Читать книгу Go West, Inspector Ghote - H. R. F Keating - Страница 7

It was very, very different from Banares. Los Angeles airport’s futuristic control tower, perched like a concrete spider on four high, shell-thin arching legs, was the first piece of California that Inspector Ghote took in, his head throbbing and dazed after upon hour of hour of time-annihilating air travel.

But, he told himself, that is not something in a science-fiction magazine. It is real. It is a part of the real America, land of every sort of mechanical marvel, of space shots, of automation, of efficiency.

As he left the plane and followed his fellow passengers through the airport building, other random, equally vivid flashes impinged on him. There were tanned faces, male and female, with click-on, click-off smiles bidding him time and again “Have a nice day.” But no nice day awaited him. That he knew with inner certainty.

And there were the enormous men everywhere, great towering muscular six-footers every one, glowing with good feeding. And girls. He had found himself standing behind two of them on a moving staircase taking him he was not quite sure where. They too were so tall, and they radiated such healthiness—easy-moving limbs, morning-fresh complexions, hair tossing freely from side to side.

How would he manage among such giants of people, people from whom high-sailing confidence shone out like the bright glow from a dance of night-time fireflies? In this ashram where Nirmala Shahani had put herself, though its head might be an Indian holy man himself, perhaps an antagonist endowed with formidable mystic power, he would find her surrounded, no doubt, by Americans. Surrounded by Americans like the towering creatures on every side of him now, casually purposeful amid the hurly-burly of the airport, itself so different from the familiar, slow-paced, bureaucratic worm-windings of Santa Cruz Airport back at home. How would he be able to deal with such beings? To force, if necessary, answers out of them? To sift truth from the lies they might put before him? How could he fight such guardians away from the girl he had travelled so many thousands of miles to rescue?

Suddenly the universal sign for a men’s room caught his eye. He broke from the steadily moving file of newly-landed passengers and plunged into it to gain a few moments’ respite.

But even in this sanctuary the pressure of American life did not slacken. The whole place was relentlessly clean. It smelt, not with the familiar pungency of Bombay public lavatories but with a floweriness, an aggressive floweriness. And there was a machine for dispensing toothbrushes. Brush regularly with Aim as part of your total oral hygiene program, an advertisement on it commanded.

Aim, a toothpaste with an aim, a toothpaste with an undeviating purpose. And its use to be only part of a “total oral hygiene program.” What was an oral hygiene programme even? Would he have to have one here in California? It had not been so long since he had abandoned a simple morning mouth-scrub with a sharp-smelling twig from a neem-tree in favour just of a toothbrush and a tube of Neem dentifrice.

He picked up his bag—Why had he not made time in Bombay to get hold of something respectably smart?—braced himself and pushed his way out back into the onward-pressing stream of passengers. There was to be, it was plain, no refuge for him anywhere in California until he had wrested Ranjee Shahani’s daughter from her ashram. Not to forget as well, he cautioned himself, wresting her from the Indian swami at its head, who in all probability was exercising over her power far different from the everyday cause-and-effect wrongdoing he was accustomed to deal with in Bombay.

And what about Mr. Fred Hoskins?

Mr. Fred Hoskins, $250 a day and expenses. When Ranjee Shahani had said he would cable the private eye to tell him to assist his representative from India, the suggestion had been simultaneously very welcome and diabolically unpleasant. To be greeted in California by someone who knew the ways of that unknown territory, who would accept him as a properly authorised representative, there to carry out his task: That was something to be heartily grateful for. But in California to have always at his elbow, in the role of mere assistant and a discredited one at that, a man who in one day could pick up as much as two thousand rupees—plus expenses—it was a situation so out-of-balance it would not bear thinking about.

There was the problem, too, of how he was to recognise this powerful, and discredited, figure. There had been no time to have a photograph sent from America. There had not even been time in reply to Ranjee Shahani’s cable for a full personal description to be sent. What would a man who earned two thousand rupees a day look like? And, when you got down to it, all these Americans looked the same. Big.

Then, suddenly, there in front of him on a large sheet of brilliantly white card was his name, or what must be his name, boldly scrawled in thick black letters with a fat felt-pen. INSPECTOR GOTHE.

He swung his head up to look at the man holding the placard. The fellow was huge. Bigger, it seemed, even than most of the other men striding by with determined, easily confident, set faces. But this fellow must be at least six-foot-eight. And every part of him looked proportionately large. The hands which held the placard were like two great chunks of red meat. Of beef. The face, looking challengingly over the placard’s top, was of the same bloody, beefy colour and the hair crowning it, cropped close to a big square skull, was of an orangey-red hue like the fur of a jackal. But the most striking thing of all was the belly on which the lower edge of the stiff placard rested. It was tremendous. It hung forward over a well-cinched black leather belt like a great swinging sack of grain. Oh yes, much, much of those two thousand rupees per diem would be needed to fill that swaggering outgrowth.

Squaring his shoulders, Ghote went up to the giant figure.

“It is Mr. Fred Hoskins?”

The big red face bent downwards. An expression of pained surprise appeared on it. A deep breath was at last drawn in.

“Inspector Goat?”

“Well, actually my name is pronounced like Go and Tay. Ghote.”

The big head nodded slowly up and down two or three times. Then the two great beef hands tore the white placard in half and in half again with two massive ripping sounds.

Fred Hoskins tossed the jagged pieces in the direction of a trash basket.

What a waste only, Ghote thought briefly.

“Welcome to the greatest state of the greatest nation on earth, Inspector,” the giant suddenly boomed.

“Yes,” said Ghote. “Yes. Thank you.”

The private eye’s great red face was still looking down at him. It was plain that he was adjusting himself to a new situation.

“Okay,” the fellow said at last, with abrupt twanging certainty. “Now this is what I think you should do. You should place that bag of yours in the trunk of my car, and we’ll proceed directly to the ashram. I was going to introduce you around, to have you meet some of my ex-colleagues and good friends in the L.A.P.D. But I guess not.”

L.A.P.D.? Ghote thought. Yes. Los Angeles Police Department.

He felt a little jet of pleasure at having got that right. But it hardly compensated for the certainty that he had fallen far below the private eye’s expectations of any representative of the wealthy Mr. Ranjee Shahani, of Bombay, India.

Oh, why had he not insisted at least on getting a new suitcase for the trip? Shahani Enterprises would have paid, even.

“Yes, yes, that is a very good idea,” he said. “The sooner I am seeing this ashram, the sooner I can be arranging for Miss Nirmala Shahani to leave.”

“You should be so lucky,” Fred Hoskins banged back. “I tell you, Inspect— Hell, I can’t call you that. What’s your name?”

Ghote wanted to say that his name was Ghote, and that it was spelt with the H as the second letter. But he knew at least something about Americans. They believed in informality.

“I am Ganesh,” he said. “Ganesh.”

“Well, this is how it is, Gan,” Hoskins said. “I’m the guy who picked up the trail of the Shahaneye kid, and I’m the guy who found the ashram. So I’m in a position to inform you that I know as much about that little piece of ass as anyone. And you can take my word for it, she’s not going to leave that place any time soon. She’s gone off on a religion kick, and that’s the way she’s gonna stay.”

Ghote, his head still thickly muzzy from his long flight, felt as if a hammer was being repeatedly banged down on the top of his skull. But he had to make some sort of a reply.

“Yes, Mr. Hoskins,” he began. “I very well understand what is the position, but—”

“Listen, if we’re gonna work together on this case, we’re gonna have to work as a team. So you’re gonna have to call me Fred. In these United States we don’t stand on ceremony. You’re just gonna have to learn that.”

“Yes,” Ghote said.

He wished with all his might that this yammering giant could simply vanish into thin air. But he was dependent on the fellow. Without him he would have the greatest difficulty getting to the ashram at all. He did not even know its address, just that it was not in Los Angeles but somewhere outside. He could make inquiries if he had to, and in the end he would find it. But if he was to act at all, quickly Fred Hoskins stood, giant-like, squarely in his path.

“Fred,” he said. “Yes, I will call you Fred.”

The big private eye led him rapidly out of the airport building to a vast car-park. Row upon row of vehicles confronted his bemused gaze, almost all huge in size, as big as any of the imported monsters belonging to Bombay film stars and a few magnates like Ranjee Shahani, which swam like rare whales among the shoals of little Fiats and Ambassadors familiar to him.

Fred Hoskins directed his grain-sack of a belly down one of the dozens of alleyways between the rows of wide, grinning monsters, and Ghote followed half a pace behind, leaning over to one side the better to lug his wretched-looking suitcase.

Out of the corner of his eye he registered the innumerable shiny chrome names of the cars—Chevrolet, Buick, Oldsmobile, Cadillac, Ford, Dodge, Pontiac, Peugeot, Datsun, Audi, Ferrari, BMW, Ford, Ford, Ford, Chrysler, Plymouth, Alfa-Romeo, Aston-Martin, Ford, Ford, Jaguar—a smaller vehicle this, but gleamingly expensive-looking—Toyota, Volvo, Porsche—a racing model with its name on a smart red translucent panel—another Ford, another, another Chevrolet, another Cadillac, Triumph, Ford, Ford, Lotus, Saab, Ford, Ford, Ford.

So many makes, and from all over the world. So many shapes. So many colours, gold in plenty, silver, pink, scarlet, orange, the palest blue, the darkest most lustrous blue, white, black. What a fearful obstacle this very richness, number and variety seemed. So much to learn about, so much to have to deal with. What sort of a person would drive each particular make? Were there really so many people of such wealth in California? How would he ever begin to learn which car told you what about its driver? Who owned what? Who bought what? Who wanted what?

Fred Hoskins came to an abrupt halt.

“This is the bus,” he said.

It was as big as any of the monsters in the row, a huge, shiny, lurid green affair. Fred Hoskins gave its immaculate paintwork a hearty slap and then produced a bunch of keys and advanced on the driver’s door. Ghote, with a cloudy notion of showing himself to be thoroughly democratic, staggered with his case round to the back and tried to lift open the hugely wide trunk.

“No! No! Wait! Wait!” Fred Hoskins yelled.

He jerked wide the door in front of him and thrust his great square jackal-fur-topped head inside. From the car’s interior his voice sounded just a little quieter.

“Everything automatic in this baby. Just wait right where you are.”

Ghote stood and waited, heaving in a deep breath of air—immediately finding lungs and throat filled with sickly, mechanical-tasting fumes so strong that his very eyes stung and watered.

He began to shake with coughing, and was only dimly aware that just in front of him the top of the big car’s wide trunk was slowly rising, impressive as the portal of some massy temple.

Fred Hoskins stepped back out of the car’s front door.

“Put the bag in,” he yelled. “Let’s get this show on the road.”

Coughing and spluttering, Ghote picked up his wretched case and heaved it into the trunk’s vast interior.

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.