Gregory Roberts - The Mountain Shadow

‘I’ve got money.’

‘And you should keep it.’

‘We don’t know how long we’ll be here in Bombay,’ she said, taking a sip from a flask and passing it to me. ‘Let’s enjoy this ride as much as we can, and as safely as we can.’

‘The detective business isn’t on the top ten list of safe occupations. I’m pretty sure it’s not on the top hundred.’

‘It’s still way above crime and punishment, Shantaram.’

Crime, and punishment. How many times had I heard or thought that phrase, that echo of Fate’s laugh, in the last few days? How many times does it take?

‘I don’t see a place for me in that set-up, Karla.’

‘You’re a silent partner,’ she said. ‘Like me.’

‘I am?’

‘The silenter the better.’

‘ Silenter? ’

‘You talk to people that Didier and Naveen can’t reach. If we have to talk to those guys, who’s gonna do that but you, or me? Why not you and me together?’

‘Karla,’ I smiled, wanting to take her clothes off, and my clothes off, and stop talking. ‘I can’t move from committing crimes to solving them. My skill-set is on the villain side.’

‘We’re specialising,’ Karla said, taking another sip from the flask, ‘in missing persons.’

‘Karla,’ I laughed. ‘You and me, we are missing persons.’

She laughed again.

‘Cases that the cops have given up on,’ she said.

‘If the cops gave up, there’s probably a good reason.’

She selected a joint from the brass case, and lit it.

‘Not necessarily. Sometimes they just want the case to go away, and a case that could get solved goes unsolved. And sometimes they’re paid to look the other way. Runaway husbands, missing brides, prodigal sons, we’re the office of last resort, for lost loves.’

‘I don’t see any money in it, Karla. I’d be living on your dollar, it seems to me.’

‘There probably won’t be any dollars. Not yet. It’ll cost more than it makes. But private security and private detection will boom, in this country. It’s a good bet. And fortunately, I’ve got enough chips to play the game, for a while. If it bugs you, keep a tab, and pay me back when the business takes off.’

‘Speaking of missing persons, any word of Ranjit?’

‘Not yet. There was a rumour he was seen on a yacht, in the Maldives. I’m trying to check it out. For the time being, his proxy vote makes me a serious player. Good thing he was a lousy boss, and I wasn’t. His entire news service is helping me track him down. Ironic, ain’t it?’

‘Are you still at the Taj?’

‘Yeah. It’s okay, for now. They’ve got good security downstairs, and I’ve got better security upstairs.’

‘Have you seen Didier?’

‘He’s been hanging with me. He’s pretty spooked about the acid throwers. You know how vain he is.’

‘He doesn’t call it vanity. He calls it good taste, and I think we both agree.’

‘One way or another,’ she said, ‘I’m gonna remove that woman from my harm’s way.’

She shoved all the things aside and lay back on the blankets, one hand behind her head.

‘So, Shantaram, now that you know my plans, are you in?’

Fate leads you to what you desire, and Time makes sure that it’s the wrong moment. Was I with her, in her lost love detective agency plan? No. I couldn’t work with the cops, and I couldn’t turn anyone in to the cops, which made me a lousy detective.

She knew it. She saw it in my eyes, and in my breathing: the heavy breath of worry that we weren’t on the same path away from the mountain.

‘Stop thinking,’ she said. ‘Tomorrow is just like you. It’s never on time.’

The wind in moonlight, painting leaf-shadow lace on her skin. Love in all the past lives, every time we’d loved each other and lost each other: starlight on her sleeping face. There was no star in my sky that night: no light to guide me on that sea of what we were, and what we weren’t. But I didn’t care. She was asleep, in my arms, and I was already sailing home.

I didn’t throw in with Karla, Naveen and Didier in the Lost Love Bureau. Call me stubborn. Naveen did. Call me crazy. Didier did. Call me a free spirit. Karla didn’t. She didn’t speak to me at all. She didn’t even respond to my messages, but sent a message of her own, through Naveen, to stay away until she cooled off. I got hotter, instead, and bought Didier’s black market crime portfolio. He’d become a legitimate businessman, a partner in the Lost Love Bureau, two doors down from my own, and decided to turn his back on black business. I let his drug and callgirl rackets slide, and focused on his money changing operations. It took me a while to sort out the details. I was buying white money that had become black money, making it white again through a black bank, and figuring small weekly margins on a high daily turnover: make or break. It was like the stock market, without the lies and corruption.

When Karla finally responded, late in the second afternoon after coming down from the mountain, I raced to meet her at the sea wall in Juhu where we’d talked of Lisa, our own lost love, weeks before.

And as evening strollers passed us, smiling happily, and the sun began to fall, Karla wept and told me she wasn’t angry with me: she was troubled by Ranjit and Lisa.

‘What was Ranjit doing there with Lisa that night? What was she doing with him? Since I came back to Bombay, I can’t stop thinking about it.’

She cried into my chest, and then stopped crying, as I held her.

‘Why don’t I understand it, Shantaram?’

Karla was two beats ahead of every mind she met. The mystery tormented her, where it was just a slow burn in me; sand in the wind, for her, and sand in an hourglass with Ranjit’s name on it for me. I had to tell her to let it go, just as she’d once told me.

‘We’ll find him,’ I said. ‘And when we do, we’ll find out what happened. Until then we’ll have to stop thinking about it, or we’ll both go nuts. I mean, more nuts than we already are.’

She smiled.

‘There’s something not right,’ she said. ‘Something I should know, but don’t know. Something right there in front of me. But you’re right – if I don’t let it go, it’ll drive me crazy.’

Vermilion sunset, the last grace of the sun, washed flaws and faults from every face and form on the promenade: an ocean of evening light showing only the beautiful things we are inside.

Gentle breezes chased one another along the sea wall, playing through skirts and shirts of walkers on the way. The first few car headlights began to pass.

Pale shadows of palm leaves drifted across her face, tracing the exact curve of her neck to her lips, every time a car passed. Karla.

‘Is it your pride that won’t let you join Didier and Naveen and me?’ she asked, a harder eye turned toward me.

‘No.’

‘Pride is the only sin we can’t see in ourselves, you know.’

‘I’m not proud.’

‘The hell you’re not. But that’s okay. I like pride in a man. I like it in a woman, too. But don’t let it stop you now. We can make this work.’

‘How, Karla?’

‘We might be here a week, okay, but we might still be here three years from now. This can start to build in three months. Security is the big thing in India in the next fifty years. I’m telling you. I’ve had two years to study this, with Ranjit’s best advisors.’

‘You’re serious, aren’t you?’

‘I’m always serious, when it comes to love.’

‘Love?’ I grinned, like an idiot.

‘Pay attention,’ she jabbed at me. ‘I’m talking business.’