by Amit Nangia
“I’ll just grab a bite later,” he said, taking a big swallow of his drink. “I am not feeling too hungry now, so I’ll just get something when I go out.”
I didn’t say anything. He took another drink, fidgeting a little.
“I still got to keep right on top of this deal, you know. This is the most important time. We’re due to pull down the money in less than twenty-four hours. And if the police got any clues, they might try to pull something right at the last minute and I need to find that out from my sources.”
I waited, still keeping silent. Looking at him, and saying nothing. He filled up his glass again.
“Yeah,” he mumbled. “Yes, sir, I sure got to keep a close eye on everything from now until the wind-up. I guess you and Silky can get along here alright by yourselves, huh?”
I smiled at him. Just smiled. He glanced nervously at Silky, and she gave him a dead-eyed stare.
“I guess it all works out pretty good. I, uh…” Thakur paused, fumbling with the buttons of his coat, “…well, I’ll just run along then.”
And I spoke at last. I told him to stay right where he was for a moment, and Silky and I and the boy would go with him.
“G…go with me?” he stammered. “W…what…what for?”
“For the same reason you’re going,” I said. “To get the money.”
His mouth dropped open. A guilty, red flush spread over his face. “This is not the time to change the plan. And it isn’t the time to get money. It’s not supposed to be until tomorrow night!”
“Yeah? How do I know that?”
“It’s what we planned right from the beginning. I gave the family seventy-two hours.”
“Seventy-two hours from when? From the time I took the boy? From the time the ransom note was mailed? From the time the family got it, or the night of the day they got it or when?”
“Well, it…it was…”
“Forget it. It doesn’t mean anything. It doesn’t change anything. Maybe you didn’t plan on running out on us in the beginning, but you’d never pass up a setup like the one you’ve got now. Silky and I tied down here, the cops looking for us and you on the loose.” I shook my head, nodded to Silky, “Get the boy ready! We’re leaving.”
She got up and went into the bedroom. Without saying a word. Ignoring him when he told her to wait, to talk me out of this crazy notion. Silky shut the door. He stared at it helplessly.
“Alright, Tiwari. The money isn’t there, but if you don’t believe me, I’ll prove it to you. It’s all wrong, sending the pick-up boy right now…but if that’s the way you want it do it…”
“It’s not the way I want to do it,” I said. “We’re going to pick the money up ourselves.”
Thakur looked like he was about to faint. Filthy bastard! Rampyari and I had a high five moment; I touched her in my thoughts, itching to let her kiss Thakur once more. But that was for later.
“No!” he said. “We can’t take the boy to the railway station? What if he is spotted?”
“Alright. We’ll leave him in the car then. Just you, I and Silky will go in.”
“Leave him? Damn it, that’s even worse! He might try to run away or someone might look in and see him.”
“That’s right.” I nodded.
“Well, then? You can see for yourself that your idea won’t work.”
“Silky doesn’t trust me. I don’t trust her. And we don’t trust you. But I can fix that part. We’ll park near the station, where I can see you go in and come out. If you aren’t back in fifteen minutes, I’ll tip the police off to you.”
“But…but Tiwari,” Thakur mopped his face. “That’s not right. That’s not what we planned. Suppose the money really isn’t there?”
“It is. We both know it is. So get it. Get it by yourself, or Silky and I will go with you and get it.”
“But you can’t! You can’t leave the boy in the car like that.”
“So that brings us right back to where we started, doesn’t it? You get it, and don’t take more than fifteen minutes to do it.”
“But…”
His mouth worked helplessly. He looked down at the floor, shaking his head, wagging it back and forth, until I thought it was going to fall off. And then, at last he looked up again; there was a kind of greenish cast to his face, but a red flush was spreading beneath it. Thakur was sick, really sick; he was scared to death. But there was some other expression I could not read.
“Tiwari, I got to tell you something. This job…I… God, there wasn’t much risk the way I had it figured. With the pick-up guy getting the money, we all would be safe.”
“We will still be safe. You can check from your sources in the police about their plan,” I snapped.
He heaved a deep sigh and almost whispered to himself, “I’ve been lying to you, Tiwari.”
“I can’t hear you, Thakur. Are you talking to me?”
“I don’t have any sources in the police,” Thakur looked up, his eyes screaming his confession. He did not have a contact. Then how did he know all that he did. Kya pata chutiya fir jhoot bol raha ho? “Most of the guys I know, they don’t even speak to me. I don’t know what they’re doing or what they’ve done. I figured I could go on, safe enough, without knowing. If there was any kind of jam, it would be someone else that got stuck, and… naturally, I didn’t want any of us to get into trouble. That’s why I planned the pick-up guy to begin with.”
“What! You really don’t know anything? If that is the case, then you’re not sure that the guy who goes for the money won’t be walking into a police trap?”
“That’s right! I have no fucking clue. And if I go about asking my acquaintances in the police now, they will surely get suspicious. But I don’t know anything, I swear.”
Silky walked into the room hearing the commotion and asked me, “Tiwari, is there anything you need my help with?”
“Poison. I need you to poison Thakur.” Bhenchod. My basic premise on this man had been wrong. Chutiya, kisi kaam ka nahin hai.
“What are you saying?” Silky chuckled, not realising what had happened.
“Nothing much. Just that Thakur has been lying to us about his contacts in the Police department and he is making us walk right into the trap.” Her jaw dropped.
“So you don’t know a thing?” Thakur shook his head. “Well, you’ll know pretty soon,” I said. “You’re going to find out awfully fast.”
We sat there for another half-hour or so, and he was talking every minute of it. Begging, pleading with me, and actually crying a little towards the end. Words poured out of his mouth, and they didn’t mean a thing to me. I didn’t even hear them. They were just a noise, just a lot of noises coming from a sickish-white face. I didn’t mind them particularly. I didn’t care whether Thakur made them or whether he didn’t. Other people had never meant anything to him. What they said meant nothing to him. And now it was his turn. Now, he was meaningless, and what he said was meaningless.
“Anything else? If you’re all through, we’ll shove off.”
“Shove off? But, Tiwari, I just…”
“Alright. There’s no hurry. You talk as long as you want to, and then we’ll leave.”
His eyes watered. His lips trembled, and he managed to get his mouth open, but no words came out. I grinned at him as I dug Rampyari out. His last rendezvous with her might have flashed across his eyes, because he went absolutely quiet. I asked him again if there was anything he wanted to say.
I rode in the back with the boy. Silky drove and Thakur sat in the front with her. The ride was quiet. No one said a word. About a few hundred metres from the railway station, I had Silky stop the car and Thakur got out.
It was about ten-thirty, but the hustle bustle near the station was at its peak. Hawkers, travellers, and innumerable auto-rickshaws crowded the road.
It was Rampyari’s gentle touch on Thakur’s arm that made him get out of the car, his own car, because we couldn’t have got the Mercedes. He trudged down the street, practica
lly by himself. He kept walking, but turned around near the intersection and looked back at us. He crossed the intersection, and looked back again. He hesitated; he was too scared to go ahead, knowing it was a do or die situation. Then he went on, walking fairly fast.
I got behind the wheel and made the boy lie on the backseat, while Silky shifted on to the passenger seat. Then I followed Thakur down the street, letting the car creep along, letting him stay well ahead of me.
I stopped near the railway station and killed the engine. I watched as Thakur disappeared through the entrance. I saw a few other men walk in behind him; it was rush hour at the station.
I scooted down a little in the seat and peered up at the clock in the station tower. It was quarter to eleven in the clock. He had until eleven to get back with the money. If he wasn’t back by then…
I kind of hoped that he wouldn’t be. Because I’d meant just what I’d said about calling the police, and that would wind everything up much faster. And that was all I wanted now. Just to get it over with. Because it was bound to be bad; no good, no happiness could come out of this now. So the quicker it was over, the better.
Thakur had been gone a little more than five minutes. I looked down from the clock to the tall entrance of the building, and I saw a few men casually roaming about. Instinctively, I looked at their feet. Bullshit! Policemen!
I pointed to Silky all the men in casual clothes with police boots peeping out as a giveaway. Just when we were trying to get going, I saw a man hurry through the entrance and pause at the top of the steps. He had something in his hand – a flashlight. He flashed it three times, and the light was red.
That sealed it. It was a trap, and Thakur had walked right into it.
Then, Silky sat up with a gasp, turned towards me, her face blurred white in the semi-darkness. “Tiwari…look!” she said and pointed towards the police cars entering the lane.
A police car had pulled into each side of the intersection ahead of us. Two other cars had stopped at the next intersection, shutting off the side streets. Only the intersection right behind us was still unmanned. Silky whispered, “Tiwari! W…what are they doing?” But before she could complete her sentence, I had pulled the car back in full speed and was on the main road, beyond the police reach.
“It’s a stake-out. They tagged him as soon as he got the money, but they’re afraid to take him in a crowd. I guess that’s the reason.”
“Well, do something! Let’s get out of here,” she said clutching on to my arm.
I kind of frowned, jerked my arm away from her hand. This was what I wanted, you see, the end. And it seemed like she should want it, too; that she should damned well get it, regardless of what she wanted. And then…
When a man stops caring what happens, all the strain is lifted from him. Suspicion and worry and fear are all brushed aside, and he sees people as they are. Exactly as they are. That’s how I saw Silky then.
Weak and frightened. Self-pitying, maybe. But good, too. Basically as good as a woman could be, and hating herself for not being better. She’d planned to call the cops, telling them the boy was in the boot of the car, after we’d made our escape. I knew that now. I knew that if it came to a showdown, she’d protect him with her life. I knew it, and suddenly I wanted Silky to live.
“Let’s wait here a while and see what happens. If someone asks, tell them we are waiting for my friend Anwar Ali.” Anwar’s name always came handy to rescue me out of difficult conversations.
I heard it before I saw anything…a motorbike… That’s when I saw Thakur come out of the station. Thakur with the suitcase, and the damned bike right behind him. I was too far off to see what was going on clearly, but Mirza and Thakur together were trouble. What was Mirza doing here? Or was it just someone else’s bike? I was looking around from a safe distance when I heard the shot, and by the time I turned back to look in front, it was all just about over.
The policemen were clearing the area and every living soul was shoved away. Thakur was sprawled on the steps. The biker had grabbed up the suitcase and was speeding across the police line. All I could hear was the noise from the bike’s silencer. It grew louder…the sound of an accelerating bike. I heard the police sirens and police cars all starting up to follow him.
I drove almost until dawn, aimlessly, just riding until it was time to stop going. I didn’t know when that time would be, but I figured it couldn’t be very far off. Things would work out a certain way. It would all work out in time, just a little more time, and meanwhile, I had to keep going.
Finally, a little before daylight, I turned off the highway and entered a thin road heading towards some village. On both sides, there were tall green sugarcane fields. It was so overgrown, you could hardly see through it. I ploughed the car on through the middle of the thin mud trail between the fields. And after a few hundred metres, I stopped. I had to. With a trail that no one would ever spot, it was just what I needed. Exactly the right place to wait while things were working out a certain way.
I got out quietly, lifted the kid out, and laid him down on the ground. I gave him some water to drink. Then, I let him go to the toilet, washed his face and hands for him, and put him back in the car. There was nothing else I could do for him.
Silky left the car for a few minutes. When she returned, she looked at the boy, tried to talk to him…to ask him how he was, and so on. And then she got back into the seat with me.
“Well? What do we do now, Einstein?”
I shrugged. “How do I know? You tell me if you’ve got any ideas.”
“Hell!” She shook her head dully, “Hell, what a mess! The whole damned police force is looking for us. No money and a kid, and…” Her voice broke, and she took gulped in some water.
“Listen Silky. You and I can still be together. What matters is that we are safe. We can start a new life. But you need to tell me who took the money…”
“You think I have the money?” She threw her hands in the air. “Don’t start it all over again, Tiwari! I am sick of justifying. I am sick of telling you that I don’t have it. If I had the money, I would have left by now and wouldn’t be sitting with you in this damn field cursing my stars. And I will damned well tell you what to do.” I looked away, sensing her anger rise. The boy was terrified in the back seat and I didn’t want anything to happen to him, out of fear or Silky’s or my foolishness.
“Switch on the radio, we might get some news.”
After some shuffling through local channels and frequencies, the monotonous voice of a news man hit our eardrums: “…the Oberoi family has refused to give a statement. As per our sources, the body has been identified as that of an ex-cop popularly known as Thakur. He is reported to have died before he could talk. The police found the Mercedes used for the kidnap at a house in Gurgaon which is believed to have been occupied by a woman in her late twenties, going by the name Silky. Aryaman Oberoi’s pictures in her iPad and laptop proved to the police her involvement in the job. The neighbours around that house and local barmen have reported spotting another guy with Thakur and Silky. Though the barman has hinted at Mirza’s name, his involvement remains unproven. The unidentified man is being tracked; a sketch has been issued for search…”
The playground matron “believed” Mirza to be the kidnapper, and the cops “believed” that he and Thakur were the principals in the crime. Silky was just a small part of the team, supposedly. And I was anyway unidentified; clean. They would end up with a sketch of the chauffer’s lookalike, not Tiwari’s.
It was a pretty thin theory, of course; about everyone else getting caught and money disappearing in the act. I mean, there were all kinds of loopholes in it that I couldn’t fill, and I sure wasn’t going to try.
“I can’t understand how Mirza got stuck into this mess!” I was slightly taken aback with that assumption by the police.
Silky sighed, “You’ve got to understand! Any crime that happens in this area, Mirza is the first suspect. He could be blamed for practically ev
erything that I did. And you…”
I was lost in my own thoughts. “Tiwari!” she said sharply. “What are you getting at?”
“…and you.” I went on, “You’ve got it just about perfect. You were a woman living alone. So, Mirza and Thakur threatened you, and you were scared to death, so you went along with them. They might have continued the association behind your back, for all you know…”
Silky sat motionless; perhaps evaluating what had happened in the last twenty-four hours. “In any case, you will get a clean chit sooner or later. It works perfectly for you. Even if you are questioned, you can pull it off with the abla nari trick… All I am asking is that we can still start a new life. Just you and me.” I spoke tenderly.
Silky stared at me, silent and motionless for a moment. Then, still staring at me, slowly she shook her head, “You don’t mean that. You can’t mean it.”
I laughed, cutting her off. She didn’t want to be with me. But I had to be sure.
I snickered and lit a cigarette. I held the match for a moment, while I took the gun from my pocket and checked the chamber.
I opened the door, slid the gun back onto my hip, but not into the pocket. I let it slip past the pocket on purpose, as though I’d missed. It landed on the seat I had just vacated. I got out, my back turned to her. I have to be sure.
There was one shrieking gun shot, and I pitched forward and fell on the floor. She actually shot me!
Everything was silent for a moment. Then, I heard Silky start the car and rush away with the boy. The sound of the car grew fainter and fainter…and then vanished entirely.
I stayed where I was, trying to hear the sound. And this – this, that had happened – was what had to be.
She didn’t love me. She didn’t want to be with me. She wanted the money and could probably get it from the parents now.
But I wished she’d stayed a little while longer. Just a little, a minute or two more. That’s when I heard a bike coming closer. The same motorbike, announcing its arrival before you could see it. The sound died abruptly as the bike stopped a few feet away from me. Mirza! He had found me, finally.