LITMIR.BIZ

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appearances, there was nothing original about this imbecile. Max and Jayesh had parked on the street and paid a boy a few rupees to watch the car. They were in a part of town even the most daring tourist guides didn’t know about. Young girls, children, their faces made up with kohl like adults, but still not able to look older, stood in a row or crouched like beggars in front of Hindu temples. This wasn’t a place for charity, though. It wasn’t begging bowls or mango leaves they held out to passersby, but their own underfed, emaciated bodies that would probably grow no more.

      Max was disgusted. Behind every victim there was a family to support. Selling your body for a few rupees was better than picking through the garbage with the sacred cows.

      “They live in the basti, the slum over there,” shouted another boy they’d recruited for car-watching duty.

      Street children? Not exactly, since the whole slum was on the street.

      And there was Adoor Sharma, turning away from them.

      “Pimp?” guessed Max.

      The boy shook his head, no. Mama and Papa were the pimps. Max imagined the bachas in the chaos at the end of the day drowsing under filthy sheets while their parents counted out the rupees on the packed earth.

      Holding a piece of ripped cotton, the sari of the young prostitute, Sharma moved on to business. A few slaps to show who was boss. She let out a cry of fear to which no one responded, except Max. Sharma never saw it coming. His shirt came apart under the impact, and the blow to his legs floored him. Not such a tough guy now. More like a wet rag. The threat of a fight had stirred the group and their clients, who were all watching, except the young girl, who had fled. Jayesh seized Sharma by the face with one hand and hauled him up. He stood there, trembling and frail.

      “We want to talk to you,” Jayesh said in Hindi.

      Sharma’s terrified face looked from Jayesh to Max. This chootia, this SOB, was quite a coward. He stammered, “I haven’t done anything, I swear I haven’t.”

      “Of course you haven’t. You have an excuse. You’re still sick, aren’t you?” said Max.

      All of a sudden, the watchman seemed to grasp what the two were after. “I had a fever!”

      “You haven’t been to see a doctor, though, have you?”

      “You don’t go to one when you’re sick, just when you’re rich!”

      “Poor you, with your fever, all alone in a corner.”

      “I might’ve been contagious.” A sly smile crept over his face as his confidence returned. Sharma had fooled the police, and now he could do it with these two. He straightened. The second time he didn’t see it coming either, as Max doubled him over with a heavy blow to the stomach. From his knees, he grimaced and moaned like a dying man. The customers and hookers dispersed as they realized this was only going one way.

      Jayesh forced Sharma to stand up again. Max got closer, oh-so-close, and fear returned to Sharma’s face.

      “They needed someone inside the house to tell them when David came and went, so they paid you off with a whore or some baksheesh.”

      “No, never. I had nothing to do with it!”

      “Why don’t we ask these girls, say the one you were just beating up? Maybe that one over there? Malaria or no malaria, I’m sure someone saw you around that day.”

      Sharma’s eyes darted around, and Max knew he’d struck a nerve. That night, instead of guarding the house, the fool had come down here to play the tough guy, then got back in the wee hours, just as the boss was leaving for work.

      “Okay, so I come down here at night, but nobody ever paid me.”

      “You tell that to the police?”

      “I didn’t want trouble. I don’t want to have anything to do with all that.”

      “All that what?”

      “You know, the war.”

      “You think the attack had to do with the Pakistan war?”

      “I think nothing. I just hear what people say, that’s all.”

      “Like your friends in the RSS or the Durgas?”

      “They’re not my friends. I don’t know any of them. I don’t get into politics.”

      “Maybe someone promised you a job as watchman at a ministry, or chauffeur, maybe.”

      “I haven’t done anything, honestly.”

      “Did you meet them at a demonstration? Was that it? Or some looting, perhaps? Say, you do the restaurant, and I’ll take the butcher shop. You rape the old ones, and I get the young ones!”

      “Not me, I didn’t do it!”

      “I bet you’ve got your membership card with you, photo, engraved swastika and all, plus Bhargava’s signature.”

      Jayesh picked up the cloth bag Sharma’d dropped and inside found a wallet with banknotes: American and Nepalese.

      “Hey, hey, now you’ve got me real interested! So you did the safe, too, eh?”

      Sharma tried to get away as his fear turned to panic, but Max and Jayesh were too fast for him, and had no problem wrestling him down. Things just picked up where they had left off momentarily. No one was coming to Sharma’s defence, and no one was going to ask them to take it somewhere else. Each was in his own world and had nothing to do with anyone else’s.

      Even panic was not enough to risk telling the whole story. A nod from Max, and Jayesh kicked Sharma in the head. He crumpled to the ground. Overkill? Maybe. No, Sharma was still moving and conscious.

      Max bent down. “You know something, and you’re going to tell us right now. Got it?”

      Blood from Sharma’s nose spread fast and dark against his grey shirt. He raised his eyes to them.

      “Who did it?” asked Max.

      “I don’t know. I swear I don’t, but Mr. David was scared.”

      “Scared of who?”

      “He never told me anything, but I could see he really was frightened. He was always looking behind him. He was nervous.”

      “What of?”

      “I don’t know.”

      “A trip he was taking?”

      Suddenly, Sharma’s expression altered — surprise, even astonishment this time. The watchman looked away, but it was too late. Max noticed the shift. The trip — even the cops didn’t know about it.

      “You know where he went, don’t you?”

      Sharma hesitated, and the terror showed again on his face. Then resignation. These two aren’t from the government, so I’m okay.

      “One morning, early, when I went over to go on duty, I heard him on the phone to a hotel. He was reserving a room.”

      “What hotel? Where?”

      “In Srinagar, the Hotel Mount View.”

      Max was perplexed.

      “The strongbox. That was you?”

      “Yes, I knew the combination. That is … a cousin of mine sells them.”

      “So you took the money.”

      “I was certain the police had already searched everywhere, but when I looked inside …”

      “When there was no one else around.”

      “Yes.”

      “What else was in there besides the tickets?”

      “I just took the money.”

      “No documents, other things, letters?”

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