The Mountain Shadow (64 page)

Didier found me, and did the right guy thing. He backed away, and left me in pieces.

I washed up again, and looked into the mirror.

A photo that Lisa had pushed in the top of the mirror frame had been torn away. Lisa’s face had been ripped from the picture, and only my foolish, smiling face remained. I took it down, tore it up and threw it in the bin.

Sitting in the living room, Didier and I drank strong, black coffee, and smoked strong, black Kashmiri. It was Lisa’s stash: her perfect, heavenly high, only for the most special occasions, which was why I’d had to hide it with my things.

And when the brandy and the food arrived, with Tito, we drank a toast, with Lisa, to the loved.

Tito helped me shove the heavy chest away from the wall again.

‘Nice,’ he said, when he saw the guns, passports and money. ‘Ten per cent.’

‘Done.’

He began to stuff the bundles into a sack.

It was my safety net in the Island City, the stake I was bringing to the table as a partner with Didier: everything I owned that wasn’t in my pockets, or my pack.

Tito was about to tie the sack closed, but I stopped him.

‘Wait a minute.’

There was a place I hadn’t looked, and that the police might’ve overlooked. There was a gas-fired hot water heater in a closet. Lisa had made a shelf on top of the heater to dry out some tripping mushrooms, which a friend had brought from Germany.

I opened the door and searched on top of the panel. There was a shoebox in the back. I saw the words REASONS
WHY written on the end panel.

I pulled it toward me, feeling around inside, and my hand shivered through keepsakes and pictures as if through reeds in a pond.

They were simple things: a thin, silver scarf she’d worn, the first time we met, a wind-up child’s toy, a brass Zippo lighter that Didier had given to us as a housewarming present, and that she couldn’t bear to let me use, for fear that I might lose it, which I would’ve done, a dog whistle that she used whenever we walked on Marine Drive, so she could get the attention of every dog she passed, a paperweight I’d made for her from silver rings, and a scatter of stones, shells, pictures, amulets and coins.

It was a box of nothings, bits of stuff that had no value or meaning for anyone else in the world.
And isn’t that love, Lisa
, I thought, looking at the box of charms. When it means nothing to anybody else, and it means everything to us, isn’t that love?
Didn’t we love, Lisa? Didn’t we love?

I put the box in Tito’s sack along with the pieces of Khaderbhai’s sword and the pair of Lisa’s hemp sandals. He tied it tightly, and slung it over his shoulder.

‘What’s your family name?’ I asked him.

I was studying his face. It was an important face. He had all my worldly goods in his hands, and we’d known each other fourteen minutes. I wanted to recognise that face, no matter how it changed.

‘Deshpande,’ he said.

‘Take care of our percentages, Mr Deshpande.’

‘No tension,’ he laughed.

We shook hands. He nodded to Didier, and trotted down the stairs.

‘So, how do we kill him?’ Didier asked, pouring a measure of brandy, after Tito left.

‘Kill who?’

‘Concannon, of course.’

‘I don’t want to kill Concannon. I want to find him, and make him tell me who bought that dope off him, and gave it to Lisa.’

‘I would recommend that we do both,’ he mused.

‘I need to talk to Naveen,’ I said. ‘Can you call him, and set it up? I have to report to Sanjay, early in the afternoon. Tell Naveen I’ll meet him at five, at Afghan Church, if he can make it.’

‘Certainly. Do you know when Abdullah returns?’

‘No.’

‘You need him now, inside the Company.’

‘I know.’

I looked around the room, and into the bedroom beyond.

‘I’m gonna sleep here, tonight.’

‘Surely not?’ Didier protested. ‘It is not secure. I know a place, near Metro. The manager has a splendid collection of manias and obsessions. You will love him. Let me take you there, now.’

‘I’m gonna sleep here.’

‘You, my friend, are –’ he began, but then laughed. ‘Well, if there is no persuading you, then Didier will sleep in this place of such sadness and sorrow with you.’

‘You don’t have to –’

‘Didier insists! But on the couch, of course. And thank my foresight, in asking Tito to bring two bottles.’

I slept on the floor, beside Lisa’s bed, with the pillow that was hers. Didier slept like a child, his arms and legs flung wide, on the couch.

Morning stumbled into a cold breakfast of the food I couldn’t eat the night before, and brandy with a dash of coffee in it.

We cleaned the kitchen, and Didier joined me at the door of the apartment that he’d visited so often: that place where love had laughed for the last time.

‘I’m ashamed,’ he said softly. ‘I’m so ashamed, Lin.’

‘Shame is the past. If it isn’t now, it soon will be.’

He thought for a moment.

‘That’s one of Karla’s, isn’t it?’

‘Of course.’

We both thought, for a while.

‘When you see her –’

‘Didier.’

‘No, I was going to say, when you see Karla, be gentle with her.’

‘I’ll talk nice to Karla. I always talk nice to Karla. I want to ask her how come she was the one who found Lisa’s body. You just get all those eyes and ears of yours on Concannon, Didier. And set it up for me with Naveen. Are we good?’

I was trying to move, trying to escape from the cage of sorrow, and Didier knew it. We stood in silence for a while, staring at the empty rooms, before he spoke.

‘I am not-good-okay, my friend. Shall we . . . I mean, if you will permit it, I would like to say some words, for Lisa, here at this door that we will never open again.’

‘Nice idea. Go ahead.’

‘Lisa, we loved you, and you knew that, in your heart. We loved your smile, and your free mind, and your habit of dancing for no reason, and your cheating at charades, and the way you loved us all, every time you saw us. But most of all, we loved your sincerity. You never faked it, Lisa, as you Americans say. You were always the real person. If there is any essence of your spirit lingering here, come into our hearts, now, and stay with us, when we leave this place where you left us, so that we can carry you inside us, and always love you.’

‘Didier,’ I said, after a while. ‘Thank you. That was really nicely put.’

‘Of course,’ he replied, pulling me through the door, and closing it for the last time. ‘If you could only hear the words that I have prepared for you, my dear friend.’

‘You already wrote lines for when I’m dead?’ I asked, taking the stairs.

‘Didier should not be caught on the hop, as they say. Especially if it concerns a beloved friend.’

‘I . . . guess not. Have you composed farewells for all your beloved friends?’

‘No, Lin,’ he said, as we reached the courtyard of the building. ‘Only you. I have only written such words for you. What I said just now for Lisa, it was from my heart. And you, my still-living friend, are attracting interest from bookmakers, ready to give odds on your survival outside the Sanjay Company.’

I looked back at the apartment building. Without her body to see dead, and believe dead, the apartment we’d shared was all I had of her, and what we were. It had been a light, happy place for both of us, most of the time. But I knew that for me alone, every time I saw it would be a conversation with the ghost of God.

Chapter Thirty-Six

I
T WAS HARDER TO GET INTO
R
ANJIT’S
media headquarters than it was to break out of prison. After three levels of security, each one checking my VISITOR tag and none checking my metal, I finally reached his private secretary.

‘The name is Shantaram,’ I said, for the fourth time. ‘It’s a private, and personal, matter.’

She picked up a phone, spoke the mantra, and then opened the door.

Ranjit rose from his leather chair, extending his hand over the desk. The secretary left, closing the door.

‘Sit down,’ I said.

‘What do you –’

‘All that security, and no-one thought to ask me if I was carrying a gun.’

‘A gun?’ he gasped.

‘Sit down.’

He sat down, his hands floating on the glass-topped desk.

‘Where’s Karla?’

‘Karla? You’re here about Karla?’

‘Where’s Karla?’

‘Why?’

‘Pick up the phone.’

‘What?’

‘Pick up the phone, and call Karla.’

‘Why don’t . . . why don’t
you
call her?’

‘I don’t like phones. And I don’t need one, because I can make you call her for me. You see that, right?’

‘See . . . what?’

‘Call Karla.’

‘I –’

‘Call Karla.’

‘You call me,’ Karla’s voice said from behind me, ‘and I come.’

She was sitting in an armchair in a corner of the large office. Potted palms beside her chair had hidden her from sight.

She seemed angry, and very glad to see me. I’d walked into a fight they’d been having.

‘Hello, Karla. In the corner for bad behaviour?’

‘Ranjit and I have a new agreement,’ she said, lighting a cigarette, shafts of light and dark on her face through the palm leaves. ‘If we find ourselves in the same room, we sit as far apart as we can.’

‘Are you done here?’ I asked, staring into queens.

Ranjit laughed. I faced him. The laugh stopped so quickly that he almost choked on it.

‘What are you laughing at?’

‘I . . . well . . . I . . . really have no idea.’

He was terrified. It didn’t make sense. Sure, I’d mentioned a gun, but I wasn’t carrying one, and Karla was there, and she was. He was safe, but he was sweating hard.

‘You know that expression, where you tell someone they look like they’ve seen a ghost?’

‘I . . . I suppose,’ he replied.

‘Well, you look like the ghost.’

‘The . . . ghost?
Whose
ghost?’

‘What’s wrong with you?’

‘You . . . said you had a gun.’

He was shaking.

‘I said that no-one thought to
ask
me if I was carrying a gun. I didn’t say I had one.’

‘Well, yes . . . I mean, no.’

‘Is there anything you want to tell me, Ranjit?’

‘No!’ he said quickly. ‘Nothing at all.’

‘What do you know about Lisa’s death?’

‘Nothing. Nothing. The poor girl. A tragic accident. That is, I mean . . . nothing at all.’

‘Goodbye, Ranjit, and please don’t wait up,’ Karla said, standing, and walking to the door.

I opened the door for her and we left the office. Ranjit was still sitting in his chair, his hands splayed on the desk as if he was trying to stop it floating away.

When the elevator doors closed, she took out a flask, drank a sip, closed it and turned to me, all queens.

‘Do you think I had something to do with her death?’

‘
What?
’

‘The cops did. Worked me over pretty good. Only left bruises where I won’t show.’

I felt my stomach drop. Anger filled the empty inside.

‘Lightning Dilip?’

‘He sends his regards,’ she said.

The doors opened on a small crowd in the lobby. She stopped me in the doorway, blocking the people. Our faces were inches apart.

‘I didn’t have anything to do with it,’ she said. ‘I would never hurt Lisa. Or let anyone else hurt her.’

‘Of course not,’ I replied, but she was already gone.

I made my way to the desk, hurled the visitor tag across the counter, and bounced through people until I found Karla, unruffled, a little way from the front entrance.

We rode to the Bandra sea-face. She clung to my back, her face pressed into me, a ready-to-die passenger.

I could’ve gone to a dozen places closer, but I needed to ride. When we stopped, near the sea, I was as calm as the waves on the bay.

We walked that little smile of the coast in the midday heat, but we were comfortable: two foreigners who’d learned to love a sun-blessed city.

‘We had a date,’ she said, as we walked.

‘We had a date?’

‘No.’

I thought about it.

‘You and Lisa had a date?’

‘Yeah.’

We walked on for a while, and then I got it.