The Ayyangar house was the last one on the left at the bottom of the hill. Wally Baker had gone in there about forty minutes ago. Ever since, the fat red sun had refused to slide toward the horizon, the hands of my watch were glued into place, and every minute was an hour.
Then suddenly the sun fell. It is the only way to describe sunset in the tropics. The sun fell and there was maybe ten minutes of red twilight with the sun-track gone from the river and the vendors closing their stalls, and then it was dark.
I went down the hill toward the Ayyangar house. It had no windows in front. There might have been windows in back, if it had a courtyard. Otherwise, air came and left through a hole in the roof. Across the cobblestones of the alley was a larger house, a structure of two stories with windows in the upper story and a small rectangular lotus pond out front with stunted almond trees guarding it. The windows showed no light. I went in among the almond trees and took up my vigil. The cleaver thudded into its chopping block. The unseen bodies burned and the smoke smelled. A voice with a lot of timbre chanted the hymn to Ram. And far off, so far off that I thought it might have been my imagination, the rhythmic strumming of a sitar was the night’s slow-cadenced metronome.
It was eight-thirty on my watch when a fleet of overheated cars roared into the Court of the Lotus. They made so much noise they might as well have come with sirens wailing. But I’ll say this for them—once they came, they were quick. Before the sound of the last motor had faded, crouching figures came scooting down the alley. They fanned out in front of the Ayyangar house, seeking cover. Two of them joined me in the little grove of almond trees. I didn’t budge; for a while I didn’t breathe. One of them crouched very close to me. His automatic rifle smelled of oil and he smelled of unwashed body. He was muttering to himself, possibly to bolster his courage.
Ten cops, I thought. Maybe twelve. Three jeeploads or four, if they’d come with any kind of equipment. I took a look. Night had swallowed the cops. I saw nothing but the fire-glow at the bottom of the alley. Then one of the jeeps started down the hill with a roar and a clatter. It pulled up just in front of my position. Two men jumped out. They left the motor idling.
They swung a searchlight mounted on the jeep at the front of the Ayyangar house. A dazzling blue-white tunnel cut across the smoky alley to throw a circle of light on the door of the Ayyangar house. One of the men from the jeep picked up a megaphone and bawled into it in Hindi.
Silence louder than thunder answered him.
The man with the megaphone tried it in English, calling: “Come out of there one at a time with your hands on your heads!”
He tried another dialect. It might have been Urdu. The only thing he got was a sore throat.
The cop who smelled was getting nervous. He fiddled with the safety catch of his automatic rifle. He pointed the rifle at the circle of light across the alley. He fidgeted, rested the rifle butt at his feet and mopped his face. He raised the rifle into position again, muttering.
The man with the megaphone had returned to English. This time he bawled: “Surrender or we’ll open fire!”
The cop who smelled died a thousand deaths waiting for the signal to commence firing. I figured he wasn’t the only one. Any minute I expected to hear the distant stitching or nearby explosive clattering of an automatic rifle.
The man with the megaphone put it down and said something to the other fellow who’d come down in the jeep. I couldn’t see them very well in the darkness, but neither was short and stocky enough to be Banerjee. The other fellow, the driver, saluted. He raised a hand to his lips. He probably had a whistle. It would be the signal the automatic riflemen were waiting for. I didn’t think riddling the soft masonry walls of the Ayyangar house would do Marianne and Wally Baker any good, but I wasn’t the Benares collector.
Before the jeep driver could blow his whistle, the door in the round white glare of the searchlight turned black.
It wasn’t a door any longer. It was a doorway. It had opened. The house was dark. The cop who had done the shouting, who was probably the Benares collector, struck down the hand of his driver. No whistle blew for the moment.
I realized for the first time that the noise at the crematorium had stopped. The fire-glow was fading on the water. I thought bitterly: Banerjee had given us two and a half hours, but we hadn’t been able to do anything with them. It wasn’t anybody’s fault.
The silence stretched and was complete except for the half-heard sitar. That and the single dazzling beam of light piercing the darkness gave what was happening the quality of an opium dream. The dream exploded in a scream of terror.
I saw a glow in the black doorway. I didn’t know what it was. Neither did the collector. He told the driver to blow his whistle. The scream became a wail. The whistle shrilled, and as the police poured out of their hiding places and started across the alley, the glow emerged from the doorway.
It took three blind staggering steps. It was a human figure, and it was on fire. It burned like a torch. It raised arms like two smaller torches. Flames engulfed it and leaped from it. As it staggered out of the beam of the searchlight it started to fall.
A single shot echoed in the alley along with the sound of breaking glass. The big searchlight was snuffed out.
I was up and running from the stand of gnarled almond trees before the echoes had stopped bouncing across the alley. On the roof of the Ayyangar house I had seen the muzzle flash. I collided with a cop. He was running, like the others, toward the human torch still burning about ten feet from the doorway. We both fell down. His rifle clattered on the cobblestones. As he got up I hit him in the belly and he went down again. I picked up the rifle and ran with it.
There was still a faint fire-glow on the water at the foot of the Ghat of the Lotus. Silhouetted against it and running down the hill were five figures. I didn’t know who they were, but they had dropped down from the roof of the Ayyangar house using the human torch as a diversion. I hoped two of them ran reluctantly. Even as I ran after them they plunged out of sight as if the ground had swallowed them. It meant they had started down the steep stone steps of the ghat.
Voices shouted behind me as I reached the steps. An automatic rifle opened up, stitching a pattern of death in the night. Tracer bullets made orange streaks in the darkness, showing the flat trajectory of the rifle fire. It was about four feet to my left. It swung over toward me. I ran down the steps. Bullets struck stone somewhere above my head and sang off into the night.
They were just getting into a skiff. It had been moored at the end of the ghat and probably was used to take the ashes of the dead to the bosom of the Mother of Waters. It was drifting loose now. The glow from a low, open-topped kiln silhouetted three figures already in the skiff and two others wading up to their knees and pushing the little boat out of the shallows. Both of the waders wore dhotis. I called for them to halt. Someone fired a pistol at me. It was the only answer I got. I dropped to one knee, raised the automatic rifle to my shoulder, and fired a burst purposely far to the right of the waders so I wouldn’t hit anyone in the skiff. Then I fired again, letting the tracer bullets guide me in.
The tracers made a bright, flat arc, the orange streaks rushing along it to disappear in the body of one of the waders. He fell over in the water. The other wader, who had not been hit, fell into the skiff. They began to pole it away from the ghat.
I rushed down to the water’s edge and plunged in. The shallows were knee-deep. The soft, muddy bottom pulled at my shoes. Two of the figures in the skiff were standing up. They were fighting. I heard shouts behind me. I took four splashing steps to where the water lapped at my waist. I dropped the automatic rifle and started to swim. About a second later the police coming down the ghat steps opened fire.
The skiff was rocking and making no headway now. If Ambedkar or whoever had the gun wanted to kill his prisoners, there wouldn’t have been any fight. But he wanted to hold onto them.
An arc of tracers struck the gunwale of the skiff. Everyone went ov
erboard. The skiff drifted away. The figures in the water were about twenty-five yards away from me. Two of them were thrashing in the water, still fighting. I sought bottom with my feet, but the water was over my head. I swam toward them. There was no more firing from the ghat. Someone swam over in my direction, then went underwater. Hands tugged at my belt, pulling me down. I went under, gagging on a mouthful of water. I fought back to the surface. The water smelled of sewage and rot. I groped blindly down with my hands. My left hand closed on hair. I pulled. The tugging at my belt stopped and a head broke the surface alongside of mine. I jerked it up. Feet kicked at me slow-motion, underwater. I looked at the face. It was Marianne.
She didn’t see me, or didn’t recognize me. She was hysterical. I had to hit her.
Then there was splashing in the water all around us. Heavy hands grabbed me. I was ducked and came up choking. I was ducked again. Then they dragged me out to where I could stand and finally threw me down on the edge of the ghat. Someone kicked me. It was a while before they realized they were kicking the wrong guy.
The police dragged Marianne out of the water too. They got the skiff also, and they got Wally Baker. They took the man I had shot out of the water and set him down near me. He had a shaved skull and a topknot. I had never seen him before. He was dead.
They took us back up the ghat and up the alley to the waiting jeeps. Wally Baker was unconscious and had to be carried. Marianne had to be carried too, but I knew she would be all right. I was worried about Baker, though. He was as limp as a dead man.
They roared with us through the streets of Benares to the police station at the Darjeeling Gate. The cops in the jeep with me talked like conquering heroes.
The only ones they hadn’t been able to find were Ambedkar and Rukmini.
18.
YOU KNOW, Mr. Drum,” the collector sahib told me two hours later, “perhaps we ought to keep you in our lockup until the Benares Conference is over.”
He smiled, which was something. He was veddy, veddy English, this collector. His name was Percy Machari, he was Anglo-Indian, was tall with red hair and bland blue eyes and gray-tan skin, and was convinced his men would have walked off with Ambedkar and Rukmini except for me.
I didn’t argue with him. It wasn’t true. From where I’d been standing the cops wouldn’t have noticed the five figures dropping down from the roof and heading for the river if they hadn’t noticed me going after them. But the collector sahib’s suggestion was dry English humor, and all the dry English humor since the Battle of Hastings wouldn’t keep me in his lockup. I figured it wouldn’t hurt to let him have his joke.
“Unfortunately,” he told Banerjee, “you realize that there will be no apprehending these two men—this Ambedkar and Rukmini—now. For, with the death of the Ayyangar woman, there is no one to connect them with the house on the Ghat of the Lotus except the Americans.”
The Ayyangar crone had been Ambedkar’s diversion. She had burned brightly and her face was black char, but the police had made positive identification on the basis of smallpox scars on her feet, which hadn’t burned at all.
It had been a crowded two hours. Banerjee had awaited the convoy at the Darjeeling Gate station. He and the collector sahib had jawed a few moments in Hindi, then the whole convoy had swung around and taken us to Benares’ best hospital, which is the second story of the Destitute Hindu Pilgrim Shelter about a quarter of a mile from the Darjeeling Gate. They brought out stretchers for Wally Baker, who was unconscious, and Marianne, who was either unconscious or in a deep, almost comatose sleep. They took a gander at me and allowed as I could walk. I went inside with them.
A few minutes later, Marianne awoke hysterically. She looked at me and cried, “Wally! Wally?”
I touched a finger to her lips. Her head dropped back on the pillow and she glared wildly about the white-walled hospital room, at the two young Indian doctors and the nurse, and at me. Her eyes softened when she saw me the second time. “Chet,” she breathed, “we aren’t there any more, are we?”
I shook my head and smiled at her. Her eyes misted. “Where’s Wally?”
One of the doctors tapped my shoulder. “The miss-sahib must rest, please sir.”
Wally was on the next bed. Marianne saw him and tried to get up, but they wouldn’t let her. From where Marianne was, Wally looked as if he was sleeping. He wasn’t, though. They had given him something to keep him under. He had a fractured skull. He probably got it jumping from the skiff. It was amazing that he had still managed to fight afterwards. They put him on the critical list.
Banerjee came in. “How is the American reporter?” he asked.
One of the doctors told him about Wally, standing in the doorway so Marianne wouldn’t hear. They couldn’t really tell about his chances until they X-rayed his skull to check for brain damage.
“And the girl?”
The nurse and the other doctor had taken over. They were moving Marianne to the adjacent room and would give her something to make her sleep. The doctor told Banerjee that what she needed more than anything was a good night’s sleep and some added rest. He stared at me. “The same wouldn’t do you any harm, sahib,” he said.
Banerjee wondered if Marianne would be well enough to make a deposition tomorrow evening. The doctor surprised him by saying it would be better if Marianne left the hospital to make it, as they didn’t want her to brood over Wally Baker. Banerjee said he would call and arrange it.
Marianne asked for me, and I went into her room. The nurse gave her two yellow capsules and a glass of water, which Marianne obediently took. The nurse was plump and dark. “Five minutes, sahib,” she told me.
Already Marianne was drowsy. Her eyes were glazed. She held out a hand and I took it. Her skin was cold. “Wally’s going to be all right, isn’t he, Chet?”
“Yes. You go to sleep.”
She grinned then. “That Brother Bear. Storming in there like that. A regular old hero. What did he think his name was, Chester Drum? He didn’t have a chance. He didn’t even fight much at first. He wanted to be taken.”
Her eyes closed. I thought she was asleep, but she wouldn’t let go of my hand. She opened her eyes. “Find out the name of that stuff, will you?” she said. “My head’s spinning and spinning. It’s better than hundred-proof bourbon.” Her eyes widened. “Chet, is it safe now? Will they come back?”
“You’re safe. You’re safe here.”
“Wally’s in love with me,” she said. “Been for a long time. He’s a rock, Chet. Steady and secure. Weather any storm. Do you mind if I talk about … those pills … never been this drunk in my life.”
It was the sleeping pills and fatigue. She went on: “Listen, you’ve been around. Can a gal love … two men at the same time?”
“You don’t love me, Marianne.”
“It scare you? Old confirmed bachelor?”
“You don’t love me.”
“… spice. Any gal in her right mind would take all her vacations with you if she could. You’re the vacation type. Because you can have more fun than anyone I know. But you can also be grimmer and sadder. Wally’s a rock. Get you in out of a storm. Safe harbor … I’m talking rot.” She tried a grin. It barely reached her lips. “You, you’re a regular old manic depressive.”
“I forgot to take my Miltown along this trip,” I cracked. Feebly. I liked Marianne more than I wanted to admit. But I’d got all tangled up in matrimony a few years back, it hadn’t lasted six months, and I was no longer in the market. Besides, all you had to do was take one look at them to know Marianne and Wally Baker belonged together. She’d put the bubbles in his champagne; he’d keep her from boiling away. The only thing Marianne and I would have together would be a rocket’s flight once around the moon and then the long fall.
The nurse came back. I leaned down and kissed Marianne’s forehead. “Don’t go far,” she said sleepily.
“I’ll be outside, baby,” I told her.
After that, Banerjee’s boss cracked his veddy, ve
ddy English joke. Banerjee had spoken only when he had to. He was still mad because the collector sahib had left him in the Darjeeling station during the raid.
“You mean Ambedkar and Rukmini are free now?” I asked the collector. “You’re calling off your dogs?”
“But yes, Mr. Drum. We must. Even if we can prove they stayed at the Ayyangar house, with the Ayyangar crone dead, how could we prove they kidnaped the American reporter?”
“Because she’d say so. Because Baker would back it up. And because I would.”
“And their motive?”
I looked at Banerjee. He studied his fingernails. “Because they were holding her hostage while I went to find the American Observer for them.”
“And you found him?”
“No.”
The collector sahib clucked his tongue. “They wanted him, Mr. Drum, for what reason?”
“I can’t answer that.”
“You don’t wish to?”
“I don’t know.”
There wasn’t much else that could be said. The collector sahib was a funny bird, proud of the English blood in his veins and his Sandhurst education, but prouder still of his country, India. He wouldn’t upset the Benares Conference applecart for anything in the world, not when, starting tomorrow morning, the new India played host to twenty-one nations of the new Asia and Africa. Apparently he thought rounding up Ambedkar and his sidekick, if they could have been rounded up, wouldn’t do the Conference any good. He didn’t come out and say it, but he didn’t have to.
I hung around the hospital until midnight. They weren’t going to take X rays of Wally Baker’s skull until the morning. Marianne slept soundly. Banerjee and the collector sahib went back to the Darjeeling station, Banerjee leaving word that he wanted Marianne to make a full statement when she was strong enough. The doctor said he would call the assistant collector tomorrow.
Killers Are My Meat Page 14
