Nisha threw Santosh a look and he raised his eyebrows. She leaned forward. “Mr….”
“Aakash,” he said, affronted. “It’s just Aakash.”
“… Aakash—I’m having difficulty understanding why you wouldn’t want to talk to the Afternoon Mirror. After all, the free advertising alone surely would have made it worthwhile. I’m picturing it now, the salon—sorry, the lounge—featured in the Afternoon Mirror, waiting lists stretching off into infinity. It would appear to me to be—what do you call it?—a no-brainer.”
“Well,” he said defensively, “that’s just where you’re wrong.”
“Why?” she pressed. Her voice was soft, but probing. “Was there something you were worried she might discover?”
By now Aakash was looking shifty. The office door was open. He got up, walked over, and closed it. The act was dropped a little. “Look,” he said, “I may have, um, overplayed the celebrity angle of my work.”
Nisha and Santosh exchanged a glance.
“In what way?” said Nisha.
“In the sense that the celebrity bit of my client list needs working on.”
“You are yourself becoming something of a celebrity, are you not? The very fact that Bhavna wanted to interview you attests to that.”
“I am,” said the hairdresser proudly.
“And yet this reputation is built on false pretences …”
Aakash froze as if the walls had ears. “All right,” he said, “keep it down. Don’t tell the world. I do have some celebrity clients, just not lots.”
“How many celebrity clients?”
“Three.”
They both looked at him, eyebrows raised.
“Okay,” he admitted. “None. Yet. But did you see the lounge? They’ll be pouring in soon, just you mark my words.”
“I see,” said Santosh, the first words he’d spoken since they’d arrived at the Shiva Spa. He looked at Nisha and saw his own disappointment reflected in her eyes. “I think we’re done here.”
Chapter 20
THE MAN KNOWN only as Munna sat across two seats of the booth in the Emerald Bar, an illegal dance bar. Huge and perspiring heavily, he mopped his wet brow with a handkerchief every now and then, piggy eyes blinking as he spoke into his phone.
Munna liked gold. Under an open-necked shirt he wore gold-rope chains around his neck. His chubby fingers were made even chubbier by an assortment of thick gold rings. On the table in front of him was a pack of Marlboro Lights, a solid gold lighter, and a sleek gold-plated cell phone. He was rumored to carry a gold-plated Desert Eagle in his waistband.
There were other rumors about Munna. That the lake bordering his weekend home on the outskirts of Mumbai was used to breed crocodiles, an efficient and ecologically friendly means of disposing of human bodies.
In booths to the left and the right sat some of Munna’s men who, as well as drinking, smoking, and pawing the girls, provided an intimidating gauntlet to run before an audience with the gangster. But in Munna’s priv
ate booth were his personal bodyguards, standing to his left and right, their Glock 22 pistols in shoulder holsters under tailored cotton jackets.
Next to him a girl sat curled up. Not a day older than sixteen, she wore a tiny skirt and a bra top, had dark rings under heavy-lidded eyes, and track marks on her arms, visible if you looked close enough. With her legs tucked up beneath her she leaned into Munna and endured his wandering hands. Soon she would dance for him, once his business was concluded, and after the dance, perhaps he would bid his close protection to leave them, and they would stand outside the door of the booth and listen to her stifled screams.
Munna controlled most of the city’s drug traffic, bootlegging, prostitution, extortion, and illegal betting. Growing up in the slums of Mumbai, Iqbal Rahim had fought his way to the very top of the crime ladder by bumping off his rivals and accomplices in equal measure. He had somehow managed to retain a baby face, and hence came to be known as “Munna”—or baby boy.
There was absolutely nothing that Munna could not get done in the city and he often used that power to play Robin Hood to full effect. Whether it was the school admission of a child, the medical treatment of a cancer patient, or the out-of-turn allocation of a subsidized house for someone on an endless waiting list, Munna ensured that he was both loved and feared. There was no politician in Mumbai who could hope to win an election without Munna’s invisible support.
Barely two decades earlier, Mumbai had been in the throes of a deadly gang war. The police chief set up an encounter force to deal with the situation. In Mumbai police terminology, an encounter was a euphemism to describe extrajudicial killings in which a police team shot down suspected gangsters in carefully staged gun battles. It was all-out war.
The net result was that the Mumbai police had succeeded in crippling the underworld in Mumbai. Although “encounter specialists” within the police force were criticized by human rights activists, they were praised by ordinary citizens. Rupesh’s boss—the Police Commissioner—had started his own career as an encounter specialist and had worked his way up to his present position.
Only the most determined gangsters had remained in Mumbai during the encounter years and Munna was one of them. His mentors had fled to Karachi and Dubai while Munna had gobbled up the residual empire left behind by them. Several corpses later, he had emerged more powerful than any previous mafia don, someone who knew the value of working alongside the enemy.