Already, he felt as though the past ten weeks had turned him into someone that he didn’t seem to know anymore. Who would he be when this performance was done? Assuming a criminal alias and living inside it had consequences, and he thought the acerbic, scarred man across the table could tell him more about that than he cared to know.
He slouched against the back of the booth, considering his options. He didn’t have many, but he eyed Sedgwick with cautious calculation and exercised one of them.
“You know, the ink on those briefing books was barely dry when I read them two days ago. If they’re obsolete already, I’d appreciate having that confirmed by Frank.”
“Forget about Frank.” Sedgwick swatted the suggestion away without even changing expression. “Frank is off the grid. He appears out of the mist when he’s called and sinks back into it when they’re done with him. You’re not likely to ever see him again.” He gave a wolfish smile. “You’re in my wheelhouse now, McBride. They threw you to me, and they knew exactly what they were doing. I write the music; you play the tune. The sooner you get used to it, the easier it will be. Welcome to my world.”
The cheerful menace and clichéd constructions were too corny to sound threatening, and Conor didn’t feel provoked. The more time he spent in his company, the easier it was to see the loneliness and self-doubt lurking beneath the agent’s veneer of irascibility.
He swallowed the anxiety that had convulsed the muscles in his throat and gave Sedgwick a weary smile of acceptance. “Okay, then. Go on and tell me who I’m supposed to be in your world.”
11
He didn’t care much for who he turned out to be in Curtis Sedgwick’s world, but as he’d expected, he accommodated himself to the role without much difficulty—or at least without much that was visible to anyone else.
His responsibilities, as they were outlined that first night, were not complicated. He would function as an armed guard, and on the evenings when collections were scheduled, he would accompany Raj on his rounds to ensure the smooth transport of funds to a designated drop point. On certain other evenings, he would be safeguarding the supply side of Khalil’s drug operation, tagging along with Sedgwick to take delivery of fresh product arriving from the Kabul and Peshawar regions and conveying it to the numerous retail distribution points scattered around Mumbai.
The first step in cementing his latest identity was to settle on what others would call him. A single, easily pronounceable word was all that was required, Sedgwick had insisted, and he found it unnecessarily complicated to create something new. With a perverse instinct to irritate, he selected the half of the official alias that Conor despised most and introduced him to the skittish, skeletal Raj simply as Con.
During the week that followed, he understood that he would soon be introduced to an assortment of leading characters in Ahmed Khalil’s underworld army but not before Sedgwick had taken ample opportunity to school him in the details of his new persona.
“Let’s get this clear. Your job is not to blend in,” he instructed during one of the frequent educational sessions he had convened following the Chole House initiation.
They were on Chowpatty Beach, steering around the lovers and families who had come out to stroll in the evening air and watch the sunset. Conor’s attention was divided between the lesson and the large plate of bhel puri he was devouring as they walked. He’d become addicted to the famous Mumbai salad of puffed rice dressed with combinations of potato, fruit, dry noodles, and piquant spices. It was offered in countless varieties at the street stalls lining the beach, and he was making a point of trying them all.
“Not to blend in,” he repeated dutifully, wiping a smear of tamarind chutney from his chin. Sedgwick shot him an impatient glance before continuing.
“Your job is to provide contrast, primarily just by being white. That’s why Khalil hired me—he wants a few goras on the payroll to show around. He thinks it makes him look more international. You also need to have an attitude that contrasts with his regulars. They’re a band of goondas—thieves, pimps, black marketeers, and smugglers. They’re colorful and uninhibited—big personalities. You, on the other hand, will be colorless and self-contained. This is your chance to show off that splendid ‘talent for repose’ your teachers were so proud of. You need to convey the threat of violence while looking tranquil at the same time. Think of yourself as a monk—a dark, brooding, ass-kicking monk with a sketchy paramilitary past that you don’t discuss. That’s what I’ve led them to expect.”
“Uh-huh, monkish. Okay.”
“In other words,” Sedgwick stopped and turned to face Conor, lip curled. “A little less like the sloppy, bumbling tourist you’re successfully imitating right now. Christ, how many of those have you eaten today?”
“That was the third.” Conor grinned. “Anyway, we haven’t started yet—the monkish bit, I mean. Don’t worry. I’ll be ready.”
“That was just a point of reference. Don’t overdo the monkish thing.”
“Relax.” Conor sighed. He threw the empty plate on top of an overflowing trashcan. “I guess it would be more fun for you if I were a complete, bleedin’ eejit, but I actually do get the point. You want tall, dark, and silent with a whiff of sophisticated malevolence—enough to command respect without looking psychotic. I’ve seen that guy in a dozen different films. I can play the part, and I promise not to embarrass either of us while I’m doing it. Feel better?”
The steely gray eyes squinting at him plainly communicated a lack of conviction, but a few nights later, Conor was secretly pleased to watch those same eyes gape in surprised appreciation when he arrived at their specified rendezvous point—the lobby of the Intercontinental Hotel—in character and ready for his debut.
The adjustments he’d made to his appearance were subtle but added up to more than the sum of their parts. With an application of styling gel, he’d combed his hair straight back from his forehead, and it molded to his head like a shining, black skullcap, giving his face a severe, chiseled appearance. The look also gave greater exposure to the thick lines of his eyebrows and accentuated his dark, carefully expressionless eyes. To offer an extra dimension of shadow to his face, he had allowed his beard to grow to a precisely groomed stubble.
Aiding the concealment of the handgun snapped into a shoulder holster, he wore a black cotton blazer over a charcoal gray T-shirt that fit snugly against the muscles of his chest and waist. He’d completed the ensemble with a pair of jeans, black boots, and the silver pendant around his neck.
He’d debated leaving off the unusually shaped cross but was reluctant to remove it. He finally justified it by considering that its resemblance to the ancient Sanskrit swastika symbol might prove useful, or at least lucky, and transferred it to a shorter string of black leather, furthering the similarity to amulet necklaces commonly worn throughout the country.
Sedgwick lifted the lapel of the blazer to confirm the presence of the shoulder holster, and then, crossing his arms, studied Conor with unfeigned interest. For once, he appeared genuinely impressed.
“It’s superb,” he remarked. “Better than I would have ever imagined. Amazing, really. You haven’t done that much, but you’re almost unrecognizable, and you look pretty comfortable with it. How do you feel?”
Unrecognizable, Conor thought. He didn’t care to dwell on the process he had engaged in to become mentally and physically acclimated to the role, or how easily it had slipped over him once he was ready for it.
“I feel fine,” he said, laconically. Even his voice sounded different to him, its light, lyrical cadence flattened to a subdued monotone. “Are we ready to go?”
Sedgwick looked startled. “I figured you’d want to eat first. Wouldn’t dream of having you miss a meal.”
Conor shook his head. “Not hungry.”
“Not hungry?” Sedgwick laughed. “Well, that clinches it. Conor McBride has left the building. It’s too early, though. Let’s go to the bar. I’m not as nervous as I was before seeing y
ou, but I could still use a drink.”
Conor allowed the barest twitch of a smile to pull at one corner of his mouth. “Me too.”
“That was your best effort yet,” Sedgwick said when the last of the meetings had concluded and their collection of lively guests had departed. “You handled Abdul Hassan perfectly. Very clever to show him that touch of deference. He’s been with the organization longer than anyone, and he’s frustrated that he hasn’t moved up the ranks. “Problem is,” he added, stifling a yawn, “He’s dumber than a box of rocks. There’s not much he can be trusted to do right.”
“I did get that impression.”
Conor was stretched out along the length of the booth with his back against the wall. They were both exhausted. He hadn’t realized how much tension they’d been shouldering between them until it had dissolved with the departure of Abdul Hassan, who had been the last inebriate to push himself up from the table and totter unsteadily into the night.
At each of the meetings, Conor had spoken very little. He ate nothing, declined to smoke, drank only coconut water, and in his demeanor balanced an attitude of remote equanimity against an undercurrent of intensity. Within the first ten minutes of each gathering, Khalil’s goondas had absorbed the primary message: “Con” the bodyguard was the real thing, and he was not going to be one of their new drinking buddies.
The line between wary respect and mistrust was a thin one, requiring continuous adjustments in tone and body language to ensure the desired results. It was tedious and nerve-wracking, like a series of interviews for a job he had to pretend to want. But when it was over, he had earned the durable respect of his sardonic controlling officer.
He was relieved to have it over with and relieved that he would not have to put on the performance for Khalil himself, who had decamped to Dubai for the foreseeable future to pursue certain business opportunities. He was also relieved to be able to relax into some semblance of himself again, if only temporarily. He folded his hands against his stomach and closed his eyes, but almost immediately, they snapped open again.
“Jaysus, I’m starving. My stomach thinks me throat’s been cut, I’m that hungry.”
“Glad to hear it.” Sedgwick exhaled a weary laugh. “You ate everything in sight for the first week, and then hardly so much as a peanut the last four days. I was beginning to think anorexia was one of your new character traits. Do you want to order something?”
“Not here.” Conor’s face convulsed with disgust. “I’d like to get the hell out of this place and not see it again for a donkey’s year or two. I just need to gather the strength to get up out of this booth.”
“This was the hardest part, you know,” Sedgwick said. “Getting in smoothly and making everyone comfortable with it. The rest will be easy compared with this.”
“Ah, Curtis.” Conor sighed, dropping his boots to the floor. “No offense, but that’s the biggest load of shite you’ve dished out yet.”
The most disquieting aspect of his budding career as a bodyguard was how quickly it transitioned from perilous endeavor to commonplace routine. The weeks following his initiation into the Khalil gang were not enjoyable, but he had to acknowledge they were not as dangerous as he’d anticipated.
The delivery of drugs operated on a precise timetable, so, much like any other man with a job, he had a schedule to keep and duties to perform, and they had a greater degree of rhythmic predictability than he ever expected.
Several nights a week, he accompanied Sedgwick to grotty, waterfront warehouses known locally as godowns, and these outings were not without suspense. The deliverymen came in two varieties: jumpy teenaged boys and sweating middle-aged men. They were usually tense and ill humored, and, according to his controlling officer, congenitally larcenous. As a deterrent to temptation and to keep them aware of their tenuous position, Sedgwick frequently created some point of conflict around the size of the delivery, the date for the next shipment, or any number of other things to create an excuse for intimidation.
Conor’s role in this bit of stagecraft was devoid of nuance. He was to terrify the men by any means necessary while Sedgwick reminded them of their low rank in the hierarchy. In some instances, the desired pitch of fear was achieved without much effort. Standing in the shadows, he sometimes got results simply by stepping forward with a dark, unsettling stare. More often than not, though, Sedgwick wanted more tangible threats of violence, which typically meant the petrified courier found himself pinned either to the floor or the wall with a gun pressed to his temple.
There was also a timetable and rotation for collections from the nightclubs and dance bars, and by contrast these happened in a much more workman-like manner. He shadowed Raj from one end of the city to the other, but the only security action required so far had been to shield the bagman from a rampaging drunk who had mistaken him for someone else.
The delivery of the money collected was equally monotonous. The house Thomas supposedly used as a central drop point was in a residential section of Goregaon East. The ceremony was always the same. They were buzzed in to a small hallway where they sat on low chairs and waited. After about ten minutes, an elderly man in a long white kurta would appear with a tray of biscuits, chai, and an envelope containing their payment. Without a word, he placed the tray on a side table, took the duffel bag Raj placed on the floor next to it, and disappeared back through the door at the end of the hall.
Over a period of weeks, Conor made a surveillance of the property on his own, furtively peeking into windows and analyzing it from every angle. The efforts yielded no results. He never saw anyone enter or leave the building, and except for the nights they were scheduled to be there, he never saw a light inside.
After several weeks, he was discouraged and restless and yearned to separate himself from the entire loathsome enterprise. The sheer banality of the Khalil operation heightened his aversion to it. The corruption and exploitation, carried on with the dispassionate efficiency of a conventional corporate endeavor, was an obscenity he couldn’t rationalize. It was hard to stomach the shame he felt for the part he played in keeping it running.
Apart from personal angst, another factor added to his edginess: a nagging sense that they were on the wrong track. Maybe Thomas wasn’t in Mumbai at all. Maybe they should look somewhere else. Conor didn’t bother to hide his misgivings from Sedgwick, but his boss provided little reassurance beyond an exhortation to stay the course.
“We’ll get wind of him sooner or later,” he remarked at one point. “He’ll make a mistake, or we’ll get lucky. That’s how it works, and it takes longer than you want it to. You thought you were going to blow into town and wrap it all up in a couple of weeks? Think again. You’re only getting started, and if you’re finding the routine a little humdrum, enjoy it while you can. The sort of excitement that pops up in this business is not going to be the kind you’ll find entertaining.”
As usual, he was correct.
12
The Marilyn Monroe was a ladies dance bar, one of many sprinkled throughout Mumbai and concentrated in the upscale, air-conditioned neighborhoods of the northwest suburbs. The term was specific to the type of club where women in flowing skirts and bare midriffs listlessly rotated on a dance floor while Bollywood songs played at ear-bleeding decibels. Their male admirers sat in the shadows sipping overpriced whisky or else stood on the floor’s perimeter, raining handfuls of rupees over their favorite dancer in an ecstatic ritual called a money shower.
To Conor, the sight of jiggling, middle-aged men sprinkling banknotes over women young enough to be their daughters was pathetic, but it did offer a marginally healthy contrast to what reigned in the garbage-heaped lanes of Kamathipura.
The largest red-light district in Asia was not known for nightclubs and dancers but for brothels. It was particularly known for the infamous Falklands Road area called “the Cages,” where stacks of concrete cubicles hacked out of crumbled buildings were filled with sex workers of all ages.
The Monroe
sat in the middle of the district, at the end of a lane just north of Falklands Road. It was accessed from the street through a nondescript door that led up a flight of stairs to a soundproofed corridor. The door at the end opened into a room containing a bar and dance floor surrounded by mirrored walls lined with low, white leather couches.
Conor was sitting on one of the couches, impassively watching the dancers while Raj took care of business with the floor managers behind the bar. On the table next to his elbow sat a piping hot tiffin canister and a bottle of lime soda, along with a sticky packet of jalebi—a deep-fried sweet dripping with sugar syrup. The jalebi was essentially a bribe. No other incentive proved as effective in persuading Radha to eat her dinner. Since he frequently surrendered a hefty bundle of rupees to the bar’s owner, Rohit Mehta, simply for the privilege of giving the young dancer a hot meal, he always made sure the sweet was visible to her from the dance floor.
At thirteen, Radha was not the youngest girl he’d ever witnessed plying her trade during the small hours of the night. Her plight was not the most desperate, but for some reason he had been drawn to her, and within a short time, they had befriended each other.
From halting conversations with Raj, Conor had pieced together her story. She was not an orphan but something worse—a child sold into Rohit Mehta’s particular brand of slavery by her own parents. Ever true to his reputation as a man to seize the main chance, Mehta snapped up the child at a bargain rate and put her into the lineup as his “unplucked flower.”
She was good for business, and because of her youth—and a drug habit that Mehta supported in a grotesque parody of fatherly indulgence—she was an easily controlled commodity. Conor was determined to help her. Her fragile vulnerability and the beguiling innocence she maintained despite her circumstances affected him in a way he found difficult to explain. So far, the only practical assistance he’d managed to offer was a healthy meal and his friendship.
The Conor McBride Series Books 1-3 Page 10