"Well, it's still missing, and so is Modena. The boys on the street have been telling me. Maurizio's going around all over the place looking for Modena. He won't give up until he finds him.
And Ulla's no better. Sixty thousand bucks-it's not all that much, but people have been killed for less. If Modena's got it, he better stay clear of Ulla while Maurizio's still after him."
"I know. I know."
Her eyes were suddenly glazed and apprehensive.
"I'm not worried about Ulla," I said more softly. "I worry about you. If Modena's back, you should stay close to Abdullah for a while. Or me."
She looked at me with her lips pressed to white rims around what she wanted to say but couldn't or wouldn't.
"Tell me about the scene," I suggested, trying to shift us from the cold, black whirlpool that Ulla's life was becoming. "What's going on in this movie?"
"It's a nightclub, or at least it's a movie version of one. The hero steals a jewel from a rich politician, I think-something like that-and he runs in here to hide. He watches the girl, Kimi, doing a big dance number, and he falls for her. When the cops show up, he hides the jewel in her wig. The rest of the movie is about how he tries to get close to her, to get the jewel back."
She paused, studying my face, and trying to read the expression in my eyes.
"It's... I guess you think it's kinda stupid."
"No, I don't," I laughed. "I like it. I like all this. In the real world, the guy would just beat her up and take his jewel back. He might even shoot her. I like the Bollywood version better."
"So do I," she said, laughing. "I love it. They put it all together from painted canvas and skinny pieces of wood and it's ... it's like they're making dreams or something. I know that sounds corny, but I mean it. I love this world, Lin, and I don't want to go back to the other one."
"Hey, Lin!" a voice called out from behind me. It was Chandra Mehta, one of the producers. "You got a minute?"
I left Lisa with the German tourists and joined Chandra Mehta beneath a metal gantry that supported a complex tree of bright lights. He wore a baseball cap backwards, and the press of the tight band made his plump face seem rounder. Faded blue Levis were buttoned up under his expansive paunch, and a long kurtah shirt almost covered it from above. He was sweating in the mildly humid air of the closed set.
"Hey, man. How is it? I've been wanting to see you, yaar." His voice was breathy with conspiracy. "Let's go outside and get some air. I'm boiling my fuckin' bonus off in here, yaar."
As we strolled between the metal-domed buildings, actors in costume crossed our path, together with men carrying props and pieces of equipment. At one point, a group of nine pretty dancing girls dressed in exotic, feathered costumes passed us on their way to a sound stage. They turned my head around, forcing my body to follow it until I was walking backwards for a while. Chandra Mehta never gave them so much as a glance.
"Listen, Lin, what I wanted to talk to you about..." he said, touching my arm at the elbow as we walked. "I have this friend, you know, and he's a business fellow, with a lot of dealings in the USA. Achaa, what to say... he has a problem of his rupees to-dollars cash flow, yaar. I was kind of hoping that you... a little bird told me that you are a helpful fellow when the cash is not flowing."
"I assume this cash should be in U.S. dollars, when it's flowing correctly?"
"Yes," he smiled. "I'm very glad that you understand his problem."
"Just how badly is the flow backed up?"
"Oh, I think that about ten thousand should move things along very nicely."
I told him Khaled Ansari's current rate for U.S. dollars, and he agreed to the terms. I arranged to meet him on the set the following day. He was to have the rupees-a much larger bundle of notes than the American currency made-in a soft backpack, ready for me to collect on my bike. We shook on the deal. Mindful of the man I represented, lord Abdel Khader Khan, a man whose name would never be mentioned by Mehta or by me, I put a slightly uncomfortable pressure in the handshake. It was a tiny pain I inflicted on him, the merest twinge, but it reinforced the hard eye-contact above my amiable smile.
"Don't start this if you're going to mess it up, Chandra," I warned, as the handshake pulsed from his pinched hand to his eyes. "Nobody likes to get jerked around-my friends least of all."
"Oh, of course not, baba!" he joked, not quite smothering the blip of alarm that spiked in his eyes. "No problem. Koi baht nahi! Don't worry! I'm very grateful that you can help me, my... what to say, help my friend, with his problem, yaar."
We strolled back to the sound stage, and I found Lisa with Mehta's fellow producer, Cliff De Souza.
"Hey, man! You'll do!" Cliff said in greeting, seizing me by the arm and dragging me toward the tables on the nightclub set. I looked at Lisa, but she just raised her hands in a gesture that said You're on your own, buddy.
"What's going on, Cliff?"
