41
26th May 2008
Boston
The shortlist for the Bancroft Prize was announced. Awarded annually by the trustees of Columbia University, the Bancroft Prize was given to authors of books of exceptional merit in the fields of American history, biography and diplomacy. That year, Staring Down the Barrel was one of the books shortlisted.
The entire faculty of MIT was up in arms. How could something which had been dismissed as mischievous and evil by the late dean of MIT even be considered for the award, leave alone make it to the shortlist? It was even suggested that the NRA was behind the nomination.
Cardoza was upset. The notoriety of Staring Down the Barrel was making him angry. Deahl seemed to be winning all the rounds in this battle of egos despite the university trying to pull him down.
The Boston Globe had carried a detailed interview of Deahl and even excerpted his book. It was a part of its feature on books shortlisted for the Bancroft Prize. Cardoza was reading it when Cirisha walked in. Hurriedly he shoved the newspaper away. Cirisha couldn’t resist a smile.
‘You know, Michael, everyone says you are a far better boss to work for than James.’ She knew that the comparison would cheer him up. ‘You never take credit away from your team. And look at James. The only thing he can say about a guy who spent his entire life at MIT working with him is that Richard helped him gather and analyse the data. As if Richard was a clerk.’
‘Everyone is not the same, Cirisha.’ And he finally smiled. ‘How does your day look?’
‘Two classroom sessions today. One research discussion. And balance I have to catch up on a couple of things which are bothering me. In the afternoon I have to meet someone from the Boston Police. Crime investigation team.’
‘Why? What are you up to now?’
‘Nothing serious, Michael. Last year, I had complained to Snuggles against instances of child labour at their manufacturing facility in India. Apparently their CEO has been arrested while on a visit to Boston. The Boston Police wants to meet me for some first-hand information.’
‘Great. How is Aditya coping up with life here?’
‘Oh, he is doing fine. He is learning fencing at the MIT Fencing Institute. Keeps him busy for a few hours. He has company at home in the form of my father. So no complaints.’
Cardoza smiled. ‘God bless the great Indian family,’ he said and went back to his computer screen. Cirisha walked away.
In her chamber, she logged in to her computer and manoeuvred to the Boston Globe website. The interview with Deahl was on their home page. There was still an hour to go for her classroom session, and she was already prepared for it. There was adequate time for her to go through the interview. Even though she had seen it that morning, she hadn’t had the time to read it. She began reading the article—her training in speed-reading was helpful.
Deahl had managed the Q&A very well. He had presented the research in its true form, without giving it any political overtones. ‘I am not a politician. Though I support the Democrats, I don’t support all their policies, particularly the one on gun control. This book is an honest attempt at presenting facts, which resoundingly confirm that gun control is not the way out for all our problems. We have researched over a thousand cases of gun-related crime, individually met the felons, tried to understand the criminal psychology and what goes through their minds, and then analysed if he or she would have committed the crime even if access to guns had been denied.’
Cirisha found this very interesting. She had done loads of research, but the idea of doing research with convicts enthused her. And when she read in the interview that Richard had spearheaded the research, her respect for him went up a few notches. Not that it really mattered.
She shut the browser on her laptop, picked up a few papers and walked to her class. The students section was a few minutes’ walk away.
Lieutenant David Windle was waiting for her when she returned. It was not too difficult for Cirisha to make out from the uniform and overall demeanour that he was the person from the Boston Police crime investigation team who had come to meet her. David was about six foot two. Cirisha seemed diminutive in front of him.
After the initial formalities, Cirisha told him about her visit to the slum in Dharavi, the factory where Snuggles shoes were manufactured, the children working there and the Snuggles labels. When the officer told her that Shivinder had been taken into custody on account of the company filing charges against him—charges of defrauding the company to the tune of fifty million dollars—she was surprised.
‘But officer …’ She was hurriedly interrupted. ‘Lieutenant Windle. Please.’
‘Oh, I am so sorry. Lieutenant Windle, isn’t that something the Indian Police would be worried about?’
‘Yes, you are right. That’s why I am here. There isn’t enough clarity with regard to the jurisdiction. But that’s for the courts to resolve. If the crime is committed in India, even if it is against an American citizen or entity, the law prevents us from keeping anyone under detention for more than twenty-four hours. The extradition process would kick in if the Indians were to make a request. The legal team at Snuggles had said in their complaint that the issue was precipitated by your email to them.’
Windle was quite friendly and chatted with her for over an hour. ‘Some guys got killed here a few days back. You knew them?’
‘Yes, there were four of them.’
‘There was quite a buzz around the incident in the Boston Police headquarters. MIT is not directly under our control. We don’t get in unless it’s too serious an issue or the MIT Police requests help from us.’ Cirisha just nodded. ‘That Avendon fella … apparently he did it. I can’t imagine him shooting down everyone. Even the coroner was shocked. He was to come and visit us a few days back.’
‘Visit you? What for?’
‘Said he wanted to interview a few felons who were convicted for homicide. We have quite a few of them up there in the Greater Boston area. Apparently for some research project.’ Cirisha could tell that Windle was not aware of the research and the huge controversy that Deahl’s book had stirred up. He was a cop whose life revolved around criminals and their arrests.
‘Oh. OK. He was doing some work which revolved around people who were propagators of gun-related crime.’
‘Wonderful. All these guys who use guns should be bundled up and sent to Guantanamo. There is no place for them in mainland America.’
‘That would be a nice idea. By the way, what did Richard Avendon do in Greater Boston then?’
‘What did he do? Now that, you tell me. I wish he had done something because he never came.’
42
26th May 2008
Boston
Around the time Windle was with Cirisha in Cambridge, Aditya had travelled down to Greater Boston to meet Shivinder.
‘Until the preliminary investigation is over, he will remain in custody,’ the officer-in-charge announced. ‘In any case, Lieutenant Windle is handling this case. We will have to wait till he returns.’
‘Lieutenant Windle?’
‘Yes, he is the in-charge of the precinct. He is visiting MIT in connection with this case. You could either wait in the visitors’ room or you may choose to come back later.’
‘Thanks, sergeant. But when I had called yesterday, I was asked to come in today. And that’s the reason I have driven all the way from Cambridge to meet him. Do you think it will be possible?’
‘Let me see what I can do.’ And he disappeared. In three minutes he was back. He had probably conferred with Windle in the interim. ‘Please follow me.’
‘What happened? How did you land up in this mess?’ Aditya asked Shivinder the moment he saw him.
‘It’s all because of your wife.’
‘Come on, Shivinder. You did all this because you were blinded by money. You should have stopped after we got rid of the shoes in the warehouses. Instead you went a step ahead and started manufacturing low-cost fakes and stuffing them in
to the fraudulently opened stores, and pocketed the money for yourself.’
Shivinder laughed. ‘What about you? You were the one who got me into all of this.’
‘Come on. Don’t pull me into this. It’s your problem. You deal with it,’ Aditya whispered. ‘I came here because you called me. Only because you said you needed help. For old times’ sake.’
‘Adi, I am stuck here with my reputation in tatters because of you and your wife. Without your manipulation, I would not have got into this. I am not an idiot, dude. There is enough on record to prove your involvement. If I go down, I take you with me. And as far as that wife of yours is concerned, let her know that I am going to come after her. Just watch out.’ The look in Shivinder’s eyes scared Aditya. He was worried. More than anything else, he was worried that Cirisha would find out about his involvement in the Snuggles scam.
‘What do you need from me? Why did you call me here?’
‘I need to make sure that my money is safe. These guys here can’t do anything to me. I haven’t committed a crime on US soil. Sooner or later I will be out. Even if they file against me in Indian courts, it will take some time before the courts there charge sheet me and ask for my extradition. Till the time all this settles down, I need to make sure that the money we have accumulated in GB2 is safe. Not only the floats in India, but also in Geneva. You have to make sure of that.’
‘But how?’
‘You are the banker. You know how to move money. Figure it out.’
Aditya gave him a long hard look. There was no way he was going back into GB2 India to pull the money out. In any case Snuggles would have flagged it off as a suspected fraudulent account. Surveillance by the bank authorities would be high now. If he tried to do something, he would be in trouble. He decided to take it as it came.
As he turned and made his way out of the room, he looked at its dark walls. His future seemed as dark. ‘And Aditya,’ Shivinder said, ‘I am sure you don’t want your wife to know what happened on the night of your promotion.’ Aditya turned, looked back at Shivinder in disgust and left. The sergeant quietly shut the door behind him.
‘Why did I let myself be lured by the wily Shivinder?’ Aditya thought to himself as he recollected the evening after the party when he, along with Shivinder and a few others, had gone to the infamous Mumbai dance bars. One thing led to another and even before he knew it, they were back in Shivinder’s car with two women. All that happened was on impulse, fuelled by alcohol and anger at Cirisha for not being able to make it to his promotion party. He had regretted it the morning after, but he couldn’t have turned back the clock. He left the prison and drove back home, a disturbed man.
‘You met Shivinder?’ Cirisha asked him the moment he parked his car and walked in.
‘Yes, I did.’
‘Hope they lock him up for good.’
‘Come on, Cirisha. What has he done to you?’
‘It’s not always about what he has done to me. Isn’t it also about the conscience-less animal that he is? About what a man like him does to society?’ And she walked away.
Narayanan, who was quietly standing in the corner of the large living room, came up to Aditya, put an arm around his shoulder and quietly said, ‘Let it be. She is different.’ Aditya was fuming. He hadn’t even had a chance to calm down after the meeting with Shivinder. And here he was, at home, hearing all this nonsense. The elephantine ego of an unemployed investment banker was beginning to get hurt.
That night Cirisha started rereading the book. Staring Down the Barrel. Something in the book amazed her. Intrigued her. Scared her.
As she rested her head on the pillow, her body on the mattress, eyes firmly riveted on the concentric rings in the false ceiling above, her mind wandered to a thought that had been bothering her for quite some time. Was she responsible for Richard’s death? One of her closest associates, her confidant at work and the only one she connected with. Yet she was not there for him when he needed her most. The time they spent together had helped him keep his impulsive behaviour in check. Unfortunately, for the better part of last year, her presence in India meant that her calming influence was missing from Richard’s life, exposing him to the upheavals of his own aspirations. Becoming a tenured professor was the single most important thing in his life. More important than life itself. He was willing to do whatever it took. Make any compromise required. Academia should have been the last place for such tribulations, but sadly, the politics and aggression of the corporate world had permeated through the world of academics. ‘When paranoia hits academia, it’s time to hang up your boots,’ Cardoza had once told her.
Staring at the ceiling, she wondered. First it was Ahmed Siddiqui who died in strange circumstances, and now, four faculty members had been killed in a conflict over tenure promotions. Was it worth it? Should she just call it quits and go back to India? In any case, Aditya was not too happy with her move here. And her father too lived all alone in Coimbatore.
It was a restless night. Her mind wandered all over the place. At one point, Aditya, who had come in by then, shook her and asked her if she needed something. ‘Do you think we should see a doctor?’ he asked her out of concern.
The Dharavi slum, the factory, Gangu Tai, the children in the factory, she remembered all of it. And then today’s conversation with Lieutenant Windle. It had raised more questions in her mind. She had promised to give him a copy of the email she had initially sent to Richard, seeking his help with the Footwear Association of America and Snuggles HQ. In that email she had detailed everything that she had seen at the Dharavi factory.
Worried that she might forget it, and driven by a restless, insomniac spirit, she got up. ‘You sleep. I am going to the study,’ she told Aditya. He opened his eyes for an instant and shut them immediately. In any case, he was tired after the drive to Greater Boston and back. The stress of the various discussions had only added to the fatigue.
Cirisha turned on her laptop and opened her inbox. The Dharavi email that she was looking for was over a year old. She couldn’t find it. It struck her that since it was over six months old, it would have been archived. Retrieving it from the archives was a painful process. That’s when she remembered. A few days ago, Richard had sent her an email erroneously. Wasn’t that on top of the mail she had sent Richard detailing the Dharavi findings? The entire sequence would be there in chronological order in that email. Thankfully, that email was easy to find.
Windle had specifically requested for a printout. She fired one. The printer took some time to warm up. She waited for the four pages to print. While she was waiting, she went back to her computer and read her initial email to him. She was reminded of Richard. His bubbly energetic self. She thought for a minute. Had she not been married to Aditya, she would have seriously considered Richard as someone she would want to spend her life with. His childlike, mad passion for academia was endearing. She would have loved to see the look on Cardoza’s and Deahl’s faces on being told that the two of them were getting married.
She went back to reading the emails. Two emails had come in from Richard that day, just about a week before his death. The first seemed to be a normal email, which had the word ‘Details’ in its subject line. Richard had erroneously forwarded the Dharavi slum email back to her. It was a cryptic message. The body of the email contained three meaningless words. She read it three times. And then a fourth time. She couldn’t figure out what it meant. In any case it was not meant for her. That’s what Richard’s next email had said. ‘Sent by mistake.’
The printout was ready. She picked up the papers from the printer and put them in her bag, even as she realized that she could have printed it out in college. She needn’t have done that at three in the morning.
The next morning, Windle produced Shivinder in front of the Massachusetts district court judge, who refused to grant him custody. Much to Windle’s despair, Shivinder was allowed to go free. However, he was ordered not to leave Boston till the police in India filed their charges.
He was asked to appear in court in sixty days’ time to decide on the future course of action, in case Mumbai Police did not file charges till then.
43
27th May 2008, morning
MIT, Boston
For the first time, Cirisha was late for work that day. Cardoza and the research team were waiting for her to begin their discussion on her project.
‘I am sorry, Michael, I overslept. I’m really sorry for wasting the team’s time.’
‘It’s OK, Cirisha. Since you were not here, we started discussing Erica’s research. We will be done in fifteen minutes. Come and grab a seat. You too can listen in.’
Cardoza knew, as did everyone on the team, that Cirisha was not a habitual latecomer. Cirisha joined in. It was an interesting study on the reasons for rising suicide rates across various universities in America. Erica had done a detailed research on the causes and commonly used methods of committing suicide, and even presented some ideas to predict occurrence. Cirisha was left wondering if Richard too would eventually become a statistic for the study.
Erica was done in fifteen minutes and Cirisha got down to presenting her findings. Within ten minutes of Cirisha beginning to speak, Cardoza got up. ‘Folks, my apologies. I completely missed it. I just saw on my BlackBerry that I need to be in another meeting. Seriously sorry, guys. Let’s continue the discussion tomorrow.’ He looked at Cirisha and said, ‘Can you walk with me to the coffee shop? I need to get a dose of caffeine before I head to my sleepy meeting.’
On the way to the coffee shop, a quarter of a mile away from the Academic Block in the direction of the duPont Center, Cardoza spoke. He looked concerned. ‘Cirisha, take a break if you need to.’
‘Sorry, Michael.’
‘Richard was a good friend of yours. I am aware that you are extremely disturbed. But Cirisha, we need to move on. As long as we are at work, we need to make sure that we are not distracted. It’s been close to two months since that unfortunate incident.’
Bankerupt (Ravi Subramanian) Page 15
