The Mountain Shadow (2 page)

‘Are we clear on the ice cream?’

‘Fuck the ice cream, Dennis.’

‘I don’t want to hear the words
ice cream
for at least three months.’

‘Yes, Dennis.’

‘Good. Now, Jamal, please make me another chillum. A big, strong one. A gigantic one. A legendary one. It would be an act of compassion, not far from a miracle. Goodbye, all and everyone, here and there.’

Dennis folded his hands across his chest, closed his eyes and settled into his resting state: death-like rigidity at five breaths a minute.

No-one moved or spoke. Jamal, lip-lock urgent, prepared a legendary chillum. The room stared at Dennis. I seized Vikram by the shirt.

‘Come on, we’re outta here,’ I said, pulling Vikram with me out of the room. ‘Goodbye, all and everyone, here and there.’

‘Hey, wait for me!’ Naveen called after us, rushing out through the French doors.

Back on the street, fresh air stirred Vikram and Naveen awake. Their steps quickened, matching mine.

The breeze driven through a shaded corridor of three-storey buildings and leafy plane trees brought with it the strong, working scent of the fishing fleet at nearby Sassoon Dock.

Pools of sunlight spilled through gaps between the trees. As I passed from shade to light, splashing into each new pool of white heat, I felt the sun flooding into me and then draining away with the shadow tide, beneath the trees.

The sky was haze-blue: glass washed up from the sea. Crows rode on the rooftops of buses to cooler parts of the city. The cries of handcart pullers were confident and fierce.

It was the kind of clear Bombay day that makes Bombay people, Mumbaikars, sing out loud, and as I passed a man walking in the opposite direction, I noticed that we were both humming the same Hindi love song.

‘That’s funny,’ Naveen remarked. ‘You were both on the same song, man.’

I smiled, and was about to sing a few more lines, as we do on blue glass Bombay days, when Vikram cut across us with a question.

‘So, how did it go? Did you get it?’

One of the reasons why I don’t go to Goa very often is that every time I go to Goa, someone asks me to do something down there. When I’d told Vikram, three weeks earlier, that I had a mission in Goa, he’d asked me to do something for him.

He’d left one of his mother’s wedding jewels with a loan shark, as collateral for a cash loan. It was a necklace inset with small rubies. Vikram repaid the debt, but the shark refused to return the necklace. He told him to collect it in Goa, in person. Knowing that the shark respected the Sanjay Company mafia gang I worked for, Vikram asked me to visit him.

I’d done it, and I’d retrieved the necklace, but Vikram had overestimated the loan shark’s respect for the mafia Company. He kept me waiting for a week of wasted time, ducking out of one meeting after another, leaving offensive messages about me and the Sanjay Company until finally agreeing to hand the necklace over.

By then, it was too late. He was a shark, and the mafia Company he’d insulted was a shark boat. I called in four local guys who worked for the Sanjay Company. We beat the gangsters that stood between him and us until they ran.

We confronted the shark. He handed over the necklace. Then one of the local guys beat him, in a fair fight, and kept on beating him, in an unfair fight, until the wider point about respect was made.

‘Well?’ Vikram asked. ‘Did you get it, or not?’

‘Here,’ I said, taking the necklace from my jacket pocket and handing it to Vikram.

‘Wow! You got it! I knew I could count on you. Did Danny give you any trouble?’

‘Scratch that source of loans from your list, Vikram.’

‘
Thik
,’ he said.
Okay.

He poured the jewelled necklace from its blue silk pouch. The rubies, fired with sunlight, bled into his cupped palms.

‘Listen, I’m . . . I’m gonna take this home to my Mom. Right now. Can I give you guys a lift in my cab?’

‘You’re going the other way,’ I said, as Vikram flagged down a passing cab. ‘I’m gonna walk back to my bike, at Leopold’s.’

‘If you don’t mind,’ Naveen asked softly, ‘I’d like to walk some of the way with you.’

‘Suit yourself,’ I replied, watching Vikram put the silk pouch inside his shirt for safekeeping.

He was about to step into the taxi but I stopped him, leaning in close to speak quietly.

‘What are you doing?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘You can’t lie to me about drugs, Vik.’

‘What
lying
?’ he protested. ‘Shit, I just had a few little puffs of brown sugar, that’s all. So what? It’s Concannon’s stuff, anyway. He paid for it. I –’

‘Take it easy.’

‘I always take it easy. You know me.’

‘Some people can snap out of a habit, Vikram. Concannon might be one of them. You’re not one of them. You know that.’

He smiled, and for a few seconds the old Vikram was there: the Vikram who would’ve gone to Goa for the necklace without any help from me, or anyone else; the Vikram who wouldn’t have left a piece of his mother’s wedding jewellery with a loan shark in the first place.

The smile folded from his eyes as he got into the taxi. I watched him away, worried for the danger in what he was: an optimist, ruined by love.

I started walking again, and Naveen fell in beside me.

‘He talks about that girl, the English girl, a lot,’ Naveen said.

‘It’s one of those things that should’ve worked out, but rarely do.’

‘He talks about you a lot, too,’ Naveen said.

‘He talks too much.’

‘He talks about Karla and Didier and Lisa. But mostly he talks about you.’

‘He talks too much.’

‘He told me you escaped from prison,’ he said. ‘And that you’re on the run.’

I stopped walking.

‘Now
you’re
talking too much. What is this, an epidemic?’

‘No, let me explain. You helped a friend of mine, Aslan . . . ’

‘What?’

‘A friend of mine –’

‘What are you talking about?’

‘It was near Ballard Pier one night, late, a couple of weeks ago. You helped him out of a tight spot.’

A young man, running toward me through Ballard Estate after midnight, the wide street a merchant’s bluff of locked buildings on both sides, no escape when the others came, and the young man stopping, streetlights throwing tree shadows on the road, the young man standing to fight them alone, and then not alone.

‘What about it?’

‘He died. Three days ago. I’ve been trying to find you, but you were in Goa. I’m taking my chance to tell you now.’

‘Tell me what?’

He flinched. I was hard-faced on him, because he’d talked about the prison break, and I wanted him to get to the point.

‘He was my friend, in college,’ he said evenly. ‘He liked roaming, at night, in dangerous places. Like I do. Like
you
do, or else you wouldn’t have been there, to help him out that night. I thought, maybe, you’d like to know.’

‘Are you kidding?’

We were standing in thin shade. We were inches apart, while the churn of the causeway wound around us.

‘What do you mean?’

‘You put prison escape on the table, just so you can bring me the sad tidings of Aslan’s demise? Is that what you’re telling me? Are you nuts, or are you really that nice?’

‘I guess,’ he said, hurt and getting angry, ‘I’m really that nice. Too nice to think you’d take what I’m saying for anything but what it is. I regret that I troubled you. It’s the last thing I would want to do. I apologise. I’ll take my leave.’

I stopped him.

‘Wait!’ I said. ‘Wait.’

Everything about him was right: the honest stare, the confident stance, and the light in his smile. Instinct chooses her own children. My instincts liked the kid, the young man standing in front of me looking so brave and hurt. Everything about him was right, and you don’t see that often.

‘Okay, my fault,’ I said, raising a hand.

‘No problem,’ he replied, relaxing again.

‘So, let’s go back to Vikram telling you about a prison break. See, that’s the kind of information that
might
raise Interpol’s interest, and
always
raises
my
interest. You see that, right?’

It wasn’t a question, and he knew it.

‘Fuck Interpol.’

‘You’re a detective.’

‘Fuck detectives, too. This is the kind of information about a friend that you don’t hide from a friend, when you come to know it. Didn’t anybody ever teach you that? I grew up on these streets, right here, and I know that.’

‘But we’re not friends.’

‘Not yet,’ Naveen smiled.

I looked at him for a while.

‘You like walking?’

‘I like walking and talking,’ he said, falling into step with me in the serpent lines of people traffic.

‘Fuck Interpol,’ he said again, after a while.

‘You really do like talking, don’t you?’

‘And walking.’

‘Okay, so tell me three very short walking stories.’

‘Sure. Fine. Walking story number one?’

‘Dennis.’

‘You know,’ Naveen laughed, dodging a woman carrying a huge bundle of scrap papers on her head, ‘that was my first time there, too. Other than what you saw with your own eyes, I can only tell you what I’ve heard.’

‘So heard me.’

‘His parents died. Hit him pretty hard, they say. They were loaded. They had the patent for something, and it was worth a lot. Sixty million, to Dennis.’

‘That’s not a sixty-million-dollar room back there.’

‘His money’s in trust,’ he replied, ‘while he’s in his trance.’

‘While he’s lying down, you mean?’

‘It’s more than lying down. Dennis is in a state of Samadhi when he sleeps. His heartbeat and his breathing slow down until they approach zero. Quite often, he’s technically dead.’

‘You’re fuckin’ with me, detective.’

‘No,’ he laughed. ‘Several doctors have signed death certificates in the last year, but Dennis always woke up again. Jamal, the One Man Show, has a collection of them.’

‘Okay, so Dennis is occasionally technically dead. That must be tough on his priest, and his accountant.’

‘While he’s in his trance, Dennis’s estate is managed in trust, leaving him enough to buy the apartment we just visited, and maintain himself in a manner suitable to the parameters of his trance states.’

‘Did you hear all this, or detective it?’

‘Bit of both.’

‘Well,’ I said, pausing a while to let a car reverse in front of us. ‘Whatever his gig, I can truly say I never saw anyone lie down better in my life.’

‘No contest,’ Naveen grinned.

We both thought about it for a while.

‘Second story?’ Naveen asked.

‘Concannon,’ I said, moving on.

‘He boxes at my gym. I don’t know a lot about him, but I can tell you two things.’

‘Which are?’

‘He has a mean left hook that bangs a gong, but it leaves him dipping if it misses.’

‘Uh-huh?’

‘Every time. He jabs with the left, punches with the right, and always brings the left hook straight over the top of it, leaving himself wide open if he doesn’t connect. But he’s quick, and he doesn’t miss often. He’s pretty good.’

‘And?’

‘Second, I can say he’s the only guy I met who got me through the door to see Dennis. Dennis loves him. He stayed awake longer for him than anybody else. I heard that he wants to legally adopt Concannon. It’s difficult, because Concannon is older than Dennis, and I don’t know if there’s a legal precedent for an Indian adopting a white man.’

‘What do you mean, he got you
through the door
?’

‘There’s thousands of people who’d like to have an audience with Dennis, while he’s in his trance. They believe that while he’s
temporarily
dead, he can communicate with the
permanently
dead. Almost nobody can get in.’

‘Unless you walk up, and knock on the door.’

‘You don’t get it. Nobody would
dare
to walk up and knock on the door, while Dennis is in his trance.’

‘Come on.’

‘Nobody, that is, until you did.’

‘We already covered Dennis,’ I said, pausing to let a four-man handcart pass. ‘Back to Concannon.’

‘Like I said, he boxes at my gym. He’s a street fighter. I don’t know much about him. He seems like a party guy. He loves a party.’