Karla was two beats ahead of every mind she met. The mystery tormented her, where it was just a slow burn in me; sand in the wind, for her, and sand in an hourglass with Ranjit’s name on it for me. I had to tell her to let it go, just as she’d once told me.
‘We’ll find him,’ I said. ‘And when we do, we’ll find out what happened. Until then we’ll have to stop thinking about it, or we’ll both go nuts. I mean, more nuts than we already are.’
She smiled.
‘There’s something not right,’ she said. ‘Something I should know, but don’t know. Something right there in front of me. But you’re right – if I don’t let it go, it’ll drive me crazy.’
Vermilion sunset, the last grace of the sun, washed flaws and faults from every face and form on the promenade: an ocean of evening light showing only the beautiful things we are inside.
Gentle breezes chased one another along the sea wall, playing through skirts and shirts of walkers on the way. The first few car headlights began to pass.
Pale shadows of palm leaves drifted across her face, tracing the exact curve of her neck to her lips, every time a car passed. Karla.
‘Is it your pride that won’t let you join Didier and Naveen and me?’ she asked, a harder eye turned toward me.
‘No.’
‘Pride is the only sin we can’t see in ourselves, you know.’
‘I’m not proud.’
‘The hell you’re not. But that’s okay. I like pride in a man. I like it in a woman, too. But don’t let it stop you now. We can make this work.’
‘How, Karla?’
‘We might be here a week, okay, but we might still be here three years from now. This can start to build in three months. Security is the big thing in India in the next fifty years. I’m telling you. I’ve had two years to study this, with Ranjit’s best advisors.’
‘You’re serious, aren’t you?’
‘I’m always serious, when it comes to love.’
‘Love?’ I grinned, like an idiot.
‘Pay attention,’ she jabbed at me. ‘I’m talking business.’
‘Okay, I’m attentive.’
‘Money isn’t gonna flow from the rich to the poor. It’s gonna flow from the poor to the rich, faster than ever, and it’s gonna stay there. That’s so outrageously unfair that personal security can’t lose as an investment. See?’
‘In a strange way. And the detective agency?’
‘We’re a bureau, not an agency. We only take on one kind of case. Lost loves. We don’t snoop or peep or shadow. We investigate missing loved ones. That’s our way into the wider security business. We’re gonna grow, and fast.’
‘How?’
‘If we want to grow, we need to know all the main players as friends. If we find missing loved ones for them along the way, they can’t roll on us later. Plus, we get to know where all the skeletons dance.’
‘You really thought this through.’
‘Will you stop stating the obvious?’
‘Look, I follow your logic, and I see the point –’
‘Do you? This is something clean, and right. I don’t see the right on your side of the playpen.’
‘Right? We’re talking about what’s
‘You know, whatever else happens on the ride, interesting stuff like success and failure and fun, the bottom line for me, now, is that it’s gotta be right, and it’s gotta make a difference, or I’m an hour yesterday.’
‘Finding lost loves?’
‘Would you prefer losing
She snapped the words at me, because she thought I hadn’t taken her seriously, but I was stung.
‘Is that at me? At us?’
‘I’m not the one who’s walking away from this, Shantaram.’
‘Karla, I’m yours. But you know I can’t work with the cops.’
‘You can stay out of that part.’
‘The handing people over to the police part, or the giving evidence in court part? I can stay out of that?’
‘Didier will handle police liaison. He said he’s looking forward to an interview with the cops where he isn’t on the floor.’
‘It’s not just that. I’ve got too much at stake, Karla. I’m wanted everywhere but here, and that’s because I know who to pay. I stay on my side of the line. The cops leave me alone because I don’t sell drugs or girls, I don’t cheat anyone, I don’t beat anyone who hasn’t got it coming, I keep my mouth shut when they give me a kicking, and I pay them regularly, and well.’
‘Paradise,’ Karla said, an eyebrow perched like a mockingbird on a branch.
‘They tolerate me. But that could change, and then I’d have to run, and fast. You know that. I can’t get into anything serious, and you shouldn’t, either. I thought we understood that.’
‘I told you, I’m a silent partner,’ she said, the queens flashing at me for an instant. ‘But I can always find my voice, if you’re not in this with me.’
There was a little silence. She was daring me to say the wrong thing, I guess, and maybe I did.
‘Have you heard anything new about Ranjit?’
She looked away. I thought I’d hurt her, and I tried to change the subject.
‘How about this?’ I suggested. ‘You check out of the Taj, and move into the rooms next to mine.’
‘Next to you?’
‘I mean it, Karla. There are three rooms, with a balcony that looks out on a good street, and you said you like security.’
She thought about it, offering me two queens from the corner of her eye.
