Bharati Mukherjee - Miss New India

And another thing: she knew, almost immediately, that she was to blame. If she had disappeared from everyone's life after the hours in jail, they'd all be safe. If she hadn't come to Bangalore, none of this would have happened. She had brought destruction on her own home, and on Minnie and Husseina and even poor Ahilya, and now the same thing was about to happen to Parvati and Auro.

It was Tookie, of course, and her new friends, and her Rajoo. Bang-a-Buck had got to her.

Anjali could hear the distant, muffled sounds of movement. She could picture the two men somehow cracking open the rear door, or cutting the window and not letting it fall to the floor to waken the house. She could imagine them now in the kitchen, perhaps with flashlights, then moving into the living room and clearing the tables of anything valuable… but when she ran a mental inventory of the downstairs tabletops, there were no valuables worth the effort of breaking in. They weren't like Minnie's tables, laden with "priceless" silver trays, "irreplaceable plates," heavy sterling silver that had once graced the mouth of a king, and thinner-than-thin "historical" crystal goblets and champagne flutes.

And then it came to her: the only valuables were the paintings, by the Bangla women artists. She had no sense of their value, but she remembered what Parvati's friends had said: the paintings were nice, of course, but such brilliant investments.

In the end it was an easy decision. I owe my life to Parvati, and my life is worthless anyway. Anjali lifted Dinesh's hockey stick from its place on the wall. It floated like a feather in her hands. The stairs were just outside her bedroom door, and as she slowly descended, barefoot, the noises, even the male voices, grew more distinct. They were in the downstairs living room. Why didn't Auro wake up? But of course, he snored too loudly. Some nights, she could hear him all the way upstairs.

No lights were on, but moonlight was pouring through the windows. The burglars had lifted two paintings off their brackets and leaned them against the wall, and with their backs to her, they were working on the next. They were laughing and talking loud enough to be understood, had she spoken Kannada, as though they'd been assured the house was empty. She knew the location of every chair and table in the living room; she could negotiate the passage to the far wall with her eyes closed.

The men half-turned, facing each other, in order to lift the painting off its hooks. And that's when one of the men must have seen her from the corner of his eye; he gave a shout and dropped his end of the painting, and their eyes met and she remembered his face, and that's when Anjali aimed for his head and let the hockey stick fly. It caught him between the eyes, across the bridge of the nose, and he screamed as a plume of blood shot straight out; then he staggered and fell. The second goondah dropped his end of the painting, and it flopped toward her, separating her from him as he frantically turned his head in every direction. He was cursing loudly, and she screamed back at him, in Hindi, threatening to kill him as she had his partner. But he kept the painting between them and she couldn't squeeze her way around it and the sofa it had glanced off. Please, Auro, she prayed, wake up, call the police, but the bedroom door remained partially closed. And so she screamed again, "Thieves! Thieves!" in English, Bangla, and Hindi, and out of nowhere, from the darkened hallway behind him, Malhar leaped upon the man's shoulders, the low growl no longer a warning but a prelude to full attack. The thief fell, hands across the face, and the dog fastened on one wrist and shook it till the man's arm broke.

It was over in seconds. Both men lay in blood, moaning, and the bedroom door opened and Parvati, still tying the sash of her nightdress, cried, "Anjali! What have you done?" Malhar was dragging his trophy by the wrist down to his hiding place at the end of the hall. And then Parvati saw for herself the damage, the paintings, the man at Anjali's feet, and heard the screams of the second goondah as Malhar pulled him into the shadows like a lamb bone to be gnawed over in the dark.

Parvati screamed. Auro shouted, "Wha?" And upstairs Anjali heard a door close.

THEY HAD THEIR breakfast, or at least their tea and granola with yogurt, at four A.M. The medical vans had taken away the burglars. Swati and her sister had swabbed the floors.

Inspector Raja Venkatesh, known socially to Auro and Parvati, was on the scene. By Anjali's standards he was the perfect Bollywood police inspector: an aging heartthrob, efficient, trim, mustached, with epaulettes, graying temples, and perfect English. Even at four in the morning his starched trouser creases were knife-sharp, and his polished shoes reflected the kitchen spotlights.

"These guys are known miscreants," he said. The second thief had been carried away, sobbing and trembling, as Malhar shadowed him to the door. The first goondah was in a coma from a fractured skull and had been carried out on a litter. "No legal jeopardy attaches to your action, sir," he said to Auro. "Warranted self-defense."

With her recent police history, better that Anjali not be a part of it.

"I trust the same immunity extends to my brave watchdog," Auro laughed. He patted Malhar's broad bottom.

"Of course, sir. And my condolences for the other dog. Poisoned, no doubt." He sipped his tea. "I had no idea of your proficiency with a hockey stick, Mr. Banerji. Maybe we should be looking for you on the club tennis court?"

"Hardly." He chuckled. "Schoolboy skills."

"So brave," said Parvati. "But I do hope the poor boy pulls through."

Rabi was slurping his granola and yogurt. "Those poor boys knew what they were looking for, didn't they?" he said.

Inspector Venkatesh nodded. "They apparently were sent here on a mission-who sent them is still to be determined. Have you heard of All-Karnataka Auction House?"

"Nothing at all," said Auro.

"Nor have I," said Parvati.

Fortunately, Inspector Venkatesh didn't look at Anjali. She remembered the van, and Rajoo peeling off his hundred-rupee notes.

"Who's behind this auction house?" asked Rabi.

"We have traced the abandoned van to that company. Those boys could have been employees." He seemed to be mulling over a mountain of additional commentary. "I need not mention to collectors like you that Indian antiquities-and what we might think of as yesterday's rubbish-have become international attractions. The big houses, the London and New York and Tokyo markets, they are involved with local providers who are not always, as we can see, on the up and up."

And then, almost as if compelled to confess under duress, Anjali interjected, "I think I remember that company removing objects during the Bagehot House riot." It was the least, and the most, she could say. She should have shut up.

He wrote it down. "You were a witness to such removals?"

"I saw a van with that name on it."

"Anjali was a tenant there," Parvati explained. The inspector took the news quietly. "Yes, Miss Anjali Bose. I am already knowing," he said.

She didn't say everything she knew: His name is Lalu. He is the brother of my fellow Bagehot House tenant Sunita Sampath. He looked like a frightened mouse, just like her. He worked at Glitzworld for a man named Rajoo. Everyone knows Rajoo. He sent food and booze to Minnie Bagehot. I ate the mutton stew that Rajoo sent. Read Dynamo's columns. It's all connected.

"Miss Bose, let me be the first to inform you that yesterday a passport in your name was found in an abandoned purse in Amsterdam. And yesterday, the body of a young Indian lady was discovered in an Amsterdam hotel. We believe it was your Bagehot House co-tenant, Miss Shiraz. She hanged herself by a T-shirt from the shower stall."