So, when my health improved and I began to earn real money, I didn't move back to the slum. Instead, with Khaderbhai's help, I rented an apartment in Colaba at the landward end of Best Street, not far from Leopold's. It was my first apartment in India, and my first indulgence of space and privacy and domestic luxuries such as a hot shower and a functioning kitchen. I ate well, cooking high-protein and high-carbohydrate meals, and forcing myself to finish off a bucket of ice cream every day. I put on body weight. I slept for ten hours at a stretch, night after night, healing my lacerated body with sleep's ravelling repair.
But I woke often, with my arms flailing, fighting, and the wet metal smell of blood still fresh from the nightmare.
I trained in karate and weightlifting with Abdullah at his favourite gym in the fashionable suburb of Breach Candy. Two other young gangsters-Salman Mustaan and his friend Sanjay, whom I'd met at my first visit to Khader's council-often joined us.
They were strong, healthy men in their late-twenties who liked to fight about as much as they liked sex, and they liked sex just fine. Sanjay, with his movie-star looks, was the joker. Salman was quieter and more serious. Although inseparable friends since childhood, they were as hard on one another in the ring as they were when they boxed Abdullah and me. We worked out five times each week, with two days off to allow our torn and swollen muscles to recover. And it was good. It helped. Pumping iron is Zen for violent men. Little by little, my body regained its strength, muscular shape, and fitness.
But no matter how fit I became, I knew that my mind wouldn't heal, couldn't heal, until I found out who'd arranged with the police to have me picked up and sent to Arthur Road Prison. I needed to know who did it. I needed to know the reason. Ulla was gone from the city-in hiding, some said, but no-one could guess from whom, or why. Karla was gone, and no-one could tell me where she was. Didier and several other friends were digging around for me, trying to find the truth, but they hadn't found anything that might tell me who'd set me up.
Someone had arranged with senior cops to have me arrested, without charge, and imprisoned at Arthur Road. The same person had arranged to have me beaten-severely and often-while I was in the prison. It was a punishment or an act of revenge.
Khaderbhai had confirmed that much, but he couldn't or wouldn't say more, except to tell me that whoever it was who'd set me up hadn't known that I was on the run. That information, about the escape from Australia, had emerged from the routine fingerprint check. The cops concerned had realised, at once, that there might be profit in keeping quiet about it, and they'd shelved my file until Vikram approached them on Khader's behalf.
"Those fuckin' cops liked you, man," Vikram told me as we sat together in Leopold's one afternoon, a few months after I'd started work with Khaled as a currency collector.
"U-huh."
"No, really, they did. That's why they let you go."
"I never saw that cop before in my life, Vikram. He didn't know me at all."
"You don't get it," he replied patiently. He poured another glass of cold Kingfisher beer, and sipped it appreciatively. "I talked to that guy, the cop, when I got you out of there. He told me the whole story. See, when the first guy in the fingerprint section found out who the fuck you really were-when your fingerprint check came back with the news that you were this wanted guy, from Australia-he freaked out on it. He freaked out on how much money he might get, you know, to keep the shit quiet. A chance like that doesn't come along every day, na? So, without saying anything to anyone else, he goes to a senior cop he knows, and shows him the file report on your prints. That cop freaks out, too. He goes to another cop-the one we saw at the jail-and shows him the file. That cop tells the others to keep quiet about it, and leave it to him to find out how much money there is in it."
A waiter brought my cup of coffee, and chatted with me for a while in Marathi. Vikram waited until we were alone again before he spoke.
"They love it, you know, all these waiters and cab drivers and post office guys-and the cops, too-they love it, all these guys, that you speak Marathi to them. Fuck, man, I'm born here, and you speak Marathi better than I do. I never learned to speak it properly. I never had to. That's why so many Marathis are so pissed off, man. Most of us don't give a shit about the Marathi language, or who all comes to live in Bombay, or wherever the fuck they come from, yaar. Anyway, where was I? Oh yeah, so the cop has this file on you, and he's keeping it quiet. But he wants to know more about this Australian fucker, who escaped from jail, before he does anything, yaar."
