The Mountain Shadow

The cops were under strict orders to react swiftly in matters of religious sentiment, which was a convenient excuse for Lightning Dilip. He joined with Sanjay Company men, who paid him with more than patriotic fervour, and sent his jeep patrols to hunt down Scorpions for disturbing communal harmony.

It was a tense business, during the truce, being immune from police aggression. Most of us preferred the aggression. You know where you stand, when everyone’s playing by the same rules. When the cops are the good guys, it’s time to think about another game.

It was eerie, stopping at a traffic signal and having a police jeep draw up alongside; having the cops try to smile, and even make small talk, when you’ve been beaten in the back of the same jeep, by the same cops.

At the end of our patrol, when no-one had heard or seen anything unusual, we stopped near Haji Ali’s tomb, where Tardeo met Pedder Road.

Everything south of that point was Sanjay Company territory, from sea to sea. The tomb of the saint was on neutral ground, and gangsters from all over Bombay came to the shrine peacefully, even gangs that were at war.

Abdullah left the bikes with a contact at the nearby service station, and led us on the long walk across the land bridge footpath to the small island tomb of the saint.

We’d all performed the gangster ritual before: a late-night walk to the saint’s tomb, before battle.

Haji Ali, then simply a wealthy Uzbek merchant named Ali, gave up all he had to the poor, and went on a pilgrimage to Mecca.

He travelled all of the world that a traveller could reach. It was a difficult thing to do, because it was the fifteenth century, but he went everywhere, carrying his belongings on his back, and learning everything that could be known.

A man of good taste, he settled in Bombay, and was renowned in the city and beyond for his piety. He died while on the annual Haj. The coffin carrying his body was lost at sea, but washed up, miraculously, on the shores of Bombay, where his tomb was built.

Once a day, in high season, the sea washed the path to Haji Ali’s tomb away, leaving it invisible below the menacing water. It was as if the saint sometimes said, Please, enough, and was released from the world of our sins and sorrows by a drowned path, letting him sleep in peace to restore his power as one of the great protectors of the city.

On that night, the path across the sea was dry and almost deserted. The wind was sharp, and came in ruffling bursts. We walked alone, six gangsters, toward the island tomb, moonlight throwing long shadows on a mirror of shallow tide.

The rounded rocks beneath us on either side of the wide path were exposed: black wet things clinging to the path for shelter, their backs bent to the sea.

Incense, burning in bunches as thick as a camel’s hoof, filled the air with fragrances of devotion.

I didn’t follow the ritual on the path across the sea to the island shrine. Gangsters going to war walked toward the shrine thinking of the harm they’d done in the past, prayed for forgiveness at the tomb, and walked away from the shrine ready for hell. I didn’t do it, that time.

I thought of Karla, and how angry we’d been when we’d said goodnight.

I didn’t think about who’d taken the contract out on me. The list of suspects was long, and I couldn’t shorten it by thinking about it. As it turned out, Abdullah shortened it for me, as we walked back across the sea, on the strip of stone that joined the shore.

‘You did not ask me who took out this contract on you.’

‘I thought I’d survive the twenty-four, and then find out,’ I replied.

‘Why do you not want to know now?’

‘Because, when I know, I’ll want to do something to him. And it would be better to do something to him after everybody stops trying to kill me.’

‘It was the Irishman.’

‘Concannon?’

‘Yes.’

It was my turn to laugh, and about time.

‘Good to see you keeping those spirits up,’ Ravi said, walking a pace behind us with Shah, Comanche and Tall Tony.

‘No,’ I laughed, ‘it’s not funny at all, but it’s really, really funny at the same time. I know this guy. I know Concannon. It’s his version of a practical joke. It’s a gangster joke, to see if I can make it through. That’s why the contract expires in twenty-four hours. He’s fucking with me.’

I couldn’t explain it more, because I was laughing too much, and then the guys understood, all but Abdullah, and they laughed. Every time they tried to straighten up, they reminded themselves how much they wished they’d thought of it first. Then they started exchanging the names of paranoid friends they’d love to do it to, and fell helpless again.

‘I love this guy,’ Ravi said. ‘I’ve gotta meet him. I mean, we’ll kill him, of course, but I’ve gotta meet him, before we do.’

‘Me, too,’ Tall Tony said. ‘Is this the guy Abdullah shot in the leg?’

‘The same.’

‘Twice,’ Abdullah corrected, ‘in the same leg. And now, you can see that mercy is a virtue best reserved for the virtuous, and not for a demon, like this man.’