Naturally, the yellow-cab drivers had a different point of view. I was an infamous figure of almost mythical proportions to them, a Redbeard or Red Baron (indeed, my rickshaw sported a little red pennant from her rear mast, a radio antenna), and every second robbery was linked to me in some way. A bounty of ten thousand rupees was placed on my head, soon upped to fifty thousand, and from there to two lakhs. At least three men were killed by bounty hunters and irate yellow-cab drivers in cases of mistaken identity. And I wasn’t always so lucky: two bullets found me out in my hiding places, as I mentioned earlier, and I submit that I shed more than my share of blood.
Eventually, after heavy casualties on both sides, a truce was agreed to, and rickshaw drivers and yellow-cab drivers joined one another in putting an end to the cycle of robbery and reprisal. By this point, most of the robbing was being done by professional thugs who had nothing to do with either side but simply saw a good opportunity and did not discriminate between the types of vehicles they robbed. So both three- and four-wheeled transporters banded together against this common threat.
The bounty on my head was withdrawn, and I came out of hiding a hero to rickshaw drivers and a feared but respected former adversary to yellow-cab men. All sorts of rumors were circulating: that I had killed six men with my bare hands and eaten their livers, that I could shoot the cap off a bottle of Pakola at twenty paces, that I had once caught a bullet in my teeth and spat it away unharmed. Truth be told, I had never killed anyone, was a fair shot at best, and had teeth so weak I avoided eating sugarcane, but I encouraged the rumors, because they deterred would-be aggressors and, to be frank, flattered my ego.
Now, I was strutting about proudly in those days, and it goes without saying I should have been more careful. Some lad got it into his head that I had killed his father, a yellow-cab driver, and he swore to himself that truce or no truce, he would get revenge. The day before it happened, my sources later told me, he was heard boasting that he would not only kill the great Murad Badshah but would humiliate me besides. And he came after me with his father’s gun.
There are three lessons to be learned from what followed, aside from my general point about death and killing. The first is that the gun of the father is always the undoing of the son. The second is that it is never wise to call someone something which he is not. And the third is that a man’s weakness can at times be his greatest strength.
Gun in hand, the boy arrived at the little depot where I maintain my rickshaws. I was in the small, dimly lit back workroom, tinkering about with a broken-down engine and holding a fancy Japanese wrench given me by a friend who retired from the rickshaw business when things first began to get rough, not because he was afraid, but because his wife said he was losing his hearing driving a noisy rickshaw all day and ought to be working a register in her brother’s store instead. A few children were playing in the street outside, and our would-be murderer, seeing this audience and rising to the role he fully expected to play, cried out theatrically as he entered my depot, ‘Your time is up, fat man!’
If he had been silent I might well have breathed my last that day.
Instead, I surged to my feet and would have roared, ‘What [obscenities] said that?’ but as so often happens in moments of intense excitement, my stutter locked onto my voice like a fearful lover and prevented me from uttering a sound. I was growing red, my mouth working desperately, when the boy strode purposefully into the workroom with a glint in his eye and the tip of his tongue between his lips. In the dimness, he did not see me beside the door. But I saw his gun, and without thinking, I swung my wrench in a mighty blow that caught him at the back of the head, where the spine meets the skull, and with a sound like stepping on a soft-shell turtle his life was over.
I have many regrets about that day. Perhaps I could have disarmed him. Perhaps I could have struck him with less force. But life seeks to preserve itself, and I acted as any man who wants to live would have acted. I derived no pleasure from it, and of all the stories you may hear of the men who have died at my hands, only this one is true, and my career as a robber would have been more illustrious were it not.
Perhaps you will now better understand why I, an infamous criminal, was so horrified by the events of that ill-fated robbery, when my friend and colleague Darashikoh revealed his capacity for cold-blooded murder.
It was a dark and stormy night.
Do you smile at this introduction? Allow me to submit for your consideration the saying that tales with unoriginal beginnings are those most likely later to surprise.
So, the night was dark and stormy.
Lightning flickered above the city, a crescent moon sneered through a gap in the clouds. The boutique huddled against the storm, a tiny island of light on an unlit street.
I wore red, the darkest crimson, a color that blends into black in the dark and flatters my figure by day. My kurta fluttered behind me in the breeze, and a concealed revolver itched where it pressed against my hairy belly. Darashikoh was inside, for all the world a tastefully dressed patron of the shop, but he carried death in his undershorts and hunger in his heart. I had done all this before, but the thrill, the excitement, the electricity of anticipation never goes. Yes, armed robbery is like public speaking. Both offer a brief period in the limelight, the risk of public humiliation, the opportunity for crowd control. And in both, what you wear is an often ignored but vitally important factor.
The signal I awaited was simple: when Darashikoh placed his pistol against the head of the guard standing just inside the entrance of the shop, clearly visible through the window display, I was to come in and fleece the place.
The signal was given and I walked in. If you learn nothing else about violent conflict, learn this: never rush. Take your time, evaluate the situation, then act. When you have multiple tasks to perform, proceed sequentially, or you will make a mess of them all. Think of it as being assigned to read a long, convoluted poem, if that helps you. My tasks at this stage were to enter, control the crowd, rob them, and leave.
The shop guard, a rather sweet fellow with a shotgun and a leather bandolier of cartridges, seemed almost ready to cry by the time I entered, walking purposefully but without undue haste. From my long years in the service profession I have learned both that the customer is always right and that if he steps far enough out of line, threatening him with execution-style murder is a valid although rarely exercisable option. I am told my smile and manner succeed in conveying this duality of knowledge and so it is easy for me to maintain the utmost respect while inspiring terror of bowel-moving proportions.
With a cheery ‘If you please,’ I proceeded to lighten the burden of wealth that bore down so heavily upon this establishment’s clientele. My revolver gleamed with the sweat it had accumulated while pressed against my skin, and it was slippery in my hand. I looked about me as I proceeded, and so I saw the vacant look in Darashikoh’s eyes as he stood with one foot on the guard, who was by now lying flat on the floor.
It happened when I turned my back on him.
I was encouraging an elderly lady to help her husband remove a lovely watch with a complicated clasp when I heard a sound behind me, the sound of feet moving quickly, and I whirled just in time to see Darashikoh raise his gun.
The moment is frozen in my memory: the blank faces above their expensive outfits, the colorful clothing on shiny metal racks, the motionless, impossibly slender mannequins, the gasping inhalation that preceded the woman’s scream, the change in pressure as the door of an air-conditioned space is opened, Darashikoh’s left hand flashing up to steady his aim. And then the scream – shrill – a sound that raises hackles.