‘Well . . . ’
‘Was he asking after you by name?’ Naveen asked, his young face serious. ‘And is he asking after both of you, or just Scorpio?’
Both men looked at Naveen.
‘This is Naveen Adair,’ I said. ‘He’s a private detective.’
There was a pause.
‘Fuckin’ hell,’ Gemini muttered. ‘Not very private, is it, goin’ round announcin’ it, right here in the fruit and vegetable market? That’s more like a public detective, innit?’
Naveen laughed.
‘You didn’t answer my questions,’ he said.
There was another pause.
‘What . . . kind of detective is he?’ Scorpio asked suspiciously.
‘He’s a detective,’ I said. ‘It’s like a priest, you pay once. Answer the questions, Scorpio.’
‘You know,’ Scorpio said, looking at Naveen thoughtfully, ‘come to think of it, the guy has only been asking after me, not Gemini.’
‘Where’s he staying?’ Naveen asked.
‘We don’t know yet,’ Gemini said. ‘We didn’t take it seriously, at first. But now, it’s been two days. It’s startin’ to get a bit spooky for Scorpio, and he’s spooked enough, know what I mean? One of the street boys has been followin’ the white-haired geezer today, and we should know where he’s stayin’ pretty soon.’
‘If you want, I’ll look into it,’ Naveen said softly.
Gemini and Scorpio looked at me. I shrugged.
‘Yeah,’ Scorpio agreed quickly. ‘Hell, yeah. Please try to find out who this guy is, if you can.’
‘We’ve gotta get to the bottom of this,’ Gemini added fervently. ‘Scorpio’s got me so aggravated, I woke up with me hands around me own neck, this mornin’. It’s come to a pretty pass, when a man strangles himself in his own sleep.’
‘What should we do now?’ Scorpio asked.
‘Stay out of sight, as much as possible,’ Naveen said. ‘Let Lin know, if you find out where the guy’s staying. Or leave a message for me at the Natraj building, on Merewether. Naveen Adair.’
There was a little silence while the Zodiac Georges looked at one another, then at Naveen, then back at me.
‘Sounds like a plan,’ I said, shaking hands with Gemini.
The money I’d given him was enough for at least two of their favourite drugs, a few soft days in a rough hotel, clean clothes from their frequently unpaid laundry man, and a diet of the Bengali desserts they loved.
They wriggled into the camouflage of the crowded street, Scorpio stooping to put his head beside the Londoner’s as they walked.
‘What do you make of it?’ I asked Naveen.
‘I’m smelling lawyer,’ he replied carefully. ‘I’ll see what pops up from the toaster. I can’t guarantee a result. I’m an amateur, remember.’
‘An amateur is anyone who hasn’t learned how not to do it,’ I said.
‘Not bad. Is that a quote?’
‘It is.’
‘Who said it?’
‘A woman I know. What’s it to you?’
‘Can I meet her?’
‘No.’
‘Please.’
‘What is it with you and meeting hard-to-meet people?’
‘It was Karla, wasn’t it? An amateur is anyone who hasn’t learned how not to do it. Nice.’
I stopped, standing close to him.
‘Let’s make a deal,’ I said. ‘You don’t mention Karla again, to me.’
‘That’s not a deal,’ he said, smiling easily.
‘Glad you understand. We were not minding if we do have a drink, remember?’
We walked into Leopold’s beer-and-curry-scented cave. It was late afternoon, the lull before the storm of tourists, drug dealers, black marketers, racketeers, actors, students, gangsters, and good girls with an eye for bad boys squalled in through the wide arches to shout, eat, drink and chance their souls on the wet roulette of Leopold’s thirty restaurant tables.
It was Didier’s favourite time in the bar, nudging out second place, which was every other hour that the bar was open, and I found him sitting alone at his regular table, set against the back wall, with a clear view of all three entrances.
He was reading a newspaper, holding the pages at arm’s length.
‘Holy shit, Didier! A newspaper! You should warn people about a shock like that.’
I turned to the waiter, uneponymously named Sweetie, who was loitering with intent, his pink nametag loitering sideways on his jacket.
‘What’s the matter with you, Sweetie? You should’ve put a sign outside, or something.’
‘Fuck you very much,’ Sweetie replied, shifting a match from one side of his mouth to the other with his tongue.
Didier tossed the newspaper aside, and hugged me.
‘You wear the sun well,’ he said.
He held me for a moment, examining me with forensic thoroughness.
‘You look like the stand-out. That is the expression? Not the star actor, but the one who takes all the punishment.’
‘The expression is stand-in, but I’ll take stand-out. Say hello to another stand-out, Naveen Adair.’
‘Ah, the detective!’ Didier said, shaking hands warmly, and running a professional eye over Naveen’s tall, athletic frame. ‘I’ve heard all about you, from my journalist friend, Kavita Singh.’
‘She covered you, too,’ Naveen replied with a smile. ‘And may I say, it’s an honour to meet the man behind all the stories.’
‘I did not expect a young man of such impeccable manners,’ Didier responded quickly, gesturing toward the chairs, and signalling to Sweetie. ‘What will you have? Beers? Sweetie! Three very chilled beers, please!’
‘Fuck you very much,’ Sweetie mumbled, his end-of-shift slippers dragging to the kitchen.
‘He’s a repellent brute,’ Didier said, watching Sweetie leave. ‘But I feel myself strangely drawn to the effortlessness of his misery.’
We were three men at the table, but we all sat in a line with our backs to the wall, facing across the scatter of tables to the wide arches, open to the street. Didier let his eyes rove around the restaurant: a castaway, scanning the horizon.
‘Well,’ he said, inclining his head toward me. ‘The adventure in Goa?’
I took a small package of letters wrapped in blue ribbons from my pocket, and handed it across. Didier took the bundle and cradled it in his palms for a moment, as if it were an injured bird.
‘Did you . . . did you have to beat him for them?’ he asked me, still staring at the letters.
‘No.’
‘Oh,’ he sighed, looking up quickly.
‘Should I have?’
‘No, of course, not,’ Didier explained, sniffing back a tear. ‘Didier could not pay for such a thing.’
‘You didn’t pay me at all.’
‘Technically, in paying nothing, I am still paying. Am I right, Naveen?’
‘I have no idea what you’re talking about,’ Naveen replied. ‘So, of course, I agree with everything.’
‘It’s just,’ Didier sniffed, looking at the letters, ‘I rather thought he might have put up some little fight, perhaps, to keep my love letters. Some . . . some show of lingering affection.’
I recalled the look of simian hatred on the face of Gustavo, Didier’s ex-lover, as he screamed curses on Didier’s genitals, and hurled the little bundle of letters into a rubbish pit below the back window of his bungalow.
I had to pierce his ear with my thumbnail to make him climb into the pit, retrieve the letters, wipe them clean and hand them to me.
‘No,’ I said. ‘Affection has moved on.’
‘Well, thank you, Lin,’ Didier sighed, putting the letters in his lap as the beers arrived. ‘I would have gone down there myself to get the letters, but for t
hat little matter of the outstanding arrest warrant in my name, in Goa.’
‘You’ve gotta keep track of these warrants, Didier,’ I said. ‘I can’t keep up. You could paper a room with my fake yellow slips. It’s wearing me out, clearing you of all charges.’
‘But there are only four outstanding arrest warrants in all of India, Lin.’
‘Only four?’
‘At one time, it was nine. I think it must be that I am becoming . . . reformed,’ Didier puffed, curling his lips at the distasteful word.
‘A slander,’ Naveen observed.
‘Why, thank you. You . . . are a very agreeable young man. Do you like guns?’
‘I’m not good with relationships,’ Naveen answered, finishing his beer and standing. ‘I can only bond with the gun in my hand.’
‘I can help you with that,’ Didier laughed.
‘I’ll bet you can,’ Naveen laughed back. ‘Lin, that guy in the suit, the one following the Zodiac Georges, I’ll look into it, and get back to you here.’
‘Be careful. We don’t know what this is, yet.’
‘It’s cool,’ he smiled, all fearless, immortal youth. ‘I’ll take my leave. Didier, it has been a pleasure and an honour. Goodbye.’
We watched him out into the early evening haze. Didier’s brows edged together.
‘What?’ I asked him.
‘Nothing!’ he protested.
‘What, Didier?’
‘I said nothing!’
‘I know, but I also know that look.’
‘What look?’ he demanded, as if I’d accused him of stealing my drink.
Didier Levy was in his mid-forties. The first powder snow of winter wove spirals through his dark, curly hair. Soft, brilliantly blue irises hovered in the anemone patchwork of red veins filling the whites of his eyes, making him seem young and dissolute in the same smile: the mischievous boy still hiding inside the ruining man.
He drank any kind of alcohol, at any time of the day or night, dressed like a dandy, long after other dandies melted in the heat, smoked tailor-made joints from a bespoke cigarette case, was a professional at most crimes, the master of a few, and was openly gay, in a city where that was still an oxymoron.
I’d known him for five years, through struggles against enemies, within and without. He was brave: the kind of man who’ll face a gun with you and never run, no matter what the fall.
He was authentic. He expressed the uniqueness when what we are, is what we’re free to become. I’d known him through lost loves, alarming lust, and kneeling epiphanies, his and mine. And I’d spent enough of those long, lonely wolf nights with him to love him.
‘That look,’ I repeated. ‘The look that says you know something that everybody else should know. The look that says I told you so, before you tell me anything at all. So tell me, before you told me so.’
Didier’s outraged expression crumbled in smiles, and fell into a laugh.
‘It is more of a told me so,’ he said. ‘I like that boy very much. More than I expected to. And more than I should, because this Naveen Adair, he has a reputation.’
‘If reputations were votes, we’d be presidents of somewhere.’
‘True,’ he replied. ‘But this boy’s reputation carries a warning. A word to the wise, isn’t that the expression?’
‘It is, but I’ve always wondered why the wise need a word.’
‘It is said that he is very, very good with his fists. He was a boxing champion at his university. He could have been the champion of India. His fists are deadly weapons. And as I have heard, he is very quick, too quick perhaps, to provoke into using them.’
‘You’re no slouch in the provoking department, Didier. And it doesn’t take a stick through the bars to get me going.’
‘Many men have already fallen to their knees before that young life. It is not a good thing, in a man so young, to see so much submission. There is a lot of blood behind that charming young smile.’
‘There’s a lot of blood behind your charming smile, my friend.’
‘Thank you,’ he nodded, accepting the compliment with a little toss of the greying curls. ‘I’m simply saying that from what I have heard, I would very much prefer to shoot that handsome young fellow than to fight him.’
‘Then it’s a lucky thing you carry a gun.’
‘I’m . . . if you’ll excuse the lapse . . . being serious, Lin, and you know how much contempt I have for serious things.’
‘I’ll keep it in mind. Promise. I’d better go.’
‘You’re leaving me here to drink alone, and you’re going home to her?’ Didier mocked. ‘You think she’s waiting for you, after almost three weeks in Goa? What makes you think she hasn’t left you for some greener pastures, as the English say, with such charming provincialism.’
‘I love you, too, brother,’ I said, shaking his hand.
I walked out into the breathing street, turning once to see him holding up the little bundle of love letters I’d retrieved for him, and waving goodbye.
It stopped me. I felt, as I too often did, that I was abandoning him. It was foolish, I knew: Didier was arguably the most self-sufficient contrabandist in the city. He was one of the last independent gangsters, owing nothing, not even fear, to the mafia Companies, cops and street gangs that controlled his illegal world.
But there are some people, some loves, that worry every goodbye, and leaving them is like leaving the country of your birth.
Didier, my old friend, Naveen, my new friend, and Bombay, my Island City, for so long as she’d have me: each of us dangerous, in our different ways.
The man I was, when I arrived in Bombay years before, was a stranger in a new jungle. The man I became looked out at strangers, from the cover of the jungle street. I was at home. I knew my way around. And I was harder, maybe, because something inside me was missing: something that should’ve been there, next to my heart.
I escaped from prison, Didier escaped from persecution, Naveen escaped from the street, and the southern city escaped from the sea, hurled into its island existence by working men and women, one stone at a time.
I waved goodbye, and Didier smiled, touching the love letters to his forehead. I smiled back, and it was okay: okay to leave him.
No smile would work, no goodbye would pray, no kindness would save, if the truth inside us wasn’t beautiful. And the true heart of us, our human kind, is that we’re connected, at our best, by purities of love found in no other creature.
Chapter Three
It was a short ride from Leopold’s to my apartment. I left the busy tourist causeway, crossed the road past the Colaba police station, and cruised on to the corner known to every taxi driver in Bombay as Electric House.
A right turn down the leafy street beside the police station gave me a view into a corner of the cellblock. I’d spent time in those cells.
My rebel eyes found the high, barred windows as I rode by slowly. A little cascade, memories, the stink of open latrines, the mass of men fighting for a slightly cleaner place near the gate bullied through my mind.
At the next corner I turned through the gate that gave access to the courtyard of the Beaumont Villa building, and parked my bike. Nodding to the watchman, I took the stairs three at a time to the third-floor apartment.
I entered, ringing the bell a few times. I walked through the living room to the kitchen, dropping my bag and keys on the table as I passed. Not finding her there or in the bedroom, I moved back into the living room.
‘Hi, honey,’ I called out, in an American accent. ‘I’m home.’
Her laugh rippled from behind the swirling curtains on the terrace. When I shoved the curtains aside I found her kneeling, with her hands in the earth of a garden about the size of an open suitcase. A little flock of pigeons crowded around her, pecking for crumbs, and pestering one another fussily.
‘You go to all the trouble of making a garden out here, girl,’ I said, ‘and then you let the birds walk all over it.’
‘You don’t get it,’ Lisa replied, turning aquamarine eyes on me. ‘I made the garden to bring the birds. It’s the birds I wanted in the first place.’
‘You’re my flock of birds,’ I said, when she stood to kiss me.
‘Oh, great,’ she mocked. ‘The writer’s home again.’
‘And so damn pleased to see you,’ I smiled, beginning to drag her with me toward the bedroom.
‘My hands are dirty!’ she protested.
‘I hope so.’
‘No, really,’ she laughed, breaking away. ‘We’ve gotta take a shower –’
‘I hope so.’
‘You’ve gotta take a shower,’ she persisted, circling away from me, ‘and change your clothes, right away.’
‘Clothes?’ I mocked back at her. ‘We don’t need no stinking clothes.’
‘Yes, we do. We’re going out.’
‘Lisa, I just got back. Two weeks.’
‘Nearly three weeks,’ she corrected me. ‘And there’ll be plenty of time to say hello, before we say goodnight. I promise.’
‘Hello is sounding a lot like goodbye.’
‘Hello is always the first part of goodbye. Go get wet.’
‘Where are we going?’
‘You’ll love it.’
‘That means I’m gonna hate it, aren’t I?’
‘An art gallery.’
‘Oh. Great.’
‘Fuck you,’ she laughed. ‘These guys are good. They’re on the edge, Lin. They’re real-deal artists. You’re gonna love them. And it’s a really important show. And if we don’t hurry, we’ll be late. And I’m so glad you got back in time.’
I frowned.
The Mountain Shadow Page 3