Last Man in Tower (38 page)

‘Better you leave us alone here, Kothari. All we want from you is an alibi.’

The Secretary of Vishram Society shook his head. ‘And what of my responsibility to you, Mrs Puri? My father said, a man who lives for himself is an animal. I’m going to make sure you’re all right. Now tell me, where is Ajwani?’

‘In the city,’ Mrs Puri said. ‘Falkland Road.’

‘On a day like this?’

‘Especially on a day like this. That’s the kind of man he is.’

‘Let me wait until he comes back. It’s my responsibility to do so. Don’t tell me to go away.’

‘You’re not such a bad Secretary after all,’ Mrs Puri said, as she sat on the cot.

Kothari kicked the wicker basket in the direction of Mrs Puri, who kicked it back, and this became a game between them. Someone knocked on the door of the inner room.

When the Secretary opened it, he saw Sanjiv Puri.

‘What are you doing here?’ Mrs Puri hissed. Her husband walked in, and along with him came Ibrahim Kudwa.

‘He rang the bell and asked for you.’

‘I know what is going on,’ Kudwa said. ‘No one told me, but I’m not as stupid as you think. And I know you didn’t tell me because you thought a Muslim wouldn’t want to help you.’

‘Nothing is going on, Ibby.’

Kudwa sat beside her on the cot. ‘Don’t treat me like a child. Ajwani is going to do
something
. Tonight.’

The Secretary looked at the Puris.

‘What’s the point of hiding it from Ibrahim?’

‘We know it’s dangerous, Ibby. That is why we kept you out of it.’ Mrs Puri reached for his forearm and stroked it. ‘The only reason. We know you have Mumtaz and the children to take care of.’

Her husband moved protectively in front of her. ‘Will you tell the police about us now?’

‘No!’ Ibrahim Kudwa winced. He slapped his breast pocket, brimming with heart-shaped antacid tablets. ‘You’re my
friends
. Don’t you know me by now? I want to save you. How can Ajwani get away with this?’ he pleaded with folded palms. ‘Ram Khare will be watching from his booth. Someone passing on the road might see. Masterji might cry out. It’s a trap – can’t you see? The builder has trapped all of you. From the day he paid the money to Tower B ahead of schedule: this is what he wanted you to do.’

‘And he’s
right
, Ibby,’ Mrs Puri said. ‘That man walked into Mumbai with nothing on his feet, and look at him now. And look at
us
. We should have done this a long time now.’

‘Don’t raise your voice,’ the Secretary said. ‘Speak to Ajwani when he gets here, Ibrahim. Me, I don’t want the money. I just want to make sure that no one goes to jail. That is my sacred responsibility here.’

The lynx-lines spread wide around his eyes; he grinned.

He picked up the big crescent knife from the basket and scraped it against the nuts.

‘Ajwani is an expert at this. I’m not quite sure how it’s done.’ Selecting a large coconut, which was still attached to the brown connective tissue of the tree it had been hacked from, Kothari held it out at arm’s length: then he stuck the knife into it. Three hesitant strokes, then it came to him.
Thwack thwack thwack
. The white flesh of the coconut exposed; fresh water spilling out.

‘Not for me,’ Kudwa said, pointing to the antacid tablets in his translucent shirt pocket. ‘Bad stomach.’

‘Have it, Ibrahim. All of us are going to. It will cure a weak stomach.’

Kudwa had a sip, and then offered the coconut to Mrs Puri, who sipped and passed it to her husband. When he was done, the Secretary reached in with his knife, and carved out the white flesh of the coconut, which he offered to Mrs Puri.

‘It’s there, why waste it?’

‘All right.’

Mrs Puri scooped the coconut flesh with her fingers, and passed it to Kudwa, who did the same, and licked the white slop off his fingers.

The Secretary pitched the coconut into the corner. Kudwa pointed at the knife that he had just placed over the coconuts.

‘Is Ajwani going to do it with that…?’

The Secretary pushed the basket away with his foot.

‘We don’t know anything about it, Ibby. We’re just here to give Ajwani some support.’

‘That’s right,’ the Secretary said. ‘We’ll say we were here with him when it happened.’

They sat there, in the inner room: the chiming of the Daisy Duck clock from outside told them it was a quarter past seven.

Kudwa stretched his legs.

‘What is that you’re humming, Ibrahim?’

With sly fingers the Secretary pinched the strip of heart-shaped antacid tablets from the shirt pocket and examined them.

‘“Hey Jude”.’

The Secretary put the antacid tablets back into Kudwa’s shirt pocket. ‘What is that?’

‘You don’t know? How is it possible?’

‘I’m a Mohammad Rafi man, Ibrahim.’

‘Here,’ Kudwa said. ‘It’s an easy song. Here, I’ll show you.’ Clapping his hands together, he began to sing.

‘Voice is so beautiful, Ibby,’ Mrs Puri said.

He blushed.

‘Oh, no, no. It’s terrible now, Sangeeta-ji. I don’t practise. But you should have heard it in college…’ Kudwa moved his hand over his head, to indicate past glories.

‘Should I go on with “Hey Jude”, or do you want something in Hindi?’

He waited for an answer from Mrs Puri. Standing at the door of the inner room, she was telling Mani: ‘Close the outer door. And don’t answer the phone for any reason. Do you understand?’

Returning after dark, Masterji stopped in the stairwell of Vishram Society; his red fingers reached for the wall.

By the banister on which his daughter used to slide down on her way to school (her father upstairs shouting: ‘Don’t do that, you’ll fall’), he said aloud: ‘I am starting an evening school. For the boys who play cricket by the temple.’

At once he felt something he had almost forgotten: a sensation of fear. ‘Have to get checked for diabetes tomorrow,’ he reminded himself. ‘It’s just a question of taking tablets and watching the sweets. You’ll be fine.’

He kept going up the stairs to the fifth floor, where he opened the door that led to the roof terrace.

Firecrackers were exploding in the distance.
The wedding of a rich man
, Masterji thought. Or perhaps it was an obscure festival. Incandescent rockets and whirligigs and corkscrews shot through the night sky: Masterji put both hands on the short wall of the terrace. He heard a snatch of what he thought was band music.

‘We beat Mr Shah,’ he wanted to shout, so loudly that the people celebrating could hear, and celebrate louder.

He wished he could go to where the rockets were bursting: and soar over the fireworks, over Santa Cruz, over the churches and beaches of Bandra, over the temple at SiddhiVinayak and the darkened race course at Mahalakshmi, until he alighted at Crawford Market. There he would look for that bearded day-labourer and fall asleep by his side, adding to the numbers of those who were not alone tonight.

Mr Pinto did not hear the phone, but its ringing pierced through the cotton wool to reach his wife’s more sensitive ears. She shook his shoulder until he unplugged his ears and reached for the receiver: it might be the children calling from America.

For an instant he thought the threatening calls were starting again. It was the same voice.

‘Pinto? Don’t you know me? It’s Ajwani.’

Mr Pinto breathed out. ‘You frightened me.’ He looked at the clock. ‘It’s eight fifteen.’

(‘Is it Tony?’ Mrs Pinto whispered. ‘Deepa?’)

The thin voice on the phone said: ‘No one else is picking up, Pinto. It’s all up to you.’

‘What are you talking about, Ajwani? You’re frightening me.’

‘Do you know where I am? In Dadar. I can’t leave the station. The hand shakes. It took me an hour to pick up the phone.’

‘The Secretary told us to stay in bed and wear ear-cotton tonight, Ajwani. We are watching television. Good night.’

‘… Pinto… tell them it’s a mistake, Pinto. You must tell them it’s a mistake.’

‘What are you talking about?’

‘Tell them not to do it. We can all live together in the building like before. Tell Mrs Puri. Tell the Secretary.’

Mr Pinto put the phone down.

‘Who was that?’ his wife asked.

‘Do
not
,’ he said, ‘make me pick up the phone again tonight. Do not.’

He took the phone off the hook.

He and Shelley watched their favourite Hindi TV serial, in which the acting was so exaggerated, and the zoom-in camera so frequently used, that an absence of sound only mildly inhibited one’s understanding of the plot.

Mr Pinto folded his arms in front of the TV and watched. On a piece of paper by the side of his sofa, he had written:

$100,000 × 2

and

$200,000 × 1

*

The Daisy Duck clock outside chimed nine o’clock. In the inner room of the Renaissance Real-Estate Agency, Kudwa was singing ‘A Hard Day’s Night’, while the Secretary was slapping his thighs in time.

‘Ajwani is not coming.’ Mrs Puri stood up from the cot and straightened her sari. ‘Something has happened to him.’

‘So?’ Kudwa stopped singing. ‘It’s over, isn’t it?’

Without looking at each other, Mrs Puri and her husband held hands.

‘We can’t waste this chance, Ibby. It’s for Ramu.’

‘I can’t let you two do it on your own.’ The Secretary got up. ‘I’ll make sure no one’s watching. That’s my responsibility. And you, Ibrahim. Will you go to the police?’

Ibrahim Kudwa blinked, as if he couldn’t understand the Secretary’s words. ‘You are my neighbours of nine years,’ he said.

The Secretary embraced him. ‘You were always one of us, Ibrahim. From the first day. Now go home and sleep.’

Kudwa shook his head.

‘Nine years together. If you’re going to jail, I’m going to jail too.’

It was decided that the Puris would leave first. The back door that led from the inner room to a side alley closed behind them.

Kothari’s mobile phone rang a few minutes later.

‘Masterji is on the terrace. Ram Khare is not in his booth. Come.’

They went out through the back door. They crossed the market. On the way to the Society, Kudwa said: ‘Maybe we
should
ask him. If he’ll sign.’

Both stopped. To their left, a paper kite had floated down and collapsed on the road.

The Secretary moved, but not Ibrahim Kudwa; the Hindu holy man was sleeping by the whitewashed banyan outside his cyber-café. A cyclostyled advertisement had been pasted over his head:

S
TRONGLY
S
CENTED
P
HENYL
. D
ISINFECTS
. F
RESHENS YOUR HOUSE
. B
UY
D
IRECT. 170 RS FOR FIVE LITRES
.

If only
, Kudwa thought,
I could inhale the cleansing scent of disinfectant right now
. He looked up and saw the dark star from last Christmas over his café.

‘Do you think… they expect me to come all the way to the Society?’

‘What are you talking about, Ibrahim?’

‘I mean, do Mrs Puri and Mr Puri expect me to come all the way? Or would they know I was being supportive if I came this far and went back?’

‘Ibrahim, I expect you to come with me all the way. We have to make sure Mr and Mrs Puri are safe. We’re not
doing
anything.’

The door of the cyber-café trembled. Kudwa realized that it had not been doubled-bolted from the inside. How many times had he told Arjun, someone could pick the lock from the outside and steal the computers unless he…

‘
Ibrahim
. I need you.’

‘Coming.’

With Vishram Society in sight, the two men were spotted.

‘It’s Trivedi. He’s coming this way. We should go back.’

‘He won’t say a thing tomorrow. I know this man.’

Trivedi, bare-chested except for his shawl, smiled at the men, and passed them.

When they got to the gate, the Secretary looked up and said: ‘He’s
not
on the terrace.’

They unlatched the gate and tiptoed through the compound, the Secretary darting into his office for a few seconds, leaving Ibrahim Kudwa rubbing his hands by the noticeboard.

‘What do you want that for?’ he asked, when Kothari emerged with a roll of Scotch tape.

‘Go into the office,’ the Secretary whispered, ‘and bring the hammer with you. It’s sitting next to the typewriter.’

Mrs Puri was waiting for them at the top of the stairs. Her husband stood behind her.

‘He just returned from the terrace and closed his door. You men took too long.’

‘Do we call it off?’ Kudwa asked. ‘Another day?’

‘No. Do you have the key, Kothari?’

The Scotch tape was not the only thing the Secretary had brought from the office. He inserted the spare key to 3A into the hole and struggled with it. They heard the sound of a television serial from the Pintos’ room.

‘Should we ask him, one more time, if he will sign?’

‘Shut up, Ibrahim. Just stay there and watch the door.’

The door opened. Masterji had gone to sleep in his living room, his feet on the teakwood table, the Rubik’s Cube by his chair.

Kudwa came in behind the others and closed the door. The Secretary, moving to the chair, cut a piece of Scotch tape and pressed it over Masterji’s mouth.

That awoke the sleeping man. He ripped the Scotch tape off his mouth.

‘Kothari? How did you get in?’

‘You
have
to agree now, Masterji. Right now.’

‘Think of Gaurav,’ Mrs Puri asked. ‘Think of Ronak. Say “Yes.”
Now
.’

‘Get out,’ the old man said. ‘All of you get out of my—’

The Secretary moved before he could finish the sentence: he cut another slice of Scotch tape and tried to stick it over the old man’s mouth. Masterji pushed the Secretary back. Mr Puri stood stiff near the door.