Bradstreet Gate: A Novel

by Robin Kirman

  Tomorrow she would do just that, of course, Nandi promised, but since the previous volunteer hadn’t yet vacated her room, Georgia would need to spend the next night or two as a guest of a personal friend. “Mrs. Chandar lives very near here, on Cardinal Gracious Road.”

  Georgia heard a thudding noise from the hall: Sanjay was hauling her suitcases up the stairs.

  “Better you leave the larger parcels here,” Nandi explained. “Mrs. Chandar’s house is neat but small.”

  Georgia consented to this much—she could do one night with only her essentials—but when Nandi asked her to leave her passport with him, too, she refused.

  “It’s for the authorities, you see, Miss Calvin. I’ll need to get you registered. Things can be slow here, you understand, and you must want to rest.”

  “I’m in no hurry; I’ll come with you.” Years of travel with her father had taught her a few lessons at least: she would be polite, she would be patient, but she would never let her passport, not for a moment, out of sight.

  “Another day then,” Nandi relented. “Registration can wait. Sanjay will take you to your room now.”

  —

  Georgia’s temporary home was a ten-minute drive from Nandi’s office: a cramped, ground floor flat with a rusting toilet and just one sink for the apartment—in the kitchen area, surrounded by exposed pipes. Mrs. Chandar was waiting to show her in: her face was thickly lined, and she squinted like there was some trouble with her eyes.

  The room she pointed Georgia to was barely large enough to hold a cot and a small desk; on the desk sat a plastic fan, a lamp, and an old miniature television, with dials missing.

  “It’s perfect, thank you,” Georgia said.

  After unpacking the few items she’d brought with her, she lay down on the cot. Out in the hall, a phone began to ring; Mrs. Chandar answered and then came to knock on Georgia’s door. Georgia followed her into the kitchen, where an old rotary phone sat beside an electric kettle.

  Mr. Nandi was on the line. “I want to invite you to join me and a friend for dinner this evening.”

  “Tonight?” She hadn’t slept but an hour on the flight and jet lag was making her light-headed. “Honestly, I’d planned on just collapsing into bed.”

  “Oh, but you must eat. We’ll make it early. Sanjay will pick you up at six and deliver you again at home.”

  She agreed; if Nandi meant this dinner as a gesture of welcome, she didn’t wish to seem ungrateful. After a short rest and a rinse with cold water at the kitchen sink, she dressed in her only change of clothes: a button-down and linen pants. Sanjay called to her outside the door.

  “We must leave now, miss. The roads can be slow this time of day.”

  They headed north, back on the highway, crossing again over fields of low, congested housing; sturdy tile-roofed homes gave way to hovels topped with aluminum siding or simple sheets of plastic, held down with stones. Soon the city center was behind them and they were back on the dusty highway: roadside shops sold maps and gum and trinkets for tourists. Above one, an electric sign blared: LUXURY SURPRISES.

  She had the urge to tell Sanjay to turn around; she hadn’t bargained for an hour’s drive each way. But Nandi and his friend were waiting. It would be too rude to stand them up; better to use the drive to catch some sleep. She closed her eyes and when she opened them again, at Sanjay’s honking, she saw muddied, skinny bovine haunches, a tail snapping; they were in the country, waiting for a cow to cross the road.

  Not long after, Sanjay pulled up to an impressive wrought-iron gate under a freshly painted sign: HILTON MUMBAI.

  The gate opened and the car moved down a driveway to where three men in white uniforms lined up to open Georgia’s door. Sanjay instructed them where she was headed and two different men, in different livery, appeared to escort her through the lobby, past other white tourists and under chandeliers, to drop her in the dining room. The hotel restaurant was frigid and low-lit; the walls were painted with frescoes of dancing elephants. Mr. Nandi waved to her from a front table. He was dressed in a brown suit and pink shirt, beside a fat white-haired man in a well-cut gray suit.

  Mr. Nandi performed the introductions. “Mr. Sadiq Gupta.”

  When Gupta put out his hand to shake, a gold watch jangled from his wrist. He handed Georgia a business card and she slid it into her pocket.

  “Mr. Gupta is one of our largest donors.”

  She took her seat between the men. The waiter laid her napkin on her lap; he brought no menu.

  “Allow me to do the ordering,” said Mr. Gupta. “I come here often; this is among the best restaurants in Mumbai.”

  “I told you the man was generous,” said Nandi, smiling across at Gupta.

  Generous, maybe, but she was starting to suspect that it wasn’t for her benefit that she’d been kept from bed after two sleepless days and carted miles away from her new home. These men wanted something; it was only the substance of their desire that eluded her. She had nothing to offer, nothing but the company of a fair-haired American—could that be all they sought?

  Mr. Gupta began making small talk, asking how she found his country so far.

  “On first glance, it’s a culture of extremes.” A polite way of saying one marked by shocking inequality. Already, this dinner had begun to feel oppressive—she was recalling her unpleasant work back in D.C., the many meetings she’d endured with potential museum donors, feigning interest because they were, like Gupta, reputed to be “generous men.”

  “A culture of extremes, exactly,” Gupta agreed. “Both very foolish and very advanced. India has a long tradition of this. My father was educated at Oxford. My brother’s son studies now at MIT. It’s a fine school, they say.”

  “Yes, it is.”

  “And you, too, Mr. Nandi tells me, studied at a fine school. Harvard, am I correct?”

  It surprised her to hear the name of a place so far away repeated here, though the explanation was simple enough: the volunteer agency must have sent Nandi her CV.

  “I have a son, seventeen now,” Gupta explained. “He would very much like to attend Harvard himself.”

  “Well, I’m sure he can if he works hard and if he’s smart.”

  “Oh, he is certainly smart. Smart enough to choose a rich father.”

  Mr. Nandi laughed loudly at his friend’s joke. A rather cynical take on the principle of karma, Georgia thought, but it must be hard not to grow cynical in a city where children begged on the streets outside designer shops.

  Mr. Nandi turned to her. “I suggested to Mr. Gupta that perhaps you could be of help.”

  There was a lull; the men were waiting for her to speak. “I’m sorry,” she said finally, “but there seems to be some confusion. I came to work in an orphanage. And you look healthy to me, Mr. Gupta, so, until your son qualifies…”

  Nandi coughed and wiped his forehead with his napkin. Despite the cold air blasting from above, he’d begun sweating.

  “Naturally, you’d need to meet the boy first,” said Mr. Gupta. “You’ll visit us in Malabar Hill. You’ll see Dhanesh is a very special child.”

  “She will,” insisted Nandi. “She’ll meet the boy tomorrow.”

  Georgia fiddled with her silver, growing nervous. She disliked how freely Nandi spoke of what she would do—none of it implied by their previous agreement. She’d come to aid the deprived, not to dine among men in Bermuda shorts and loafers, women stuffing their rings into purses before they dared to step outside. An American couple sat bickering at the next table: “For God’s sake, Sue, it won’t make you look fat. The guide said money belt up front.”

  She must remember though, that beyond this hotel, she was not among her countrymen; she knew no one in this place so far but Sanjay and these men, and so she refrained from speaking her mind. She must better understand Nandi’s intentions and her options. In the worst case, if she were the victim of fraud, then she’d contact Global Aid and lodge a complaint. She could demand her bags back, take her things, an
d go. She was here by choice, a volunteer, she told herself, though, seated between these strange men, she’d begun to feel more like a prisoner.

  Four waiters arrived to parcel out three heaping plates of food.

  “These are just the appetizers,” offered Gupta. “You must try one of each.”

  “You see,” said Nandi, “how very generous Mr. Gupta is.”

  16

  Back in her room at Mrs. Chandar’s, Georgia lay awake; the fan clattered madly but scarcely stirred the air. She was too full and hot to sleep. After a restless hour, she considered getting up and asking Mrs. Chandar if she might use her phone.

  Her father was her first thought, the obvious person to turn to for advice in such a situation. But relations between them had grown strained. Her father’s show in Chelsea had caused a storm within their family. Her mother had been outraged: it was vile enough that her ex-husband had taken those pictures in the first place, but to display them again at that moment, to profit from their daughter’s ordeal, and from her public humiliation—this was a level of selfishness and depravity too low even for him. Georgia chose to disengage; she’d skipped the opening, pleading sick, and though she sensed her mother went too far in her anger, privately, she’d agreed with her.

  The argument had only added to the stress of her first year out of school. Most of Georgia’s memories of that time were of fear and isolation. Strangers recognized her from her photo in the papers; the story of the Patel case refused to go away. Storrow remained in the news, depicted as a drifting victim or a monster on the loose: trying to escape recognition, he’d moved from Boston to D.C., then to Cincinnati. Finally, he’d been hired by a Cincinnati law firm under a false name, and then summarily dismissed when the lie was discovered. Around the time Georgia discovered these facts, from a Washington Post story published a year after the murder, she began receiving strange phone calls. The number was blocked, and the caller usually hung up after a few seconds; he never spoke, but once she’d heard him cough “excuse me” and, based on this alone, this reflexive courtesy, she came to believe the man was Storrow.

  To this day she didn’t know if it really had been him; after a few weeks, the calls had simply ceased and nothing like them had occurred again. A year went by without incident and then another. The press moved on to other stories of other alleged murderers, and even she was beginning to forget about Storrow and Julie’s death—or to think of them without fits of anxiety—until her visit to New York.

  Alice’s fantasies, Charlie’s loneliness as thick as hers. Charlie’s was the voice, Georgia realized, that she most wished to hear then, in Mrs. Chandar’s dark, sweltering room, but she wouldn’t allow herself to call him. She’d already abused what kindness he had left to show her, and anyway she couldn’t risk letting the dread she’d felt with him, in New York, catch up with her here.

  —

  The next morning, when Mr. Nandi called at nine, Georgia inquired when she would be paying her first visit to the orphanage. Today was not a good day, Nandi said, because the orphanage director was ill, but Sanjay would be by to collect her around noon to show her the Mumbai sights.

  “Actually, I’d prefer to go around on my own.”

  “I would discourage that. Until you become more familiar with our city.” It seemed that Mr. Nandi meant to look after his valued property. Closely. But Georgia was insistent; the events of the day before had made her all the more determined to assert her freedom here, and Nandi’s reluctance to take her to the orphanage that morning only deepened her suspicions. She decided she didn’t need to wait for him; among the paperwork that she’d received from Global Aid was an address for Mission of Hope.

  According to the guidebook map, the trip was short: the nearest train station, Andheri, was just a few blocks away, and a few stops on the Western Churchgate line would get her almost to the orphanage door. She packed her rupees and her passport—after Nandi’s efforts to take it from her, she didn’t trust leaving it behind. To keep people from staring, she wore her hair twisted up inside a cap and an Indian print scarf draped over her Western clothes. Experience had made Georgia confident on foreign soil; she was adept at navigating even poorly marked roads and at picking up local habits. On the streets, she moved swiftly with the crowd and, at the crossings, ran alongside other Mumbaikars, slipping nimbly between cars.

  Traveling by train appeared much simpler and safer than by foot. She found the Andheri railway station and was relieved to see that the Mumbai trains didn’t look like quite the death traps the guidebooks made them out to be. Parked on the platforms, they appeared sturdy enough, though the entrances were without doors. She moved deep inside the full car; the human stench was potent. Before the train had even left the platform, a child approached her, hand outstretched.

  Her guidebook had warned her not to give—once tourists started doling out rupees, they would find themselves swarmed by children. Georgia gripped a rail and held her purse close, with the straps wrapped around her arm. Stoically, she shook her head over and over; it did no good. Within minutes she was surrounded: these children knew their trade; the motions and noises, even the costumes seemed arranged for effect. A boy began to whimper. His face was streaked with dirt. A girl pressed a flower into Georgia’s palm; her hair was done in braids.

  “Please,” Georgia found herself pleading back at them, “a little space; I’ll give you something when I’m getting off, okay?”

  At first Georgia thought it was the tug of a child’s hand she felt; but when she looked down to check her purse, just the straps were left dangling, neatly cut. In front of her, a man leaped out the open doorway onto the platform. The train was still in motion; she waited for it to slow and jumped down next, shouting for somebody to stop the man racing ahead.

  People pushed against her, entering and leaving the train. Georgia watched the black head dashing through the crowd, and then lost sight of him; the thief and her purse—with her money, her passport—were gone.

  Inside the station, she found a man in uniform who led her to another station employee, seated at a desk in a small office; a plastic fan turned in one corner, flypaper hung from the ceiling. She explained what had happened, and the man made out a note for her to show the conductor: her fee would be waived for her return trip.

  “That’s all you plan to do? What about police?”

  “You want police?” the man asked, rubbing his nose; clearly he found money for a return trip the better choice.

  She reconsidered. “I’d like to call the U.S. embassy.”

  The man at the desk said something in Hindi to his colleague and then returned to her. “Police can take you to the embassy. If you’ll just wait a few minutes, madame. The police will come.”

  She waited, thirty minutes and then an hour and then two; the police were occupied, the station official told her, or else they must be coming from another station. Sometimes, he admitted, there were problems with the trains. She watched a fly trapped on the flypaper buzz and then grow still, buzz and stop, buzz and stop. She was sweating terribly.

  “Maybe I should just call the embassy directly,” she told the man at last. He shook his head. He didn’t know about the embassy, he said; his duty was to notify Mumbai police and keep her there until the proper authorities arrived to file a report.

  “You’re saying I can’t leave?”

  “No, madame. Police are coming; they expect to find you here.”

  The time was nearly twelve. Soon, Sanjay would be arriving at Mrs. Chandar’s to collect her; he and Nandi would worry at her absence. She ought to get word to Nandi somehow—but his contact information had been inside her purse. In the pocket of her pants, though, the same she’d worn the night before, she discovered Sadiq Gupta’s business card.

  It was Gupta’s secretary who answered her call and realized at once the mess Georgia was in: “If the police ever arrive, you’ll be there all day and evening.” After consulting with Mr. Gupta, the secretary assured Georgia that the sit
uation would be handled now: “Whoever seems to be in charge there, just put him on the line.”

  Twenty minutes later, Georgia was ushered to the station entrance, where a silver SUV waited for her outside. A man in a clean white jacket beckoned her into the backseat.

  “Thank you so much,” she told him, finding herself suddenly close to tears. “I’ll be fine now, thank you, once I reach the embassy.”

  “Embassy, miss?” The driver locked the doors and honked at a beggar who leaned over the hood. “Mr. Gupta has instructed me to take you to his home.”

  —

  Three more servants greeted Georgia at Gupta’s apartment, leading her into a plush living room where, among the marble tabletops and upholstered divans, a boy and a strikingly pretty woman were seated. The woman rose to take Georgia’s hand; she was dressed in Western style in a deep red blouse and skirt, makeup flawless, if a bit heavy. She looked far too young to be either Gupta’s wife or the mother of the teen boy who sat with her, but it appeared that she was both.

  “My son and I are very grateful that you’ve come today, with all your difficulties. Rest assured, my husband deals directly with the embassy. You don’t need to worry, Ms. Calvin. Dhanesh, say hello.”

  The boy mumbled his greeting. He was a mousy type, with a narrow face and long-lashed eyes. Mr. Gupta had claimed his son was seventeen, but this boy seemed several years younger.

  “Dhanesh is very eager for his first lesson.”

  “I’m sorry? What lesson?”

  “I suppose an introduction,” Mrs. Gupta offered. “You could start by describing the expectations you encountered at Harvard, or with the application process.”

  She could hardly stand: the cold air of the car on her sweat-dampened clothes had given her a chill. What she felt, along with relief at the sight of such pleasant surroundings, was a desperate desire for a warm shower and a rest. “I’m not in any state, I’m afraid, to have a lucid thought right now.”

  “Of course.” Mrs. Gupta smiled, not acknowledging the distress in Georgia’s tone. “In that case, you’re welcome to simply get to know each other then, until my husband returns to help you with your passport. Have a seat. He should be back home shortly.”