Go West, Inspector Ghote Page 3

  Fred Hoskins watched him.

  “You are now experiencing Los Angeles smog,” he said. “It’s the product mostly of the vast number of vehicles on our roads. The city of Los Angeles has more cars per family than any other city in the U.S.A. And that, I guess, goes for the world too. Coupled with the fact that the sun shines all the time in Southern California, this produces a mixture of sulphur dioxide and nitrogen oxide—smog. D’you get it?”

  “I think I have got it,” Ghote said, as yet another fit of coughing shook him to the backbone.

  If he was going to be like this all the time he was in California, he thought, he would never be able to summon up enough strength even to speak to Nirmala Shahani, let alone to snatch her from the grasp of her captors.

  Fred Hoskins had gotten into the car. Ghote saw him lean forward and jab at a button somewhere.

  “The door on your side is unlocked,” came that thunderous voice. “Get the hell in here.”

  Ghote hurried round, pulled open the car’s immensely thick door and slid down on to the wide leather seat beside the huge private eye.

  Why such a hurry, he wondered. He had agreed that it would be a good thing to get out to the ashram as soon as possible. But that had been as much out of politeness as anything. His instinct told him now that it would be a mistake, in fact, to go rushing in there. Rescuing Nirmala was almost certainly going to be very tricky. So he would need to be at his most alert when he arrived at the ashram. And alert he was not. His head ached and his limbs felt as if they belonged to someone else altogether.

  He groped round for the handle to lower the car window beside him, thinking that once they were moving the air, smog-tainted though it was, might blow away his muzziness.

  “I am going to ask you a candid question, Gan,” Fred Hoskins said suddenly.

  “Yes? Yes? What is it?”

  “Just what the hell are you doing there?”

  Ghote turned away from the padded door beside him.

  “I am attempting to lower the glass only,” he said. “I am thinking that in this heat that would be better.”

  Fred Hoskins heaved a long sigh.

  “Never try to open any window in this car,” he said. “For one thing, they open automatically at the touch of a switch. And for another, you are now in an air-conditioned automobile. If any passenger opens a window, the cool air from the air-conditioner right in front of you escapes outside. Now, watch this.”

  A thick beef-red finger jabbed at one of the rows of buttons on the long, gleaming dashboard and at once through a small vent at about midriff level there came a blast of ice-cold air.

  “Very good, very good,” Ghote gasped.

  He wondered whether on top of all his other troubles he was now going to catch a chill.

  Fred Hoskins eased the battleship car out of its place and took it along the interminable row of other huge vehicles towards the park exit.

  “Please,” Ghote asked, “how far is it to the ashram?”

  They might be there in half an hour or less. Would he possibly be fit enough to tackle the swami who ruled the place? And whatever tribe of enormous Americans he had gathered round him?

  The big private eye gave him no answer. His eyes were fixed on another car approaching the exit from a different direction and a foot or two in advance.

  “See those plates?” he muttered. “Ohio plates. I’m not gonna let a hick like that get outa here in front of me.”

  The lurid green battleship lurched suddenly forward. Through the firmly closed window beside him Ghote heard a squeal of brakes. He twisted round to see what had happened. The hick from Ohio had brought his vehicle to a stop and was shaking his fist. Fred Hoskins gunned his motor and they shot out of the park.

  “When you get to drive in California, Gan boy, you gotta be aggressive.”

  “Yes.”

  Ghote decided not to ask again how far the ashram was for at least a few minutes.

  He watched the streets outside. They were very different from those at home, but he found it hard to say exactly why. There were big buildings in the Fort area of Bombay much as there were here, and indeed many of those he could see did not look much newer or smarter than some there. But there was a difference, a strong difference.

  And then it came to him. It was the people, the way they were moving. No one was just standing, much less sitting or lying asleep on the pavement as they would be in Bombay. Everyone he saw seemed to be going somewhere in a determined manner. Yes, that was it. This was a place full of purpose. A place where time was money.

  And the cars all around them. Fred Hoskins’ butting driving style was only a shade more forceful than every other driver’s. Bombay wallahs in charge of a car could do things that were hair-raising enough, especially say a Sikh behind the wheel of a taxi. But here people were not just taking occasional mad risks. They were pushing and pressing ceaselessly with steady, confident determination one against the other.

  If he had not had Fred Hoskins to take him to his destination, how would he have managed in conditions like this? Could he have produced that aggressiveness the private eye had said was so necessary here?

  Despite the beating in his head and that faraway feeling in his legs, he made up his mind that if he ever did have to drive in California, dammit, he would push with the best of them.

  “Mr. Hosk—Fred,” he said, “how far is it, please, to the ashram?”

  “Not far. It’s just about on the county boundary. About sixty or seventy, I guess.”

  All that way. Nirmala Shahani must be hidden in the deepest countryside somewhere.

  “That is sixty-seventy kilometres?” he asked.

  “Miles. Seventy good honest American miles, boy.”

  Seventy miles.

  “But, please, how long will it take to get there then?”

  Ghote looked at his watch. But the time it showed seemed to bear no relation to anything. Had he altered the hands when the plane was coming into Los Angeles? He could not remember.

  He tried to look up through the car’s lightly greyed windows to see the sun. But with the smog haze thick above, he could not make out at all where in the sky it might be.

  “In this bus,” Fred Hoskins said, giving the wide moulded wheel in front of him an emphatic smack with a great red beefy hand, “no time at all. But I’m gonna give you a tour of the real L.A. before we hit the freeway.”

  “Oh? Yes. Thank you.”

  Ghote sat wondering what on earth was happening. A few minutes ago Fred Hoskins had been furiously impatient to be on their way. Now he was talking about making a sightseeing detour.

  But he was in the fellow’s hands altogether. Nirmala Shahani was held in the ashram, seventy miles away in what direction he did not know. If he was to get to her without interminable delays he had to rely on this clamorous giant of a man, however many times the fellow seemed to change his mind.

  Sending the big green car weaving forcefully through the lanes of traffic, Fred Hoskins began to talk.

  “Gan, boy, you’re gonna thank me for what I’m about to do for you. You’re gonna see for yourself the classiest community in all Southern California. I am gonna take you through Beverly Hills, home of many world-famous stars of the motion-picture industry. Beverly Hills is a city. And you’ve got to get this right: it’s separate from L.A., although it’s a suburb. And in Beverly Hills you’ll find some of the most luxurious homes in the world.”

  A driver almost as aggressive as the big private eye attempted at this moment to cut in ahead of them and the thump-thumping flow of words temporarily came to a halt. Ghote decided that perhaps he ought to offer something of his own.

  “In Bombay also,” he said, “our film stars are having most posh homes.”

  “As I was saying, Gan, the most luxurious homes in the world, owned by the world’s most powerful people. We’re now driving along La Cienga Boulevard—when incompetent drivers let us—but soon we’ll make a left on to Sunset Boulevard. Sunset
Boulevard is a name you’ll certainly recall. It was the title of a famous movie featuring Gloria Swanson. In case you didn’t see it in a movie theatre, you’ll have seen it on your local television station many, many times.”

  The voice hammered on and on, each syllable setting up a new thud in Ghote’s head. He thought for a brief moment of trying to explain that American films were not shown on Bombay Doordarshan, and that in any case he himself had no set. But by now he had realised that even if he succeeded in getting in a few words about Indian television this giant at the wheel of his giant car would not hear him.

  He turned instead to thinking about his coming encounter with the swami holding Nirmala Shahani and the bodyguard of enormous Americans that he would in all likelihood have round him. What could he himself do, particularly with the swimmy fatigue that had invaded his every limb, to prepare for the encounter?

  Precious little, he recognised soon enough. All he knew about the swami was the fact, reported to Ranjee Shahani by Fred Hoskins, that he was known in California simply as the Swami With No Name. Any name, he had explained in an interview the private eye had found in the files of the Los Angeles Times, was a link with the world, and he had long been free of all earthly ties.

  It was a considerable claim. And it might, just possibly, be true. There were such men in India, the yogis, those who had taken the path to things unimaginably high. But in California? An Indian setting himself up as a swami in California, was it not more likely that he was nothing other than a confidence trickster? That name that was no name was just the sort of thing to impress people who had no knowledge of Indian philosophy, and it would serve nicely, too, to protect the fellow from awkward inquiries.

  But, trickster or genuine yogi, one thing was clear: the Swami With No Name was not going to be easy to tackle.

  “We are now entering the city limits of Beverly Hills.” Fred Hoskins’ slam-bang voice broke in on his thoughts.

  He sat up and did his best to look as if he was delightedly taking in everything he saw. He must do what he could to keep the giant beside him on his side. They were going to be a team. The fellow had said so at the airport. He felt the thought descend like a mass of half-chewed chappatti to the pit of his stomach.

  Oh, if only he could accomplish his mission in two or three hours of sweeping activity. End up, before this day was done, with a rescued Nirmala Shahani ready to fly at his side back to Bombay, to her father, to the arranged marriage awaiting her with the heir to R. K. Ajmani, import-export.

  Dutifully he regarded the stately houses set back far from the road, itself bordered, not by pavements for people to walk along, but by wide, beautifully trimmed, implacably green lawns laid to separate the homes from the cars.

  A niggle of doubt struck him.

  Surely Fred Hoskins had declared that the sun shone without interruption in Southern California. How could it be then that these lawns were so green? In Bombay, where outside the monsoon months the sun also shone unrelentingly, grass on such open spaces as the maidans was always a uniform parched brown.

  “Please,” he said, “how is it that these lawns I am seeing are altogether of such a fine green hue?”

  “Sprinklers, Gan. Every day for about an hour these lawns will get a continuous sprinkling from pipes in the ground. The water comes from mighty reservoirs built in the hills that surround Los Angeles. They are some of the major engineering feats of the world.”

  “Yes,” Ghote said, putting his head mentally between his arms to protect himself from the rain of hammer blows.

  He made up his mind not to ask another single question, however much silence might cost him in his relations with the towering private eye.

  He sat pretending to be struck dumb with amazement at the size and magnificence of the houses to either side, at spreading red-tiled roofs that reminded him of a little Catholic enclave he knew in Bombay only multiplied ten or twenty fold, at great white-pillared facades, at wide green gardens under gracefully bending palm trees.

  Yet somehow even these palms were different. They ought to have been reassuringly familiar. But they lacked altogether the battered dustiness of the palm trees of Bombay.

  He felt very far from home. A venturer making his way through territory that could all too easily hide every kind of unknown trap. And his only companion this giant beside him. Who seemed as much enemy as friend.

  THREE

  Uneasily Ghote looked at the jutting-bellied private eye grasping the wheel of his monster car. The fellow ought to be simply a help to him. Ranjee Shahani must be paying him two thousand rupees a day still to be exactly that. Yet his attitude so far had not really been at all helpful. He seemed to be an obstacle in the way, making things difficult, refusing to answer questions. He was yet one more hard hill to climb in a whole series of mountain ridges he felt lying between him and Ranjee Shahani’s daughter.

  Why was the fellow behaving like this?

  But the thumping muzziness in his head would not let him work his way to any clear answer. Perhaps, after all, it was no more than the fact that the fellow was so American, so Californian. There was this huge car of his. There was his enormous well-fed frame. There was his aggressiveness and that seemingly unshakable confidence in the kind of life he was living. Yes, perhaps it was just that the fellow summed up in himself this whole rich, different land.

  And now another of those great, tumbling speeches was beginning.

  “We’re now climbing.” Not that this was not perfectly evident, even though the huge car apparently needed no shifting of its gears to tackle the steep rise in the road ahead. “These are the Santa Monica Mountains. You’ll notice that even in this unhospitable terrain the citizens of Los Angeles have established their homes, trying to rise above the smog that stifles the city at sea-level. Now, look to your left. There on the hillside you’ll see a magnificent residence built on steel stilts to conform to the slope. Note that even at this distance from other homes the house is fully equipped with electrical power and is connected by pipeline to the city water supply.”

  Ghote looked to the left. Yes, the stark white house on the hillside was raised up on stilts.

  “Who is the owner of such a fine establishment?” he asked, at once breaking his just-imposed rule about asking questions.

  “In a few moments,” Fred Hoskins replied, massively ignoring his question, “I will tell you to turn your eyes to the right. By that time we’ll have ascended the full height of the mountains and on the far side you’ll have a view of the famed San Fernando Valley. I will not at this time sing the song of that name.”

  A spasm of anger shook Ghote from the base of his spine to the top of his ever more heavily thudding head.

  “Mr. Hoskins,” he said, “kindly tell me. In the course of your inquiries on behalf of Mr. Ranjee Shahani did you interview the Swami With No Name himself?”

  But again the hulking private eye ignored his question, leaving instead a massive silence in the big car.

  Ghote, his anger yet more fuelled, would not have let him get away with it. Except that at that moment there came into view round a bend in the twisting road ahead an extraordinary sight.

  It was a man. A man coming towards them close to the edge of the road, a road here as elsewhere without any sidewalk. He was running, thumping along at a steady even pace. And he was dressed in the smallest imaginable pair of bright red, shiny satin shorts topped by a white T-shirt with a printed message on it in red letters so big that Ghote had taken them in at his first single glance. FIGHT THE FAT. On the runner’s feet were bright red-and-white shoes, and round his head were what could only be headphones, a pair of huge headphones like two black dishes clamped over either ear.

  Fred Hoskins, who since Ghote’s question had been concentrating ferociously on the wheel in front of him, appeared not even to have noticed the sight.

  “That—that person,” Ghote said, as the big car moved past the runner, “what—what is he?”

  “What person, Gan?
Can’t you see I’m concentrating on the road?”

  “There was a man in the road. Someone running. You would see him still in your mirror.”

  Fred Hoskins jabbed a glance at the mirror.

  “Jogger,” he said.

  “Please, what is a jogger?”

  “Jeez, Gan boy, where’d you come from? A jogger’s a guy who needs to cut down on the flab. So he gets out there and buys himself a pair of running-shoes and some shorts from one of the stores especially for joggers, and then he hits the road and pounds that extra flesh into the ground.”

  “I see,” Ghote said.

  He thought of asking whether it would not be better not to eat so much in the first place. But he felt that in his present jet-confused state he could not trust himself to put the question in a properly polite manner.

  “And was that a pair of headphones he was wearing also?” he asked. “Please, what is the purpose of those?”

  “Music on the move, Gan. From radio stations strategically placed so no American needs to be without music at any time of the night or day. Rock music, country music, sweet music, pop music—all or any of these are there for him at the touch of a button.”

  “In India also—”

  But they had arrived at the crest of the hill.

  “Look, Gan, look. For Christ’s sake, look, won’t you?”

  “Yes, yes. I am looking.”

  Fred Hoskins brought his enormous car to a halt just off the road, its wide front pointing at the valley spread below.

  “Gan boy,” he demanded, “is that or is that not the best view you’ve ever seen?”

  It was certainly a huge extent of country that lay spread out before them. And behind as well it was possible to see for as far as twenty miles or more, though there the scene was for the most part obscured by the smog. In front, however, everything was clear. Far below, tiny, thin roads crossed and re-crossed in a huge grid pattern, with little bright beads of colour moving along them everywhere, sometimes in long necklaces, elsewhere as miniscule individual beetles. Above, against a purely blue sky, planes by the dozen buzzed to and fro like so many purposeful bees.