The Third Squad

by V. Sanjay Kumar

  “Don’t worry about who is behind you. We will take care of them. Be alert when you reach the airport. And do not harm this guy.”

  “Could you repeat that?” says Karan. This did not make sense.

  “Do not harm this fellow. He’s a decoy. We know it but we are pretending we don’t.”

  * * *

  DJ is on the phone with Tiwari. They are on a local train and making good progress. Tiwari asks them to head to the departure area outside the international airport. They get off at Vile Parle Station and rush to a cab, but the driver refuses to move till he has four passengers. KK breaks into Marathi and tells him he will finish his family, his society, his ancestors, and his unborn progeny. KK is not an impressive physical specimen but his eyes are raving mad. They get moving. It is still raining. The skies have darkened again and it is 5:45 p.m. when they reach the airport. They keep some distance from the building and train their camera and wait. The phone rings after a while, jolting them alert.

  Tiwari is down to a whisper. “Go to the parking lot,” he says. “Karan is headed there behind that same fellow.”

  “This better be good,” mutters DJ.

  Tiwari hangs up. They hurry toward the parking lot. Cars are rushing by in every direction. The streetlights blink on around them, forming patterns on the water that has collected on the roads. They are completely soaked and equally miserable.

  “This was your idea,” says DJ. “Following a wordless, expressionless piece of wood all around town. Seriously, just tell me, man—who is this guy?”

  KK considers the request and then relents: “He’s an encounter cop. He kills people for a living. The bad news is that he is very good at it. His name is Karan.”

  DJ swallows. “An encounter cop? Of the shooting variety? The Karan?”

  KK nods. DJ does not want to hear what he’s hearing.

  “He doesn’t look or behave like an encounter cop.”

  “DJ, for once you are right,” says KK. “Just relax.”

  They are standing under a bus shelter near the parking lot. A cab draws up with tires screeching. They recognize the license plate and in an instant Karan gets out. He is wearing an overcoat and he walks toward them with his hands in his pockets. He stands at the other end of the bus stop and observes the arriving cars.

  The camera is now running. Karan gets a call. He holds the phone to his ear and through the drizzle and the honking cars they hear him arguing with somebody. He stands in the rain and his shoulders slump.

  “What should I do now!” he shouts.

  He shuts his phone and shoves it into his inner pocket. Taxis are streaming in and people are spilling out and running toward the terminals with wheelie bags. The normal approach to the terminals is clogged and cars have lined up beyond so passengers have to trudge over from some distance.

  DJ and KK are breathless. They can sense something is about to happen. KK’s phone vibrates. He slides it to his ear and hears a strange noise. After a moment, he realizes it’s the sound of Tiwari burping on the other end.

  “Nothing has happened yet, sir,” says KK. “But this man we are following, he seems tense.”

  Tiwari laughs nervously. This is a crucial operation for him and he isn’t happy that he has to depend on DJ and KK for its success. “There will be two people who look the same,” he says. “One is a decoy who will arrive first; the other man, one of my best informers, will come later. We should allow him to catch an international flight and escape.”

  In reality, they both arrive at the same moment. KK peers through the rain and spots two men stepping out of different cabs. They are both of medium build. Each wears a light shirt and dark pants, and both have phones glued to their ears. Now what? Karan glances from one to the other. He dials a number.

  “There are two,” Karan says to his controller. “The rain has picked up again and they look the same. What should I do? There’s no time.”

  They watch Karan write something on his palm. He curses as his hands are wet. The two men have gathered their luggage and are heading toward the terminal.

  “You want me to what?” he shouts again. “You said to follow this man, and I have done so. You said to lose him, I did that. Now you say he’s a decoy and you want me to shoot him?”

  The phone squawks.

  “The other guy!” shouts Karan. “The other guy, the real guy is also here. I can get him.” He listens intently, shaking his head, clearly unhappy. “You want me to shoot the decoy and not the man I’m supposed to? I don’t know anything about the decoy.” He listens again. “Fine, if those are the orders. Just say it again, say it aloud.” He pauses and then nods. “Okay, I got it.”

  He’s in a hurry. Karan glances at his palm, dials the smudged number, and looks up. “Hello,” he says, then waits.

  Both men are again on their phones.

  “Abbas?” he says, then pauses for some kind of response. Both the men look around but Karan remains uncertain. They are approaching the entrance of the terminal.

  Karan speaks again: “Abbas bhai, you are wearing a white shirt and black pants. I can see you. Don’t ask me where I am.”

  One of the men halts in his tracks.

  “Abbas bhai, turn around please,” says Karan.

  One of the two men moves first. His white shirt is wet and so are his dark slacks. He darts his head from side to side. And then the other man turns around as well. There are two flashes of light and two muffled thumps. Karan shoots the second man in the knees, two shots in rapid succession: left knee, right knee. DJ and KK watch in horror as blood spurts, the man drops his phone and crumples, his hands stretching outward for support. He falls slowly onto his shattered knees and he screams. His shirt falls open and the headlights of a car illuminate his bare chest; no gold chain. Karan notices that and shoots him in the head—a single shot in the middle of the forehead. The man falls backward, a pool of red spilling onto the road. DJ and KK realize they are running toward the fallen figure out of sheer instinct. Their camera is rolling and they focus on the man’s face. He is far gone. DJ falls to his knees next to the guy’s brains and gags. KK whirls around to find Karan right behind him. His eyes are dark and his manner is calm. He holds out his left-hand palm upward. The right still brandishes a gun. KK gives him the Handycam. Karan drops it onto the road and crushes it with his boot. A phone rings.

  “Answer it,” Karan orders.

  “It’s okay, Mr. Karan,” says KK.

  “I said answer it. I’m not going to ask you again.”

  KK drops the phone into a puddle where it fizzles and dies. He then looks up and Karan is gone. DJ has fled to the bus stop. He’s leaning against a pillar with his mouth open.

  There’s a small packet of mawa lying where Karan had been standing, its red color bleeding into the other red puddle by KK’s feet. In the distance they hear the rumble of the Western Express Highway, red buses trundling along on the overpass beside yellow-black taxis. One of them would be the 84 Ltd.

  They walk the long road, bare-headed in the rain. They reach the bus stop and take the familiar ride to Goregaon.

  DJ cannot stop babbling. Something in his brain has become dislodged. KK sits next to him and tries to ignore him.

  “My mother told me not to deal with you,” DJ tells KK. “She always said you were trouble. Nothing good will ever come of that chokra, she said. He looks wild and he looks stupid.”

  “Thanks,” says KK without moving an inch. “You want to know what your mother needs?”

  “That guy fired three shots. He didn’t spray bullets. Instead: one, two, three; left knee, right knee, forehead. Is this a movie, brother? Are we in some kind of movie?”

  “You were filming it,” deadpans KK.

  DJ looks at his shoulder bag as if it contains a snake. “We are in danger,” he announces. “People will think we still have all this on tape and now they will come after us. The whole underworld will be on our case. Abbas’s bhais will be drooling over our pictures and sharpeni
ng their knives. And that shooter Karan will come first. He will need only one shot for me.”

  “He should aim for your mouth first. It’s always open,” says KK.

  “No, first he will get you. You were the one making calls from there. But you were so calm, man. Didn’t you see Abbas writhing on the ground?”

  KK pats his damp hair with a handkerchief. At least the traffic is moving smoothly, the office crowds returning home on the other side of the road. “Do you have any battery left?”

  DJ looks at him blankly.

  “I’m asking about your phone, you dildo. Come on, snap out of it.”

  They eventually alight at Nana Nani Park, a haven for old souls. They sit there and wait for nightfall.

  Dilip Jadhav and his best friend Kunal Kirkire are about to part ways after the most eventful day of their lives. A curious exhilaration has exercised pressure on their bladders. They relieve themselves in Brihanmumbai Public Sauchalya, a dark alley where the pavement slopes toward a gutter. These men have aged in a single evening. Somewhere they long for the days of their youth.

  Day Two

  The airport encounter made the newspapers the next day, and there was a color photograph depicting the body lying in the pouring rain with a plane taking off into the clouds overhead. It was a dramatic shot. Some footage made it on the nightly television news as well. Importantly, Karan was named as the alleged “rogue officer” who, it was claimed, had taken out the wrong person in a botched encounter. The long rap sheet of the “victim” wasn’t mentioned. All of Mumbai instead saw a file photograph of Karan in uniform. He looked young and dashing, belying the picture that had been painted of him. To those in the force it was obvious who had instigated this.

  Immediately after the incident, Tiwari started working the phones and raised hell. When nothing happened he called on Parthasarathy, asking for immediate action against Karan. He wanted a joint meeting ASAP. with Ranvir to demand an explanation and perhaps some blood. “We cannot set a precedent by doing nothing,” he kept repeating. “This is not a mistake. It is rank insubordination.” For once Ranvir was quiet when spoken to.

  Parthasarathy knew this thing would not die down easily because the gangs would go after Tiwari. This was a breach of trust, and in the khabari business it was a serious offense. Anticipating trouble, Tiwari had tried to deflect blame and had gone ahead and released some details to the press. But he needed an official response from Partha.

  Where was Karan?

  * * *

  That night you harbored guilt. (Evam told you that this was natural.) You walked the streets holding a collapsible umbrella, you wandered into flooded alleys, and you whiled away time sitting in small Udipi establishments run by the Shetty clan, drinking strong South Indian coffee. You were hungry. You went to the Madras Café in Dadar TT, taking your time to finish a plate of idlis and a huge family-size dosa that you had to fold into thirds. You were tired and wet and miserable but you could not rest. You rode trains aimlessly for a few hours till the services began to dwindle. You wished you could go home quietly, wash your feet, and creep into your bed. You kept your phone switched off.

  You were scared. (Evam told you that this was natural too.) You had no idea why you were scared. You had done something wrong. But it wasn’t that simple. If it was that simple you would have been fine after a while. You had done what you thought was right and you did it without thinking. Your second nature was not what you thought it was. You were human, not just a killing machine that followed orders blindly. You should feel relieved to know that. But you were scared.

  You wished to know what Ranvir Pratap thought about what you had done. He is your umbilical cord, said Evam. Now you knew why you were scared.

  You wanted to call him but you waited. For once in your life you thought, He should call me. But he didn’t. Why? Why, Ranvir Pratap, mentor of good men, why this silence? What would you have done in my place, sir? You have trained me and trained me well, so well that people do not believe someone like me can be normal so they dig into my past, into my every gesture, wanting to make me out to be some kind of aberration.

  Will Nandini understand if you say, Yes, I did shoot, I killed a man but I let another one go. There is a man alive because of me. Will she see this the way you do?

  This morning you awoke in an empty compartment of a train parked in the depot. You switched on your phone but kept it on silent. You watched it flash every now and then. Desai was calling relentlessly. He, this man you have never met, would likely end up at your house very soon.

  Finally you answered his call and he sputtered for a while. You could hear some noises in the background, the hum of a familiar air conditioner. He wasn’t alone—he was probably with Ranvir, the mole with the master.

  “You got the wrong guy!” shouted Desai.

  You looked at your hands while you lied. You were mechanical in your pretense. It was easy as long as you did not think.

  “You want me to believe you made a mistake?” shouted Desai. “You were supposed to shoot the decoy, damnit, not the real Abbas.”

  You asked him something and he shouted some more. “How does it matter who the decoy was? What do you mean was he also a killer?”

  But it mattered to you who you shot. You had realized that yesterday. You could not pull the trigger on a man who you had not studied, whose résumé you had not assimilated. You had to know that your quarry deserved your attention.

  “You were given an order, Karan.”

  You nodded, but they couldn’t see how you were torn like never before. Then you did another thing that your training taught you not to do: you spoke.

  “Dans ce pays-ci, il est bon de tuer de temps en temps un amiral pour encourager les autres.”

  “Karan, are you hallucinating? What are you saying? It sounds like garbage.”

  You translated for him: “Desai, it’s strange how it’s good that from time to time someone dies so others don’t.”

  * * *

  Parthasarathy and Ranvir met in the morning and argued for a while. They had to handle Tiwari and calm him down. And they had to make an assessment of Karan. This could have been an error—after all, there was little time, it was raining, and he had to take a shot in a narrow window. But this was Karan. Both were disturbed. Should they have informed Karan in advance? Were they wrong in presuming that a police officer would follow orders and knowingly kill someone he didn’t know anything about, who would be simply collateral damage, and at the same time allow a known offender to escape? If he felt such a thing as a conscience Karan could have shot at the decoy and missed. But why did he have to kill Abbas? It was hard for Partha to comprehend.

  “Karan never misses,” said Ranvir. “It’s the only part of his résumé that’s still intact.”

  “I believe he is now AWOL?”

  Ranvir nodded, looking disappointed. In his books, Away Without Official Leave was desertion. This was the second cardinal error that Karan was making. He should have reported back after the assignment.

  Ranvir had called Evam at the crack of dawn, seeking an explanation.

  “He probably expects you to call him, Mr. Ranvir. He wants you to speak to him,” Evam said, trying to figure out why Karan was on the run.

  “And what about his actions yesterday?” Ranvir’s tone was accusatory.

  Evam tried to provide some sort of explanation: “Aspies have a very strong sense of what is right and what is wrong. For them it is black-and-white, with no shades of gray. They cannot compromise in these matters and they don’t respond well to half-measures. So I am not surprised that Karan chose not to shoot the decoy. Personally, I think that was . . . Actually, let’s leave aside what I think.”

  “But what’s shocking is that he then chose to shoot Abbas,” replied Ranvir. “How do you explain that?”

  Even Evam didn’t have a satisfactory answer for this. A man who was trained to hunt spends stressful hours building the justification to track a target, chase the target su
ccessfully around the city, and in the final flush of the dance, at the very moment when he is to pull the trigger, he is told to “let him go” when he knows the rotten bastard will get away for no good reason. But could that man be excused for . . . It was hard to explain.

  “In such situations of extreme stress, Aspies are affected more than others,” said Evam lamely.

  “That’s great,” replied Ranvir. “So what will our Aspie do next?”

  This was beginning to look like a true “rogue officer” situation, a nightmare scenario that the police dreaded.

  * * *

  Despite the strained circumstances, Nandini decides to go ahead with a group visit that she had committed to months earlier. A large Volvo bus arrives at the chawl, eats up a lot of space, and causes a traffic jam. The chawl has dressed up for the occasion, lights strung on trees and balconies in place of the usual clotheslines.

  “We eat whatever we can pronounce,” says the superintendent of the chawl to the group of tourists that Nandini has brought with her. “It’s that simple. If we can’t pronounce it then we don’t serve it. In the posh neighborhood of nearby Breach Candy they love Italian cuisine, and in the upmarket Warden Road they adore French dishes. I cannot order those things. I only know how to order simple things like kozhi or kombdi wade or kalya watanyachi ussal.”

  “The chawl is the beating heart of the city,” says Nandini. “Which is why my husband and I decided to live here and not in the police quarters.”

  The group listens intently and smiles. Others from the chawl in the reception party are eager to have their say, and they speak to the visitors in turn:

  “We listen to music that we can sing: three easy notes set to a repetitive beat, a nice chorus that we can shout out loud, and songs that everybody in the vicinity can recognize and join in. People say it’s boring but for us it’s a community thing. We do not attend concerts in Rang Bhavan, we cannot afford the Zubin Mehta performance, for example, and nobody here has mourned the decline of jazz in Mumbai.”

  “We decorate our houses with what we can make ourselves. Anything handmade, preferably by a family member; like cushion covers that are embroidered with brightly colored flowers, or curtains that are patchwork from older clothes, and watercolors painted by wives that show women from Rajasthan with pots on their heads.”