by Vish Dhamija
‘Because, Dr Mehta, it will be mutually beneficial.’ Jay smiled. He looked around to check if there were any cameras, any recording devices. None.
Why would Dr Mehta need one here?
‘I am not sure I understand you, Mr Jay Singh.’
‘I have a client, of incredibly high net worth and a very important person, Dr Mehta, who is also a prominent member of our society. An undesirable element of society annoyed him on New Year’s Eve when my client was with a friend, a girl friend, and in the ensuing clamour my client shot the lowlife in the knee. You see, he — my client — is a little hot headed, but that is another story.’
‘I am still not sure I understand what you’re trying to say, Jay. Is there a real purpose to this meeting?’ Dr Mehta looked at the free Novatel clock on his desk.
‘Would you want to attend to something else before we continue with our meeting, Dr Mehta?’
‘No. I need to visit the private rooms before I leave the hospital, but I’d like to hear about this strange and loony client of yours first, so please keep it short.’
‘My client, Dr Mehta, as I said, is a prominent member of society who shouldn’t have been involved in this brawl in the first place. To make matters worse, his girlfriend that evening was an escort — you see this information, and the unlicensed firearm my client used can land him in a difficult position—’
‘Please stop.’ Dr Mehta put his hand up like the former Indian National Congress symbol. ‘I am not at all interested in your client, his extracurricular activities, his high net worth or any of that nonsense. Why am I supposed to know all this? Please come to the point, I need to leave.’
‘Oh yes, I forgot…you might have another appointment.’
‘No, as I said, I need to wind up and go home.’
‘Sure.’ Jay passed a wicked, I-know-it-all smile. ‘Dr Mehta, my client could not have shot this lowlife because he wasn’t at the location at the time. He was in your hospital undergoing some treatment, under your observation, on the said New Year’s Eve.’
‘Who is it? I don’t remember any patient of mine who is a “prominent”’ Dr Mehta used his fingers as quote marks to emphasise the word, ‘member of society. What treatment was he undergoing?’
‘Dr Mehta, he wasn’t. But, I’d like you to work your records to say that he was here to provide him with an airtight alibi.’
‘Oh, I see. So you want me to give a false statement in the court?’
‘You’re a remarkably smart man, Dr Mehta.’
‘Get out.’ Mehta let out a loud breath and pointed towards the door.
‘You must be joking.’ Jay did not even as much as shift in his seat. He had been in such situations before and some insolence was expected.
‘I don’t want any money, any offer of partnership, any more of your garbage. Please leave.’
‘Dr Mehta —’
‘I am a doctor. I have ethics.’
‘Ethics. Morals. Scruples. Before you realise, you’ll pull in your conscience in the conversation. Why get into all that rubbish, Dr Mehta? My client can build another hospital for you, renovate this one, he’ll do whatever you ask for.’
‘I cannot imagine that you, an advocate, a protector of legal rights and an alleged upholder of ethics is attempting to entice me, a doctor, to save a criminal’s life. Is that why you studied law? To break it, to support criminals?’ Mehta picked up his phone and fumbled with the numbers without taking his gaze away from Jay.
Jay’s countenance still did not change one iota. Nada. It was water off a duck’s back. He sat listening judiciously to the doctor — who, in his early fifties, was probably a decade older than him — as though some priest was admonishing him, an infidel, after a grave misconduct. Mehta, on the other side of the desk, sounded exasperated at Jay’s lack of principles.
‘Will you please leave or do you want me to call the police?’
‘I’m sorry to have bothered you, Dr Mehta. It’s my mistake, totally, to have underestimated your integrity. I’ll leave. But before I go, could I show you something please?’
‘It better be good.’
‘It sure is.’ Jay put his hand in the inside pocket of his jacket and pulled out a white envelope. Carefully — taking his time so as to irk the doctor — he took out a couple of photographs and handed them to Mehta.
Mehta looked like a corpse, the blood drained from his face like someone had thwarted the supply. He turned the shade of cheap limestone. He discernibly sighed. Jay thought he even heard the doctor’s stomach grumble.
‘Where —?’
‘Where did I get these from? Oh, Dr Mehta, I have sources. A middle-aged, respectable married man like you, with grown up daughters, shouldn’t be jazzing around with a girl your daughter’s age. Truth is such a bastard. It always gets out at the most inappropriate time and places, without any warning. I would be devastated to send these to your wife. Think about your family, and if your patients — the people who respect you — came to know of this, what implications would it have on your practice?’
‘What do you want?’
‘Dr Mehta, I believe that our ancestors — the monkeys — had established a fair and simple exchange mechanism when it came to services. They scratched each other’s backs. You must have heard of the phrase: You scratch my back, and I scratch yours. Simple reciprocity.’
‘And how do you intend scratching my back?’
‘Oh, I’ll scratch your back exactly as you’d want me to. Fair enough?’
‘What is that supposed to mean?’
‘First, I won’t ask you for yet another favour. Well, not using the same photographs again at least. Plus, as I said, I could arrange for a generous donation — from abroad, of course, which can never be traced back — for your hospital.’
‘I guess I don’t have a choice.’
‘Not now. You made your choice when you agreed to have an extramarital relationship. Do we have a deal now?’
‘Wouldn’t someone ask why your prominent member of the society was admitted into my care, in this hospital?’ Mehta looked around to convey that this wasn’t the hospital where the high and mighty came for treatments.
A smile broke on Jay’s lips. Mehta’s question suggested that his initial aversion to the offer was fading. Everyone with an IQ in three figures knows that they have got to, at some point, pay the price for the derby they’ve lost. The doctor’s payback time had come.
‘Because, by the time this case comes to court, you, Dr Mehta, will be a big name, your hospital will have been inaugurated and endorsed by powerful people.’
‘How?’
‘I bury such bodies every day. Leave the behind-the-scenes arrangements to yours truly. Don’t worry.’
Dr Mehta looked crestfallen; he just nodded.
If Dr Mehta hadn’t agreed to Jay’s proposal, he had an appointment with another equally unknown doctor but he was confident Dr Mehta would relent when his testes were put in a nutcracker. It was naïve to argue with reality. Mehta’s family, his practice would all be in jeopardy if these pictures of his straying were exposed.
‘My office shall contact you with details of how, what and when, Dr Mehta. All I need is half-a-day of your time to testify this in court when the time comes.’
Dr Mehta nodded again. Trepidation showed in his eyes; he was reluctant, but pragmatic. He couldn’t picture a way out. What a fool he had been for pure carnal pleasure. His impiety had brought him to this. Why? Too late, he knew.
Jay got up, straightened his jacket, closed a button and stretched out his hand. The startled doctor offered his limp hand.
‘Could I drop you somewhere? I’ll be discreet,’ Jay earnestly asked.
‘No thanks.’
‘Have a good day, Dr Mehta, or whatever is left of it.’
Jay Singh was out of his room before Mehta blinked. He was gone, and he hadn’t left any details behind.
***
‘We never came here,’ Jay politely articulated
to Bhīma. It wasn’t a directive for Bhīma; it was an aside for the number-crunching bookkeepers that kept the taxman at bay. Unlike Grisham’s novels set in the US, he didn’t bill hours; he was retained for defence cases. Most defence advocates in India are on a comprehensive retainer. In any event, you only came to Jay Singh if you had incredibly deep pockets and when you were book-ended by law enforcement. Politely put, when you were knee-deep in shit. The guilty — or the not so innocent — clients didn’t challenge. Jay was paid, in gold, for every waking minute of his time: his fuel, travels, meals, his security, an unquestionable and generous expense account, and whatnot by the clients that Jay signed up to represent.
‘Where, hukum?’
Jay knew Bhīma would make something up if quizzed by accountants.
‘Attaboy! It’s been a long day, Bhīma. Let’s go home now.’
‘Jee, hukum.’ Bhīma put the Long Wheelbase A8 into D.
Jay reclined into the comfort of the fawn leather in the rear cabin of the car to think about the case at hand as the vehicle negotiated this repulsive, semi-urban part of Gurgaon. He knew that all courtroom trials followed the same routine. A good criminal de-fence advocate — the autodidactic Jay Singh reiterated to himself from time to time — needed to have a credible story, and know the art of telling it skilfully. The practiced art of storytelling dictated, too, that a proficient advocate discoursed the major part of the plot, allowing his client and witnesses to speak less. There was, of course, a very narrow latitude there, a fine line across which it could be deemed as leading the client and/or witnesses, and a good storyteller recognised exactly where it was and never crossed it: precisely, where the opponent could cry “objection”. Jay was well versed in that. The prosecution and defence would tell their respective narratives, using the same characters — not one less, not one more — and since there were no juries in India, the judge had the unconditional powers to discard one account and accept the other. But here was the catch. It was almost a prerequisite that the preparation of the story begin much earlier.
Jay had just started that groundwork.
With the alibi from a — soon to be — highly reputable doctor that the accused was in a hospital on the night of the said incident, the prosecution wouldn’t be left with much ground. No judge in any courthouse could argue with that. End of story. OJ Simpson’s case, in the US, was a lesson to everyone across the world — and maybe even on Mars, if the aliens were clued in — that there was a big difference between being innocent and being not guilty. That difference, in legal parlance, is called evidence. Not being guilty sets you free; the world can only point fingers.
The only golden rule a good defence advocate follows is that there is no rule. That accepted, everything is possible. Right, wrong, true, false were good for textbooks. The tyros believe in those principles, the naïve philosophize about them, the religious get their consciences involved. Not Jay Singh; in fact, he found it intolerably difficult to comprehend the senseless morality bug. He believed that honesty was an overrated policy and that the whole morality thing was hyped; he hadn’t started out with that belief, but you couldn’t argue with him on that. Not now. He bent witnesses, bought prose-cution’s testifiers to turn them hostile, blackmailed people into providing alibis. And was it finagling if the witnesses declined to come forth? And although it could never be proved, the word in some circles was that some of the mafia guys were paid protection money — hafta — by Jay Singh. He kept some VIPs on side too, by being a bagman for them and thus he was wired into the legal, political, medical and underworld communities and enjoyed a kind of immunity. Nevertheless, he knew there was always danger in the sides.
Jay hadn’t always been like this. But the Devil is a bullish buyer and a fierce negotiator. How much you sell your soul for first time around depends on — and only on — how hungry you are. Jay Singh sold his soul for the proverbial song years ago, but then he was starving at the time.
Excused.
But once he traded it, he repeatedly peddled it like an aging hooker who craved to cash-in as much as she could before her expiry date. If there, indeed, was a heaven, Jay Singh didn’t aspire to get there. He looked out of the window as the car crossed over to the newer face of the city. Droves of cars — moving slow like a cortège of snails — were almost parked in traffic and there wasn’t a place to park in the city when one looked for one. The irony made him smile. Gurgaon was a rabbit warren now. The veneer of civilisation barely covered the piqued passions of the people honking the variety of horns from all sorts of automobiles. Somehow the bright brains responsible for the city’s planning thought that the solution to all traffic problems was to build a flyover. No other way was even considered to ease the traffic. No by lanes, no channelling traffic, nothing. The city had nastily spread far beyond everyone’s expectations, but the sameness of the malls, the concrete high-rises, the ostentatious display of wealth was now beyond vulgarity. As they say, whenever prosaic life has threatened, man has gone to the moon or Mars or built yet another dick-compensating tower. The once small village — Guru Droncharya’s Gaon, hence the portmanteau “Guru-Gaon” — was now a sprawling and uncontainable city. Just then the car ascended onto yet another flyover. Jay neither liked the grim nor the glitzy side of the city.
He got down when Bhīma passed the security gates and stopped by the front porch of his farmhouse in Chhatarpur. With security being paramount, Jay had decided to buy this place over any apartment or bungalow in New Delhi. It had a lot of distance between the main gates and the building with a swimming pool and tennis court, unlike the quintessential Delhi properties which, despite being exorbitantly priced, had very big houses packed into very small plots — like a size sixteen woman cramped into a size twelve spandex — and balconies, sometimes, hung out over the main boundary wall.
Jay looked up to the heavens. The night sky was scattered with cumulus clouds like faint white cotton wool floating across. Nothing major, they weren’t rain clouds. The white bubbles looked more like a painter’s afterthought, it might have been all inky blue, white was only to add colour. Another irony, he smiled, knowing white was technically not a colour.
Sheeba, the faithful German shepherd, came running to greet the master; her big bushy tail took it upon itself to shame a small windmill. Jay bent down to caress his best friend. Satisfied after a few strokes under her chin, Sheeba’s enthusiasm waned; the tail moving listlessly, she lay on the floor with her eyes open.
The Pharaonic house had only living area on the ground floor, a 4000 square feet of open space with just four floor to ceiling red-brick beams breaking the expanse of the room. No walls. The main door opened into this area and not a separate foyer. To the right of the entrance was the formal sitting room — a proper drawing room — that had black leather sofas, coffee table and the Persian rugs; Champlevé lamps adorned the console table behind the three-seater sofa, red silk jacquard curtains draped the floor to ceiling French windows — red, in Jay’s mind, wasn’t a fashion statement, it was an attitude, a passion for life. People who sported deep colours were, by nature, intense. As such, this expensively ornate part wasn’t much visited unless formal guests, or sometimes clients, were entertained. Despite it having no door or walls to prevent her, Sheeba was aware she wasn’t permitted to take her paws and her fur to the area. The left side of the living quarter was the informal entertainment area with comfy fabric sofas and chairs with ottomans, television, the music system and a well-stocked bar. This area, too, had its set of floor to ceiling French windows overlooking the swimming pool, and the sheer organza curtains allowed light to penetrate in and to permit visibility. This side being east-facing, the morning sun crept into the ground floor here. The back of the room contained the dining table, a door on the left that led to the kitchen and a staircase on the right to the first floor. A peep into the residence could never reveal the lack of a woman’s touch.
The entire house and the surrounding area were covered by ANG 2000, a powerful coun
ter surveillance device designed to beat all wired microphones inside walls and floor. The formidable masking system injected noise to defeat any eavesdropping devices that banked on acoustic leakage. And before you think this was the only place protected, his car and office were equally well secured. The hunter who sets traps for others always ensures he guards himself against those very traps.
Jay got up after petting Sheeba for a while and headed straight for the bar. The evening had just begun.
The caretaker of his house, a short and frail Nepalese, Bahadur, must’ve heard him return. He came into the room with other bar accoutrements — the ice bucket, the soda water, the thinly sliced cheddar.
‘Salaam, Sahib.’
Singh smiled. ‘Salaam, Bahadur. I’ll dine late. Please give Sheeba her feed and you and Bhīma have your dinner whenever you’re hungry. Don’t wait for me.’
Sheeba’s ears twitched hearing her name. Bahadur left the sahib in the living room and returned to the kitchen. Jay heard the front door open and, catching Sheeba’s newfound excitement, guessed it would be Bhīma. He carried on looking through his CDs. He put on Symphony of Destruction and turned up the amplifier to a deafening level; some thrash metal was required to let the aggression out. Megadeth started dispensing the drums as he poured four fingers of Chivas into his tumbler.
“You take a mortal man, and put him in control… watch him become a God.»
Jay smirked at the lyrics; a reptilian smile crossed his lips knowing what he had just made the vulnerable doctor do and, also, tilted the game for the prosecution. The prosecution and plaintiff would be ambushed. There was little chance that they could survive the devious trap. Game over, job done. The sight of victory, no matter how small it was or how disingenuously it was achieved, was always attractive.
TWO
The law firm of Cooper & Singh occupied 20,000 square feet in Unitech Cyber Centre in Gurgaon, Sector 39. The plaque called out Sam Cooper and Jay Singh as the two partners. All others were salaried advocates, associates, interns, notaries, secretaries and other support staff. No one had ever met Sam Cooper; he didn’t operate from the Gurgaon office. He apparently worked in London and handled the UK business of the firm. The truth was that Sam Cooper did not operate from any office, because Sam Cooper was not a qualified advocate. Sam Cooper was Jay Singh’s old college friend who only graced Jay’s residence infrequently and proffered advice, sometimes even unsolicited advice. However, having a fictitious consulting advocate and a spurious partner at Cooper & Singh was like gold dust icing on the proverbial cake. When success had come calling without warning, Jay decided that an English-sounding name gave more credence to his legal firm. That aside, it was fiscally beneficial too. Being the senior partner of the firm, Sam Cooper had to be apparently conferred with on critical cases, thereby adding a precious sum in fee paid in foreign currency into an offshore account. If the client wanted to pay through legitimate channels, they could pay Jay who would transfer the money; alternatively, the client could pay directly into a numbered account in Switzerland that supposedly belonged to Mr Sam Cooper.