The Last Taxi Ride

by A. X. Ahmad

  “I will. Thank you.”

  He smiles at her, and Vashtee winks back at him as she walks away, her rump swaying, heavy gold bangles tinkling on her wrists.

  Ghungroo. So Leela works at a club.

  He’s taken club girls home in his cab before, at three or four in the morning, and they always seemed drained, kicking off their high-heeled shoes and curling up on the seat; a few have even fallen asleep. None of them want to talk, and he associates a kind of sadness with those silent rides through the sleeping city.

  Maybe Leela is just a hostess, but she could also be a stripper; she’d lied to him about still working as a nanny, and clearly hides what she does for a living.

  Ranjit has never heard of a club called Ghungroo. It’s not one of the many in the trendy Meatpacking District, or the hipster joints in Williamsburg, or the cluster of large, garish places in Midtown. He recognizes that word, though: ghungroos are the ankle bells worn by classical Indian dancers and courtesans, the tinkling of bells amplifying the stamp of their dancing feet.

  A strange name for a club. Still musing on the name, he gets up and walks across the Sheep Meadow.

  A few clouds have floated into the sky, blocking the sun, and there is suddenly a summer drizzle, so fine that it is almost invisible. All across the vast lawn there is sudden movement as sunbathers sit up and grab for shirts, their faces dazed and swollen, the outlines of grass imprinted on their cheeks.

  One woman stands abruptly, twisting her long black hair into a ponytail, and Ranjit suddenly has a vision of Shabana in his cab.

  Trying not to think of her dead, smashed face, he makes his way carefully through the crush of bodies.

  Chapter Fourteen

  At ten thirty that night the sudden rain is just a memory and it is hot again, and humid, the temperature barely dropping after the sun goes down.

  Ranjit walks slowly down West Thirty-seventh Street. Club Ghungroo should be right here, but there is no awning, no lines, and no thick-necked bouncers. All he can see is a darkened nine-story building with a brightly lit glassed-in elevator lobby at street level. Two men in dark jackets stand inside, with the alert expressions of those in the service industry.

  Damn it, is this the right place? Ghungroo wasn’t listed, and neither Ali nor Murgi had heard of it. All evening Ranjit called cabbies, who in turn called others. Finally, half an hour ago, a Pakistani driver remembered dropping off some well-heeled businessmen at this strangely named club on Thirty-seventh.

  Ranjit walks past the address, then ducks into the wide archway of a darkened office building; from here he has a clear view of the building. West Thirty-seventh Street, south of the hubbub of Times Square, is a strange place for a nightclub. This block is lined with nineteenth-century brick office buildings, the kind with creaky elevators and small, dark offices housing importer-exporters, insurance agents, and freight expediters. During the day the street must be busy enough, but now all the buildings are dark. The only light comes from the brightly lit elevator lobby, which casts a yellow lozenge of light across the street.

  If there is a club here, it must be at the top of the building, perhaps with a roof terrace that takes advantage of the Midtown views. Craning his neck, Ranjit looks up, but sees only darkness. He reaches for his phone and starts dialing the cabbie to confirm this address, but just then a black stretch limo hums down the street, and stops right by the lit elevator lobby.

  Hanging up, he peers into the street: the limo’s tinted windows block his sightline, but he can see the tops of three men’s heads as they saunter into the lobby. They show something to the men inside, then vanish into the elevator. The limo drives away, and the street is silent again. The dark-jacketed men in the lobby stroll outside, their eyes scanning the street.

  Ranjit ducks back, thinking that they have seen him, but the men stop right by the door. A flame flares in one man’s fist, and they both light up cigarettes, taking quick, hungry drags. Another limo turns into the street, and both men crush their cigarettes under their heels, and hurry back into the lobby.

  The second set of visitors—men this time too, in suits and ties—enter the elevator. And as soon as this limo departs, another one rolls up, and then another. It is almost as though the cars are following a premeditated plan and have staggered their arrivals. Are the men all together? It’s hard to tell.

  What seems to be the last limo stays motionless for a longer time, and as its passengers depart, Ranjit can hear the sound of raucous voices. At first he doesn’t understand, and then catches an entire sentence, shouted from one of the passengers to the men in the lobby.

  “Baas. Khatam. Elevator bundh karo. Abbhey, suna? Jaldi, jaldi.”

  The man has spoken in Hindi: We’re finished. Shut down the elevator. Did you hear me? Quick, quick. It is not the polished, Urdu-inflected Hindi of the north, but the crude dialect of Mumbai.

  Hearing it, Ranjit stiffens: so the Ghungroo is an Indian nightclub.

  The man continues talking in Hindi, telling the driver to park nearby and wait for them. Ranjit strains to glimpse the speaker, but he’s hidden behind the limo, and by the time it pulls away, the lobby is empty. The limo drives by slowly, and the driver finds a space in the middle of the block, reversing in jerkily.

  The limo’s interior light goes on for a second, and Ranjit sees the driver, dressed in a dark livery uniform, complete with a peaked cap. The driver hauls himself out of the car, then locks the car door, tugs on the handle to check it, and walks away slowly.

  Ranjit has to make a decision: stay here and watch the elevator lobby, or follow the driver and try to get some information about this club: livery drivers, like cabbies, are lonely, and happy to gossip with their fellow drivers. Glancing back at the street, Ranjit sees no more headlights, and the darkness makes the decision for him.

  It is easy to follow the limo driver, who moves slowly, with the stiff, hobbling gait that affects so many longtime chauffeurs. The man turns decisively down Ninth Avenue, passes a sushi place and a deli without slowing down, then crosses the street and enters a brightly lit diner.

  It has red leatherette booths along one wall, and a counter along the other, with a lone counterman in a filthy apron, busy wiping down the grill. These kinds of diners—which serve omelets, matzo ball soup, and meatloaf—are disappearing in Midtown, replaced by cheap ethnic food and chopped-salad chains.

  Ranjit hesitates. All the booths are empty, as is the long counter; once he enters, he will be instantly noticed. He watches the driver hoist himself painfully onto a stool at the counter, then take off his cap and run a comb through thick, iron-gray hair. His immaculately combed hair and aristocratic profile are in sharp contrast to his shabby, too-large jacket.

  Come on, Ranjit tells himself. This guy is just another worn-out livery driver. He’s probably lonely after driving all day, he’ll want to talk.

  A bell above the door tinkles as Ranjit walks in, and the counterman looks up sourly. Ranjit sits on a stool, leaving a seat between himself and the driver.

  “Got any tea?” he asks. “Real tea?”

  “Whaddya mean? There’s Lipton’s or Earl Grey.”

  “Never mind. Just give me a poppy-seed bagel, toasted. No butter.”

  The livery driver looks up from studying a laminated menu. “I’ll have the lumberjack breakfast.”

  The counterman’s face darkens. “We don’t serve breakfast this late.”

  “Nonsense.” The driver’s English is clipped, almost British, the English of the Indian upper classes. “It says here on your menu: ‘Breakfast served all day.’ All day, yes?”

  Muttering, the counterman moves away, and the grill goes on with a hiss.

  Ranjit turns to the driver. He must be in his late sixties, but his smooth skin and well-combed hair make him look younger. The only signs of his age are the deep creases that bracket his thin, downturned mouth.

  “You’re from India, right? I’m Ranjit Singh, from Chandigarh. Food any good here?”
<
br />   “Anil Tiwari, from Mumbai. The food is bad. But one comes to these places for bad food. So one could say it is good bad food.”

  Ranjit smiles, but the driver doesn’t smile back. Ranjit gestures to the man’s uniform. “So, you’re driving, yes? Me too, my cab is outside. How is business?”

  “How long have you been driving?” Anil Tiwari examines him through hooded eyes.

  “Two years. But it’s temporary.” Ranjit thinks of Leela when he says this.

  “Ah. Well, you will find out, as I have, that there is no easy answer to your question. So I will say, business in New York is always good, if you are willing to take it up the ass.” The obscenity is incongruous, coming in that cultured accent. “Take me, for example. I’ve been eating this same shitty food four nights in a row, because my customers want to go to this club down the street.”

  “I hear you, Anil Sahib.” Ranjit uses the honorific, wondering what misfortune happened back home to condemn this man to a life as a livery driver. “The waiting is really the worst part.”

  The man pushes up the cuffs of his too-long jacket. “I could be home, having dinner with my wife. But, no, I have to hang about here, like a servant. These people behave like they’re still in India, they think they can kick people around.”

  “Yeah, I know. Those Indian bankers, they’re real assholes. Sometimes they’ll get into my cab and keep yammering on their cell phones, as though I should read their minds and know where they’re going.”

  Tiwari nods vigorously in agreement. “The men who hired me call themselves businessmen … tchaaa. Businessmen, my ass. They’re thugs, from Mumbai. You should hear their Hindi. Straight from the Dharavi slum. They think they’re tough guys. But you know what they’re scared of?”

  “What?” Ranjit’s mind is a whirl.

  “Rats.” Tiwari smiles for the first time, his teeth stained and yellow. “This guy I drive, he got out of the car, a rat ran across the street, and he turned white as a sheet. Big, tough guy, scared of a rat. Yelled at me, as though it was my fault. What can I do, with the garbage strike and all? You know there are thirty-two million rats in New York City? Four for each person?”

  Just then the food arrives. Tiwari looks skeptically at his stack of pancakes, eggs, and sausages, pours syrup over everything, and begins to meticulously cut it up.

  Are Tiwari’s clients actually thugs from Mumbai, or is he just exaggerating? Ranjit needs to know more.

  “So, Anil Sahib. You’re stuck here till late at night? Let’s go and get a drink after this.”

  “I dare not. My clients could be hours, or they could be out in a few minutes. Depends if they find any girls. Last night, my client had me pick him up fifteen minutes after I dropped him off. I went to the service entrance, at the back, and he was standing there with a girl. Took her straight back to the hotel.”

  “So it’s a strip club, yes? The girl was a stripper?”

  Tiwari chews his food slowly. “Stripper-shipper, I don’t know. This girl was pretty, but she looked like a regular girl.” He shrugs and begins to chew on a piece of sausage. “She was Indian. Can you imagine it? That girl’s parents came to this country, slaved away, probably sent her to college, and this is what she does. Disgusting. Tchaaa…”

  Tiwari continues to eat, rambling on about Indian-American children, and how fast they forget their values. He talks on and on, but Ranjit is no longer listening, his mind busy trying to assemble all the pieces.

  Leela had said, You don’t know these people, before running away from him. Now it turns out that she’s working at a strip club that is patronized by Indian thugs. Ranjit’s next question is based on a hunch.

  “Anil Sahib.” He interrupts Tiwari in mid-flow. “Do you know who owns this club?”

  “Ghungroo? Some rich Gujarati guy, Patel. He owns a lot of places. Hair places, yoga places, beauty parlors.”

  Bingo. Jay Patel owns the club where Leela works. So the rumors about his connections to the Mumbai mob are true. Clearly Leela has learned something while working at the club, something that has frightened her into silence. He must talk to her. Maybe she will be able to tell him why Patel is so interested in finding Shabana’s murderer.

  And now he knows that the club has a service entrance at the rear. It makes sense—the management wouldn’t want the workers taking the fancy elevator up. He’ll wait there till Leela comes out, and this time she won’t be able to run away.

  Tiwari is still talking, though somehow most of the lumberjack breakfast has vanished into his skinny frame. “… ah, I’m going to quit this job next year. Maybe the year after. Go back to India, get myself a chauffeur, never drive again. Just sit back and see the world go by.”

  Ranjit nods in agreement. He’s heard this retirement fantasy many times from his cabbie friends. Taking out a twenty-dollar bill, he beckons to the counterman.

  “For me and my friend here.” Leaving his bagel untouched, he slides off the stool. “Nice to meet you, Tiwari Sahib.”

  “Aare? What is this?” Tiwari looks up in astonishment.

  “It is my pleasure. Good to talk to a fellow countryman.”

  “Wait. Wait.” Tiwari pulls a crumpled card from his wallet, smoothens it out, and hands it over. “My number. You can call me if you need anything.”

  “Thank you, Tiwari Sahib. Drive safe, now.”

  Heading out of the door, Ranjit glances back. Tiwari is hunched over his food, pouring syrup over his last pancake.

  Now to find the rear entrance to the Ghungroo. Walking toward the club, he thinks about Anil Tiwari, the name strangely familiar from somewhere in the past. Tiwari, Tiwari … wasn’t that the name of the banker in Mumbai, the one convicted of fraud? Or was it one of the bureaucrats caught up in the Bofors arms-trading scandal?

  Ranjit finds an alley that runs parallel to Thirty-seventh Street, allowing him to approach the back of the Ghungroo building. Back here, its ornate white terra-cotta facing gives way to a bare brick façade, and the windows on the top three floors have been bricked in. That must be where the club is, though Ranjit can’t hear even the faintest trace of music.

  At the base of the building, metal stairs lead up to a small loading dock and a door: this must be the service entrance. Judging from the cars jammed into the alley—a Camaro, two Beemers, and an old Jaguar XJ6—the employees of Club Ghungroo are doing well.

  A fixture over the service entrance casts a dull yellow cone of light, and Ranjit stands in the shadows, next to a row of tall trash cans. As he waits, the reek of the trash seeps into his nostrils, fermented and alcoholic, and soon the smell becomes a taste at the back of his throat. And Tiwari was right about the rats: dark, furry shapes run across the alley, avoiding the light.

  The stink of the garbage is making it hard to breathe and he tries to ignore it. He meditates, focusing on his breathing, and is getting somewhere when a spill of light shines through his eyelids.

  Opening his eyes, he sees a car drive into the alley, two figures in the front. It is a Ford Crown Victoria, painted an unobtrusive brown, but its three tall antennas are a dead giveaway. He has seen these unmarked police cars before, parked all over Midtown, waiting for taxi drivers to make illegal turns.

  The dung-colored car stops in the center of the alley, and Ranjit hears the soft click-click of a camera as the license plates of the parked cars are captured. The photographer is a woman with close-cropped hair, and the driver is a man with well-oiled, dark hair, his parting razor-sharp. Even from this far away, there is no mistaking Detective Case and Detective Rodriguez.

  What the hell are they doing here? If the cops find him in the alley with the Glock tucked into his waistband, they’ll arrest him for sure, and this time, there will be no bail.

  The camera held in Case’s hands moves as she clicks away, and Rodriguez sits calmly at the wheel, sipping from a tall canister of coffee; the detectives seem to have come prepared for a stakeout. Case lowers the camera, nods to her partner, and the Crown Vic reverse
s slowly down the alley.

  Ranjit knows that he has to get out of there, but have the cops left, or are they waiting out on the street? There is only one way to find out. He takes a step forward, then hears the rumble of another car and ducks back behind the trash cans.

  A black stretch limo trundles down the alley, something about its cautious progress telling him that the driver is Tiwari. The service entrance door at the back of the building opens, and the sudden sound of laughter spills out into the alley. A tall man walks out onto the loading dock, laughing uproariously, half-turned to the woman behind him. Despite a face pitted with old acne scars he is slim and handsome, with short black hair, the front stylishly tufted up. In his untucked white shirt and dark pants, he could pass for a finance guy, except that his hands are covered with thick gold rings that glint in the dim light.

  A much shorter woman trails behind him, and at first all Ranjit can see is the electric blue of her cocktail dress. As she walks farther out onto the loading dock, the light shines down on her short platinum-blond pageboy hairdo, one long swoop of hair almost covering her left eye.

  Under the hair—either a wig or a weave, he cannot tell—Ranjit recognizes Leela’s catlike features. Her blue cocktail dress is cut very low in the front, revealing deep cleavage. The tall man skips down the stairs and stands impatiently by the stopped limo. Leela picks her way carefully down, her high black heels clattering on the metal treads, a smile frozen onto her face.

  The driver hops out to open the rear door—yes, Ranjit was right, it is Tiwari—and Leela hesitates at the open door. The tall man pushes her roughly into the car, and climbs in after her. The passenger door slams shut and Tiwari hurries to the driver’s seat.

  As the limo moves off into the darkness, Ranjit leans forward in frustration: without a car, he cannot follow them.

  At least he can see if the cops follow the limo. He moves quickly, staying close to the alley wall as he runs toward the street. Pressed flat against the brick wall, he peers around the corner, just in time to see the red taillights of the limo reach the end of the block. The dung-colored cop car pulls out of a parking spot and heads after it.