“Beena, my darling,” Joseph said, embracing her and kissing her on both cheeks.
“Oh, Joe, superb, just superb,” Beena said in a squeaky voice Prem hadn’t heard before. He wasn’t sure what was going on, so he excused himself and waited outside. A light snow had dusted the parked cars with white. Across the street, an abandoned bar had boarded up its windows and an auto repair shop was in a state of disrepair. But the rest of that corner of Oak Tree Road hummed with activity. Two jewelry stores, Nina and Sona, were gearing up to open, along with a casual sort of street-food eatery named Chowpatty, after the beach, to complement the more traditional Ashoka. Up the road, just before King’s Court, an elegant new restaurant named Moghul had relocated from New York, giving the higher-end doctor, lawyer, and business crowd a place to kick back and enjoy their tikka masala. Prem wasn’t sure why, but the thought of all those people working so hard to start their businesses made him sad.
Prem had not been entirely honest with Beena about the reasons for his hugging-the-rice-sack panic attack. Even in his feverish haze, he’d summoned the wherewithal to know he could not let her or anyone know he had entered into a hasty, misguided verbal contract with a murderous Indian gangster.
A few weeks earlier, he had started to question the viability of his plan to finance the show by relying on deep-pocketed sponsors. How could he convince Macy’s, Roy Rogers, and Midlantic Bank of Edison to voluntarily pour money into a show with no stars, based on movies they knew nothing about? He began to consider alternate sources of investment: his father (not an option), his friends (they had no money), taking on additional hours at Exxon (physically impossible), selling his belongings (he had none). Then, while he was working the early shift one bleak winter afternoon, huddled in the store with too many other guys, the Tiger Mart logo caught his eye. The image rolled around in his mind until it took him back to the miserable final days of his ill-fated movie venture, when Tiger Nayak’s thugs demanded money from him, threatened to hurt his heroine, and ended up killing a cat. But the thing they had really wanted all along was to make a simple show-business investment.
At first, Prem had wanted to approach an American gangster. He thought a local thug might be more accessible and the underlings might be more polished and perhaps would kill fewer domestic animals. But it occurred to him that maybe some distance between him and the gangsters would be more prudent. Also, he didn’t know how to contact any American gangsters. So it would have to be T-Company. He realized he had always communicated in person or via menacing letter with the gang members, never on the phone, yet he felt certain that one of his Bombay contacts would be able to provide him with contact information. In the end, it was Brijesh, the crooked-teeth hero who couldn’t memorize anything, who gave him the phone number he needed.
Brijesh had retired from acting and worked full time for T-Company, which paid very well and had a surprisingly comprehensive dental plan. “Just don’t mention my name,” Brijesh said. “Unless they like what you are saying. Then, please, could you mention my name?”
In the first of several surreptitious early morning calls, using a prepaid phone card at a payphone outside of Krauszer’s, Prem was pleasantly surprised by the mafia family’s thoughtfully organized automated phone system. After just two quick transfers, he found himself speaking with T-Company’s official spokesman, a civilized and proper fellow with a fine Indian boarding-school accent.
“Sir, good evening, or should I say good morning, given your current location.”
Prem was taken aback by the spokesman’s excellent manners. “Ya, good morning, good evening, good morning, I mean,” he said. “I am Prem Kumar.”
“Sir, my name is Anthony Braganza. How may I help you today?”
“Well, you see, I had some, uh, relations with Tiger Nayak some time back, and I would like to discuss, uh, working with them again on a different, uh, project in show business.”
“Oh, you are acquainted with our esteemed leader. Very good, very good. Just hold, please.”
Less than a minute later, Prem was speaking with the chief investment officer, a position he had not imagined existed in such an organization. Mr. Shailesh Kamath was even more polite than the spokesman.
“I understand you have a business proposition for T-Company,” Mr. Kamath said.
“Sir, yes, sir,” Prem said, feeling a military tone was called for.
“A quick review of our records indicates that you were a reliable business partner, trustworthy and delivering outstanding results.”
“It does?”
“Furthermore, Tiger Nayak feels that it would be in our organization’s interest to do business with you again.”
“Really?”
“Now, tell me about your proposal.”
Prem laid out the particulars of his Superstar Entertainment plan, beginning with the excellent venue and ending with the lack of stars. “Please hold,” Mr. Kamath said. Prem watched the cars lining up at the traffic light on Oak Tree, the morning rush to get to decent and respectable jobs on time. He wondered what they ate for lunch and whether or not they liked their coworkers and what time they would go home. Why couldn’t he be more like them, instead of on hold with a network of criminals? When Mr. Kamath returned, it was with the news Prem had been hoping for. “Tiger Nayak would like to make a sizable investment,” he said.
Prem tried to maintain his composure as they hashed out the numbers and terms of the agreement. The rupees-crore-to-hundreds-of-thousands-of-dollars-conversion conversation was at times difficult to follow, but all around exhilarating. And although icicles had formed on his eyebrows and he couldn’t feel his toes, he was the happiest he had been since losing Leena.
“Very good then, the cash will be delivered to you on Tuesday evening by our man in America,” Mr. Kamath said.
“Perfect, hundred percent, wait, what?” Prem said.
“This Tuesday, the cash will be delivered. Our man’s name is Wristwatch and he will identify himself by exposing the T-Co tattoo on his neck.”
“Wristwatch.”
“He is exceptionally punctual.”
“So Wristwatch with the neck tattoo will be coming. Does he have to?”
“Do not be alarmed, he is quite professional.”
“Where even will I put so much cash?”
“The safe in your offices should be adequate, so long as no one knows you are in possession of such a large amount.”
“The safe. In my offices,” Prem repeated. “Can you just wire the money to my account like a normal investor?”
“Tiger Nayak is no ordinary investor,” Mr. Kamath said, sounding agitated. “Now, would you like to move forward? Tiger Nayak will be very upset if you back out now.”
Prem swallowed hard. “Do you always refer to your boss by the full name?”
“Yes.”
“Good to know. Please tell Tiger Nayak that we have a deal,” Prem said, hardly believing what he was saying. “Oh, and Brijesh! Uh, he said to mention his name.”
“Very good, sir, I’ll make a note to issue him a referral fee,” Mr. Kamath replied.
As Prem began the long walk home, he was still considerably high from his long-awaited victory. How bad could it be? he asked himself. With a spokesperson, investment arm, and even a referral-rewards program, T-Company appeared quite professional, actually. But as he pushed forward against an arctic wind and thought about what had just transpired, the shine of being indebted to a ruthless criminal organization began to wear off. What would happen if he couldn’t keep his end of the deal? How could he have been so shortsighted? Maybe he should have requested a formal written contract, one that specified no murdering. By the time he reached King’s Court, a full-on panic had set in.
For the next two days, Prem had an extreme reaction to loud noises. If Iqbal dropped a frying pan, or Lucky closed the fridge too hard, or anytime he mistook anything for a pounding at the door, Prem jumped up, spilling tea, toppling canned goods, bumping into Amarleen, who was always near enough to be bumped into. When Tuesday evening finally arrived, he was bruised in several places and had burned himself twice.
He began hovering around the door in the late afternoon, leaving his post only to use the bathroom. It was during one of these breaks that the knock came, and disastrously, Iqbal answered. A very tall man, dwarfing even Iqbal, with a thick, tattooed neck and broad chest stood before him. He had on a tidy black suit and unnecessary black sunglasses and, though no longer a young man, curiously had no laugh lines to speak of.