Go West, Inspector Ghote

by H. R. F. Keating

  We are two: we have two. The old family-planning slogan came into Ghote’s head. Well, if children were wealth, then Ranjee Shahani was half way there at least. As he himself was with his one son. But why was he being told this tear-jerking film-story tale?

  “Two years ago, Inspector,” the crorepati went on, placing every word down as if it were a weighty coin, “I sent that one daughter of mine, Nirmala by name, to America. For her education, you understand.”

  “Yes, sahib.”

  Of course anybody of Ranjee Shahani’s wealth and influence would want to send their only child to the U.S.A., or at worst to the U.K., for final education.

  “Inspector, until three-four weeks ago we were receiving aerogramme letters from Nirmala written each Sunday informing us of the great, great progress she was making at her college. Her college in California, Inspector.”

  Ghote realised that he was expected to bring an expression of admiration on to his features at this. California was plainly a particularly special part of America. But where was it? Where? Yes. Yes, that was it. In the far west, as far west as you could go. California.

  “And then, suddenly, Inspector, nothing. Nothing, nothing. One week missed, two. Three. We are telephoning, telephoning. She has left the college they are saying. Whereabouts unknown.”

  Ghote felt a lurch of unstoppable dismay. The crorepati’s only daughter missing in America, in California. And he himself must have been summoned here then to be sent to that unknown, distant territory to find her.

  “Mr. Shahani—” he began.

  The crorepati ignored his half-uttered objection.

  “What to do, Inspector?” he said. “What to do? But well I am knowing what to do. Jaldi, jaldi a private eye I am hiring. Two hundred and fifty dollars a day plus expenses. That is rupees two thousand per day, Inspector. Rupees two thousand.”

  Ghote, suddenly freed of the prospect of having to conduct an investigation in distant, strange, complicated, unknown California felt a sense of awe invade him. Two thousand rupees a day. In a single day to earn nearly twice as much as he himself brought down in a month. What a marvel of a man, of a detective, such a person must be. And, of course, such a man must have succeeded in locating Ranjee Shahani’s missing daughter, though if so why—

  “In two days my private eye had found.”

  Ghote let a broad smile come on to his face.

  But no matching smile showed on Ranjee Shahani’s round, well-fleshed features. Instead, plain to see, a look of smouldering rage was gathering there.

  A pudgy fist rose up and beat the unsmirched white blotting-paper.

  “She will not come back, Inspector. That man says she is happy-happy where she is. He is a damn fool only.”

  A damn fool. On two thousand rupees a day, plus expenses. It could hardly be. But what wealth must Ranjee Shahani have to be able to say that, to be able to think it.

  “Do you know where that stupid girl has put herself, Inspector?”

  And this time, it was clear, the crorepati did want an answer. But where—where in America? In California could the girl have gone?

  “She has taken job, sir?” he tried. “Some job paying rupees 60,000 p.m.?”

  “Inspector, if Nirmala was wanting that much money per month, do you not think I could give and give?”

  “Yes, sir. Of course, sir. Easily you could give.”

  Ranjee Shahani blew fiercely out between puffed cheeks.

  “No,” he said, “Nirmala has entered an ashram.”

  “An ashram, sir? But then she has come back to India? There cannot be any such holy places where you are able to cast off the cares of the world in California.”

  “There are such places there, Inspector. There are. I have talked with my friend the Minister, and he has talked with his friend in Delhi. External Affairs, Inspector. And they have consulted Consul General in Los Angeles, California. And, Inspector, it seems that in what they are calling the Golden State there are many, many ashrams. And it is in one of these that my Nirmala is being kept.”

  “Kept? Sir?”

  “Yes, Inspector. Kept-kept. It is a swami who is there. From India. And that girl is saying she is wanting to be there with him for ever. He is preventing her, Inspector.”

  “Preventing, sir?”

  “Yes, yes. And there is worse also.”

  “Sir, worse?”

  “Inspector, when I am sending Nirmala to California naturally I am opening a bank account for her. State Bank of India, 707 Wilshire Boulevard, Los Angeles.”

  “Yes, sir. Naturally a father would do that. If he could.”

  “But naturally also, Inspector, I am making it joint-account. Joint-account with me. So that I am always able to know-know what that girl is spending only.”

  “Yes, sir, I see.”

  “Inspector, she has cleared account. Every rupee, every dollar, Inspector. That man has got his hands on all. All. And, Inspector …”

  “Yes, Mr. Shahani, sir?”

  “For that girl I have arranged a first-class marriage. With the son of Mr. R. K. Ajmani, R. K. Ajmani and Co. (Private) Ltd., import-export. That boy is very, very active and their business and mine would fit together like two cooing doves only.”

  The crorepati leant forward suddenly and sharply across the huge sheet of unspotted white blotting-paper in front of him.

  “Inspector,” he said, hammering out each word, “tonight-tonight you will fly to California, and there you will fetch back my daughter, whatever that damn-fool private eye is saying about happy-pappy in that ashram. You will make her see reason, Inspector, if it is taking you every day of your leave-time and twice as much more. I cannot go, Inspector. What would Shahani Enterprises do if I am not here? Mrs. Shahani cannot go. Naturally, she is not speaking much English. I have no one else to go. You are going to go for me, Inspector Ghote.”

  TWO

  It was very, very different from Banares. Los Angeles airport’s futuristic control tower, perched like a concrete spider on four high, shell-thin arching legs, was the first piece of California that Inspector Ghote took in, his head throbbing and dazed after upon hour of hour of time-annihilating air travel.

  But, he told himself, that is not something in a science-fiction magazine. It is real. It is a part of the real America, land of every sort of mechanical marvel, of space shots, of automation, of efficiency.

  As he left the plane and followed his fellow passengers through the airport building, other random, equally vivid flashes impinged on him. There were tanned faces, male and female, with click-on, click-off smiles bidding him time and again “Have a nice day.” But no nice day awaited him. That he knew with inner certainty.

  And there were the enormous men everywhere, great towering muscular six-footers every one, glowing with good feeding. And girls. He had found himself standing behind two of them on a moving staircase taking him he was not quite sure where. They too were so tall, and they radiated such healthiness—easy-moving limbs, morning-fresh complexions, hair tossing freely from side to side.

  How would he manage among such giants of people, people from whom high-sailing confidence shone out like the bright glow from a dance of night-time fireflies? In this ashram where Nirmala Shahani had put herself, though its head might be an Indian holy man himself, perhaps an antagonist endowed with formidable mystic power, he would find her surrounded, no doubt, by Americans. Surrounded by Americans like the towering creatures on every side of him now, casually purposeful amid the hurly-burly of the airport, itself so different from the familiar, slow-paced, bureaucratic worm-windings of Santa Cruz Airport back at home. How would he be able to deal with such beings? To force, if necessary, answers out of them? To sift truth from the lies they might put before him? How could he fight such guardians away from the girl he had travelled so many thousands of miles to rescue?

  Suddenly the universal sign for a men’s room caught his eye. He broke from the steadily moving file of newly-landed passengers and plunged into it
to gain a few moments’ respite.

  But even in this sanctuary the pressure of American life did not slacken. The whole place was relentlessly clean. It smelt, not with the familiar pungency of Bombay public lavatories but with a floweriness, an aggressive floweriness. And there was a machine for dispensing toothbrushes. Brush regularly with Aim as part of your total oral hygiene program, an advertisement on it commanded.

  Aim, a toothpaste with an aim, a toothpaste with an undeviating purpose. And its use to be only part of a “total oral hygiene program.” What was an oral hygiene programme even? Would he have to have one here in California? It had not been so long since he had abandoned a simple morning mouth-scrub with a sharp-smelling twig from a neem-tree in favour just of a toothbrush and a tube of Neem dentifrice.

  He picked up his bag—Why had he not made time in Bombay to get hold of something respectably smart?—braced himself and pushed his way out back into the onward-pressing stream of passengers. There was to be, it was plain, no refuge for him anywhere in California until he had wrested Ranjee Shahani’s daughter from her ashram. Not to forget as well, he cautioned himself, wresting her from the Indian swami at its head, who in all probability was exercising over her power far different from the everyday cause-and-effect wrongdoing he was accustomed to deal with in Bombay.

  And what about Mr. Fred Hoskins?

  Mr. Fred Hoskins, $250 a day and expenses. When Ranjee Shahani had said he would cable the private eye to tell him to assist his representative from India, the suggestion had been simultaneously very welcome and diabolically unpleasant. To be greeted in California by someone who knew the ways of that unknown territory, who would accept him as a properly authorised representative, there to carry out his task: That was something to be heartily grateful for. But in California to have always at his elbow, in the role of mere assistant and a discredited one at that, a man who in one day could pick up as much as two thousand rupees—plus expenses—it was a situation so out-of-balance it would not bear thinking about.

  There was the problem, too, of how he was to recognise this powerful, and discredited, figure. There had been no time to have a photograph sent from America. There had not even been time in reply to Ranjee Shahani’s cable for a full personal description to be sent. What would a man who earned two thousand rupees a day look like? And, when you got down to it, all these Americans looked the same. Big.

  Then, suddenly, there in front of him on a large sheet of brilliantly white card was his name, or what must be his name, boldly scrawled in thick black letters with a fat felt-pen. INSPECTOR GOTHE.

  He swung his head up to look at the man holding the placard. The fellow was huge. Bigger, it seemed, even than most of the other men striding by with determined, easily confident, set faces. But this fellow must be at least six-foot-eight. And every part of him looked proportionately large. The hands which held the placard were like two great chunks of red meat. Of beef. The face, looking challengingly over the placard’s top, was of the same bloody, beefy colour and the hair crowning it, cropped close to a big square skull, was of an orangey-red hue like the fur of a jackal. But the most striking thing of all was the belly on which the lower edge of the stiff placard rested. It was tremendous. It hung forward over a well-cinched black leather belt like a great swinging sack of grain. Oh yes, much, much of those two thousand rupees per diem would be needed to fill that swaggering outgrowth.

  Squaring his shoulders, Ghote went up to the giant figure.

  “It is Mr. Fred Hoskins?”

  The big red face bent downwards. An expression of pained surprise appeared on it. A deep breath was at last drawn in.

  “Inspector Goat?”

  “Well, actually my name is pronounced like Go and Tay. Ghote.”

  The big head nodded slowly up and down two or three times. Then the two great beef hands tore the white placard in half and in half again with two massive ripping sounds.

  Fred Hoskins tossed the jagged pieces in the direction of a trash basket.

  What a waste only, Ghote thought briefly.

  “Welcome to the greatest state of the greatest nation on earth, Inspector,” the giant suddenly boomed.

  “Yes,” said Ghote. “Yes. Thank you.”

  The private eye’s great red face was still looking down at him. It was plain that he was adjusting himself to a new situation.

  “Okay,” the fellow said at last, with abrupt twanging certainty. “Now this is what I think you should do. You should place that bag of yours in the trunk of my car, and we’ll proceed directly to the ashram. I was going to introduce you around, to have you meet some of my ex-colleagues and good friends in the L.A.P.D. But I guess not.”

  L.A.P.D.? Ghote thought. Yes. Los Angeles Police Department.

  He felt a little jet of pleasure at having got that right. But it hardly compensated for the certainty that he had fallen far below the private eye’s expectations of any representative of the wealthy Mr. Ranjee Shahani, of Bombay, India.

  Oh, why had he not insisted at least on getting a new suitcase for the trip? Shahani Enterprises would have paid, even.

  “Yes, yes, that is a very good idea,” he said. “The sooner I am seeing this ashram, the sooner I can be arranging for Miss Nirmala Shahani to leave.”

  “You should be so lucky,” Fred Hoskins banged back. “I tell you, Inspect— Hell, I can’t call you that. What’s your name?”

  Ghote wanted to say that his name was Ghote, and that it was spelt with the H as the second letter. But he knew at least something about Americans. They believed in informality.

  “I am Ganesh,” he said. “Ganesh.”

  “Well, this is how it is, Gan,” Hoskins said. “I’m the guy who picked up the trail of the Shahaneye kid, and I’m the guy who found the ashram. So I’m in a position to inform you that I know as much about that little piece of ass as anyone. And you can take my word for it, she’s not going to leave that place any time soon. She’s gone off on a religion kick, and that’s the way she’s gonna stay.”

  Ghote, his head still thickly muzzy from his long flight, felt as if a hammer was being repeatedly banged down on the top of his skull. But he had to make some sort of a reply.

  “Yes, Mr. Hoskins,” he began. “I very well understand what is the position, but—”

  “Listen, if we’re gonna work together on this case, we’re gonna have to work as a team. So you’re gonna have to call me Fred. In these United States we don’t stand on ceremony. You’re just gonna have to learn that.”

  “Yes,” Ghote said.

  He wished with all his might that this yammering giant could simply vanish into thin air. But he was dependent on the fellow. Without him he would have the greatest difficulty getting to the ashram at all. He did not even know its address, just that it was not in Los Angeles but somewhere outside. He could make inquiries if he had to, and in the end he would find it. But if he was to act at all, quickly Fred Hoskins stood, giant-like, squarely in his path.

  “Fred,” he said. “Yes, I will call you Fred.”

  The big private eye led him rapidly out of the airport building to a vast car-park. Row upon row of vehicles confronted his bemused gaze, almost all huge in size, as big as any of the imported monsters belonging to Bombay film stars and a few magnates like Ranjee Shahani, which swam like rare whales among the shoals of little Fiats and Ambassadors familiar to him.

  Fred Hoskins directed his grain-sack of a belly down one of the dozens of alleyways between the rows of wide, grinning monsters, and Ghote followed half a pace behind, leaning over to one side the better to lug his wretched-looking suitcase.

  Out of the corner of his eye he registered the innumerable shiny chrome names of the cars—Chevrolet, Buick, Oldsmobile, Cadillac, Ford, Dodge, Pontiac, Peugeot, Datsun, Audi, Ferrari, BMW, Ford, Ford, Ford, Chrysler, Plymouth, Alfa-Romeo, Aston-Martin, Ford, Ford, Jaguar—a smaller vehicle this, but gleamingly expensive-looking—Toyota, Volvo, Porsche—a racing model with its name on a smart red tran
slucent panel—another Ford, another, another Chevrolet, another Cadillac, Triumph, Ford, Ford, Lotus, Saab, Ford, Ford, Ford.

  So many makes, and from all over the world. So many shapes. So many colours, gold in plenty, silver, pink, scarlet, orange, the palest blue, the darkest most lustrous blue, white, black. What a fearful obstacle this very richness, number and variety seemed. So much to learn about, so much to have to deal with. What sort of a person would drive each particular make? Were there really so many people of such wealth in California? How would he ever begin to learn which car told you what about its driver? Who owned what? Who bought what? Who wanted what?

  Fred Hoskins came to an abrupt halt.

  “This is the bus,” he said.

  It was as big as any of the monsters in the row, a huge, shiny, lurid green affair. Fred Hoskins gave its immaculate paintwork a hearty slap and then produced a bunch of keys and advanced on the driver’s door. Ghote, with a cloudy notion of showing himself to be thoroughly democratic, staggered with his case round to the back and tried to lift open the hugely wide trunk.

  “No! No! Wait! Wait!” Fred Hoskins yelled.

  He jerked wide the door in front of him and thrust his great square jackal-fur-topped head inside. From the car’s interior his voice sounded just a little quieter.

  “Everything automatic in this baby. Just wait right where you are.”

  Ghote stood and waited, heaving in a deep breath of air—immediately finding lungs and throat filled with sickly, mechanical-tasting fumes so strong that his very eyes stung and watered.

  He began to shake with coughing, and was only dimly aware that just in front of him the top of the big car’s wide trunk was slowly rising, impressive as the portal of some massy temple.

  Fred Hoskins stepped back out of the car’s front door.

  “Put the bag in,” he yelled. “Let’s get this show on the road.”

  Coughing and spluttering, Ghote picked up his wretched case and heaved it into the trunk’s vast interior.