Bombay Monsoon, page 17
This was an odd conversation to be having in my own head. My parents had raised me to regard skin color as irrelevant, to me personally at least. Of course, they said, many people gave it too much importance, some for all the wrong reasons. I understood why a black man sees color. He’s likely to be on the wrong end of prejudice for his. But the white racists disgusted me. Bullies who bully those they can get away with bullying.
“You’ve got white skin,” she said. “You’ll never truly understand.”
I said nothing more. But if this remarkable woman thought of herself as somehow less than beautiful because of an arbitrary esthetic standard, I wanted to hold her tight, make her feel safe, and let her know she was perfect.
Even with the power back on, we burned candles and diyas instead of electric lights. Sushmita didn’t want to alert nosy neighbors to our presence. Not that there was any house in view, but she was exercising maximum care.
I’d somehow managed to make an edible dish of cabbage, so we had that and a plate of leftover dal and rice she’d made earlier. We talked late into the night. She asked me about my football career, such as it was, and I told her about the worst defeat of my sporting life, Harvard Beats Yale 29-29.
“That sounds like a draw,” she said. “You Americans really should learn English. Or maths.”
Ignoring her comment, I propped myself up on an elbow to tell the tale.
“It was my sophomore year and I was riding the bench.” I had to explain sophomore and riding the bench to her. She watched me with big, sparkling eyes, as if I weren’t boring her. “Both teams were undefeated, facing off in the final game of the season for the Ivy League title. We were leading by sixteen points late in the fourth quarter. And then disaster struck. Harvard scored twice in the last forty-two seconds—sixteen points.”
“Is that a lot?” she asked.
“Yes. That’s a whole lot. So they tied us, but the feeling was that Harvard had won. I can’t argue with that, because it sure felt as if we’d lost.”
Sushmita caressed my cheek. “I’m sure Yale would have won if you’d played, Danny.”
She was teasing, of course. But she made up for it soon enough. She was natural and unashamed. I wondered how she could be so sensitive about her complexion but not her body. Later, she caught me gazing at the silky hair on the nape of her neck, visible when she tied up her tresses in a ponytail.
“Stop staring, you pervert,” she said, and gave me a playful shove.
I told her she was beautiful. She said I was a frog. I shoved her back. We wrestled. Not sure who won. I think it was a tie. Like Yale and Harvard.
The next morning we slept in. No run for me. Sushmita said it might cause talk. I had no idea of the time. I hadn’t wound my watch, and it had stopped somewhere around three in the morning. We lingered on top of the sheets, in no hurry to get up or do anything. Two days passed this way, with no concerns about the time.
That last night, however, things changed. We both grew quiet as the minutes ticked away, inching us nearer to our date with the real world. The ease and playful joy we’d both experienced for three full days waned as the earth turned and morning drew closer.
Her head resting on my chest, Sush asked me what we were going to do. I told her I didn’t know. In fact, I was debating with myself.
“You’ve got that look again,” she said. The light was low, but she knew I was brooding. “It’s the same look you had the night you announced you were leaving Poona. Please tell me, Danny. What is it?”
But I couldn’t. Not yet. Even if I believed I needed to know her intentions in order to make up my own mind, I still couldn’t bring myself to tell her I was considering turning on Willy.
“I’m sad that our time is over,” I said instead. “You’ll drop me at the station and go back to Poona. I’ll be in Bombay, miserable.”
“You don’t think I’ll be miserable, too? Alone with a man I don’t love?”
“Don’t you?”
“We’re comfortable together, but it’s not love. It hasn’t been for some time now. I want to be yours, Danny, but it’s impossible. Not now. Not yet.”
Her words nearly changed my mind. Maybe I should tell her about Ranjit and Harlan and Willy. Maybe she was trying to tell me to trust her. But in the end, I was more afraid to lose her outright than I was eager to win her forever.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
SATURDAY, JULY 19, 1975, 3:11 P.M.
I stopped at my flat to drop off my bag. Ramu/Ranjit had cleaned up the mess left by my burglar, and everything looked normal again. I worried Bikas might try a second time, though I didn’t believe he’d actually kill me. At least not yet. He’d never get the film if he did. Still, I wasn’t resting easy. I decided to contact Lokhande for advice.
I headed to the office. Truth be told, I half-expected to find a pink slip waiting for me on my desk. Instead there were several messages from New York, requesting information and updates for a feature they were working on there. Details on the suppression of civil liberties and democratic franchises. They wouldn’t be able to list me as a contributor, due to the censorship in country, but I would eventually get credit for my part in the story once the Emergency was lifted.
There were notes from Frank, too. He didn’t seem to care that I’d been gone a full week, and he was eager to read my piece on the cinema business. That was going to be tricky since I hadn’t written one.
“Where’s Frank?” I asked Janice, who’d joined me for afternoon tea.
“In Goa. He won’t be back until a week from Monday. I think he’s met someone.”
“A biped?” I asked.
“Some woman with UNESCO. She’s stationed here for a few months. Working on health care issues or hunger. I couldn’t quite hear properly when he was telling his friend on the phone the other day. But what about you? You fell off the face of the earth for a while there.”
“I got some bad food somewhere,” I lied. “Then I was traveling out to Juhu every day on the train for my film story.”
I asked her if Bikas had called again. She said no. Strange, I thought. I would have expected him to be hopping mad after I’d stood him up at Sassoon Docks. Why hadn’t he tried to reach me?
We chatted a while more over Vikky’s sweet tea. Janice wanted to know about Ramu.
“Did he really climb up the side of the building?” she asked.
I recalled Ranjit/Ramu’s cool demeanor when explaining the incident to me at the Blue Diamond Hotel. It had been a dry run, he said. A chance to see if he could make the climb and break in when Willy and Sushmita were out of town. I shuddered, imagining the heights. It was quite inconvenient that he got caught, but he managed to keep his identity from the police. They were always on the take from gangsters and criminals—possibly even Willy Smets—so he couldn’t risk word getting out that he was CBI and not a servant.
“He did, indeed,” I said. “I saw it myself. Me, I’m scared to death of heights. I would have fallen to a spectacular death, which is a recurring nightmare for me.”
Janice finished her tea and announced that she was packing it in for the week. It was Saturday, after all, and we were both off the next day.
“Plans with Mr. Dreamboat?” I teased.
“As a matter of fact, yes. We’re going to see a film, then we’ll have a late dinner at my place. Perhaps I shouldn’t be sharing such details with you, Mr. Jacobs.”
“Why not? We’re friends, aren’t we?”
“If you say so. But if we’re friends, look out or I’ll ask you about that pretty girl you brought to Bombay Gym last week. Did you deliver my gift to her?”
Sushmita was the last person I wanted to discuss just then. But I’d opened the door with my own questions about her gentleman friend, Shirish. The mention of Sushmita’s name took me back several hours to our goodbye at the Lonavala station. Bucking societal norms, she’d leaned over from the driver’s seat—still no seat belt—and kissed me long on the lips. I don’t know if anyone could see us inside the car, but it was a risky move.
She said she’d get a message to me the next day or the day after. She told me not to give up on her. Not to forget that I’d told her I loved her. Of course she’d never returned the favor, I thought, but perhaps for good reason. I was free and she, not quite.
“Mr. Jacobs, you’re not listening to me,” said Janice, pulling me back from the memory. “Did you deliver my gift?”
“Sorry, Miss Spenser. She’s out of town. I’ll get it to her as soon as possible.”
She wished me a pleasant Sunday and was off to her healthy and perfectly uncomplicated friendship with a good man. I envied her the normalcy. The averageness of her romance. I had no idea how passionate the two of them were behind closed doors, but I would have loved to exchange their conventionality for my train wreck of a life.
I spent several hours more in the office. First I phoned Lokhande, who was out, and left a message with my work number. Then I made some calls to my film industry contacts, checking in again with Ravi Om Gopal. He didn’t want to have anything to do with me or my story, but finally agreed to slip me the name of a director who’d been arrested three days before in yet another roundup by Mrs. Gandhi’s police. I had to swear I’d never mention where I’d gotten the name.
“Anonymous source,” I told him. “Don’t worry. You’re safe.”
I researched the director in question—Mukesh Sharma—for the better part of an hour, and found what I thought was his mother’s address in Lower Parel. I made a note to contact her in the morning or Monday. There was also a minor starlet who’d been linked to his name in the film biz gossip columns a few months earlier. I’d try to find her as well.
Lokhande returned my call around seven. He thanked me for the bottle of Chivas Ramu had dropped off for him.
“But next time, Dan, don’t send it to the station. That makes it look like a bribe.”
What did he mean next time? Was he expecting more imported booze from me? And wasn’t it a bribe?
We got down to business. I explained the situation to him, that Bikas had broken into my flat and I’d appreciate some police protection. Maybe an officer posted in the lobby?
“Why did he break into your flat?” he asked.
“I think he wanted to threaten me. He’s changed his mind about the interview, I guess.”
I didn’t mention that Bikas had ransacked the place. That would suggest he’d been looking for something. I was still keeping the existence of the film—the film I’d lost—from Lokhande, of course.
“Why didn’t he simply threaten you by phone? Why risk getting caught?”
“I don’t know. Can you help me?”
There was a pause on the other end of the line. At length, Lokhande said he’d stop by to check on me in the coming days, but it sounded as if I was in little danger.
“He’s given you his warning,” he said. “No reason for him to do anything else to you if you don’t print your story. Unless …”
“Unless what?” I asked, thinking I already knew the answer.
“Unless you have something he wants and won’t give it to him.”
SUNDAY, JULY 20, 1975, 9:03 A.M.
Huge waves were breaking against the seawall along Marine Drive, launching great plumes of water that rose high into the air before cascading down onto the footpath and anyone foolish enough to be out and about. Me, for one. I ran hard through the rain, hurdling the puddles, as I cursed myself for having left Poona. No one had forced me. I could have told Harlan and Ranjit to go to hell. I could have continued sleeping with Sushmita. We could have managed Chhotu, as she’d explained.
Around one in the afternoon, I crossed the road under an umbrella and took a table in the coffee shop at the President. The buffet would be fine. I only picked at it anyway. What I really wanted wasn’t on the menu, à la carte or otherwise. I wanted Sushmita. And if I couldn’t have her, then I wanted distraction. Diversion. What the Indians called “time-pass.” Let the day get itself over with and give me Monday morning so I could go back to work and do something to forget about her.
What I got instead was Russell Harlan parking himself in front of me at my table.
“I thought you were in Poona,” I said.
He signaled to the waiter. Once the black-vested young man had come and gone with his order, Harlan folded his hands on the table and leaned forward.
“You’re going to help us, I know,” he said.
“Why?”
“Because you’re a good kid.”
I digested that for a long moment, then had a question of my own before I answered. “You’re not really the bigot you pretended to be, are you, Russ?”
“I can’t give myself a character reference.”
“But it’s true, right? You’re actually a decent guy.”
“My wife and kids think I’m okay,” he said, eyes on his uninteresting hands, not on me.
“What should I think?” I asked. “Are you a guy looking out for his own interests and willing to have some poor sap stick his neck out and pay the price?”
He regarded me and, face like a stone, told me he was willing to give me assurances.
“What kind of assurances? Can you promise I’ll get the girl? Can you assure me I won’t get killed spying on Willy Smets?”
“No, Dan,” he said. “I can’t promise you any of that. What I can tell you is that I’ll be very appreciative. Your country will be, too. And the Indian government, for that matter. You’ll have done good. The right thing.”
“No Sushmita, then? No happily ever after?”
“No.”
“What exactly do you want me to do?” I asked. “Steal his books? Wear a wire? Take him out with a bullet behind the ear when he least expects it?”
“Do you know how to shoot a gun?”
“Of course not. I’ve never even held one in my hand.”
“Then we won’t ask you to shoot him.”
I glanced away, then chuckled. This wasn’t the same jerk I’d met a couple of weeks before. He was a serious, even-tempered guy, who projected authority. He had an uncanny knack for making you want to please him. Like a football coach or a platoon sergeant, only he went about it quietly. He was a pretty fine actor, as well.
“What do you want me to do?” I repeated.
“We want you to work for him. Ingratiate yourself to him. Gain his trust. Get to know his operation.”
“And then stab him in the back?”
“Figuratively speaking, yes. Of course a man like that deserves a real knife in the back.”
“I gotta tell you, Russ, I’m having a hard time believing some of this. How can he be such a bad guy when he’s so good to me? Why would he be nice?”
“Maybe it’s your good looks and charm, Dan.”
I scoffed.
“I mean it. For some reason he likes you.”
“Ridiculous.”
“Okay, then maybe it’s because there are things you could get done that he can’t. You’re squeaky clean. Not on Interpol’s radar or the FBI’s or the DEA’s. You’re white. That helps in this country. The police tend to give Westerners a pass where they don’t for the locals. Like at the airport. Customs.”
“You want me to be a double agent? I’ve never even held a gun. Do you think I’ve trained as a spy?”
“Let’s not exaggerate, Dan. You’re not going to be a spy. You’re going to be a snitch.”
“You ever thought of going into the recruiting business? If so, don’t.”
“Look, I’m not saying it’s going to be easy. But you really only have to do what Smets asks you to do. Then, when we contact you, you tell us.”
“So no danger in this for the snitch?”
He lit a cigarette before answering. “There are risks,” he said. “You’ll want to be careful not to arouse his suspicions.”
“How do I accomplish that?”
“For one thing, you stop sleeping with his girlfriend.”
It was distasteful enough to consider turning Willy over to the authorities. He’d never done me wrong. But I’d done him dirty on several occasions. I’d counted them—fifteen in all—and could tick off the day, the hour, and the positions involved. It was a regular Kama Sutra of betrayal, and it was all seared into my memory.
But as bad as stabbing Willy in the back might have seemed an hour earlier, it now came with the charming title of “snitch.” Couldn’t wait to put that on my résumé. Why did Harlan have to be so fucking honest? Couldn’t he have let me have my double-agent fantasy?
“Well?” he asked. “What do you say?”
“I say no. I’m not a snitch. If you can’t get Willy Smets the honest way, with all the resources and wall-climbers and pretty blondes you have, I’m not going to help you.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
SUNDAY, JULY 20, 1975, 10:51 P.M.
My thoughts seesawed between Harlan’s proposition and Sushmita, a hundred miles or so away. She’d said she’d get word to me as soon as possible. I wondered how. I didn’t have a telephone, and a telegram seemed risky under the circumstances. I resigned myself to the probability that I’d hear from her only when she and Willy returned to Bombay. And who knew when that might be?
Harlan, on the other hand, had sat there and watched me walk out on him. He didn’t try to stop me, talk sense into me, or even say goodbye. That troubled me. It was as if he wasn’t concerned. As if he had another card to play. I hated not knowing his intentions. He was a seasoned agent, after all. I was sure he’d run into tougher nuts than me in his career. And I’d felt so cool striding out of the coffee shop, leaving him with my bill to pay.
