Shantaram (113 page)

"So, the Pakistan ISI told the Iranian secret police about their contact on the Khader council."

"Abdul Ghani. Yes," he replied. "In Iran they were very worried.

Six good traitors gone. Nobody ever can find the bodies of those traitors. Only three were left. The three men from Iran, so then they work with Abdul Ghani. He told them how to make a trap for me. At that time, do you remember, we did not know it, that Sapna, he was working for Ghani and planning to move against us.

Khader did not know. I did not know. If I knew that, I would put the pieces of those Sapna men into Hassaan Obikwa's hole in the ground myself. But I did not know. When I came into the trap, near to Crawford Market, the men from Iran fire the first time from a place near me. The police, they think that I am firing my gun. They fire at me. I am dying, I know, so I take my guns and I shoot at the police. The rest, you know."

"Not all of it," I grunted. "Not enough. I was there that night, the night you got shot. I was in the crowd at Crawford Market police station. It was wild. Everyone said you were shot so many times that your face was unrecognisable."

"There was so much blood. But Khader's men, they did know me.

They make a riot and then they fight step and step into the police station, and they take my body out of there and away to the hospital. Khader had a truck near there, and he had a doctor - you know him, Doctor Hamid, do you remember him?-and they saved me."

"Khaled was there that night. Was he the one who rescued you?"

"No. Khaled was one of the men who make the riot. It was Farid who took my body." "Farid the Fixer got you out of there?" I gasped, stunned that he'd said nothing about it in all the close months we'd worked together. "And he's known about it all this time?"

"Yes. If you have a secret, Lin, put it in the heart of Farid. He is the best of them, my brother, now that Abdel Khader is gone.

After Nazeer, Farid is the best of them. Never forget that."

"What about the three guys? The three Iranian guys? What happened to them after you got shot? Did Khader get them?"

"No. When Abdel Khader killed Sapna and his men, they ran away to Delhi."

"One of the Sapna guys got away. You know that?"

"Yes, he went to Delhi also. When I was strong again-not completely fix up yet, but strong enough to fight-just two months ago, I went to look for the four men and their friends. I found one of them. One from Iran. I finish him. Now there are only three left from that time-two spies from Iran, and one Sapna killer from Ghani."

"Do you know where they are?"

"Here. In the city."

"You're sure?"

"I am sure. That is why I have come back to Bombay. But now, Lin brother, we must return to the hotel. Salman and the others, they are waiting for us, upstairs. They want to make a party. They will be happy I can find you-they did see you leaving, hours before, with a beautiful girl, and they told me I will not find you."

"It was Lisa," I said, glancing unconsciously over my shoulder at the bedroom window on the first floor of the Taj. "Do you... want to see her?"

"No," he smiled. "I did meet someone-Farid's cousin, Ameena. She has been looking after me for more than a year. She is a good girl. We want to be married."

"Get the fuck outta here!" I spluttered, more shocked by his intention to marry than I was by his survival of the killing fusillade.

"Yes," he grinned, reaching out to give me an impulsive hug. "But come on, the others are waiting. Challo."

"You go ahead," I answered him, smiling to match his happy grin.

"I'll be with you soon."

"No, come, Lin," he urged. "Come now."

"I need a minute," I insisted. "I'll be there... in a minute."

He hesitated a moment more but then smiled, nodded his head, and walked back through the domed arch toward the Taj Hotel.

Evening dimmed the afternoon's bright halo. A haze of dusty smoke and vapour misted the horizon, sizzling soundlessly, as if the sky at the distant wall of the world was dissolving into the waters of the bay. Most of the boats and ferries were safely tied to their mooring posts at the dock beneath me. Others rose and fell and rose again, swaying on the secure tethers of their sea anchors. High tide pushed the swollen waves against the long stone wall where I stood. Here and there along the boulevard, frothy plumes, like gasps of effort, slapped up, over, and onto the white footpaths. Strollers walked around the intermittent fountains, or ran laughing through the sudden boom and spray. In the little seas of my eyes, those tiny blue-grey oceans, waves of tears pushed hard against the wall of my will.

Did you send him? I whispered to the dead Khan, my father.

Assassin grief had pushed me to that wall where the street boys sold heroin. And then, when it was almost too late, Abdullah had appeared. Did you send him to save me?

The setting sun, that funeral fire in the sky, seared my eyes, and I looked away to follow the last flares of cerise and magenta streaming out and fading in the ocean-mirrored sapphire of the evening. And staring out across the rile and ruffle of the bay, I tried to fit my feelings within a frame of thought and fact.

Strangely, weirdly, I'd re-found Abdullah and re-lost Khaderbhai on the same day, in the same hour. And the experience of it, the fact of it, the inescapably fated imperative of it, helped me to understand. The sorrowing I'd shunned had taken so long to find me because I couldn't let him go. In my heart, I still held him as tightly as I'd hugged Abdullah only minutes before. In my heart, I was still there on the mountain, kneeling in the snow and cradling the handsome head in my arms.

As the stars slowly reappeared in the silent endlessness of sky, I cut the last mooring rope of grief, and surrendered to the all sustaining tide of destiny. I let him go. I said the words, the sacred words: I forgive you...

And it was good. And it was right. I let the tears fall. I let my heart break on my father's love, like the tall waves beside me that hurled their chests against the wall, and bled onto the wide, white path.

____________________

CHAPTER FORTY

The word mafia comes from the Sicilian word for bragging. And if you ask any serious man who commits serious crimes for a living, he'll tell you it's just that-the boasting, the pride-that gets most of us in the end. But we never learn. Maybe it's not possible to break laws without boasting about it to someone.

Maybe it's not possible to be an outlaw without being proud in some way. Certainly, in those last months of the old mafia, the brotherhood that Khaderbhai had designed, steered, and ruled, there was plenty of boasting and no less pride. But it was the last time that any of us in that corner of Bombay's underworlds of crime could've said, with complete honesty, that we were proud to be gangsters.

Khader Khan had been dead for almost two years, but his precepts and principles still dominated the day-to-day operations of the mafia council he'd founded. Khader had hated heroin, and he'd refused to deal in the drug or permit anyone else but desperately addicted street junkies to trade in it within the areas he'd controlled. Prostitution had also appalled him. He'd seen it as a business that injured women, degraded men, and blighted the community where it occurred. The hemisphere of his influence had extended to all the streets, parks, and buildings across several square kilometres. Within that little kingdom, any man or woman who hadn't kept their involvement with prostitution and pornography to very low, very discreet, levels of activity had risked his condign punishment. And that situation prevailed under the new council headed by Salman Mustaan.

Old Sobhan Mahmoud, still the nominal head of the council, was gravely ill. In the years since Khader died, he'd suffered two strokes that had left his speech and much of his movement severely impaired. The council moved him into Khader's beach house in Versova-the same house where I'd gone through cold turkey with Nazeer. They ensured that the aged don had access to the best medical treatments, and arranged for his family and his servants to attend him.

Nazeer slowly groomed Khader's nephew, young Tariq, for what most on the council assumed would be a leading role. Despite the boy's pedigree, his maturity, and his unusually solemn demeanour-there was no-one, man or boy, whose dour, fervent intensity reminded me so much of Khaled-Tariq was deemed to be too young to claim a council position or even to attend the council meetings. Instead, Nazeer gave him duties and responsibilities that more gradually acquainted him with the world he might one day command. In all practical senses, Salman Mustaan was the don, the new Khan, the leader of the council and the ruler of Khaderbhai's mafia. And Salman, as everyone who knew him testified, was Khaderbhai's man, body and soul. He governed the actions of the clan as if the grey-haired lord was still there, still alive, advising and cautioning him in private sessions every night.

Most of the men supported Salman unquestioningly. They understood the principles involved, and agreed that they were worth upholding. In our area of the city, the words goonda and gangster weren't an insult. Local people knew that our branch of the mafia did a better job than the police at keeping heroin and salacious crimes from their streets. The police, after all, were susceptible to bribes. Indeed, Salman's mafia clan found itself in the unique position of bribing the police-the same cops who'd just been paid off by pimps and pushers-to look away whenever they had to run a recalcitrant heroin dealer into a brick wall, or take a mash hammer to a pornographer's hands.

Old men in the district nodded to one another, and compared the relative calm on their streets with the chaos that tumbled and trawled through the streets of other districts. Children looked up to the young gangsters, sometimes adopting one as a local hero. Restaurants, bars, and other businesses welcomed Salman's men as preservers of peace and comparatively high moral standards. And the informing rate in the areas of his control, the amount of unsolicited information supplied to the police-a sure indicator of public popularity or displeasure-was lower than in any other area across the whole seething sprawl of Bombay. We had pride, and we had principle, and we were almost the men of honour that we believed ourselves to be. Still, there were a few grumbles of complaint within the clan, and some council meetings hosted fierce, unresolved arguments about the future of the group. The heroin trade was making other mafia councils rich. New smack millionaires flaunted their imported cars, designer clothes, and state-of-the-art electronic gadgets at the most exclusive and expensive venues in the city.

More significantly, they used their inexhaustible, opiate-based income streams to hire new men: mercenaries who were paid well to fight dirty and to fight hard. Little by little, those gangs expanded their territories in turf wars that left a few of the toughest men dead, many more wounded, and cops all over the city lighting incense sticks to give thanks for their luck.

With similarly high profits derived from the new and insatiable market for imported, hard-core pornographic videos, some of the rival councils had accumulated enough money to acquire that ultimate status symbol for any criminal gang: a hoard of guns.

Envious of the wealth amassed by such gangs, infuriated by their territorial gains, and wary of their growing power, some of Salman Mustaan's men urged him to change his policy. First among those critical voices was that of Sanjay, Salman's oldest and closest friend.

"You should meet with Chuha," Sanjay said earnestly as he, Farid, Salman, and I drank chai at a little shop on Maulana Azad Road near the brilliant, green mirages of the Mahalaxmi Racecourse. He was talking about Ashok Chandrashekar, an influential strong-arm man in the Walidlalla gang. He'd used Ashok's nickname, Chuha, meaning the Rat.

"I've met with the fucker, yaar," Salman sighed. "I meet him all the time. Every time one of his guys tries to squeeze out a corner of our territory, I meet with Chuha to set it straight.

Every time our guys get in a fight with his guys, and give them a solid pasting, I meet with Chuha. Every time he makes an offer to join our council to his, I meet with him. I know the fucker too well. That's the problem."

The Walidlalla council held a contiguous border with our own.

Relations between the gangs were generally respectful but not cordial. Walid, the leader of the rival council, had been a close friend of Khaderbhai and, with him, was one of the original founders of the council system. Although Walid had led his council into the heroin and pornography trade that he, like Khaderbhai, had once despised, he'd also insisted that no conflict with Salman's council should occur. Chuha, his second in command, had ambitions that strained at the leash of Walid's control. Those ambitions led to disputes and even battles between the gangs, and all too often forced Salman to meet with the Rat at stiffly formal dinners held on neutral ground in a suite at a five-star hotel.

"No, but you haven't really talked to him, one on one like, about the money we can make. If you did, Salman brother, I know you'd find out he talks a lot of sense. He's making crores out of the fuckin' garad, man. The junkies can't get enough of the shit. He has to bring it in by fuckin' train. And the blue movies thing, man-it's going crazy. I swear! It's a fuckin' deadly business, yaar. He's making five hundred copies of every movie, and selling them for five hundred each. That's two-and-a-half lakhs, Salman, for every fuckin' blue movie! If you could make money like that by killing people, India's population problem would be solved in a month! You should just talk to him, Salman brother."

"I don't like him," Salman declared. "And I don't trust him, either. One of these days, I think I'll have to finish the madachudh once and for all. That's not a very promising way to start up a business, na?"

"If it comes to that, I'll kill the gandu for you, brother, and it will be my pleasure. But up to then, like, before we actually have to _kill him, we can still make a lot of money with him."

"I don't think so."

Sanjay looked around the table for support, and finally appealed to me.

"Come on, Lin. What do you think?"

"It's council business, Sanju," I replied, smiling at his earnestness. "It's got nothing to do with me."

"But that's why I'm asking you, Linbaba. You can give us an independent point of view, like. You know Chuha. And you know how much money there is in the heroin. He's got some good money ideas, don't you think so?"

"Arrey, don't ask him!" Farid cut in. "Not unless you want the truth."

"No, go on," Sanjay persisted, the gleam in his eyes brightening.

He liked me, and he knew that I liked him. "Tell me the truth.

What do you think of him?"

I glanced around at Salman and he nodded, just as Khader might've done.

"I think Chuha's the kind of guy who gives violent crime a bad name," I said. Salman and Farid spluttered their tea, laughing, and then mopped at themselves with their handkerchiefs.

"Okay," Sanjay frowned, his eyes still gleaming. "So, what... exactly... don't you like about him?"

I glanced again at Salman. He grinned back at me, raising his eyebrows and the palms of his hands in a Don't look at me gesture.

"Chuha's a stand-over man," I replied. "And I don't like stand over men."

"He's a what?"

"A stand-over man, Sanjay. He beats up on men he knows can't fight back, and takes whatever he wants from them. In my country, we call those guys stand-over men because they really do stand over little guys and steal from them."

Sanjay looked at Farid and Salman with a blank expression of confused innocence.

"I don't see the problem," he said.

"No, I know you don't have a problem with it. And that's okay. I don't expect everyone to think like me. Fact is, most people don't. And I understand that. I get it. I know that's how a lot of guys make their way. But just because I understand it, that doesn't mean I like it. I met some of them in jail. A couple of them tried to stand over me. I stabbed them. None of the others ever tried it again. The word got around. Try to stand over this guy, and he'll put a hole in you. So they left me alone. And that's just the thing. I would've had more respect for them if they'd kept on trying to stand over me. I wouldn't have stopped fighting them-I still would've cut them up, you know, but I would've respected them more while I did it. Ask the waiter here, Santosh, what he thinks of Chuha. They came in here last week, Chuha and his guys, and slapped him around for fifty bucks."

The word bucks was Bombay slang for rupees. Fifty rupees was the same amount, I knew, that Sanjay customarily tipped waiters and better-than-average cab drivers.

"The guy's a fuckin' millionaire, if you believe his bullshit," I said, "and he stands over a decent working guy like Santosh for fifty bucks. I don't respect that. And in your heart of hearts, Sanjay, I don't think you do, either. I'm not going to do anything about it. That's not my job. Chuha makes his graft by slapping people. I understand that. But if he ever tries to stand over me, I'll cut him. And I tell you, man, I'll enjoy doing it."

There was a little silence while Sanjay pursed his lips, twirled his hand palm upward, and looked from Salman to Farid. Then all three of them burst out laughing.

"You asked him!" Farid giggled.

"Okay, okay," Sanjay conceded. "I asked the wrong guy. Lin is a wild guy, yaar. He gets wild notions. He went to Afghanistan with Khader, man! Why did I ask a guy who's crazy enough to do that?

You ran that clinic in the zhopadpatti, and you never made a fuckin' paise out of it. Remind me of that, Lin brother, if I ever ask you for your business opinion again, na?"

"And another thing," I added, keeping a straight face.

"Eh, Baghwan!" Sanjay cried. "He's got another thing, yet!"

"If you think about the slogans, you'll understand where I'm coming from on this."

"The slogans?" Sanjay protested, provoking his friends to bigger laughter. "What fuckin' slogans, yaar?"

"You know what I mean. The slogan, or the motto, of the Walidlalla gang is Pahiley Shahad, Tab julm. I think I'm right in translating it as First Honey, Then Outrage, or even Atrocity.

Isn't that right? And isn't that what they say to each other as their slogan?"

"Yeah, yeah, that's their thing, man."

"And what's our slogan? Khader's slogan?"

They looked at one another, and smiled.

"Saatch aur Himmat." I spoke it aloud for them. "Truth and Courage. I know a lot of guys who'd like Chuha's slogan. They'd think it was clever and funny. And it sounds ruthless, so they'd think it was tough. But I don't like it. I like Khader's."

At the sound of an Enfield engine, I looked up to see Abdullah park his bike outside the chai shop and wave to me. It was time for me to go.

I'd spoken the truth, as I saw it, and I meant every word, but in my own heart of hearts I knew that Sanjay's argument, although not better, would turn out to be stronger than mine. The Walidlalla gang under Chuha was the future of all the mafia councils, in a sense, and we all knew it. Walid was still the head of the council that bore his name, but he was old and he was ill. He'd ceded so much power to Chuha that it was the younger don who ruled. Chuha was aggressive and successful, and he gained new ground by conquest or coercion every few months. Sooner or later, if Salman didn't agree to merge with Chuha, that expansion would come to open conflict, and there would be a war.

I hoped, of course, that Khader's council, under Salman, would win. But I knew that, if we did win, it would be impossible to claim Chuha's territory without also absorbing his trade in heroin, women, and porn. It was the future, and it was inevitable. There was simply too much money in it. And money, if the pile gets high enough, is something like a big political party: it does as much harm as it does good, it puts too much power in too few hands, and the closer you come to it the dirtier you get. In the long run, Salman could walk away from the fight with Chuha, or he could defeat him and become him. Fate always gives you two choices, Scorpio George once said: the one you should take, and the one you do.

"But hey," I said, standing to leave, "it's got nothing to do with me. And frankly, I don't really give a damn one way or the other. My ride is here. I'll see you guys later."