Devil in Pinstripes (15 page)

A
mit woke up on the first ring of the alarm that he had set on his cell phone. On any normal day, he would have lazily pressed the snooze button and managed to get those extra divine ten minutes of sleep. Today was different. Sleep had all but deserted him. Chanda was wondering what the secret behind his jumpy behaviour was. He did not tell her anything. ‘Professional ethics,’ he would say at a later date.

He had fixed up a meeting in office at 8.15 a.m. – much earlier than his normal in-time of 9.30 a.m. He walked into the co-room, the room that he shared with Sangeeta, a few seconds after the clock ticked over 8.15 a.m. He was the first to have arrived. A few janitors were cleaning up the tables and getting them ready so that the office got into squeaky clean shape before everyone walked in.

Amit ticked off one of them and asked him to get a cup of coffee. ‘Make that two,’ Manish had just walked in with a big grin on his face.

‘What is it with you that you always come in when I order a cup of coffee?’

‘There is an old Hindi saying which states that while you are eating, an enemy walks in; while you are sleeping, your love walks in and while you are drinking, your real friend walks in,’ said Manish as he walked into his room and dumped the bag into his seat. ‘No alcohol, so we will drink coffee to our friendship,’ he smiled.

On any normal day, Manish would have opened his bag, pulled out the laptop, plugged it in, and checked for emails. The Singapore office, which was their regional hub, opened a couple of hours before India. Hence, it was normal for his mail box to be clogged even before anyone in India woke up. Today, he dumped his bag on his table and walked up to Amit. By then the cleaner had come in with coffee for the two of them.

‘Look, I too have taken after you. I have started having coffee without sugar.’

‘You can do with some weight loss.’

‘Ha ha! Come let’s go.’ And both of them walked into the board room on the same floor. Only the two of them – Amit and Manish.

They were closeted in the room for about thirty-five minutes when there was a knock on the door. It was Sunil Pande, the HR head. He peeped in through the board room door. Seeing the two of them, he pushed the door open. ‘Quickly shut the door and come in,’ said Manish. Through the small slit in the door, as it shut itself under the recoil of the spring, Amit could make out the silhouette of Suzanna passing by. She glanced in their direction and saw them sitting there. The door banged shut even as Pande took his seat at the far end of the table.

Within minutes, Manish Kakkar’s phone started ringing. Amit and Manish were seated right next to each other and from where Amit was, he could see the flashing screen of Manish’s mobile. The name repeatedly flashing on the screen was Gowri’s. Kakkar glanced at Amit. A smile came on to his lips and he picked up the phone.

‘Ya?’

‘What’s the issue?’

‘Nothing.’

‘Nothing? Then what are all of you doing in the board room. Sunil told me that Amit had called him last night stating that he wanted to meet him urgently in the morning and now you are with him. Any problem?’

‘Arre nothing. We’ll talk when you come.’

‘Tell me now.’

‘Gowri, I will talk to you when you come. I cannot tell you anything now.’

‘I will be there in half an hour. See you,’ and he hung up. Amit was smiling. From the moment he saw Suzanna staring at the three of them in the conference room, he had been expecting Gowri to call one of them. Gowri was very wary of any meetings happening without his knowledge or presence. He discouraged this shit. And now there seemed to be a serious meeting happening on the corporate floor, right next to his cabin, and that too without him. A nasty grin took over Amit’s face. The thought of an insecure Gowri worried about their discussion pleased him no end.

‘Gentlemen, please put your phones on silent and let’s not get distracted by any calls coming in.’ This statement of Amit, put a stop on any chances of Gowri calling Sunil, especially after an unsuccessful attempt at getting information out of Manish Kakkar.

From the moment Manish disconnected his call, Gowri was extremely restless. He didn’t like to be kept in the dark about what was going on. Being in control was his style. He got out of home and drove like a maniac to reach office.

He parked his car in a lane opposite the building and walked furiously to his office. When he reached the corporate floor he didn’t walk to his room. ‘Where are they?’ the entire floor could hear his question which was directed at Suzanna. She pointed towards the board room.

Kadaaak! The door flew open as Gowri walked in. ‘What’s going on folks? Will someone tell me?’

‘Arre Gowri. Come, come. Good to see you. How come so early today?’ Amit was having some fun.

‘Relax buddy!’ he was getting irritated. There was a congregation happening in his company and people were secretive about it. It had never happened earlier. This was the first time. He was the one who kept the secrets . . . no one kept secrets from him.

Gowri sat down on the chair in the boardroom, as if saying that he would not go from there unless he was made a party to the discussion that was on.

‘OKAY,’ began Manish ‘Gowri,’ we wanted to have this discussion before you came in because we know it’s close to your heart.’

‘I am listening’

‘We have just about concluded our discussion. Vikas needs to go.’

‘What?’ Gowri was shocked. ‘You are kidding.’

‘No he is not.’ It was Amit who spoke. ‘Vikas needs to go.’

‘Just because he didn’t suck up to you when you went there!’

‘We will discuss that offline Gowri. But Vikas needs to put in his papers today. Else . . .’

‘Else what?’

‘We will have to terminate him,’ Manish came in.

‘But why?’ Gowri looked at Sunil, who had a helpless look on his face. Vikas was one of Gowri’s handpicked resources who had so far demonstrated complete allegiance to Gowri. The latter had seen him grow from a sales executive to a branch manager.

Vikas was the star sales manager in Kolkata, when Gowri plucked him out and put him as a branch manager in Raipur. The former owed his career to Gowri, and the latter was his godfather.

‘Will anyone tell me why the fuck does he have to go?’

He was losing his patience. Very poor at managing anger. Amit was enjoying this.

‘Gowri. I think the guy is on the take. He is making money out of us.’

‘What?’ and after a pause added ‘Says who?’

‘Me.’ The fact that it was Amit, infuriated him even more. But he controlled his temper and his words and kept looking at Manish.

‘Okay, let me tell you the entire story Gowri. You are aware of the car repossession process. In case a car loan customer continuously defaults on his loan instalments, we repossess his car.’

‘I am aware,’ said Gowri with his jaw tightly clenched. ‘I have done this business longer than you have buddy.’

‘Normally we avoid repossessing the car, but in case the loan value is large and if after repeated follow-up the customer does not pay, we go and do repossess . . . as a last recourse. To ensure that it does not backfire on us we inform the local police authorities and take necessary precautions, so that no one can accuse us of skirting the law and file a case against us for criminal intimidation.’ The last sentence was added as an afterthought when he saw Rekha, the compliance head walking into the room. Amit had sent her a message in the morning asking her to join in.

‘Once the car is repossessed, it is in our custody. We park it in our parking yard and follow up with the customer for his instalments. The customer is informed that in case he does not pay up, the car will be sold and our money recovered from the sale proceeds. At this stage, normally, customers pay up. Collecting becomes easy if the resale value of the car is higher than the outstanding loan amount.’

‘I know all this. Why are you telling me this crap? Tell me what the problem is!’

‘What I am telling you is the genesis of the problem Gowri! Be patient and hear me out. In case the customer does not pay up even after the car is repossessed, we then go ahead and sell the car. In some cases we are able to sell the car for an amount lower than the loan value, in which case we follow up with the customer for the difference or write off the amount in our books. If we are able to sell the car for a value more than the loan outstanding, we return the excess money to the customer. For example, if the customer owes us two lakh and we are able to sell the car for 2,30,000, we take 2 lakh and return the excess 30,000 to our customer.’

‘So?’ Gowri was getting frustrated now. He knew all this. There was no need to reiterate this. ‘As I said earlier, I have done this longer than you have. Tell me what the problem is.’

‘DL2CAM 0192, a Delhi registered Toyota Corolla. Loan in the name of Aakash Gulati, a businessman in Delhi. Has business interests in Raipur. Loan for 8 lakh. Stopped paying after five instalments.’ It was Manish who began the story.

‘When after repeated reminders he did not pay up, we issued a notice to repossess the car. The car was repossessed by our agents in Raipur three months ago. The car is about a year old.’

‘What is the relevance?’

‘The outstanding on the car loan is Rs 7.65 lakh. Given that he had not paid his instalments for the last six months, I had given a go-ahead to dispose off the car and recover our money. Yesterday morning I got a request from Vikas asking for approval for selling the car at Rs 5.1 lakh – a ridiculous price for a Toyota Corolla which is about a year old.’

‘A new one costs Rs 11 lakh. I am sure you would be aware.’ Amit butted in and the sarcasm was not lost on Gowri. He was not amused. A dirty stare was all that he could return to Amit. Couldn’t say anything else. If looks could kill, Amit would be dead by now.

‘I went back to him on email. A year old Toyota Corolla should definitely get a better price. On that mail I asked him for reasons why the car would not sell at anything beyond Rs 5.1 lakh. He replied stating that the car has been involved in an accident in the past and is severely dented. This has impacted the second hand sale price of the car.’

‘That seems logical. A dented car, involved in an accident will not get a good price. Commonsense. Isn’t it?’ Gowri tried to reason.

‘Yes it does. But that’s not the end of it.’ He pulled out three colour printouts from his folder and passed them on to Gowri. ‘These are the pics of the pearl white Toyota Corolla which he sent me yesterday morning.’

From the pictures it was clear that the car had been involved in a frontal accident and its bonnet had completely crashed. It would cost a fortune to repair the car, notwithstanding the amounts paid by the insurance firms.

‘So where is the problem? The car has had an accident. Hence we cannot get a good price. I can’t understand. Am I missing something here?’

‘Amit, will you take on from here?’

‘Before I begin, let me show you a video.’ Amit switched off the lights in the room and turned on the projector. It was connected to his laptop.

‘Will you stop this jazz and tell me without fucking around?’ said an agitated Gowri.

Amit ignored Gowri’s tirade and fiddled with his laptop. ‘Let me play this for you.’

The clip came on screen.

The clipping was of a car yard, where a number of used cars were parked. Amit zeroed in on a pearl white Toyota Corolla. It started from the back of the car, then went around the car to the right, back again, then to the left and slowly moved ahead, finally coming to rest at the front of the car. It was a clumsily shot video. Clearly someone had used a mobile phone to shoot the clipping. After pausing for a moment, the video closed in on the bonnet. It was a sparkling car in mint condition. The video then slowly retracted and the angle tilted downward towards the front number plate. The person who was shooting the video purposely went closer to the number plate and stopped right in front of it. The video lingered on the number plate for some time and then the clip ended. The movie stopped and the last clip was in front of their eyes. It showed a clear shot of the number plate of the car.

It had the number DL2CAM 0192.

‘This is the car in question, right? DL2CAM 0192?’ Amit looked at both Manish and Gowri.

‘The problem is that I landed up in the most unexpected of places yesterday. Since I was in Raipur, Manish asked me to visit the yard and do an inspection of the facilities available there and also to do a surprise check on this car. In fact, the visit was scheduled at the last minute because I had some time at hand, and I decided to help Manish.’

‘I still don’t understand what the issue is,’ muttered Gowri.

‘Either you are naïve Gowri, or you think we are idiots.’ Amit was beginning to get irritated. ‘Can’t you see the picture which Vikas sent Manish?’ Amit pulled it up on the screen. It was a badly damaged Toyota Corolla with its bonnet smashed to smithereens. Amit pulled up the last screen shot of the video again – the image of the bonnet of the car he had shot on his mobile phone. Both the images appeared side by side on the screen.

‘Completely different cars!’ Manish looked at Gowri and said.

‘What does this show?’ Gowri asked.

‘Now don’t be naïve Gowri.’ Amit was back to having some fun.

‘Enough mate. Let me explain,’ Manish chipped in.

‘Gowri, clearly Vikas has sent me a picture of a different car. He has used the image of a dented car to get an approval to sell a perfect car in mint condition at a lower price. The car in picture would sell for at least Rs 8 lakh. Vikas has clearly struck a deal with a used car dealer. He would sell the car for 8 lakh. The car dealer would only issue a payment of Rs 5.1 lakh to NFS. That would not raise any eyebrows, because Vikas holds my approval. The balance of Rs 2.9 lakh would be pocketed by the used car dealer and Vikas. Apart from this there could be no motivation for him to send a wrong photograph. The right car is parked in the yard, but the photo is of a different car.’