JOHNNY GONE DOWN

by Bajaj, Karan

‘How did you put in my photograph?’

  ‘A simple lamination job. Five-year-olds at the favela could do it. Getting the passport was the tricky part. I couldn’t get you an Indian one, no matter how much I tried. Indians seem to be careful people who don’t travel much, at least not to this part of the world. How did you turn out like this?’ He smiled. ‘Anyway, I thought America would do since you’ve lived there before.’

  ‘Will they recognize me at the airport?’ I asked, still examining the passport.

  He laughed. ‘Not unless you do something foolish. You have an inflated sense of your fame. Every day, there is a new celebrity in Rio - no one remembers anyone.’

  ‘I don’t know how to thank you. I don’t even know how to begin to thank you,’ I said.

  He waved his hand. ‘I’ve done nothing, men,’ he said. ‘All of us partied for the last five years while you worked. Yet, you took the fall alone. But we will get back at them, you wait and see.’

  ‘Don’t do anything foolish,’ I said.

  ‘I won’t,’ he said. ‘I’ve learnt from you. Silence and business will be my weapons now.’

  I grimaced. ‘Get out of this business. No good comes of it.’

  ‘Cocaine is my life, my karma yoga, you might say.’ He smiled at me. ‘You know me. I have no concept of right or wrong, good or bad; there are some things I do and some things I don’t, that’s all.’

  The car drew up at the airport.

  ‘Here is your bag,’ said Marco. ‘It contains five hundred dollars, toiletries, a few clothes and shoes. This is the maximum cash you are allowed to carry, and I didn’t want to take a chance.’

  ‘That’s more than enough,’ I said. ‘I’ve lived on less.’

  ‘Now here’s the tough part. No matter what happens, don’t call me and don’t call Lara; not for a couple of years at least, until I have sorted out this mess. The Godmother won’t forget and the police will be under a lot of pressure from the media to do something. You will have both on your back. Every phone call, every message, every movement that Lara and I make could be traced.’ He paused.

  ‘You are on your own from now on,’ he said. ‘I have no contacts there. Just keep this one number, but don’t call him unless it’s a matter of life and death. I mean it. Don’t call him unless you have to. He is an important man and will know how to help you - but he’ll extract a price you will find hard to pay. Just trust me on this.’

  ‘I trust you,’ I said quietly as we stood outside the terminal.

  He looked me in the eye and hugged me with all his strength.

  ‘Stop being a faggot now, will you?’ I said, tearing up as I walked off.

  The Entrepreneur

  Make mistakes of ambition and not mistakes of sloth.

  Niccolo Machiavelli

  25 January 1995, Shelter for the homeless, Minnesota, USA

  ‘Where are you from?’

  I looked up from my bowl of watery soup to see a middle-aged African-American man with long, knotted hair and needle marks all over his eyelids. His hand trembled as he tried to guide a spoonful of soup into his mouth. Despite his best efforts, he kept spilling it over his tattered overcoat which looked like it hadn’t been washed in years. There were scars all over his wrist and white foam dribbled out of his mouth. A far gone crack addict, I noted, someone who had to stick needles into his eyeballs to get the drug to flow into his bloodstream faster: the veins in the arms and wrists took too much time. The seed money for the business I ran in Rio came from feeding junkies like him, I thought shamefully I had no right to complain. I deserved to be where I was.

  ‘Where are you from, brother?’ he asked again.

  ‘Very far,’ I said.

  A gust of Arctic wind blew in through the broken windows of the large dining hall and I shivered. Three months in Minnesota and I still wasn’t used to the weather. The first thing I would do once I got a job was buy an overcoat. Just after I bought a shaving razor. Just after I bought a toothbrush. Just after I bought a second pair of underwear. Just after…

  ‘Why are you here, brother?’ he asked, his hands still shaking violently. His teeth chattered - or what was left of them anyway. Half were broken, the rest chipped at the edges. His lips were sore and chapped and his gums showed remnants of dried blood. I had an eerie feeling that I would end up like him soon. Another week in this cold and I would probably need to shoot up something to give myself an illusion of warmth - crack was cheaper than overcoats after all.

  Everyone around me had already capitulated. Unshaven faces, unkempt hair, rotting, decaying flesh, men and women freezing in the cold, every item of clothing except the bare essentials sold for crack. They appeared stunned into stoned silence, like zombies silently awaiting a passage into the afterworld.

  ‘Why are you here?’ the man demanded again, his rough voice breaking the silence in the icy dining room.

  No one paid any attention except the two kind-hearted volunteers who had brought food for the homeless today. They looked at him warningly, but I don’t think he noticed - or cared.

  Why indeed, I wondered. Because Nick Bolton, the wayward plumber whose identity I had now taken, had made Minneapolis, Minnesota his home. Because five hundred dollars ran out in three months in this city even if you stayed in cheap motels and scrounged for leftovers outside budget diners. Because I had no means to get more money since I’d already bartered my only asset, my prosthetic arm, for a sweater at the midnight black market on Hennepin Avenue.

  ‘I’m here to look for a job,’ I said.

  He thrust some soup into his mouth excitedly.

  ‘There are no jobs here,’ he said, shivering. ‘No chances for the poor. No chances for the yellow, brown or black.’

  I nodded. Despite his piteous state, he made sense. I was no longer an MIT graduate. I was a plumber who had dropped out of high school, and in the twenty years I had been out of the country, it seemed that even plumbers needed a high school education to fix leaking toilets.

  ‘The only jobs are in drugs. Do you deal?’ he said.

  Did I deal? Just a few months ago, I was a drug lord of sorts with a fifty million dollar empire, I wanted to tell him.

  ‘No,’ I said.

  He sensed my hesitation. Suddenly, his authoritative voice turned squeaky and pleading.

  ‘Just one hit, please, brother. One hit only, please.’

  ‘No, no,’ I said, shaking my head violently.

  ‘One hit please.’ He was getting hysterical now. ‘I’ll do anything for you, brother. Just one rock. I’ll blow you, brother. I’ll give you the best blow job you ever got, by Jesus.’ He opened his mouth and ran his tongue over his bloody gums. ‘See. No teeth. I put you in nice and soft. Please, please, one hit, brother.’

  ‘I don’t deal drugs,’ I said, nearly shouting now. ‘I didn’t deal drugs. Not now, not ever.’ I slammed my soup bowl on the table, held my head in my hands and began to sob silently. Why had I entered her life just to ruin it? Would she ever be able to move on? Had I given up too quickly? Should I have taken my ten year imprisonment instead of running away like a rat?

  The man calmed down a little at my outburst.

  ‘Jesus always creates a pattern,’ he said unexpectedly. ‘When you are close, you only see unravelled threads, but with time and distance, it will reveal itself as a mosaic. Just wait and watch. Everything was meant to be exactly the way it is.’

  ‘What?’ I said, raising my head, surprised at his sudden lucidity.

  ‘Jesus creates a pattern. Jesus creates a mosaic,’ he said animatedly.

  ‘It’s a pattern; you just don’t know it now.’ His hands were shaking even more.

  ‘A pattern,’ he said, banging his fist on the table. He upset his bowl of soup all over himself as the volunteers came rushing to our table to hold him down.

  ‘It’s a mosaic; you wait and watch,’ he shouted as they led him out of the room. ‘Just one hit, please. One hit, brother. One rock. Best blow job ever.’
<
br />   I shuffled away from the dining hall to the sleeping area, more than a little shaken at his outburst. There were thirty bunk beds here - no mattresses, bedsheets or pillows, just bare iron frames from volunteer donations. No one could lay claim to a particular bed. Every day, the occupants changed; some died from the cold or one of a hundred diseases, some slipped back into the streets because of the rigid drug-free rule enforced by the volunteers and some just disappeared, never to be heard of again. I’d been in the shelter for a few weeks and in a strange way, it had begun to provide a measure of comfort that I once used to associate with home. Today, once again, I felt a quiet sense of pleasure when I saw that my favourite bed - the one farthest away from the broken window - was as yet unoccupied. I curled up in it, trying desperately to keep warm. I closed my eyes, watched her cry silently and prepared for another sleepless night.

  An advertisement for an accountant’s position in the Minnesota Star Tribune Classifieds caught my eye the next day. This time I decided to get rejected in person, instead of over the phone. I scraped my week long beard with a blade in the mirror in the common bathroom, careful not to nick myself like I had the first time. Other people came in and out of the bathroom. No one asked to use the basin. Grooming, shaving, washing - these were unnecessary for the living dead. Sometimes I envied them. It was so much easier to drift away, speed up what destiny had designed for one, and not fight the battle any longer. I was touching forty, had fewer years ahead of me than behind, and I no longer had the will to build my life again.

  I winced as I nicked myself, and a small bewildered droplet of blood appeared on my dry skin. I wondered what it would be like to slash my face until it turned into a bloodied mass of flesh and bone.

  I stared at my reflection a while longer before wiping off the drop with the back of my hand, and forced myself to finish shaving without incident.

  Dressed in a suit I had rented from the local dry-cleaning shop, I looked almost presentable. There was a scar on my forehead, my mouth was still a little swollen from a scuffle in the shelter a few weeks ago, and my left arm was missing, but on the whole, I didn’t look like the homeless bum I was.

  Outside, the freshly fallen snow which had looked so beautiful twenty years ago now seemed dangerous and threatening. I couldn’t afford to slip on the ice and fall, not today, when a small voice in my head told me things would work out - the same voice that had accurately forecasted doom when Lara was in the throes of childbirth and the gunshot had sounded. I decided to splurge one dollar of my seven on a bus to the St Louis Park office in the Twin Cities.

  ‘You don’t look like a Nick Bolton if I may say so,’ guffawed the tall, bald man who was interviewing me.

  I smiled noncommittally, although my heart skipped a beat. This was my chance, I thought. I was finally inside an office. Not plush or luxurious, by any means. It was a small, uncarpeted two-room suite on the first floor of a strip mall in a forgotten part of town. But it was warm. That was all that mattered. There was a receptionist in the other room, doing her nails, and inside was this military looking guy who looked like an ageing Mr Clean, the genial giant who cleaned bathroom tiles in the billboard advertisements opposite the shelter.

  ‘Pardon me,’ said the military guy. ‘I’m a private investigator, so I am suspicious of everything.’

  I stiffened. What if he managed to sniff out my past?

  ‘But I know a good man when I see one, and I like you. You are homeless, right?’ he said, his eyes boring into me. He wasn’t offensive at all, just a man used to calling a bum a bum.

  I nodded cautiously.

  ‘That’s not a problem with me,’ he continued. ‘I am no one to judge you. I spent years climbing the ranks of Homeland Security, but look where I am now. We all make choices, son. I made the wrong ones. But that’s the past, let’s not go there.’

  I had no desire to go anywhere. I just wanted to stay in that warm office.

  ‘Have you handled accounts before? Real cash?’ he asked.

  I nodded.

  ‘My clients are all respectable citizens, but for obvious reasons, sometimes they have to pay in unrespectable ways. I’ve had trouble with the law, so I want to ensure everything is legal - or can be made legal. I need someone who understands enough to know what’s right and what can be made right.’

  I told him briefly what I knew about both legal and illegal accounting - escrow, onshore, offshore, laundering, Moldova, Malta, Seychelles, etc.

  ‘Wow,’ he said. ‘Aren’t you a little overqualified to be here?’

  I let that one pass.

  ‘Your salary won’t be much, just five hundred dollars a month. I’ve just started so that’s the most I can afford right now. It will grow as the business grows, and believe me, I know what I’m doing. God knows I am not a saint, but you can trust me on this,’ he said. ‘Is that good enough?’

  Twenty years ago, I had earned exactly that amount as my graduate scholarship. But it didn’t matter. Money had never meant anything; now it meant even less. If I could have a warm roof above my head, I wanted nothing more.

  ‘At times, very few times, I may need your help in some private investigation activities. Very basic things, like following someone, and you will have a licensed gun in case something goes wrong. Can you handle a revolver?’

  I could probably handle every revolver made by man.

  ‘I think so,’ I said.

  He nodded approvingly. ‘I thought as much.’ He paused. ‘I have nothing more to ask you. Do you have any questions for me?’

  I shook my head.

  ‘Well then, it’s all settled,’ he said. ‘Congratulations, you are hired!’

  A wave of relief swept through me. Warmth, I thought. Now I would have nothing to bother me, except my memories. I thanked him profusely.

  ‘I just have to run a quick background check on you and we’re good to go,’ he said.

  I froze. The moment he ran the check, he would know. I couldn’t con a CIA man. My fake ID notwithstanding, he’d know I wasn’t a plumber who grew up as a ranch hand on a Minnesota farm. I couldn’t predict what he would do then. Would he dig up my real story or would he let it go? What happened to me was inconsequential, but I couldn’t in any way endanger those I’d left behind.

  ‘Could you spell your name for me?’ he asked. ‘And your birth date, please.’

  I thought of the icy evenings and bitter nights in the shelter and felt a crushing sense of despair. But once again, I had no choice.

  ‘I don’t want the job,’ I said with sudden resolve. ‘On second thoughts, the pay is too low.’

  He looked at me, astonished. Our eyes locked for a moment, then he relaxed.

  ‘I understand,’ he said slowly. ‘If I venture into the dark side again, I’ll track you down. And I won’t do any background checks then.’

  I left the office.

  Down the stairs of the crumbling staircase I went, dreading the bitter winds that awaited me outside. I’d be asked about my past, no matter what I was being interviewed for. Where could I go now? What could I do? The only option, I thought, was to start where Nick Bolton had left off, and enroll in high school again. Then I could slowly rebuild my life, perhaps even get into MIT again. If I didn’t mess up - and given my track record, that was unlikely - in five years I would be where I was twenty-five years ago. Not that it mattered. Time had lost all meaning, achievements meant nothing, I had already lost more than I could gain in several lifetimes, and I wasn’t looking to reach anywhere -except perhaps a warm place.

  I was so engrossed in planning my future that I didn’t realize I had walked all the way down to the basement instead of the ground floor.

  A white middle-aged man with long, Santa Claus hair stood outside what looked like a storage room, smoking a cigarette.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I said and began to walk back up the stairs.

  ‘Will you help me?’ he asked.

  ‘Sure,’ I said, thinking of the few extra minutes I wo
uld spend in the warmth of the building. He probably wanted my help to move some stuff. Maybe he would tip me. I cheered up at the prospect of a double-digit bank balance.

  ‘Come in,’ he said.

  I followed him into the storage room, which was actually set up as a rumble-down office. A lone wooden desk with a computer and a telephone stood in the centre with two cheap plastic chairs placed on either side. But it was warm, warmer even than upstairs, perhaps because the room had never seen air or sun.

  The phone began to ring as soon as we entered.

  ‘Could you tell them that Philip is busy with a team meeting?’ he said. ‘No, can you say that he is leading a team meeting? Or… no, say he is with clients, but…’

  I picked up the phone.

  ‘May I speak to Philip North?’ said a woman’s voice.

  ‘Mr North is leading a client meeting,’ I said.

  ‘Are you his assistant?’

  ‘Yes,’ I replied without thinking.

  ‘Could you give him a message to call Mr John Brochkardt at Cerberus Capital? I am Shauna, Mr Brockhardt’s assistant.’

  ‘Sure,’ I said. ‘He will be in meetings all afternoon, but I’ll request him to spare some time.’

  I put down the phone.

  Philip looked at me in awe, a large smile spread across his cheery face. He was about my age, though his white unkempt hair and thick, dark spectacles gave him a weary look. There was a vague, distracted air about him as if his mind was elsewhere, in higher planes than the small, dark room he currently inhabited.

  ‘That was unbelievable, man. Just incredible,’ he said. ‘I’m Philip North.’

  ‘Nick Bolton.’

  He expressed no surprise at hearing an American name from an Indian mouth.

  ‘You caught on really fast, man. I need to give the impression that I’m busy and have a big, thriving office. Venture capitalists dig that kind of stuff.’

  I was suddenly transported twenty years back in time to MIT.

  ‘What are you seeking VC funding for?’ I asked.