Shantaram (70 page)

"Where is Letitia?" Didier asked.

"She's down the platform, yaar. She's buying a cold drink. See her there, just past the chai shop?"

"Ah, yes. And she knows nothing of the plan?"

"Not a fuckin' thing, man. I'm so nervous that it's not going to work, yaar. And what if she gets killed, Didier? It won't be a good look for us, man, if my proposal kills her!"

"Killing her would definitely be a bad start," I mused.

"Don't worry. It will be okay," Didier soothed, although he mopped his brow with a scented handkerchief as his eyes searched the empty tracks for an approaching train. "It will work. You must have faith."

"That's what they said at Jonesville, yaar."

"What do you want me to do, Vikram?" I asked, hoping to calm him down.

"Okay," he replied, puffing as if he'd just run up a flight of steps. "Okay. First, Lettie has to stand just here, facing you.

Just like I'm standing now." "U-huh."

"It has to be right here. Exactly here. We've checked it out a hundred fuckin' times, man, and it has to be just here. Have you got that?"

"I... think so. You're saying that she has to stand just-"

"Here!"

"Here?" I teased him.

"Fuck, man, this is serious!"

"Okay! Take it easy. You want me to make Lettie stand here."

"Yeah. Here. And your job is to get her to put the blindfold on."

"The... blindfold?"

"Yeah. She's got to wear a blindfold, Lin. It won't work without it. And she has to leave it on, even when it gets very scary."

"Scary..."

"Yeah. That's your job. Just convince her to put the blindfold on, when we give you the signal, and then convince her to keep it on, yaar, even if she's screaming a bit."

"Screaming..."

"Yeah. We thought about a gag, but we decided, you know, a gag might be a bit counter-fuckin'-productive, yaar, because she might freak out a bit, with a gag. And she's going to freak out enough as it is, without using a fuckin' gag on her."

"A... gag..."

"Yeah. Okay, here she comes! Get ready for the signal."

"Hello, Lin, you fat bastard," Lettie said, giving me a kiss on the cheek. "You're really beefing out, aren't you, son?"

"You look good, too," I replied, smiling at the pleasure of seeing her.

"So, what's this all about then?" she asked. "It looks like the gang's all here."

"You don't know?" I shrugged.

"No, of course I don't. Vikram just told me we were meeting you and Didier-hullo, Didier-and here we all are. What's up?"

The train from Churchgate Station came into view, approaching us at a steady pace. Vikram gave me the signal, opening his eyes as widely as the muscles would allow, and shaking his head. I put my hands on Lettie's shoulders, gently turning her until she stood as Vikram had requested, with her back to the tracks.

"Do you trust me, Lettie?" I asked. She smiled up at me.

"A bit," she replied.

"Okay," I nodded. "Well, I want you to do something. It's gonna sound strange, I know, but if you don't do it, you'll never know how much Vikram loves you-how much we _all love you. It's a surprise that we figured out for you. It's about love..."

The train slowed behind her as it entered the station. Her eyes were gleaming. A smile flickered and faded on her open lips. She was intrigued and excited. Vikram and Didier were gesturing wildly, behind her back, for me to hurry. The train stopped with a wheezy creak of metal triumph.

"So, here it is-you have to put a blindfold on, and you have to promise us not to look until we tell you."

"Is that it?"

"Well, yeah," I shrugged.

She looked at me. She stared. She smiled into my eyes. She raised her eyebrows, and turned down the corners of her mouth as she considered it. Then she nodded.

"Okay," she laughed. "Let's do it."

Vikram leapt forward with the blindfold and tied it on, asking her if it was too tight. He guided her a step or two backwards, toward the train, and then told her to raise her arms over her head.

"Raise my arms? What, like this? If you tickle me, Vikram, you'll pay!"

Some men appeared at the edge of the roofline on the train carriage. They'd been lying on the roof of the train. They leaned over, and seized Lettie's raised arms, lifting her slight frame effortlessly onto the roof with them. Lettie shrieked, but the piercing sound was lost in the shrill of the train guard's whistle. The train began to move.

"Come on!" Vikram shouted to me, climbing up the outside of the carriage to join her.

I glanced at Didier.

"No, my friend!" he shouted. "This is not for me. You go! Hurry!"

I jogged along beside the train, and clambered up the outside of the carriage to the roof. There were a dozen men or more on the roof. Some of them were musicians. Sitting together, they cradled tablas, cymbals, flutes, and tambourines in their laps. Further along the dusty roof was a second group. Lettie sat in the middle of them. She still wore the blindfold. Men held her at the shoulders-one on each arm, and two from behind-to keep her safe. Vikram knelt in front of her.

I heard his pleading as I crept along the roof toward them at a crouch.

"I promise you, Lettie. It really is a great surprise."

"Oh, it's a friggin' surprise all right," she shouted. "And not half as big as the surprise you're gonna get, when we get down from here, Vikram bloody Patel!"

"Hi, Lettie!" I called to her. "Great view, eh? Oh, sorry. Forgot about the blindfold. Well, it _will be a great view, when you can see it."

"This is fuckin' madness, Lin!" she shouted at me. "Tell these bastards to let go of me!"

"That wouldn't be wise, Lettie," Vikram answered. "They're hanging on to you so you don't fall, yaar, or stand up, and snag yourself on an overhead wire, or something. It's really only another half a minute, I promise you, and then you'll understand what all is happening."

"I understand, don't you worry. I understand that you're a dead man, Vikram, when I get down from here. You might as well throw me off the bloody roof now, I'm tellin' ya! If you think I-"

Vikram untied the blindfold, and watched her as she looked around, taking in the perspective from the roof of the fast moving train. Her mouth fell open, and her face slowly swelled into a wide smile.

"Wow! It's... Wow! It really is a great view!"

"Look!" Vikram commanded, turning to point along the roofs of the train carriages. There was something stretched across the tracks, much higher than the roofline of the train. It was strung between the pylon supports for the overhead electric wires. It was a huge banner, puffed like the sail of a ship in the steady breeze.

There were words painted on it. As we neared the banner, the writing became clear enough to read. The words were painted in letters as tall as a man. They filled the whole width of the billowing sheet:

LETITIA I LOVE YOU

"I was afraid you would stand up and hurt yourself," Vikram said.

"That's why those fellows were holding on to your arms."

Suddenly, the musicians struck up the chiming, thudding strains of a popular love song. Their voices soared over the blood stirring thump of the tablas and the wail of the flutes. Vikram and Lettie stared at one another, their eyes holding as the train pulled into a station, stopped, and pulled out again. Half way to the next station, we approached another banner. Vikram wrenched his eyes from hers, and looked ahead. She followed his gaze. More words were written across the taut white cloth:

WILL YOU MARRY ME?

We passed beneath the pennant and out into the soft afternoon light. Lettie was crying. They were both crying. Vikram threw himself forward and wrapped her in his arms. They kissed. I watched them for moment and then I turned away to face the musicians. They grinned at me, wagging their heads and laughing as they sang. I did a little victory dance for them as the train rocked and rumbled through the suburbs.

Millions of dreams were born there, around us, every day.

Millions of dreams died there, and were born again. The humid air was thick with dreams, everywhere, in my Mumbai. My city was a steaming, sweltering hothouse garden of dreaming. And there, on that red-brown rusting metal roof, a new dream of love was born.

And I thought of my family as we rushed through the humid dreaming air. And I thought about Karla. And I danced on that steel serpent as it slithered sinuous beside the scroll and swell of the endless, imperishable sea.

And although Vikram and Lettie disappeared for a week, after she accepted his proposal, a lightness and optimism that was like happiness circulated in the Leopold's crowd. When he finally did return, that positive feeling greeted Vikram with real affection.

Abdullah and I had just finished our training and we teased him, mercilessly, for his delirious, exhausted joy. Then, while Vikram blubbered about love, we ate in hungry, purposeful silence.

Didier was jubilant, crowing over the triumph of his romantic scheme, and demanding modest tributes, in the form of stiff drinks, from everyone we knew.

I looked up from my plate of food to see a man, one of the street boys who scrounged for the black marketeers, gesturing to me in some anxiety. I left the table, and walked to the footpath to speak with him.

"Lin! Big trouble for you," he said quickly, looking left and right nervously. "Three men. Africans. Big men. Very strong. They look for you. They want to kill you." "Kill me?"

"Yes. Sure. Better you go. Go fast from Bombay for a while!"

He ran off, and I lost sight of him in the crowd. Puzzled, but not worried, I returned to the table. I'd only eaten two mouthfuls when another man called me out to the street. It was Gemini George.

"I think you're in a spot of bother, old chum," he said. His tone was cheery, but his face was tense and afraid.

"U-huh."

"Seems there's three bull-necked African geezers-Nigerians, I think-and they mean to do you a bit of grievous bodily harm, if you know what I mean."

"Where are they?"

"I dunno, mate. I seen them talkin' with some of the street boys, but then they got in a taxi and took off. They're fuckin' big lads, I tell ya. They filled that taxi, with a bit of flesh to spare. Fairly bulgin' out the windows they were, know what I mean?"

"What's it about?"

"No idea, mate. They didn't say nothin' what they're on about, Lin. They're just lookin' for you, and they got trouble in mind.

I'd watch my back, and I'd watch my step, sunshine."

I reached into my pocket, but he put a hand on my wrist.

"No, mate. On the house. I mean, it's not right, whatever their game is."

He sauntered off in pursuit of a passing trio of German tourists, and I walked back into the restaurant. With Gemini George's warning to support the first, I was worried. It took me longer than usual to finish my meal. Soon after, there was a third visitor. It was Prabaker.

"Lin!" he said, his expression frenzied. "There is a bad news!"

"I know, Prabu."

"Three men, African, they are wanting to beat and kill and beat you! They are asking questions everywhere. Such big fellows they are! Like buffalos! You must make a lucky escapes!"

It took me five minutes to calm him down, and even then I had to invent a mission for him-checking for the Africans at the hotels he knew well-in order to prise him from my side. Alone again with Didier, Vikram, and Abdullah, we considered my options, in a lengthening silence. Vikram was the first to speak. "Okay, so we find the fuckers, and break their heads, yaar," he suggested, looking from face to face for support.

"After we kill them," Abdullah added.

Vikram wagged his head from side to side in agreement.

"Two things are sure," Didier said slowly. "One, you must not be alone, Lin, at any time, until this is resolved."

Vikram and Abdullah nodded.

"I will call Salman and Sanjay," Abdullah decided. "You will not be alone, Lin brother."

"And two," Didier continued, "the others, whoever they are, whatever their reasons, must not remain in Bombay. They must go- one way, or the other way."

We got up to pay the bill and leave. Didier stopped me when the others walked to the cashier's desk. He pulled me down into a chair beside him. Sliding a napkin from the table, he fumbled under the table's edge for a moment and then slid a bundle across to me. It was a pistol, wrapped in the napkin. No-one knew that Didier carried a gun. I was sure that I was the first to see and handle the weapon. Grasping it tightly in the napkin wrapping, I stood and joined the others as they left the restaurant. I looked back over my shoulder to see him nodding gravely, the curly black hair trembling about his face.

We found them, but it took us all the day and most of the night.

In the end it was Hassaan Obikwa, another Nigerian, who gave us the decisive clue. The men were tourists, completely new to the city, and unknown to Obikwa. He had no precise idea of their motive-it was something to do with a drug deal-but his network of contacts had confirmed that they were determined to do me harm.

Hassaan's driver, Raheem, almost fully recovered from the injuries he'd suffered in prison, discovered that they were in one of the Fort area hotels. He offered to _resolve the matter.

He was conscious of the debt he owed me for buying him out of Arthur Road Prison. With an earnest, almost shy expression, he offered to have the men killed, slowly and painfully, as a personal favor to me. He seemed to think that it was the least he could do, under the circumstances. I refused. I had to know what it was all about, and I had to put a stop to it. Clearly disappointed, Raheem accepted the decision, and then led us to the small hotel in the Fort. He waited outside with our two cars while we went inside. Salman and Sanjay remained with him, watching the street. Their brief was to stop the cops, if they arrived, or slow them up long enough for us to leave the hotel.

One of Abdullah's contacts smuggled us, whispering, into a room adjoining that taken by the three Africans. We pressed our ears to the connecting wall, and could hear their voices clearly. They were joking, and talking about trivial, unrelated things.

Finally, one of them made a remark that tightened the skin on my skull and face with dread.

"He got that medal," one of them said. "Around his neck. That medal is gold. I want that gold medal."

"I like them shoes, them boots he got," another voice said. "I want them shoes."

They went on to talk about their plan. They argued a little. One of the men was more forceful. The others agreed, at last, with his idea to follow me from Leopold's all the way to the quiet car park beneath my apartment building and then beat me until I was dead, and strip my body.

It was bizarre, standing in the dark and listening to the details of my own murder. My stomach dropped and tightened on a curdling mix of nausea and rage. I hoped to hear some clue, some reference to a motive, but they never mentioned one. Abdullah was listening with his left ear against the thin partition, and I was listening with my right. Our eyes were only a hand's width apart. The signal to move, when I nodded my head, was a gesture so faint and subtle that it was as if our minds had spoken the message.

Vikram, Abdullah, and I stood outside the door to their room, with a passkey poised over the lock. We counted down _three...

_two... _one... then I turned the key and tried the door. It wasn't locked from the inside. I stood back, and kicked it open.

There was a second, three seconds, of utter stillness, as the surprised and frightened men stared at us, their jaws gaping and their eyes bulging. Nearest to us was a tall, very solid man with a bald head, and deep scars cut into his cheeks in a regular pattern. He wore a singlet and boxer shorts. Standing behind him was a slightly shorter man, who was dressed only in jockey shorts. He was bending over a waist-high dressing table, poised in the act of snorting a line of heroin. The third man was shorter still, but very thick in the chest and arms. He lay on one of the three beds, at the furthest corner of the room, holding a Playboy magazine in his hands. There was a strong smell in the room. It was the smell of sweat and fear. Some of it was mine.

Abdullah closed the door of the room behind him, very slowly and gently, and locked it. He was wearing black: he almost always wore a black shirt and pants. Vikram was dressed in his black cowboy rig. By some chance, I too wore a black T-shirt and black trousers. We must've looked like the members of some club, or gang, to the goggle-eyed men in the room.

"What the fuck-" the big man bellowed.

I ran at him and rammed a fist into his mouth, but he had time to raise his hands. We grabbed at each other, fists flying, and locked in a hard grapple.

Vikram sprang for the man on the bed. Abdullah closed on the man at the dresser. It was a short fight, and a dirty one. There were six of us-six big men in a small room. There was nowhere to go but into each other.

Abdullah finished his man quickly. I heard a frightened shriek, choked off, as Abdullah snapped a hard, straight, right hand to the man's throat. From the corner of my eye, I was aware that the solid man fell back, grasping and clutching at his throat. The man on the bed jumped to his feet and kicked outward, trying to use the advantage of high ground. Abdullah and Vikram tipped the bed up, sending the man sprawling behind it. They leapt over the upturned bed and fell on him, stomping and kicking him until he stopped moving.

I held the strap of the big man's singlet with my left hand, and pounded at him with my right. Ignoring the blows to his head, he managed to get his hands around my neck, and started to squeeze.

My throat locked tight. I knew that the breath I held in me was the last until I finished him. I reached out for his face, desperately, with my right hand. My thumb found his eye. I wanted to push it into his brain, but he moved his head, and the thumb slipped between the eye and the hard ridge of bone at his temple.

I drove the thumb in harder and deeper until I gouged his eye from the socket, and it hung there from bloody strands. I tried to reach it, to rip it away or to dig my thumb into the empty socket, but he pulled back to the limit of his reach. The eye hung out on his cheek, and I swung my fist at his head, trying to crush it.

He was a hard man. He didn't give up. His hands squeezed tighter.

My neck was strong and the muscles were well developed, but I knew he had the strength to kill me. My hand reached, groping for the pistol in my pocket. I had to shoot him. I had to kill him. That was all right. I didn't care. The air in my lungs was spent, and my brain was exploding in Mandelbrot whirls of colored light, and I was dying, and I wanted to kill him.

Vikram crashed a heavy wooden stool into the back of the big man's bald head. It's not as easy to knock a man out as it seems in the movies. It's true that a lucky hit can do it in one shot, but I've been hit with iron bars, lumps of wood, boots, and many hard fists, and I've only ever been knocked out once in my life.

Vikram slammed the heavy stool into the back of the man's head five times, with all of his strength, before the big man buckled and fell. He was defeated, and groggy. The back of his head was pulpy. I knew that his skull was fractured in several places.

Somehow, he was still conscious.

We worked on them for half an hour, overcoming their initial reluctance to talk. Raheem joined us, speaking in English and their Nigerian dialect. Their passports told us who they were- Nigerian citizens, on tourist visas. Other information in their wallets and luggage told us where they'd stayed in Lagos before they came to Bombay. Little by little, the story emerged. They were muscle: hit men, sent by a gangster in Lagos to punish me for a major heroin and Mandrax tablet deal that had gone wrong.

The deal involved some sixty thousand dollars-money that their boss in Lagos had lost in a hustle in Bombay. The hustler, whoever he was, had nominated me as the mastermind of the plan; the man responsible for ripping off the money.

The hired thugs surrendered that much information, but then they balked. They didn't want to give me the man's name. They didn't want to tell me who'd set me up. They didn't want to betray him without the express permission of their Nigerian boss. We insisted, and they were persuaded. The man's name was Maurizio Belcane.

I put the big man's eye back into its socket, but it stared out at a strange angle. From the way that he turned his head to look at me, I guessed that he couldn't see out of it, yet, and I suspected that it would never sit correctly again. We closed the eye with tape, bandaged his head, and tidied the other men up.

Then I spoke to them.

"These men will take you to the airport. You're gonna wait in the car park. There's a plane to Lagos tomorrow morning. You're gonna be on it. We're gonna buy the tickets with your money. And get this straight-I had nothing to do with this. That's not your fault- it's Maurizio's-but that doesn't make me any happier about it.