A determined phalanx of eight or ten men broke through the circle, and I was face to face with Khaled Ansari. I was running on instinct, and I almost punched him. He held out both hands, waving for me to stop. His men ploughed their way back into the crowd, and Khaled pushed me in behind them. Someone punched my head from behind, and I turned and ran at the mob again, wanting to fight every man in the city; wanting to fight until they punched me numb; until I couldn't feel that spear, dead Abdullah's spear, in my chest. Khaled and two of his friends wrapped their arms around me and dragged me out of the writhing, lunatic hell that the street had become. "His body's not there," Khaled told me when we found my bike. He wiped the blood from my face with a handkerchief. My eye was swelling up quickly, and blood dripped from my nose and a cut on my lower lip. I hadn't felt the blows at all. There was no pain.
The pain was all in my chest, right next to my heart, and I breathed it in, and out, and in.
"The crowd stormed the place. Hundreds of them. That was before we got here. When the cops pushed them out again, they went to the cell where they'd put his body, and it was empty. The crowd let all the prisoners out, and they got his body."
"Ah, Jesus," I moaned. "Ah, fuck. Ah, God."
"We'll get people on it," Khaled said, quiet and confident.
"We'll find out what happened. We'll find... it... him. We'll find his body."
I rode back to Leopold's, and found Johnny Cigar sitting at Didier's table. Didier and Lisa were gone. I collapsed in a chair beside Johnny, much as Lisa had done beside Didier a few hours before. Leaning my elbows on the table, I rubbed my eyes with the heels of my hands.
"A terrible thing," Johnny said.
"Yeah."
"It shouldn't have happened."
"No."
"And it didn't need to happen. Not like this."
"Yeah."
"He didn't need to take that fare. It was the last one for the night, but he didn't need it. He made plenty yesterday."
"What?" I asked, looking at him with a frown that was angry in its bewilderment.
"Prabaker's accident," he said.
"What?"
"The accident," he repeated.
"What... accident?"
"Oh, my God, Lin, I thought you knew about it," he said, the blood in his face an ebb tide that receded to his tightening throat. His voice cracked, and his eyes filled with tears. "I thought you knew. When I saw your face just now, the way you look, I thought you knew about it. I've been waiting for you nearly for one hour. I came to find you as soon as I left the hospital."
"Hospital..." I repeated stupidly. "St. George Hospital. He's in the intensive care. The operation- "
"What operation?"
"He was hurt-very badly hurt, Lin. The operation was... he's still alive, but..."
"But what?"
Johnny broke down and wept, bringing himself under control only with deep breaths and a clench-jawed effort of will.
"He took two passengers, very late last night. Actually, it was about three o'clock this morning. A man and his daughter, wanting to go to the airport. There was a handcart on the highway road.
You know how these fellows take some short-cuts at night, on the main road. It's forbidden, but still they do it, yaar, to save miles of pushing those heavy carts. This cart was full of steel for building. Long steel pieces. They lost the control of that cart on a hill. It slipped from their hands, and it rolled backwards. Prabaker came around the corner in his taxi, and the whole thing went into the front of the car. Some of the steel went through the window. The man and the woman in the back were killed. Their heads came off. Completely off. Prabaker was hit in the face."
He wept again, and I reached out to comfort him. Tourists and patrons at other tables glanced at us, but quickly looked away.
When he recovered, I ordered a whisky for him. He gulped it in one tip of the glass, as Prabaker had done on the first day that I met him.
"How bad is he?"
"The doctor said it's sure he will die, Lin," Johnny sobbed. "His jaw is gone. The steel took it away completely. Everything is gone. All his teeth. There is a big hole, just a big hole, where his mouth and his jaw used to be. His neck is open. They haven't even put bandages on his face, because there are so many tubes and pipes going into that hole. To keep him alive. How he survived it, in that car like that, nobody can say. He was trapped in there for two hours. The doctors think that he will die tonight. That's why I tried to find you. He got bad wounds in the chest and stomach and head. He's going to die, Lin. He's going to die. We have to go there."
