Bhendi Bazaar (21 page)

TWENTY-THREE
2007

The breakthrough couldn't have come from a more unlikely source.

Recycling had been a custom in India long before the word was coined or the need to reuse everyday stuff was felt around the world. Every household collected bric-a-brac like empty glass bottles, plastic jars, daily newspapers and whatnots to convert them into cash.

There were hawkers who visited localities and residents’ houses and shops to buy them and take them for recycling. Old newspapers went into making paper bags for small-time vendors or for wrapping street side food.

Elvis Pinto, the taxi driver — the one who had dropped Bhim Yadav at ITC Grand Maratha hotel almost a month earlier — had stopped to pick up his lunch from a street side vendor who had packed his on-the-go
vada-pau
in a month-old newspaper. It was there, as he wolfed on his eats, that Elvis saw the picture of Yadav. The police had urged everyone to come forward if they saw or remembered anything that could help the police close in on the murderer. At the outset, Elvis wasn't keen to walk into a police station — the reputation of local police wasn't any better than an occupying army; they'd ask him all sorts of unnecessary questions, hassle him, he'd be called several times to various police stations to repeat his story, maybe even be asked to go to court. He squashed the stale newspaper into a ball, but didn't throw it out of the window of his car, like he normally did.

Later, after dropping a passenger at the airport, he got into the taxi queue. Bored, he lit up a cigarette and unfolded the paper he had thrown in the trash in his car.

Rita Ferreira sounded another fellow Goan to him. He had decided. If he were to divulge that he was the driver who dropped Bhim Yadav to ITC Grand Maratha on the latter's last night, it would only be to Rita. Ignoring the blaring horns of other taxis in the queue, he turned the car around and drove towards Crawford Market.

Even with the best intentions, it took Elvis forty minutes to convince the constable at the desk that he needed to see DCP Rita Ferreira, but he kept at it relentlessly. When Rita was messaged that some eccentric taxi driver called Elvis wanted to see her regarding the murder of Bhim Yadav, Vikram was dispatched to bring him to her office pronto.

Elvis came in, raised his hand to his temples and gave a salute. 'Madam.' ‘Sit down Elvis. This better be good.’ Rita was polite but assertive.

Elvis looked at Vikram, who sat down next to him. 'Don't worry, he works in the same team.'

'You from Goa, madam?' ‘Yes.’

‘Great, madam.’

'Yes, but surely that wasn’t what you came all the way to ask me, is it?'

'No, no, madam. I know you busy. But we both from Goa so I ask.'

'What do you know about Bhim Yadav?'

'I drop him to hotel.' ‘When?’

‘That night…’

Rita pressed the buzzer; the office boy appeared out of nowhere, like a genie. She gestured three with her fingers. Three teas.

Elvis slurped the tea and narrated the events of the night as he drove Yadav to the hotel. He also gave Rita the much-needed Malti's mobile number.

'Do you, by any chance, have a number for Julie?'

'Same same, different names, different number, same woman.'

No wonder Hegde got the payment from a single source. The two numbers couldn't have been set up for tax reasons, Rita thought. To misguide punters? 'Thank you Elvis. Could we do anything for you?' Rita asked.

'Madam, my landlord big bully. Please ask Inspector
sahib
to visit me in uniform once.'

'Vikram, please take down Elvis' address and ask local police to help him.'

'Thank you madam.'

Elvis left the building, happy. He had done a good deed, and secured a favour too. His wife, he knew, would be proud of him.

Chirag tale andhera: "
The utmost darkness is under the oil-lamp." Malti's number was traced to just south of Crawford Market. In Bhendi Bazaar. The police had looked for her everywhere only to find her behind the bazaar.

An emergency briefing session was called for in the Operations Room at 7 p.m. Rita solicited views from all the inspectors. One school of thought was to storm the place and make the arrest. The other, the more practical one, was to glean more info without letting any slip outside the eight of them. The latter view, though contested by Nene and the two Mathurs, was to negate the effect in case their entire intelligence had been erroneous. That being the case, the killer might come down heavily that the police had targeted prostitutes again.

"Stupid laws in the country, and the world over — the whore's the one charged by police, not the fucking tricks, not the pimps, not the men who lure or force women into this ugly profession."
The killer's words rang in Rita's ears.

In any case, what could the police arrest Malti for? They had no evidence. If the police started arresting every prostitute in Mumbai for soliciting, there wouldn’t be a vacant cell in any prison.

'Only I shall visit Malti,' Rita said amongst simultaneous rising of eyebrows so high, a puppeteer may have pulled them up with an invisible string. Her caucus of inspectors was surprised that she wanted to go alone. The disbelief was contagious; eyebrows rose and fell like sounds in a choir.

'Are you sure?'

'Is it safe?'

'Take one of us along.'

But Rita was adamant. She explained that she was only going for a chat with Malti. 'I want you guys to dig up every bit of information on Malti. Use your snitches. I'll tell you what I get to know after I return.'

The bazaar was more than alive at 8 p.m. when Rita negotiated the narrow, congested streets of Bhendi Bazaar in her Gypsy. No driver either, she had insisted. Quintessential small shops lined the street on both sides selling junk jewellery, gemstones, trinkets, bangles. The businesses here had been passed down as inheritance and so had been the spaces on the pavement for their vending carts, and for living — marriage, birth, sickness and death, all took place on the pavement. It had been like this since 1947, and there was little chance it would ever change. Women were still washing clothes at the communal tap; families that resided under the bridge were getting ready for al fresco dinner. Generations have lived the dream of making it one day, woken up to the reality, and carried on determinedly while their elected politicians, having betrayed their trust for sixty years since Independence, slept in air- conditioned homes. A group of men sat around a table playing cards, another group sat smoking hookah, drinking rotgut.

Most did honest business. A tarot card reader sat with his clients, a
chai-wallah
served tea in the corner. Some didn't: pickpockets, drug addicts, drunkards, pimps swarmed the area too. Hindi songs blared on someone's radio in one of the shops. Eunuchs in saris begged at every traffic light, blessed you if you gave them something, cursed if you didn't. Every eye, at least once, looked at Rita's unmarked Gypsy. Each one recognised a police vehicle. But everyone carried on with his or her chore seemingly unaffected by the presence of police.

A policewoman in an area… where no policeman dared to visit?

Malti's terraced house in Bhendi Bazaar was derelict; it seemed like the occupier or landlord had abandoned the building since Pandit Nehru ceased to be the Prime Minister. At least, from the outside. Rita got down from the Gypsy to an audience of a thousand eyes.

Without returning any stares, Rita confidently walked to the door and rang the bell. 'Yes?' A young girl, her décolleté neckline showing ample silicon unabashedly, opened the door. Hardened with time and hard experience, she had long learnt to manage emotions and expressions. No smile. Lips shut tight like a vault. She looked at Rita like the latter was some kind of an artefact she didn't like, but she kept any surprise out of her voice. Rita felt sorry for the girl; she, like Rita, was doing a job. It wasn't exactly her fault if the gentry didn't like her profession. Many in the city didn't like Rita’s profession either. The girl looked straight at Rita, then suddenly, her eyeballs darted from left to right and back a few times, like a well-controlled yo-yo, checking if Rita was alone. ‘Who are you?’

'I am looking for Malti.' Rita flashed her ID card.

Trepidation appeared on her face and faded, but the girl didn’t say anything, only beckoned Rita to step in. She bolted the door and led Rita into the lavish living room and asked her to wait. When the girl disappeared into the house, Rita’s eyes absorbed the place, the decor of which was in congruence with the outdoors; it, too, must have been last updated in the Sixties, albeit it was much better maintained. The paint had faded, and in places peeled off. The furniture was well used, but it wasn't broken or torn. The dark curtains were pulled down to stop prying eyes from looking in. There was no chance of this place getting sunlight in the day either. The room felt as if it hadn't been aired for years, maybe decades.

Iridescent lighting gave away that it wasn’t a home, or perhaps sought to express that deliberately. After all, those visiting this place weren’t desirous of being at home. Isn’t the proscribed always more pleasurable?

'How may I help you?' someone asked in the background. A graceful middle-aged woman dressed in a sari walked in. Margaret Flynn had been waiting for this day — the day she could see the police — for a quarter of a century. Sure, she had seen lots of off-duty policemen who came for free fucks, but not someone who came on duty. Her misadventure had cost her two younger friends their lives. She, being the one who had planned everything and having failed the two, found her conscience burdened with Deborah's and, then, Viviane's suicide. After the death of Pathak, the Cuffe Parade bordello had shut down in the mid- Nineties. Margaret, working her way through the prostitution hierarchy, had eventually retired from being a hooker herself and become a Madame. What other options did she have? There was no way back to a free Russia, she didn't even have a passport. The London dream the trio had had when they had set out in 1982 had replaced her sleep with a million waking nights, staring at the ceiling while tricks rode her.

'There have been murders all around the city and —'

'What have I got to do with murders? I thought you had come to help.' Margaret lit up a cigarette and took a drag.

'Help?'

'My friends and I were pushed into prostitution twenty-five years ago. Our fault? We trusted people; we thought the nightmare would end when the police found out. Some policemen came following their lust, the bastards. No one helped. Why have you come now?'

'Where are your friends?'

'They died.'

'You're not Indian.'

Despite Margaret's aged ruddy skin, several-shades-darkened complexion, and her impeccable Mumbai diction, Rita’s brain could discern the difference under the surface. Margaret took another drag. She responded with an expressionless stare for some time, and then gave a fake smile and responded after a nice, calculated pause. 'What makes someone an Indian? I've spent more years of my life here than anywhere else. Yes, I was Margaret once, but it doesn't matter now.'

So she was right, Rita made a mental note: “Margaret.” Where was this headed was her concern. What bothered Rita was why? Why was it said at all? It wasn't unwittingly dropped. She was intelligent enough to see it was an attempt to outsmart her, manipulate the conversation by implanting other tales. She realised she required to take the conversation back to the purpose she had come here for. 'As I was saying, six men have been murdered...hold on,' Rita told Margaret as the latter had opened her mouth to say something. ‘Each one of these men were in someway associated with you; they made contact with you either directly or indirectly.’

'And you think someone killed them because they banged one of my girls?'

'It's a possibility. Don't
you
think so?'

'Could be a mere coincidence.'

‘Six men? You'd think there was a terminal point in coincidences. I shall name them.

Just tell me if you know any one of them: Adit Lele...' Margaret reflected for a minute. 'No.'

'Samir Suri.'

'No.'

'Joseph Martin.'

'No.'

'Al Khan. Bhim Yadav. Dina Patel.'

'No. No. No. I have clients all over Mumbai. Some of them call for our services only once in a lifetime and some don't even give their real names. How do you expect me to know or remember any of the names?' The hesitation was momentarily there, but Margaret carefully controlled her face, her expressions. She wasn't a good liar; she was a better actress. She wasn't willing to give anything away, which, Rita knew, wasn't the same as not knowing. She was trained to recognise when a person lied. Margaret had prevaricated, she knew.

'How many girls stay with you here?' Rita looked around and above to explicate. 'Ten, including me.'

‘Could you give me the whereabouts of all these girls on the days these murders took place?' Rita knew Margaret and her ilk were notoriously secretive of their rendezvous, their high-roller clients, but she had to know.

A nod.

Rita pulled out the dates.

Margaret picked up her diary. She carefully provided names and addresses where every girl was on the dates asked.

'I am not looking for your word for it. I would make checks on every girl's whereabouts to corroborate the alibi.'

Nod again. 'I know.' Margaret blew smoke rings — two or three at a time — towards the stained ceiling, her eyes shouting invective, though the lips did not stir.

'And if anyone of these aren't upheld by these men —'

'Many might not be. You think the men who fuck hookers would agree when you ask them?'

'We got ways to make them talk.'

'Anything else?'

'Not at the moment, but if you remember anything that you think might be relevant, give me a call please.' Rita handed her card to Margaret, who kept it at the nearby credenza without looking at it.

'Hope you catch the murderer,' Margaret uttered as she led Rita to the door. 'I will. This might not be my last visit here.'

'My only request to you is come in the morning. This is business time. Some clients visit us here.'