Pirate Vishnu (A Jaya Jones Treasure Hunt Mystery)

by Pandian, Gigi

  “As you can see,” Samuel said, “this is not a regular cabinet. It’s magic.”

  Chapter 31

  “Wait here,” Lane said to me as he ducked out of the front door of the store.

  “Oh no, you don’t,” I said. “You’re going to disappear again.”

  “I won’t,” he said before turning away from me. “Abdul, could you come with me?”

  I waited inside and opened the folded letter. I skimmed Anand’s short letter to his friend Faruk Marikayaer, which had been written in English.

  I have the Heart of India. I have a plan, but I must not say more. If I encounter difficulties, I will give my brother Vishwan the information he needs to retrieve it from where it is kept. He may turn to you for assistance. Treat him as you would a brother.

  A hand touched my elbow, startling me and nearly making me drop the letter. It was a man I hadn’t seen before. Though much younger, he had the same eyes and nose as Abdul. His son?

  “Madame,” he said, tugging on my elbow. “Madame would like to see one more thing. Special for you. In the back of the store.”

  Had Lane sent him to get me? I gave a hesitant nod.

  “Thank you, madame,” the younger shopkeeper said. “Just this way, madame. Through this curtain.”

  The moment I stepped through the door, strong arms grabbed me.

  “Don’t scream, Jones,” a familiar voice said in my ear. “I’m trying to save you. Naveen is here.” Lane relaxed his grip on my arms as I stopped squirming.

  “I’ve got us a motorcycle,” he continued. “Abdul is fulfilling his duty to help you. It’ll get us away from here—and back to Trivandrum before Naveen can get there. There isn’t time to catch a flight tonight. But I want to talk to the archivist again in person before Naveen can.”

  I hesitated.

  “We don’t have much time,” Lane said. “Do you trust Naveen?”

  “No.”

  “And he isn’t stupid. He’ll realize before too long that we’re out back. He’s too involved to get out now. He’s already killed once. Who knows what he’ll do?”

  Before I had time to think about what Naveen might possibly do, the bells at the front of the store jangled.

  Our young helper poked his head out from behind the curtain into the front section of the store. “One moment, sir!” he called out.

  Lane grabbed my hand with a firm grip and pulled me toward the back door.

  “Even if you’re right,” I said, “we can’t outrun him and make it to Trivandrum on some moped Abdul uses to get around Kochi.”

  “That’s not what I had in mind,” Lane said, pushing open the back door.

  In a small alley, a bright yellow motorcycle as large as a baby elephant sat on a small strip of concrete behind the shop. This was no outdated city bike. In spite of the dirt and mud in the alley, the bike had been polished so rigorously that any bugs that landed on it must have slipped right off. And there were a lot of bugs flying around that alley. One of them flew into my mouth that was hanging ajar.

  I coughed. “This isn’t a moped.”

  “This isn’t Abdul’s bike. You met his son inside just now. This is his bike. I paid him generously for it, so he was happy to do as his father wished.”

  “A racing bike,” I said, feeling my stomach churn—whether with excitement or fear, I wasn’t sure.

  “Indians do love their motorcycles.” Lane picked up the helmet from the bike’s storage basket and tossed it to me. It was as sleek as the bike.

  Lane straddled the bike as I adjusted the helmet strap. Luckily Abdul’s son was a small man, so the helmet was only a couple sizes too big for me.

  “Acha!” A muffled voice yelled from behind the door.

  More raised voices sounded inside the shop. Lane looked up sharply at me. I slid onto the leather seat behind him.

  “You know how to drive this type of bike?” I asked as I wrapped my arms around him.

  “Only one way to find out.” He revved the engine. I held on tighter.

  Abdul appeared in the back doorway. “Assalamu alaikum, my friends,” he said.

  “Walaikum assalam,” Lane replied.

  A cloud of dust filled the alley as we sped into the streets of Kochi.

  Chapter 32

  The hazy light of dusk filled my vision beyond the motorcycle helmet’s visor. I was glad for the fading light and the obscured view from my helmet. It meant I couldn’t clearly see just how close we came to every object we passed, be it building, automobile, pedestrian, or animal. The Kochi streets were narrow, but Lane barely slowed as he snaked the bike through holes in traffic no wider than the scrawny men pedaling their bicycles through the same spaces.

  The heat of the day had covered most of the evidence of the monsoon, drying the roads except for the potholes, numerous and deep. I knew I should have stuck with black rather than wearing white.

  But being covered in mud was the least of my problems. I hung on for dear life on the back of a high-octane motorcycle, holding onto a man I couldn’t figure out, running from another man who might be a murderer. Mud was the least of my problems.

  As we emerged from the winding side streets and turned onto the road that ran along the waterfront, I caught a glimpse of the red sky of the sun setting on the horizon of the Arabian Sea. The sight was so beautiful that for a second, I forgot where I was. I was back in Goa as a small child, riding on the back of my father’s moped along the beach, breathing the scents of fresh rain and the sea mingled together, laughing as bicycles passed our sputtering contraption. My father used to laugh back then.

  The bike tilted at a precarious angle as we rounded a curve leading to the bridge that would take us out of Kochi. My memory vanished as I held on tighter to Lane.

  Rush hour traffic was over, but the main road—two lanes rather than one—looked as full as ever. The difference was that when it wasn’t rush hour, the cars actually moved.

  Traffic came to a standstill at one of the few intersections managed by a traffic light. The scent of the ocean was replaced by dust and manure. Underneath the signal, a counter indicated the seconds before the light would turn back to green. It didn’t seem to stop drivers from inching forward and circling around other vehicles to gain a better position on the road.

  Lane pulled up next to a shiny red moped carrying a man in a dress shirt and slacks. Lane raised his voice above the din of the engines to ask if we were heading the right way to the highway heading south to Trivandrum. Lane spoke in English, and the man answered in kind.

  “Straight,” the man said, bobbing his head back and forth in that Indian way that looks neither like a shake nor a nod, and pointing straight ahead.

  The light turned green. I felt Lane’s muscles tense as he wove between the trucks, cars, auto-rickshaws, motorcycles, and the occasional street vendor pushing his cart. He kept up our speed wherever he could reasonably manage it, and sometimes when he shouldn’t have. I understood the urgency. It wasn’t possible that Naveen could be following us, but he must have known where we were headed, because I had stupidly told him I knew he’d gotten to Joseph. He could hire his own transportation and meet us there. Our only hope of getting to Joseph’s office first was speed.

  A swarm of shabby auto-rickshaws honked repeatedly from a few yards ahead of us, all trying to sneak into the narrow gap between two open-backed trucks full of laborers returning home. A herd of goats along the side of the road merged into traffic, much to the dismay of the boy leading them. Some of the braver drivers wove their mopeds and motorbikes between the scrawny animals.

  Lane revved the engine before changing his mind and slamming on the brakes. Lane’s feet touched the ground as we came to a full stop, steadying us so we wouldn’t be run over by the drivers who wouldn’t be deterred. My chest pressed into his back at the une
xpectedly harsh stop.

  I couldn’t blame the drivers for their impatience and willingness to keep driving in spite of what was in front of them. A timid soul might spend the entire day on the road without ever reaching his destination. There was a time when I’d been used to it, but it took time to readjust.

  When we finally emerged from the swell of traffic, the sun had finished its descent. Traffic on the dark highway was dense, but moved freely. It was here that I could feel the power of the motorcycle doing what it was made to do. For the next hour, we made good time, only slowing when traffic merged into a single lane to go around the elephant strolling down the left lane with his master and a stack of hay on his back.

  When the highway diverged, Lane pulled off the road at a late-night restaurant.

  At first I thought we were going to eat—which I had mixed feelings about since I knew we were in a hurry but my stomach screamed at me in hunger—but I was quickly proven wrong. Without leaving his perch on the bike, Lane pulled up alongside two men smoking in the parking lot.

  “Trivandrum?” he asked.

  “Straight,” the men said, their heads bobbing in unison. The one with the bushier mustache pointed onward to the road from which we’d come.

  Lane nodded and we headed back to the road.

  The next time we stopped, Lane pulled off the road in front of an Indian Oil petrol station to put gas in the bike.

  I leapt off the bike and shook out my hair. It felt like an entire dust cloud was forming between my hair and the helmet. I looked at my unruly mane in the bike’s side mirror as Lane filled up the tank.

  “Why doesn’t Aishwarya Rai’s hair look like this when she gets off the back of a motorcycle in the movies?” I said.

  “I kind of like it like that,” Lane said.

  “You like the rat’s-nest look?”

  “I like any look on you, Jones.”

  I watched the ease of the movements of his lean body. The sides of his shirt were pressed with sweat from where I’d held onto him on the back of the motorbike. The night was hot. I breathed deeply in the humid air.

  We made better time than expected, arriving in Trivandrum a little after one o’clock in the morning.

  Lane dropped me off at my hotel so I could get a few hours of sleep before going to see Joseph. He said he’d do the same and come back to pick me up.

  I walked up the drive of the hotel. I don’t know what it is with me and hotel lobbies, but a familiar face was waiting for me when I walked through the glass doors.

  A man was having an animated discussion in English with the clerk at the front desk. I knew that voice.

  “Sanjay?” I said.

  He turned from the clerk to face me. A travel bag sat on the floor next to his feet. He wore a jacket in spite of the warm night air. He must have just arrived on one of the flights that arrive in the middle of the night.

  “You’re alive,” he whispered. A smile lit up his face, but it didn’t hide his pallor.

  Something was wrong. Not just the strain of a long flight.

  Sanjay took two steps toward me before staggering. The flap of his jacket opened up. That’s when I saw it. The front of his shirt was drenched with a thick, dark red liquid. He took one more step forward before his legs gave out. Sanjay collapsed at my feet in a pool of blood.

  Chapter 33

  San Francisco, 1905

  The knock at the door was timid. Anand opened it to find Li’s sister Mai standing there. She looked stunning in a modern crimson dress. She had become a beautiful woman in her seventeenth year.

  “My brother says you have not been to The Siren’s Anchor lately. Is it because of what happened to your friend Samuel?”

  “I hope Li told you that Samuel is unharmed,” Anand said. “It was only a trick.”

  “Yes,” Mai said. “Li did not wish me to worry. I knew Samuel had been working as a spiritualist, but never thought it could be so dangerous.”

  “Samuel has gone to find his fortune in the Colorado silver mines,” Anand said. He suspected his friend had departed in part because of unrequited feelings toward Mai, but he kept that to himself. “And I have been contemplating returning to India. It was not prudent for me to remain there at the time, but I have now seen much of the world. This is a strange but marvelous country, but I think it may be time for me to go home.”

  “You’re leaving us?”

  “Is there anything keeping me here?”

  “I enjoyed our walk the other day.” She blushed. “It is a lovely afternoon. Perhaps it would help calm your worries to walk with me? You could tell me of your home.”

  “You wish to hear of the Kingdom of Travancore?”

  “I have never been outside of San Francisco,” Mai said. “I would like that very much.”

  Anand took Mai’s arm. She was stronger than she looked. He liked that. He liked her. Yet it was with trepidation that he took her arm. He knew how fragile life was. His own death, he could tolerate. But truly caring for another, in the way he could imagine caring for Mai? That was enough to frighten even Anand Selvam Paravar.

  Chapter 34

  Hospitals can be stressful under any circumstances, but it’s especially true when it’s in a foreign country. Almost everyone involved understood English, but that didn’t help much since I had no idea what had happened to Sanjay.

  Sanjay was still unconscious when the doctor cleaned and bandaged his wound. After clearing away the blood, they determined it was a knife wound. It wasn’t deep enough to have hurt any internal organs.

  Thank God. I don’t know what I would have done without Sanjay. He was the most solid thing in my life.

  The strange thing, they said, was the amount of blood. The knife wound didn’t seem serious enough to merit that amount of blood. They asked if Sanjay was a hemophiliac, which I knew he wasn’t. He’d had several injuries from his magic act, but none of them were life threatening like they would have been to a hemophiliac. Then why was there so much blood?

  I paced the crowded hallway in a daze, waiting for him to wake up. I walked down the hall to a waiting room where a colorful musical flickered on a small television screen. Even if I’d spoken the language of the film, I doubt anything could have held my attention.

  After what seemed the length of at least five Bollywood films—but was in reality somewhere around an hour—the doctor finally came to get me and led me back to Sanjay’s room.

  I sat at the edge of Sanjay’s cot, all too aware of the cloth bandage that covered his midsection.

  “You’re wearing pink,” was the first thing out of Sanjay’s mouth as he took my hand in his.

  “Your blood was all over me. In the confusion I left my backpack at the hotel. I had to buy a new blouse from one of the vendors outside. This country is worse than Telegraph Avenue in Berkeley—it’s impossible to find anything without color.”

  “It looks good on you.” Sanjay squeezed my hand and attempted a smile. His lips were dry and his thick hair was a mess. “It’s been a year since I’ve seen you wear color, after the airline lost your luggage and you had to improvise.”

  “How could I forget?” I said, looking Sanjay over with relief. “Something looks different about you,” I added.

  “Besides the blood loss, you mean?”

  “I know what it is. You don’t have your hat. Did the nurses take it?”

  “I didn’t bring it to India. Didn’t want to deal with airport security taking it apart. You know how many illusions are in that bowler hat?”

  “You probably could have used it to defend yourself,” I said. “What on earth happened?”

  Sanjay’s smile faded. “A package.”

  “A package?”

  Sanjay let go of my hand and sat up on the cot.

  “I got home to my lof
t, the day after you left,” he said. “Outside my door, a large package was waiting for me. I didn’t remember ordering anything online, but with everything going on, I thought maybe I’d forgotten something I ordered for an illusion. I didn’t open it right away. I made some dinner first.”

  “Sanjay,” I cut in.

  “What? I was famished. I ate. Speaking of which, I’m pretty famished now. I haven’t had a chance to eat since I arrived. I was too worried about you. Can’t we get out of here and get some food?”

  “The doctor is waiting for some test results,” I said. “You lost a lot of blood. You’re not going anywhere until then.”

  “It doesn’t make any sense,” Sanjay said. “How did I lose so much blood?”

  “You’re going to finish telling me what happened, so we can figure that out. But you don’t have to tell me in quite so much detail.”

  “Can’t you go get me some food? I don’t know Trivandrum, so I don’t know the best places to eat. If we were in Delhi—”

  “Sanjay. Nobody tried to stab me, so you’re the one who tells your story first. Now.”

  “It wasn’t a person who stabbed me,” Sanjay said.

  “What? How did you get stabbed, if not by a person?”

  “When I looked at the box,” Sanjay said, “I saw that it had been hand delivered, not mailed. I was curious. I opened the top of the box and saw the lid of a serving tray. Weird, right? Turns out it was spring-loaded. That’s when a knife popped out of the box and slashed my stomach.”

  “A booby trap?”

  “Sort of,” Sanjay said, shifting uncomfortably. “The weird thing, though, is that it didn’t seem bad at all. I didn’t think I needed to go to the doctor. It wasn’t much worse than cutting a finger while cooking. And it wasn’t nearly as serious as some of the injuries I’ve gotten when practicing a new illusion. I thought it must have been my magician friend Tempest playing a practical joke. She’s got a wacky sense of humor.”