Sacred Games (12 page)

So Sartaj and Katekar stood at the edge of Navnagar, below the small world it contained. ‘All right,' Sartaj said, looking at the terraced, untidy descent of the rusted tin roofs. ‘So this Bihari is the boss.'

‘He plans everything. These three, these are his boys.' Katekar wiped his face with an enormous blue handkerchief, and then the back of his neck and his forearms. ‘They make money.'

‘Doing what? Fraud? Robbery? Or are they shooters for some gang?'

‘Maybe. But I've never heard of that, Bangladeshis in a company.'

‘These boys grew up here, maybe they're more Indian than anything else. But this Bihari is the key. He's older, he's professional. He lives quietly, doesn't show off his money, he clears out fast and first when there's trouble. Wherever he is, those boys are going to be.'

‘Yes, saab,' Katekar said. He put away his handkerchief. ‘So we find the Bihari.'

‘We find the Bihari.'

 

Pursuing the Bihari had to wait while Sartaj fulfilled certain obligations. Policing was often a scattered business that required setting aside one job to attend to another. What Sartaj had to do now was strictly unofficial and had nothing to do with any case, and he had to do it alone. He dropped Katekar at the station and drove south to Santa Cruz. He was to meet Parulkar in a sparkling new building just off Linking Road, near Swaraj Ice-cream. Sartaj parked behind the building and marvelled at the green marble in the lobby, and the sleek steel lift. The apartment Parulkar was waiting in was supposed to belong to Parulkar's niece. This niece worked at a bank, and her husband was in import-export, but they were barely out of their twenties, and the apartment was very large and very expensive. The gold letters on the nameplate spelled out ‘Namjoshi', but Sartaj was certain that the three-bedroom apartment actually belonged to
Parulkar. Certainly, the ease with which he sat cross-legged on a huge sofa in the drawing room, like a rotund, khaki-clad sage, suggested a man in charge of his own prime real estate and his own destiny.

‘Come, come, Sartaj,' Parulkar said. ‘We must hurry.'

‘Sorry, sir. The traffic is bad.'

‘The traffic is bad all the time.' But Parulkar was not reprimanding Sartaj, he was fatherly and patient, and only mindful of his own hectic schedule. He pointed at a frosty glass of water on the table. Sartaj took off the silver cover and drank, and followed Parulkar across the shadowed breadth of the drawing room, to a bedroom.

Parulkar shut the door behind them and padded around the high white bed to the other side of the room. He opened a cupboard, and hefted out a black duffle-bag. ‘It's forty today.'

‘Yes, sir,' Sartaj said. Parulkar meant forty lakhs. These were Parulkar's recent unofficial earnings, which Sartaj would move over to Worli, and hand over to Parulkar's consultant, Homi Mehta, who would funnel it to a Swiss account and charge only a very reasonable commission. Sartaj ferried Parulkar's money every few weeks, and he had long ago stopped being surprised by the amounts. Parulkar was, after all, the commissioner for a very rich zone. It was a very wet posting, and Parulkar drank deep from its burbling fount of money. He was an avid earner, but not greedy, and he was very careful about the disposal of the money. His personal assistant, Sardesai, handled the collection of the money, but Sardesai knew nothing of what happened to the money once he had given it to Parulkar. Parulkar passed it over to Sartaj, who moved it to Mehta, the consultant. Sartaj only knew that then, somehow, the money disappeared from India and reappeared abroad, where it sat safe and accumulated interest in hard currency.

Parulkar emptied the cash on to the bedspread and handed the bag to Sartaj. ‘Eighty bundles of five-hundred-rupee notes,' he said. They trusted each other completely, but this was their ritual each time money went to the consultant. Sartaj gathered up a hefty brick of money and put it into the bag. He would do this eighty times while Parulkar watched, and then they would have an agreed-upon count.

‘What are you going to do about this Gaitonde business?' Parulkar said, watching Sartaj's hands.

‘I was going to ask you about that, sir.'

Parulkar pulled his legs up on to the bed and took up his meditative posture again. ‘I don't know that much about the Gaitonde company.
There was a fellow called Bunty who ran their business in Mumbai. Smart fellow, Suleiman Isa's boys shot him, put him in a wheelchair, but he was Gaitonde's trusted man, he stayed in charge from his wheelchair. There was a time when you could just go to Gopalmath and meet Bunty, but after he got shot he went into hiding. Ask Mehta for this Bunty's number, he will have it.' Mehta, as a money manager, was neutral in the gang wars. All sides used his services impartially, and valued him equally.

‘Yes, sir.'

‘But of course your best intelligence on Gaitonde may come from his enemies. Let me make a couple of calls, and I will get you in touch with someone. Someone who is very, let us say, knowledgeable.'

‘Thank you, sir.' What Parulkar meant was that he would use his links inside the Suleiman Isa company to get someone to talk to Sartaj. Since Parulkar's connections with that company went back years, even decades, the source he would provide for Sartaj would no doubt be a highly placed one. So this was a big favour, one more in a long string of kindnesses that Parulkar had bestowed on Sartaj. ‘Forty, sir,' Sartaj said, putting the last stack into the bag. ‘Sir, what is this all about? Gaitonde is dead, why do they want to know about him now?'

‘I don't know, Sartaj. But be careful. What I understand from my sources is that the IB is also involved in this Gaitonde business.'

‘IB, sir? Why?'

‘Who knows? But it seems this whole investigation is actually a joint operation. IB is letting RAW handle the details, so RAW is talking to you and me. When these big agencies get involved in a case, mere policemen have to watch their backs. Do your work, but don't try to be a hero for them.'

Sartaj zipped the bag. So it was not only international agents who were interested in Gaitonde's demise. The Intelligence Bureau, with its domestic counter-intelligence purview, was also curious. It all made Sartaj feel quite small. ‘Of course not, sir. I am never a hero. I don't have the height.'

Parulkar rocked back and forth, gurgling with laughter. ‘Nowadays even very short people are becoming heroes, Sartaj. The world has changed, my dear fellow.'

Sartaj thought for a moment that Parulkar would recite a couplet, but Parulkar was in a hurry, and he left it at ‘my dear fellow' and sent his cash and Sartaj on their way. He only said, ‘My regards to Bhabhi-ji,' and raised a hand, and that was all.

 

As he drove to Worli, Sartaj thought about Papa-ji. Most people remembered Sartaj's father as a tall man, but he had been only five feet seven and a half. His ramrod posture, his muscular arms and glorious moustache and, above all, his always-perfect turban, all these gave him a stature that magnified him in memory. Sartaj, his son, was a full inch taller, but he knew that he was not nearly as impressive, in his person or reputation, as Papa-ji. Papa-ji had been honest. He had insisted always on the crispest turban, on the finest suit, but he had managed to maintain his style on his wages, and had worn the same blue double-breasted blazer for a decade's worth of weddings and official functions. After his death, Sartaj had found the blazer in a trunk, carefully mothballed and wrapped in crisp paper. And now, long after Papa-ji's death, strangers still said to Sartaj, ‘Oh, you are Sardar Saab's son? He was a good man.' A year ago, in Crawford Market, a diamond merchant had patted Sartaj sadly on his shoulder, and said, ‘Beta, your father was the only honest policeman I have ever known.' Sartaj had nodded, and muttered, ‘Yes, he was a good man,' and walked away, his shoulders stiff.

Now Sartaj wheeled right towards the sea-front, then pulled a fast U-turn in front of a bus and came coasting back to the pavement. The general provision store to his right was crowded with uniformed children buying ice-creams. They looked as if they were in the third or fourth, but their school-bags were huge and very heavy. They were too young to know yet that medical school positions were bought and sold, that entrance papers for management schools were leaked to those who could afford it. Sartaj pulled Parulkar's duffle-bag from behind the front seat and walked slowly through the kids. When he had been their age, he had known Parulkar already for a year and more. Parulkar had then been a young, slim sub-inspector, a favourite chela of Papa-ji's. Papa-ji had liked Parulkar, had thought him intelligent and hard-working and dedicated. He had often brought Parulkar home for dinner, he said, ‘The boy is unmarried and needs to eat good home food once in a while.' But Ma had never really taken to Parulkar. She was civil enough, but she didn't trust him from the start. ‘Just because he listens to your stories endlessly you think he's your devoted bhakt,' she said to Papa-ji. ‘But mark my words, these Marathas are too clever.' It was no use telling her that Parulkar was not a Maratha, but in fact a Brahmin. She said, ‘Whatever he is, he's a sharp one.' Her dislike for Parulkar had intensified with his steady ascent through the ranks, and when he had passed Papa-ji's rank and gone beyond, she had stopped talking about Parulkar altogether. She called
him only ‘that man', and didn't even argue when Papa-ji spoke about men's destinies, and how each one of us should be grateful with what Vaheguru had given.

Sartaj angled up the narrow stairs next to the general provision store, which led up to Mehta's tiny office. Mehta had worked in these four little cubicles all his life, and he lived close by, in a spacious but simple apartment overlooking the sea. He was a neat, discreet Parsi gent, dressed now, as always, in complete white. ‘Arre, Sartaj, come, come,' he said, reaching across the table with a fragile hand for a quick, limp shake. He was thin, but elegant, and Sartaj always admired the cut of his fine grey hair. Homi Mehta reminded him somehow of the black-and-white movies that ran on television on Sunday afternoons, it was easy to imagine him sweeping down the seafront in a black Victoria.

‘This is from Saab,' Sartaj said, and put the duffle-bag on the desk.

‘Yes, yes,' Mehta said. ‘But when are you going to bring me some of your own cash, young man? You need to save for the future.'

‘I am a poor man, Uncle,' Sartaj said. ‘What to save, when there is hardly enough to survive?'

This was a conversation that Sartaj and Mehta had every time Sartaj visited, but today Mehta wasn't willing to let it go so soon. ‘Arre, what are you telling me? The man who got Ganesh Gaitonde has not got even a little money?'

‘There was no reward.'

‘Some people are saying that you got a good amount from Dubai to put a bullet in Gaitonde's head.'

‘Uncle, I didn't kill Gaitonde. He shot himself. And nobody paid me.'

‘All right, baba. I didn't say anything. People, you know, people are saying it.'

Mehta was counting Parulkar's money, laying the bricks in orderly stacks on the right-hand side of the desk. He was a meticulous man, and scrupulous in his accounting. A long time ago, during one of their first meetings, he had told Sartaj, ‘In a world of dishonesty, I am an entirely honest man.' He had said it without pride, as just a statement of fact. He had explained to Sartaj that finally all the movement of money in and out of the country depended on the consultants. They were also called ‘managers', in Delhi they were ‘headmasters', but whatever name they were given, everything depended on their honesty. The money came from secret deals and graft, bribery and embezzlement, extortion and murder, and the managers took care of it with discretion and integrity. They made
it vanish and they made it reappear. They were the secret magicians who were crucial to all business, and therefore they knew everyone.

‘Uncle, I need some help,' Sartaj said.

‘Tell me.'

‘Parulkar Saab said you may know how I can get in touch with one of Gaitonde's men.'

‘Which one?'

‘Bunty.'

The old man gave nothing away. He wiped his fingers on a tissue, and started another stack. ‘I will have to ask him,' he said. ‘What should I tell him?'

‘I just want to talk to him. I want to ask him some questions about Gaitonde.'

‘You want to ask him some questions about Gaitonde.' Mehta nodded, and squared away the last stack of money. ‘Okay. You have a new mobile, write down the number.'

Sartaj grinned, and wrote on a pad. Old man Mehta didn't miss a thing, even the small bulge in his breast pocket. Sartaj had finally succumbed and bought a mobile phone, after years of insisting they were too expensive and the rates were too high. He had paid too much, eventually, for a tiny Motorola because it was so silvery and stylish. The phone was still shiny and unused, and he hadn't given the number to anyone yet, but Homi Mehta was ancient and wise and keen-eyed.

‘Here, Uncle,' Sartaj said. ‘Thank you.'

‘Okay. Forty total,' Mehta said, patting the money.

Sartaj stood up. ‘Right. I will see you next time.'

‘Next time, bring me something to save for you. Think of your old age.'

Sartaj raised a hand, and left Mehta and the money. There had been a time, when Sartaj had still been married to Megha, when Mehta always told him to save for his future children. After the divorce, Mehta had stopped doing that, and had started with these reminders of age and passing time. I must really be starting to look old, Sartaj thought.

There was a different group of children at the store now, older ones in their early teens, more sophisticated and self-conscious than the lot before. They drank Pepsis and Cokes and whispered to each other. Sartaj walked half-way to the jeep, then came back to the store and bought a Chocobar. There were other, fancier ice-creams available nowadays, but Sartaj liked that old Kwality taste of slightly oily chocolate with the vanilla underneath, it was the flavour of his childhood. The teenagers
nudged each other: don't miss the funny sardar policeman chomping at a Chocobar. Sartaj smiled and walked on, and by the time he reached the jeep he was licking at the bare wooden stick. He crunched it between his teeth, as he had always done as a boy, flipped it away and drove.