The Mountain Shadow (87 page)

Abdullah left the bikes with a contact at the nearby service station, and led us on the long walk across the land bridge footpath to the small island tomb of the saint.

We’d all performed the gangster ritual before: a late-night walk to the saint’s tomb, before battle.

Haji Ali, then simply a wealthy Uzbek merchant named Ali, gave up all he had to the poor, and went on a pilgrimage to Mecca.

He travelled all of the world that a traveller could reach. It was a difficult thing to do, because it was the fifteenth century, but he went everywhere, carrying his belongings on his back, and learning everything that could be known.

A man of good taste, he settled in Bombay, and was renowned in the city and beyond for his piety. He died while on the annual Haj. The coffin carrying his body was lost at sea, but washed up, miraculously, on the shores of Bombay, where his tomb was built.

Once a day, in high season, the sea washed the path to Haji Ali’s tomb away, leaving it invisible below the menacing water. It was as if the saint sometimes said,
Please, enough
, and was released from the world of our sins and sorrows by a drowned path, letting him sleep in peace to restore his power as one of the great protectors of the city.

On that night, the path across the sea was dry and almost deserted. The wind was sharp, and came in ruffling bursts. We walked alone, six gangsters, toward the island tomb, moonlight throwing long shadows on a mirror of shallow tide.

The rounded rocks beneath us on either side of the wide path were exposed: black wet things clinging to the path for shelter, their backs bent to the sea.

Incense, burning in bunches as thick as a camel’s hoof, filled the air with fragrances of devotion.

I didn’t follow the ritual on the path across the sea to the island shrine. Gangsters going to war walked toward the shrine thinking of the harm they’d done in the past, prayed for forgiveness at the tomb, and walked away from the shrine ready for hell. I didn’t do it, that time.

I thought of Karla, and how angry we’d been when we’d said goodnight.

I didn’t think about who’d taken the contract out on me. The list of suspects was long, and I couldn’t shorten it by thinking about it. As it turned out, Abdullah shortened it for me, as we walked back across the sea, on the strip of stone that joined the shore.

‘You did not ask me who took out this contract on you.’

‘I thought I’d survive the twenty-four, and then find out,’ I replied.

‘Why do you not want to know now?’

‘Because, when I know, I’ll want to do something to him. And it would be better to do something to him after everybody stops trying to kill me.’

‘It was the Irishman.’

‘Concannon?’

‘Yes.’

It was my turn to laugh, and about time.

‘Good to see you keeping those spirits up,’ Ravi said, walking a pace behind us with Shah, Comanche and Tall Tony.

‘No,’ I laughed, ‘it’s not funny at all, but it’s really, really funny at the same time. I know this guy. I know Concannon. It’s his version of a practical joke. It’s a gangster joke, to see if I can make it through. That’s why the contract expires in twenty-four hours. He’s fucking with me.’

I couldn’t explain it more, because I was laughing too much, and then the guys understood, all but Abdullah, and they laughed. Every time they tried to straighten up, they reminded themselves how much they wished they’d thought of it first. Then they started exchanging the names of paranoid friends they’d love to do it to, and fell helpless again.

‘I love this guy,’ Ravi said. ‘I’ve gotta meet him. I mean, we’ll kill him, of course, but I’ve gotta meet him, before we do.’

‘Me, too,’ Tall Tony said. ‘Is this the guy Abdullah shot in the leg?’

‘The same.’

‘Twice,’ Abdullah corrected, ‘in the same leg. And now, you can see that mercy is a virtue best reserved for the virtuous, and not for a demon, like this man.’

The guys laughed harder. It was a good sign, in a way. One of our men had been murdered, a man we all loved, and I’d been threatened with murder, but we weren’t so afraid that we couldn’t laugh. The young street soldiers composed themselves under Abdullah’s stern eye, and we completed the walk to the shore.

The walk to Haji Ali’s tomb before war was an insult to the saint whose coffin rode miracle-waves back to the Island City, blessing it forever, and we knew it.

But we also knew, or willed ourselves to believe, that saints forgive what the world shuns. And we were sure in those moments of the walk, despite our sacrilege, that he knew we loved him: the eternally patient saint, who listened to our gangster prayer as he slept on the sea.

Chapter Fifty-Four

C
ONCANNON’S PRACTICAL JOKE WAS A BLESSING,
after I survived it, because it flushed assassin-minded snakes out of the long grass of Colaba’s unconformable jungle. Abdullah and Didier visited every thug who’d asked about the reward for my life, and slapped him around in case the reward was offered again.

I hunted Concannon across the city, following every slender lead. Some of the searches took me to distant suburbs, on rough roads. I spent a lot of time in the saddle, most of it thinking about him. But the Irishman was always a ghost, a rumour, an echo of a taunting laugh, and I finally had to be satisfied, for a while, that if he couldn’t be found, he wasn’t a threat.

Karla was still mad. She froze me out, and was invisible for days. I tried to stay mad at her, but couldn’t pull it off. I thought it was wrong of her to withhold the letter, especially after the writer had paid to have me killed. I felt aggrieved, but I missed her too much. Those days we spent together, connected and happy, were most of the good I knew.

You wanna know a sure sign that you’re with your soul mate?
a Nigerian smuggler once told me.
You just can’t stay mad at her. Am I right?

He was right, and he was wrong: soul mates can stay mad, for a while, and Karla was still mad. But at least the glacial distance meant that I didn’t have to talk about Concannon’s joke. I knew she’d heard about it. I knew she’d find it funny, and find a dozen clever ways to tease me about it.

Madame Zhou was still at large. No-one had seen or heard from her in weeks. The word
acid
was burning my mind, every time I thought of it. I didn’t want to pester Karla, and I didn’t care who she wanted to see. But I wanted to know that she was safe, until she decided to have breakfast with me again, so I kept a discreet watch over her, whenever time allowed.

She spent a lot of her time with Kavita Singh at the newspaper office, and at Lisa’s art gallery. I knew where she was at any time of the day or night, but I couldn’t talk to her. It was driving me crazy, and I got a little short-tempered.

My money changers were throwing bundles of money at me, instead of passing them to me. People started suggesting anger management remedies, after my third argument in as many days. They ranged from prostitutes, to drugs, to gang fighting, and ended with explosions.

‘Blowing shit up is the surest way to get a woman out of your mind,’ a friend confided. ‘I’ve blown up lots of stuff. People think it’s terrorists, but it’s just me, getting a woman out of my mind.’

I didn’t want to explode things, but I was still tetchy, and love-confused, so I consulted a professional.

‘You ever blow anything up for love?’ I asked my barber, Ahmed.

‘Recently?’ Ahmed replied.

Ahmed’s House of Style barber shop was one of the last to resist modernisation into a hairdressing salon. It had three red leather and chromium chairs. They were man-chairs, endowed with hypnotic powers, and no guy I knew could resist them for long.

The mirrors you faced, when you sat in those chairs, were covered with mug shots of previous victims, none of them happy. They were customers who’d agreed to have their photograph posted, in exchange for a free haircut. They were up there as a warning not to ask for, or accept, a free haircut at the House of Style.

Ahmed had a dark sense of humour, which is something you don’t search hard for in a barber, but Ahmed was a blood-in-the-bone democrat, and we rated him for that. He tolerated every opinion, and absolute freedom of speech was guaranteed in his barber shop. It was the only place I knew, in the whole city, where Muslims could call Hindus fanatics, and Hindus could call Muslims fanatics, and get all that stuff out of their systems without riots.

It was addictive. It was a bigotry bazaar, and customers seized it by the biased lapels. It was as though everyone in Ahmed’s House of Style was on truth serum. And all of it was forgiven and forgotten by everyone, as soon as a customer walked out into the street.

Ahmed shaved me with a razor as sharp as a Cycle Killer’s moustache. When you live on the wrong side of the legal tracks, the number of people you trust to shave you with a straight razor dwindles to not many. Ahmed was trustworthy, because he was so true to his craft that he couldn’t possibly kill me with a straight razor. It was against the barbers’ code.

If he wanted to kill me, he’d have to use one of his guns, like the gun he’d sold me a few months before, which was in Tito’s vault. Safe in the laws of his guild, I opened my throat to his honour and relaxed in absolute trust, and got myself shaved.

He wrapped my freshly skinned face in towels hot enough to force confessions. Satisfied that the punishment fit the crime, he whipped off the towels, and removed the shroud with a bullfighter’s flourish.

He brushed me off skilfully, powdered my neck where he’d shaved it, then offered me the entire range of his only aftershave,
Ambrosia de Ahmed
.

I was calm. I was cosseted by Ahmed’s professionalism. I was healed, and feeling serene. And I was just rubbing my face down with Ahmed’s ambrosia, when Danda walked in the door, calling me a motherfucker.

Danda: and me with aftershave.

I didn’t let him finish his tirade. I didn’t care what he called me, or why he called me it. I didn’t care what he wanted, or why he wanted it. I grabbed his shirt and slapped a cologne-wet palm at his red ear, and kept on slapping it until he broke free and ran away, taking a fair portion of my testiness with him.

I opened the door of the barber shop, and waved goodbye.

‘
Allah hafiz
, Ahmedbhai.’

‘Wait!’ Ahmed said, coming to join me at the door.

He turned up the collar of my sleeveless denim vest, and curled it into place.

‘That’s better.’

I walked outside and met Gemini George, on the step. He grabbed me by my carefully arranged vest.

‘Thank God, mate,’ Gemini said, coughing, panting and falling into a hug. ‘I’ve been looking everywhere for you.’

‘How’d you find me?’

Gemini George knew it was a professional question.

‘A pimp, in First Pasta Lane. He’s been following you around. They say you’re acting testy. He’s been betting you won’t last another two days, without visiting a girl.’

‘I’m fine,’ I said. ‘I just got cured.’

‘Good,’ he said nervously.

‘What’s the problem?’

‘It’s Scorpio,’ he replied quickly. ‘He’s gone crazy. You’ve gotta help me.’

‘Slow down. Scorpio can’t go crazy. Scorpio’s already crazy.’

‘Way, way crazier than Scorpio crazy. Twilight Zone crazy. He’s freaked out, man.’

‘Maybe we should talk about this somewhere.’

We sat in the Madras Café. We had
idli sambar
, followed by two rounds of strong, sweet tea. Gemini was a street guy, even though his friend was a millionaire: he ate first, and talked later.

When he sipped at his tea, washing down the last flavour of chilli and coconut, he told me the story. It began, as so many stories in India do, with a parade of saints.

The previous day there’d been a procession through the streets to venerate the memory of a local saint, who happened to be a lover of hashish. The streets were filled with devout holy men. It was the only day in the year when the cops couldn’t bust anyone for smoking, because most of the people smoking were holy men.

It was a festival designed for the Zodiac Georges, and Gemini had used it to lure Scorpio from his eagle’s nest at the Mahesh, and get out in the fresh air. It went well, at first, Gemini said. Scorpio found his street-shuffle walk again, remembering the rhythm of the road as Gemini walked beside him. He even got talkative. He began to tell his four bodyguards, hired from the hotel by the hour, about the doorways and alleyways they passed, and the adventures that he and Gemini had experienced in each one of them.

Then they turned a corner and found a sadhu, a holy man, barring their path. His hands were raised, one holding a knotted staff, and the other stained sacred red.

‘What happened?’ I asked him.

‘I said,
Namaste, ji. Like to swap dope? I’ve got some Manali.
’

‘Did he smoke with you?’

‘He didn’t get a chance. Before he could reply, Scorpio tried to step away, but the sadhu stopped him.’