Mumbai Noir (11 page)

For the next two hours, over coffee and sandwiches, I scrutinised the “occupation” column of the Excel sheet—the listing of film financiers was far too long for my liking. Salim Chingari could be under the benevolent protection of any one of them. I needed a short list of three for a fighting chance of finding Jasmine.

I knew just the right man who could help me do that. I was going to use my social network, again, which I have assiduously cultivated over the last thirty years. A private detective is only as good as his contacts.

“This is a surprise, Shorty! Where the fuck have you been recently?”

“All over town.”

“Looking for something?”

“Yeah. Love and sympathy.”

“Forget it. Even the Salvation Army is out of stock.”

“Got to be somewhere. Dalal Street?”

“Something on your mind?”

“Need to find a film financier.”

“Don’t choke me, Shorty. Are you thinking of making a movie about your life,
Jab I Fart?”

He laughed outrageously at his own witticism. I let him have a little fun at my expense—I’m not touchy. Besides, Rafique Irani knows everyone and his uncle in the city. I was at his spacious sea-facing office in Nariman Point. The corpulent and jovial Irani is India’s Recycling King and his life’s ambition is to be on the
Forbes
list of Asia’s richest entrepreneurs. I am sure he will get there. Besides collecting truckloads of old newspapers, plastics, and bottles every day and sending them to China by the shipload, he’s also a personal collector of antiques—especially
Titanic
memorabilia. He has quite a collection which he showed me once at his Worli residence.

One of his kinks—in a long list—is that he doesn’t like neighbors. So he bought the whole building and converted it into a private museum with the top floor as his residence. He’s one moneybag in Mumbai I have a sneaking affection for. He has a sense of humour—the Parsi kind—and doesn’t take himself too seriously. I got to know him because I had once given him a hot tip that a certain liquor baron was moving in for the kill to buy a rare pair of Roman wine goblets from a source in Istanbul. Rafique Irani beat him to it in a photo finish. I was at his house that night when he opened one of the rarest single-malt bottles on earth—to celebrate. I really couldn’t figure out what all the fuss was about. It tasted like booze.

After he had calmed down a bit, I showed him the list and gave him a camouflaged outline of the case I was on. I urged him to identify the three most likely film financiers with underworld connections. He studied it for five minutes, picked up a pen, and circled a name. “Here’s my shortlist of one.”

I looked at the name he had circled in red—
Dr. Prem Pardeshi.
I wondered about the subject of his thesis.

“You’re sure?”

“As sure as the sun will rise tomorrow and a politician will take a bribe.”

“Do you know him?”

“Nope. I know about him from my business sources.”

“Thanks. Anything I can do for you?”

“Yes, Shorty. Get me the Kohinoor diamond. My fiftieth birthday is just round the corner.” He burst into his boisterous laugh again.

“Sure,” I said. “Give me a couple of days to talk to the queen.”

For the next four days I was busier than a pandit during marriage season. I was on Pardeshi’s tail like a man possessed. I wanted to bring an honorable closure to this case to salvage my self-esteem—I was not ready yet for Konduskar’s description of a “washed-out” private detective.

I used every trick in the trade to shadow him. Pardeshi was a man you could easily lose in a crowd—fiftyish, short, frail, and nondescript. I hired a retired policewoman to help with the shadow work. She is very good at tailing people in the guise of an old woman selling flowers. Part of her old police work.

By the third day we had a good fix on Pardeshi’s routine. He would kiss his tired-looking wife goodbye at the door of his apartment at Buena Vista in Pali Hill and head straight for a sleazy massage parlor in Santa Cruz called Tasty Bites. Two hours later he would be on his way to a bar in Andheri named Natasha’s Nest. I followed him inside on the third day. I was in disguise—wearing thick specs—and sat at one of the distant barstools sipping a Bombay beer, the least pricey one in the joint. He had a forlorn expression on his face—typical of afternoon drinkers. He ordered another drink and something to eat which looked like omelet and bread. I ordered a grilled cheese-and-tomato sandwich to while away the time.

His next stop was at a building in Lokhandwala complex— one of the biggest concrete jungles after Gurgaon. He was there for barely forty-five minutes—presumably in his office. Maybe the film finance business was at a low ebb; how much of the same old shit can the public really take? Then he got into his heavily tinted black Accord and was most likely headed home—for a well-deserved siesta. I followed him in my hired-for-the-day rickshaw to the base of the Hill, like I had done the previous two days. I have used Mustafa’s services on tailing assignments before—he doesn’t talk much, is the soul of discretion, and is an expert driver in Mumbai’s saturated traffic. And, as a bonus, his rickshaw is spotlessly clean. I like that.

On the fourth day I got the break I was looking for. Pardeshi skipped his massage—or whatever—and was heading toward Juhu beach. He seemed to be in a major hurry judging from the persistent honking. I had a strong hunch he would connect with Chingari—on orders from his bosses in Dubai, Karachi, Colombo, or god knows where.

My hunch was right. He drove into a gate of a two-story bungalow which had all the signs of a safe house—still, quiet, eerie. We waited across the road and Mustafa pretended to change a tire so that we wouldn’t attract too much attention. I gave him precise instructions.

I was on edge but ready with my act.

In about fifteen minutes the black car came out of the gate. I couldn’t see too well because of the heavy tint but I was reasonably sure there was no one else in the car except Pardeshi and his young driver.

I made my move. I was going to make a very high-risk pizza delivery.

I entered the gate, walked up the driveway, and rang the bell next to the heavy door. Nothing happened so I rang again. Now I could hear some activity inside.

“Who’s that?” a gruff voice said in Hindi.

“Domino’s Pizza, sir.”

“I haven’t ordered any pizza-wizzah. Get lost,” the voice barked.

“This is a free promotion offer, sir, of our new kheema and karela pizza.” I recited this in an American BPO accent.

The door opened. No one can resist a free pizza!

It was Salim Chingari all right—all dressed up to make a quick exit from the safe house. He didn’t get very far; I had him right where I wanted him. He was looking at the barrel of my licensed gun in extreme close-up.

“Sorry about the pizza, sir. The promotion just expired.”

Though grouchy, Konduskar kept his promise. He booked Chingari on multiple charges—extortion, assault and battery, unlawful confinement, among others. The next day Chingari spilled the beans and begged for a fix of heroin. He was not so tough after all. What worried me was that he was an escape artist—from jails. But then, I am not his keeper, only his finder.

The Nagpada cops and I traced Jasmine that night—not in very good shape but alive. She had been kept as a “prisoner of obsessive love” by Chingari—the hophead fixer of Nagpada. She was in a nursing home in Lower Parel—why there’s no Upper Parel, I have no idea—shot full of sedatives to ease the pain inflicted by a horsewhip. When Jasmine was well enough I took her “home”—to Hawa Bai’s high-class whorehouse where she belonged. She didn’t have anywhere else to go. The story of so many young and hapless girls, from all parts of the country, who are tricked into this business by ruthless agents working for entrenched establishments like Hawa Bai’s.

It was a touching reunion—even for a hardened private detective pushing fifty.

“Come and spend a night with one of my girls when you’re feeling blue, handsome,” Hawa Bai said in her imperious tone, handing me the rest of the money.

“Maybe.” I took the cash and left.

The next morning I called up Rafique Irani at his office.

“Mr. Irani, the queen has graciously consented. She wants to present the rock to you in person. When would be convenient?”

“Tell her majesty I’ll be there before she can say East India Company.” I could hear the guffaw.

“The case is closed. I found the girl.”

“Good for you, Shorty. Was it worth it?”

“Yes.”

“Come over for a drink tonight. I want to hear the details. This raddi business is getting me down.”

“Sure,” I said. “And I’ll pick up some biryani from Altaf’s on my way.”

He’s a big pushover for gourmet biryani. In his private museum there’s a set of vintage copper and brass biryani cooking handis from the Mughal era.

Rafique Irani had company when I walked into his penthouse. His lady love, I presumed, from their body language.

“I am Behroze Ichaporia,” she introduced herself. “And you’re Shorty Gomes, of course. I have heard so much about you and your exploits from Raf.”

“Don’t believe a word of it, Miss Ichaporia. It’s pretty dull stuff: all in a day’s work. Our friend here exaggerates and embellishes things to make my work sound interesting, like advertising.”

“You are being modest, Mr. Gomes.” She had a pleasant resonance in her voice.

“No, I am not. I am being realistic.”

As the evening progressed, I discovered she was a selfmade Mumbai woman—independent, smart, empathetic, and full of life. Another collectors’ item for Irani. After we were suitably oiled on the expensive cactus juice—she had a good appetite for the stuff—she pulled the old, hoary question on me: “Tell me, Mr. Gomes: if you were not a private detective what would you be?”

“An undertaker,” I said. “The business is steady.”

Two weeks later I was drinking my second cup of tea at Kayani’s, glancing at the headlines in the morning newspaper— full of scams in politics, sports, agriculture, defense, industry, finance, entertainment, you name it. The same old pasteurized story—with monotous, clockwork regularity. How much more of this brazen looting can the people take? I wondered. Compared to these plunderers, Genghis Khan was a rookie just learning the ropes. There was little point being a “crimebuster” in these loaded, free-for-all times. As Konduskar had implied at our meeting in Nagpada, what was the sense of putting the small fry behind bars?

As I was punishing my brains with these weighty questions, a minor news item in the inside pages caught my attention. The headline read:
Dreaded Criminal Escapes from Judicial Custody
.

Salim Chingari had done it again. His MO was the soul of simplicity. While being taken for a court appearance in a police van he had faked a very convincing fainting fit—frothing from the mouth and all. The two flustered cops drove him to a nearby hospital for emergency treatment. Chingari made his escape from the hospital brandishing a surgeon’s scalpel. The two cops were suspended, pending an internal inquiry. You know what that means.

So here I was, back to square one. Easy come, easy go, I ruminated. It made my day.

That afternoon I packed my meager possessions from my flophouse and decided to go where I belonged.

My old landlady was very understanding. Waiving the half-month’s rent, she said: “Bring me some Goan sausages if you decide to come back, Shorty.”

“I will, Mrs. D’Costa,” I said. Though there wasn’t much chance of that.

I took the night Volvo to Goa and slept like a baby. The vodka-and-lime mixture helped.

When I landed at Panaji, I felt alive and ready to start all over again.

THE BODY IN THE GALI

BY
S
MITA
H
ARISH
J
AIN
Kamathipura

R
adhana’s hamam was as disgusting a place as I had expected. Located at a petrol station in Panvel, near one end of the Mumbai–Pune Expressway, it was a haven for lonely truckers and sexually transmitted diseases.

Subhash Mehta was found in a gali behind the eunuch bathhouse, lying in a large puddle of his own blood, which was still trickling from his groin when my men got there. His genitals had been hacked off, leaving him with only a two-inch penis stub and parts of his scrotal sac.

By the time my havaldar and I drove to the hamam, the gali was cordoned off with police tape. On the outside of the barrier, a handful of reporters who had found their way to the remote location jockeyed for camera position. On the inside, a group of garishly made-up women, residents of the hamam, pleaded with a constable to let them return to their guru, insisting they hadn’t seen a thing; khaki-clad officers took measurements and collected samples from the body and the area surrounding it, recording each item in a notebook and placing the samples into small plastic bags for analysis.

I worked my way through the activity, toward the narrow space where Subhash lay—spread-eagled on his back, naked.

“Bloody hell, yaar. Who would do this?”

The senior constable, one of the small minority of Indian Christians living in Mumbai, crossed himself and mumbled a short prayer. Other constables walked near the body to take a closer look at what had become of their colleague, a rising star in the Mumbai police crime branch. Some uttered a short blessing; most checked themselves below their belts.

A group of constables remained on the periphery, craning their necks to see over the shoulders of those surrounding the body, but keeping their distance. There is an even divide in Mumbai between those who believe in the power of the eunuchs and those who don’t. Hijras were believed to be honored ascetics, conveyers of holy power, custodians of procreation; and what is more important than that? Not a surprising sentiment in the second most populous country in the world.

“Eh, come here!” I shouted. I was as disgusted by the hijra culture as those constables, but a member of my branch had died, and someone was going to pay. The gali snapped to attention, and the senior constable scrambled to meet me.