He walked into the kitchen. Dishes were in the sink, a laptop on the kitchen table. His brother, older than him, was a strange person in so many ways. He made big money as a brain surgeon, but gave most of it away. He lived here sometimes by himself, sometimes with a woman he’d met recently, another doctor, a young Chilean just out of medical school, half his age. They seemed to fight and break up and then get back together again, a circle of pain and love.
He turned the burner on and put on some hot water. His suit coat was soaked and heavy. He could smell the gasoline and wood smoke on his clothes.
It had been his brother who had stayed away from platitudes. The first time his brother had walked into their house after the accident he had not spoken a word, but had taken Michael’s blood pressure and examined him, as he’d refused to go to the hospital despite a bad cut on his hand.
“You look like shit,” his brother had said finally. At the time, and for days afterward, he’d not spoken more than a few words to anyone.
“I’m taking Rebecca to Mother’s,” his brother told him. “She’s okay, physically.”
“All right,” Michael had said.
“It’s a bad cut, but it will heal,” his brother said. He’d cried in front of his brother then, like a little boy that had lost something. His crying had shocked his brother, who continued to stitch up his hand not saying anything.
“Where’s Rebecca?” his brother asked.
“Her room.”
“Do you want Mother to come? Stay with you.”
“No. No one.”
“All right,” his brother said. “Do you want to come out to the beach? Maybe you two shouldn’t be here right now.”
“No. Take Rebecca to Mom’s,” he said. “Will you take care of her — if something, if something happens to me?”
“Okay.”
He’d expected his brother to say something else, something ignorant, but he didn’t. He’d understood, perhaps, that some pain is just too much to take. Perhaps only a scientist would understand that kind of pain, he thought, looking at the stove-ring’s blue flame.
O’Higgins heard the kettle begin to whistle. He took his wet jacket off, laid it on a chair, then pulled the empty pistol from its holster. He set it on the counter and started to make tea.
Asha came into the kitchen. “Michael — I — I don’t know what to do now,” she said. She ran to him and threw her arms around him, crying. “I didn’t want to die. Thank you.”
CHAPTER 24
Michael watched Asha end the call, then lay her phone on her lap.
“Nirad wants to meet you. At our home, on Broadway,” she said.
“Okay. You should turn your phone off, or they’ll use it to trace you.” He’d made her turn it off the moment she’d gotten back in the car at the beach. But he’d agreed to let her call Nirad.
“The girls? Can you get them back, Michael?”
“I don’t know. Maybe,” he said.
“Please. Try,” Asha said.
She’d pulled an old purple Mexican blanket over her legs. His brother, Andrew, had traveled throughout Mexico, hitchhiking, after he’d gotten out of medical school. He’d sent back gifts, small things in the mail to everyone in the family. He’d been gone a year, walking away without having told anyone he was going. His brother was a brilliant neurosurgeon now, with a big practice in the city.
They’d spent the night at his brother’s place in Bolinas. Michael called him at his office in San Francisco and asked him to stay away. It wasn’t a problem, his brother said.
He’d wanted to be alone with Asha. It was selfish. He would have to go explain what had happened at the beach to the Marin County Sheriff’s Department. The body of an unidentified man had been found shot dead, people on horseback had discovered it on Limantour Beach. It was on the news.
“Okay. I’ll try.”
“Aren’t you afraid of him? Nirad?”
“No. Should I be?” He smiled at her.
They’d slept in his brother’s bed. The feel of her in the night, her touch-presence was extraordinary and wonderful. Making love to her was like sailing, before the accident, when he’d first started to learn and realized what it was like to be close to nature like that, hand-and-hand, and part of it: boat-man-water. That’s what it was like making love to her, he thought, looking at her.
“It’s strange that I saw Duxbury Reef like this,” she said. She turned and looked out the window. His brother’s house had been built above the reef on the Bolinas Mesa, with a perfect view of it. “It looks so cruel in real life — the reef — not like the painting. Here, it’s cruel-looking.”
She was wearing her black pants and a t-shirt they’d found in his brother’s chest of drawers. Half the pulls off the chest of drawers were broken off. The chest was old, from a secondhand shop by the looks of it. His brother, a hippie, was brilliant but eccentric.
A poster of a ski jumper hung on the living room wall, the skier full on in the air, mid-jump. His brother was someone he didn’t really know, Michael realized. But he loved him. Loved him for staying away. Loved him for knowing when not to talk or ask questions. Loved him for being a hippie surgeon who would disappear into Mexico and come back sunburnt and so alive and happy.
“You’ll have to stay here. I’ve told my brother. I called from the landline. It will be safe. They won’t know where you are. I’ll come back for you in a day or two. Keep your phone off. Promise me,” he said.
“All right. Can I call my mother from here?”
“No. Better if you don’t. They’ll expect you to call her.”
“Will you go see him then? Nirad?”
“Yes.”
“I love you,” she said. “Please come back to me. I’m alone now.”
He nodded and took a coat out of the hall closet. His brother was a big man too, but didn’t seem like it, he thought, slipping on the coat that smelled of the beach. He handed her his backup revolver, the one he’d bought in Yuma, and showed her quickly how to use it if she had to.
He realized he was out of ammunition as he walked away from the house on the muddy dirt road leading down to where he’d left the Ford. He stopped at a gun shop in Petaluma, an old-school mom and pop place, and bought a box of nine millimeter ammo for the Glock. He called the Marin County Sheriff’s Department from the car. Identifying himself as police, he explained that he’d shot a man in self-defense on Limantour Beach the day before, in the course of an ongoing investigation. Then he hung up.
***
They were sitting in Marvin’s car in front of the Chaundhry family mansion on Broadway.
“What happened to your damn eyebrows?” Marvin asked him.
“They got singed,” O’Higgins said.
“Did you shoot that asshole, Das?”
“Yes,” O’Higgins said.
“Where’s Asha?”
“At my brother’s place,” O’Higgins said.
“The Marin County Sheriff’s office is looking for you,” Marvin said.
“I know.”
“Where’s Rebecca?”
“She’s at home. She’s okay.”
“Do you want me to go in there with you?”
“No. Call the cops, tell them I’m here?”
“You sure?” Marvin said.
“Yeah,” O’Higgins said.
“Did you — you know?”
“It was a fair fight,” O’Higgins said. “He was armed.”
“Are you sure you want to talk to him? Nirad?”
“Yes,” O’Higgins said.
“Why? He’s no threat now.”
“Because. I’m going to arrest him for the murders.”
“You can’t. You don’t have any proof, Mike.”
“Yes I do. It’s in there somewhere. I know it. The murder weapon,” O’Higgins said, turning to l
ook at the house.
“It’s too late, amigo. He’s still holding all the cards. The DA is charging Robert Thomas. They’ve arrested him again. They found incriminating things from the house at his gallery. He’s some kind of serial killer they think. Thomas,” Marvin said.
“He didn’t do it, Marvin. Not this time. I want you to leave. The police will come and pick me up for shooting the Colonel. You don’t want to be here, Marvin.”
“Mike —”
“Marvin, it’s okay. I did it to myself. Right?”
“Stubborn Irish fuck,” Marvin said.
“I’ll need a lawyer, I guess,” O’Higgins said.
He walked up the steps to the mansion. It was the first day in April. The sky was cold and blue and clear, all new feeling as if the world were starting over again. The fog would move down from the Marin Headlands and stop bothering the sailboats around the Golden Gate. All through April and into June it would stay clear, and sailors would be able to see the Farallon Islands to the west.
Tourists on the Golden Gate Bridge would see a place they’d dreamt about. Families would have strangers take photos of them that they would look at fondly years later. From Iceland to Egypt, these photos of excited family faces on Golden Gate existed in drawers and scrapbooks.
O’Higgins glanced out toward the bay, punched in the code to the Chaundhry mansion’s front door and walked in.
“I’ll pay you,” Nirad said.
Chaundhry was standing alone in the living room. He put down his cell phone. He’d been speaking to someone. O’Higgins watched Marvin get in his car and pull off down the street. He imagined Rebecca with Marvin’s daughters, and he smiled. He sensed that the world was changing when he saw the girls together, beyond the awful prejudices generations had grown up with.
Nirad turned and faced him, leaning on his cane.
“You killed the girl because she was pregnant. I understand that. But why Rishi? He was your son. You loved him — I saw the photos of the two of you, in the office. You and him. He kept them, so it must be true. He loved you,” O’Higgins said.
“It was true,” Nirad said. “He did. I did. I loved him too.”
Nirad put his phone down. He leaned heavily on his cane while he pocketed the phone. It was the cane he’d seen at the lawyer’s office leaning against the conference table. It had a white ivory head of an elephant on the end of it.
“But you killed him. I don’t get it. Why? That’s what I want to know. I want to know what someone like you tells themselves.”
“I came to offer you money to give me the photos of the girl and me. You took the phone back from Das. You still have her phone,” Nirad said.
“How much?” O’Higgins said.
“How much do you want?” Chaundhry said.
“It’s all about money, then?”
“Yes. Most of the time, yes. I’m afraid it is. My grandfather was a farmer. One bad crop, one late payment to the money lender and we would starve — I learnt what money meant then. We lost the farm and were forced to move to the city. Do you know what that’s like in India, to be destitute? How much, Detective?”
“You tell me why you killed Rishi first.”
“He was hysterical. He threatened that he would tell the press what I’d done.”
“Why?”
“Because — the girl had gone to him, unfortunately.”
“When you walked in that afternoon, Rishi knew about what you’d been doing to the girl?”
“Yes.”
“Bharti Kumar knew she was pregnant?” O’Higgins said.
“Yes. I should have been more careful, but sometimes I can’t control myself. It’s a problem I’ve lived with my whole life. A bad temper. Impulsiveness.”
“Careful?”
“Yes. How much, Detective? For the phone,” Nirad said.
“And what happened when you got here? I want to know,” O’Higgins said.
“I told Rishi it was none of his affair.”
“You mean he wanted you to stop it.”
“We both lost our tempers, I suppose,” Nirad said. “But Asha thought Rishi was the guilty party.”
“Now you’re lying,” O’Higgins said.
“Asha killed them. I couldn’t stop her. I’m an old man,” Nirad said.
“You’re lying.”
“I want those photos. Give me Bharti’s phone,” Nirad said.
“Fuck you,” O’Higgins said.
“How much, Detective? Ten million. Is that enough?”
“Asha was at the market when you got home,” O’Higgins said. “That’s why you had to bribe the Gilberts, to make the timeline work. You killed them both, and then you walked across the street and picked up the girls and took them to the Consulate.”
“You’re in love with Asha, is that it? You’ll need money. She’s a spoilt girl. She won’t love you if she can’t have all of this.” He gestured around the room with the cane. “She’s used to it, you see. To having money, to the private planes, and the mansions around the world. She’ll leave you, Detective. What are you? Just a policeman. Twenty million for the phone?”
“Not enough,” O’Higgins said.
“What is it you want?” Nirad said.
“The truth. I want you to tell me what really happened. Tell me that, and I’ll give you the phone.”
“A full confession? There is no confession, because I didn’t do it.”
O’Higgins took out his phone. “I’m going to call someone, and when I tell them, they’ll send an email to the Times of India. It’s all there, the photos. Just the best ones. You’re an email away from being ruined. Is that what you want?”
He started to punch Madrone’s cell phone number into his phone. “Yeah, it’s me,” O’Higgins said.
“Wait!” Nirad said.
“Hold it,” O’Higgins spoke into the phone.
“How do I know — how do I know you’ll give me what I want?” Nirad asked.
“You don’t, asshole,” O’Higgins said.
“Thirty million?” Nirad said, walking close to him.
“Send it,” O’Higgins said into the phone.
“It’s gone,” Madrone said. “The file. Something’s happened to it. The file is gone.”
O’Higgins ended the call and put his phone down.
“We knew about what you planned. The Americans are very interested in me becoming Prime Minister,” Nirad said. “They know about your friend, and they know your partner went to the Gilberts. Those photos are gone. All that is left is on that phone.” Nirad stepped closer, so that he was close enough for O’Higgins to see the spit accumulating on the corners of the old man’s mouth.
“You want to know what happened, that afternoon?” Nirad said.
O’Higgins realized that he’d been beaten. The evidence was gone. Probably from every place the photos had been sent. Kumar’s phone was blank. Kumar’s iCloud account had disappeared. Nirad Chaundhry was safe. The bluff was over. He’d won.
“You’re a fool,” Chaundhry said. He pulled at his cane, furious. O’Higgins saw a blade emerge as Nirad lunged at him with it, screaming, wild-eyed and murderous. The blade caught him in his side. The old man shoved it into him, running him through, a queer look of glee on his face. O’Higgins could feel the hilt touch his stomach, his gut punctured.
“I killed them both,” Nirad said, his eyes bright with hate. “It’s how the world works.” He pressed the hilt into O’Higgins, his hand bloody. Nirad’s face strained, his neck thick with hate and blood-engorged.
A gunshot fired. Nirad’s face, looking at him, so terrifying, changed, its expression going soft.
Asha held the barrel of the gun against Nirad’s side. O’Higgins reached down and drew the sword from his abdomen. He turned and saw Asha standing, the backup .38 from Yuma he’d left
her in her hand. Neel was standing behind her. Both were watching Nirad, teetering as if they were watching some kind of immortal die.
Nirad was trying to stay upright, but buckled and fell onto his knees. He looked up at Asha in disbelief.
“Vishnu for protection,” Nirad said. He tried to get to his phone, despite his wound. Neel stopped him, walking up and standing on the phone, crushing it, keeping Nirad from calling an ambulance until he bled out. The three of them watched him die.
Later, Asha came to visit O’Higgins in the hospital. She explained what Nirad had been saying as he was dying. It was a line in a famous Indian poem, Asha said as she pulled the curtains open, letting in the sunshine. It was the second day of April. He’d slept without dreaming. She walked from the window toward his hospital bed and quoted:
“Brahma for creation
Vishnu for protection
And Siva for termination.
Is there any gods made out of love?”.
CHAPTER 25
He came to see Robert Thomas, who had confessed to several unsolved murders including his stepfather back in the 80s, before they moved him from the San Francisco County jail to San Quentin. Thomas had his own cell. The county jail smelled of cooped-up human beings, an amalgam of hapless young men’s fears. Or was it just the stink of the vicious, O’Higgins wondered, being led down the cell block where he’d been countless times before. All of them, guilty and innocent, wanted to believe that someone, somewhere would intervene on their behalf. Hope is the last to die.
“How is Asha? She writes me, you know. Long letters. I have them all here. I re-read them. She writes wonderfully. All about India. It’s like being there, reading her letters,” Thomas said. “I always meant to go.”
“She’s fine,” O’Higgins said.
“The girls,” Thomas said. “She got them back. Thank God.”
“Yes. She’s with them. At her mother’s.”
“Good. Good,” Thomas said.
The two men looked at each other. They’d shared something profound, and knew it.
“Why are you doing this?” O’Higgins said finally.
Robert Thomas had confessed and been found guilty of the murders of Bharti Kumar and Rishi Chaundhry, and was sentenced to death by lethal injection. The case had faded from the headlines, in part because the U.S. State Department and various intelligence agencies worked to keep the trial out of the newspapers.
Last Ferry Home Page 25
