Sacred Games (24 page)

Bunty drew on his cigarette. He let the smoke out, wheezed a little. Sartaj waited.

‘Saab, business is down for everyone.'

‘But more for the Gaitonde company than all others. Bunty, don't be a chutiya. If you are honest with me, I can be straight with you. Tell me.'

‘Bhai wasn't concentrating on business. He had us all running here, running there.'

‘After what?'

Bunty laughed suddenly. ‘He had us chasing a sadhu. He said we had to find a wise man.'

‘What sadhu? Chasing where?'

‘Three sadhus altogether, and one was the leader. Really, saab, I can't tell you more.'

‘Why not?'

‘I don't know much more.'

‘Tell me what you know.'

‘Not like this, saab.'

‘So let us meet.'

‘Saab, you talk to Parulkar Saab.'

‘About what?'

‘I want to surrender. But they will do an encounter on me, saab.'

It made sense, that Bunty wanted to come in. He would be safer in custody, and jail would shield him from his many enemies. But he was afraid of being executed before his name ever showed up on an arrest roster. ‘If you have something good to give us,' Sartaj said, ‘I am sure Parulkar Saab will look after you.'

‘I have everything, saab. I was with Bhai for a long time.'

‘Okay. I'll speak to Parulkar saab. Then I want to know who this sadhu was, this leader fellow.'

‘Once I am safe, saab, I will tell everything I know. I will give you his name. I am the only one who knows.'

‘All right. I will talk to Parulkar Saab, and tell you what he says. Give me a phone number.'

‘I am calling from a PCO, saab. And I am not in Mumbai. I will call you.'

‘Fine.' Bunty must be very afraid, to be this careful even as he searched for a way to secure shelter. ‘When will you be back?'

‘Monday, saab.'

‘Call me on Monday evening, and I will tell you what Parulkar saab says.'

‘Yes, saab. I will put down now.'

Bunty hung up, and Sartaj made chai and considered the vagaries of the gangster's life. That death could come suddenly was a given, but what struck Sartaj as poignant was that Bunty was trying to trust Parulkar, his most feared predator. Parulkar had over the years been responsible for the hunting down of many G-Company men. He had used his many
sources to obtain intelligence and fix the whereabouts of Gaitonde's functionaries, and had sent out his teams to trap them and kill them. Unless the dead men were prime shooters or eminent Number Twos, the newspapers reported their deaths in one-paragraph stories at the bottom of back pages. Bunty might rate a front-page mention in the city sections, perhaps. For his special wheelchair, maybe, if not his death.

Sartaj finished his chai, and then called the Delhi-walli, to tell her about Gaitonde's search.

‘A sadhu was the leader of this group?' Anjali Mathur said.

‘Yes, madam.'

‘What sadhu? Was there a name?'

‘No, madam. The source refused to release any other information at this time. I might know more in a few days.'

‘All right. This is very strange. We knew that Gaitonde was very religious, that he conducted pujas quite often. But we don't know of any sadhus in connection with him. And why would he be looking for this man?'

‘I don't know, madam.'

‘Yes.'

She paused. Sartaj waited. He was getting used to Anjali Mathur's slow deliberation.

‘I have an address for you,' she said. ‘Write it down.'

‘The sister?'

‘Yes, the sister. She's moved. She's in Bandra now.'

 

Before going to see the sister in Bandra, Sartaj made a stop at the station. He had to make a phone call. The piece of paper that Parulkar had given him with the S-Company contact on it had only a phone number, no name. Sartaj had to make an effort to remember. Iffat-bibi. Yes, that was it. Iffat-bibi, who was Suleiman Isa's maternal aunt and criminal accomplice. Sartaj couldn't conjure up a face for her as he dialled, but when she answered her phone and he heard her voice, he instantly thought of Begum Akhtar. There was the same roughened sweetness about the voice, that old-world heartbreak that floated off worn vinyl albums, full of pain but strong as the edge of a curving Avadhi dagger. ‘So you are Parulkar's man?' she said.

‘Yes, madam.'

‘Arre, don't call me that, you can't be so formal with me. After all, you are Sardar Saab's son.'

‘You knew him?'

‘Since when?' Iffat-bibi said. ‘I knew him when he was a young rangroot, almost. He was so handsome, baap re.'

Papa-ji had never told Sartaj about Iffat-bibi, but maybe she was the sort of woman fathers didn't tell children about. ‘Yes, he was very keen about his clothes.'

‘Your father,' Iffat-bibi said, ‘loved the reshmi kabab from a place we owned called Ashiana. But that restaurant no longer exists.'

Sartaj remembered the kababs, but he didn't know that Iffat-bibi had had anything to do with them. Iffat-bibi wanted to tell stories about Sardar Saab. She said he had once found a destitute twelve-year-old boy wandering around VT, and Sardar Saab had used his own money to buy him food and a reserved train ticket back to Punjab. ‘Sardar Saab was a good man,' she sighed. ‘Very straight and simple.'

Sartaj looked at his hand, at the steel kara on the wrist and the mark it had left over a lifetime, and nodded. ‘Yes.' He waited.

‘You should come and visit us some time. I will give you better reshmi kababs than the ones from Ashiana.'

‘Yes, Iffat-bibi. I will come some time.'

Iffat-bibi had observed the proprieties, and now she was willing to get down to business. ‘What can I do for you?'

‘I need information about Gaitonde.'

‘That maderchod?' It was a shock to hear the word in that voice which promised song, and now Sartaj understood how she could be counsellor and helpmeet to a bhai, and not just an indulgent grandmother offering food. ‘For years he bothered us. Very good that you took care of him at last.'

‘I didn't, Bibi,' Sartaj said. ‘But tell me about him. What sort of man was he?'

He was a conniving, cowardly cur, she said. He ran from a fight, and he betrayed his own men. He was a sinful lecher who used and destroyed young girls.

‘But he ran a big company, Bibi.'

She allowed that he was a good manager, and he had made some money in his day. No, she didn't know what he was doing back in the city. The last she had heard he was skulking off in Thailand or Indonesia, the bastard. She told stories about Gaitonde, about his perfidies. He had killed innocent people, saying they were Suleiman Isa's friends. He was an insect.

‘Bibi, do you know of any sadhu in connection with him?'

‘Sadhu? No. All that praying and piety, everything was a sham. He never did a bit of good for anyone in his life, may he burn.'

Sartaj thanked her, and said, ‘Now I must go, Bibi.'

‘You're talking to anyone on Gaitonde's side?'

‘Here and there, Bibi.'

She laughed. ‘Fine, don't tell me if you don't want to, beta. But if you have a problem, come to me. After all, you are Sardar Saab's son.'

‘Yes, Bibi.'

‘Phone me some time. I am an old woman, but keep in touch. I may be of use. This is my personal number, write it down.'

Sartaj put the number and name into his diary, but he thought she wouldn't be of much use, this garrulous old woman. She had nothing useful to give him, or perhaps he didn't have anything she thought worth trading good information for. He put the phone down, and went out into the station, looking for Katekar. Now they had to visit another woman.

 

Mary Mascarenas sat on her bed and shuddered. She held herself around the belly, arms tightly wrapped, and lowered her head and shook. Sartaj waited. Maybe she had quarrelled with Jojo, perhaps she had even wished her sister dead, but now it had happened, a part of her life had fallen away, and she was trembling from the amputation. There was no use trying to talk to her until the agitation was over, and so Sartaj and Katekar were waiting, looking around her very small apartment, one room with an attached kitchen really, and a cupboard of a bathroom. She had a green and black bedspread on the single bed, some small plants on the window-ledge, an ancient black rotary phone, two framed paintings on the wall, a grey-patterned dhurrie on the floor. Sitting on the single wooden chair at the foot of the bed, Sartaj saw how she had built a haven for herself. The walls were a pale green, and he was sure that she had painted them herself, to complement the darker green of the plants and the jungle emeralds of the paintings, where cottages sat amongst exuberant foliage and parrots fluttered through the treetops. Now the bright Mumbai sun slipped through the white blinds and ignited the hues that Mary Mascarenas had arranged for herself, and the shimmering, jerking fall of her hair hid her face.

Katekar rolled his eyes. He padded into the kitchen, and Sartaj could see his head craning, turning. He was taking inventory. He would go into the bathroom next, and take careful note of buckets, toothbrush, face creams. This was something they had in common, this faith in details, in particulars. Sartaj had noticed it the first time Katekar had reported to him, many years ago, about a pickpocket who worked the line from
Churchgate to Andheri Station. Katekar had droned on about name, age, height, and then added that the bastard had married three times, and that he had a weakness for papri-chaat and faluda, in the basti where he had grown up this was well known. They'd caught him three weeks later, at the Mathura Dairy Farm near Santa Cruz station, with his head lowered over a plate of bhel-puri after a profitable evening rush-hour, sitting across from a cross-eyed girlfriend who was well on her way to becoming wife number four. Close observation didn't always bring arrests, and success, but what Sartaj appreciated was Katekar's essential understanding of the fact that there were many ways to describe a man, but to say that he was a Hindu, a poor man, a criminal, all of this gave no grip, no hold. Only when you knew which shampoo he favoured, what songs he listened to, who and how he liked to chodo, what paan he ate, only then you caught him, had him, even if you never arrested him. So Katekar was in Mary's bathroom now. Sartaj was sure he was sniffing at her soap.

‘Why?' she said suddenly. She pushed the hair back from her face, tugged it back angrily. ‘Why?'

She had her sister's cheekbones, and a plumper, round jawline, all blurred now by her loss. She wasn't weeping, but was still quivering, squeezing it down until Sartaj could see it only in the tips of her fingers, and in her chin.

‘Miss Mascarenas was involved in nefarious activities with the mafia don Ganesh Gaitonde,' he said. ‘This resulted in…'

‘I heard you before,' she said. ‘But why?'

Why everything? she wanted to know. Why a bullet hole in the chest, why a concrete floor, why Ganesh Gaitonde? Sartaj shrugged. ‘I don't know,' he said. Why do men kill women? Why do they kill each other? These were questions that bit at him sometimes, but he drowned them in whisky. Otherwise why not ask, why life? That way lay hurtling chasms, the temptations of long heights. Better to do the job. Better to put one apradhi in jail, and then, when you could, another. Katekar was at the bathroom door, his eyes alive with sunlight. ‘I don't know, miss,' Sartaj said.

‘You don't know,' she said. She nodded heavily, as if this confirmed some great suspicion. ‘I want her,' she said.

‘Miss?'

‘I want her,' she said slowly, with hard-strained patience, ‘for burial.'

‘Yes, of course. Handing over of body is sometimes difficult when the investigation is still ongoing, you understand. But we will arrange for the body to be released. But I need to ask you some questions.'

‘I don't want to answer any questions just now.'

‘But these are questions about your sister. You just said that you want to know what happened to her.'

She wiped her face and sat forward a little and suddenly he was the subject of study. Her eyes were a lighter brown than they first appeared, and in a moment he was able to see the flecks dusted through them. He was now very uncomfortable, her scrutiny was shameless, direct and long, and at least his position should have shielded him from the unexpected intimacy of that unending look. But he wouldn't drop his gaze. At last she said, ‘What did you say your name was?'

‘Inspector Sartaj Singh.'

‘Sartaj Singh, have you ever lost a sister?' Her voice rose. ‘Have you ever had a sister
murdered
?'

Her utter lack of fear was irritating. Citizens, and especially women, were always subdued with policemen, careful, scared, formal. Mary Mascarenas was dismissively casual. But she had just lost her sister, and so he took a breath and held down his annoyance. ‘Miss, I'm sorry to ask you this kind of thing at a time like this…'

‘Then don't.'

‘This is a very important matter. This is a case that involves national security,' Sartaj said. And then he couldn't think of anything to say. He felt quite in the wrong, somehow, and therefore angry. Mary Mascarenas didn't look frightened, but she wasn't brave either. She was saddened, weary, and truly expecting nothing from him except more suffering. She was just going to be very stubborn, and shouting at her wasn't going to help. He took a breath. ‘National security. Do you understand?'

‘Are you going to hit me?'

‘What?'

‘Are you going to break my bones? Isn't that what you do?'

‘No, we don't,' Sartaj snapped. He caught himself, steadied and held up a hand. ‘Miss, we will arrange for the release of the body. Also, there were some possessions, and they are impounded currently, for the investigation. But those will be released to you eventually. I will phone when arrangements are complete. Here is the number at the station where you can get in touch with me.' He carefully put his card at the foot of the bed, at the very edge, and turned away.