Killers Are My Meat

by Stephen Marlowe

  “Sure.”

  Banerjee’s head jerked toward me on the squat, powerful neck. “But that didn’t happen to you at the telegraph office.”

  I told him what had happened last night. There didn’t seem any reason not to. I added, “We have a couple of things to go on now. No, make that three things.”

  Aruna brought me a glass of water. I drank it so fast that she got me another, and I drank that too. Banerjee gave me a cigarette. “Yes?” he said.

  “Two things about the place. The burning smell—”

  “May I remind you that Benares is a city-wide crematorium?”

  “Sure, but the burning is done on the ghats down by the river. She was that close. Doesn’t that limit it?”

  Banerjee shook his head. “Benares lives for the river. Benares is built along the river. That doesn’t help much.”

  “Then the noise,” I said. “Like a butcher with a big cleaver.”

  “Benares is a Hindu city. There is very little meat, and almost none of it slaughtered or dressed professionally. But on the poorer burning ghats, where an insufficient quantity of brushwood is used, the corpses are charred but not reduced to ash. After the ceremonial ablution and burning, such corpses are dismembered and burned to ash in ovens.” I looked up hopefully. Banerjee said, “There are thirty such crematoria in Benares.”

  “All right, then try this. Rukmini takes dope. Heroin or something else that’s injected into the blood. The old lady gave him a shot last night. If your narcotics department can give us a list of pushers …”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “Pushers. People who move heroin.”

  “We have no narcotics department. We have no narcotics problem as you have in the West. For in the East, Mr. Drum, where mysticism and the withdrawn personality, together, are socially approved, the nonmedical taking of a drug like heroin, while illegal, is not the anathema it has become in your country.”

  All I had left was a long face. I showed it to him.

  “However,” he went on blandly, “in my own office we keep a list of habitual users who, as you well know, are prone to fall into other phases of crime, and who may be valuable sources of information.”

  We both looked at the phone. Its presence in the room marked the Pilgrim Hotel as Benares’ best. Banerjee made a call and told me the list was on its way over. I got up and started to pace. That left Aruna alone on the edge of the bed. Banerjee looked at her and at me. One of his eyebrows lifted. “And the sadhu’s girl?” he said.

  “I don’t know what she wants.”

  “But you know her?”

  I admitted it.

  “To be sure,” Banerjee said sarcastically, “you know her. For you went with Miss Wilder to do a story on the sadhu, didn’t you? Come now, Mr. Drum. You have mentioned names in your story, as for example Ranjit Ambedkar and Rukmini, both of whom are known to my office. But you mentioned names only as you saw fit. You did not even make it clear whether Ambedkar and Rukmini are trying to find something or somebody. You ask my help, and you tie my hands.”

  “Ambedkar and Rukmini are known to your office how?”

  “As extremist rabble-rousers. India for the Indians and Asia for the Asians. That was several years ago, Mr. Drum. Ambedkar is not so young as he looks. We have no recent record of them because they went to work as domestics in the diplomatic corps.”

  “Feeling as they did?”

  “Perhaps, if you grant a certain amount of militancy to their organization, that was according to plan.”

  “Sure, but what Indian diplomat in his right mind would hire them?”

  Banerjee chewed on that one for a while. I thought: It didn’t have to be a diplomat at all; it had to be only a diplomat’s wife. But that didn’t clear up the mystery, it just made the mystery possible. In the States, Ambedkar tries to kick Varley’s head in. Because he was one of Sumitra’s extramarital rolls in the hay, houseboy or no, and jealous of Varley, another member of the not-so-exclusive club? Concurrently, Varley gets himself appointed U.S. Observer at the Benares Conference. To go where Sumitra was going? But Varley was a lad with more on his mind than what was inside Sumitra Mojindar’s silk sari. Sure, I told myself, thinking in circles, but did Ambedkar have to know that? The answer was yes, he did. Otherwise, nothing would have pleased him as much as Varley’s disappearance. On top of all that, add a xenophobic Asia-for-the-Asians organization, and make Ambedkar’s motives at least partly its motives.…

  Aruna tugged at my sleeve. She wanted something. She had come here wanting it and she still wanted it. But there was Banerjee. I didn’t know what to do about Banerjee. He wanted something too, and it was beginning to shape up as a fair request.

  I stalled, mulling it over. I ordered a tray of lunch on the phone and took a change of clothing into the bathroom. By the time I shaved and showered my headache had faded to a dull ache behind the eyeballs. I brought it back into the bedroom with me.

  Lunch had come. Banerjee was seated with his legs crossed. Aruna had found paper and pencil and was writing. I sat down to a stew of lentils and vegetables, and ate. Aruna had finished writing but didn’t interrupt me. Someone knocked at the door, Banerjee opened it, a uniformed policeman saluted him, gave him several sheets of mimeograph paper, and departed. Banerjee brought the list over to me. I stopped eating. Before I could look at the list, Aruna came over, tugged at my sleeve again, and handed me what she had written.

  It was a legible but childish scrawl. It said:

  I regret to bring you news that Mr. Stewart Varley American is dead. As he wanted to be a sadhu, his body is being cremated as is our custom.

  I jammed the note into my pocket and did some swearing. The list was forgotten in Banerjee’s hand. I said, “Where?”

  Aruna looked at me blankly.

  “Can you take me to him?”

  She nodded. Apparently it was why she had come.

  “The sadhu knows? The sadhu sent you?”

  She nodded again.

  “Three pages,” Banerjee said. “Very thorough. You see …” He had thrust the first page of the list in front of my face.

  “Not now,” I said, heading for the door. Aruna came with me.

  “Just a moment. Where are you going?”

  “Are you on duty now?”

  “No.”

  “Then wait here. If you want to.”

  “What message did the girl give you?”

  I waited at the door. I didn’t say anything. Angrily Banerjee stalked across the room. He shook the list in front of my face and said, “You want help, but you won’t give me the time …”

  His voice trailed off. I had seen the first page of the list and he had seen my face. It was a list of names and addresses, alphabetical, mimeographed in columns. One name, the third on the list, stood out.

  It was Ayyangar.

  A private detective is like a ping-pong ball.

  He spends his time bouncing back and forth, back and forth, Varley to the sadhu to Lady Mojindar to the Sadhu to Banerjee to Ambedkar to Banerjee, back and forth back and forth. And then, all at once, the bouncing stops and some of the hectic, frantic scrambling begins to make sense. It can happen in the damnedest places and at the damnedest times.

  Hotel room in Benares, India. Running water and a private bath. Where you learn Ambedkar belongs to a fanatic Indian-Asian nationalist and anti-Western organization. Where they tell you Stewart Varley is dead. Where you find out the old woman with the black betel-nut mouth who is hiding Marianne has the same name as the butler who died in Washington either from natural causes or because he knew too much.

  Aruna waited at the door. The creaking ceiling fan turned, stirring sultry air. Benerjee said, “A name there means something to you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Ah, then if you will tell me who …”

  “Not now.” I opened the door and took a step into the hall. Banerjee touched my elbow. I turned around and looked at a small automatic in his hand. It was on
e of the smallest hand guns I have ever seen, hardly bigger than a derringer.

  “Come in,” Banerjee told me, his voice a soft feline purr of anger. “Shut the door.”

  I didn’t budge. Aruna looked at my face and held her ground. Down the corridor, a woman opened a door, and shut it, and went waddling in search of the staircase. She wore a sari and had grease in her hair. She was enormously fat and managed to look better in the sari than she would have in a bikini bathing suit, but only a little better. The stairs made noises as she descended.

  I told Banerjee, “I made a mistake. The list doesn’t mean a thing to me.”

  “You lie.” That observation wouldn’t win him any gold medals. “You are obstructing justice.” Banerjee’s face was pale. His lips had almost disappeared.

  “If that’s the way you see it.”

  “That is the way I see it. We will go down to the collector’s office now.”

  “Sure we will. If you use that cap pistol. But watch out you don’t burn your hand with it.”

  I grasped Aruna’s elbow. She pulled her arm away. At first I thought Banerjee had scared her off me; then I realized she just didn’t want to be touched. We went down the hall through the wake of frangipani left by the fat woman.

  At the desk a tall, wide-shouldered American in a rumpled cord suit was asking for Chester Drum. He would be Baker from the Time-Life bureau in Calcutta. The desk clerk happened to look up. His eyes met mine. I shook my head from side to side and the smile which had commenced on his face transformed itself into a study of professional regret. I decided that desk clerks, like cops, were the same everywhere.

  15.

  ARUNA and I covered about a mile on foot. There are very few vehicles of any kind in Benares, mostly because they can’t negotiate the steps of the ghats down by the river, and Benares lives for its ghats and its Ganges. There are more beggars in Benares than in any other city in India, and probably in the world. They mark their length in the dust behind small alms cups and beseech you with round black eyes in skeletal heads. There are also more fakirs and snake-charmers and sacred cows and fat money-changers on cotton blankets with heaps of gold and silver before them, and sadhus and lepers so far gone that have no toes and their fingers are dropping off and the only thing between their eyes and their mouth is an encrusted hole.

  We passed a sadhu perched on a wall on one leg, like a crane. His beard was filthy. His bare head gleamed in the sun. The leg he stood on day and night was swollen and black with blood.

  We went through a crowd and past a funeral procession, and then the cobbled street began to drop. The walls rose like cliffs on either side, the street became a steep alley dropping down to the river, and the alley was a ghat. At the bottom of the alley we were still fifty or sixty feet above the river. A broad flight of cobbled steps fifty yards wide made up the difference. The green water of the Ganges lapped at the bottom steps. When the monsoons came, the water would rise in a very few days halfway up toward the alley.

  It was my first look at the Ganges by daylight. I’ll never forget it. Clots of mourners waited on the steps. Swaddled corpses waited too. Other corpses were roasting over open fires on the wide lower steps. There was the sweetish carrion smell and the crackling sizzle of burning fat. In the water, ashes were being strewn from urns brought out in rowboats. A dead tree floated by. It had company. A disembodied arm moved with the current. A dead cat, bloated belly up, nudged it. The ashes spread, and drifted. A few dozen ecstatic pilgrims, naked but for loin rags, rushed splashing into the shallows, shouting for Siva’s favor, bathing themselves, ducking their heads, gargling, and finally drinking the carrion-infested water until I thought they would burst.

  A hot breeze blew off the river. The crematorium smoke was sweet but acrid. I gagged on it. Aruna looked at my face and held out her hand for me. She still wasn’t happy about the physical contact, but this time it was her idea. We went down the wide stairs together toward where the corpses were burning.

  The mourners let us by. At the bottom of the ghat three fires were burning. The pyre on the left wasn’t big enough. The fagots, almost burned out now, barely reached to the charred corpse’s calves. The feet, untouched, looked as white as bleached bone.

  Aruna led me to the middle fire. It had the biggest pyre and it was blazing hot, red flame roaring a dozen feet into the air and the smaller, hotter tongues of yellow flame caressing the dark nesting solidness of a man and consuming it.

  Two sweating, big-chested attendants in sooty dhotis watched the fires. They held long, fire-blackened poles and every now and then poked one or another of the pyres with them. Their skin was like leather. One of them saw Aruna, grunted, and said a few words in Hindi. Aruna nodded. The leathery-skinned burner of corpses shot a contemptuous glance at me. Aruna produced a note. Leather Skin reached for it.

  I said, “Hold it.” I took the note and read it. Leather Skin’s eyes were bloodshot from the smoke. He watched me. The note said:

  Please show the bearer and her companion the effects of the dead American sadhu.

  It wasn’t signed. It was printed in block letters in English, still the lingua franca of India, although Hindi had been declared the official language. I gave it to Leather Skin, who read it or seemed to read it, and called out to his companion. They jawed for a while, Leather Skin trotted down a few cobblestone steps closer to the water, stooped, and returned with a cardboard box the size of a small overnight bag. He dropped it contemptuously at my feet and leaned on his pole and gazed out across the Ganges.

  I squatted on my hams and opened the box. It contained a white linen suit which I had seen Varley wearing, and a wallet. I went through the wallet quickly. It was a big breast-pocket billfold and contained Varley’s passport, his driver’s license and some traveler’s checks which he had signed but not counter-signed.

  I stood up, leaving the box where it was. My eyes stung from the smoke. The sweetish carrion odor had made my stomach queasy. Aruna watched me out of wide eyes. I asked Leather Skin: “You speak English?”

  “Yes, sahib.”

  I moved my chin in the direction of the funeral pyre “Is this the American sadhu?”

  “That is right, sahib.”

  “Who brought him?”

  “Disciples of the Panch Kosi Sadhu.”

  “When?”

  “As we closed last night, sahib.” He shrugged expansively, as if to say that was all he knew. He had an unctuous voice and a fawning manner, but he was a large, powerful man, and his eyes hated me silently and implacably.

  “They say how he died?”

  “No, sahib.”

  “Were there marks of violence about the body?”

  “None that I noticed.”

  “But they didn’t say how he died?”

  “Wait. I seem to remember. There was talk. An American … his head newly shaved … the sun … it was the sun killed him, sahib. You wish the effects sent to your hotel? There is a charge, but it is nominal, I assure you. As for the ashes, they will be strewn on the Mother of Waters. He died happy, sahib. If he was a sadhu, he died seeking moksha. He will find it, truly and eternally, when his ashes mingle with the Mother of Waters. Is there something else you wish, sahib?”

  I said: “Yes. Roll his body out of the fire.”

  Aruna gasped. It was the only sound I had heard her make. I breathed the sweet smoke. My lunch bobbed up in my throat. Leather Skin said: “That we cannot do.”

  “You’ll do it,” I said.

  Leather Skin said something to his companion. The other man looked surprised before he looked angry. Leather Skin said something else. The other man displayed dirty teeth and a moronic laugh. They both grasped their blackened poles firmly and thrust them, charred points forward, into the pyre. The muscles stood out on their backs. They bent their knees, then straightened. The fire sighed. The blackened corpse rolled, and settled back on the pyre. They started all over again. The corpse rolled. Burning fagots clung to it as it fell off the pyre. It
landed on the broad step with a thud and the crisp sound of flaking char.

  I went over there. It took some doing. I don’t like to think about the rest of it, but it had to be done. Sometimes I dream about it at night. Then I get up and drink more than I should and some of the times, but only some of them, I can get back to sleep.

  I found an unburned stick, squatted and prodded the charred skull with it. The pressure of the heated and boiling brains had cracked the skull. White liquid oozed out and ran over sluggishly, like thick hot cream.

  Priscilla Varley’s words came to me as if she’d spoken them five minutes ago. He wears a steel plate in his head where part of his skull was smashed by shrapnel.

  It was a skull. It had cracked open. I had to look at it. I looked. It was only bone.

  I got up. The river tilted and leaped up at the sky like a green wall in an earthquake. Then it dipped giddily back into its course. Pilgrims down there splashed and gargled. Leather Skin scraped his pole on the cobblestones.

  I grabbed the shoulder of Aruna’s robe and swung her around to face me. My hand left a sooty imprint on the robe. I said, “When Varley left the Pilgrim Hotel he was wearing a pair of dhotis. He didn’t have his suit and he didn’t have his wallet. Someone went and got them. Did you?”

  She didn’t answer, of course. She couldn’t. But her eyes filled with tears and her face came all to pieces and she cried silently.

  I shook her. She didn’t stop crying. “Was it the sadhu’s idea?” I asked.

  I was mad. I wasn’t thinking. The patient mourners looked up from their shrouded corpses. I pivoted. Leather Skin was glaring at me. I said, “That note wasn’t signed, but you did what it told you to.”

  He shrugged his sweaty shoulders.

  “Who sent it?”

  He smirked and said something in Hindi. His companion aired his moronic laugh again. I hit Leather Skin in the face and he skittered backwards and tripped over the corpse which wasn’t Stewart Varley. I looked down at him. I was still mad. Maybe I was going to kick him.