Vikram Chandra - Sacred Games

'Hello?'

'Peri pauna, Ma.'

'Jite raho. Where have you been, Sartaj?'

'Work, Ma. There is a big case going. The biggest.'

She chuckled. 'That is exactly what your Papa-ji used to say. Every case was the biggest case in the history of the Bombay police.'

Sartaj could hear the pleasure in her voice, the affection for old spousal dodges. 'Yes, Ma. He used to tell me that also. But this case, it really is an important case. Really really important.'

But Ma wanted to talk about Papa-ji. 'He once investigated the theft of a dog, an Alsatian puppy. He told me that was also a really really important case. He stayed out whole nights, investigating leads. And it wasn't for the owners, even. I mean, they were rich, they would have got another dog after a week or two. But your Papa-ji kept on telling me, "Imagine how that poor little thing feels, taken away from home like that." He found it, a week later.'

'I know, Ma.' Sartaj had heard the story many times before, from both Ma and Papa-ji. When Papa-ji told it, the case became an object lesson in careful investigation and the cultivation of informers. He had never mentioned the puppy's feelings. But Ma, as she was doing now, always had Papa-ji stalking the streets, worried about the dog, and the puppy whining incessantly at her kidnapper's home. Papa-ji had found the dog in four days, through a widening series of neighbourhood interviews and some careful pressure on the shopkeepers at the corner of the street. The apradhi, when he was discovered, turned out to be the nephew of the owner of the general store one lane away. This nephew was addicted to the new craze for video games, and he had sold the dog to his neighbours on Nepean Sea Road, so that he could play Missile Command endlessly at a brand-new parlour down the street, the first in that part of the city. So the dog was duly brought back, and the nephew jailed and disciplined.

'And, you know, Pinky was so glad to be back at her real home,' Ma said, as she reached the end of this well-rehearsed family tale.

'Who is Pinky?'

'Sartaj, really, sometimes you don't listen at all. Pinky was her, the puppy.'

'Pinky was the puppy?'

'Yes, yes. What's so difficult about that?'

'No, no, Ma. I remember now.'

After Sartaj said his goodbyes and hung up, and thanked Shambhu, he stood outside the door of the Delite Dance Bar and thought about Pinky. In all his recountings of the case, Papa-ji had never mentioned that the animal in question was called Pinky. He'd probably thought it didn't matter, one way or the other. But somehow it did. Knowing that she was Pinky made the whole matter of the missing dog more poignant. It was impossible that Pinky was still alive, but maybe her children and grandchildren were thriving somewhere in the city. Maybe Sartaj had himself petted some of them. He could think of at least three, no, four quite handsome Alsatians with whom he had an acquaintance. Two of them were nervous neurotics, but Sartaj put that down to them having to live in small flats all their lives. It was enough to drive anyone a little crazy.

He slung a leg over the bike, and then sat still for a moment. The evening sun blazed off the office windows across the road and threw a haze over the traffic below. The roadside hawkers were doing good business, selling clothes and cards and footwear to passing pedestrians. To the left, three buildings away, there was a cluster of chaat-wallahs, on the crowded landing of the Eros Shopping Centre. Sartaj could smell the heated pao-bhaji, and suddenly he was hungry for papri chaat. He had been addicted to it as a kid, and finally Papa-ji had rationed him to one plate a week, on Fridays. Today was a Friday, he thought, and he got off the bike and walked down.

Amidst the sizzle of the concoctions on the tavas, Sartaj queued up behind a giggly group of collegians. The girls were sleekly dressed in short tops and tight jeans, and they all wore bright red and blue bracelets around their wrists, some version of bangles made out of rubber. One of them saw him looking at her friend's arm and turned away haughtily. They whispered together. Sartaj turned away to hide his smile. No doubt they were complaining to each other over this lecherous uncle, this cheap roadside Romeo. But he just felt kindly towards them, and was amazed that it had been so long since his college days that flared pants had made a comeback.

He got his papri chaat and walked around the ring of white plastic chairs that edged the patio until he found an empty one. Then he gave himself to the pleasure of the papri chaat, to its crunch and the lovely sourness of the tamarind. He must have made a low sound of satisfaction because the three-year-old boy peeking at him from behind his mother's knee laughed and pointed. Sartaj wrinkled his nose at the boy and took another bite. 'Mmmm,' he said.

His mobile rang. Sartaj fumbled with the paper plate, wiped his hand on a napkin and finally got to the phone. It was Iffat-bibi.

'What, have you forgotten your old friends?' she said. She was as coarse-voiced as ever.

'Arre, no, Bibi,' Sartaj said.

'Then you must still be angry with me.'

'Why do you say so?'

'Because if you need something, and you don't ask those close to you, then you must be angry.'

'Do I need something?'

'Maybe you don't, but your department has been flailing its arms all over Mumbai.'

'About what?'

'Maybe you don't want those men, if you want to play all these childish games.'

'Which men?'

'The man in the wheelchair. The foreigner. And the others.'

'You know where they are?'

'I may know.'

'Iffat-bibi, you have to tell me. It's very important.'

'We know it's important.'

'You don't understand. Do you know their location? It's very urgent.'

'Has this guru escaped with a lot of money? That's very bad of him.'

'All right. What do you want?'

Iffat-bibi sighed. 'Now you're speaking like a sensible man. But not like this, not over the phone.'

'Where are you right now?'

'In the Fort area.'

'It'll take a long time for me to get to Fort. And here every minute matters. You don't know what might happen, Iffat-bibi.'

'Then you had better catch the train, no?'

'Just tell me what you want. I promise I'll do it.'

'What I want, I can't ask for like this. Come. My boys will meet you at the station.'

* * *

So Sartaj went. He caught the fast train to VT, where two young men were waiting for him outside the terminal. They came up to him out of the crowd, and one of them said, 'Sartaj Saab. Bibi has sent us.' Sartaj followed them to the gate, and then up towards the Times of India building, where a nondescript black Fiat was waiting. Everyone got in, Sartaj at the rear left, and they drove on. Nobody spoke. The driver circled around, past Metro, and back towards D.N. Road. Sartaj watched the familiar streets slide by. Papa-ji had spent considerable chunks of his career down here. He had taken the young Sartaj for walks down his beats, pointing out places where crimes had been perpetrated and apradhis apprehended. The car now turned left into a U-turn, and then right, and Sartaj saw the small Technicolor temple he had loved as a child, its walls covered with brightly painted sculptures of gods and goddesses. Papa-ji and he used to meet there, 'next to the temple,' no need to say which one.

But the old shops were gone. Sartaj didn't recognize any on the lane they turned into, although the haphazard clusters of scooters and cycles were the same. And the crowds were thicker, even at six o'clock in the evening. The driver said, 'Here,' and they stopped.

Bibi's boys led Sartaj around a seafood restaurant, through a narrow alley, to the back of the building. They went up a staircase smelling of rotting fish, and then a door opened. They were inside a very small office, some sort of accountants, it looked like. There were ledgers on the shelves, which went all the way up to the ceiling. The desks were crammed in tight next to each other, and there still half a dozen employees bent over the computer screens. To the right, the space had been doubled by putting in a mezzanine, which contained three whole workstations thus suspended in mid-air. One of the men pointed Sartaj to the end of the office, where a cabin had been wedged into the triangular end of the room. Sartaj opened the door, and bent to get through.