His companions were on their feet now. They were muttering. They moved around us, shadows wavering in the firelight. One said in English: “You have no right to come here and disturb our devotions. You have no right.”
“A girl,” I said. “I’m looking for an American girl.”
“The only girl here,” he said coldly, “is Aruna, the sadhu’s servant. We seek moksha. You will find none but men here, and none but the twice-born. Now go.”
I looked at Aruna, then at the cane. The big fellow with the delicate bones was glaring at me and panting. Aruna slowly nodded. I dropped the cane and stalked down the hillside.
I heard a hoarse shout below me and started to run. When I reached the Fiat it was rocking like a banana boat in a gale. Two Hindus on each side had planted their feet and were rocking the little Italian car back and forth. It wouldn’t take much of that to overturn the Fiat. Maybe it was their idea of nonviolence, but it wasn’t mine.
The first man I reached was the one that counted. He was big and bald, had a Siva crescent on his forehead, and probably outweighed any two of his cohorts. His head swung around at me. His eyes narrowed, then widened with recognition. I grabbed the side of his jaw and continued his head around in the direction he had started it. He either had to let go of the car or risk some dislocated vertebrae. He let go of the car, ducked his hairless head, and butted me.
I felt my own head snapping back. There was the salt taste of blood in my mouth. I was vaguely aware of the Siva man’s three scrawny companions still rocking the Fiat, but without the big guy they weren’t able to overturn it. When I stopped reeling backwards, the Siva man tried to butt me again. I took his head in chancery down against the side of my rib cage. He writhed. His feet slapped and scuffed at the sand. One of his hands dug for my groin, but I brought a thigh around for him to play with.
His head was completely bald, but it prickled with stubble. He probably shaved it. Pretty soon he began to get heavier. I did some more squeezing while he pawed at my legs weakly. When all his weight was hanging from his neck, I let go. He fell on his face in the sand and crawled up on his hands and knees like an exhausted swimmer. His head hung. When his three scrawny thugs saw what had happened, they went loping up the hillside.
I was going to ask him some questions, although I knew the answers wouldn’t mean a thing. I was a dirty pig of a Westerner who had dared to defile their devotions. It didn’t matter that a girl’s life might have been up for grabs. I was a Westerner, I had done what I had done, and it was enough: I didn’t see how there could be any connection between the Siva man and whatever had happened to Marianne. No one could have predicted we would drive out to the pipal tree.
I crouched to go through my routine anyway. Before I could open my mouth, I heard the sound of a car starting.
Distances and directions at night are deceptive, but I thought the car was somewhere on the Panch Kosi between the holy man’s hill and the city. I remembered the sound of a car before, and began to curse. We’d been followed out of Benares. And, when they saw where we were stopping, they pulled up on the road a few hundred yards behind us. Then they waited. Then they came for Marianne.
Still calling myself names, I got into the Fiat and slammed the door. I looked out the side window once and saw the Siva man, a dark bulkiness moving against the sand. He was persistent, but he had a long way to come and he wasn’t moving very fast.
I started the car, thinking that if they had anything bigger than the Fiat, and they probably did, I’d never catch them.
I went through the motions, though, swinging the little Fiat in a U-turn and speeding back toward the city on the Panch Kosi. There was nothing for my headlights to digest but the dark, silent night, and nothing for the taillights to do but choke on clouds of yellow dust.
Then the headlights suddenly seemed to leap out at the night. That meant they were picking up dust and tunneling through it. It probably meant a car. I stepped down on the gas pedal, but I already had it against the floor boards.
I saw them when it was almost too late.
The Fiat dipped forward and swerved to the left as I gave the brake pedal all I had. The tires screamed and the headlights raked through darkness and swirling dust and over robed figures scattering and a dead man wearing a white shroud and roped to two bamboo poles left on the roadside.
The Fiat stopped about five feet from the dead man. The dust rose and swirled. I got out and began to cough. Someone began to curse me in Hindi or Urdu and although I couldn’t understand the words I knew he made my efforts along those lines sound like something you might overhear at a Friday night bingo party. Maybe I should have thanked him. Instead I called out:
“Did another car come this way? Few minutes ago?”
There wasn’t any answer I could understand. The dust was so thick I never even saw them except for the brief instant before I’d almost run them down. I got into the Fiat and drove on up the Panch Kosi past the many shrines, all torchlit now, and the university. I didn’t see another car.
I drove over to the police station near the Darjeeling Gate. It was a two-floor masonry building with the saffron-white-and-green flag of India fluttering outside in the beam from a spotlight planted in the ground. I went up the steps and heard music blatting from a radio inside. A sleepy-looking old man whose head was shaved except for a gray topknot and who wore jodhpurs and a shirt stained with betel juice, lifted his head from where it had been resting on a desk which had been old when the British Governor ran the show in India, stared at me, brought his eyes into focus, and showed me his black teeth.
I asked for the chief, and he told me, “The collector is off duty, sahib. The collector works regular hours.” His voice was a whine of self-pity barely audible above the blat of the radio. He got up and went to where the radio was perched on a shelf on the back wall. He lowered the volume.
“You wish to report an incident?” He waited, staring through me, his sad eyes fixed on a point in space somewhere behind my head. Before I could answer, if answering would have done any good, I heard footsteps creaking overhead.
“Who’s up there?”
His mouth was a black hole in the puckered tan flesh of his face. He didn’t have any lips that I could see. He said, “That is the assistant collector. Very European.” The footsteps creaked some more. “He detests quiet contemplation. But then, he is an eater of meat.”
The stairs were through an archway alongside the shelf which held the radio. When I reached the top, the radio was blatting full force again. I found myself in a short, dark hallway. There were three doors, one of them with a strip of light under it. I went over there to knock, but the door opened before I reached it.
The assistant collector was a surprise. He wore a white linen suit, and it was spotless. He had dark hair and a dark face and very shrewd eyes with pale blue pupils. He didn’t need a shave. He was smoking a cigarette in an ivory holder. He was a stocky man, no more than five-six, his shoulders were only a little narrower than the cargo bay of a flying boxcar, and he didn’t have any neck I could see.
His head tilted forward. His voice was basso and rumbled up from a chest as puffed out as a pigeon’s. He said, “T. Gopalaswami Banerjee, at your service. Come in, please.”
I followed him into an office with the usual police assortment of chairs and desks and half a dozen filing cabinets which had been green and now were rusty. He sat down. I sat down. I showed him my papers which said, among other things, that I had come to Benares along with the United States Observer Team.
And we talked. Or rather, I talked. He was one of the best listeners I have ever met, chain-smoking cigarettes in his ivory holder, not saying a word but holding you with those pale blue eyes and grunting every now and then. I told him about Marianne. I did not tell him about Varley. I made it seem as if Marianne had been doing a story on the Panch Kosi Sadhu.
Banerjee asked, “But why would anyone want to kidnap an American magazine correspondent, Mr. Drum?”
/> His eyes were bland. He might have believed me. Or he might have thought me the biggest liar to visit India since Bulge and Krush packed their bags.
I shrugged. “This is my first visit to India, Collector. Far as I know, it’s Miss Wilder’s first trip, too. Miss Wilder is a trained observer, but we still might have stepped on someone’s toes. The way I understand it, the followers of someone like the Panch Kosi Sadhu can be pretty sensitive.”
Collector Banerjee removed the burned-down cigarette from his holder and used it to light a new one. He leaned forward across his desk and said: “Why did you come here and tell me this, Mr. Drum? Because surely you cannot expect me to believe you have told me the entire story? Even assuming, as you suggest, that Miss Wilder’s investigations along the Panch Kosi were most unpopular and most unwise, why would anyone want to kidnap her?”
“I’m not a cop,” I said.
“But you are a cop. India is not unfamiliar with private inquiry agents, Mr. Drum. Most of ours were former policemen. And you?”
“Something like that.”
“Then please look at this from my point of view. You came here and told me a story. Perhaps it is true. Perhaps all of it is true—as far as you took it. But you haven’t told me the entire story. Have you?”
“She’s missing,” I said. “She may be in danger. If I figured I was equipped to handle it, I wouldn’t have disturbed your sleep.”
“You private inquiry agents are all alike. I worked five years in Calcutta, Mr. Drum. I know. You work outside the law when you can. You use the law when you must.”
“You cops are all alike,” I said. “I’ve got a job. I’ve got a client. When they’re police business you’ll hear about it.”
“I am no fool, Mr. Drum. If you want a fool, I suggest Manbir downstairs. Your inquiry license means nothing in my country. Your personal code of ethics concerns me still less. If you want any help from this office, tell me what you really think happened to Miss Wilder.”
I stood up. He stood up and wrapped a smile around the ivory cigarette holder. I said, “Sure, I’m playing it close to the vest. You think I like to? You think I wouldn’t like to drop it all in your lap and visit the Taj Mahal or something? I’ve got my reasons and my reasons aren’t personal, but they sure as hell aren’t your business. You think I came here for you to lecture me?”
The smile went away. He clamped his teeth on the cigarette holder and stared at me.
I wasn’t finished. “You’ll help me,” I said. “Miss Wilder’s a pretty blonde and she’s an American. That ought to be enough of a description. You can put your ear to the ground in places I can’t even walk; that’s why I’m here. You’ll help me, Collector. I’m sending a wire to the American Ambassador in New Delhi and one to the Time-Life bureau in Calcutta. That’s why you’ll help me, if you can’t find any other reason.”
I went to the door. He took the cigarette holder out of his mouth and stared at it. He said, “No one has ever threatened me in my own office before.” His smile was as fleeting as an octogenarian’s sex urge.
“Does it go down on the blotter as a kidnaping?” I asked.
After a while, he nodded. I thought I had an ally. The only balm I could give him was: “If I find out anything you can use, I’ll call you.”
He nodded again. I went downstairs and outside. Manbir was slowly growing deaf in front of the blatting radio.
Benares’ telegraph office was located, as telegraph offices will be, in the railroad station. I sent a wire to the American Embassy in New Delhi, saying that an American citizen, Miss Marianne Wilder, the Life correspondent in Benares, was missing and that foul play was feared. I said that the police here in Benares had been notified. I sent the same wire to the Time-Life bureau in Calcutta, suggesting that they forward a picture of Marianne to the police in Benares, attention of Assistant Collector Banerjee.
I drove back to the Pilgrim Hotel and parked Marianne’s car. By that time I was thinking she might have been a gal with a secret story brewing. A ten-rupee note got me the key to her room, but an hour’s search revealed nothing more embarrassing than yesterday’s unwashed laundry. I wondered who had followed us out on the Panch Kosi, and why Marianne had spent a couple of hours alone with Stewart Varley, had seen him leave with Aruna, who had been sent to fetch him by the Panch Kosi Sadhu. It didn’t seem to mean much, but if Marianne had wanted to wander off in search of a story without my hanging around, she wouldn’t have decided to do it on foot on the Panch Kosi. All that was left was foul play.
It was a lonely thought and it scared me more than I wanted to admit. It rattled around in my head like dice in a box. I went down to the European Bar and bought a drink for the first American reporter who showed up. He was a skinny New Englander named Schrunk who worked for a string of Midwestern newspapers. He knew Marianne, he said. He made some lewd suggestions about what he would like to do with Marianne and offered the information, after his third drink, that she was a snob. Listening to Schrunk, I couldn’t blame her.
He was some reporter. When he finished his fourth drink, which he said was his limit, he left without even finding out who I was.
I bought what was left of the bottle of Scotch and took it upstairs to my room. I showered, and had a drink, and began to sweat again. The ceiling fan groaned and creaked. The bluebottle flies buzzed. I crawled in under the mosquito netting and worried myself to sleep.
When I awoke it was still dark. Somehow I knew I wasn’t alone in the room. I waited, listening. I didn’t move.
I could hear him breathing. A hand I couldn’t see parted the mosquito netting. I made a grab for it but missed.
He chuckled and said, “Put your pants on, Mr. Detective. We’re going for a ride.”
He didn’t have a sledge hammer this time. It was a good thing. If he did and had wanted to use it, I’d have been a dead man.
I got dressed and went outside with Rukmini.
13.
HIS JEEP was parked behind the Pilgrim Hotel, and although it was a hot night the canvas sides and top were in place. The plastic side windows had been scratched so that you could barely see through them.
Rukmini got in behind the wheel and started the jeep. I didn’t say a word. It was his show. We drove for about five minutes through dark streets. We rattled over cobblestones. Once or twice I thought I caught a vague glimpse of the river through the darkness. On the narrow sidewalks there were ragged beggars sleeping.
Rukmini leaned down and got something from the floor boards of the jeep. “Put this on,” he said.
He thrust it at me and my fingers closed on thick cloth. I was holding a black hood, the kind they hang men in.
“You mean on my head?” I said stupidly. I knew what he meant. I wanted time, even a few seconds. I stared ahead at the yellow headlight glow, looking for a landmark. Anything I could remember.
It was a narrow cobbled street going up and around a hillside with masonry walls rising clifflike on either side. It was like fifty other streets in cobbled, hilly Benares. Rukmini slowed the jeep almost to a stop, putting it in second gear. He looked at me. “Well,” he said, “you going to?”
I pretended fright. His smirk said he didn’t believe it. I said, “You’re taking me where?”
“To the girl, friend. As if you didn’t know,”
He brought the jeep to a stop, its brake drums squeaking.
“You going to put it on or do we sit here all night?”
There was a raw edge of anxiety in his voice, and at first I didn’t get it. He couldn’t sit still. He was fidgeting behind the wheel. He cracked his big knuckles. He lit a cigarette and took a short nervous drag and immediately killed it. He was sweating. I could smell the acrid animal stink of him. I suddenly realized, as if for the first time, that we were a long way from Embassy Row in Washington, D.C., where I had first bumped heads with Rukmini. And I also realized what was eating him.
I said, “’S the matter, you got the itch?”
He b
ackhanded my face. I sat there and took it. “The hood,” he said.
I slipped it over my head. The heavy cloth rested on my shoulders. It was as black as the middle of the night in a cave in the Belgian Congo. Sweat broke out on my face. Rukmini started the jeep. We drove and turned and clattered over cobbles and turned again. I could feel Rukmini’s weight moving, squirming under the monkey on his back. The hood smelled of sweat and wood-smoke.
In about ten minutes Rukmini braked the jeep to a stop. “Get out and stand still,” he said. “Keep the hood over your face.”
I felt my way out of the jeep. I stood there with cobblestones underfoot. That ought to mean we were still in the city, I thought. I heard Rukmini come around the jeep. His hand closed on my elbow. We walked.
I bumped something that might have been a door frame. I heard a key in a lock. Hinges squeaked. Something, probably Rukmini’s hand, shoved against the small of my back. I stumbled forward. The door closed behind me. The hood was jerked off my head.
It was a small, bare room, and it smelled of ammonia. The floor was bare packed earth. The light came from a charcoal fire in the center of the floor. The air was thick with smoke. Through it on the far wall of the room I could see a door, and next to the door a bent old woman sat with her back against the wall. She was as still as death and looked only about half as old. She lifted a hand like a claw as we went around the fire toward her. She showed us the inside of her black mouth, black tooth-stubs and black gums and a black tongue from betel-chewing. She croaked something which Rukmini didn’t bother to answer. The black hole opened wider in the seamed gray skin of her face. She was smiling at us.
“Through there,” Rukmini said.
The door wasn’t locked. It opened inward.
The second room was larger and more brightly lit. Two torches thrust into wall sockets, their smoke blackening the masonry walls and slate roof overhead, threw wavering red light over Marianne Wilder, who was on her knees on the packed earth floor a little way from the middle of the room. She was on her knees because Ambedkar had beat her down to them. Her short blonde hair was matted to her head. She was conscious, and breathing hard and raggedly but otherwise silent. Her eyes were wide and afraid, and back of them, deep, deep back of them, was a scream that wanted to be born.
Killers Are My Meat Page 10
