t seen anything. I’m not talking to you.”

  “Look, you haven’t made much progress on this investigation. I know it, and you know it. And I’m very close to finding out what happened.” Silence on Case’s end, broken only by the sound of her measured breathing. “Right now you don’t have Mohan, you don’t have Patel, all you have is me, and you know, deep down, that I didn’t do it. So, do you really want to solve this? Or just put me in jail and get me deported?” She does not reply. “Who identified Shabana’s body? Her sister, Ruksana?”

  There is a pause. “Yes. She was very cooperative. I don’t see how any of this—”

  “Thank you. And one last question: I need to know if Shabana’s corpse had her natural hair.”

  “You know damn well that the autopsy report is confidential and I can’t—”

  “Please. One-word answer. Yes or no.”

  Another long pause, then a sigh. “Wait.” A rustling of paper, and then Case answers him.

  “Thank you. I’ll be in touch.”

  He hangs up, walks into the living room, and shakes Leela awake.

  She sits up with a jerk, her fists digging into the soft futon. “Lateef, he’s here?”

  “No, not that.”

  “Then what?” She blinks hard. “What the hell is going on, Ranjit?”

  “I think…” he mumbles. “I think I know what happened. I know where Mohan is.”

  “How? How do you know?”

  “No time to explain. I might be too late, as it is. Let’s go.”

  She stares open-mouthed at him as he reaches across her for his crumpled shirt.

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Leela and Ranjit stand across the street from the looming hulk of the Dakota. At nearly two A.M., its windows are dark, though a few dim lights burn here and there: insomniacs maybe, or the very ill.

  Ranjit points to the tarnished brass keys hanging from Shabana’s key ring. “Are you sure these are for the Dakota?”

  Leela nods. “The larger one is for an outside door. The smaller one is for the apartment.”

  “Okay. There is a twenty-four-hour coffee shop on the corner. Wait there for me. If I’m not back in … half an hour, call the NYPD.” He hands her a crumpled business card. “Tell Detective Case to get here fast, and come up to the attic.”

  She squints at the card, then stuffs it into her pocket. “Tell me what’s going on. Why are you treating me like I’m stupid? I’m the one who found the photograph. You think Ruksana is in there with Mohan, don’t you? And you think they did it?”

  “It’s just a hunch.”

  “Patel is the one who killed Shabana. Why won’t you believe me?”

  “Just give me half an hour, please.”

  Leela turns on her heel and heads toward the far-off lights of the coffee shop. He walks in the other direction, feeling the hard poke of the Glock in his waistband.

  * * *

  Entering the dark alley behind the Dakota, Ranjit slots the brass key into the back door, and there is a satisfying click as the cylinders engage. He pushes the door open and walks down the long, dark corridor, emerging into the courtyard.

  The planting beds have been recently fertilized, and it smells like the countryside here, of rich, dark soil. The fountain has been turned off, and without the splash of water it is eerily silent. He listens to the wind rustle through the trees, and remembers that first evening here with Mohan, when he wished that he could live in a place like this. Now its beauty seems like a sinister cover-up.

  He stays frozen in the shadows, and under the plaster his broken arm begins to throb. What if he’s wrong? For the past week, he has refused to panic and taken it one step at a time. Now there are no longer any steps left. This is the end of the line.

  Crossing the courtyard in a few strides, he enters the dark staircase in the corner, a faint light filtering down from far above. He gropes his way upward, and soon his heart is hammering and he is out of breath. He smiles grimly, remembering his plans to exercise; if he ends up in jail, there will be plenty of time for that.

  He is gasping for breath by the time he reaches the top floor and sees the source of the light: a single low-wattage bulb in the hallway. Gripping the handle of the Glock, he walks silently down the corridor, passing the open door of a plywood storage cubicle: inside it the frayed rattan chairs and overturned couch lie untouched, coated with a thick layer of dust.

  He stands by Mohan’s apartment door and listens intently, but the only sound is his own labored breathing. One of the smaller keys fits, and the door swings open.

  The three tall, curved windows at the far end of the room let in light from the street below, and he can see clearly. The cops must have searched the room because the bed and armchair have been pushed against the wall, and the rugs rolled up, showing lighter patches of wood floor. The kitchen cabinets in the small alcove have been emptied out, and the refrigerator door is open. Nothing here at all: just a silent room, its inhabitant long gone.

  So he was wrong. Now what?

  He walks through the room again, but no trace of Mohan remains. Nothing except the rows of framed photographs on the wall: the sepia portraits of servants who once worked here, long-forgotten men and women in their stiff white collars and shabby morning coats. What impulse had led Mohan to rummage through the boxes and trunks and rescue these photographs? Had these stern-faced men and women kept him company?

  He stares at the photographs, and the sepia ghosts stare back at him. Suddenly exhausted, he sinks down on Mohan’s bed, feeling the horsehair mattress creak under him. Its striped cotton cover is badly stained, and many of the buttons holding the tufting in place are missing.

  Mohan has surrounded himself with old, battered objects. Surely it is not just an aesthetic preference—the furniture is too big for this room—and sitting in the darkness Ranjit remembers his friend’s pride in the Dakota. Mohan clearly identifies with the old building, and all this—the photographs and the furniture—are an attempt to rescue the past from the oblivion of the storage rooms.

  What had Kishen said about his cousin? That even though Shabana had a big, fancy apartment, she liked to come up to Mohan’s nest in the attic. He said they spent hours hanging these pictures.

  Staring at the photographs, Ranjit remembers that evening up here with Mohan. This place is so huge, Mohan had said, it’s been reconfigured so many times, no one really knows every nook and cranny. Except for me.

  Walking into the hallway, he peers into the dark storage room, seeing only a jumble of chair legs. There is no room to hide in this cubicle, but what about the other ones? If only he had a flashlight, he could search the attic.

  Then he remembers what to do. Up on the Siachen Glacier, he would always sit in the darkness before going out on night missions; with his well-adjusted eyes, he could easily navigate the dark outcroppings and deep crevasses.

  Reaching up, he pulls his sleeve over his palm, and unscrews the hot lightbulb. The hallway suddenly goes dark and he stands, blinded, the bulb in his hand. He forces himself to be patient, and waits for his vision to adjust.

  Sure enough, as the seconds tick by he begins to see: the corridor takes on sharper outlines, and the lighter-colored plywood doors emerge from the darkness. He walks along the corridor and checks the doors, the first few of them secured with hasps and padlocks. One hasp comes off in his hand, the screws loosened, and he yanks it open, but the room is filled to the ceiling with moldy cardboard boxes.

  The next few cubicle doors are locked solid, but then another screeches open. He peers into the narrow space, seeing rows of old Singer sewing machines on waist-high trundles, some with spools of dull thread still inserted.

  There is a clear pathway at the edge of the room, and he follows it to the outer wall, to a closed window, translucent with dust. Turning to the side wall, he runs his fingers along the smooth plywood, searching for the outline of a door, but finds nothing.
Staring into the darkness, he surveys the room, and that is when he sees it.

  If he had a flashlight, its bright light would have bounced off the windowpanes and shone into his eyes, but in the dark, it is clearly visible: there are handprints in the thick dust at the bottom of the windowpane, as if someone has recently pushed it upward. And Ranjit hasn’t touched the window.

  This is it. This has to be it. Gripping the bottom of the window, he prepares to heave it upward, knowing that these old wooden frames are often swollen tight with moisture.

  The window glides up silently and the cool night air rushes in. Touching the rope pulley within the window frame, he feels fresh oil.

  Why would Mohan bother to fix this particular window? Leaning out cautiously, he sees a stone ledge that runs along the face of the building, perhaps eighteen inches wide. He sticks his head farther out, and sees, about a hundred feet away, the faint glow of light from a window.

  There is someone up here, after all.

  * * *

  If this was ten years ago, and if his arm was not broken, he would have walked that hundred feet of ledge in minutes. In the army, heights never bothered him: the higher he went on the glacier, the happier he was.

  This ledge, though, is slick with mold and its edge is crumbling in places. He inches along it, his back against the face of the building, his arms spread out on either side like a tightrope walker. He feels his feet slip on the stone, feels the heavy plaster cast on his right arm throw off his balance.

  Far below him a car speeds down Central Park West, its headlights making twin cones of light across the road. If he falls, there is nothing to hold on to: the joints between the yellow brick are too narrow to offer even a finger-hold. And three-quarters of the way, a decorative curl of stone divides the ledge; to cross it, he will have to reach a leg across and straddle it.

  He closes his eyes. At first the fear intensifies, but he waits it out, and soon he is conscious only of the rough brick at his back and the stone ledge under his feet. The tension leaves his shoulders, and he moves sideways, his legs falling into a rhythm:

  Extend left foot out.

  Pause and stabilize.

  Bring the right foot closer in.

  Repeat.

  Behind his closed eyes, the Siachen Glacier creeps in. At nineteen thousand feet, the tops of the mountains often disappeared into the clouds, and climbing into their fleecy white was like climbing into oblivion. One time he had pushed through the clouds and emerged above them, finding himself isolated on a rocky ridgeline, looking down onto a sea of white clouds. It was as though he had reached heaven, and the sun blazing down—hotter and brighter than he had ever experienced—felt like the breath of God.

  His foot slams against an obstruction, and he knows he has reached the decorative curl of stone. Lifting his foot over it, he stands for a moment, regains his balance, then swings the other leg across. Not that far to go now.

  He hears the faint mumble of voices. Each second slows down and turns into a knife-edged eternity.

  He opens his eyes and the voices grow louder. The stripe of light on the stone ledge is a few feet away now.

  He sidles up to the lit window. It is open, its bottom sash pushed up, but the yellowed window shade is pulled down, leaving an inch of light.

  This is the tricky part. As he moves into the window, the murmur of voices stops abruptly. Arching his back, he steps backward through the opening, the plastic shade scraping across his back.

  He lands with a thud on a wooden floor and spins around, pulling the Glock from his waistband and aiming into the narrow space.

  It is more of a slot than a room, with plywood walls on both sides, and stinks of body odor and sweat and instant ramen noodles. Along one wall are plastic jugs of water, bright wrappers from packaged food, and a battered metal laptop computer. Along the other wall, on an unrolled sleeping bag, lie a naked man and woman. The man raises himself in alarm on one elbow, and the woman cowers behind him, her face hidden.

  “Hello, Mohan,” Ranjit says, keeping the gun raised. “You want to put on some clothes?”

  The woman lying behind Mohan raises her head and Ranjit sees the familiar high forehead and long neck. She has the figure of a temple carving from Khajuraho—heavy, firm breasts and a narrow waist—but without any makeup, she has worry lines engraved into her forehead, and crow’s-feet at the edges of her eyes. Her thick, shoulder-length fall of hair is gone, replaced by a thinning ponytail. He realizes with a shock that she isn’t in her thirties; more like mid-forties.

  “Hello, Shabana,” Ranjit says, lowering his gun. “Nice to finally meet you.”

  * * *

  Shabana and Mohan scramble for their clothes. He tugs on a pair of jeans, she wraps herself in Mohan’s lemon-yellow shirt, dirty and crushed now, and they both stare at Ranjit. The silence is broken only by the fluttering of the window shade.

  Ranjit tries to control the anger in his voice. “Maybe you two should tell me why you killed Ruksana—” He gestures with his head. “—and pretended it was her.”

  Mohan stands with his arms limp at his sides. He has lost so much weight that his ribs are visible, and his long, handsome face is gaunt, darkened by a week’s growth of beard.

  “How the hell … how did you find us?”

  “Your cousin, Kishen. He said that Shabana liked to come up here. And I remembered you saying that you knew your way around the attic.” Ranjit gestures with the gun in his hand. “This is a good hiding place. You let Shabana in from the corridor, locked it from the outside, and then climbed back here along the ledge, yes? A good tactical move to hole up here and wait for the fuss to die down. So you learned something at the Military Academy, after all.”

  “I can explain everything—”

  “Shut up. I’m doing the talking.” Ranjit’s voice quivers with anger as he points at two black rolling suitcases in the corner. “Going somewhere? I sincerely hope not, because you know whose fingerprints were on that statue of Ganesh? Mine. They arrested me, and I’m facing a grand jury tomorrow. So, my friend, before I turn you in to the cops, please explain to me why you killed Ruksana, and framed me.”

  Mohan gulps. His Adam’s apple bobs up and down, but no words come.

  “Come on, damn it.” Ranjit’s voice rises to a shout. “Explain to me why you flushed my life down the toilet.”

  “Bhai, no, I didn’t mean for you to be involved in this—”

  “It’s all my fault.” Shabana pulls the bright yellow shirt tight around her. “I’m the one who is responsible. You should be angry at me, not him.”

  Even clad in the dirty yellow shirt, she is every inch an actress; it is the way she holds herself, Ranjit realizes, her head high, her eyes downcast, both regal and vulnerable at the same time. Despite himself, he feels the same flutter of emotion he’d felt in the cab that day. But Shabana’s cheeks are smooth, without any makeup, and the woman in his cab had worn a lot of foundation.

  “You … you weren’t in my taxi, were you? That was Ruksana.”

  Shabana sighs and pushes a stray strand of hair from her eyes. “My sister liked to pretend she was me. She used to wear my clothes, go shopping with my credit card, sign autographs. It made her feel better, I suppose.”

  Ranjit remembers the woman in his cab, how she had offered to sign an autograph. So it was Ruksana who had made him feel like a lovesick teenager, and he feels a sudden swell of sadness that she is dead.

  “She had something wrong with her face, yes?” Ranjit gestures to his own cheeks. “Otherwise you two are identical?”

  “Yes.”

  “Also, Ruksana had her own hair, but you have a weave, with hair supplied by Nataraj Imports.”

  Shabana involuntarily reaches up and touches her thin ponytail. “How do you know about that?”

  “I worked there, for Jay Patel.”

  “You work for Patel?” Shabana reaches out and grabs Mohan’s arm and her face contorts with pain. “He’s working for that bastar
d. He’s going to kill us.”

  Mohan steps forward, his arm extended, palm out. “Ranjit, please, listen to me. If only you knew what Lateef—” He turns wildly to Shabana. “Show him. Show Ranjit what that bastard did to you.”

  Before Ranjit can stop her, she opens her yellow shirt and tugs it off.

  She half turns away, her eyes closed tightly. Her stomach and breasts are untouched, but the skin on her back is crisscrossed with long diagonal red scars, interspersed with pinkish white spots of burnt skin.

  “Put … put your shirt back on.” She doesn’t seem to hear Ranjit; he sticks the gun into his waistband, picks up the lemon-yellow shirt, and drapes it over her shoulders. His voice is quiet now. “Lateef did that to you?”

  “He did it.” Mohan’s voice shakes as he tries to button Shabana’s shirt with small, ineffectual motions. “He beat her with a belt, and he burned her. Let her go, please, Ranjit. I know Patel must have offered you a lot of money, but if our friendship ever meant anything to you, in God’s name—”

  “Calm down. Get dressed.”

  Mohan finishes buttoning Shabana’s shirt and then helps her into a pair of jeans, as though she is a child. Then he walks to a corner and pulls on a T-shirt.

  The gun remains tucked into Ranjit’s waistband. “I know all about that bastard Lateef. But why did you two kill Ruksana? She was your own sister.”

  Shabana leans against Mohan, and her voice is weak. “Has anyone ever tried to steal your life? Ruki wore my clothes, pretended to be me, and I let her. That I could bear. But then she crossed the line.”

  She wipes her eyes with balled fists, and her voice becomes stronger. “That evening, I left for the Hamptons, but I wasn’t feeling well, so I decided to come back. Ruksana was already here when I got back. Patel sent her, because he’d heard that I had learned about his smuggling operation.”

  “Why did Patel send your own sister?”

  Shabana takes a breath and continues. “Ruki is my manager. After my last film fell through, she was the one who arranged the job at the club. He trusts her.” Shabana pauses and wipes a hand across her face. “Anyway, Ruki has her own key, she let herself in and found Mohan sleeping naked in my bed. I arrived a few minutes later, and Ruki was furious, she called me a slut, she started screaming and yelling…”