The Mountain Shadow (82 page)

I avoided better places, and spent the long day and evening doing the rounds of currency dealers and touts, from the Fountain to the Point to the mangroves in Colaba Back Bay.

I listened to Chinese-whispered gangster gossip up and down the strip, made notes on all the money changers’ tallies and estimates, checked them against Didier’s notes, found out who the principal predators were, which restaurants favoured us and which banned us, how often the cops demanded money, which men could be trusted, which girls couldn’t be trusted, which shops were fronts for other businesses, and how much each square foot of black market footpath in Colaba cost.

Crime does pay, of course, otherwise nobody would do it. Crime usually pays faster, if not better, than Wall Street. But Wall Street has the cops. And the cops were my last stop before visiting the slum, to check on Diva and Naveen.

Lightning Dilip gestured toward a chair, when I walked into his office.

‘Don’t sit in the fucking chair,’ he said. ‘What the fuck do you want?’

He was looking me over, remembering the last beating he’d given me, hoping for a limp.

‘Lightning-
ji
,’ I began politely. ‘I just want to know if I can still bribe you, now that I’m freelancing, or if I have to go to Sub-Inspector Patil. I’m hoping for you, because the sub-inspector can be a real pain in the ass. But if you tell him that, I’ll deny it.’

The constables laughed. Lightning Dilip glared at them.

‘Throw this motherfucker in the under barrack,’ he said to the cops, lounging in the doorway. ‘And kick his head sideways.’

They stopped laughing, and moved toward me.

‘Just kidding,’ Lightning laughed, holding up a hand to stop his men. ‘Just kidding.’

The cops laughed. I laughed, too. It was pretty funny, in its own way.

‘Five per cent,’ I said.

‘Seven and a half,’ Lightning shot back. ‘And I’ll give you a chair to sit in, next time you visit the under barrack.’

The cops laughed. I laughed, too, because I would’ve given him ten per cent.

‘Done. You drive a hard bargain, Lightning-
ji
. You didn’t marry a Marwari wife for nothing.’

The Marwaris are trading people from Rajasthan, in northern India. They have a reputation for shrewd business, and sharp deal making. Lightning Dilip’s Marwari wife had a reputation for spending money faster than Lightning could beat it from his victims.

He looked at me, tasting the mention of his wife without pleasure. His lip curled. Every sadist has a sadist in the shadows. When you know who it is, just the mention of the name is enough.

‘Get out of here!’

‘Thank you, Sergeant-
ji
,’ I said.

I walked past the cops who’d chained and kicked me, weeks before. They smiled, and nodded good-naturedly. That was pretty funny too, in its own way.

Chapter Fifty

I
PARKED OUTSIDE THE SLUM AND MADE MY WAY
to Johnny’s house. He wasn’t there, so I went to the adjoining huts being used by Naveen and Diva. I heard them, as usual, before I saw them.

‘Do you know what a woman has to
do
to take a
shit
around here?’ Diva demanded, as I walked into the little clear space in front of their huts.

‘Wow, that was a long conversation,’ I said. ‘Weren’t you on that last time?’

‘Do
you
know, Mr
Kharab Dhandha
Shantaram?’ she demanded, using the term for
dirty business
.

‘I do. I used to live here. And it ain’t right.’

‘Damn right, it’s not right,’ Diva said, turning from me to poke Naveen in the chest. ‘A woman can’t shit in the daytime, for example.’

There were several people in the group. Naveen and Didier were standing in front of Naveen’s hut. Diva was with Johnny’s wife, Sita, and three girls from surrounding houses.

‘I –’ Naveen tried.

‘Imagine if someone told you that you can’t take a shit, all day, because you’re a man, and somebody might see you taking a shit. You’d totally freak out, right?’

‘I –’

‘Well, that’s what
we
get told, because we’re women. And when we
are
allowed to take a shit, when the sun goes down, we have to clamber around the rocks, and do it in some miserable fucking place in the total dark, because if we carry a torch, someone might
see
that we’re taking a
shit
!’

‘I –’

‘And women get molested, out there in the dark. There’s crazy guys hanging around. Guys who don’t mind that the place is full of shit. Guys who actually prefer it that way. I’m not kidding, and I’m not putting up with it. I waited till dark to take a shit, and I’m not doing that again. I’m the fuck out of here, and that means tonight! I’m leaving.’

Naveen was considering whether to say
I
again. He looked at Didier. Didier looked at me. I looked at the fascinating knot on the edge of a bamboo support pole.

There was a commotion, and Johnny rushed in from one of the narrower lanes we used for short cuts.

He saw us, and stopped. His mouth was open. His hands were out in front of him, as if he was holding a branch.

‘What is it, Johnny?’ Sita asked, in Marathi.

‘I . . . I can’t . . . ’

‘Johnny, what’s up?’ I asked.

He was stiff, as if he was ready to run somewhere. His face struggled. Sita went to him, and led him away. After a minute she returned, and called Naveen and me to her.

Didier and the girls remained with Diva.

‘What the fuck is going on?’ Diva said. ‘I’m leaving!
Hello?
Did everybody
forget
that part?’

Johnny was sitting in a plastic armchair, drinking from a bottle of chilled water.

‘They are all dead,’ he said.

‘Who’s dead?’ Naveen asked.

‘Aanu’s father, I mean Diva’s father, and everyone at his house. Everyone. Even the gardeners. Even the pets. It was a horrible massacre.’

‘When?’

‘Just now,’ Johnny said breathlessly. ‘Lin, how can we tell that girl? I can’t do it. I can’t.’

‘Did you check the story?’

‘Yes, Naveen, of course I did. The police and press are going mad. It will be on the news, very soon, and then she will know anyway. Should we just wait? What are we going to do?’

‘Turn on the radio, Johnny,’ I said.

Sita clicked on the local news channel.

Bad words like slaughter and massacre poured from the mouth of the radio. Mukesh Devnani and seven of his household had been killed. The household pets had been killed. Nothing, and no-one, was spared.

Divya Devnani, the words said, again and again, the sole heir to the Devnani fortune, might also have been killed in the slaughter, the massacre, the slaughter.

‘We can’t let her find out by hearing that,’ I said. ‘She’s gotta be told.’

‘
I’ll
tell her,’ Naveen said, soft light in his eyes.

‘Good,’ I said. ‘It’s tough on you, but it should be you. But not here. Let’s go down to the rocks, and the sea. There’s a quiet place I know.’

She didn’t protest, when we walked through the slum, but as we stepped among the black stones on the shoreline, she tried to walk back into the slum. I think she sensed that bad news had found a place to drown itself.

Naveen held her in his arms, and told her. She broke the hug, walked a few uncertain steps on the rocky shore, and began to stagger away.

Naveen followed her closely, catching her a few times when her bare feet slipped between the rocks.

She stumbled on in a daze, her eyes blind, her legs moving in an instinct to flee suffering and fear.

I’d seen it before, during a prison riot: a man so scared that he walked into a stone wall, again and again, always hoping for a door. Her mind was somewhere else, searching for the vanished world.

Without her realising it, Naveen led her in a wide arc, and back to me. She sat placidly, then, on a boulder, and very slowly came back to herself. When she did, she started crying uncontrollably.

I left her with Naveen, who loved her, and returned to the huts to bring Sita and the girls to help. Sita was gone, but I found Karla and the Zodiac Georges instead.

I looked at Didier. Diva’s hiding place in the slum was a secret.

‘I thought it wise, that she have some support,’ Didier said. ‘Especially since we shall all be spending the night here to support her, in this . . . community facility, is it not so?’

Karla kissed me hello.

‘How is she?’

‘It hit her like an axe handle,’ I said, ‘but she came around okay. She’s a tough girl. Good that you’re here. She’s with Naveen, down by the sea. I’d give them a while yet. She’s pretty cut up, and Naveen knew her father.’

‘Didier is too much of a gentleman to keep a secret,’ Didier said, ‘and leave Diva without friends, on a night of such terrible disaster as this.’

‘And Didier is too scared of ghosts,’ Karla added, ‘to stay here alone.’

‘Ghosts?’

‘Clearly,’ Didier said, ‘the place is haunted. I am sensing presences.’

‘Whatever the reason, I’m glad you’re here.’

‘It’s been a while,’ she said, looking around at the slum huts. ‘Any special attractions this time? Cholera, typhoid?’

There’d been a cholera outbreak years before, while I was living in the slum. Karla had come to help me fight it. She’d accepted the local rats, nursed helpless people, and cleaned diarrhoea from earthen floors on her hands and knees.

‘It sounds crazy, I guess, but that time with you, back then, it’s one of my happiest memories.’

‘Mine, too,’ she said, glancing around. ‘And you’re right. It’s crazy. What are the girls doing to Diva’s place?’

‘They’re sprucing it up. Hoping to raise her spirits, I think.’

‘There are spirits being raised from the dead in this wild city tonight,’ she said. ‘That’s for sure.’

‘Terrible business,’ Scorpio added, joining us.

‘Poor little thing,’ Gemini said. ‘We’ve kept her suite open, at the Mahesh. It’s always there, if she wants it.’

‘Just keep this place to yourselves,’ I said. ‘Johnny and the others are taking a risk. Don’t let anyone know about Diva. Are we good?’

‘Good as gold, mate,’ Gemini replied.

‘Yes . . . ’ Scorpio hedged. ‘Unless . . . ’

‘Unless?’

‘Unless someone is forcing me to tell.’

‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

‘Well, suppose somebody started hitting me, to get me to tell, then I would tell. So, I can only promise confidentiality up to the point of physical harm.’

I looked at Gemini.

‘It’s one of Scorpio’s rules,’ he shrugged.

‘And a good one,’ Scorpio added. ‘If everyone in the world spilled their guts at the first sign of violence, there’d be no torture any more.’

‘SnitchWorld,’ Karla said. ‘I think you’re on to something, Scorp.’

A man came through the lanes toward us, wheeling a bicycle laden with parcels.

‘Ah!’ Didier cried. ‘The relief supplies!’

The man unloaded a sponge mattress, a suitcase, a folding card table, four folding canvas stools and two sacks of booze from the bicycle. I looked at the booze.

‘It is for Diva,’ Didier said, catching my eye as he was counting the bottles. ‘The girl will need to get very drunk tonight, if on no other night in her life.’

‘Alcohol isn’t the answer to everything, Didier.’

Diva came out of the shadows suddenly.

‘I need to get very drunk,’ she said.

Didier stared his
Told you so
at me.

‘Will you . . . ’ Diva said, ‘my strange new friends, because none of you are my actual friends, and my actual friends aren’t here, and I may never see them again, like my father, will you help me to get very drunk, and clean me up when I get sick, and put me to bed safely, when I don’t know what’s going on any more?’

There was a pause.

‘Of course!’ Didier said. ‘Come here, sweet injured child. Come here to Didier, and we shall cry into everybody’s beer together, and spit into the eyes of Fate.’

She did cry, of course. She ranted, waved her arms, shouted, paced the little hut, tripped on the patchwork blankets, and called the girls in to dance with her.

When the ululating voices and handclap music reached a peak, she began to fall. Naveen caught her quickly and carried her to the bed of blankets, her arms falling at her sides like broken wings. She slowly curled her knees into her heart, and slept.