The Virtuosic Spy 01 - Deceptive Cadence (20 page)

For several minutes, Conor had a bigger fight on his hands than he’d anticipated, one he briefly worried he might even lose. He was not as strong as he’d been a month ago, and his breathing grew ragged as he struggled to contain the spinning dynamo beneath him. He finally succeeded in flipping Raj onto his stomach so that his face was pushed against the ceramic tile. He pinned him there by planting one knee on top of his back and one hand on the back of his neck.

“Bloody hell,” he panted, sucking in air with urgent, wheezing gasps. He reached a hand down to pull at the bag that was still entangled in Raj’s arms and now also trapped under his stomach. “You’ll be the death of me long before Khalil’s
goondas
, you silly plonker. Now, will you ever just let go that bag and—”

The door at the end of the foyer opened abruptly. He had been half-expecting that complication, and as the familiar figure appeared with the usual tray of snacks, he again pulled out the semiautomatic and trained it on the elderly man, motioning him to close the door.

“Sure, I didn’t think we had enough going on yet. Come on out here, baba-ji.” He waved the gun at the chair Raj had involuntarily vacated. “Sit down for a minute, and we’ll be right with you.”

The man raised one eyebrow in mild interest. He closed the door, moved into the foyer with methodical dignity, and placed the tray on the table. Looking at them both without a hint of fear, he gave a disdainful sniff and sat down. Conor pressed his hand more firmly against the back of Raj’s neck and bent down to whisper in his ear.

“If I let you up, will you let go the bag so we can get this over with, now?”

“No,
saab
,” Raj whispered.

“Well, that’s honest, anyway.” He straightened and rubbed Raj’s head gently. “I’m sorry,
chotta bhai
. I don’t know what else to do. I wish I could be smarter, for both of us.”

He moved Raj’s head to one side, and with a prayer that he had sufficiently practiced the technique when it was taught to him, delivered a hard blow to the slender, exposed neck with the butt of the gun. Immediately, the body beneath him went limp as Raj collapsed into unconsciousness.

Moving quickly, Conor rolled him onto his back and unwrapped his arms from the duffel bag. He transferred the four lakhs to his knapsack and without a glance tossed the bag with its remaining money over onto the floor next to the old man. Turning his attention back to Raj, he made sure he was breathing easily and pulled a cushion from the foyer’s second chair to prop under his head.

Sitting back on his heels, he regarded the slack, sleeping face with its sparse collection of baby-soft whiskers. It looked even younger now. He watched for another minute, reluctant to move or take his eyes away, reflecting on the surprising, desperate display of courage he had witnessed. When a small sniff reached his ears he remembered the third person in the room and lifted his head to look at him.

“Are you alone in the house tonight,
ji
?” he asked, quietly. The older man’s head moved sideways in a single twitch of affirmation. Conor acknowledged this with his own head wag and indicated Raj.

“I think he’ll only be out for ten minutes or so. Will you stay with him?”

The head moved a second time, and the man’s face remained unreadable. Conor rested a hand on Raj’s shoulder. “Here is the best kept secret in Mumbai. The mafia boy with a noble heart. He was more concerned about what they would do to me than what I might do to him. He deserves a better life than this.”

“Fine words, my boy, but what are the actions?”

Startled by the sound of the dry, gravelly voice addressing him in English, he turned again to the older man, who was on his feet, fastidiously smoothing the wrinkles from his immaculate white kurta. Despite the comment, his face contained no trace of judgment or disapproval, but there was a note of challenge in his voice as he gazed at Conor.

“We can run fast and very far away,” he continued in the same dispassionate tone. “But we cannot escape our actions.”

Conor stiffly rose to his feet with a sad smile. Picking up his knapsack, he gave a final nod to the brown, wrinkled face before turning away. “I know we can’t escape them,
ji
, and thank God for that. If we could, think what monsters we would all be.”

He stepped out into the early morning darkness and stopped on the doorstep, absorbing the old man’s warning and feeling the words take the shape of prophecy as they sank in to his soul. He leaned back against the closed door and felt the momentum of the past few hours floundering in a sea of lightheaded weariness. Methodically, he rubbed his fingers against his eyelids until the dizziness receded, and then, still feeling breathless, Conor began moving forward again.

There was a damp, soot-smelling thickness in the air, a miasma made visible in the halos of mud-yellow haze surrounding the streetlights along the road. The temperature was mild, but he felt chilled to the bone. He also noted the shaky, internal trembling that had begun after bringing the handle of his gun down onto Raj’s neck was not going away.

Looking down the road, he saw the taxi that had ferried them to Goregaon East still parked where he’d instructed the driver to wait. It looked empty, but when he came up beside it, he saw the driver and his “assistant” were indeed still inside but curled up in the back seat, fast asleep. He was not especially gentle in rousing them. The two boys—each undoubtedly too young to have a driver’s license—sprang awake with beaming smiles of reassurance.

“
Jaldi chalo
.”

He accompanied the command with another finger- snapping, hand-cracking performance, and the boys responded immediately. The shorter of the two scrambled into the driver’s seat, and although his eyes barely crested the top of the steering wheel he applied himself fearlessly to the urgent request to “go, quickly.”

As the car roared and bounced its way back toward central Mumbai, Conor pulled out his phone and punched in the number he’d known all night he would eventually have to dial. It took five rings before the call was answered. After a few seconds of rustling movement, a voice responded in a sleepy voice tinged with fear. With an exhalation of remorse, he plunged ahead.

“Meera, is that you? Yes, it’s Con. No, no, there’s nothing wrong. Listen, I’m sorry to be calling you so late.”

“It is not ‘so late’ that you are calling, Con,” Bishan’s wife responded. Her voice now contained a note of relieved amusement. “It is ‘so early.’ What manner of nonsense are you getting up to, before sunrise itself?”

“It’s a little too complicated to explain right now, but I’m afraid I need to ask a favor of Bishan Singh. Can I—”

Before he could finish the request Bishan was already on the line, filled with concern and firing questions. Conor came quickly to the point.

“Bishan, I need a ride. And I need a driver who won’t tell anyone later where he took me. Can you help me?”

“Why do you ask this question?” Bishan scolded. “I am coming. Where are you?”

“I’m not there yet, but I’m headed to the Marilyn Monroe Bar. Can you wait for me at the end of the lane? I’ll meet you there in about an hour.”

“The Marilyn Monroe Bar, you say?”

He heard Bishan’s tongue pull loudly against the back of his front teeth.

“Yes, the Monroe Bar,” he replied in a neutral voice.
 

“The Marilyn Monroe Bar in Kamathipura?”
 

“That’s the one.”

“Okay, Okay, in one hour,” Bishan said with forced vigor.
 

“Look, Bishan, I know what you’re probably thinking, and it’s—”

“No need, no need, my friend.” Obviously mortified, the Sikh’s deep voice rose to a higher pitch. “I am coming in one hour, absolutely. No problems. I will be seeing you soon. Bye for now.”

Conor snapped the phone shut and threw it onto the seat next to him with a groan.

“Jaysus, will this night never end?”

19

T
HE
SMALL
GLASS
OF
CHAI
HAD
GROWN
COLD
IN
HIS
HANDS
, its surface wrinkled over with a dark brown skin. He had forgotten he was holding it. He remembered being grateful for its heat when he’d first accepted it, but apparently it had not occurred to him to drink it, which was probably just as well.

He had been neglecting more than the tea. Behind his desk, Rohit Mehta was rocking back in his chair and regarding him with droll interest, while next to him one of the floor managers meticulously counted the stacks of rupees piled in front of them. Conor realized he had been sitting in a semiconscious stupor. He had an imperfect recollection of arriving at the Monroe and making his way to the back office. He also realized that at some point during this indefinite period, he had developed a blistering fever.

The sight of the coagulating tea set off an alarming turmoil in his stomach. He quickly put the glass on the desk and moved it to one side, out of his line of sight. By the time he had conquered the urge to be sick, a cold sweat had puddled in the area around his lower back.

“Are you feeling quite well,
yaar
?” Mehta inquired, solicitously. “You are looking somewhat gray about the face, I am thinking.”

“I’m all right,” Conor replied, hoping to convince himself if no one else. “Is he almost done?”

Rohit Mehta directed a look of mild inquiry at the floor manager, who looked up from his labors with obsequious reassurance.

“Yes, Mehta-bhai. It is nine lakhs, thirty-three thousand till now, and these many piles still to count.”

When he at last placed the final note on the last pile of rupees, the floor manager gave a sigh of satisfaction, and Conor climbed wearily to his feet.

“Where’s Radha?”

Rohit Mehta looked surprised. “She is just there, next room over, sleeping. You passed by her coming in, yes? You did not see?”

He didn’t remember seeing, but he found her on a couch in the sitting area outside Mehta’s office and thought he hardly could have missed her. It took some time to wake her, and a little more time before she was able to respond to him with any sort of lucidity.

“Is it three hours, already?” she asked, sleepily.

“It’s a bit more than that.” He smiled down at her. “Are you ready to go?”

Radha shot upright as though released by a spring and stared at him, instantly wide-awake. “I am going with you,
bhaiyya
? You are taking me?”

The bright, anxious hope in her eyes was almost more than he could stand. He’d never given the matter a moment of serious thought, and it was an odd time to start, but here now, in a dance bar in the heart of India’s reddest red-light district, with fever tingling along his nerve endings, he looked at the young face of an incipient heroin addict . . . and thought about fatherhood.

“Yes, you’re coming with me,” he said. “If you want to, that is.”

“You have paid for it? It is for
sar dhakna
?”

“No. It bloody well is not for
sar dhakna
.” Conor’s exclamation echoed in the empty room, making her jump in startled fear.

“Sorry. I didn’t mean to yell.” He sat down next to her on the couch. “Listen to me now, Radha, because it’s important for you to understand this. I’m not here to take you away so that I can . . . ehm, that is . . . you’re still very young. I know you’re not a child, exactly. But . . . well, to me you are. So we could never, I mean—ah, for the love of God, tell me you understand what I’m saying to you here.”

Radha was regarding him with a look of patient understanding. “Yes, I understand, Con-ji. I am like sister for you. I know this about you since long time. I was not thinking you would take my virginity or make me wife to you.”

“Oh.” Conor was momentarily stumped for further comment.

“But what I am asking is did you pay Rohit Mehta for
sar dhakna
? It is the only way for me to leave.”

“Let’s just say we reached an understanding.”

“There is no understanding with Rohit Mehta without rupees.” She leaned forward, eyes gleaming with curiosity. “How much did you pay for me,
bhaiyya
?”

“Radha,” Conor pleaded, getting slowly to his feet again. “Could we please talk about this another time?”

“Yes, except for this question,” she insisted. “How much did you pay for me?”

Conor rubbed a hand over his eyes in exasperation. “Twelve lakhs.”

“Twelve lakhs?!”

He thought her squeal somewhat reminiscent of his own when he’d first heard the figure.

“Did you not think the price was too high?” Radha asked in amazement.

“I thought it was surprising,” he admitted, “but I didn’t think it was either too low or too high. He could have said anything, and he would have been wrong. You are not a sari or a piece of jewelry, Radha. You’re a young lady, and you are without price. Our first rule, if you are going to come with me, is that you will never speak to me or anyone else as though you thought you had been purchased. Is that agreed?”

“It is agreed.”

He smiled at the look of dignity on her face and held out his hand. “Then, what are we waiting for?
Chalo
.”

They stepped out into the predawn darkness, and when they emerged at the end of the lane, Conor thought the look on Bishan’s face was worth twelve lakhs on its own. If he had been feeling better, he might have appreciated the moment’s comic potential: the shameless, thirty-two year-old
gora
trotting along, leading a thirteen-year-old bar girl by the hand. He settled Radha into the back seat of the powder-blue Ambassador and then rested his elbows against the hood of the car next to Bishan.

“I know what this looks like,
yaar
,” he said to his friend, “but it’s not what it looks like.”

“Please, Con, there is no need,” Bishan began before Conor interrupted him with an angry obscenity in Hindi.

“Stop blushing at me like my bleedin’ grandma,” he snapped. “She’s thirteen years old, for Christ’s sake. Do you think that little of me? Think I’ve come to India to whore around, de-flowering children? Is that what you think?”