The motorbike rumbled up CD Road through one of those sudden and intense post-monsoon showers when it not only rained cats and dogs, but bandicoots, cheetahs, Bengali swamp adders, inflatable crocodiles and baby elephants too.
Even if he was wet and miserable, Hari Majestic thought of himself as the king of these parts, a troubled king, but nevertheless the king.
His phone buzzed in his pants. He checked the screen and saw “Codename Rick”… that would be AC Gaadi. He decided not to take the call. One day he’d teach Gaadi how to write by using predictive text and then he could SMS instead of eating into Hari’s mental bandwidth.
He felt sick and tired of detective work. A big mess, that’s what he had made of his first case. The downpour grew heavier and heavier. CD Road was getting flooded. It looked like it had rained ten inches already. The streetlights flickered and there’d be a blackout any minute.
He parked his Enfield Bullet in the alley at the back of Puncherwallah Complex and handed out the half a dozen samosas he had parcelled for his trusty stray dogs. On his way to the office, he glanced across the street at Deluxe Bar where a big bunch of huge thugs stood in the doorway… And one of them was Mr Bhascar.
Running was the wrong thing to do if he wanted to prove his innocence, so Hari took a brave step into the street to resume their earlier conversation.
He stopped when he heard somebody shout “Majestic!” from above. He turned his head up. It was Doc on the first floor veranda of Puncherwallah Complex, outside his cybercafe which was adjacent to Hari’s office, waving. It looked as if his nose was wrapped in tissue paper. Maybe it had been mistaken for a ball and struck with a bat?
At the same time the drunken thugs spotted him, so Hari didn’t have the time to make sense of what Doc was up to, playing cricket with his own nose.
He assessed the scene and noticed that Bhascar held a cricket bat. Hari connected the dots. Something seriously bad was going on. And Hari had a sudden feeling that he knew what, as the gang of heavy-built thugs started moving like fuelled-up tanks towards the battlefield, in Hari’s direction. The skies cried as if the gods were already mourning him. If life was a movie, this kind of heavy rain would have been an ominous sign. Luckily, he was still wearing his helmet.
When Bhascar came close enough for them to have a civilized conversation, his first words were, “Bastard, I’ll kill you.”
It wasn’t as if it came as a surprise to Hari, because ever since the day they first met, he had known that Bhascar wanted to kill whoever was trying to make his missus happy.
Hari attempted his broadest smile, the one that stretched from ear to ear, until his lips hurt. “I’m actually not a bastard. I’m an orphan.”
Smiling didn’t help much, because Bhascar continued along the same track, “It doesn’t matter what you were before, but now you’re dead.”
“What have I done?” asked Hari and took a step back, always the sensible negotiator.
“You set my wife up in order to take compromising photos of her.”
“With all due respect, it was that other bastard,” said Hari.
But the situation was not in his favour. The thugs fanned out in the street, stopping the sparse traffic. Some of them were giants. Tattooed. Their moustaches were a hundred times bigger than Hari’s downy upper lip fluff. He had to retreat, like an abdicating emperor, back into the alley.
Bhascar came after him, “And where is that other bastard?”
“Out of station. Why don’t you save yourself trouble and simply believe me when I’m telling the truth?”
“Where?”
“Mysore, of course,” said Hari retreating another step, but they all moved a choreographed step towards him.
He knew that these thugs were not going to be happy unless somebody suffered a great deal, it was unmistakable from the way they unsheathed their long swords sharpened out of strips from a car chassis, known in street slang simply as “longs”, and how their bicep muscles were tensing inside their soaked half-sleeved safari shirts. Until they laid hands on Triplex, he’d have to substitute for his friend.
“Don’t lie to me, Majestic! I just saw him with you.”
Hari heard somebody scream ‘Help!’ but it turned out to be just himself. Some loiterers on CD Road stopped to peek into the alley, but when they figured that it wasn’t a film shoot, they hurried on in the relentless rain. This wasn’t their riot.
The thugs blocked the entrance to the dead-end alley. There was only one way he could run. He did a turn and rushed behind Puncherwallah Complex. The thugs followed, mud splattering as they ran.
Hari ran towards his motorcycle.
The pursuers were a few steps behind him, when the stray dogs started barking. The thugs stopped, hesitant to enter further into the noisy darkness. But Bhascar, face red with rage, attacked
Hari, smashing his cricket bat against the motorcycle helmet. It sent Hari staggering.
Suddenly there was an eerie howl and an organism hurled through space and landed spread-eagled across Bhascar’s face, its claws sinking deep into the fleshy head meat, as its razor teeth cut into the coffee miller’s throat.
Underdog! The fearless mutant mongrel proved that he was the best friend of some men and the enemy of their enemies, and did his usual antisocial thing by urinating into Bhascar’s sinuses.
He then snarled at the other thugs, bared his bloody incisors and gave them the I’m-rabid-and-you’re-dead glare. The thugs debated among themselves whether the risk of getting chewed up by disease-ridden dogs was worth the free booze they’d been treated to.
Feeding snacks to the dogs had proved to be a better investment than any health insurance policy, thought Hari.
In that moment of chaos, Hari jumped on his bike. He kickstarted the engine that was still hot and the Bullet shot through the lines of men. Then he did a googly around the corner and was cruising down CD Road. Death had been postponed. He glanced back and saw Bhascar and his men with their swords and bats. They were running to a row of two-wheelers outside Deluxe Bar.
He took a sharp turn at the next corner into SC Road and toppled over the bhajji-wallah’s boiling oil vat and stacks of batter-coated eggs. The hard-working man had found a drynook from where to peddle cheap junk food to the few hobos that risked the pouring rain.
“Sorry,” Hari shouted. “I’ll come and pay later.”
Somebody always had to pay… Scary thoughts filled Hari’s head. Had Bhascar beaten up Apsara to get the truth out of her? Maybe she lay hurt in their hut? He went through his options.
Her safety was his responsibility now. He could only think of one honourable thing: he must rescue Apsara and take her to a hospital. Then he’d be ready to die a hero’s death.
Plans were forming in his mind. In case he found her unharmed, he must warn her that if the gang couldn’t lay their hands on his own good self or Triplex, they might target her next. He’d drive Apsara to the police station and get Sub-Inspector Pushpa to help her. She could be locked up in protective custody, Hari thought as he swerved into Tank Bund Road. He speeded so fast in the rain that he almost skidded and fell off the bike.
The engine stalled. Everything was going wrong. He looked back to check how far they were. Half a block. They were riding slow scooters. That was a clear indication that they weren’t professionals, just a bunch of bad buddies Bhascar had rounded up and plied with booze to jack up their machismo.
“You’ll too be reborn as a scooter if you don’t cooperate,” he told his bike as he tried to wake it up.
It worked, it started. He drove out of the way of a lorry that came blasting down the road in the wrong lane the way they do at night, when the drivers are half asleep. He recalled that during their surveillance work he’d noticed a fenced in compound that had been marked for the construction of Garden-city Residence apartments, but that was being used as a garbage dump and children’s playground. There’d be plenty of hiding places. He could lose them there. It’d buy him time to fix this mess.
Hari took a side lane into the semi-slum, cruised between rickshaw wrecks and then switched off the engine and rolled the bike through a gap in the fence at the end, across chemical puddles, and did his best to look like he and his bike were part of the trash. He pushed the two-wheeler into a dark corner and squatted behind a rusted car carcass.
He waited.
Excerpted with permission from Hari – A Hero for Hire: A Detective Novel, Zac O’Yeah, Pan Macmillan.
Even if he was wet and miserable, Hari Majestic thought of himself as the king of these parts, a troubled king, but nevertheless the king.
His phone buzzed in his pants. He checked the screen and saw “Codename Rick”… that would be AC Gaadi. He decided not to take the call. One day he’d teach Gaadi how to write by using predictive text and then he could SMS instead of eating into Hari’s mental bandwidth.
He felt sick and tired of detective work. A big mess, that’s what he had made of his first case. The downpour grew heavier and heavier. CD Road was getting flooded. It looked like it had rained ten inches already. The streetlights flickered and there’d be a blackout any minute.
He parked his Enfield Bullet in the alley at the back of Puncherwallah Complex and handed out the half a dozen samosas he had parcelled for his trusty stray dogs. On his way to the office, he glanced across the street at Deluxe Bar where a big bunch of huge thugs stood in the doorway… And one of them was Mr Bhascar.
Running was the wrong thing to do if he wanted to prove his innocence, so Hari took a brave step into the street to resume their earlier conversation.
He stopped when he heard somebody shout “Majestic!” from above. He turned his head up. It was Doc on the first floor veranda of Puncherwallah Complex, outside his cybercafe which was adjacent to Hari’s office, waving. It looked as if his nose was wrapped in tissue paper. Maybe it had been mistaken for a ball and struck with a bat?
At the same time the drunken thugs spotted him, so Hari didn’t have the time to make sense of what Doc was up to, playing cricket with his own nose.
He assessed the scene and noticed that Bhascar held a cricket bat. Hari connected the dots. Something seriously bad was going on. And Hari had a sudden feeling that he knew what, as the gang of heavy-built thugs started moving like fuelled-up tanks towards the battlefield, in Hari’s direction. The skies cried as if the gods were already mourning him. If life was a movie, this kind of heavy rain would have been an ominous sign. Luckily, he was still wearing his helmet.
When Bhascar came close enough for them to have a civilized conversation, his first words were, “Bastard, I’ll kill you.”
It wasn’t as if it came as a surprise to Hari, because ever since the day they first met, he had known that Bhascar wanted to kill whoever was trying to make his missus happy.
Hari attempted his broadest smile, the one that stretched from ear to ear, until his lips hurt. “I’m actually not a bastard. I’m an orphan.”
Smiling didn’t help much, because Bhascar continued along the same track, “It doesn’t matter what you were before, but now you’re dead.”
“What have I done?” asked Hari and took a step back, always the sensible negotiator.
“You set my wife up in order to take compromising photos of her.”
“With all due respect, it was that other bastard,” said Hari.
But the situation was not in his favour. The thugs fanned out in the street, stopping the sparse traffic. Some of them were giants. Tattooed. Their moustaches were a hundred times bigger than Hari’s downy upper lip fluff. He had to retreat, like an abdicating emperor, back into the alley.
Bhascar came after him, “And where is that other bastard?”
“Out of station. Why don’t you save yourself trouble and simply believe me when I’m telling the truth?”
“Where?”
“Mysore, of course,” said Hari retreating another step, but they all moved a choreographed step towards him.
He knew that these thugs were not going to be happy unless somebody suffered a great deal, it was unmistakable from the way they unsheathed their long swords sharpened out of strips from a car chassis, known in street slang simply as “longs”, and how their bicep muscles were tensing inside their soaked half-sleeved safari shirts. Until they laid hands on Triplex, he’d have to substitute for his friend.
“Don’t lie to me, Majestic! I just saw him with you.”
Hari heard somebody scream ‘Help!’ but it turned out to be just himself. Some loiterers on CD Road stopped to peek into the alley, but when they figured that it wasn’t a film shoot, they hurried on in the relentless rain. This wasn’t their riot.
The thugs blocked the entrance to the dead-end alley. There was only one way he could run. He did a turn and rushed behind Puncherwallah Complex. The thugs followed, mud splattering as they ran.
Hari ran towards his motorcycle.
The pursuers were a few steps behind him, when the stray dogs started barking. The thugs stopped, hesitant to enter further into the noisy darkness. But Bhascar, face red with rage, attacked
Hari, smashing his cricket bat against the motorcycle helmet. It sent Hari staggering.
Suddenly there was an eerie howl and an organism hurled through space and landed spread-eagled across Bhascar’s face, its claws sinking deep into the fleshy head meat, as its razor teeth cut into the coffee miller’s throat.
Underdog! The fearless mutant mongrel proved that he was the best friend of some men and the enemy of their enemies, and did his usual antisocial thing by urinating into Bhascar’s sinuses.
He then snarled at the other thugs, bared his bloody incisors and gave them the I’m-rabid-and-you’re-dead glare. The thugs debated among themselves whether the risk of getting chewed up by disease-ridden dogs was worth the free booze they’d been treated to.
Feeding snacks to the dogs had proved to be a better investment than any health insurance policy, thought Hari.
In that moment of chaos, Hari jumped on his bike. He kickstarted the engine that was still hot and the Bullet shot through the lines of men. Then he did a googly around the corner and was cruising down CD Road. Death had been postponed. He glanced back and saw Bhascar and his men with their swords and bats. They were running to a row of two-wheelers outside Deluxe Bar.
He took a sharp turn at the next corner into SC Road and toppled over the bhajji-wallah’s boiling oil vat and stacks of batter-coated eggs. The hard-working man had found a drynook from where to peddle cheap junk food to the few hobos that risked the pouring rain.
“Sorry,” Hari shouted. “I’ll come and pay later.”
Somebody always had to pay… Scary thoughts filled Hari’s head. Had Bhascar beaten up Apsara to get the truth out of her? Maybe she lay hurt in their hut? He went through his options.
Her safety was his responsibility now. He could only think of one honourable thing: he must rescue Apsara and take her to a hospital. Then he’d be ready to die a hero’s death.
Plans were forming in his mind. In case he found her unharmed, he must warn her that if the gang couldn’t lay their hands on his own good self or Triplex, they might target her next. He’d drive Apsara to the police station and get Sub-Inspector Pushpa to help her. She could be locked up in protective custody, Hari thought as he swerved into Tank Bund Road. He speeded so fast in the rain that he almost skidded and fell off the bike.
The engine stalled. Everything was going wrong. He looked back to check how far they were. Half a block. They were riding slow scooters. That was a clear indication that they weren’t professionals, just a bunch of bad buddies Bhascar had rounded up and plied with booze to jack up their machismo.
“You’ll too be reborn as a scooter if you don’t cooperate,” he told his bike as he tried to wake it up.
It worked, it started. He drove out of the way of a lorry that came blasting down the road in the wrong lane the way they do at night, when the drivers are half asleep. He recalled that during their surveillance work he’d noticed a fenced in compound that had been marked for the construction of Garden-city Residence apartments, but that was being used as a garbage dump and children’s playground. There’d be plenty of hiding places. He could lose them there. It’d buy him time to fix this mess.
Hari took a side lane into the semi-slum, cruised between rickshaw wrecks and then switched off the engine and rolled the bike through a gap in the fence at the end, across chemical puddles, and did his best to look like he and his bike were part of the trash. He pushed the two-wheeler into a dark corner and squatted behind a rusted car carcass.
He waited.
Excerpted with permission from Hari – A Hero for Hire: A Detective Novel, Zac O’Yeah, Pan Macmillan.
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