I was quiet for a while, but I must’ve been grinding my teeth, or my knuckles, because Didier stood up and gave me a hug.
‘No matter what happens, Lin, there is always alcohol,’ he said, holding my shoulders in his straight arms. ‘Let us get majestically drunk. Do you have a preferred place of abandon?’
‘You know, Didier, you’re right. We should go anyway.’
‘Go?’
‘To see Aum Azaan, Raghav’s jazz band. They’re playing tonight. It’s an unofficial concert, on the Back Bay. I was hoping Karla would come. But let’s go anyway, and have some fun.’
‘You are singing my song, Lin,’ Didier answered gleefully. ‘But I will take a taxi, if you don’t mind.’
Chapter Fifty-Five
I rode alone to meet him at the jam, but as I cruised past the Colaba police station on my way to Cuffe Parade, I saw Arshan, standing in the middle of the road. He had a long, serrated kitchen knife in his hand. He was shouting.
I pulled the bike to a stop, and walked up to stand beside him. A crowd had begun to gather, but they were at a safe distance. So far, the cops hadn’t seen him, or they’d chosen not to respond.
‘How are you, Uncle?’ I asked, my hand close to his.
‘This coward!’ Arshan shouted. ‘He kicked my boy, and now Farzad’s in the hospital, with blood on his brain! Come out and fight me! Do you hear me, Lightning Dilip!’
‘Whoa, Arshan, take it easy, and keep your voice down.’
Nobody wins, fighting the cops head on. If you’ve got enough fire or firepower to drive some cops off, they always come back with more cops. And if you beat them, too, they come back with more cops, until you’re all dead, or very long gone. That’s what it means, to have a police force: you’ve accepted a group of people who can’t afford not to win.
That’s part of the unspoken deal they make with any city that hires them: cops put their lives on the line every day, like outlaws, and they can’t tolerate a direct attack on themselves. Cops and outlaws bite back, if anything bites them. It’s a rule. And cops always bite last.
Softly, I turned Arshan away from the centre of the road, and back onto the footpath across the street. I slipped the kitchen knife from his hand, and passed it to one of the street boys.
There was a taxi stand around the corner. I tumbled Arshan into a cab, and told the driver to wait. When I’d parked my bike in a safe spot, I called out to another street boy to watch over her until I returned. Arshan was sobbing when I returned to the cab.
I sat next to the driver, directing him to the triple-fronted mansion near Cuffe Parade. Arshan was stretched out on the back seat, his arm flung over his face. As the taxi pulled away I turned to see Lightning Dilip standing under the arch of the police station entrance, his fists on his hips.
Arshan stopped the taxi before we reached his house, saying that he had to talk to me in private. The chai shop where I sat with Concannon after the fight with the Scorpions was nearby. We sat in a sheltered spot beneath a blue plastic awning tied between trees.
Arshan drank a few breathy gulps of his tea.
‘Tell me about Farzad.’
‘He was having these headaches. I was so angry I came up here once before, to challenge Dilip, but you brought me home. The headaches got worse. Finally, we convinced him to have it checked, and they discovered a massive blood clot. It happened, they say, when he was kicked in the head.’
‘That’s tough. I’m sorry, Arshan.’
‘While they were testing him, he collapsed. They took him upstairs to the intensive care, right away. He’s been there ever since. Seventy-two hours, now, unresponsive.’
‘Unresponsive?’
‘He’s in a coma, Lin.’
‘Where is he?’
‘Bhatia hospital.’
‘It’s a good hospital,’ I said. ‘He’ll be okay.’
‘He’ll die,’ Arshan said.
‘He won’t. You won’t let him. But he’ll have nothing to live for when he gets well, if Lightning kills you. Promise me you won’t do anything like that again.’
‘I . . . I can’t.’
‘You can. And you must. People are depending on you.’
‘You don’t understand,’ he said. ‘I found it.’
‘You found what?’
‘I found the treasure.’
Bells rang somewhere: people were praying at a local temple, and ringing small, hand-held bells.
‘The treasure?’
‘Yes.’
‘When?’
He was staring at his own feet in a daze, the empty chai glass slipping through his fingers. I caught it as it fell, and set it on the ground.
‘Two weeks ago.’
‘The families must be thrilled, even at a sad time like this.’
‘I haven’t told them.’
‘What? You’ve gotta tell them.’
‘At first,’ he said quietly, talking to himself, ‘I didn’t tell anyone because I didn’t want to lose what we had. The search was . . . so much fun, you see. We were all so happy. I know the treasure will change us. It has to. We won’t be able to stop it. So, I kept it a secret.’
He fell silent, dancing backwards through memories of a treasure unfound.
‘And now?’
‘When Farzad got sick and he was lying in that bed, not responding to a kiss, I knew that I’d kept the secret because I was greedy. In my heart of hearts, the secret was too wonderful to share, and it gave me pleasure, for a while, to know that it was mine, alone.’
‘It’s human,’ I said. ‘And now you can make up for it, like a mensch.’
‘Don’t you see? I didn’t make any protest, when that policeman kicked Farzad, because I didn’t want anything to jeopardise the search. I sacrificed my own son, for the treasure.’
‘You didn’t kick your son in the head, Arshan. And Lightning Dilip has kicked me in the head a few times, without a blood clot. It was bad luck, and bad timing, and that’s not your fault.’
‘I was . . . so selfish.’
‘Well, now you can be generous, and you can afford to bring the best doctors and specialists from the whole world to Farzad’s bed. You can make him well with the treasure, Arshan.’
‘Do you really think so?’
‘I don’t know. I don’t know anything. But I think you should try. Whatever you do, you’ve gotta tell the others that you found the treasure. Every day you wait breaks a strand in their trust. You gotta do it now, Arshan, tonight.’
‘You’re right,’ he said, straightening up. ‘You’re right.’
‘Let’s get one thing straight, before you do. I don’t want any part of the treasure. I don’t want to hear about it, ever again, if that’s okay with you.’
‘What are you saying?’
‘I’m saying that I don’t need it, and don’t want it, and don’t want to hear about it, ever again. You see that, right?’
‘You’re a strange man, Lin,’ he said. ‘But I like you.’
I walked him to the door of his house. We could hear Anahita, on the other side of it. She’d worked up a good pestering, and let him have it before she opened the door.
‘Seven loaves I baked for Farzad’s prayers,’ the closed door shouted at us, ‘and you couldn’t get home on time!’
When she opened mid-pester and saw his face, she cried out and pulled him into a cuddle.
‘What is it?’ she gasped. ‘What’s the matter, my darling love?’
‘I have something to tell you, sweetheart,’ Arshan said, leaning on her, as he walked through the red curtains leading to the excavated dome. ‘Call everyone together.’
‘Of course, my darling,’ she said, supporting him on her shoulder as they walked.
‘I’m sorry about the loaves, dearest,’ Arshan said absently.
&nbs
p; ‘Never you mind about that, my darling.’
I let myself out. Nobody noticed. I was glad.
As I stood outside, waving down a taxi to retrieve my bike, I heard shouts and screams and happy ululations, ringing from the three-family home.
I got my bike, and paid the kid who’d watched it for me. He gave the money back, and change, which wasn’t a good thing.
He’d been using my bike as a prop, while I was away. He was a Zone-Drifter. His bing was to sit on other people’s motorcycles and in other people’s cars to do business. He’d just done a drug deal, sitting on my bike, and he was sharing the take with me. When I was with the Sanjay Company, it wouldn’t have occurred to him to use my bike for business. It was insubordinate, and he knew it. He was wondering if I knew it or not.
I grabbed the collar of his shirt, and pushed the money into his pocket.
‘What the fuck do you think you’re doing, Sid, using my bike?’
‘Things are bad on the street, just now, Linbaba! Afghans in Mohammed Ali Road, and Scorpions under the bed. A man doesn’t know where to deal his dope any more.’
‘Apologise.’
‘I’m so sorry, Linbaba.’
‘Not to me, to the motorcycle. You were supposed to look after her. Apologise.’
He leaned in toward the bike, both hands pressed together, while I held his shirt. He was a slippery one, and we both knew I’d have to ride him down rather than run him down, if he escaped.
He put his pressed palms to his forehead.
‘I’m so sorry, motorcycle-ji, for my bad manners,’ he said fervently. ‘I promise to respect you, in future.’
He reached out to stroke her, but I wouldn’t let him.
‘That’s enough. Don’t do it again.’
‘No, sir.’
‘And tell all the other Zone-Drifters to stay away from her.’
‘Yes, sir.’
I rode to the jam on the Back Bay using a route that didn’t pass Arshan’s home. I didn’t want to think about the treasure, or young Farzad, coma-roaming at the hospital. I was blue: blue enough to need jazz.
I parked beside Naveen’s bike, near the crowd of fifty or sixty university students sitting on the shore. Jazz was raising people to the same exalted high. I stood on the edge of the group, my hands in my jacket pockets. I was surfing the sounds with thoughts of Karla, knowing how much she would’ve loved it.
‘Musician pricks,’ Naveen muttered, joining me.
He was looking at Diva, who was sitting in adoration at the feet of a very talented, good-looking guitar player named Raghav. He was a nice kid, and a friend of mine, but Naveen had a point.
‘Indeed.’
Diva was unrecognisable to anyone but her friends, the rich Diva girls, who were with Didier, sitting apart from the main group on the lawns of the Back Bay.
She wore no make-up. The bindi on her forehead was a glass diamond, her earrings were brass, and her bracelets were plastic. Her clothes and sandals came from a slum shop, reflecting the latest fashion for slum girls.
It suited her, as it did all the girls in the slum. But the presence of the Diva girls, from the richer life, worried me.
‘The girls came along?’ I asked.
‘I couldn’t keep them away,’ Naveen sighed. ‘Diva says they’re sworn to secrecy. I had to let her do this. She’s been a prisoner in the slum for nearly two weeks, Lin. She needs this.’
‘I guess you’re right. And the students might not recognise her. She’s got the slum-girl thing down pretty good.’
‘You should hear her swear,’ Naveen said. ‘I wandered into a session the other day. The girls were teaching her what to say when a guy hits on you. It was very instructive. You want to hear some of it?’
‘I lived there,’ I said. ‘I know it starts with lauda lasoon, and ends with saala lukka. Please, God, don’t let Diva unload what she’s learned on me.’
‘Amen.’
‘Have the Diva girls been in the slum?’
He laughed, and I frowned, because I was asking about the security of Johnny Cigar and his family, and it wasn’t funny to me.
‘That’s funny?’
‘Yeah,’ he laughed again.
‘Why?’
‘Because if Diva’s Divas ever visit the slum, I’ve got this running bet with Didier.’
‘Once again, young detective, I why you. Why?’
He sighed, letting out some embarrassment.
‘Didier was trying to get the girls to the slum, and have a ghost story night. They were really up for it, but more scared of the slum than the ghosts. I said to Didier, the day they go to the slum, I’ll race Benicia around the loop.’
It was a significant boast. Naveen had been practising a few stunts and tricks with Colaba biker boys, and he was becoming a good rider, but racing Benicia was another matter.
She was a Spanish girl who’d lived in Bombay for a couple of years. She bought Rajasthani jewellery, and sold it to buyers from Barcelona. She was a single girl who kept to herself, and was a significant mystery because of it. But everyone knew that when she rode her vintage 350cc bike around Bombay, nobody beat Benicia.
‘You know Benicia?’
‘Not . . . yet.’
‘And you’re serious about the bet?’
‘Sure,’ he laughed, but then smartened up. ‘You’re not thinking of bribing the Diva girls into the slum, are you?’
‘No-one should go there,’ I said. ‘Diva’s there as a guest of Johnny and his family. Until the people who killed her father are caught, no-one should go to see her, in case they expose those people to harm.’
‘You’re . . . you’re right, of course,’ he said stiffly. ‘I wasn’t thinking of that. I’ll try to stop the Diva girls, but Didier might’ve already persuaded them. I’m sorry.’
‘It’s alright, Naveen. And if the Divas do visit the slum, and you get Benicia to race you, I’ll put a thousand dollars on you, kid, here and now.’
‘You mean it?’
I fished the money from my pocket, and handed it across.
‘Done,’ Naveen said, offering his hand.
‘Done,’ I said, shaking it.
‘How’s it going with Karla?’ Naveen asked.
‘Okay,’ I said, maybe convincingly. ‘How’s it going with Diva?’
‘I’m going nuts,’ he replied, very convincingly.
‘Does she know?’
‘Does she know I’m going nuts?’ he asked, professional concern darkening his face.
‘That you love her,’ I said, looking for the reaction.
The kid was good. He locked love in the cage of a clenched jaw, betraying nothing, and looked at the slum-girl Diva, clapping her hands in time to the music.
Some of the students wandered from group to group, laughing and talking. Others sat in whispered intimacy. There was some handholding, a little cuddling, and the occasional kiss. In Bombay, in those years, it was as wild as kids could get. It was also more innocent than you can reasonably expect sexually excited twenty-year-olds to be.
It was a sweet thing, the gentle love those kids shared, as their enervated minds recovered from the task of inheriting the city, while the music played, echoing softly from the tall apartment buildings nearby, where many of them lived.
They were sons and daughters of the future. They wore hip clothes, passed joints and bottles of cheap rum around, and played music near the sea. But they also got good grades, and didn’t give a damn that the group included every faith, and every caste.
They were already something that had never existed on the foreshore of the Island City, and when their turn came to run the companies and councils, they’d be navigating by different stars.
Diva’s two friends were leaning in toward Didier, clutching at him in helpless giggling. They weren�
��t listening to the music. Every sentence Didier whispered made them shriek into his shirt front, trying to stifle the sound.
He saw me, and excused himself from their pout.
‘What kept you?’ he asked, shaking my hand.
What kept me?
Arshan’s suicide attack on the Colaba police station, and a fabled treasure.
‘Tell you later. How you doing?’
Didier didn’t hear me. He was making a scandalous gesture to the girls.
‘How you doing, Didier?’
‘I have two very charming ladies over here, who would like to know you better than they should.’
He waved his hand as if presenting a magic trick. We looked at the girls, sitting a few metres away. They were doing something with their faces. It might’ve been smiling. I couldn’t be sure.
Whatever he’d told them about me sent them from fear to fascination, it seemed. They raised their hands, and moved them. It might’ve been waving, or they might’ve been warding me off.
They were scary-smiling again, and I couldn’t figure it out. Guys never understand what pretty girls do with their faces. They got up, quite athletically for sit-around girls, and began to slow-walk toward us, their bare toes prowling through the grass in step. They weren’t sit-around girls at all.
The Divas were dancers: dancers who danced together, and practised. They were good. That part, I understood. Guys always understand what pretty girls do with their hips.
‘If they ask you about the man you killed,’ Didier said, as the Diva girls slow-stepped across the moonlit grass, ‘I’ll take it from there.’
‘I haven’t killed anyone, Didier.’
‘You haven’t?’ he asked, dubious. ‘Why do I always think you have?’
‘Hi,’ one of the girls said.
‘Hi,’ the second girl said.
‘I’m so glad you girls are here,’ I said. ‘You’ve gotta hang around, until my wife gets back from church.’
‘Your wife?’ one girl said.
‘Church?’ the other peeped.
‘Yeah. She’s got the kids. Four under four. So glad you’re good babysitters. Those kids are demons, and we need a break.’
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