The waves laughed. The waves cried. That glorious living second, ending as wind, and sea, and earth: the waves laughed, and cried, calling me. I was falling, hard. I had to get a grip. I had to pull myself together. I needed my motorcycle.
‘I have to go home,’ I said.
‘Of course. I will come with you.’
‘Didier –’
‘Why do you always fight affection, Lin? It is truly your great, personal flaw.’
‘Didier –’
‘No. When a friend wants to do a loving thing, you must allow him. What is love, but this?’
What is love, but this?
The words chanted themselves to me in the taxi, and only stopped when we reached the apartment, and sat down with the nightwatchman to ask about Lisa.
He cried for her, and for what we were for him: always happy, kind and generous, on every festival and name day.
When he calmed down, he told me that Lisa had returned around an hour after midnight, with two men in a black limousine.
One of the men returned to the car, after fifteen minutes or so, and drove away. The other man left about an hour later. Karla arrived a few minutes after, and called the watchman.
‘Did you know the men?’
‘No, sir.’
‘What did they look like?’
‘One was a foreigner. He was the first one to leave. He had a loud voice. He was walking with two sticks, and he was shouting in pain, like maybe he had a broken leg.’
‘Or maybe two fresh bullet wounds in the leg,’ Didier observed.
‘Concannon. And the other man?’
‘I never saw his face. He looked away from me, and he covered his mouth with a handkerchief, coming and going.’
‘Did he have a car?’
‘No, sir. He walked away, very fast, in the direction of Navy Club.’
‘Did you get the number of the car?’
‘Yes, sir.’
He went through his logbook, and gave me the number.
‘I’m so sorry, sir. I should have –’
‘Your job is to guard the gate, not the apartments. It’s not your fault. She liked you. Very much. And I know you would’ve saved her, if you could, just like I would’ve done. It’s okay.’
I gave him a chunk of money, asked him to keep his eyes open for the cops, and climbed the steps to my apartment.
I opened the door, walked through the living room and stepped into the bedroom. That place of quarrel and love, for us, had become a tomb for Lisa, alone.
The mattress she’d bought because she liked the seahorse pattern on the cover was stripped bare, but for two pillows at the head, and a pair of Lisa’s well-worn, well-loved hemp sandals at the base.
After a minute, I stopped staring at the place where Lisa’s breath had faded, and ceased, and stopped, and died, and I moved my eyes away.
The room was clean, and empty. Everything of hers was gone. I looked at the few things of mine that remained.
The red movie poster, Antonioni’s Blow Up, art and abandon becoming death and desire, and the wooden horse head on the window sill, my belts, strung on a suit stand in the corner, the sword, in two pieces in the wall unit, and a few books.
And it was all: all there was of me in the apartment. Without Lisa’s flowers and paintings and coloured sarongs, the place we’d called home was cold, and alone. What is civilisation? Idriss once remarked. It’s a woman, free to live as she wants.
‘There is a picture of her, in death, on that bed,’ Didier said, standing in the doorway. ‘It is in the police report. Do you want to see it?’
‘No. No. Thanks.’
‘I thought it might console you,’ he said. ‘She looked very, very peaceful. As if she simply went to sleep, forever.’
We listened to the silence, echoing off the walls in our hearts. Just the thought of that picture, of her dead sleep, made my stomach churn with dread.
‘You are not safe, I am afraid, Lin,’ Didier said. ‘The police are very hot for you. If they come to know that you have returned to Bombay, they will come here, looking for you.’
He was right: right enough to shake me awake.
‘Give me a hand,’ I said, beginning to wrestle the heavy chest of drawers away from the wall.
We pushed the chest wide enough to expose the false back panel. It looked untouched. I released the cover.
‘Have you got a man you can trust to hold my guns, a lot of money, some passports and half a key of the best Kashmiri that ever rolled down the Himalayas?’
‘Yes, for ten per cent.’
‘Of the money only?’
‘Of the money.’
‘Done. Call him here.’
‘I must insist that he brings something to drink with him, Lin. Do you know how many hours it has been, since I last made contact with alcohol?’
‘You drank from your flask three minutes ago.’
‘The flask,’ he sighed, genius to child, ‘does not count. Shall I tell him to bring food, as well?’
‘I don’t want any food.’
‘Good. Food is for people who don’t have the courage to take drugs. And food kills half of the alcohol effect. There was a test done on a drunken mouse, once, or perhaps it was a drunken rat –’
‘Just call him, Didier.’
I stuffed a few bundles of rupees in one inside pocket of my denim vest, and a bundle of US dollars in the other. I cut a piece off the Kashmiri key, and put the rest back in the compartment. I strapped on my knives in their scabbards.
After snapping the cover in place, I shoved the chest against the wall again, in case someone other than Didier’s man entered the apartment.
Didier was in the open kitchen, searching through the cupboards.
‘Not even cooking sherry,’ he muttered, and then he saw me and smiled. ‘My man, Tito, will be here in half an hour. How are you, my friend?’
‘Not-good-okay,’ I said absently.
I was looking at the refrigerator. The photographs that Lisa had taped to the door, photographs of her that she’d asked me to take, were gone. Strips of clear tape remained, framing empty spaces.
She’d insisted on tape, instead of magnets. I hate magnets, she said. They’re such treacherous things.
‘Her parents,’ Didier said, ‘gathered everything that was hers, and took it with them. There were many tears.’
I went to the bathroom and washed my face with cold water. It didn’t work. I fell forward on my knees at the toilet, and emptied every dark, acid thing that was inside me.
Didier found me, and did the right guy thing. He backed away, and left me in pieces.
I washed up again, and looked into the mirror.
A photo that Lisa had pushed in the top of the mirror frame had been torn away. Lisa’s face had been ripped from the picture, and only my foolish, smiling face remained. I took it down, tore it up and threw it in the bin.
Sitting in the living room, Didier and I drank strong, black coffee, and smoked strong, black Kashmiri. It was Lisa’s stash: her perfect, heavenly high, only for the most special occasions, which was why I’d had to hide it with my things.
And when the brandy and the food arrived, with Tito, we drank a toast, with Lisa, to the loved.
Tito helped me shove the heavy chest away from the wall again.
‘Nice,’ he said, when he saw the guns, passports and money. ‘Ten per cent.’
‘Done.’
He began to stuff the bundles into a sack.
It was my safety net in the Island City, the stake I was bringing to the table as a partner with Didier: everything I owned that wasn’t in my pockets, or my pack.
Tito was about to tie the sack closed, but I stopped him.
‘Wait a minute.’
There was a place I hadn’t
looked, and that the police might’ve overlooked. There was a gas-fired hot water heater in a closet. Lisa had made a shelf on top of the heater to dry out some tripping mushrooms, which a friend had brought from Germany.
I opened the door and searched on top of the panel. There was a shoebox in the back. I saw the words REASONS WHY written on the end panel.
I pulled it toward me, feeling around inside, and my hand shivered through keepsakes and pictures as if through reeds in a pond.
They were simple things: a thin, silver scarf she’d worn, the first time we met, a wind-up child’s toy, a brass Zippo lighter that Didier had given to us as a housewarming present, and that she couldn’t bear to let me use, for fear that I might lose it, which I would’ve done, a dog whistle that she used whenever we walked on Marine Drive, so she could get the attention of every dog she passed, a paperweight I’d made for her from silver rings, and a scatter of stones, shells, pictures, amulets and coins.
It was a box of nothings, bits of stuff that had no value or meaning for anyone else in the world. And isn’t that love, Lisa, I thought, looking at the box of charms. When it means nothing to anybody else, and it means everything to us, isn’t that love? Didn’t we love, Lisa? Didn’t we love?
I put the box in Tito’s sack along with the pieces of Khaderbhai’s sword and the pair of Lisa’s hemp sandals. He tied it tightly, and slung it over his shoulder.
‘What’s your family name?’ I asked him.
I was studying his face. It was an important face. He had all my worldly goods in his hands, and we’d known each other fourteen minutes. I wanted to recognise that face, no matter how it changed.
‘Deshpande,’ he said.
‘Take care of our percentages, Mr Deshpande.’
‘No tension,’ he laughed.
We shook hands. He nodded to Didier, and trotted down the stairs.
‘So, how do we kill him?’ Didier asked, pouring a measure of brandy, after Tito left.
‘Kill who?’
‘Concannon, of course.’
‘I don’t want to kill Concannon. I want to find him, and make him tell me who bought that dope off him, and gave it to Lisa.’
‘I would recommend that we do both,’ he mused.
‘I need to talk to Naveen,’ I said. ‘Can you call him, and set it up? I have to report to Sanjay, early in the afternoon. Tell Naveen I’ll meet him at five, at Afghan Church, if he can make it.’
‘Certainly. Do you know when Abdullah returns?’
‘No.’
‘You need him now, inside the Company.’
‘I know.’
I looked around the room, and into the bedroom beyond.
‘I’m gonna sleep here, tonight.’
‘Surely not?’ Didier protested. ‘It is not secure. I know a place, near Metro. The manager has a splendid collection of manias and obsessions. You will love him. Let me take you there, now.’
‘I’m gonna sleep here.’
‘You, my friend, are –’ he began, but then laughed. ‘Well, if there is no persuading you, then Didier will sleep in this place of such sadness and sorrow with you.’
‘You don’t have to –’
‘Didier insists! But on the couch, of course. And thank my foresight, in asking Tito to bring two bottles.’
I slept on the floor, beside Lisa’s bed, with the pillow that was hers. Didier slept like a child, his arms and legs flung wide, on the couch.
Morning stumbled into a cold breakfast of the food I couldn’t eat the night before, and brandy with a dash of coffee in it.
We cleaned the kitchen, and Didier joined me at the door of the apartment that he’d visited so often: that place where love had laughed for the last time.
‘I’m ashamed,’ he said softly. ‘I’m so ashamed, Lin.’
‘Shame is the past. If it isn’t now, it soon will be.’
He thought for a moment.
‘That’s one of Karla’s, isn’t it?’
‘Of course.’
We both thought, for a while.
‘When you see her –’
‘Didier.’
‘No, I was going to say, when you see Karla, be gentle with her.’
‘I’ll talk nice to Karla. I always talk nice to Karla. I want to ask her how come she was the one who found Lisa’s body. You just get all those eyes and ears of yours on Concannon, Didier. And set it up for me with Naveen. Are we good?’
I was trying to move, trying to escape from the cage of sorrow, and Didier knew it. We stood in silence for a while, staring at the empty rooms, before he spoke.
‘I am not-good-okay, my friend. Shall we . . . I mean, if you will permit it, I would like to say some words, for Lisa, here at this door that we will never open again.’
‘Nice idea. Go ahead.’
‘Lisa, we loved you, and you knew that, in your heart. We loved your smile, and your free mind, and your habit of dancing for no reason, and your cheating at charades, and the way you loved us all, every time you saw us. But most of all, we loved your sincerity. You never faked it, Lisa, as you Americans say. You were always the real person. If there is any essence of your spirit lingering here, come into our hearts, now, and stay with us, when we leave this place where you left us, so that we can carry you inside us, and always love you.’
‘Didier,’ I said, after a while. ‘Thank you. That was really nicely put.’
‘Of course,’ he replied, pulling me through the door, and closing it for the last time. ‘If you could only hear the words that I have prepared for you, my dear friend.’
‘You already wrote lines for when I’m dead?’ I asked, taking the stairs.
‘Didier should not be caught on the hop, as they say. Especially if it concerns a beloved friend.’
‘I . . . guess not. Have you composed farewells for all your beloved friends?’
‘No, Lin,’ he said, as we reached the courtyard of the building. ‘Only you. I have only written such words for you. What I said just now for Lisa, it was from my heart. And you, my still-living friend, are attracting interest from bookmakers, ready to give odds on your survival outside the Sanjay Company.’
I looked back at the apartment building. Without her body to see dead, and believe dead, the apartment we’d shared was all I had of her, and what we were. It had been a light, happy place for both of us, most of the time. But I knew that for me alone, every time I saw it would be a conversation with the ghost of God.
Chapter Thirty-Six
It was harder to get into Ranjit’s media headquarters than it was to break out of prison. After three levels of security, each one checking my VISITOR tag and none checking my metal, I finally reached his private secretary.
‘The name is Shantaram,’ I said, for the fourth time. ‘It’s a private, and personal, matter.’
She picked up a phone, spoke the mantra, and then opened the door.
Ranjit rose from his leather chair, extending his hand over the desk. The secretary left, closing the door.
‘Sit down,’ I said.
‘What do you –’
‘All that security, and no-one thought to ask me if I was carrying a gun.’
‘A gun?’ he gasped.
‘Sit down.’
He sat down, his hands floating on the glass-topped desk.
‘Where’s Karla?’
‘Karla? You’re here about Karla?’
‘Where’s Karla?’
‘Why?’
‘Pick up the phone.’
‘What?’
‘Pick up the phone, and call Karla.’
‘Why don’t . . . why don’t you call her?’
‘I don’t like phones. And I don’t need one, because I can make you call her for me. You see that, right?’
‘See . . . what?’
‘Call Karla.’
‘I –’
‘Call Karla.’
‘You call me,’ Karla’s voice said from behind me, ‘and I come.’
She was sitting in an armchair in a corner of the large office. Potted palms beside her chair had hidden her from sight.
She seemed angry, and very glad to see me. I’d walked into a fight they’d been having.
‘Hello, Karla. In the corner for bad behaviour?’
‘Ranjit and I have a new agreement,’ she said, lighting a cigarette, shafts of light and dark on her face through the palm leaves. ‘If we find ourselves in the same room, we sit as far apart as we can.’
‘Are you done here?’ I asked, staring into queens.
Ranjit laughed. I faced him. The laugh stopped so quickly that he almost choked on it.
‘What are you laughing at?’
‘I . . . well . . . I . . . really have no idea.’
He was terrified. It didn’t make sense. Sure, I’d mentioned a gun, but I wasn’t carrying one, and Karla was there, and she was. He was safe, but he was sweating hard.
‘You know that expression, where you tell someone they look like they’ve seen a ghost?’
‘I . . . I suppose,’ he replied.
‘Well, you look like the ghost.’
‘The . . . ghost? Whose ghost?’
‘What’s wrong with you?’
‘You . . . said you had a gun.’
He was shaking.
‘I said that no-one thought to ask me if I was carrying a gun. I didn’t say I had one.’
‘Well, yes . . . I mean, no.’
‘Is there anything you want to tell me, Ranjit?’
‘No!’ he said quickly. ‘Nothing at all.’
‘What do you know about Lisa’s death?’
‘Nothing. Nothing. The poor girl. A tragic accident. That is, I mean . . . nothing at all.’
‘Goodbye, Ranjit, and please don’t wait up,’ Karla said, standing, and walking to the door.
I opened the door for her and we left the office. Ranjit was still sitting in his chair, his hands splayed on the desk as if he was trying to stop it floating away.
When the elevator doors closed, she took out a flask, drank a sip, closed it and turned to me, all queens.
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