Last Man in Tower - Aravind Adiga [119]
He had been walking about the flat ever since Shanmugham had come back from the lawyer’s office, sweating with bad news.
Fresh breeze: he went up to the window. Down below, in the gutter outside his building, a man in rags scavenged for empty bottles.
Even down there, Shah saw wanting. That beggar with the gunny sack, if the story so far were told to him, would be appalled by this old teacher. A man who does not want: who has no secret spaces in his heart into which a little more cash can be stuffed, what kind of man is that?
“I have seen every kind of negotiation tactic, Giri. I can classify them. Saying you’re ill. Blind. You miss your beloved dead dog Timmy or Tommy that lived in that flat. But I have never seen this tactic of simply saying ‘No,’ permanently.”
“Yes, Boss.” Giri said. “Will you eat now?”
“We are dealing with the most dangerous thing on earth, Giri. A weak man. A weak man who has found a place where he feels strong. He won’t leave Vishram. I understand now.”
Giri touched his master.
“Sit. Or the hilsa will get cold, and what did Giri go to all this trouble for?”
Shah looked at the fish: and he had a vision of the old teacher, sliced and chopped the same way, salted and peppered, sitting on the dinner table. He shivered, and rubbed the silk again.
All Shanmugham had done so far was to send a boy with a hockey stick to speak to that old man—Mr. Pinto. Nothing criminal in that. He had just been sending Vishram Society a gift from reality. He had assumed that would be enough, for a building full of older people. Social animals.
Now Shanmugham was waiting in the basement for instructions. He could see him standing by a car’s rear-view mirror or in the lift, practising his threats: “Old man, we have given you every chance, and now we are left with no ….”
The silk grew warm in Shah’s fingers.
A dirty business, construction, and he had come up through its dirtiest part. Redevelopment. If you enjoy fish, you have to swallow a few bones. He made no apology for what he had had to do to get here. But this was not how the Shanghai was meant to happen: not after he had offered 19,000 rupees a square foot for an old, old building.
The hot silk handkerchief fell to the floor.
Hanging above the writing desk in his study was Rosie’s gift, the framed three-part black-and-white poster of the Eiffel Tower being raised into place. With all his fingers on the polished mahogany table Shah saw, as if through a periscope, the rabbit-warren of cash networks that ran beneath it: he spied into the deepest, most secret paths through which the Confidence Group moved its money and followed the flipping serial numbers of accounts in the Channel Islands and in the Maldives. He was master of things seen and things unseen. Buildings rising above the earth and concourses of money running below it.
And why had he built these things above and below the earth?
Now everyone believed India was going to be a rich country. He had known it ten years ago. Had planned for the future. Skip out of slum redevelopment. Start building glossy skyscrapers, shopping malls, maybe one day an entire suburb, like the Hiranandanis in Powai. Leave something behind, a new name, the Confidence Group, founder Dharmen Vrijesh Shah, a first wife’s son from Krishnapur.
And some stupid old teacher was going to get in the way? One of the neighbours had told Shanmugham that Masterji’s son had contacted her. He had told her that his father planned on going to the Times of India the next day. To say that the Confidence Group was threatening him.
The builder slapped both palms against his skull. Of all the good housing societies in Vakola, of all the societies dying to receive such an offer, why had he picked this one?
Fate, chance, destiny, luck, horoscopes. A man had his will power, but there were dark powers operating all around him. So he sought protection