Sacred Games (5 page)

He paid quickly and left. There was a different lot near the door now, but again with the same silence, the same stares, the same beaded necklaces and piercings and practised dishevelment, and he understood that his elegant blue trousers marked him fatally as an outsider. By the time he reached the end of the lane he had no confidence in his white shirt with the button-down collar either. He navigated the right turn on to the main road carefully, stepping over two boys sleeping on the pavement, and
walked towards the Crossroads Mall, where he had parked. His feet fell soundlessly on the littered pavement and the shuttered shop doors loomed above. I can't be this drunk on two beers, he thought, but the lampposts seemed very far away and he wanted very much to shut his eyes.

Sartaj went home. He fell into his bed. Now he was able to sleep, it slid heavily on to his shoulders like a choking black landslide. And then instantly it was morning and the shrill grinding of the telephone was in his ear. He groped his way to it.

‘Sartaj Singh?' The voice was a man's, peremptory and commanding.

‘Yes?'

‘Do you want Ganesh Gaitonde?'

‘You're never going to get in here,' the voice of Gaitonde said over the speaker after they had been working on the door for three hours. They had tried a cold chisel on the lock first, but what had looked like brown wood from a few feet away was in fact some kind of painted metal, and although it turned white under the blade and rang like a sharp temple bell, the door didn't give. Then they had moved to the lintels with tools borrowed from a road crew, but even when the road men took over, wielding the sledgehammers with long, expert swings and huffing breaths, the concrete bounced their blows off blithely, and the Sony speaker next to the door laughed at them. ‘You're behind the times,' Gaitonde crackled.

‘If I'm not getting in, you're not getting out,' Sartaj said.

‘What? I can't hear you.'

Sartaj stepped up to the door. The building was a precise cube, white with green windows, on a large plot of land in Kailashpada, which was on the still-developing northern edge of Zone 13. Here, among the heavy machinery groping at swamp, edging Bombay out farther and wider, Sartaj had come to arrest the great Ganesh Gaitonde, gangster, boss of the G-Company and wily and eternal survivor.

‘How long are you going to stay in there, Gaitonde?' Sartaj said, craning his neck up. The deep, round video eye of the camera above the door swivelled from side to side and then settled on him.

‘You're looking tired, Sardar-ji,' Gaitonde said.

‘I am tired,' Sartaj said.

‘It's very hot today,' Gaitonde said sympathetically. ‘I don't know how you sardars manage under those turbans.'

There were two Sikh commissioners on the force, but Sartaj was the only Sikh inspector in the whole city, and so was used to being identified by his turban and beard. He was known also for the cut of his pants, which he had tailored at a very film-starry boutique in Bandra, and also for his profile, which had once been featured by
Modern Woman
magazine in ‘The City's Best-Looking Bachelors'. Katekar, on the other hand,
had a large paunch that sat on top of his belt like a suitcase, and a perfectly square face and very thick hands, and now he came around the corner of the building and stood wide-legged, with his hands in his pockets. He shook his head.

‘Where are you going, Sardar-ji?' Gaitonde said.

‘Just some matters I have to take care of,' Sartaj said. He and Katekar walked to the corner together, and now Sartaj could see the ladder they had going up to the ventilator.

‘That's not a ventilator,' Katekar said. ‘It only looks like one. There's just concrete behind it. All the windows are like that. What is this place, sir?'

‘I don't know,' Sartaj said. It was somehow deeply satisfying that even Katekar, Mumbai native and practitioner of a very superior Bhuleshwarbred cynicism, was startled by an impregnable white cube suddenly grown in Kailashpada, with a black, swivel-mounted Sony video camera above the door. ‘I don't know. And he sounds very strange, you know. Sad almost.'

‘What I have heard about him, he enjoys life. Good food, lots of women.'

‘Today he's sad.'

‘But what's he doing here in Kailashpada?'

Sartaj shrugged. The Gaitonde they had read about in police reports and in the newspapers dallied with bejewelled starlets, bankrolled politicians and bought them and sold them – his daily skim from Bombay's various criminal dhandas was said to be greater than annual corporate incomes, and his name was used to frighten the recalcitrant. Gaitonde Bhai said so, you said, and the stubborn saw reason, and all roads were smoothed, and there was peace. But he had been in exile for many years – on the Indonesian coast in a gilded yacht, it was rumoured – far but only a phone call away. Which meant that he might as well have been next door, or as it turned out, amazingly enough, in dusty Kailashpada. The early-morning man with the tip-off had hung up abruptly, and Sartaj had jumped out of bed and called the station while pulling on his pants, and the police party had come roaring to Kailashpada in a hasty caravan bristling with rifles. ‘I don't know,' Sartaj said. ‘But now that he's here, he's ours.'

‘He's a prize, yes, sir,' Katekar said. He had that densely snobbish look he always assumed when he thought Sartaj was being naïve. ‘But you're sure you want to make him yours? Why not wait for someone senior to arrive?'

‘They'll be a long time getting here. They have other business going on.' Sartaj was hoping ardently that no commissioner would arrive to seize his prize. ‘And anyway, Gaitonde's already mine, only he doesn't know it.' He turned to walk back towards the door. ‘All right. Cut off his power.'

‘Sardar-ji,' Gaitonde said, ‘are you married?'

‘No.'

‘I was married once –'

And his voice stopped short, as if cut by a knife.

Sartaj turned from the door. Now it was a matter of waiting, and an hour or two under a hot June sun would turn the unventilated, unpowered building into a furnace that even Gaitonde, who was a graduate of many jails and footpaths and slums, would find as hard to bear as the corridors of hell. And Gaitonde had been lately very successful and thus a little softened, so perhaps it would be closer to an hour. But Sartaj had taken only two steps when he felt a deep hum rising through his toes and into his knees, and Gaitonde was back.

‘What, you thought it would be so easy?' Gaitonde said. ‘Just a power cut? What, you think I'm a fool?'

So there was a generator somewhere in the cube. Gaitonde had been the first man in any of the city's jails, perhaps the first man in all of Mumbai, to own a cellular phone. With it, safe in his cell, he had run the essential trades of drugs, matka, smuggling and construction. ‘No, I don't think you're a fool,' Sartaj said. ‘This, this building is very impressive. Who designed it for you?'

‘Never mind who designed it, Sardar-ji. The question is, how are you going to get in?'

‘Why don't you just come out? It'll save us all a lot of time. It's really hot out here, and I'm getting a headache.'

There was a silence, filled with the murmuring of the spectators who were gathering at the end of the lane.

‘I can't come out.'

‘Why not?'

‘I'm alone. I'm only me by myself.'

‘I thought you had friends everywhere, Gaitonde. Everyone everywhere is a friend of Gaitonde Bhai's, isn't it? In the government, in the press, even in the police force? How is it then that you are alone?'

‘Do you know I get applications, Sardar-ji? I probably get more applications than you police chutiyas. Don't believe me? Here, I'll read you one. Hold on. Here's one. This one's from Wardha. Here it is.'

‘Gaitonde!'

‘“Respected Shri Gaitonde.” Hear that, Sardar-ji? “Respected.” So then…“I am a twenty-two-year-old young man living in Wardha, Maharashtra. Currently I am doing my MCom, having passed my BCom exam with seventy-one per cent marks. I am also known in my college as the best athlete. I am captain of the cricket team.” Then there's a lot of nonsense about how bold and strong he is, how everyone in town's scared of him. OK, then he goes on: “I am sure that I can be of use to you. I have for long followed your daring exploits in our newspapers, which print very often these stories of your great power and powerful politics. You are the biggest man in Mumbai. Many times when my friends get together, we talk about your famous adventures. Please, Shri Gaitonde, I respectfully submit to you my vita, and some small clippings about me. I will do whatever work you ask. I am very poor, Shri Gaitonde. I fully believe that you will give me a chance to make a life. Yours faithfully, Amit Shivraj Patil.” Hear that, Sardar-ji?'

‘Yes, Gaitonde,' Sartaj said, ‘I do. He sounds like a fine recruit.'

‘He sounds like a lodu, Sardar-ji,' Gaitonde said. ‘I wouldn't hire him to wash my cars. But he would do well as a policeman.'

‘I'm getting tired of this, Gaitonde,' Sartaj said. Katekar had his shoulders tensed, he was glowering at Sartaj, wanting him to curse Gaitonde, to shut him up by telling him exactly what kind of bhenchod he was, that they were going to string him up and shove a lathi up his filthy gaand. But, it seemed to Sartaj, to shout abuse at an unhinged man inside an impregnable cube would be spectacularly useless, if momentarily satisfying.

Gaitonde laughed bitterly. ‘Are your feelings hurt, saab? Should I be more respectful? Should I tell you about the wonderful and astonishing feats of the police, our defenders who give their lives in service without a thought for their own profit?'

‘Gaitonde?'

‘What?'

‘I'll be back. I need a cold drink.'

Gaitonde became avuncular, affectionate. ‘Yes, yes, of course you do. Hot out there.'

‘For you also? A Thums Up?'

‘I've a fridge in here, chikniya. Just because you're so fair and so hero-like good looking doesn't mean you're extra smart. You get your drink.'

‘I will. I'll be back.'

‘What else would you do, Sardar-ji? Go, go.'

Sartaj walked down the street, and Katekar fell in beside him. The cracked black tarmac swam and shimmered in the heat. The street had emptied, the spectators bored by the lack of explosions and bullets and hungry for lunch. Between Bhagwan Tailors and Trimurti Music, they found the straightforwardly named Best Cafe, which had tables scattered under a neem tree and rattling black floor fans. Sartaj pulled desperately at a Coke, and Katekar sipped at fresh lime and soda, only slightly sweet. He was trying to lose weight. From where they sat they could see Gaitonde's white bunker. What was Gaitonde doing back in the city? Who was the informant who had given him to Sartaj? All these were questions for later. First catch the man, Sartaj thought, then worry about why and when and how, and he took another sip.

‘Let's blow it up,' Katekar said.

‘With what?' Sartaj said. ‘And that'll kill him for sure.'

Katekar grinned. ‘Yes, sir. So what, sir?'

‘And what would the intelligence boys say?'

‘Sahib, excuse me, but the intelligence boys are mainly useless bhadwas. Why didn't they know he was building this thing?'

‘Now, that would have been very-very intelligent, wouldn't it?' Sartaj said. He leaned back in his chair and stretched. ‘You think we can find a bulldozer?'

 

Sartaj had a metal chair brought to the front of the bunker, and he sat on it, patting his face with a cold, wet towel. He was sleepy. The video camera was unmoving and silent.

‘Ay, Gaitonde!' Sartaj said. ‘You there?'

The camera made its very small buzzing machine noise, nosed about blindly and found Sartaj. ‘I'm here,' Gaitonde said. ‘Did you get a drink? Shall I phone and order something for you to eat?'

Sartaj thought suddenly that Gaitonde had learned that big voice from the movies, from Prithviraj Kapoor in a smoking jacket being magnanimous to the lowly. ‘I'm fine. Why don't you order something for yourself?'

‘I don't want food.'

‘You'll stay hungry?' Sartaj was trying to calculate the chances of starving Gaitonde out. But he remembered that Gandhi-ji had lasted for weeks on water and juice. The bulldozer would arrive in an hour, an hour and a half, at most.

‘There's plenty of food in here, enough for months. And I've been hungry before,' Gaitonde said. ‘More hungry than you could imagine.'

‘Listen, it's too hot out here,' Sartaj said. ‘Come out and back at the station you can tell me all about how hungry you were.'

‘I can't come out.'

‘I'll take care of you, Gaitonde. There are all sorts of people trying to kill you, I know. But no danger, I promise. This is not going to turn into an encounter. You come out now and we'll be back at the station in six minutes. You'll be absolutely safe. From there you can call your friends. Safe, ekdum safe. You have my promise.'

But Gaitonde wasn't interested in promises. ‘Back when I was very young, I left the country for the first time. It was on a boat, you know. Those days, that was the business: get on a boat, go to Dubai, go to Bahrain, come back with gold biscuits. I was excited, because I had never left the country before. Not even to Nepal, you understand. Okay, Sardar-ji, establishing shot: there was the small boat, five of us on it, sea, sun, all that kind of chutmaari atmosphere. Salim Kaka was the leader, a six-foot Pathan with a long beard, good man with a sword. Then there was Mathu, narrow and thin everywhere, always picking his nose, supposed to be a tough boy. Me, nineteen and didn't know a thing. And there was Gaston, the owner of the boat, and Pascal, his assistant, two small dark men from somewhere in the south. It was Salim Kaka's deal, his contacts there, and his money that hired the boat, and his experience, when to go out, when to come back, everything was his. Mathu and I were his boys, behind him all the time. Got it?'

Katekar rolled his eyes. Sartaj said, ‘Yes, Salim Kaka was the leader, you and Mathu were the guns and Gaston and Pascal sailed the boat. Got it.'

Katekar propped himself against the wall next to the door and spilled paan masala into his palm. The speaker gleamed a hard, metallic silver. Sartaj shut his eyes.

Gaitonde went on. ‘I had never seen such a huge sky before. Purple and gold and purple. Mathu was combing his hair again and again into a Dev Anand puff. Salim Kaka sat on the deck with us. He had huge feet, square and blunt, each cracked like a piece of wood, and a beard that was smooth and red like a flame. That night he told us about his first job, robbing an angadia couriering cash from Surat to Mumbai. They caught the angadia as he got off the bus, tossed him in the back of an Ambassador and went roaring away to an empty chemical godown in the industrial estates at Vikhroli. In the godown they stripped him of his shirt, his ban
ian, his pants, everything, and found sewn inside the pants, over the thighs, four lakhs in five-hundred-rupee notes. Also a money belt with sixteen thousand in it. He was standing there baby-naked, his big paunch shaking, holding his hands over his shrunken lauda, as they left. Clear?'