They lost sight of the groom as they turned into the tree-lined driveway of the colonial-era Viceroy Hotel.
Only when seated in Gage’s seventh floor room overlooking the earth-toned city did Babu mention Wilbert Hawkins.
“He is still living in Gannapalli,” Babu said. “I’m not sure he is leaving the village since he finished building his house.” Babu spread his hands. “Why he is picking the second hottest district in all of India, I am not understanding.”
“Probably because it’s the last place anyone would think he’d hide.”
Babu grinned, his head working a slight figure eight, the Indian head bob variously meaning I understand, or Yes, or Maybe. “That, and the women, no?”
Chapter 25
The forty-minute drive west from Hyderabad toward Gannapalli in Babu’s Land Cruiser took them from the cool world of offshore Web designers to the scorched farmland of those whose lives were measured not by digital clocks, but by the gestation periods of cattle and the growing seasons of rice.
Villagers dragged flat wooden carts piled with coconuts and potatoes toward the city, while others pulled empty ones back to the countryside. Cows and buffaloes grazed along the undivided two-lane road. Travelers waited for buses in whirlwinds of dust while breathing diesel fumes belching from aging truck engines, and the occasional monkey begged for food from laborers gathered under the shade of axelwood and laurel trees.
“Have you decided on an approach?” Babu asked as he turned north from the highway toward Gannapalli.
“You mean since there’s no one to kidnap?” Gage said.
Babu pulled away, as if offended. “I am understanding from you last time that investigation is an art, a matter of applying the correct technique at the proper time. I am not a one-trick horse.” He grinned at Gage and asked, “Horse?”
“Pony. A one-trick pony.”
“Yes, indeed, a one-trick pony.”
W ilbert Hawkins didn’t expect to find a white man sitting in his living room when he woke from his afternoon nap.
It hadn’t been difficult for Gage and Babu to obtain entry. The low-caste ten-year-old servant girl had cowered at the sight of them fifteen minutes earlier, then backed away from the front door, eyes down.
The stucco house stood three stories tall on the edge of the town of ten thousand people bordering rice paddies and mango gardens; the rice tended by girls and women with their saris pulled up to their knees as they waded the shallow fields, the trees swarmed by young men in dhotis and sandals.
And Babu had known right where to find the house.
Hawkins was still rubbing his eyes as he walked from the kitchen and through the dining room carrying a bottle of Kingfisher beer. He first spotted Gage’s briefcase on the marble living room floor, then took two more steps before he froze as his eyes first widened and then narrowed on Gage sitting on a bamboo-frame cushioned couch to his right.
Gage recognized the remnants of the oil field scrapper displayed in the fifteen-year-old photo his wife had provided. Sixty-three years of weathered skin hung on his thin body. Wire-rimmed, aviator-style glasses and a receding hairline framed his face. Skinny arms extended from the sweaty T-shirt encasing his pot belly.
Gage rose as Hawkins stepped into the room. Babu remained seated.
“What the hell are you doing in my…” Hawkins didn’t finish the sentence. They all knew the answer.
Gage handed him a business card.
“TIMCO,” Gage said.
Hawkins frowned as he examined it, then shook his head as he looked up.
“I’ve got nothing to say.”
Having made his stand, Hawkins gestured for Gage to sit back down and settled himself into a lounge chair along the wall dividing the living room from the dining area.
Hawkins whistled, and a thirteen-year-old girl strode in from the kitchen, past the dining table, and into the living room as though she was the queen of the house rather than a servant. She was wearing a full sari of an adult woman, not the half sari of a teenage girl. She stopped in the doorway next to Hawkins’s chair.
“Beer? Coke?” Hawkins asked.
Gage and Babu both nodded at Coke, then the girl went back the way she’d come.
“You guys got something else to talk about besides TIMCO, I got lots of time.” He grinned. “That, I got a whole lot of. Information? Zip.”
“Just to make sure we’re on the same page,” Gage said. “I think you know what really caused the explosion at TIMCO.”
Hawkins rolled his eyes. “You didn’t have to travel all this way through this godforsaken country when you could’ve read that in my deposition.”
Gage sat forward, then aimed a forefinger at Hawkins’s face. “You lied during your deposition.”
Hawkins’s face flared. “So Porzolkiewski’s lawyers said, but they couldn’t prove shit.”
Gage glanced over at Babu, then fixed his eyes on Hawkins. “I don’t have time to screw around.”
He opened his briefcase and took out an eight-by-ten photograph taken by Babu four days earlier. It was a view into Hawkins’s bedroom on a night too hot to close the drapes.
Gage rose, took two steps, loomed over Hawkins, and then dropped it in his lap.
Just then, the girl walked up behind Hawkins carrying a hammered aluminum tray bearing two Cokes. She looked down at the photo, wild-eyed, mouth gaping open. The tray fell from her hands. The bottles exploded on the marble floor.
The photo showed her on top of Hawkins. Legs spread over his face, his penis in her mouth. She darted toward the front door. Babu leaped up, grabbed her by the arms, and swung her down on the couch in one motion.
Hawkins stared at the image, not bothering to wipe the soda spray off his face and arms. He finally looked up at Gage, forcing a smile.
“When in Rome…”
Gage reached down and yanked Hawkins up by his T-shirt, stretching it to its limits. Hawkins hung backward, suspended, gasping, flailing. Gage dropped him in his chair, then backed away, and locked his hands on his hips.
“You know how much time you could get for child molesting?” Gage said.
Hawkins looked past Gage toward the front door. “The police here won’t do anything.” Hawkins returned his eyes to Gage. His voice strengthened. “They don’t care. I pay them not to care. Hell, girls around here get married at nine.”
Gage shook his head. “Not here. In the States.”
Hawkins straightened himself in the chair.
“There’s no way India’s gonna extradite me to the U.S. for coming over here to screw these girls. Brings in too much money. Bombay is the new Bangkok. Just check the Internet. The worst they’ll do is tell me to lay off.” Hawkins shrugged. “So maybe I got to pay off some prosecutor. So what?”
“Not child molesting here, you idiot. In Richmond. Your kids.”
Hawkins’s jaws clenched.
Gage walked over to his briefcase and pulled out a criminal complaint charging Wilbert Hawkins with molesting John Doe and Jane Doe, forged by Alex Z a couple of hours after Gage had left Jeannette’s house.
Hawkins’s eighteen-year-old son awaiting trial for fondling little girls. His teenage daughter screwing thirty- year-old men. It wasn’t hard to figure out how it all started.
Gage tossed the complaint at Hawkins. He grabbed at it too late.
Hawkins picked the Coke-soaked pages from the floor. Shaking hands jerked them around in front of his face,
