Vikram Chandra - Sacred Games

Stop it. Just stop it. Sartaj cracked his knuckles, and the small pops brought him back to the pavement where he was walking now, to Apsara and Pyaar ka Diya and its posters, in which the lead pair paid tribute to the bent-back Raj-Nargis pose from Awaara . Concentrate on the problem at hand, Sartaj told himself. Do the job. Watch the crowd, look closely at the faces. Sartaj did that, but he was unable to rid himself completely of the memories, of the body parts which had been littered through the wreckage. An upper arm, a foot. Yes, bombs just went off. They exploded. Sartaj reached the end of his beat, and turned around and did it again.

Kamble came back across the road a little before the half-hour was up. The public had been mostly sucked into Apsara, or they had gone home, but some of the chokras were still hanging about. Sartaj watched Kamble stepping across the divider, and worried about his lack of patience. Strength was good to have, and courage was sometimes necessary, but the main requirement of the job was to be able to spend countless hours completing small, boring, maybe meaningless tasks. Katekar, now, would never have wanted to leave Apsara so early. But Katekar was dead.

'Do you think the kattus did it?' Kamble said.

'What?'

'The bomb. If there's a bomb in the city, it's got to be the Muslims who brought it in.'

'Yes. That is true. It must be the Muslims.'

'So let's go and talk to this Zoya kutiya. Maybe she knows something. If we go straight to her house, she can't turn us away. After all, we're policemen.'

After all. That was true. 'Calm down. There's no use rushing in. We have time. You said it yourself, it has been months. If there is even a bomb, it hasn't gone off yet. It's not going to go off tonight. Or tomorrow morning.'

Kamble spat into the gutter. He stretched his shoulders back. 'Of course. I'm not saying that. But we could just go and talk to the randi. So what if she's acting like one big film star? That's all she is, one randi. Anyway, you page me and tell me when we need action.'

'I will. We can't summon her to the station, we have limitations. So we have to figure out an approach to her. We don't want to scare her.'

'Fine, fine. Are we finished here? I'm going to find myself a woman. Too much bomb tension, bhai saab.'

'Just one more minute. I have an idea.' Sartaj was watching, across the road, K.R. Jayanth the distinguished pocket-maar strolling towards the bus stop, licking at an ice-cream cone. Everyone, it seemed, wanted to give themselves a little after-work treat. 'Come on.'

Sartaj led the way across the divider, and he came up on Jayanth's right. He matched Jayanth's stride, and walked very close to him, just like a friend taking the evening air. Jayanth remained calm, Sartaj was pleased to note. He was an old hand, and likely to be reasonable. Jayanth just edged away slightly to the left, and kept at his cone. But now Kamble was on his other side, hemming him in.

'Namaste, Uncle,' Sartaj said.

Jayanth nodded. 'You're police,' he said.

Sartaj had to laugh, from the sheer pleasure of meeting a practised professional. 'Yes,' he said. 'Made good money today?'

Jayanth took a bite out of the cone. 'I don't know what you are talking about.'

Sartaj put a hand on his shoulder. 'Arre, Uncle. We have been watching you work all evening. With the two boys. You are very good.'

'What boys?'

'One in a blue shirt, one in dark glasses. Come on, Jayanth Uncle, don't annoy me now. You've come out of retirement, you're working hard. Nothing wrong with that.'

'My name is not Jayanth.'

Sartaj cuffed Jayanth in the face. It was a short blow, with the back of the hand that had been resting on Jayanth's shoulder, but there was some knuckle in it and it rocked Jayanth back. Kamble was staring in disgust at his right foot, which now had a long splatter of ice-cream along the front.

'Let's just take the bastard back to the station,' he said. 'He'll remember who he is there.'

On this busy street, only one woman had seen the blow. She was hurrying away from them now, throwing horrified glances back at Sartaj. She was carrying a netting bag full of vegetables and wore bright red sindoor in her hair. Sartaj ignored the impulse to explain to her, this is just the language we speak, nothing really bad will happen to the nice old man . He turned back to Jayanth. 'So, Uncle. You want to come back to the station with us?'

'All right.' Jayanth threw away his empty cone. 'I am Jayanth. I don't know you.'

'Sartaj Singh.'

'You don't work in this zone. How much do you want?'

'You have a setting with the local officers?'

Jayanth shrugged. Of course he had an arrangement with the local boys, but he wasn't going to give away information. 'We don't want to trouble you that way,' Sartaj said. 'Or arrest you. Not at all. But we need you to do some work for us.'

'I am an old man.'

'Yes, Uncle. But you don't really have to work. Just keep your eyes open.' Sartaj told him that he was to look out for a chokra in a red T-shirt with such-and-such logo, with a black tooth, that he was to discover the chokra's name, and if possible his habitation. That he was not to alarm Red T-shirt, or hint in any way that big, ugly, violent policemen were looking for him. That he was to call Sartaj or Kamble at this-and-this number as soon as he had a line on the boy.

'I can't go around looking into boys' mouths,' Jayanth said. 'They will think I am some pervert, they are very smart.'

'I know, Uncle. You just look for the right red T-shirt. Then you talk to him. Be patient. Don't rush anything. Just do your usual work, and keep your eyes open.'

'Okay,' Jayanth said.

'He'll be here,' Kamble said.

'Of course,' Jayanth said peevishly. Street chokras were very territorial, they had all their corners and areas marked out, down to borders drawn along the middle of streets. And they defended their regions as fiercely as generals battling over holy lands, everyone knew this. 'But you think he'll be here in the same T-shirt?' And then, to Kamble, 'What are you doing ?'

Kamble was holding Jayanth's trouser pocket open and groping about in it. 'Don't worry,' he said. 'I'm not picking your pocket. Don't worry. And don't worry about the chokra. You just keep alert, keep looking. He'll show up.' He held up a brown leather wallet, worn down past the polish to the bare hide. 'You don't carry much money, Uncle.'

Jayanth didn't miss a beat. 'Too much crime on the streets nowadays,' he said.

Kamble chortled appreciatively. 'Six hundred rupees, and a picture of…What god is this?'

'Murugan.'

'No I-card, nothing at all.'

On the other side, in Jayanth's other pocket, something crinkled under Sartaj's gentle patting. Sartaj fished with his forefinger, and drew out an inland letter, folded twice over.

'Malad,' Sartaj said. The letter itself was in some incomprehensible southern script, but the address was in English. 'You're working very close to home, Uncle.'

'I'm an old man. Can't travel too far.'

Kamble gave him back the wallet. 'You moved out of Dharavi anyway. I bet it's a nice apartment in Malad. For an old man you make a good amount of money. Even if you don't carry it on yourself.' Jayanth flinched a little under Kamble's beady-eyed hostility, and looked down.

Sartaj wrote down the address. 'Why are you out here anyway, Uncle, at this age? Isn't your America-wallah son helping you any more?'

Jayanth waggled his head from one side to the other, and looked quite as sad as any filmi father who had endured a lifetime of family quarrels and ungratefulness and tragedies. 'He's got children of his own now,' he said. 'His own responsibilities.'

'He married an American woman?'

'Yes.'