The Blue Bar (Blue Mumbai #1)(31)
Rehaan took his eyes off the fight. A blow from Arnav that should have been parried landed on the movie star’s chest. He staggered and fell. Arnav reached out to help him up, but couldn’t stop staring at Kittu Virani. She approached in a tight-fitting dress that must have seen life as a shower curtain at some point.
“How long were we supposed to wait? You think we have nothing else to do?” Kittu swanned in on tall heels.
Before Rehaan could speak, Arnav said, “You need to take off your shoes before entering the dojo.”
“And who made those rules?” Kittu turned the expressionless mask of her face toward Arnav.
“I’m sorry,” Rehaan said to Arnav. “We’ll leave now.”
Kittu ignored Rehaan. “You are a police officer, with a job. Do what your boss tells you to do. Let others worry over rules.”
“Like who, Ms. Virani? Does Mr. Taneja make the rules? You are a woman yourself. Aren’t you curious why we found three dead, decomposing women on a site where your fiancé’s company is running a project?”
“Do you have any idea who Rahul is? He employs men like you as security guards and pays them double what you earn in a month. That project is mine, too. And that’s not protected land. Go check who contested it before you make wild accusations.”
Vijayan. Land mafia. Naik’s words came back to Arnav. Vijayan had grabbed the site, but the government had sold it to Taneja Estate Holdings.
“I’m sure you can tell me.”
“Let’s go, Mom.” Rehaan ushered his mother out, and turned to mouth to Arnav, “I’m sorry. Call you later.”
He reached to pick up his shoes and cap on the way out, and the dojo was silent again.
Arnav ignored his annoyance at the haughty socialite, and considered the facts. Taneja and Vijayan didn’t see eye to eye. Vijayan and Rasool Mohsin’s rivalry had fueled legends for decades. Rasool Mohsin might have taken a contract for disposing of the victim from the Versova site. Had he taken the contract for the bodies at Aksa, and deliberately buried them at a site Vijayan was associated with in order to get his rival in trouble?
Arnav asked the dojo’s security guard to lock up, apologizing for the drama he had witnessed.
Walking to his old car, he looked up the road to find a large black Scorpio truck parked at the turn. Kittu sat inside, and Rehaan stood outside, pacifying her. Another man sat beside the driver, but the semi-tinted windows obscured his features. Rehaan spotted Arnav, waved to him, entered the Scorpio, and drove off.
From the articles Arnav had found during his research on Kittu and Rehaan Virani, one thing was clear. No matter how much Rehaan resented his mother, she dictated the decisions in his life—who he should date, the events he should attend. Not for the first time, Arnav felt relief at being unencumbered. Family could be a right millstone around the neck.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
TARA
Her first evening in Mumbai, Tara checked her phone once more time as she prepared to meet Shetty’s new girls. No word from either Zoya or Pia, and neither had read her messages. Pia must be home from school by now. Tara walked out of the three-star hotel room where Shetty had put her up. Striding through an airless corridor with a ragged carpet, she stepped out onto the street.
She dialed Pia, but the phone was switched off. When she called Zoya, her friend’s phone played a long caller tune, asking the world in casual Hindi to stay chilled out, to relax, to be carefree. Tara hated these squeaky tunes that sang into your ear in place of the regular telephone ring. Mouth dry, stomach uneasy, Tara held the device tighter to her ear. Waiting on phones unsettled her—a reminder of the times she held on for one to ring, which would propel her into a desperate sprint across the Borivali railway station. She recognized the first stirrings of a headache, the tingling at her neck that meant she’d suffer later. Someone in the neighborhood had lit sandalwood incense, and Tara tried to ignore it.
The scent brought back that room where she’d worked for four horrific years of her life, starting when she was thirteen. Pia’s age. At seventeen, she’d hated the place for the way it sucked the life out of her, and loved it for letting her live at all—walls plastered over with posters of Bollywood heroes, the mirrors framed in bright plastic, red, pink, orange; the icons of various gods and goddesses smeared with sandalwood, red kumkum, and in some cases, soot from the incense; the rickety stools and chairs the girls sat on, the cot where the older women rested their feet, sore from hours of dancing. That day when her life changed, she’d seemed to see the entire room at once. Each object harsh, separate.
At 3:00 a.m. on her chair, surrounded by the chatter of the girls packing up and calling cheerful goodbyes laced with swear words, it was all Tara could do to keep her stomach calm. She could taste each individual smell—tobacco, weed, perfumes—and craved nothing more than to get away, but her limbs would not obey her brain, which was zinging back and forth between snippets of odd fancies.
“Let’s go.” Zoya had slapped her shoulder, making her flinch. “You can finish up your dreaming at home.”
That was Zoya, hurting you even when she meant to be kind.
Back in the apartment, Tara had crashed on her bed.
“What’s wrong?” Zoya said. “You never sleep without a bath.”
“Let the others take their turn. I might throw up.”