The Last Taxi Ride

by A. X. Ahmad

  “Actually, this is all your fault.”

  “How so?” Case arches a thin eyebrow.

  “I was in the alley behind Ghungroo Friday night when you two drove through. It caught the attention of Patel’s goons. You were gone by the time they showed up, but they caught me, and broke my arm. The doctor says I’m going to need a fair amount of physiotherapy.”

  They are both suddenly alert. Rodriguez looks at Case, and when she speaks there is a slight quickening in her voice.

  “And what were you doing in that alley?”

  “Patel hired me to find Mohan. The trail led to Ghungroo.”

  “He what?”

  “Hired me to find Mohan, and bring him back. He said he would pay me fifty grand if I succeed. He even gave me this. I’m going to take it out slowly, okay? Don’t shoot me.”

  Ranjit reaches into the waistband of his jeans, pulls out the Glock by its barrel, and places it gently on the table.

  “Fuck you.” Rodriguez’s right hand crosses under his jacket and comes out holding an identical gun. “You pull a gun on two police officers? Are you crazy? We’re taking you in, and this time—”

  “It’s not loaded. And I have a license for it.” Ranjit’s voice is mild.

  Case’s long-fingered hand picks up the Glock and slips out the magazine. “It’s empty.”

  “I say we take him in. Fuck this bullshit. Pull a gun on me—”

  Rodriguez’s hands are trembling, his gun still pointed across the table. He’s way too excitable to be a cop, Ranjit thinks. Or else he’s just bad under pressure.

  “Relax, Rodriguez.” Case puts Ranjit’s gun back on the table and leans back. “Let’s cut through the crap, okay? What do you know?”

  “Me?” Ranjit settles back in his chair and feels the ache in his arm start up. “My guess is that you were investigating Patel before Shabana was killed. He probably flew under your radar for years, but you guys noticed him when Lateef showed up. Because Lateef is Don Hajji Mustafa’s nephew, and Don Hajji Mustafa is one of the biggest gangsters in Mumbai, and he’s in the middle of a gang war.” Ranjit smiles humorlessly. “Must be hard for the NYPD, huh? You just got rid of the Mafia, and now there are the Chinese, the Vietnamese, the Koreans, and the Russians. The last thing you need is a bunch of slum dogs from Mumbai showing up here on tourist visas. You with me so far?”

  Case stares steadily at him.

  “Of course you are. You guys knew that Lateef was here overseeing something big. You knew that Shabana was broke, that she was working for Patel as a hostess at the club.

  “Now here’s the big news. Shabana overheard some stuff that the boys from Mumbai were talking about. She was about to come to you guys with some evidence she found, and Patel had her killed. Mohan must have figured that he was next on the list, and he took off.”

  Rodriguez reholstered his weapon, but his voice still bristles with anger. “And how do you know all this? You have this evidence, or are you going to sit there and tell us fairy stories?”

  “You guys have been investigating Patel for months, you still don’t know what he and Lateef are up to, do you?”

  “And you fucking know? You’re going to tell us?”

  From the look on Rodriguez’s face, Ranjit knows he was right. The cops have no clue.

  “Yes, I do. I have an informant inside the club. But I need some assurances first.”

  Case steps in smoothly, knowing that Rodriguez has just revealed their ignorance.

  “So, Mr. Singh, what is it that you want?”

  “Thought you were never going to ask. I want the charges dropped against me, of course. And there is a hostess at the club helping me. Her mother and son are illegal, and Patel knows that, he uses that information to control her. I want guarantees that they will get papers.”

  “That’s all?” The crow’s-feet around Case’s eyes deepen as she smiles. “You just want us to fix a grand jury trial and circumvent federal immigration regulations?”

  “Or you can just send me in front of the grand jury. Worst case, I’ll get three years as an accessory, and be deported. By that time, the boys from Mumbai will be all set up here, and they’ll be a permanent headache.”

  There is a silence. The pain in Ranjit’s arm intensifies as the painkiller wears off, the torn tissues and nerves screaming out in protest.

  “The machinery of justice doesn’t stop on a dime, you know.” Her voice is still calm, but slower, tinged with relief, and he knows he’s convinced her. “It all takes time. There are no firm guarantees. But if you can deliver, we might be able to work something out.”

  “I’ll get you enough information to nail Patel. Meanwhile, you guys stay away from Ghungroo. If Patel gets spooked—”

  Rodriguez scowls. “Screw this. No deals. He’s bullshitting. He doesn’t know anything, he’s making all this up. He’s a fucking cabdriver.”

  Third time today, and Ranjit is getting tired of it.

  “Okay. You guys do this alone. No one is going to talk to you. For example—the cabbie who knifed the other guy, Afzal Mian? That was in your jurisdiction, yes, Rodriguez? Caught him yet?”

  “We’ll get him. You don’t need to worry about it.”

  “Afzal is at his aunt’s house. It’s above Chen’s Noodles in Flushing.”

  “Bullshit. I’m calling it in. You just wait here.” Rodriguez gets to his feet and stalks out of the room, the bead curtain tinkling as he pushes through it.

  “Is he always like this? Must be hard to work with.”

  Case leans back and looks at Ranjit through her gray-green eyes. “You’re pretty good at this. Had some training?”

  “What?” Ranjit imagines Rodriguez getting on his radio, the squad cars tearing through the streets of Flushing, cops banging on the door of a frightened, middle-aged Pakistani woman’s home. What if Afzal decided to move to some other relative’s house?

  “You’ve been trained at interrogation. You were watching his face.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  She sighs and looks past him at the bead curtain, still shimmering with Rodriguez’s sudden departure. “I’ve seen your file. You were a captain in the Indian Army. How did you end up driving a cab here?”

  “Shit happens. There are doctors, engineers, computer programmers driving cabs. What’s so special about me?”

  “We’re not racist, Mr. Singh. Just overworked. All the resources in this city are going towards preventing another terrorist attack. Organized crime is getting a free pass, and we can’t have that, can we?”

  “Next you’re going to tell me that some of your best friends are Sikhs. Or else you like Indian food.”

  “Can’t stand Indian food, actually. The spiciest I can go is horseradish on my pastrami sandwich.” She smiles, a real smile this time, and her eyes twinkle. “Ah, here he is.”

  Rodriguez comes back through the curtains. “We had a patrol car just around the corner. You lucked out, the guy was there. Though his auntie or mother or whatever tried to throw a pot of boiling water at the officers. We had to take her in, too.”

  Fuck. Ranjit closes his eyes for an instant, imagining the poor woman making rice just as the cops burst in.

  Case stands up, a gesture of dismissal. “Okay, Mr. Singh. You have three days. After that, the deal is off. I need evidence to nail Patel, not rumors, you understand? Hard evidence.”

  Ranjit nods and stands up to leave.

  “One more thing. You said that Patel knows what’s happening inside our precinct. I want to know about that too.”

  Rodriguez’s eyes narrow. Did Case see that look? Ranjit can’t tell, her face is impassive.

  “I’ll see what I can do.”

  He heads out of Pham’s and walks quickly across the road, through the usual mess of people standing around outside the Tombs. There are police cars pulled up on the sidewalk, relatives with tear-stained faces milling about, even a newly released prisoner, carrying his belongings in a see
-through plastic bag.

  Afzal Mian and his aunt will soon make their way here. He will be charged with attempted homicide, and she with assaulting a police officer. Ranjit thinks of the night he spent in the bowels of the Tombs, and shudders. He just did what he had to do, but he doesn’t like it, doesn’t like it at all.

  Walking up toward Canal Street, he wonders if Case and Rodriguez are going to follow him, and decides they are. Yes, there is a Crown Vic with three tall antennas, pulling out behind him.

  He has to head to Little Guyana and talk to Leela again. If he leads the cops to her, they can just put the squeeze on her and cut him completely out of the picture. He can’t have that.

  How is he going to get all the way to Queens with a tail? He sees a yellow cab ahead of him disgorge some rumpled Chinese passengers. He runs up to it, and peers in at the driver, recognizing a tired-looking Bangladeshi man in a rumpled long-sleeved shirt, buttoned at the wrists despite the heat. Rashid? Riyaz? What the hell is the man’s name?

  “Salaam Aleikum. Remember me? Ranjit Singh from Karachi Kabob?”

  “Waalekum as salaam. Hanh, hanh. I remember you, Ranjit bhai. But where is your taxi?”

  Ranjit gets in, and smiles. “I’m in a bit of a situation. I need to go to the taxi waiting line at JFK airport,” he says.

  “What? The waiting line? But then I will be stuck there for hours…” The Bangladeshi cabbie stares at him in confusion.

  “Here.” Ranjit forks out three of the twenty-dollar bills that Patel gave him.

  “Okay, bhai.”

  The taxi rockets down Canal Street, and Ranjit settles back in the cab and closes his eyes. Just let the cops try and follow him now. His arm is aching unbearably, and he takes his third Percocet of the day, ignoring the warning that the doctor had given him.

  * * *

  Forty minutes later, the cab winds its way into the huge taxi waiting area at JFK, and Ranjit’s tail has been lost in the labyrinthine service roads leading to the airport. He thanks the cabbie and walks away—Riyaz, that’s the man’s name, he remembers, too late.

  There are rows of stationary cabs here, most of them empty, though here and there a cabbie is fast asleep, or talking on his cell phone. A man with a rolling suitcase wanders between them, selling kernels of roasted corn.

  Some cabbies have started a cricket game in the empty part of the lot, using a trash can as a wicket. Voices chatter and shout in Arabic, Punjabi, Creole, Russian, and some African dialect that Ranjit does not recognize. Passing the restaurant in the middle of the lot, he sees the Muslim cabbies praying on a strip of empty concrete behind it.

  The painkiller is making him exhausted, and he stops by the stinking toilets, thinking that he’ll wash his face, but they are broken as usual, the stall doors now replaced by black plastic sheets, urine sloshing all over the floor. Walking on, he finally reaches the front of the line, and when the next cab gets called to a terminal, he hitches a ride.

  Reaching the concrete wings of the old TWA terminal, he stands in the passenger line, and gets into another cab, telling the cabbie to go to Richmond Hill. The painkiller has kicked in, and his arm is numb, but he is now feeling light-headed and very nauseous. He should have read about the side effects before he took three of the damn things.

  * * *

  The backyard of Leela’s house is empty except for a rusty lawn chair, sunk into the earth under the tall tree. There is a blue-and-yellow child’s ball lying in the grass, and as he looks at it, it splits into two images, then re-forms.

  Blinking rapidly, he walks to the front of the house and rings the doorbell. It is still chiming when the door jerks open and Leela appears, barefoot, wearing a faded pink robe. Her curly hair is hidden by a tight net, and her face is made up.

  “Sorry to just show up like this. I have to talk to you about Shabana—” He sways against the doorframe, and reaches out his good hand to steady himself.

  “Ranjit, I’m about to go to work—”

  Darkness dims the edges of his vision. “I’m sorry.” His voice slurs. “Just a few minutes. That’s all.” He sways again, and this time his shoulder slams into the doorframe.

  “Are you drunk? What the hell?” She looks up at him, her eyes wide with alarm. They are green again, and the bruise under her eye has been skillfully covered with makeup.

  “Not drunk. My arm. The painkillers…” He tries to explain, bracing himself against the doorframe.

  “Leela.”

  They both look down the dark corridor and Leela’s mother appears, still wearing her faded red pantsuit. He sees the resemblance between them, and realizes that the old lady was once an attractive woman.

  “Leela. The man is sick. He is going to fall down, he better come in.”

  “I’m fine, thank you, madam.” Ranjit swallows hard, and feels the sweat soaking his back.

  He suddenly notices everything: the toenails on Leela’s feet glistening red, the roots of the old lady’s gray hair showing below the black.

  He swallows again. “Sorry to bother you, I—”

  Before he can finish the sentence, the doorframe seems to give way. He pitches forward into darkness, but this time, arms catch him before he hits the floor.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  DUBAI, 2005

  Eight years had passed since Sanjeev vanished.

  Shabana stared out of the window as the Emirates flight descended toward Dubai, flying low across the blue-green Arabian Ocean. With a sudden roar the plane crossed the coastline, and the city appeared underneath. The Dubai Creek coiled through it, separating old from new: on one side were the crowded alleyways and bazaars of the old souk, but the other side was an abstract grid, its long, straight roads lined by skyscrapers that shone like gold in the harsh desert light. And somewhere down there, where the grid faded out into the blank desert, lived Don Hajji Mustafa, in the tenth year of his exile.

  Because the Don could not travel, the world came to him: Indian government ministers, supplicants, and businessmen of all stripes drove straight from Dubai airport to meet him, clutching slim, locked briefcases. Once a year, the Don grew tired of business and threw a party for all the Bollywood movie stars, who flew into Dubai for the weekend; it was a pilgrimage to show loyalty to the Don, and those who ignored it did so at their own peril.

  This year the Don had requested that Shabana arrive a day early. As a black Mercedes whisked her into the desert, she gazed at the endless sand dunes and wondered why he had sent for her. Did he still doubt her loyalty? In the years since Sanjeev disappeared, she had listened to everything he said, and acted only in films that he approved.

  Maybe the Don had gotten wind of her search for Sanjeev. Ever since that day on the beach in Mumbai, Shabana had looked for him. She had hired a series of highly paid private detectives who had sworn not to talk, but the Don had eyes and ears everywhere …

  As the road through the desert became a rutted dirt track, she sat up straighter and braced herself for her audience with the Don. She checked her appearance in a small hand mirror: barely any makeup and a simple cotton salwar kameez. The Don liked her to look like the young, uncomplicated girl she portrayed in her films.

  The car crunched over gravel and arrived at what must be an oasis, because the Don’s sprawling, marble-floored villa was surrounded by date palms, immaculate lawns, and flowering pink bougainvillea.

  Shabana was shown into a sunken living room. She stood there for an instant, transfixed by a peacock on the lawn outside: it flared its tail in alarm, creating a fan of iridescent turquoise feathers.

  “Stupid birds. Always panicking.”

  Shabana started. The Don was sitting at the end of a long white leather sofa, his white kurta-pajama blending with it. As she moved closer, she was shocked to see how old he looked. Now pushing seventy-five, his hair was still dyed dark black, and his eyes burned as fiercely as ever, but he seemed thinner, and the skin under his chin hung in wattles.

  “Stupid birds,” the Don repe
ated. “Some fool gave them to me as a present. Said they were from a maharajah’s palace in Rajasthan.” He turned his burning gaze on Shabana. “You look as beautiful as ever. Your sister is taking good care of you, hanh?”

  “Yes, she is.” The truth was that Ruksana was more insufferable than ever, but Shabana smiled sweetly. “Uncle, you seem tired. Do you need help with your party tomorrow night?”

  “The party?” The Don frowned. “Oh yes, the party. That is all taken care of.” He waved dismissively. “Every chootiya movie star from Mumbai will come, because they are afraid of me. They will eat my food, drink my liquor, then go back to Mumbai and bad-mouth me.” He shook his head. “How things have changed. When I started out, I was the hero. Me. The government, hah, what did they care about the common man? People came to me to get things done. But now … after nine-eleven, they call me a terrorist. Can you believe that?”

  He waved his hands. “Terrorist? Me? I am a businessman. So I do business with people. Afghans. Iraqis. Libyans. So what?”

  “Yes, Uncle.”

  The Don walked to the glass door and rapped his knuckles sharply against it. “This glass might as well be metal bars. Being stuck in this house is like being in jail.” He stared out at the perfect green lawn. “What is there, in this godforsaken Dubai? Air-conditioning. Silence. Peacocks. Yes, fucking peacocks.”

  Shabana had never heard the Don complain, never seen him acknowledge his exile, and she remained silent.

  “I miss Mumbai,” the Don said slowly. “I want to go back and eat biriyani at Azeem’s restaurant. I want to smell the sewage and petrol fumes. I want to walk on the dirty sand of Chowpatty Beach and eat bhelpuri in a newspaper plate.”

  So he hadn’t heard of her search for Sanjeev. Don Hajji Mustafa, the Don of Dons, was simply homesick for Mumbai. Shabana was shocked.

  “Well, Uncle, I’m sure you’ll go back one day,” she said consolingly.

  “One day? Pah. I could die here, in this dump. I’m not waiting for one day. I’m going back home soon. It’s all a matter of public relations.”

  “Public relations?” Shabana frowned.