Mumbai Noir (29 page)

Mrs. Vishwanathan gave a great sigh and asked: “But will one be able to go there?”

“Means?”

“Means without Vishal?”

Her voice actually wobbled. Peter started to look at her but decided against it. Vishal rose in his mind, as he had once seen him in the changing room. He had the body of someone who had devoted attention and steroids to it. He wore tight T-shirts and shorts to show it off. He had been turned loose on the several Mrs. Vishwanathans who came to the gym and here was the expectable result. He had noticed it himself, the restless hands that fluttered near the brawny young shoulders, the coquettish demands for help, the small gifts of specially prepared food. It was as much maternal as it was sexual.

“Very sad,” he said, and meant it.

His mobile phone rang. Jende.

“Bola,” Peter said.

“Just come.”

“Where?”

“Debonair II.”

This was a new high-rise on the sea face, at Veer Savarkar Marg, the road that ran past a crematorium, a mill, a monument, and a park. It began at the Siddhivinayak Temple, one of the city’s most famous, and ended at the durgah of Makhdoom Ali Mahimi, the Muslim patron saint of the city’s police.

“Which floor?”

But Jende had terminated the call.

At Debonair II, it was clear that the problem was on the fourth floor.

“Madhavi P. Twenty-four. Graphic designer. Dead,” said Jende. “Not interfered.”

By which Peter took him to mean that the woman had not been raped or molested in any way, peri- or postmortem. The victim had been young and female and pretty. Now she lay like a broken doll, her body oddly contorted.

“Why am I here?” he asked.

Jende pointed. A familiar blue card lay on the desk.

“Many people are members of EverFit,” said Peter.

“A gym coach gets beaten to death. Then a female member is murdered. Too much or what?”

“Much too much.”

“I am thinking,” said Jende, “we are going to get more answers back at the gym.”

Kalsekar was behind the counter. He was drinking tea as if it were gin. Perhaps he had spiked it with gin. His hands were shaking now.

“Let us sit together,” said Jende.

“I don’t know anything.”

“This boy, Vishal …”

“All lies.”

“I know that. But you must tell us the truth then.”

“He was a good boy.”

“Everyone knows that.”

“Who would want him dead?” Kalsekar’s face crumpled a little and suddenly he went from old to ancient.

“You tell me,” said Jende.

“I don’t know anything.”

“Tell me what you know.”

“It’s all lies.”

“Where did he live?”

“I did not even take rent.”

Jende glanced at me. I’d had no idea. Vishal lived with Kalsekar?

“Food money I had to take. How much chicken one boy needs?”

“That is understandable. Anyone would take.”

And so it came out, in fits and starts. The young man with the certificates who wanted a job. The discovery of some common village ancestry. The offer. The unlikely companionship between receptionist and trainer.

In the middle of it, the medical examiner came in. He held a dumbbell in his gloved hand. It had smears of blood on it. “Your weapon, I am thinking,” he said to Jende.

“Come for lunch,” Peter said to Jende.

“Mutton-chicken-fish?”

“I don’t know,” Peter confessed.

“Doll curry, probably,” Jende said, mocking the Roman Catholic way of speaking of daal.

“I’m a poor man, Jay.”

“Tell bhabhi, send a dabba. I’ll be here interviewing all the boys.”

Milly packed the dabba without too much complaint. She could see the need to keep an inspector sweet. “Never know when you’ll need them,” she said, while hesitating over a second piece of fish. Then she threw it in with the air of a woman making her final offering to the Fates.

When Peter took the dabba over, Sihon was being interviewed.

“This woman, she was yours to handle, na?”

“Nothing like that,” said Sihon. He looked at Peter. “Means you tell him, uncle.”

“Uncle only has told,” said Jende.

“What has uncle told?”

“That you handle the young women, Vishal handled the aunties, and Rahul for the chiknas.”

This made it sound far more dubious than it actually was.

Sihon shrugged.

“
They
only told to do like that.”

They
did an awful lot of things.

“So tell us about yesterday. Did Madhavi P come yesterday? For workout?”

“She came.”

“What she did?”

“Cardio.”

“For how long?”

“Thirty minutes.”

“What time?”

“Seven-thirty.”

“And she left at?”

“Eight-thirty.”

“So what was she doing for half an hour?”

“Means?”

“She did cardio for half an hour. But full one hour she spent in the gym?”

“Ladies are like that. They talk. They sit on the stairs and talk on the phone. Shower bath only takes ten-twenty minutes.”

“Medical report says she was killed at nine o’clock. You were the last person to see her alive.”

This was an unbelievable stretch and it could only fail.

“Arrey, sir, why you’re talking like that? So many people must have seen on the road.”

“Yes, that we will be checking. But where were you last night?”

A sly look came over Sihon’s face for half a second and then it vanished. “At home.”

“You were at home?”

“Yes.”

“You’re sure, na?”

“Yes.”

Peter could hear the young man wavering.

“Okay. I will write this down and you will sign it. You were at home last night.”

“Sign?”

“And we will check this with your parents.”

“Arrey, no, saab, please, why all this?”

“Because you are lying to me.”

“Lying?” But he was already caught.

Peter stepped in. “Sihon?”

“Uncle?”

“Tell the truth, baba.”

Sihon looked terrified for a moment. The truth was a loaded weapon.

“Sir, I am not like that. But he said. They could not. So I said. But I was there.”

“You’re on drugs or what?” Jende demanded.

Peter stepped in again. He realized suddenly and uncomfortably that he and Jende were playing Good Cop, Bad Cop à la Mahim.

“First say this: what are you not like?”

“Means, sir, I would not do. We are told. Don’t even look at the ladies. Means, they are your sister. We are told.”

“And you looked on them as your sisters, yes, yes,” said Peter soothingly.

Sihon seemed uncomfortable.

Jende pounced: “No, he is not looking on them as sister. He is going to Madhavi’s house for sex.”

“No, sir,” Sihon almost howled. “Not Madhavi. Chanda.”

“Chanda?” Peter asked.

“My setting is with Chanda,” Sihon repeated.

Peter tried not to respond but he knew his surprise was showing on his face. Chanda was one of the yuppie women at the gym. She wore designer trackpants and carried a water bottle that looked like it had been designed for intergalactic travel. She took tiny sips from it, as if the liquid inside were rare and precious. Sihon was having an affair with Chanda? They might be about the same age but it seemed as odd as Mrs. Vishwanathan and Vishal.

“Chanda? What you’re doing with Chanda?”

“Her husband told.”

“Her husband told you to fuck Chanda while he watched?” Jende asked, but he was already losing steam.

“Means not like that. He doesn’t have.”

“What doesn’t he have?”

“Means no children.”

Peter could feel shock seeping through his face but Jende didn’t seem particularly surprised.

“He didn’t have brothers?”

“His brother is not like me,” said Sihon, extending a forearm and turning it for them as if displaying it.

Peter raised his eyebrows.

“Means I have color.”

Sihon obviously believed that Mr. Chanda had chosen him as surrogate father on the basis of the color of his skin. A few minutes later, he was allowed to leave. His alibi was watertight. He had been doing his duty with Chanda, and Mr. Chanda had also been present. Jende received this information with no change of expression. Peter hoped his own face was as expressionless.

“I told my parents I was studying for IAS. Please don’t tell, aahn?” Sihon said as he left.

“Haan, one more mystery cleared,” concluded Jende, pointing to the
Jesus Loves You
sticker. “That boy’s work.”

Rahul was up next.

“Vishal was a good guy,” he said. “He was a good guy.”

“Did you know Madhavi P?”

He had known Madhavi. But he had not even been in the city until that very afternoon. He had been on an Ashtavinayak yatra, visiting the eight Ganesha temples of note in the state of Maharashtra. The young men at EverFit had had to fend for themselves for a couple of days. Twenty other people could vouch for him.

The door opened a crack—it was Mrs. Vishwanathan. “Excuse, please,” she said to Jende. “May I have a word with the manager?”

The constable on duty outside poked his head around the door. Jende raised an eyebrow and the constable looked like he had been struck by a bolt of lightning.

“Chalaa,” he said, and Mrs. Vishwanathan vanished.

“Odd how you meet people again and again,” Peter said. And he told Jende about their walk around the park. “And yes, I wanted to mention this: two robberies have happened. Three, if you count the mobile phone that vanished.”

“Who-who was robbed?” Jende asked.

Peter could not remember. And so he stepped out where Mrs. Vishwanathan was still squabbling with the constable, and in triumph she entered in and gave the details of the robberies.

When she finally departed, denied of her request to see Vishal’s body one last time (her voice wobbling again), Jende turned on Peter.

“And when were you going to tell me this?”

“I told you.”

“By mistake. If maami had not come barging in, you would have forgotten. There is something going on in this gym. We find out what, we crack this case. Luck by chance, you come here for exercise. Tell me everything.”

“What do you mean, everything?”

“Everything means everything. Anything you saw. Anything you remember. Anything you do. Anything anyone else does. Make a list.”

So Peter made his list:

Rahul looks after the college boys.

Sihon looks after the young women.

Vishal looks after the aunties.

“Same to same things don’t write,” said Jende, looking over his shoulder.

No one looks after the uncles. (Including me.)

Gym timings are from 5 a.m. to 10 p.m.

“These also you told,” Jende complained.

You have to wear separate shoes for the gym.

Mr. Kalsekar is the first person who greets you when you come into the gym.

He gives you a pouch into which you put your spare change and your money and your phone and everything else so it won’t bother you.

He gives you a token for your stuff.

This system was started when an elliptical trainer broke down because a five-rupee coin slipped inside and jammed it.

No one claimed the five-rupee coin.

The sauna works on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays.

There is a masseur who works part-time. He is in his gaon.

The gym charges Rs. 500 per massage.

No one takes massages.

Jende picked up the list, although Peter felt he had barely finished saying what he knew.

“How did the mobile get stolen if it was in a pouch with Kalsekar?” Jende asked.

“I think the guy was talking on it as he went in and so he didn’t put it in his pouch,” Peter said. Then he paused. “But I think it was found later.”

“These robberies. This murder here. That murder there. These are three faces of one coin.”

Peter kept from commenting. Perhaps the rim of the coin might be considered a third face, he thought. Sometimes things can have three faces. Like the Shiva at Elephanta and the three faces of Kalsekar’s new watch.

“Kalsekar had a new watch,” he told Jende.

Jende froze. “Show me your keys,” he said.

Peter was nonplussed.

“Your house keys. Show them to me.”

“What do you want with my house keys?” Peter asked, but he reached into his pocket and produced them nonetheless. He wished now that he had not agreed to attach them to the Our Lady of Perpetual Succour key chain, but Milly had insisted. “She won’t let you lose your keys again,” she had said. And so far, she had been right.

“Did you ever give them to Kalsekar to keep in a pouch?”

“Yes. Many times. When I went to the gym.”

“And this pouch-shouch. How is it sealed?”

“Sealed? What sealed?”

“Means: how do you know they haven’t taken something out?”

“Who is going to take anything out? Everyone knows how much money they have.”

“Money is not the only valuable thing, na?” Jende held the keys out against the light. He grunted a little.

“What? What?”

“Tell bhabhi she might have had a lucky escape.” He pointed to a tiny blob of blue sticking to the teeth. “You can go now, Pittr,” said Jende.

* * *

Later, he came to see Peter. He knew that his old friend would be up, reading. But he also knew that Milly would be asleep so he did not ring the bell; he only whistled, long and low. Peter let him in.

“You solved the full case. You and Mrs. Muthuswamy,” Jende said when he had drunk a glass of water and was slumped back in an armchair.

“Vishwanathan.”

“That only.”

“How?” Peter asked. “How did you figure it?”

“You know what
they
do when they get money?” There were many
they
s in every city, thought Peter, but Jende continued: “They buy 555 cigarettes. They buy Black Label and they buy a new watch.”

“Kalsekar?” It seemed incredible. “Kalsekar?”

“The mobile phone started it,” Jende explained. “Vishal robbed that one. They gave it back when the owner made a noise. Kalsekar figured there must be an easy way to rob everyone. And when the pouch system began, they found one. The house keys. Kalsekar would take them out and press them into clay molds.”