Night work (20 page)

"We'd like to speak with your brother, Mr. Mehta," Boyle told him.

The man sighed again, more deeply than before, and turned back to
the house. "Are you finished out here, Inspectors? Because I need
to talk to you about my brother before you see him."

Kate cast a last glance at the collapsed walls and the black,
flattened shrubbery that surrounded them, rendered even more unearthly
by the strange shadows cast by the garden spotlights. She and Boyle
turned to follow Mehta back inside. The curtain on the kitchen door
fell back, but not before she had caught a glimpse of a plump woman in
a garish orange sari, watching them. Peter's wife, Rani, no doubt.

Back in the study Mehta sat again behind his broad mahogany desk,
leaving them to choose between the two uncomfortable chairs on the
other side, chairs whose seats were slightly lower than Mehta's.
Boyle sat down, but Kate chose instead to stand, leaning up against the
window frame with the light behind her and in a place that required
Mehta to crane his neck around to see her. Two could play the
one-upmanship game, and Kate had taken a dislike to Mehta, particularly
the way he kept referring to Pramilla not by name, but as merely
"the girl.

"What do you have to tell us, Mr. Mehta?" Tommy Boyle
asked. He and Kate had talked over everything Roz and Amanda had told
her, and she had in turn been given the details of his preliminary
interview with Mehta the night of Pramilla's death. Now it was
time to get down to details.

"My brother was too upset the other night to talk to
you," Mehta began. "I made him take his sleeping pill early
to calm him down, and he is still most disturbed. The doctor is
quite
concerned, in fact. I want to stress that interviewing him is
not... how shall I say this? Not like interviewing other
men."

"Are you telling me there's something wrong with your
brother, Mr. Mehta?" Boyle asked bluntly. Roz had said there was,
but it was best to hear it from the source.

"Yes," Mehta said with equal frankness. "There is
something wrong with my brother. Laxman is more or less retarded. I
have been told it was due to our mother's advanced age when she
was pregnant with him, although it may have been a brief problem during
the birth that affected him, but in either case he was starved of
oxygen during a vital time, and it damaged his brain. He functions, he
communicates, he can even read and write and do basic math, but he will
never hold more than a low-scale job, and on his own he would never
marry a woman with more wit than a ten-year-old.

"In India, caring for people like my brother would be easier.
There may be fewer facilities, but more... flexibility, shall we
say, and people willing to work for a pittance. But Laxman and I are
both American citizens. We were born here, have lived here all our
lives. Our mother was a pretty traditional Indian woman in some ways,
and always dressed in a sari, but she made certain we spoke only
English in the home, and she raised us, as well as she could, as
Americans.

"She died six years ago, when Laxman was twenty-three. He
missed her enormously--still does; he's never really gotten
over her death. So Rani and I decided that the best solution was to
bring him a kind of substitute mother, you might say: a wife. Their
children... any children Laxman fathers will be normal, you
understand; we were not being irresponsible. And from the wife's
point of
view,
a village girl, even a bright one,
wouldn't have the same expectations of a husband as someone who
had grown up in a city. The girl we found was ideal. A little young by
American standards, I realize, but not by Indian ones.

"And it seemed to work well at the beginning. Oh, the very
beginning was a little rocky, but as soon as we got back here they
settled in nicely. The girl was so quiet you hardly knew she was here,
and Laxman seemed very fond of her. He found her soothing, began
speaking a little more Hindi to her, dressing in
kurta
pajamas instead of jeans. I was very pleased, and God knows things went
smoother, both here and at work, where Laxman had been trying to do
jobs he couldn't possibly handle and creating untold difficulties
for me. If only she'd gotten pregnant."

"That created a problem? They hadn't been married all that long."

"I didn't care one way or another. I have two sons and
two daughters, so the family as a whole didn't need
Laxman's sons. Frankly, I've had enough of babies and
unsettled nights, and I knew that if they had children, the burden
would end up on Rani's back, and mine.

"But my wife is more traditional, and thought it was unfortunate that the girl didn't catch.

"Understand, Inspector, that there was nothing wrong with my
brother physically. His brain may not be too hot, but once he
understood what the equipment between his legs was for, he went at it
with an enthusiasm that other men would envy. I had to speak with him
about the need to keep a closed door between them and others,
especially the children."

Boyle's face gave away nothing, but Kate wondered why the
apparently urbane Mehta felt the need to flaunt his brother's
skills in such detail, verging on crudeness. Perhaps they were meant to
think that he shared his brother's prowess? She had the urge to
match his crudeness and ask whether Laxman and Pramilla had gone around
fucking like rabbits, just to see how he reacted, but before she could
say anything, Boyle mildly noted, "A man can be virile but
sterile, Mr. Mehta. Although I'm sure you know that."

"Of course," he admitted, though not looking pleased.
"I merely tell you because you need to understand what the girl
was to Laxman. He was very fond of her, but she also changed. When she
first came she was all sweetness and docility, giving her husband and
his family the proper respect, but later, and especially recently, she
became more difficult. She was learning English, and was very arrogant
about it. She showed it off in front of Laxman and Rani--she would
correct her husband and sister-in-law when they made a mistake, as if
to point out how clever she was. She made inappropriate friendships
with women in the neighborhood--"

"How were they inappropriate?"

"The women... they were not Hindu, to begin with, not
even Indian, and one of them was divorced. Not the sort of friendships
a proper young girl, a girl with family responsibilities, ought to
cultivate. There was, for one thing, no supervision when men were
present, which upset my brother greatly when he found out. I realize
this is a part of the American custom, but it is unacceptable to a good
Indian family."

"She was becoming American?" Boyle suggested.

"She was becoming irresponsible, neglecting her husband and
her household duties to Rani. The outdoor kitchen was a way of
encouraging her to be an independent woman, a wife and future mother,
while at the same time strengthening her ties to her own past and her
people."

It all sounded pretty sordid to Kate, a very small step from
slavery, but again she tried to push her own feelings down. Still, she
could not suppress them completely, and they added an edge to her own
question.

"You said it was your brother's idea to give Pramilla a
traditional Indian kitchen. Are you telling me now that he was behind
this fairly subtle... manipulation, shall we say, of his
wife?"

Mehta shifted in his chair to look at her. "Of course not, not
directly. But retarded though he might be, he is not insensitive. I
think what he actually said, following a tiff between the two women,
was, "She misses the smell of dung fire." I talked with
Rani, and between the three of us we came up with the kitchen
compromise. It wasn't permanent, you understand. I could see that
everyone would be much happier if Laxman and his wife had their own
establishment. It is the Indian way to have all the family living
together, but it is not always the best. No, when the girl had been
mature enough to take care of a house and her husband, they would have
moved out. In fact, I had my eye on a place down the street that was
about to come on the market. It would have been ideal, close enough
that we could keep an eye on them, but far enough away that they could
stand on their own. Without the girl, though..."

Kate suddenly found the man's resolute avoidance of the name
"Pramilla" unbearably irritating, on top of all his other
ideas and assumptions. She pushed herself away from the window and
said, "I think we should talk to Laxman now, if you don't
mind." She said it in her cop voice, those tones of bored
authority that made gangbangers drift reluctantly away and drunks
subside, and it worked on the Chief Executive Officer of Mehta
Enterprises. He removed himself from the barrier of his desk and led
the two detectives back through the house, this time passing through
the dining room, down another hallway, and up some stairs to a door. He
knocked and opened it without waiting for an answer.

The suite of rooms Kate entered was a self-contained apartment whose
occupant had far stronger ties to the Indian subcontinent than did the
people downstairs. The air smelled of sandalwood incense and curry, and
the walls were hung with garish prints: Krishna and his big-breasted
milkmaids, the elephant-headed Ganesha, and Hanuman, the monkey god
(which reminded Kate of Mina's antics on the school stage the
week before). Gold thread shot through the heavy drapes and the sofa
upholstery. The living room was blessed with at least six shiny brass
lamps, and every horizontal surface--tables, shelves, the top of a
huge television set, a pair of brightly colored ceramic stools from
China, and the corners of the floor itself--was laden with
objects, most of them shiny, and a few of them expensive, a couple of
them beautiful, all of them looking newly acquired. One corner had a
delicate triangular table set up with a sinuous statue of a
maternal-looking figure, with the ash of incense and some wilted
marigolds at its base. Pramilla's household shrine, most likely.

All in all, the apartment looked as if the contents of a large knick-knack shop had been moved here in their entirety.

As they entered, Peter Mehta had glanced through an open doorway
into what resembled a staff lunchroom, with a small table, two chairs,
a half-sized refrigerator, and the basic necessities for producing hot
drinks and warming leftovers. Finding it unoccupied, he led them into
the knickknack shop of a living room before going to another door,
which he opened, making a brief noise of impatience or irritation
before stepping inside. Kate followed, and caught her first sight of
Laxman Mehta.

Her first impression was of a small boy waiting in his bedroom for
his parent to fetch him for some dutiful event such as a dinner at
Grandma's. He sat fully dressed but for his shoes, perched at the
end of a neatly made bed with his hands between his knees, looking at
nothing. His brother bent over him and gave his shoulder a gentle shake.

"Laxman," he said. "Mani, come on, don't sit
here all day. You've missed both tea and dinner, and Rani even
made
samosas
for you. And look, there are two people here to
talk to you, Inspector Boyle and Inspector Martinelli. They're
with the police. Come on, Mani, it's time to move along."

The boy on the bed, whom Kate knew to be nearly her own age, roused
himself and nodded. When he stood up it was with the slow deliberation
of an old man, and Kate recognized the symptoms instantly: Laxman Mehta
ached with grief.

His brother seemed oblivious, merely chattering his encouragement in
a way that made Kate think that if she were not there, he would be
considerably more brusque. Peter Mehta clearly found his brother a
burden.

But a gorgeous burden, Kate saw. Even face-to-face, Laxman looked
closer to twenty than thirty, his skin clear and unlined, the only sign
of his recent tragedy the stance of his back and shoulders and a
certain sunken distraction around his eyes. Although the distraction
might be chronic, she reminded herself. Both Peter and Roz's
informant had indicated that he was retarded.

As a decorative object, though, this male was extraordinarily
beautiful. His long black eyelashes over those dark limpid eyes would
make a poet croon, the creamy hairless skin on his face cried out to be
touched, and unlike his stocky brother, Laxman was blessed with a slim,
almost adolescent body that promised innocence and strength. If even a
lesbian like herself felt the stir of his beauty, she could only assume
that there were places in town where this man's presence would
cause a riot. Half the men in the Castro would fling themselves at his
feet while the other half were turning their backs in despair. He,
however, would notice none of it--which was part of his
attraction. He was quite oblivious of his own beauty. His family must
have kept him under close wraps, and breathed a sigh of relief when he
was safely married off.

Physically, at any rate, the farmer's daughter could have found herself with a less acceptable husband.

Kate stepped aside to allow the three men to return to the living
room, but also so that she could take a closer look at the bedroom. The
single bed was narrow, the walls stark and almost without decoration.
It was austere compared with the collections in the main room, but
there was a door beside the bed, and she took two quick steps over to
it, and opened it into something out of a maharajah's harem. She
had thought the living room was ornate, but this was a jewel box,
packed to bursting with a thousand gaudy baubles, carved figures of
lithe tigers and entwined couples, armfuls of silk flowers thrust into
maroon and cobalt vases, two gilt-framed mirrors on the flocked
wallpaper, a lace canopy over the bed and a heavily embroidered cover
on it. The two silk lamp shades on either side of the bed had what
appeared to be genuine pearls dangling from the lower rims. One of the
lamps was on, but so low that the streetlight outside cast shadows
through the delicate filigree of the magnificent carved screen that
covered the window. Even dimly lit, however, the room's
impression was quite clear. Kate backed off, closing the door quietly,
discomfited by the sheer raw sensuality of the room. There was no doubt
which bedroom the couple had slept in.