A Walk Across the Sun (17 page)

At last the brothel owner spoke. “Come,” he said to Sita.

Ahalya stood desperately, hoping to intervene. “Take me. Leave her alone.”

Suchir turned to Ahalya and frowned. “You stay here,” he said, his voice harsh. He reached out and took Sita by the arm. Sita glanced fearfully at her sister and followed Suchir down the stairs.

The click of the door sounded like a gunshot to Ahalya. She buried her face in her hands and wept. Blood rushed to her head and the walls seemed to close in on her. The thought of her sister lying beneath a man in the throes of lust rendered absurd her novice attempts at detachment. She teetered on the edge of collapse, wondering how she would find the strength to comfort Sita in the aftermath.

Suchir led Sita past a group of chattering beshyas and into the brothel lobby. Business was slow on Sundays. Men were home with their families, watching soccer and cricket on television and sleeping with their wives.

Following Suchir's direction, Sita stood beneath the lights. She placed her hands together to keep them from trembling. She saw a man no older than thirty-five sitting on the couch. He was dressed in expensive clothes and wore a silver watch on his wrist. The man appraised her openly but kept his seat.

“Suchir says you are an orphan,” he said in Hindi. “Is this true?”

Sita nodded, confused.

“He says you are healthy and that you aren't pregnant.”

She nodded again.

The man turned to Suchir and they exchanged a few words in an indecipherable tongue. Eventually, the man nodded and shook Suchir's hand. He took a last look at Sita and left the brothel. During the entire exchange, he made no attempt to approach her.

Sita was relieved—overwhelmingly so—yet she was also troubled. Both the man's behavior and Suchir's were a mystery. She thought back to New Year's Eve when Shankar had purchased Ahalya's virginity. Sumeera had dressed them both in the finest saris and jewelry and garlanded them with flowers. The costumes had been an enticement to the buyer, a lure for his money. Tonight, Suchir had simply appeared and taken her as she was.

Sita followed Suchir up the dank wooden stairs to the attic room. In the doorway she looked at Ahalya and saw her tears. She ran to her sister and clutched the fabric of her sari. She wept even though she had not been violated. She wept over the death of her parents. She wept because her sister had wept.

In time Sita drew back and answered Ahalya's unspoken question. “Nothing happened,” she whispered. “A man was there, but he didn't touch me.”

“Did he say anything to you?”

“He wanted to know if I was an orphan and if I was pregnant.”

“And Suchir, what did he say?”

“I couldn't understand him. They weren't speaking Hindi.”

Suddenly, Ahalya's arms were around her again, hugging her to her breast. “Rama was watching over you, Little Flower,” she said. “He kept you from harm.”

“Not Rama,” Sita corrected her, “Baba. He promised always to protect me.”

Sita closed her eyes and pictured her father's face. The strong chin, the salt-and-pepper hair receding at the crown, the gold-flecked eyes full of wisdom and kindness. He had made the promise when she was five years old. And she had never doubted him.

“You're right,” Ahalya agreed, stroking her hair. “It was Baba.”

Chapter 8

If thou has not seen the devil, look at thine own self.
—J
ALAL-UDDIN
R
UMI

Mumbai, India

Thomas's first week at CASE was a study in immersion learning. The days began at eight thirty with an office-wide meeting led by Jeff Greer. The three departmental directors reported in with news from the field—investigations ongoing, leads being pursued, cases up for trial, and rescued girls making progress or regressing. No punches were pulled; no rosy portraits painted. Whether delivering hard-boiled grit or a hopeful report, the CASE directors had no patience for sensationalism or spin.

Thomas realized on his first day in the office that working for CASE was light-years away from the stereotypical nonprofit job—at least as he and his colleagues at Clayton had conceived of it. The hours were long, the professional standards high, and the cases intellectually demanding. In addition, there was danger in the work. CASE had few friends in Bombay and many powerful enemies. Most of the permanent staff members had been threatened or accosted by a pimp or trafficker, some more than once.

In many ways, life in the legal department at CASE was little different from life in the trenches at Clayton. The similarities ended, however, where the law itself began. The particulars of Indian jurisprudence were largely foreign to Thomas, and the vernacular of Indian law suffered from a profusion of strange phrases and archaic terminology left over from the days of the Raj. Thomas kept a pen handy and took copious notes, but they usually left him more bewildered than enlightened.

His education took a giant leap forward when Samantha Penderhook asked him to review a legal brief written by one of CASE's Indian lawyers. The case involved a pimp who had operated a makeshift brothel in the Jogeshwari slum. He had a friend who was in the business of trafficking girls from villages in the far north of India on the pretense that he would give them work as waitresses and nannies in Bombay. The pimp had five girls in his stable when the police, assisted by CASE, took down his operation. All five were minors. Two of the girls were barely thirteen. The evidence against the pimp was damning. Yet the case had been pending in court for four years, and the pimp was still on the street.

The Jogeshwari case highlighted the crisis in the Bombay judicial system. The pimp had admitted his crimes to the police, but the confession was not admissible into evidence because the police were presumed to be corrupt. The police also bungled the First Information Report they prepared at the scene. The FIR contradicted the statement prepared by the
pancha
—the third-party witness—giving the pimp's lawyer an opening to attack the credibility of the FIR and the police constables.

In addition, the trial process had been a model of inefficiency. The victims were called to testify six months after the raid, but the prosecutor had to wait more than two years to cross-examine the pimp. By then neither the judge nor the lawyers could quite remember what the victims had said. The only records of the victims' testimony were “depositions” typed in shorthand by the judge's clerk on her ancient computer. Unfortunately, the victims' “depositions” contradicted the notes taken by the CASE lawyer assisting the prosecution.

Finally, there was the problem of the language barrier. The girls were from a region of Uttar Pradesh near Nepal and spoke a dialect called Awadhi. It took CASE two months to locate an Awadhi translator. When at last the girls were placed under oath, the translator admitted he was hard of hearing. Although he stood directly beside the girls, he interrupted them incessantly, asking them to repeat themselves.

The Jogeshwari case was a complete disaster. After reading the brief, Thomas went to Samatha's office. She was on the phone, but she waved him in anyway.

When she hung up, he held up the brief. “Is this a joke?”

She smiled. “No joke. I told you Bombay legal work would drive you crazy.”

He put his outrage into words. “Four years ago, this pimp was selling these itty-bitty girls to his friends in the slum, and today his lawyer is arguing he should be let off because the police couldn't write a coherent sentence in the FIR and the clerk couldn't hear the girls testify and the confession of the pimp was unduly influenced by the cops, even though there were five witnesses and two third-party panchas present at the scene who said the guy just spilled his guts. What kind of kangaroo court are these people running?”

“It's a circus,” Samantha admitted. “That's why we get so few convictions. Even when the evidence is airtight, the perpetrator absconds or the victim refuses to testify or the lawyer pulls some stunt with the judge and delays the case so long that the file starts to grow mold.”

“If the whole system is broken, then why are we doing this?”

Samantha gestured toward the chair in front of her desk. “Sit down.”

When he did, she went on, “I'm sure you've heard the old Burkean maxim that evil prevails where good people do nothing. It's a nice hoary statement, the sort of thing politicians throw around on the stump and activists put on bumper stickers. But Burke was right. Bombay is a den of thieves because people sat on their hands and let it become that way. When CASE opened this office, everybody said we would close our doors in a year.”

She paused and swept her arm around.

“Well, we're still here and, by God, we've made a difference. The pimps are afraid of us. The police are starting to think twice about accepting bribes. Girls who were once being raped in the cages fifteen times a day are recovering in our private homes. It's small, but it's a start. The question you have to answer is simple: do you want to be a part of it?”

She leaned forward in her chair and placed her hands on the desk. “I imagine Jeff gave you the spiel about sticking around for the duration. He does that with everyone. But this is my department. If you reach a point where you want out, I'll run interference with headquarters. I don't need to remind you that you're not getting paid.”

Samantha meant the statement as a joke, but Thomas winced. She had no way of knowing that, if not for that coward Mark Blake and the threat from Wharton Coal, he would be back in the District, billing $325 an hour for his time. CASE's work was commendable, but he hadn't signed up for moral reasons. He was different from the other volunteers. The world of human trafficking sickened him, but he was on a career path with a defined objective: the federal bench. He would stay the course here because it was the only way back into the arms of grace.

“Don't worry about me,” he said, standing up again. “I'm on board.”

“I thought so.” Samantha grinned. “So here's your test. Make the Jogeshwari brief sing. Make it so compelling that the judge can't wait to send that bastard to the jail at Arthur Road.”

On Saturday night, Dinesh invited Thomas out to dinner in Bandra with a couple of his friends. The friends were single, white-collar types who had studied in Britain. They ate on the porch at Soul Fry, a hip hangout serving traditional cuisine with a modernist flair.

Dinesh's friends demonstrated absolutely no interest in Thomas's work at CASE and spent most of the meal questioning him about American girls. Thomas avoided the subject of Priya, thinking that one of them might know her family. But they didn't ask about her, and Dinesh had the good sense not to bring her up.

After dinner, the foursome climbed into a pair of rickshaws and made the twenty-minute trip to Dinesh's favorite club—a place called White Orchid. The club was located on the third floor of a commercial building that housed a clothing boutique and a travel agency.

As the lift ascended, he heard the muffled sound of throbbing bass and tinny vocals. They were met in a lobby by three bouncers wearing white shirts and black pants. One of Dinesh's friends shook hands with a bouncer and whispered in his ear. The man nodded and gestured his assent. He waved the group through another set of doors.

As soon as Thomas entered White Orchid, he understood that the main attraction was neither alcohol nor fraternity. The club was circular, its perimeter lined with plush couches and square tables. Men of all ages sat on the couches, sipping drinks. At the center of the room was a wooden dance floor with two floor-to-ceiling brass poles. Between the poles stood eight young women adorned like princesses in gold, jewels, and elegant pantsuits. Unlike the performers in an American strip club, these girls were fully clothed. Yet there was an unmistakable sensuality in the way they stood, they way they looked at the men, and the way they danced.

The girls took turns at center stage, only one dancing at a time. The rest stood by, casing the room with their eyes. If a man liked a girl, he offered her a tip. The girl would saunter over to the man, take the bill with a smile, and then return to the bar line. Occasionally, a man would place a stack of rupees in his hand and wink at a girl. Drawn by the more generous tip, the girl would dance for him alone. At no time, however, did the girl and her admirer touch.