The Third Squad

by V. Sanjay Kumar

  Inspector Pradeep Sharma and Subinspector Daya Nayak were being questioned by the anchor, an admiring Shekhar Gupta. They remained expressionless through all of it and made no attempt to gloat. Gupta used the cricket analogy of a century score that ended up sounding frivolous and macabre. He spoke glowingly about Pradeep Sharma’s scorecard of ninety-two hits (“nervous nineties,” he called it) and wondered whether at seventy-eight hits Daya Nayak felt the competitive pressure.

  The cops conveyed what they felt; nothing deep but a quiet satisfaction. They said they shot only in retaliation. A rooster crowed loudly in the background. They complained about their silly portrayal in Hindi cinema where the cops did nothing and always arrived late. The threesome walked through a slum along a narrow path that had low shanties on both sides, disturbing a boy in shorts and a woman in a doorway. Another rooster flew up to Daya Nayak’s side and flapped its wings at him. Talk of killing continued with what happened on New Year’s Eve 1996, going back to 1992, touching on their feelings before an encounter and after, seeking out how they felt (if they did) doing God’s work and dispensing death.

  They passed a tattered signpost that said, Welcome to Seaface. People trailed behind them, curious about the cameras and the gun-toting. A small child sat with one leg crossed over the other, ignoring them. The talk veered to the film actors and producers who were the soft targets for extortionists, who lacked bravery in real life when confronted with the filmic tactics of the underworld.

  “Injuries? Did you ever get attacked?”

  “Bullet through the thigh,” said Daya Nayak, breaking stride and showing his leg. It still hurt sometimes but no longer in the leg.

  The Mumbai Dairy soon appeared on their right and they walked past it discussing calls from known gangsters who tried to threaten them personally. “The crime lords called us and cursed us and we cursed them back in their own language,” he said.

  Pradeep Sharma waved his hands in front of him and spoke up, dismissing these gangsters as loudmouths and humble vada pao eaters who now ate chili chicken, a superior cuisine for those wanting to move up the social ladder, as if that gave them the right to talk big. They were local goons without the organization and skill sets to qualify for the tag Mafia, he felt.

  * * *

  “This is morbid,” she said. “In a few years you will be just like them.”

  He wasn’t sure why she was disturbed by that thought. He wasn’t very good at divining what went on in her head.

  “I need to get some fresh air.”

  “Shall we go for a drive?” It was nine a.m.

  They walked to his car, quietly, with pieces of a puzzle in their heads. He squeezed his tall frame in, started the engine, and reversed. A sleeping dog underneath the vehicle yelped and got away just in time. They rolled down the front windows to let in the breeze, then rolled them back up as they passed the shanties, smelling what the city had digested from yesterday’s takeout.

  Near Prabhadevi they ran into revelers carrying a huge idol on a cart, loud music blaring from speakers. Some danced in front of them, some knocked on the car’s windows and pressed their faces against the glass, leaving lip marks and spittle behind. Then they moved slowly aside, staring as they let the car through. The sound was deafening and the revelry seemed frenetic. “Is this God in our midst?” Nandini asked as they moved past the idol. No, not this; this was just the bully pulpit.

  Back at home it hit Karan with surprising clarity as to how cinematic this city truly was—it was also the uncut version of a civic nightmare.

  “So what did you learn from that interview?” she asked him.

  “Nothing,” he replied. What was there to learn from those who had done it so many times and yet survived? He would rather study those who failed.

  “Smart-ass,” she said, clearly irritated.

  “I need to remember that targets actually shoot back. Not everything is staged.”

  “I see. I feel better suddenly,” she deadpanned.

  That night he went to the Jasmine Parlor, really just a small shed. The barber broke a new shaving blade in two, set one piece in a holder, and gave him a close shave. He had his hair oiled and neatly combed and then had his mustache trimmed. He patted some Old Spice onto his cheeks, enjoying the smart stinging sensation. Outside on the sidewalk a man sat on his haunches and spoke softly to him as he cleaned his ears, collecting the wax in his palm. Below the overpass Karan parted with some change to two kids who were playing a game with stones. They thanked him in Tamil. He returned home, fresh and renewed. He headed to his small private den where he took out some creased press clippings, smoothed them out, and read them once again. It was important that he read and reread about those who had faltered. This was the 1983 puzzle, the surprising decline of a hugely successful batch of encounter specialists who had themselves committed crimes. Karan belonged to a different breed, or so he hoped.

  * * *

  The next day dawned and the chawl stirred with signs of life. An old man in a singlet walked into his view, scratched his balls, and waited for the sun. At first light the man closed his eyes, folded his hands, and murmured a prayer. He then looked around blankly, noticing nothing, not even the black umbrella that Karan left out to dry that had tumbled across the corridor to his door.

  Karan yawned and did some stretches. He had walked for an hour in the middle of the night and returned agitated. Half the time the city spat and half the time its pants were around its ankles. After returning he laid on his back and stared at the ceiling, waiting for his wife to awaken. He had things to tell her about Mumbaikars. Nandini’s smooth forehead was furrowed. Her thoughts were writing the worry lines of the city.

  Whole sentences felt out of place in Mumbai, Karan thought. Nothing simmered and foreplay was missing. Gone were the days when you could have an uninterrupted view of the setting sun as it dipped into the sea. As the lights went out the men around him changed, they turned predatory or just behaved badly, blurring the line between man and beast. The chawl resembled a pigsty in the morning. There was no room in it for nicety, and barely enough space for intimacy.

  Later, after dinner had been ingested and the television serials were winding down, the age-old Chawl Symphony began nearby. He would first hear the rustle and then imagine the quiet moves. Family after family retreated into a common room, a six-by-eight-foot intimate space in which people took turns. The lucky ones had their lovers tonight and a private space, but the lonely ones like Takia Khan the pillow hugger and Chadder Master the restless sheet spoiler were denied; they listened to those who made out and just fucked the bed. It was quick and it was furtive. The tumescent chokras bit their lips and read Savita Bhabhi. She kept her porn columns simple; she knew that syndromes couldn’t hide under the sheets.

  Should I wake her up like I used to? wondered Karan. Snuggling up to Nandini was a signal they both knew. Not this time. He felt deflated and the moment passed.

  The next day brought strange tidings. A boy who did odd jobs for them had taken to crime and submitted himself to a warlord a few weeks ago. He had now gone missing and his mother showed up at their door pleading for help. “Do something!” Nandini shouted at Karan. “You are a policeman!”

  “I’m not that type of cop,” he said, feeling helpless. What could he possibly do? “Wrong department,” he added by way of explanation.

  What they needed was a fixer, someone like that Tiwari, the bête noir of his boss Ranvir Pratap.

  Encounter Twenty-Five: Gonzales

  The neighborhood of Mahim had an old church and a green mosque and roadside eateries where tied goats stood outside and chomped grass. Inside, large cooking handis were being stirred. Fat was on the boil and aromatic spices in the mix awaited fresh meat. Soon the throats of the goats would be slit. Despite its narrow lanes and its heavy traffic this suburb found space for festivities. The one thing that cast a pall over Mahim was the smell: it was putrid. A car of doctors traversing a road through Mahim would immediately thin
k of an endoscopy camera journeying through an intestine. There is a creek in Mahim that no one has ever seen because most people who drive by roll up their windows. Those who walk through the place know the creek well enough to ignore it like people do in Mumbai—ignore what is clearly inhuman and not to be put up with. How else could the place survive? In a place like this the question of Mumbai or Bombay loses meaning.

  * * *

  Karan saw the coffin being loaded. He did not accompany it to the cemetery because Gonzales was a don and Karan was the reason he was in it. And he was there against his best judgment because he had followed his wife. He spotted Nandini standing by the side observing the ceremony, and the pall of grief that surrounded her was visible on her face. Tomorrow the welts would appear on him. She held the ends of her sari between her teeth. She turned suddenly in his direction and he had to duck. Her lips were pursed and her eyes held back something akin to guilt. Was she trying to atone for him? The crowd headed toward the cemetery at Bandra and she melted away.

  She left behind a question that nagged him: was Nandini the weak link in the family chain, or was it he?

  * * *

  Two days earlier his boss Ranvir had given him a lecture on social niceties and handed him another folder. Karan had no time to waste on decorum. Deep into the night he sat at his table and read about his next target. Name: Gonzales. Gonzales was a warlord with an army of mercenaries available for hire. He functioned as a recruiting agent for other gangs. His bulky file was slow reading, and it contained many pictures. He seemed friendly, with a smooth face and an amiable smile. It was hard to imagine him as a target. He had killed no one personally but his recruiting skills made him a potent force, so the police were desperate to get rid of him. Gonzales funded many charities and asked for nothing in return. He was a family man with two daughters and three sons, all of whom kept clear of their father’s business. There was a photograph of his wife as well. She was a school teacher.

  Karan needed something to motivate himself, but in this case it wasn’t happening.

  “Need anything else, Karan?” asked Ranvir.

  He needed a date, a place, and a time. Each was important. After forty-eight hours of nosing about, he finally had it. He had a plausible scenario.

  He would catch him at a time when he was meant to be alone. Gonzales would look surprised. Life and death would meet in a long second with many fractions. Karan would deliver. His hair stood on end when he visualized it. He felt these people would know him when they saw him. They would recognize the moment.

  “This is unreal,” said his handler Desai. He called sounding concerned after reading Karan’s one-page plan.

  “It will happen,” Karan insisted. “I guarantee it.”

  “What about contingencies?” asked Desai.

  “There’s no time for contingencies.”

  He had no second thoughts and he did not want to develop a backup plan. All he had to do was wait for the green light. This time they called him at the last moment. Desai rang him from an unregistered number. There was no introduction, only a cryptic order and an urgent tone. He had just five minutes to get ready. He walked quickly to his cupboard in the rear room and opened the drawer. The Ruger was ready for action, fully loaded and heavy. He held it in his right palm, used his left hand to form an armature under his right wrist, and took aim in the mirror. He imagined the Gonzales eye; dark brown it was, with one rogue eyelash and a red fleck in the iris. Outside the rain was pelting down. Karan pulled on his gray raincoat, slipped the hood over his head, and ducked out into the street.

  He told himself he was dreaming in fast motion; this was his degree of separation.

  Look down and your feet take steps. Your hands stay dry in the raincoat. You walk with no purpose till it is time. On days like this every child on the street bears your name. You can hear their laughter and innocent purpose. You cross the road and voices follow in your wake. Nobody is supposed to know you today. You are anonymous. You are Brahman.

  He was wearing a dark shirt, black trousers, a belt without a buckle, and dull suede shoes. He wove a path through some lanes, made sure his tracks were clean, then headed past the Mahim Causeway, taking a left onto Hill Road in Bandra. He crossed the road twice and paused under a lone tree, looking around as if seeking directions. He then walked up to the end of Hill Road and vaulted a fence behind some trees, landing softly, darting his eyes left and right, fearing movement. He crept under the cover of a hedge, keeping his eyes peeled. He had reached the designated spot.

  Gonzales was there kneeling before his mother’s grave. Alone. It was four a.m. in this Christian graveyard in Bandra. It was Purnima, a full-moon night. Most of the graves were covered with thick weeds but Mrs. Gonzales’s tombstone shimmered. Her caring offspring, a respected son of Mahim, was down on his knees with tears in his eyes. He was wearing white. His three-man guard remained at the cemetery gate to ward off trouble. Karan rose from behind the gravestone. Was there a breeze? Yes. Gonzales’s wispy hair swayed, his kurta flapped open, and moonlight bounced off the cross he wore.

  He loved his mother, this common hoodlum—it was a poignant moment and Karan was hard-pressed to pull the trigger.

  Karan must have drifted momentarily because the quarry nodded at him and was about to ask him a question. The marksman gathered himself, his left hand rose, the armature set, the gun took aim and sent a bullet into that brown eye with a rogue eyelash and a flicker of red. His quarry slumped in disbelief. There was a flurry at the gate and Karan should have left in a hurry but couldn’t. What have I done? he asked himself. His feet were curiously leaden, as if held by the soggy ground, and when he moved his gait was confused. He stumbled down a pathway he shouldn’t have taken, one that led him toward the henchmen. Unsurprisingly, there were flashes and the sound of gunshots. He climbed over the fence and stumbled, hurting his knees in the fall; later, he felt his side where a bullet had grazed and drawn blood, six inches from his heart.

  * * *

  Karan had left his shell behind again. The gangs knew what caliber he used. Ranvir was livid; he banished Karan to Lonavla for a week. It was a dry spell in the ghats and he sat for hours thinking, unable to sleep. He walked to the railway station every morning and sat on the platform, expecting trouble. If the gangs sent somebody for him, Karan wanted to see him first. But nothing happened.

  When he returned home he thought he would sneak in quietly. Nandini was waiting for him and she met him at the door. “Done with your Silver Jubilee celebrations?” she asked. “So many days to celebrate your twenty-fifth?”

  That was grossly unfair but it was true that each number was significant in the encounter units, and twenty-five was a real milestone. He wanted to explain his absence but he couldn’t reveal where he’d been these last few days.

  * * *

  “Is this fellow Karan a mental case?”

  It was frustrating. Karan was not meant to take chances in his job. He had been repeatedly told that he’d often have just one shot, so there was no margin for error. But he usually needed just one shot.

  Whether he was standing, sitting, prostrate on a terrace, or leaning into the wind and fidgeting, when the moment came he was cold, motionless, and—to use a cliché—deadly. Statistically, he had a 0 percent failure rate, but more than once he had taken a leap of faith. How else could you describe shooting into an opaque door? “I could sense my quarry,” Karan had replied when questioned. Remarkably, he had gotten it right. He always faced the target when he took his shot, even if that exposed him somewhat. Was he being polite, fair, or even-handed? Yet of late he seemed to be hesitating when the moment came.

  They decided to step inside his mind. People were asked to try to get close to Karan, to try to understand and influence him. They reported a lack. A deficiency. He had a fixed smile and a noncommittal manner and most times he lacked an opinion. But he wasn’t a junkie.

  They consulted a psychologist who suggested someone should talk to his wife. A coun
selor was sent under the pretext of department routine. Her name was Ms. Daftary. She was from Bombay, a little old-school. Aware that she was visiting a chawl (she could not understand why someone would forsake the comfortable police quarters and choose to live in a place like that), she dressed down for the occasion and as she entered—squeezing past a Slimline fridge, a sofa bed, and other space-saving devices—the splendid aesthetic hit her (her own words) and she suddenly felt dowdy sitting across from Nandini, who it seems made a simple salwar kameez come alive and elegantly carried a couple of accessories that could best be described as bling. She offered her guest sweet orange jalebis and crisp salty khakhra from Swati snacks, and a green-colored drink made from khas, if you please. It was not the kind of presentation Ms. Daftary had expected in a chawl.

  She filed a quirky first-person report of what had happened in their meeting:

  “Do you have any idea what he actually does?” I asked Nandini.

  “He tells me stories about encounters,” she said. “They sound like bad dreams. I cannot imagine him hurting anyone.”

  “Have you seen his weapon?”

  She nodded. “I’ve tried to hide it,” she said.

  “Why?”

  “What do you mean? Shouldn’t I?”

  I was stumped and then I saw her smiling. “So what did you do?” I asked her.

  “What do you people make him do?”

  “Nothing extraordinary.”

  She seemed exasperated.“Should I be like him and just pretend everything is normal?”

  “Yes, isn’t it?” was my reply.

  She walked into an inner room and returned with a pistol. “Have you ever held a gun that has killed people?” she asked.

  I could not tell if she was serious. She is a well-grounded person, talkative and candid. Theirs is a marriage of love, she told me. She does not like his job and constantly questions him about his assignments. I am sure they fight because she feels strongly about the police killing criminals without a judicial process. She lectured me on habeas corpus. I have a feeling Karan must be suffering because of a growing rift caused by his job.