Part Twelve
Chapter Sixty-Eight
I woke to find that it wasn’t Karla’s kisses burning my skin: I’d fallen asleep with my face on a statue of Lord Shiva, and His trident had carved a mark on my cheek. I hit the shower and washed up again, determined to keep the door locked for a couple of days, and maybe continue my wake for the dead. But when I dried off and looked in the mirror, the trident mark was still there. It seemed as if it would last a few days before fading. And I knew, staring at that folly, that if I got so wasted that I branded my own face, when there were enemies who’d happily scar it for me, it was time to stop getting wasted.
And with that sobering thought, it occurred to me that Karla might’ve left her fetish party early, and could be stranded somewhere in the Island City, because of the rioting. I dressed in battle gear, did a pocket check, and walked into the entry hall. There was a barricade of furniture against the door leading to the stairs. It was common practice in hotels during a police lockdown of the city, in those years, to keep guests safe on one side of a barricade, and looters or rioters on the other.
‘The whole of South Bombay is locked down,’ Jaswant said, reading his newspaper. ‘I was lucky to get this newspaper. And no, you can’t have it until I’m finished.’
‘Where?’
‘You can’t have it anywhere. There’s a line before you, baba.’
‘I mean, where’s the lockdown?’
‘Everywhere.’
A lockdown meant that I couldn’t travel anywhere in the city during daylight: nobody could.
‘For how long?’
‘What the fuck do you care?’
‘Fuck it, Jaswant. What’s your hunch? One day, or four?’
‘Given all the fires and rioting last night, I’ve got the bookies on three days,’ he replied. ‘And I repeat, what the fuck do you care?’
‘Three days? I don’t think I’ve got enough inspiration for three days.’
‘Inspiration!’ Jaswant said, putting down the newspaper and swinging his swanky new executive chair round to face me.
He threw a switch on his desk, and a panel slid open in the wall beside me. It was a secret cupboard filled with alcohol, cigarettes, snack foods, tiny cereal packets, cartons of milk, boxes of sugar cubes, pots of honey, tuna fish, baked beans, matches, candles, first aid kits, and indiscernible things pickled in jars.
He threw another switch, and a cascade of tiny coloured lights rotated around the cupboard.
‘Hey,’ he asked, peering at the trident on my face, illuminated by his coloured lights. ‘Do you know you’ve got a Trishula mark on your face?’
‘Let’s not get too personal, Jaswant.’
He waved a hand at his cupboard of pleasures.
‘Always happy to keep things on a business level, baba,’ he said, raising his eyebrows in sequence. ‘There’s music, too.’
He threw another switch, and Bhangra dance music stomped out of speakers on his desk. The paperweight danced with the stapler on the glass-topped surface, jittering back and forth across Jaswant’s reflected smile.
‘We Sikhs have learned to adapt,’ he shouted, over the music. ‘You wanna survive World War Three, move into a Sikh neighbourhood.’
He let the song play to the end, and it was a pretty long song.
‘I never get tired of that,’ he sighed. ‘Wanna hear it again?’
‘No. Thanks. I wanna buy your booze, before Didier does.’
‘Didier’s not here.’
‘I don’t wanna take the risk.’
‘That’s . . . just about the smartest thing you ever said to me.’
‘People don’t lay smart on you, Jaswant, because your attitude is wrong.’
‘Fuck attitude,’ he said.
‘The prosecution rests.’
‘Attitude doesn’t pay my rent.’
‘Wrap up some rent for me, Jaswant.’
‘Alright, alright, keep your wrinkly fucking shirt on, baba,’ he said, joining me at the window and bagging the supplies I pointed out.
‘Have you got any pre-rolled joints?’ I asked.
‘Sure, I’ve got fives, tens, fifteens –’
‘I’ll take them.’
‘What them?’
‘All of them.’
‘Chee, chee! Didn’t anyone ever teach you the art of business, man?’
‘Gimme the stuff, Jaswant.’
‘You don’t even know what it costs, man.’
‘How much does it cost, Jaswant?’
‘A fucking bundle, man.’
‘Done. Wrap it up.’
‘There you go again. You’ve got to fight for the price, or it isn’t really the price. You’re cheating me, when you don’t bargain me to the fair price, even if I come out in front. It’s how it’s done, man.’
‘Tell me the fair price, Jaswant, and I’ll pay that.’
‘You’re not getting me,’ he said patiently, teaching an ape. ‘The game, for both of us, is to discover the fair price. That’s the only way to know what anything costs. If we don’t all do that, we’ll be fucked. It’s spoilers like you who mess everything up, because you’ll pay anything, for anything.’
‘I pay what it costs, Jaswant.’
‘Let me tell you something. You can’t opt out of that system, man, no matter how hard you try. Bargaining is the bedrock of business. Didn’t anyone ever teach you that?’
‘I don’t care what it costs.’
‘Everybody cares what it costs.’
‘I don’t. If I can’t afford it, I don’t want it. If I want it, and I can afford it, I don’t care what it costs in money. That’s what money’s for, isn’t it?’
‘Money’s a river, man. Some of us go with the current, and some of us paddle to the shore.’
‘Enough with the old Sikh sayings.’
‘It’s a new Sikh saying. I just made it up.’
‘Wrap my stuff, Jaswant.’
Jaswant sighed.
‘I like you,’ he said. ‘I’ll never say that in public, because I’m not showy in public. Everybody knows that. But I like you, and I see some interesting qualities in you. I also see some errors in your spiritual thinking, and because I like you, I’d be happy to realign your chakras for you, so to speak.’
‘You’ve made that speech before, haven’t you?’ I asked, taking my two sacks of essential stuff.
‘A few times.’
‘How did it go over?’
‘I can sell a story, Lin. I once played Othello, in –’
‘Nice doing business with you, Jaswant.’
‘That’s it!’ he said. ‘That’s what I was trying to tell you before! I like you, see, but when you’re like a child, and you’re not a child, you take all the fun out of being an adult, see?’
Cue music. He punched the Bhangra music awake.
I stashed my supplies, ate two cans of cold tuna, sharpened my knives while the food settled, and then did push-ups and chin-ups until night gave me the chance to move across the city.
A full bandobast, or shutdown of the city, is impossible to negotiate by daylight. Anyone on High Street at high noon is a victim, or soon to be. The cops were scared. There weren’t enough of them to stop the people, when the people went to war with one another, or to save the banks. The shutdown made everything much clearer for the cops: if you’re on the street, you’re meat.
‘I’m going out, Jaswant,’ I said, just before midnight.
‘The fuck you are. That barricade stays.’
‘I’ll make a mess of it, if I pull it down,’ I said, moving to the barricade.
‘No way!’ he said, coming around his desk to ease the barricade away from the door. ‘This is an intricate defence. My Parsi friend could do it better, I wish he were here. But it’s good enough to keep the
zombies out.’
‘Zombies?’
‘This is how it starts, man,’ he said anxiously. ‘Everybody knows that.’
He nudged the artwork of chairs and benches away from the door, and opened it a slender crack.
‘You’ll need a code word,’ he said.
‘What for?’
‘To get back in. So I’ll know it’s you.’
‘How about, Open the door.’
‘Something more personal, I was thinking.’
‘If I make it back, and you don’t open the door, I’ll break it down.’
‘How?’
‘The hinges are on the outside, Jaswant.’
‘Hinges!’ he hissed. ‘My Parsi friend would’ve thought of that. I’ll bet his zombie barricade is flawless.’
‘Just open the fucking door, Jaswant, when I come back.’
‘Come back uninfected please,’ he said, shoving the barricade against the door.
Night is Truth wearing a purple dress, and people dance differently there. The safest way to get around at night during a shutdown in Bombay, if you absolutely have to get around, is to ride on the back of a traffic cop’s motorcycle.
I knew a good cop, who needed the money. Corruption is a tax imposed on any society that doesn’t pay people enough to repel it themselves. His story, at roadblocks, was that I was a translator, a volunteer, who was warning tourists to stay off the streets at night.
And we did encounter a bewildered tourist, here and there, on the rounds: people with backpacks, not packed for barricaded hotels in a ghost city, and who were glad to see a cop, with a foreigner tagging along.
We drifted through most checkpoints on idle, answering questions with a shout and a wave, and I rode around the silent city behind a cop, with a gun, paying him by the hour to help me find Karla, on his rounds. I wanted to be at her side, or to know she was safe.
Legends are written in blood and fire, and the streets were red enough to write new ones. The traffic cop escorting me said that violent clashes had broken out near the Nabila mosque. Some had died, and many more had been wounded. The mosque was intact, with not a tile damaged. People called it a miracle, forgetting how many firemen had been injured to save the sacred space.
‘It is a nicely impressive time,’ Dominic the traffic cop said Indianly, calling over his shoulder as he rode just above stalling speed, on empty streets.
‘Impressively scary, Dominic.’
‘Exactly!’ he laughed.
‘Let’s try the Mahesh hotel,’ I suggested.
‘This is a time to tell your grandchildren about,’ Dominic said, veering toward the Mahesh, and staring through shadow curtains into every deserted laneway. ‘A time when ghosts roamed freely, in Bombay.’
We didn’t find Karla, but we found her car. When we drew alongside, we found Randall at the wheel, and Vinson in the back seat.
Randall hissed down the window. Vinson was hissing down a scotch.
‘Hi, Randall. Where’s Karla?’
‘I don’t know, sir. I haven’t seen her since she left on the motorcycle, with Miss Benicia.’
‘I found her!’ Vinson said from the back seat, a little drunk.
I turned to face him.
‘Where?’
‘In an ashram!’ he said happily.
‘Karla, in an ashram? Not unless she’s buying it.’
‘Not Karla. Rannveig. Naveen found her. She’s in an ashram, about a hundred miles from here. I’m gonna go there, as soon as all this calms down.’
I turned back to Randall.
‘What’s going on?’
‘My instruction was to meet Miss Karla at the Amritsar hotel,’ he said. ‘But the bandobast came down so fast, and the police wouldn’t allow me to move, and I wouldn’t abandon the vehicle, so I got stuck here, sir.’
‘And the passenger?’
‘Mr Vinson dived into the car when a looter, trying to steal a car like this one, was shot at in this street, at two o’clock this afternoon, sir.’
‘Lucky for me you opened the door, Randall,’ Vinson said, opening the liquor cabinet.
‘And you’ve been here ever since?’
‘Yes, sir, waiting for an opportunity to rendezvous with Miss Karla, at the Amritsar hotel.’
‘The Mahesh is only five hundred metres away, Randall,’ I said. ‘This isn’t a night to be out. You’d be safer in there.’
‘I will not abandon the vehicle, sir, unless my life is in the balance. I am perfectly comfortable. But, perhaps Mr Vinson would care to make a run for it.’
‘No way, man,’ Vinson slurred. ‘I wanna be alive, to find my girl. She’s in an ashram. That’s, like, heavy shit, man.’
I looked at Dominic.
This will cost you, his look said, and fair enough. I was asking a lot.
‘Make it a Press car,’ he said, wagging his head. ‘We’ll get through.’
‘Have you got a pen, and white paper?’ I asked. ‘Can you make a PRESS sign?’
They bickered about drawing the sign, as people do, even when very important things are at stake, but finally agreed on the draft.
Randall placed it on the dashboard, propped against the window by one of Karla’s shoes.
Dominic cruised us through checkpoint after checkpoint. Randall saluted. Vinson drank, impersonating the press.
At the alley behind the Amritsar, I paid Dominic and thanked him for his help.
‘You’re a good guy, Lin,’ he smiled, pocketing the money. ‘If I thought you were a bad guy, I’d shoot you. See you in two hours. Don’t worry. We’ll find your girl. This is Bombay, yaar. Bombay always finds a way to love. Get some rest.’
He rode away, the thrum of the motorcycle reminding those behind shutters and doors that someone was there: a brave man, maintaining order.
Chapter Sixty-Nine
When Dominic left, Randall slipped around the car to open the door for Vinson. Before he could reach it there was a voice from the alleyway, and we both stopped.
‘I warned you,’ Madame Zhou said. ‘I warned you to stay away from Kavita Singh.’
Her goons, the twins and the acid throwers, peeled off their skin of shadows. I was about to answer, but Randall stepped forward, standing beside me.
‘Please,’ he said, quietly.
‘I got this, Randall,’ I said, trying to watch five dangerous minds at the same time. ‘Madame Zhou does a regular show in this alley, and somehow I always get a ticket.’
She laughed, but she was the only one.
‘Please, allow me to speak,’ Randall said softly. ‘I’ve been waiting for this.’
He meant it. I allowed him.
‘Permit me to present myself to you, Madame,’ he said, addressing the veiled figure. ‘I am Randall Soares, one of two men who stand here for the Woman. If any harm comes to the Woman, I will kill you, and all your pets. This is your last warning, Madame. Leave us alone, or die.’
He had guts. It was more than I’d have said, in his place, because I knew that Madame Zhou’s specialty was second-hand revenge. I was hoping that Randall didn’t have a family that could be traced through his name.
Randall had his hand in the pocket of his jacket. The acid throwers had their hands in their pockets. I had my hands on my knives. Madame Zhou moved backwards into the alleyway until shadows ate her again.
‘Randall Soares,’ she said, the last word a rattlesnake’s hiss. ‘Randall Soares.’
The pets backed into the shadows. The alley was silent.
‘Get in touch with any Soares that you know,’ I advised him. ‘That woman is all grudge.’
‘I have no family,’ Randall said. ‘I am an orphan, given up at birth, and never adopted from the orphanage that I left, at the age of sixteen. Madame Zhou cannot hurt a family I don’t have.’
‘You’d really kill them?’
‘Wouldn’t you, sir?’
‘I’m hoping to stop it before it comes to that. Are you ex-army?’
‘No, sir, Indian Navy Marines.’
‘Marines, huh? For how long?’
‘Six years, sir.’
‘What happened?’ Vinson called from the car.
‘Bat’s in the wrong belfry, sir,’ Randall said, opening the door for him. ‘A small fist, knocking on Hell’s gate.’
‘So fricking great to get out in the air,’ Vinson said, stretching. ‘I was in that car for hours. I gotta piss, man, like urgently.’
He made for the nearest wall.
‘Get civilised, Vinson,’ I said. ‘Hold it in, until you get upstairs. There are motorcycles parked here.’
Randall put the car close to a wall in the arched alleyway, permitting traffic through the lane but allowing for a quick getaway.
‘No-one will mess with it,’ I said, as Randall locked the car. ‘You can come upstairs, and stretch your legs.’
‘Wonderful, sir.’
‘Enough with the sir bullshit, Randall. My name is Lin, or Shantaram, if you prefer, but never sir. You might as well call me boss.’
‘Thank you, Mr Shantaram,’ he smiled, Goan sunsets gleaming in his eyes.
‘Can I piss somewhere?’ Vinson asked, riding waves on the footpath.
Randall and I shuffled Vinson up the stairs, and I banged on the door.
‘Open up, Jaswant.’
‘What’s the password?’ Jaswant called from the other side of the door.
‘Open the fucking door, you motherfucker,’ I said, supporting Vinson.
‘Lin!’ Jaswant said, from behind the door. ‘What do you want?’
‘What do I want, you landlord’s excuse for a Punjabi? I want to strangle you with your turban, and stab you with your own kirpan.’
‘Over my baptised ass,’ he said. ‘What do you really want?’
I looked at Randall, who seemed to be enjoying himself. I looked at Vinson, drooling off my arm. He was certainly enjoying himself. I looked at the locked door to my own hotel.
‘I would like to come in please, Jaswant,’ I said, as sweetly as possible with clenched teeth.
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