Emily Kimelman - Sydney Rye 04 - Strings of Glass (8 page)

I felt a
clench in my chest hearing my thoughts about Dan said aloud.

“So
you came for closure?”

Anita
laughed deeply. “God, yes. Wouldn’t that be amazing. To close this. To end
it. But that’s, that’s not possible.” She looked up at the blue swath of
sky above the road. “I’ll never be free of him, of these feelings.”

“Maybe
not,” I said knowing that she was right. I’d never be free of what
happened to my brother. His murderer was dead but he still had a hold on me,
still controlled my thoughts. Made me so angry, so dangerous. Anita was right,
it was an infection. “You know what?” I said. “If you can’t get
closure, I suggest revenge.”

“Is
that what you did?” There was that look in her eye again. That reporter’s
curiosity.

I cocked
my head. “Can I trust you?” I asked.

She
licked her lips. “You saved my life. I owe you forever.”

I
nodded. “Then yes, that’s what I did.” I started walking again.

“Did
it work?” She asked, her eyes widening with hope.

I
smiled. “Well, I’m in this jungle now, talking with whatever you
are…”

She
laughed. We came around a bend and the guest house was only a hundred
yards away. A single story, Portuguese-style Goan home, its roof extended over
the large veranda. At its peak, a
paper star swung in the breeze, decoration left over from the Christmas
holiday. A high wall, topped with broken glass that glinted in the sunlight,
separated the house from the road.

“I’ve
wished for his death a thousand times,” Anita said. Her voice caught in
her throat. “And I also missed him.” She shook her head. “What a
fucking psycho he turned me into.”

“I
know the feeling.”

“You
were?”

“No,
the being a psycho thing, though. I know about that.
About having crazy emotions that make you do dangerous things.”

“Is
that what you do now?”

“I
don’t know what I do now, but I know that I want to stop Kalpesh Shah.” I
turned to her, taking her shoulders in my hands. They were small and I could
feel her bones. “I don’t like injustice, I don’t like it when people let
things happen. When they just sit on their asses and watch. If you let me,
I’ll help you bring him to justice.”

She
looked up at me. “Let’s do it.” And then she smiled in a way that
made her eyes glow. The glint of revenge, I thought. 

#

I
loaned Anita my cell phone to
call her editor after I made her promise not to mention me. I left her out on
the veranda and went into our cabana to offer her some privacy… or at least
the illusion of it. Dan sat at his desk, leaning over his computer, a joint
hanging from his lip. He looked up when I walked in. “Good talk?” he
asked.

“I
think so,” I said.

“We
going?”

I
nodded. “Yeah.”

He
grinned. “Awesome. Come here.” I crossed the room and took the joint
that he offered me. “Check this out,” he said,
pointing to the screen. “It’s him, Kalpesh.” On the screen a middle
aged man with a deep scar down the side of his face looked out at me. He was
not smiling but appeared amused. Possibly at the ridiculousness of his own
outfit. He was dressed up in robes and jewels that gave him the appearance of
something ancient, out-of-date and
well, ridiculous. “His family has been in development forever,” Dan
said,
taking the joint back. I sat on his knee and he scrolled through some more
pictures of Shah. “His house in Old City is a heritage site and he’s
buying up the whole area.” Dan told me, handing back the joint. I pulled
on it, watching as the images flashed on the screen.

“So
he could be keeping the kids in any number of buildings?” I asked.

“That’s
right,” Dan said, taking back the joint. He
smiled at me.

“What?”

“I’m
just saying. This is what it could be like. You and me working together.”
His arm encircled my waist and pulled me closer. “We can come up with a
new name for it.”

“Calm
down,” I said. “Let’s see how this goes, OK?”

“Yes,
Captain.”

“Don’t
call me that!”

Dan
shrugged.

Blue
stood up and greeted Anita, who stood in the doorway, looking down at my phone.

“How
did it go with your editor?” I asked.

“I
didn’t like lying to her but I didn’t mention you,” Anita said,
looking up at me. “I told her I managed to escape the attackers myself.
She wanted me to come home immediately, but I insisted I stay through the Kite
Festival.”

Anita
stepped into the room and sat on our bed. “I guess soon after that she’ll
learn the truth when we land in Paris with Shah.”

“You
still can’t talk about me then. You can’t ever talk about me,” I said.

Anita
turned to me. “Really? How am I supposed to explain Shah being there, the
private jet, any of this?”

“I’m
sure you’ll come up with something,” I said.

Anita
stood up. “What? Do I suddenly work for you now?”

I rose
off Dan’s lap, ignoring his whispered plea for calm. “No,” I said
evenly,
“but
you owe me.” I raised my eyebrows.

Anita’s
eyes narrowed. “Yes.”

“So
stop bitching.”

Anita
sat down again and I followed suit. “Fine,” Anita said nodding.
“You’re right. I’ll do whatever it takes.”

“That
a girl.”

O
ur
flight landed into the dawn of a hazy day. Pollution gave the morning mist a
sheen. This was no soft, billowing moisture left by a
cool night; it was the dregs, the smoke of an industrial dragon.

Anita
directed our driver through streets crowded with confusion. Rickshaws, cows,
dogs, cars, wooden carts pulled by stick-thin men all pushed forward. Horns
chorused. We pulled up in front of a modern building that rose into the thick
sky, appearing to have no top. Anita dismissed the driver and then hailed two
rickshaws. “Just in case, I don’t want Kalpesh finding out where we’re
really staying,” she said, helping me into one of
the three-wheeled, black and yellow vehicles. Blue
hopped up next to me while Dan and Anita climbed into another one.

The
driver gripped his handle bars and, twisting the throttle, directed the little
bee-like vehicle buzzing into traffic. A string of limes and hot peppers swung
from the rearview mirror, a silent, spicy prayer to keep us safe. The toot of
our horn laid down the soundtrack as we maneuvered through the brightening
morning.

The city
that protected Shah revealed itself in glimpses. There was nothing in its
visage that spoke to the evil that did not lurk here but rather shined. His
name graced plaques on buildings halfway built, bamboo scaffolding shrouding
the construction sites. Funny to think a man responsible for the destruction of
so many lives could also be the builder of so many buildings.

The
streets became narrower and the structures shorter and older. Anita and Dan’s
rickshaw stopped at the mouth of a slim lane across from a temple with steep
steps that led to open doors. I watched as a woman climbed those stairs, holding
her young son’s hand. Anita paid her driver and then came over and paid mine.
We waited for them to turn and leave before Anita led us away from the temple
into a maze of narrow alleys lined with thick, crumbling walls. Food littered
the streets, which were pot-holed and stank of a
thousand years of civilization. A cow with long ears and a grey and white coat
stood in the middle of the lane, munching on some of the abandoned food. He
flicked one of his giant ears at the flies that buzzed around him. Blue moved
closer to me. “It’s OK,” I told him as we passed the cow, who didn’t
take any notice of us.

Glancing
around and finding no one in sight except
for the slowly chewing cow, Anita inserted a key into a big wooden door covered
in chipped blue paint. With a satisfying click the lock opened and Anita pushed
into a darkened room. “Hurry,” she said. Dan, Blue and I followed her
inside.

She
closed the big door, leaving us in pitch darkness. She flipped a switch and a
string of bulbs illuminated the room we stood in. It had a ten-foot
high ceiling and walls painted a dark blue. There was no furniture and dust
covered the tile floor. “I bought this place a couple of years ago with my
brother,” Anita said.

“Does
he live in the city?” I asked.

Anita
nodded. “But we hardly talk, we never really did.”

“But
you bought a place together?” Dan asked.

Anita
smiled.
“He
thought it was a good idea, but didn’t have enough
money. I helped out. But we bought it as a company so my name’s not on
it.”

“Good,”
I said.

“Yes,
I’ve been staying here while researching this story.” A look crossed her
face. Perhaps she was realizing this was no longer just a story. Now it was a
choose-your-own
adventure. “This way,” Anita said as she moved toward an open door to
our right. We followed her into a kitchen. She plugged in a string of
construction bulbs that looped across the room, illuminating an old wooden
table with four chairs, built-in cabinets and a new
refrigerator that clicked over, almost as if in protest to being disturbed.

“Are
your parents in town, too?” Dan asked.

“They
do live here but they’re out of the city visiting my sister in the States.
That’s actually their building we went to originally. Hopefully Kalpesh will
think we are staying there.” Anita pointed toward a darkened stairwell in
the corner of the kitchen. “The bedrooms are upstairs,” she said.
“There is plenty of room.”

Handing
Dan a flashlight she started up the darkened stairs, lighting our way with her
own torch. The white beam of light caught the dust that floated in the still
air. The steps were narrow and steep, curving up into the floor above.

We came
out into a small bedroom. A single bed, neatly made, was pushed up against one
of the walls. A wooden desk piled with paperwork faced a large window, its curtains
drawn. Anita went and pulled back the drapes. Sun poured into the room
revealing cracks as thin and elegant as a spider’s web, that lined the floor
and walls.

I
watched as Anita dropped her bag onto the bed and then walked back over to her
desk. I could picture her sitting there pouring over notes, pacing back and
forth trying to puzzle it all out; almost
like a prisoner or a monk. Either way,
someone paying penance in the hope of freedom. I recognized her obsession and
worried again about her telling this story. 

Looking
up from her desk Anita pointed to another set of steps. “You guys are up
there. And the bathroom is through there,” she said,
pointing to a door to our right. Dan climbed the steps first. We came out into
a room with windows all the way around. Its walls were painted black, but the
sun had bleached them into more of a slate grey.

A double
bed with clean white sheets on it sat in the middle of the floor which was
painted ochre, also bleached by the sun. Dan dropped onto the bed and immediately
pulled out his laptop. I walked over to one of the windows and pushed aside the
white curtains. Rooftops spread before me. We were in the center of the old
city. A rim of taller buildings surrounded the enclave of three-
and four-story
homes. Most of the roofs seemed in disrepair, many were corrugated steel, but a
few sported fresh new tiles.

Anita
came up behind me and looked out the window. “Shah’s place is that way,”
she said,
gesturing with her chin. “The parapets provide some shade,” she said,
pointing to a low wall that separated two rooftops. “The ladies will sit
on mattresses while the men fly the kites.”

“Women
never fly them?” I asked, imagining women in
bright colors laying in the shade while men and boys flew kites.

“Some
do. I did,” Anita said.

I
glanced at her and she was smiling, looking out over the rooftops. “Were
you any good?” I asked.

She
laughed and turned back into the room. “Yeah, I was pretty damn
good.”

“Sydney,”
Dan said,
and we both turned to him. He was looking down at his computer screen. “I
got an email back from a woman at one of the NGO’s I contacted. She wants to
meet.”

“OK,”
I said. “Where?”

“At
her offices.” He started typing. “I’ll tell her we can come today,
right?” Dan glanced up at me and I nodded.

T
he Better Indian Children’s
Fund
offices were in a dusty building in a shabby neighborhood without sidewalks or
traffic signals. At the entrance, broken
tile was piled up next to bare cement steps in what looked like an abandoned
plan to refurbish the facade.

After
exhaustive research Dan had come to the conclusion that they were our best bet.
Founded by Chloe Denison, an American who’d originally
landed in India with the Peace Corps,
the organization cared for street kids, educating them, and offering a safe
haven. From what Dan could find they were clean, broke but clean.

Chloe
Denison, a slight woman with white-blonde
hair and eyelashes that were almost clear, looked over the rim of her large
glasses at us. She was in her early thirties, fine
lines radiated from her pale blue eyes and dark circles showed how little she
slept. Her tongue, pink and wet, curled out of her mouth, running across her
lips in a nervous gesture.

Dan and
I sat across from Chloe, a large desk piled with paperwork between us. Blue was
by my side, his neck long, craning to see over the stacks of files. Chloe
picked up a pen and fiddled with it. We’d told her we knew of some kids that
needed help and that we wanted to bring them to her. “What are you going
to do about Kalpesh Shah?” she
asked.

Dan and
I looked at each other and then back at her. She shrugged. “You don’t
think I know what you’re doing?” She put down the pen and looked at her
hands. “You think you’re the first to try?”

“I’m
sorry,” I said. “What do you think we are going to do?”

She
looked up at me through those pale eyelashes, her long delicate fingers
entwined on the desk. “I’ve been here a long time. You’re after those kids
he’s got locked away.”

“How
do you know-” Dan started.

Chloe
waved him off, leaning back in her chair, and pushing her glasses up her nose.
“I deal with homeless and abused children and you think I don’t know about
what’s going on over there?”

“All
right,” I said, “and what are you doing about
it?”

A flush
rose on her cheeks. “What do you think you can do about it?”

“Apparently
you’re the expert,” I said. Blue shuffled closer to me, leaning his haunch
against my shin.

“I
need to know what you’re going to do about Kalpesh Shah,” Chloe said.
“If you think I’m risking…” She shook her head. “Not going to
happen.”

Dan sat
forward. “As I told you in my email we are interested in making a rather
large donation to this institution-”

A knock
on the door interrupted him. Blue stood. “Come in,” Chloe called.

The door
opened and a tall man with dark hair, olive skin, and a
Spanish accent walked in, talking and looking down at a clipboard. “I’m
not sure we’ll have enough-” He looked up then;
seeing Dan, Blue and I, he smiled and blushed. “I’m sorry, I did not
realize you had visitors.”

“Father
Agapito, this is Sydney, Dan, and,” Chloe paused for a moment before
remembering, “Blue.” Agapito reached out his hand and I shook it. He had
calluses like a man who worked hard. “Pleasure to meet you,” he said.
Then reached out to Dan who stood slightly to make the connection. “I’m so
sorry to interrupt.” Agapito looked at Blue and smiled. “What an
incredible creature. May I?” he reached his hand out.

“Sure,”
I said. “Blue.” I nodded at Agapito and Blue offered him the crown of his fuzzy
head. Agapito pet it gently. “Wonderful,” he said.

“We
were just discussing a topic you might be interested in,” Chloe said.

Agipito
looked at her. “Yes?” he smiled. “How can I help?”

“They
are looking to place some abused children.”

He
frowned. “I’m sorry to hear that,” he said. “It is so horrible
when the weakest among us are taken advantage of.” Agapito looked down at
Blue for a moment and then raised his head. “Would you like to see our
school?” he asked.

Dan and
I looked at each other, both sensing that the tense conversation with Chloe
could use a break.  “Sure,” Dan said, standing. 

“It’s
only a couple of blocks away,” Agapito told us. “We are full, but I’m
sure that we can find room for the children you seek to help. Never have we
turned any away.”

He held
the door for us and we all reentered the hall with its institutional gray
carpets and bare, scuffed, white walls. Agapito ran a couple steps to pass us
and open the tinted glass doors that led to the street. The day had gotten
hotter and by the time I reached the bottom of the steps I felt sweat on the
back of my neck.

I pulled
my hair into a pony tail and reached into my bag taking out my sunglasses and
putting them on. Blue’s tongue slipped out of his mouth and he began to pant.
Agapito led the way through congested streets, most without sidewalks, putting
his hand out to stop the traffic for us to cross. “You’re quite
the shepherd,”
I said.

He
laughed easily. “Yes, and you are good with the puns. That is the word,
yes?” A little girl ran up to us, snot crusted on her face and dirt
smudging her smooth, youthful skin.

“Father,”
she said. “Want pencil, Father.” She smiled
up at him, ignoring the rest of us.

The
priest grinned and, reaching into his back pocket, pulled out an orange-colored
pencil. “How about this?” he asked. The little girl’s eyes widened at
the sight
of the prize.

“Yes,
Father.” She reached up for it and then added quickly,
“Please, may I?”

Agapito
nodded and handed over the pencil. The girl ran away but then stopped a couple
of paces and turning back yelled,
“Thank you, Father!” Then sprinted
away.

Agapito
smiled watching her go. “Pencils?” I asked.

“Oh
yes,” he said. “They love them. Notebooks,
too. You should see what these children draw. Amazing.”

We
turned a corner and half the block was taken up by a large, European-style
church surrounded by lush green gardens. It looked out of place in the dusty busyness
of the street. A man wearing only a lungi and a pair of flip flops pulling a
two-wheeled
wooden cart filled to comedic proportions with metal pipes spotted Agapito and
grinned, showing off a mouth only half-full of
teeth. “Hello!” he yelled.

“Hello,”
Father Agapito yelled back with a big wave.

“How
are you?”
the toothless, bare-chested man yelled, the words
sounding foreign in his mouth.

“Very
good! And you?”

Horns
honked at the two-wheeled cart’s progress but
Agapito’s friend continued his slow pace. “Very good! I am very
good!”

Agapito
waved at him again and then turned and opened a low metal gate for me.
“Please, come in,” he said.

I stepped
into the shade of a tall tree onto a stone path. It led through green grass
shorn short to the church’s large wooden front doors. Blue sniffed at the grass
intently. It was as if we’d entered a different world. The madness of the
Ahmedabad street continued just on the other side of the gate. In fact, a cow
reached his head over and crunched on the sweet grass, but on this side there
was a quiet and peace. The air was actually easier to breath.

I looked
over at Father Agapito. He was wearing a button-down
white linen shirt and a pair of jeans with dark leather sandals. A thin gold
chain disappeared into his neckline. The man was good-looking
and young, younger than me, I realized. He closed the gate and then something
across the street caught his eye. I followed his gaze and through the cacophony
of vehicles, dogs, cows, and people,
I saw what he was watching. A man, clearly angry, was yelling at a woman who
cowered in front of him.

The man
grabbed the woman by the shoulders and shook her.  Then his

hand came up and whacked
across the young woman’s face. She would have fallen if he had not been holding
her up. Agapito leapt over the small gate and raced across the street, dashing
in front of scooters, sliding over the hood of a stopped car and pushed between
the couple. “Oh shit,” I said.

Blue
watched intently by my side and Dan stepped next to me. “That’s not your
average priest,” he said.

“No,
no it’s not,” I answered as we watched Agapito speak slowly to the man.
The woman reached out and scrunched the back of Agapito’s shirt between her
fingers. The young priest reached an arm behind him and lightly touched her
sleeve, reassuring her, while using his voice and personal power to calm down
her abuser.

“I’ve
never met anyone like him,” Chloe said. “The first time I saw him
pull something like that I thought for sure he was dead.” She shook her
head. “But I was wrong.”

I
watched in awe as Agapito laid his hand on the man’s shoulder and then, turning
his body to create a bridge between the two, put his other hand on the woman
and they all bowed their heads to pray. I would have just cold-cocked
the mother fucker. I wondered which method was more effective. “Has he hit
her before?” I asked.

Chloe
shrugged. “I don’t know. I’ve never seen them before.”

“I
didn’t realize yours was a religious organization,” I said.

“We’re
not,” Chloe answered. “But we work closely with the church. They have
the space and the energy.”

“How
long has Agapito been here?” I asked.

“We’ve
worked together for two years. He approached me actually. Wanted better
teachers, better funding, better results. But he can be unrealistic.”

“I
could have guessed that,” I said.

Agapito
shook hands with the man then blessed the woman, laying his hands on her head
and shoulders. Saying his goodbyes, he crossed the street to us. It was as if
the traffic parted for him. “Moses style,” I said.

“What?”
Dan asked.

I
laughed. “Nothing.”

“I
apologize,” Agapito said as he opened the gate for himself. “Shall we
go in?” He raised a hand toward the church entrance.

Chloe
and Dan started down the path, Agapito, Blue and I followed. It was cool and
dark inside the church. A large stained
glass
window depicted a man with his hand up, thumb pressed to his pinky and ring
finger, the other two pointed up in a
tisk tisk
gesture. The Saint was
balding with raised, judgmental eyebrows, and an outfit covered in crosses. It
reminded me of my stepfather, who was fond of wearing a tie patterned with
crosses. He called himself a priest but he was nothing like Agapito, more like
the guy in the glass, judgmental and covered in meaningless symbols.

Agapito
followed my gaze. “I do not like that depiction of St. Nicholas. He looks
as if he is admonishing us, doesn’t he?”

I
nodded. “That’s just what I was thinking.”

“I
would get rid of it but there are much better ways to use our limited funds.
Come, I will show you.” We walked down the aisle between pews of dark
wood, all with prayer books and hymnals tucked into
the backs.

I never
attended church as a child except with friends. My mother did not find her
religion until I was a teen and by then she would have had to use chloroform to
get me into her fiancé‘s mega-church of rip-off-hood. I
thought back to the last time I’d seen her when I was in the hospital and James
had just been murdered. She told me James was going to hell because he was gay
and I hated her for it. I hated her so much I thought I might explode with
grief and pain. Her abandonment of James for how nature made him brought bile
to my throat in that church as I walked toward the altar.
Blue tapped his nose to my hip reminding me he was there and I pushed the
memory away as we turned and headed for a side door.

Above
the exit a plastic Jesus wearing a crown of
thorns, the blood at his hands and feet looking almost sticky in the low light,
stared down at me, forlorn on his cross. I paused for a moment and Agapito
stopped with me. “Do you have a relationship with Jesus?” he asked.

“Yes,”
I said. “But it’s not a good one.” I passed through the door that
Chloe held open for me. The sounds of children’s voices filled the hall. Both
of Blue’s ears rotated forward. As we walked over worn linoleum and
passed closed doors, the voices and squeals grew louder.  “The children
are out in the yard,” Chloe said. “We built it last year.” She
smiled over at Agapito.

“It
is so wonderful for them to have a safe place to play,” Agapito said.
Chloe pushed open a door at the end of the hall and sunlight blinded me for a
second. We stepped out into a walled yard filled with playground equipment covered
in children. They pushed each other on swings and flew down the slide, which
glinted bright silver in the sun. Kids crisscrossed the yard in what looked
like a game of tag. Several young women in kurtas and
jeans watched over them. A young boy, maybe 7 or 8, raced up to Agapito and
grabbed his hand.

“Come
play, Father?” the boy asked.

Agapito
crouched down. “Not now Goyo, we have guests. Can you say hello to
them?”

The boy
looked over at Dan and me, squinting against the sun. Then he looked at Blue.
“Hello,” he said with a shy smile. Blue laid down, kicking one of his
back legs out, and panted at the boy. 

“Hi,”
I said.

“Nice
to meet you, Goyo,” Dan said,
extending his hand. The boy looked at it and then grinned. Taking Dan’s hand he
shook it extravagantly, pumping his little arm up and down.

“Nice
to meet you, sir,” Goyo said as if it was something he’d heard in a movie.
Then his gaze returned to Blue.

“You can
pet him,” I said.

Goyo
dropped Dan’s hand and inched closer to Agapito, that shy smile catching his
lips again. The boy shook his head, wrapping tiny fingers around the priests
wrist.

Agapito
ruffled Goyo’s hair then sent him off to play with his friends. Once the boy
was out of earshot Agapito told us, “His
entire family died in a fire. I found him on the street, hungry and
terrified.” The priest smiled at me. “I am so pleased that I had a
place for him here where he can eat, play, learn,
like all children should.”