Last Man in Tower - Aravind Adiga [25]
“Just one suicide?”
“Yes, sir.”
“I’ll manage.”
At the traffic lights before Malabar Hill, a headless cat lay on the road; from the neck up, it was just a smear of pink pulp imprinted with a tyre tread, an exclamation mark of blood. The builder’s heart went out to it. In a world of trucks and heavy traffic, the little cat had not been given a fair chance. But what about you, Dharmen? the pulverized animal asked. You’re next, aren’t you?
He lowered the window and spat at the corpse.
He dreamed of breakfast. Eight pieces of toast, sliced diagonally, piled into a porcelain dish; a jar of Kissan Mixed-Fruit Jam; a jar of Kissan Marmalade; a bottle of Heinz Tomato Ketchup; and, suspended in a lobed bowl of water to keep it soft, an iceberg of home-made butter.
The Mercedes drove up Malabar Hill; the ocean glinted to Shanmugham’s left.
As the driver adjusted his gears, they stalled outside an old ruined mansion. Fresh saplings had broken through the exquisitely carved stone leaves and flowers on the nineteenth-century cornice, and a sign hammered into the front wall said:
MUMBAI MUNICIPAL CORPORATION
THIS BUILDING IS DANGEROUS, DILAPIDATED, AND UNFIT FOR
HUMANS TO BE AROUND. NO ONE SHOULD ENTER IT.
As the car accelerated past, light from the ocean echoed through the ruined mansion.
Shanmugham saw four massive banyan trees growing in the compound of one grand building, their aerial roots clinging as if glued to the boundary wall: four escutcheons of the House of Shah.
The lift took them to the eighth floor.
“We’ll go to the construction site right after breakfast,” Shah told his assistant, as they walked towards his flat. “The contractor told me this morning that everything was all right and there was no need for me to be there. You know what that means.”
A medallion of a golden Lord Ganesha sat on the lintel above the builder’s home.
The door was open. Two black leather shoes had been left outside.
In the living room, a tableau as if from a stage comedy. In front of a giant bronze image of the Dancing Nataraja, Shah saw Giri, his housekeeper, alongside two men in khaki uniforms, one of whom sipped a glass of cold water. The other man in uniform had a hand on Satish, his son, and was admonishing the boy with his index finger, as if putting on a dumb show for his father’s sake.
The mucus in Shah’s chest rumbled.
“Boss.” Giri, who wore a tattered banian and blue lungi, came up to him. “He did it again. He was spray-painting cars outside the school; they caught him and brought him here. I told them to wait till you ….”
The policeman who had his hand on Satish appeared to be the senior of the two. He spoke. The other kept drinking his cold water.
“First, we saw him doing this ….”
The policeman made a circular motion to indicate the action of spraying. Shah listened. The fingers of his left hand rubbed the thick gold rings on the fingers of his right.
“Then he did this. Then this. They finished painting the first car, and then they went to the next. It’s a gang, and each one of them has a gang-name. Your son’s name is Soda Pop.”
“Soda Pop,” Shah said.
The policeman who had been sipping water nodded. “… Pop.”
Plump, fair-skinned Satish exuded nonchalance, as if the matter concerned someone else.
“Then Constable Hamid, sir”—the policeman talking gestured to the one who was not—“he’s sitting in the police van, he said, isn’t that the developer Mr. Shah’s son? And then, considering the excellent relations that our station has always had with you, sir, we thought … before it gets into the paper ….”
The developer Mr. Shah, having heard enough, wanted possession of the goods: with his fingers, he beckoned the boy. The policeman did not stop him; he strolled over to his father’s side.
“His friends? Those other boys, who were doing this—” Shah made the same circular motion. “What happens to them?”
“They’ll all have to go to the police station. Their parents will have to come and release them. We’ll keep the names out of