I stepped behind the registration desk and flipped through some bills Jean had impaled on a spindle: Niagara-Mohawk, Bell Telephone, Kyber’s Heating Oil, laundry, and a monthly statement of deliveries from Chicken-Lickin’. I moved on, sliding open the center drawer under the counter. Pencils; preprinted bills and carbon paper; three rubber stamps: PAID, AMOUNT DUE, and RECEIVED OF; paper clips and cellophane tape; and a ring of twelve keys, each of which was clearly marked with a black number on white adhesive tape. The brass keys were nearly identical, aside from the indistinguishable variations in their cut. They opened the ten guest rooms and the office’s front door.
The twelfth key was the odd one. Unlike its sisters, it bore no number. But I never would have given it a second look if it hadn’t been a different color and shape altogether. I closed my fingers around the unmatched key and lifted it from the drawer. A long, silver key, unlike any I’d ever seen—except one. Julio had been carrying a twin key that morning.
I lowered my head in concentration, trying to imagine a hole for the key. I stepped outside and stood facing the door, my eyes scanning the face of the building, looking for another keyhole. There was nothing but cinderblock, the phone, and the damn Dr Pepper machine.
The Dr Pepper machine.
I took a step to my left and considered the glowing hunk of metal and glass. There, on the right, about halfway down the side, was a small, round, silver keyhole. My heart climbed over two ribs, hoisted itself over my collar bone, and lodged itself in my throat. I’d found Julio’s hiding spot.
Once I’d opened the refrigerated machine, it didn’t take long to find what I was looking for. Nestled out of view in one of the structural cavities of the steel, a black, metallic cylinder rested against the cold walls: Kodak Tri-X, thirty-six exposures.
Improvising with what was left of my damaged equipment, I processed the film myself, rolling the strips of celluloid in my seldom-used developer. My hands were shaking in anticipation as I set about making a contact sheet. I could always make individual prints later, but I wanted to see Julio’s photographs in sequence immediately.
I swished the tongs in the chemical bath, squinting through the low, red light as the black-and-white images spread across the paper. Of the thirty-six frames shot by Julio, four were blank. The other thirty-two were sharp, well-exposed, beautifully composed candid nudes of Jordan Shaw. I swallowed hard, with no saliva, examining the frames under a loupe, and I understood why Julio had been so reluctant to admit to the existence of the film. She was genuine, without shame, so casual and full of grace in her nudity that it seemed perverse to find her provocative. Yet I knew she was. The photographs were intensely erotic: the tall, lean, blonde, captured in the intimacy of her bath, unapproachable but powerfully seductive. In my ten years as a photographer, I had never made such gripping photographs.
I made one set of eight-by-tens, then found myself obsessed. Like a novice hobbyist, I reprinted the set, experimenting with exposures and grains, searching for the look I liked best. Hours wasted for nothing more than furtive voyeurism. But then I enlarged the photographs and I saw it. A dark smudge on her pelvis—just above her pubic hair.
“Good God,” I mumbled to myself, examining the photograph under the loupe. “It’s a tattoo.”
It was some kind of scribbling, possibly writing, but that’s all I could discern.
Julio had played his hand close to the vest, thinking he had a sound hiding place. He thought he could wait it out and reclaim his treasure once the heat was off. His only mistake, in fact, was doubting the integrity of his cache. Not even the Dr Pepper man would have found the hidden film, unless he’d known where to look. But Julio couldn’t resist running to the Mohawk as soon as he had been released from jail. He checked to see that the film was safe and swiped the small change from the soda machine as a bonus.
“I need your help, Ellie.”
“You? What are you doing here?”
“Help me. Don’t let me die without justice.”
“I’m not up to it. I’m not that clever.”
“You’re a lot like me, Ellie. You and I would have been friends; I sense it. Please find my killer.”
“Can’t you give me a hint?”
The phone pealed, and I bolted up in my bed. I’d taken a Darvon and must have nodded off.
“Hello,” I said, rubbing my eyes and cursing the rude awakening. God, had I really asked the murdered girl in my dream for a hint? And yet I found myself wishing the phone hadn’t rung; now I’d never know what Jordan might have said to me.
“I have to see you, Miss Stone,” said the voice over the phone, thick with what sounded like an Indian accent. It wasn’t Roy.
“Who’s there?” I asked.
“This is Hakim Mohammed. I’m across the street in the ice cream shop. I must see you tonight itself.”
“I’ll be right down,” I said, and he hung up.
For safe keeping, I placed Julio’s photographs and negatives into a large folio of Curtis prints (one of my mother’s) on my bookshelf. No one would ever look there.
Hakim was sitting in a booth in the back, a glass of carbonated water in front of him on the table. Fadge gave me a what-the-hell’s-going-on look when I came in.
“Take this envelope,” said Hakim, once I’d slid into the booth across from him. “Use it any way you deem fit.”
“What is this?” I asked, starting to open it.
“Not here,” he said, stilling my hand with his. He was wearing a mean little green onyx ring on his pinkie finger. “You’ll know what to do when you see it.”
“Why are you helping me?” I asked. “For Jordan?”
“I never even met Jordan Shaw. Goodbye, Miss Stone.”
With that, Hakim slid over to get out of the booth, but he didn’t make it that far. As large as a house, Fadge stood above us, blocking his escape.
“Please, sir,” said Hakim, craning his neck to look up at Fadge. “Let me pass.”
“First you tell the lady what she wants to know, then you can drag yourself out of here.”
Hakim inched back across the seat until he was in front of his half-empty glass of water again.
“I would go to the bloody police to file a complaint,” he muttered, “but I’m sure they would treat me even worse than you.”
“She’s worked hard on this story,” said Fadge, leaning over the table, inches from Hakim’s face. “Tell her what she wants to know.”
Fadge straightened up and backed off a step. I gave him a nod to indicate thanks and that he’d done his job. He stared down at Hakim for another moment, then left us. Seconds later, he switched off the front lights, and I could hear him lock the door. Hakim settled back against the wall of the booth and cleared his throat. We sat quietly for almost a minute, Hakim glaring at his water glass, struggling to control his temper. I don’t think he appreciated having to answer to a woman, even if a six foot two, three-hundred-pound beast was the muscle behind her.
“So you want to know why I want to help you?” He said, fiddling with the little onyx ring. “It has nothing to do with you or that randi, Jordan Shaw.”
“I beg your pardon?” I asked.
He looked pleased for having surprised me and insulted Jordan Shaw with one simple word.
“It means ‘whore,’” he said simply.
“Oh! Well, let’s put that to one side, shall we? Why are you trying to help me if not for me or her?”
“Prakash Singh is a bloody Indian,” he began. “Do you understand what that means to a Pakistani?”
I shrugged. “I know you’re not friendly with Indians, but this seems like a lot of trouble to take.”
“What do you know of trouble? Was your father murdered?”
That stung hard. I bit my lip but said nothing. After a moment, Hakim resumed.
“Does the year 1947 mean anything to you?”
“That was the year of India’s independence,” I said, grateful the subject had turned away from my fathe
r.
“And Pakistan’s,” he said as if to scold me. “I was ten years old in 1947, the year of Partition and Independence. My family was from the Punjab. East Punjab. Jullundur. That’s inside India today. My father, abbaji, was a doctor, a learned man. I had three brothers and two sisters. I was the youngest. My father was not interested in politics. He did not hate the British or the Hindus. He was a peaceful man.”
Hakim paused, shifted in his seat, refusing to look me in the eye. He seemed to weigh his words, deliver them slowly. His closed mouth, twisted into a snarl, tried to subdue the violent emotion just inside.
“As Independence neared, there were rumors and threats against Muslims. Slaughter, rape, and settling of old scores by the bloody Hindus. Many Muslims decided to leave for the new Pakistan. My father did not believe the worst. He wanted us to stay in this new India. He had his practice, his friends, his brothers and cousins. Our family had been in Jullundur for generations.
“My mother’s family was from Lahore. She had five brothers. They begged my father to shift from Jullundur to Lahore before Independence. But he was determined to stay.” Hakim drew a sigh. “Until his brother Asif and his family were attacked by a mob of Hindus. They barely escaped alive and fled to Lahore.”
“So you all moved to Pakistan?” I asked.
“Not quite. There were many horrible tales of rioting, violence, and strife. More than a million died in the bloody days before and after Independence. Unspeakable atrocities were committed by the Hindu dogs and their Sikh partners.”
“Didn’t a lot of Hindus die as well?”
He pounded his fist on the red, linoleum tabletop. Fadge appeared from the front to investigate, but, seeing that I was in no danger, he withdrew again.
“I don’t care about the Hindus or Sikhs or Jains or Parsees or even the other Muslims,” he said. “I care that my family was murdered.”
“I’m so sorry,” I blurted out. “I didn’t realize.”
Hakim went quiet, breathing deeply, looking mournfully at his ring. I could see the tears in his hard eyes, though they never fell.
“We boarded the train at Jullundur on August 20th,” he resumed in a soft voice. “All of us. My father and mother, three brothers and two sisters, just two days after Eid, with all the possessions we could carry. Abbaji was sure he would be able to return later to collect the rest of our belongings and the items from his small clinic.
“It was a short distance to Lahore. Perhaps 350 kilometers. We settled in and watched the hot countryside pass by. Everything seemed fine.” He closed his eyes and drew another breath. “And then we reached Amritsar, where the train stopped to take on passengers. That’s when a mob of Hindus began stoning the train. Abbaji and my older brothers told my mother and sisters and me to lie flat on the floor. They covered us with our baggage to hide us. Then some men stormed the train with knives, rifles, and lathis. The police stood by on the platform as the marauders ran through the train, beating and stabbing anyone in a kufi or a turban. Anyone wearing a beard. A group of ten Hindus burst into our car, swinging lathis and machetes. My brothers, Yusuf and Faroukh, threw themselves at the mob and tried to defend us. I watched in horror from under our baggage as they were cut down with machetes. They died on the floor before us. Then the Hindus took my fourteen-year-old brother Zahid and abbaji and dragged them off the train. They beat them and stabbed them to death on the platform.”
I felt sick. Hakim’s soft voice narrated the horrors so calmly, almost in a whisper, like a prayer. I didn’t have anything to say. No words of comfort or solace came to me. I just sat there, frozen in my seat, waiting for him to close his tale. But he wasn’t finished.
“The men took my sister Rehena away. She was thirteen, the sweetest child that ever lived. The last I saw of her was her foot, still colored from her Eid celebration mehndi.”
“Oh, my God,” I croaked, my throat too dry to gasp.
“We never learned her fate,” said Hakim, shrugging sadly.
“I’m very sorry,” I offered. “So very sorry.”
He finally looked at me. “My mother and my sister Kamaliya and I survived the attack. My chachaji, my father’s brother Asif, took us in, raised us, and cared for my mother.”
Hakim grunted a small, bitter laugh. “You know, only fifteen men and boys were murdered that day. And a handful of girls abducted. A minor incident in the greater tragedy of Partition. There were no headlines. No international outrage. No monuments to the dead . . . That makes it harder for me somehow. As if they died and no one took notice.”
His story was over now, I was sure.
“So that is why I help you, Miss Stone,” he said. “I don’t hate all Indians. Just certain ones like Prakash Singh, who smirk at me for my heritage and my country. Who believe in India over Pakistan and shrug their shoulders indifferently at the misery they gave to us.”
“But Prakash wasn’t there,” I said. “He didn’t murder your family. Why do you blame him more than others?”
“Prakash Singh is from Amritsar,” he said. “That’s why I hate him a little more than the rest.”
“You mentioned mehndi,” I said. “What exactly is mehndi?”
“Is this a joke to you?”
“No, I’ve heard of it once before. Jordan mentioned it in a postcard.”
Hakim thought on it a moment, then answered. “It’s henna. A dye used for celebrations. A tattoo. It fades away after a few weeks.”
“One last thing,” I said. “How did you end up in Jordan’s motel room that night and what did you see?”
Hakim took my question in his stride. He didn’t deny, feign innocence, or lose his temper. He just answered.
“I hired a car and followed Prakash Singh here,” he said. “I knew he was up to no good, and I wanted to catch him at it.”
“That still seems like a lot of trouble to me,” I said. “With nothing personal against him, why drive two hundred miles on the off chance he might be doing something underhanded?”
“It was personal, Miss Stone. Prakash Singh filed a grievance against me. Tried to have me dismissed from the program. He accused me of cheating. He said I copied a paper from a journal and presented it as my own work.”
“Was it true?” I asked.
That riled him.
“No! The faculty and dean investigated the charge and found nothing. Instead, they reprimanded that bloody Sardar for filing a false report. Prakash Singh engages in this harassing behavior just to make my life difficult, and all the while with a smile on his lying lips.”
“What did you see in Jordan’s room?”
He sneered and shook his head. “Nothing. I was too late. That bloody Sardar had already killed her and removed the body. There was nothing in the room but some blood on the bed. Her clothes and possessions were gone. I cleared out fast. I didn’t kill that girl, Miss Stone, if that’s what you’re suggesting.”
“I’m just trying to tie up the loose ends,” I said. “A witness said three men visited the room. You were the last one.”
“But not the one who killed her.”
Hakim pushed out of the booth and stood up. Fadge made no move to stop him this time. Hakim nodded curtly in lieu of a good-bye and then strode purposefully to the door. He grabbed the handle and gave it a yank. The door refused to open. He rattled it two more times, then turned sheepishly to Fadge, who was watching from a stool at the counter.
“Would you unlock the door, please?”
Fadge pushed off his stool, shuffled over to the door, and fished a key ring from his pocket. To Hakim, it must have seemed like five minutes for the big man to locate the correct key, though it was probably more like twenty seconds. When Fadge finally unlocked the door, Hakim slipped past him into the cold night. I followed him out, intent on having a look under his car. But a taxi was waiting, and he climbed in. Then he was gone.
Inside the envelope, I found four color snapshots of Jordan and Jerrold, taken somewhere in India almost a year and a ha
lf earlier. In two pictures, they were holding hands. From a distance, it appeared Jordan was wearing some dark lace gloves reaching halfway up her forearms. In the third and fourth, Jordan and Jerrold were wrapped in a tight embrace, nose to nose like lovers, standing in the courtyard of some kind of palace. The buildings were beautiful—with intricate, carved detail—deep red in color and nearly deserted. The last photograph was taken with a long zoom, a little bit grainy, but I could see the lace gloves were not gloves at all. They were actually magnificent henna tattoos. Mehndi.
The pictures had been taken from a distance of about fifty or sixty feet. They almost passed for simple tourist shots, but there was an unsettling feel of voyeurism about them, and I was sure they were stolen photographs, surreptitiously taken by someone who didn’t want to be seen. I thought back to Jordan’s letter to Ginny, the one gushing about the perfect night in Fatehpur Sikri with David Jerrold, and I wondered if perhaps the lovers hadn’t escaped the prying eyes of the world after all.
And there was more. Two letters at the bottom of the envelope, both written in Jordan’s hand, made most interesting reading. The first was dated September 1, 1960, addressed to Jeffrey Nichols. After some small talk about the boredom of New Holland, Jordan Shaw gave me what I wanted.
I’ve been thinking of the time we spent together in India and realize that David and I were perhaps indiscreet. I know that I can rely on your tact and friendship. As far as I’m concerned, it makes no difference. I don’t care if people gossip about me because I love David so much. His position is very delicate, though, at least until he gets his divorce and his tenure case is decided. I know people wouldn’t understand, but this is not a frivolous affair for us. We’re planning to marry as soon as possible . . .
I wasn’t so sure Jerrold ever intended to divorce for Jordan, but she seemed convinced.
The second letter was dated November 16, 1960, and was a stream of consciousness narrative of her heartbreak. She had just received the Dear Jordan letter and was pouring her heart out to her friend Jeffrey Nichols.
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