Gregory Roberts - The Mountain Shadow

I parked the bike in a row of motorcycles outside KC College. I gave the parking attendant a hundred-rupee note, and asked him to keep his eyes open for dangerous types.

‘They’re college kids,’ he said in Hindi. ‘They’re all dangerous. Who knows what they’ll do next?’

‘More dangerous than the kids are.’

‘Oh, okay. You got it,’ he winked.

I walked the half-block to Sanjay’s mansion, and rang the bell. An armed Afghan guard opened the door, recognised me and ushered me inside.

I found Sanjay in the breakfast room, at the end of the house. A row of windows looked out on a distressed garden, bound by high walls. Sanjay was in his pyjamas and a dark blue dressing-gown with a monogrammed pocket.

A breakfast big enough for three big henchmen covered the table, but Sanjay was drinking tea, and smoking a cigarette.

There was only one chair in the room, and Sanjay didn’t rise from it.

‘Good work,’ he said, looking me up and down. ‘But then, you always did good work, didn’t you? Your money, for this job, will be delivered to you. All your things from the passport factory have been removed. They’re in that red case, near the front door. That leaves only goodbye. So, goodbye.’

‘How was the mission compromised? Why did I come home early?’

He stubbed out the cigarette, took a sip of tea, placed the cup very delicately on the saucer and leaned back in the chair.

‘You know why I’m glad to see you go, Lin?’ he asked.

‘Because you think I’m made for better things?’

He laughed. I’d known him for years, but I’d never heard that laugh before. It must’ve been one he saved for the right goodbye. Then he stopped laughing.

‘Because, you’re not a team player,’ he said grimly, ‘and you never will be. You’re a black sheep. Look around you. Everyone belongs to something or someone. You’re the odd man out. You don’t belong anywhere. You don’t belong to anyone. And now, you don’t belong here.’

‘Was it because Lisa died? Is that why you had a man at the airport?’

‘Like I said, you’re not a team player. There was no way to know how you’d react. You were in Madras, when it happened.’

‘When did you know?’

‘Five minutes after the cops, of course. But you had already started, and the job was too important to stop.’

‘Five minutes?’

‘You never use the phone, so I knew there was a good chance you wouldn’t come to know about it. It was my decision to keep it quiet until the job was complete, and it was my decision to have contacts for you, every step of the way.’

‘Your decision.’

‘Yes. If you don’t like it, well, you know, there’s always the fuck-you option.’

‘You didn’t tell me that my girlfriend died.’

‘ You’re the one who wanted to keep her out of the family. It was your choice that we never met her, when we know the Mothers, sisters and wives of every brother in the Company.’

I looked at him, angry enough to fight him. My heart was thumping tribal music. I wondered how many times leaders lived through murderous seconds like those, without ever knowing that Death, Himself, had been lured into the room on a false alarm.

‘You still have a faint shadow of my protection,’ Sanjay said. ‘It covers you, because it would not look well for me , if a former employee was killed in the first two weeks that he left my service. But the clock is ticking. Don’t make me brush that shadow from your back sooner. Now, get the fuck out of here, and let me finish my breakfast in peace.’

I opened the door and was about to leave, but he spoke again. They always speak again: they always want the last word, even when they already had it.

‘I’m sorry about your girl,’ he said. ‘It’s a sad business. Must be hell for her family. But don’t let your feelings push you into hasty action. The Company will let you burn, the next time you fuck up.’

I left the mansion and rode to the food stands for office workers at Nariman Point. I was still angry, and hungry. Standing with dozens of others, I ate hot bread rolls, filled with eggs, fried potatoes and spiced vegetables, and drank a pint of milk.

I’d been skipping meals, and ducking sleep. I had to work out. I had to stay sharp. Every street guy in the south would know within hours that I was officially out of the Company. There were a few, with grudges, who’d only held back because I was a Company man. They could come out snapping, when they knew I was a lone wolf.

Half an hour’s ride away on that cold river of truth was a gym, in Worli. Some abandoned mill complexes had been transformed into beauty parlours and health centres. A retired gangster from the Sanjay Company, named Comanche, had set up a gym there as his home and place of business.

He was a friend, a stand-up gangster, and we’d fought with knives against rival gangs together, twice, and been cut both times. That’s stuff you don’t forget.

Comanche was a true independent, allowing members of any mafia Company to exercise in his gym, and cops as well, so long as no-one said a word against the Sanjay Company.

I stripped to jeans and boots, and pushed weight for an hour. Half an hour of shadow boxing gave me a cool-down.

The kids in the gym, all local and poor, were shy at first, although doing the young manhood thing of making sure I clearly understood they weren’t afraid. When they saw that I was okay, they joined in the shadow boxing with me, training hard.

Showered, dressed and refreshed, I looked in the spotted mirror.

My eyes were bright, and clear. Calm settled on me like flakes of autumn. When all else fails , the sign above the mirror said, steel it out .

‘You need a lat machine,’ I said to Comanche, passing him enough money to buy a new lat machine.

Comanche looked at the money.

‘That was an expensive training session,’ he said, frowning.

‘Loved every minute of it. But put a little window in there, yaar. If someone ever forces me to imagine what a snake’s asshole smells like, I now know where to start.’

‘Fuck you,’ he laughed. ‘Seriously, what’s the money for?’

‘I’m hoping you’ll consider it a membership fee.’

‘But Company men are free. You know that.’

‘I’m not with the Company any more, Comanche. I’m freelance, now.’

I hadn’t said it to anyone but a close friend, and after so long in the brotherhood it sounded strange, even in my own ears.

‘What?’

‘I’m out, Comanche.’

‘But, Lin, it’s -’

‘It’s okay. Sanjay’s good with it. Happy, in fact.’

‘Sanjay’s… Sanjay’s… good with it?’

‘I just came from there, man. He’s good with it.’

‘He is?’

‘My word.’

‘Okay.’

‘But, I’ll need a new place to train, now that I can’t use the Company gym. So, how about it? Will you have me as a member?’

He was confused and afraid, but he was a friend, and he trusted me. His face gradually softened, and he extended his hand.

‘ Jarur ,’ he said, shaking hands. ‘You’re welcome here. But I have to say, you’d be wiser to leave Bombay, man, under the circumstances.’

‘Maybe, brother,’ I said, walking away. ‘But would She let me go?’

Karla will be pleased

to accept the company of Shantaram

at 8 pm, in her suite.

It was written in her hand: the precise, fluent script I liked more than any other calligraphic style I’d ever seen. I wanted to keep it, but I was trading punches with a dirty world: if an enemy put his fingers on the note, I’d want to beat him for it.