The Third Squad
Page 22
My boss Ranvir had called me before this assignment. He was brusque and told me I had to decide once and for all. Decide what? He said, You are as good as you ever were. Really? Don’t walk away, he warned me. Nobody can.
Tense the finger, Karan. Trust the invisible armature when you aim.
I pace the length of the room and then head back toward the window. He is still there, I know, and this time he will be ready. I need him to be looking into the scope of his gun. I need his left eye.
Nobody shoots with their eyes wide open, Karan. Except you.
Tell me, Nandini, should I atone for all I have done, bear today the burden of it all? I would like to.
Second nature comes to natural-born killers.
I make my move, show myself as I whirl, crouch as I take aim and shoot. A fraction of a second before I fire, a bullet enters the side of my chest. It is a high-caliber bullet that leaves a gaping hole. As I recoil a second bullet catches me in the pit of my stomach, and after that I really cannot remember . . .
The Next Day
“Did you see what happened to him?”
“It’s all there in high-definition. This camera has super-zoom.”
“What were the seniors looking for? Why did they want all this on film?”
“They need to cover their backsides. They wanted evidence that this was not a setup where they killed one of their own.”
“They fucked him.”
“You can say that again.”
There is the sound of evil laughter.
They wrap up their equipment. KK looks wistful. For once even DJ is moved by what they’ve seen. Over the past few days they had been tailing this guy and they felt like they were getting to know him.
DJ thinks aloud: “Was he just a pawn, a puppet? Will anyone remember him?”
KK is staring at a photograph from the man’s final encounter. “I will. He was a fucking poet, the way he moved and the way he used a gun. He even had a lisp when he spoke.”
“Did Pandey call you yet?” asks DJ. “He asked us to show up tomorrow morning at a place called the Special Branch. We might have an official full-time job.”
“Doing what?” asks KK. They are waiting to catch a bus that heads westward toward Versova. There, in the vicinity of a paan shop, is their source for good grass.
“No clue,” replies his partner. “But he did say he had a new boss—Ranvir Pratap.”
“So it seems like our friend Tiwari has been asked to take a long walk?”
They laugh together, loudly, both trying to visualize what happened when Pandey accidentally shot Tiwari in the thigh, right near his crotch.
“Do you think Pandey will miss him?”
“Yes and no.”
They laugh some more.
“I wish our sharpshooter survived.”
“Those who shoot first usually do, at least in the movies . . . Can you imagine their bullets crisscrossing?”
* * *
Life has been quiet in Karan’s absence. My niece who attends a boarding school has come to Mumbai for her holidays. I often take her for long walks, doing things I haven’t done in a while, like roaming parts of this city that are conducive to leisurely examination. It’s a Saturday and we stand in Azad Maidan and an hour goes by. The vast open space teems with children playing cricket. The noise from the grounds is heartening. My niece picks up a stray ball and throws it back into play. She smiles when the boys cheer.
We head toward Churchgate Station skirting the Cross Maidan on the way. We reach the Oval Maidan, which is a smaller space, and we stand next to the Eros Cinema, sip a lemon drink, and enjoy the refined atmosphere. We take a leisurely stroll around the oval. One side is lined by art deco buildings where generations have resided. On the other side of the oval, buildings reflect the city’s colonial history.
Near the Cooperage side of the oval, there’s a small traffic island with a statue of the leader Ambedkar in the center, pointing to the sky as always. Behind his statue the road leads to the old business district. This is where Bombay intersects with Mumbai. It’s not a peaceful coexistence.
“A Bombay state of mind,” I say out loud, without thinking.
“Hello, Nandini,” says a nearby voice. He emerges from the shadows of a semicircular building and steps to my side. He is young, younger than me, and looks nothing like what I had imagined.
I recognize his voice from the phone. “Mr. Pandey?”
He stands straight and his arms are folded across his chest. His eyes have a twinkle to them. We stay there for a moment avoiding the inevitable, but finally succumb to that posthumous discussion we were meant to have. We both start talking at the same time, then laugh awkwardly and begin again. He apologizes again for what happened.
“I was there,” he says. “For the first time Desai got to see Karan at work.”
How much will he tell me? I wonder. I make out that his apology is heartfelt.
It bothers him that he hasn’t understood why Karan just stood in front of the window totally exposed. “When I replay the scene in my mind, all I remember is that it was like a fireworks display—the two flashes from Bhosle’s rifle, the two puffs of smoke, and then the reverberations—and then suddenly Bhosle was thrown back as if a truck had hit him. And I saw a big hole. And I saw him struggle, trying to tell us something. Nobody was interested and we watched him die. In the chaos, I realized I had inadvertently let off a shot and Tiwari was rolling around and screaming, his hands bloody from the ooze coming from between his legs.”
I state the obvious: “So he got his man yet again.”
“Yes, but Karan was slow that day, a split-second slow that night, slow enough for—”
“Was it deliberate?” I ask him, hoping he will say no.
“We will never know. Maybe he was tired or confused. He had been through a lot. But Mr. Ranvir Pratap thinks differently.”
As I press for more details, he says, “You will have to ask him yourself, Nandini. He’s ready to meet you.”
Pandey is wearing a jacket with a holster underneath; he inserts his right hand, pulls out a familiar gun, and offers it to me. “They’ve given me his Ruger. I have no use for it. Would you like to keep it?”
“Yes,” I reply. What am I saying?
END
Acknowledgments
1. The phrase Dans ce pays-ci il est bon de tuer de temps en temps un amiral pour encourager les autres is taken from Candide by Voltaire.
2. The author owes a debt of gratitude to a growing list of people. Among them: Priya Doraswamy, a mentor in the guise of an agent; Ibrahim Ahmad, for his invaluable input; and the kind people who run residencies at Ledig House, New York, and Sangam House, Bangalore.
V. SANJAY KUMAR is an investment banker by training. He runs an art gallery and writes about art for catalogs and magazines. His two previous novels—Artist, Undone and Virgin Gingelly—take place in the bustling cities of Mumbai and Chennai (where Kumar grew up), exploring the fringes of middle-class life there.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form, by any means, including mechanical, electronic, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written consent of the publisher.
Published by Akashic Books
©2017 by V. Sanjay Kumar
Paperback ISBN-13: 978-1-61775-497-5
eISBN-13: 978-1-61775-510-1
Library of Congress Control Number: 2016935087
First printing
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