Sacred Games (23 page)

 

That evening, over a glass of Scotch, Sartaj told Majid Khan about his new long-named source. Majid wasn't a drinker, but he had a bottle of Johnny Walker Black for Sartaj. Sartaj drank from it every time he came for dinner, and this evening he was depending on it a little too much, gulping it down greedily. He was telling Majid about Wasim Zafar Ali Ahmad while Majid's kids put plates on the table and their mother rattled spoons in the kitchen.

‘Yes, I know him, this Ahmad,' Majid said. ‘Actually, I know his father.'

‘How?'

‘I found him during the riots, just next to the highway in Bandra. I was going to Mahim with four constables. From far away, I saw these three bastards standing over something. The streets were completely empty, you know, and there was just this empty road and these three. So I told the driver, go, go. And we sped up, and as soon as they saw the jeep, the three chutiyas ran off. Now I saw this man lying on the ground. You
know, grey beard, clean white kurta, white topi, just an old Muslim gentleman. He had tried to run, they had caught up with him, pushed him down. He was very scared, but he wasn't hurt.'

‘He would have been. If you hadn't saved him. Dead.'

‘Arre, I didn't save him. We happened to come along.' Majid wasn't being falsely modest, he was stating flat facts. He scratched at his chest, and drank from his glass of nimbu pani. ‘Anyway, we put him in the back of the jeep, took him along. He couldn't speak for an hour. But ever since then, he comes every Bakr'id to my office, he brings some gosht, I touch it and send him back with it. But he comes without fail. Nice old fellow.'

They were standing on the balcony of Majid's eighth-floor apartment, leaning on the parapet. There was a perfectly round moon hanging low over the staggered oblongs of the rooftops, over the dark rim of watery lowlands and the row of tin-roofed kholis and the sea beyond. Sartaj couldn't think of the last time he had seen this round moon. Maybe, he thought, you needed to be up this high to see it, high above the streets. ‘His son never came with the old man? To thank you and ask you for help?'

‘No.'

‘Smart fellow.' Ahmad was demonstrating his intelligence by not presuming on the thread of gratitude that bound his father and Majid, tugging on it. He was proceeding in the proper manner, going through Sartaj, the local inspector. If Ahmad could make Sartaj and the constables happy, they would recommend him to Majid, who perhaps would make it possible for Ahmad to gain influence and conduct activities of questionable legality, bringing prosperity and further advancement.

‘Yes,' Majid said. ‘He's not an innocent like his father.'

‘Innocents have very good luck sometimes, no?'

‘Sometimes. The father said they had some relative who was killed in the riots. Cousin brother.'

‘Close cousin?'

‘No, far, it sounded like. The old man was making a big fuss about it the first time he came to see me. I told him he was lucky it was only one far cousin. In this country, if you look at any family long enough, you'll find some far cousin whose luck turned bad. If not in this riot, then in some other one.'

This was true. Sartaj had heard stories in his own family, about people fleeing homes in the middle of the night.

‘Come on, you two,' Rehana called from inside. She had the familiar plastic bowl with its close-fitting top and red rose pattern in her hand. She
had been making rotis in the kitchen. The khima would have been made earlier in the evening in collaboration with her all-purpose maidservant, and between the two of them they could produce delight or devastation. It was always a lottery, and Sartaj pulled up his chair glad of the whisky he had drunk. Imtiaz and Farah were elbowing each other as they settled in. He had known them since they had been toddlers, and now that they were almost grown up the small apartment seemed smaller.

Imtiaz passed him a bowl. ‘Uncle, have you seen the CIA website?' he said.

‘The CIA, like Americans?' Sartaj said.

‘Yes, they have a site, and they let you look at their secret documents.'

Farah was serving raita into a bowl for Sartaj. ‘If they let you read it, it's not secret, idiot. Uncle, he spends hours finding weird articles and talking to girls on the internet.'

‘You shut up,' Imtiaz said. ‘Nobody's talking to you.'

Majid was smiling. ‘For this I spent thousands and thousands of rupees, so my son can talk to girls in America?'

‘Europe,' Farah said. ‘He has a girlfriend in Belgium, and another one in France.'

‘You have girlfriends?' Sartaj said. ‘How old are you?'

‘Fifteen.'

‘Fourteen,' Farah said. She was smiling. ‘I bet he's told them he was eighteen.'

‘At least I sound like I'm eighteen. Not like some people who behave as if they're eleven still.'

Farah reached under the table, and Imtiaz winced. He held up his arm. ‘The fingernails of the female,' he said, looking very pleased with himself, ‘are deadlier than the male.'

‘Stop it, you two,' their mother said. ‘Let Uncle eat.'

Sartaj ate and was relieved to find that this evening had somehow been saved from culinary havoc. ‘New haircut?' he said to Farah.

‘Yes! You are the only man in the world who would notice. My dear Papa didn't figure out for three days why I was looking different.'

‘Very nice,' Sartaj said. She looked quite plumply pretty, and Sartaj wondered if she had boyfriends in Belgium, or even in Bandra. But he kept the question to himself, knowing that Majid was very liberal, but that his tolerance of light-hearted romance didn't extend to his daughter. He might spend hard-won cash on a computer for his children, for his son, but that fierce cavalry moustache wasn't just an affectation. Boys
under the spell of Farah's new look would have to be madly brave to climb up her castle wall eight floors tall. She was beaming now, and Sartaj was sure that there were lads whose fear had been banished by that glow. He himself had done some wall-climbing in long-ago days, and had braved fierce fathers for a lovely face.

After dinner, Rehana brought Sartaj a cup of tea and sat next to him on the sofa. She had the same broad cheekbones as her children, and a comfortable heaviness. In the gold-framed photograph on the wall she was a slim, hennaed bride, but even then, even with the formally lowered head, she had had the same bright eyes. ‘So, Sartaj. Got a girlfriend?'

‘Yes,' Sartaj said. ‘Yes.'

‘Who? Tell me.'

‘A girl.'

‘So what would a girlfriend be, a pineapple? Sartaj, for a policeman, you're a very-very bad liar.'

‘It's a boring topic, Bhabhi.'

‘My son doesn't think so.' Her son had walked down to the corner shop with her husband and daughter for ice-cream. ‘Sartaj, you're not that old yet. How are you going to get through life like this? You need a family.'

‘You sound just like my mother.'

‘Because we're both right. We both want you to be happy.'

‘I am.'

‘What?'

‘Happy.'

‘Sartaj, anybody looking at you knows exactly how happy you are.'

And looking at her in the haven of her contentment, Sartaj thought he could have said the same thing about her. He felt acutely now the sodden, sweaty weariness of his own body, the whisky misery of it. He was annoyed now, at having the professional momentum of the day dragged down into this useless discussion about happiness with happy Rehana. He was saved from further investigation of the nature of happiness by a knock on the door. ‘Ice-cream,' he said. ‘Ice-cream.'

He ate a bowl of the ice-cream, and fled.

 

A violent buzzing woke Sartaj out of a dream about flying across oceans to meet foreign women. There was a very intricate plot involving watchful mothers and speeding jeeps, but it was gone as soon as his eyes opened. He propped himself up, baffled, and couldn't think where the
noise came from. For a moment he thought it was the doorbell gone wrong, but then he remembered the mobile phone. He groped for it on the bedside table, dropped it off the side and had to pull it back up by the charging wire. Finally he got it open.

‘Sartaj Saab?'

‘Who is this?' Sartaj barked.

‘Bunty, saab. Somebody told me you wanted to talk to me.'

‘Bunty, yes, yes. Good that you called.' Sartaj swung his feet to the ground and tried to collect himself, to recollect a strategy for talking to Gaitonde's man. But he couldn't remember if he had thought one through, and finally he just said, ‘I want to meet you.'

‘The rumour is that you shot Bhai.'

‘I didn't shoot Gaitonde. Forget rumours. What do you think, Bunty?'

‘My information is that he was dead when you got in.'

‘You have good information, Bunty. It all was very strange. Why should a man like that kill himself?'

‘That's what you want to talk about?'

‘That and other things. I'll tell you when I see you.'

‘What do I know about why he killed himself?'

‘Listen, Bunty. I just want to talk to you. If you help me, I may be able to help you. Gaitonde is dead, Suleiman Isa's boys will be looking for you. I've heard that some of your own people have split away already.'

‘That is a game I have played for years.'

‘True, but now? Alone? How far will you run?'

‘You mean in my wheelchair, saab?' Bunty's voice was gravelly, with a little hiss of effort at the end of each breath. Maybe it was how he had to sit, some constriction of the lungs. But he was not sad, only amused. ‘I can go faster in this thing than most men can run.'

Sartaj sat up, glad of the chance to be curious and friendly. ‘Really? I've never seen a wheelchair like that.'

‘This is foreign, saab. It goes up and down stairs also. It can do all sorts of things.'

‘That is amazing. It must have been very expensive.'

‘Bhai gave it to me. He liked things like that, up to date.'

‘So he was a modern man?'

‘Yes, very modern. But it is very hard to keep this chair running, you know. Nobody knows how to repair it here, and spare parts and everything you have to bring from vilayat. It breaks down too much.'

‘Not built for Indian conditions.'

‘Yes. Like one of those new cars. They look good, but finally only an Ambassador can get you to any village you want to go.'

‘Meet me, Bunty. Maybe I can get you to your village safely.'

‘I was born here in Mumbai, in GTB Nagar only, saab. And you are too eager to meet me. Maybe Suleiman Isa has asked you to send me home.'

‘Bunty, you ask anyone. I have no connections to Suleiman Isa or any of his men.'

‘You are close to Parulkar Saab.'

‘That may be. But I don't do such work for him, Bunty. You know that. I am just a simple man.' Sartaj stood up, walked around the bottom of the bed. He was pushing too hard, at a man who was trying to outmanoeuvre death on his speedy wheelchair. ‘Listen, you don't want to meet, no problem. Just think about it, okay?'

‘Yes, saab. I have to be careful, especially now.'

‘Yes.'

‘Saab, but I can help you over the phone. What did you want to know?'

So Bunty was keeping his options open with Sartaj, in case he himself needed help later. He had problems of his own, after all, and he wanted to stay alive. Sartaj relaxed, shook his shoulders loose and stretched his neck. Now they had the possibility of a relationship. ‘Tell me, you really know nothing about why Gaitonde took his own wicket?'

‘No, saab. I don't know. Really I don't know.'

‘You knew he was back in Bombay?'

‘I knew. But I hadn't seen him for weeks. We spoke only on the phone. He was hiding out in that thing.'

‘That house?'

‘Yes. He wouldn't come out.'

‘Why?'

‘I don't know. He was always careful.'

‘What did he sound like on the phone?'

‘Sound like? Like Bhai.'

‘Yes, but was he sad? Happy?'

‘He was a bit khiskela. But he was always like that.'

‘Khiskela how?'

‘Like his brain was full of things. Sometimes he would talk to me for an hour about something that had nothing to do with business, just talk and talk.'

‘Like what?'

‘I don't know. One day it was about computers in the old times. He
said that there were computers and super-weapons in the
Mahabharata
, he went on and on about Ashwathamma. I didn't listen. Even before, when he was on his boat, he liked to talk long on the phone. It was a big waste of money. But he was Bhai, so you just kept saying, haan, haan, and he went on.'

‘Who was that woman with him?'

‘Jojo. She sent him items.'

‘Sent him?'

‘Yes. First-class items for Bhai. He used to have them flown out to Thailand or wherever he was. Virgins. Jojo was the supplier.'

‘Virgins all the way from here?'

‘Yes, he liked Indian virgins.'

‘How many?'

‘I don't know. Once a month maybe.'

‘And Jojo was his woman also?'

‘She was a bhadwi. He must have taken hers also. That was one of his hobbies.'

‘Why did he come back to Mumbai, Bunty?'

‘I don't know.'

‘You were his main boss in Mumbai, Bunty. Of course you know.'

‘I was just one of his Number Twos.'

‘I was told you were the closest to him.'

‘I stayed with him.'

‘And the others left him? Why?'

There was a thin crackling on the line, of cellophane and cardboard, and Sartaj waited as Bunty lit his cigarette and took in a drag.

‘Some left. Business was down,' Bunty said.

‘Why?'

‘It doesn't matter now.'

This was the heart of the matter. Sartaj knew this from Bunty's reluctance to give it away, from his studied casualness. Carefully, very slowly, Sartaj said, ‘You're right, Bunty. It doesn't matter now, so tell me.'