“They catch bombil,” Raj said. “And dry them on those.” He pointed along the shore.
In the fading light I could make out a network of frames, small black strips hanging down from them.
A fish gallows.
“They make Bombay Duck from the bombil fish.” He didn’t clarify this local contradiction.
A gentle breeze rippled across my face. The air was pure fish concentrate, much more pungent than the smell of South Street Seaport; this was the real thing. An eloquent reminder of what this strip of land was for.
Nearby, laughter rose from a small group of men. They were playing a game of some kind. I couldn’t see properly. They squatted in a circle, under a bombil frame, their hands waving, their fists thumping the sand in excitement.
The light was disappearing fast. There was no sunset to speak of; dull clouds hung overhead. Would the fishermen go out if it rained too hard? The boats didn’t look substantial—no problem while the Arabian Sea quietly slapped tiny breakers on the beach, but in a real swell?
“Are you thinking about your daddy?” Raj looked at me as if I were in the last stages of a terminal illness.
Actually I had momentarily banished him from my head. I was watching fisherfolk, thinking of them. I had found a bit of Bombay where India evoked something other than pain for me.
I smiled at Raj. “I was thinking that it wouldn’t be a bad thing to be a fisherman.” I half expected Raj to turn on me, explain the brutality of the life, how these people made no money, how they were exploited, and how their existence was a living hell.
“It is very noble, I think,” he said.
It was dark. Lamps shone, on the beach and farther away, on the water. Points of light moved slightly with the gentle swell: bobbing, bobbing, bobbing.
I asked Raj if they fished at night.
I could imagine the nocturnal bombil hunt, the highlight of a daily cycle that had remained unchanged for thousands of years and would carry on long after Clay & Westminster, Jefferson Trust, and the whole of Wall Street had crumbled to dust. Well, maybe the fisher tradition wouldn’t survive that long. But I liked to think so.
“I don’t think they go out in the night,” Raj said. “Bombil are office hours fish.”
Raj certainly knew how to burst a visionary’s bubble.
“Shall we go back now?” I said.
“You want some dinner?” Raj asked.
I desperately didn’t want to hurt his feelings, but I needed to be alone. A compromise, perhaps. “I’ll tell you what. We’ll have a small bite in the Taj restaurant and then I’m going to bed. I’m feeling kind of tired. Is that okay?”
Raj put his hand on my shoulder. “No problem.”
We turned and made our way up the beach, through the line of shanties and to the car parked in the world of traffic and tinpot commerce. We had crossed a boundary into bustle and it was hard to believe that a few yards behind our backs a woman was attaching floats to a net in the tranquillity of a fishing community.
THIRTY
Ihad hoped that a few envelopes would be poking from under the door of my hotel room when I returned. Bottles, stuffed with optimistic messages, washed up on my shore.
Nothing. The beach was clean.
It was only eight-thirty; Carol wouldn’t be back yet, hardly left even. But I called her room anyway and got her voicemail. I didn’t leave a message.
I had watched Raj wolf down a biryani, but hadn’t touched a thing on my plate. He knew I wanted to be left in peace and ate with ulcerous haste. He wiped his mouth and told me I was a good chap. He told me I could go to his chawl anytime I liked, day or night, if I needed a shoulder. He was sorry that it did not have a phone, but one day . . . With that he bounded out of the hotel restaurant.
Clinging to a cold Kingfisher, I removed the order-routing agreement from the room safe. For a moment I hadn’t been able to remember the year of my birth, my head was full of vultures, mud, and the image of a little wooden cross.
At the desk, I flicked through the first few pages of the agreement. In one sense, it was standard enough. In return for advice and good service and a heap of other incentives, the broker received the exclusive rights to the client’s share dealing.
But the scale of the thing was utterly inconsistent with a business only worth fifty million. The parties to the agreement were anticipating around a billion of activity. And the client was an unknown, not one of the big institutions; not a Goldman, not a Fidelity, not a Citi; not a Jefferson. Some dingy, offshore dog.
I turned to the signature pages. The front cover usually named the key players only and mopped up the minnows with a dismissive “and others.” You had to go to the back to find the hangers-on.
Tom, Dick, and Harry. All offshore. Obscure bastions of vested interest.
Then a Dutch company, or perhaps the Netherlands Antilles. Whatever, it was the name that seized me. Huxtable BV.
It came back to me through the haze of half a decade. The name of the half-eaten file. The name launched at me in a mist of scotch by my father. His Bombay breakfast of scam and eggs.
And who had signed on behalf of Huxtable? The squiggle of black gave no clue to the identity of the Mont Blanc– or Dupont-wielding signatory. Unless, of course, one had seen the signature before. And I had.
I would have recognized the mark of Ernie Monks anywhere.
I opened a second beer and picked up the phone. I dialed Paula’s home number; it was around seven-thirty in the morning for her, and I might catch her before she left the house for the city.
“You awake?”
Paula groaned and snuffled. “I’ve got no makeup on, you know.”
“I’ll avert my eyes.” I allowed a few moments for Paula to gather herself. “You listening?”
“Nope.”
“Good. Now get a pen.”
“I already got one. What’s up?”
“Call Marty Smith at Callaghan’s in the Netherlands Antilles and get him to do a search on Huxtable BV. I want the result yesterday.”Huxtable could have been Dutch, but I was sure it wasn’t. Holland was too nice a place to be home to a company like Huxtable.
I wanted Marty to use the heavy-duty scalpel, to dig deep. “Get him to find the ultimate shareholders, if he can. It may be tough, but he can charge what he likes for this one.”
“Anything else?” Paula sounded fully awake now.
“Yes. I want you to trawl through the office records to see if anything shows for Huxtable, if we ever billed them for anything. You might find something logged under Ernie Monks or . . .” I hesitated. “Or my father.”
“Sure,” she said, displaying no surprise or curiosity. “And what cost center should I charge Callaghan’s to? You know how Keenes gets with this kind of thing. He’ll be all over the bill if you’re not careful.”
She had a point, a good one given the time of day in the US. I thought about it. “Charge it to the Schuster Mannheim merger file.” The expense tab on the file was astronomical and there was no client to fuss about it. I could’ve stuck in the bill for a new suit and nobody would notice.
“Naughty boy,” Paula said.
“It’ll be you that processes it, Paula.”
“Will that mean I don’t get a going away gift?”
“Read back the name of the company to me, so I know we’re on the same page.”
She spelled out a name. Microsoft.
I grunted. “Very funny.”
“I know how to write down a name, counselor; even one with three syllables. Hux-ta-ble. There. Happy?”
“No.” I paused. “Today, I visited the place where my father died.”
I heard her intake of breath. “That must’ve been tough.”
“Yes,” I said.
“It’s kind of hard to say this now, but your mother called at the office.”
“Did you say where I was?”
“I didn’t have to. After five minutes of shadowboxing, she figured it out. She’s a smart lady. So
unds real sweet too.”
“Oh no.”
“I got the impression that she might follow you out there.”
“Oh Christ, she mustn’t. I’m not sure she’d survive a second time around.”
“I told her you’d be back in New York any minute.”
“Well done, Paula.”
“None of my business, Fin, but I think you should have told her. She sounds pretty grounded.”
When she’s not on the pills, Paula. When she’s not airborne on the wings of those little white fuckers.
“Mendip said I shouldn’t,” I said lamely.
“He family, counselor?”
My godfather. He owned the family house, the family purse. “You’re right, I should have spoken to her,” I said.
“Well, like I said, it’s none of my business. I’ll get back to you when Callaghan has something.”
I tried my mother’s number, letting it ring until I got a harsh, high-pitched monotone.
What would my father have done? Before the Fall. When he was still the Clay & Westminster Executive Committee member with a first from Oxford, when he could have charged by the word rather than the hour. When he seemed to have the answer to everything. Which tome would he have pulled from the shelf, blown the dust from, opened at just the right page? His law always seemed to be the old, immutable law. He rarely paid heed to new cases, relying instead on the tablets handed down from the mountain, but still he always seemed to be one step ahead.
Until the half-eaten file had caught him out. Until he’d compromised.
I slept a short sleep filled with faces, dirt, and flying feathers.
Consciousness only really returned when I heard the flushing of the toilet, when I watched the frothing tide of puke and water sucked from the gleaming porcelain to start its short journey to the Arabian Sea.
My neck rested on the rim of the toilet bowl, as if I were waiting for the executioner.
At length I got up, brushed my teeth, and returned to the bedroom.
I tried Carol’s number again.
“Uh.” I’d woken her.
“How was your evening?”
“Fine.”
Silence.
“I visited the Towers of Silence with Raj.” I could have gone on.
Carol let out a yawn. “Was that such a smart idea?”
Smart? Smart wasn’t the issue.
“I’ve been reading an order-routing agreement,” I said. “There’s a whole lot more to Ketan Securities than meets the eye, and it has some very strange clients.”
Carol groaned. “Jesus, Fin, it’s late.”
I looked at my watch. It wasn’t that late. “Can I come and see you?”
“No.” There was no hesitation.
“Why not?”
“Because.”
“What kind of answer is that?”
“Look, I’m sorry. I guess you’ve had a shitty day, but we both need some rest. We have a full day tomorrow.”
“Haven’t you heard what I’m telling you? Ketan Securities stinks. Our job should be to find out how full of shit it is—”
“Like I said, you need some rest. Good night.”
The line went dead.
THIRTY-ONE
The Askari & Co. S Class Mercedes dropped me outside its somber Victorian headquarters at nine the next morning.
A hundred years of accumulated grime stained its entire frontage, windows included. I’d seen it before. Just the once, when I’d visited Sunil Askari with my mother.
I climbed the stone steps into the reception area. It hadn’t changed. It was like a railroad station: people and packages, ebb and flow, announcements and waiting, waiting, waiting.
And at the edge of it all stood a man in khaki with an ancient Lee Enfield 303 slung over his shoulder. It was the same guy as five years ago; slightly fewer spots, more facial hair, but unmistakably a grownup version of the dopey adolescent I remembered.
Raj was leaning against the receptionist’s counter, waiting for me. He looked smart. Today’s pants went all the way down to his worn but shiny shoes. There was a flash of steel at his wrist.
“Morning, morning.” He put his arm around my shoulder and turned to the receptionist. “This is a very important attorney fromNew York. He is our client. He will have an office here during his visit and every convenience must be afforded to him.”
The receptionist smiled and waggled her head while wiping the area where Raj had been leaning with a large red cloth.
He led me down a corridor. “You like the suit, ya?” He stood in front of me to allow me to admire it. “Pierre Cardin. Very chic.”
I said I liked it very much.
He stuck his wrist under my nose. “And the watch. Omega Seamaster, as used by James Bond.” He lowered his voice. “A fake, but a very good one, don’t you think?”
I couldn’t help but agree.
“I’ll take you to your office now. Everything is ready for you.”
We passed into an enormous room. Nothing here had changed in five years.
“This is where all the clerks and junior attorneys work,” Raj said.
It was a great hangar of a place; a sea of desks, all occupied and loaded with piles of papers tied in red treasury tape. Around the desks were more piles of papers, so tall that they nearly obscured the men and women working at the desks. The room testified to the labor-intensive essence of legal practice on the subcontinent.
Down one side of the room ran a long counter, over which a conveyor belt of young women in saris moved new and finished work to and from the legal factory floor.
Aside from the swish of the ceiling fans, there was curiously little noise. Where were the ringing phones? Where was the office banter?
I could never love the law enough to work in a place like this.
We left the room and squeezed along a dark passageway lined with gray filing cabinets. Raj stopped at a gap in the gunmetal and opened a door.
The room reminded me of the windowless cubicle used by Mendip back in New York. A single table, a schoolroom chair. Blank gray walls.
“Your office,” Raj announced. “I do not have such a thing. I work in the main room. It is fine, but one day I will have my own office and that will be grand.”
If it was anything like this, Raj would be better off where he was.
Askari had assigned me the least officelike office in the building. There was a phone, a barrel-sized wastebasket, and a dozen or so draft documents marshaled neatly on the table. I glanced at them. No Liquid Paper or Wite-Out this time.Askari & Co. SA/950.Sunil Askari, file reference 950.
Raj looked guilty. “I hope you are not offended by the work carried out on your drafts. They were indeed excellent.”
“Who made the amendments?” I asked.
Raj made as if to tidy the already tidy deck of documents. “I did.” I could barely hear him.
“Then I’m not offended in the least.”
Raj beamed.
I pointed to the front covers. “Surely they should have the initials RS on them.”
Raj stopped smiling. “I don’t think clients would appreciate that.”
“One day you’ll be senior partner,” I said.
He seemed shocked by the suggestion. “There is a ceiling for me. I am a Dalit.”
Untouchable. The caste system: the rich man in his castle, the poor man at his gate. Immutable, divinely ordained roles and status, changeable only in successive lives. But wasn’t the President of India a Dalit? Raj turned away from me and shuffled some papers.
The topic was obviously as untouchable as the subject matter.
“Askari wants me to do some things for him,” he said at last. “So I must leave you here. Lunch will be brought to you at one. If there is anything else you want—tea, coffee”—he winked—“or beer. Then call reception.” He pointed redundantly at the phone. “Dial 0.”
“When will you be back?” I asked. “Or shall I just leave when I’m through and see you tomorro
w?”
Raj waved his hands excitedly. “Good heavens, no. I will be back in the afternoon. Then I hope you will let me entertain you this evening. My treat.”
“Sure. But it’s my treat this time.”
And then I was alone.
My first inclination was to sweep up the documents into a bundle and head back to the hotel, where at least there was a window and minibar.
But no. It would be noticed, commented on, cause trouble. Not just for me, but maybe Raj too. Something made me feel protective toward him.
It would be late evening in New York. My hand curled around the phone, then I drew it away. I’d give Pablo Tochera until morning.
I worked my way through the pile of documents.
Most of what I’d originally written had stayed, but the changes made by Raj looked sensible enough. No point scoring, nothing persnickety, just solid matching of circumstance to law.
Except in one respect.
I went back to the sale and purchase agreement, the cornerstone contract for Project Badla.
Clause 5.Exclusivity.The keep-out-the-riffraff clause. Normally this outlined what was to happen to client lists after the sale, which part of the business kept which accounts, where the income was credited. In this type of deal it was important, because a part of the fifty million was to be deferred, depending on how well the business performed after it was bought by Jefferson Trust. That meant if other parts of Jefferson Trust appropriated Ketan clients, then the take for the sellers could be slashed.
I’d expected a scuffle around the exclusivity clause. But what was being suggested in the amended Clause 5 confused the hell out of me.
Ketan wanted all Indian clients to be the exclusive domain of the Ketan business. Fine. Next, they wanted all the non-Indian clients for trading in Indian stocks. More controversial, but still not surprising. Then they said it was okay for Jefferson to keep the income generated by clients listed on a schedule at the back of the document.
I looked at the list. It was a who’s who of every major institution in the world. Nobody seemed to be left out of the party.
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