India, Nancy thought she’d seen some sort of police activity; there were lights, the sound of hysterics, a sort of disturbance. At first, some beggar urchins were reputed to be the cause; the story was, they’d failed to beg a single rupee from a young Swedish couple who’d been photographing the Gateway of India with an ostentatious and professional use of bright-white lights and reflectors. Hence the urchins had urinated on the Gateway of India in an effort to spoil the picture, and when they’d failed to gain suitable attention from the foreigners—the Swedes allegedly found this demonstration symbolically interesting—the urchins then attempted to urinate on the photographic equipment, and that was the cause of the ruckus. But further investigation would reveal that the Swedes had paid the beggars to pee on the Gateway of India, which had little effect—the Gateway of India was already soiled. The urchins had never attempted to pee on the Swedes’ photographic equipment; that would have been far too bold for them—they’d merely complained that they weren’t paid enough for pissing on the Gateway of India.
Meanwhile, the dead boy in the taxi had to wait. In the driveway of the Taj, the Tamil driver became hysterical; a dead man had been thrown into the path of his car—apparently, there was a dent. The British couple confided to a policeman that the Tamil had run a red light (upon being struck by a dildo). The policeman was the bewildered constable who’d finally freed himself from the crime of urination at the Gateway of India. It wasn’t clear to Nancy if the British couple was blaming her for the accident, if it even had been an accident. After all, the Tamil and the Englishman agreed that the boy had looked dead before the taxi hit him. What was clear to Nancy was that the policeman didn’t know what a “dildo” was.
“A penis—a rather large one,” the Englishman explained to the constable.
“You’ll have to show him, dear,” the Englishwoman told Nancy.
“I’m not showing him anything,” Nancy said.
It took an hour before Nancy was free to register in the hotel. A half hour later—she’d just finished soaking in a hot bath—a second policeman came to her room. This one wasn’t a constable—no blue shorts a yard wide, no silly leg warmers. This one wasn’t another nerd in a Nehru cap; he wore an officer’s cap with the Maharashtrian police insignia and a khaki shirt, long khaki pants, black shoes, a revolver. It was the duty officer from the Colaba Police Station, which has jurisdiction over the Taj. Without his jowls, but even then sporting that pencil-thin mustache—and 20 years before he would have occasion to question Dr. Daruwalla and Inspector Dhar at the Duckworth Club—the young Inspector Patel gave a good first impression of himself. A future deputy commissioner could be discerned in the young policeman’s composure.
Inspector Patel was aggressive but courteous, and even in his twenties he was an intimidating detective in the way that he invited a certain misunderstanding of his questions. His manner persuaded you to believe that he already knew the answers to many of the questions he asked, although he usually didn’t; thus he encouraged you to tell the truth by implying that he already knew it. And his method of questioning carried the added implication that, within your answers, Inspector Patel could discern your moral character.
In her current state, Nancy was vulnerable to such an uncommonly proper and pleasant-looking young man. To sympathize with Nancy’s situation: Inspector Patel did not present himself as a person whom even a brazen or a supremely self-confident young woman would
Below her, in the gray-brown light, was the usual gathering of beggars—child performers, for the most part. Those international travelers who were still staggered by jet lag would find these early-morning urchins their first contact with India in the light of day.
Nancy sat at the foot of her bed in her bathrobe. The inspector sat in the only chair not strewn with her clothes or her bags. They could both hear the emptying of Nancy’s bath. Highly visible, as Dieter had advised, were the used-looking but unused guidebook and the unread novel by Lawrence Durrell.
It was not uncommon, the inspector told her, for someone to be murdered and then shoved in front of a moving car. In this case, what was unusual was that the hoax had been so obvious.
“Not to me,” Nancy told him. She explained that she’d not seen the moment of impact; she’d thought all three of them were hit—probably because she’d shut her eyes.
The Englishwoman hadn’t observed the moment of impact, either, Inspector Patel informed Nancy. “She was looking at you instead,” the policeman explained.
“Oh, I see,” Nancy said.
The Englishman was quite sure that a body—at least an unconscious body, if not a dead one—had been pushed into the path of the oncoming car. “But the taxi-walla doesn’t know what he saw,” said Inspector Patel. “The Tamil keeps changing his story.” When Nancy continued to stare blankly at him, the policeman added, “The driver says he was distracted.”
“By what?” Nancy asked, although she knew by what.
“By what you hit him with,” Inspector Patel replied.
There was an uncomfortable pause while the policeman looked from chair to chair, surveying her emptied bags, the two books, her clothes. Nancy thought he must be at least five years older than she was, although he looked younger. His self-assurance made him seem disarmingly grown-up; yet he didn’t exhibit the cocksure arrogance of cops. Inspector Patel didn’t swagger; there was something in his controlled mannerisms that came from an absolute correctness of purpose. What struck Nancy as his pure goodness was riveting. And she thought he was a wonderful coffee-and-cream color; he had the blackest hair—and such a thin, perfectly edged mustache that Nancy wanted to touch it.
The overall nattiness of the young man stood in obvious contrast to that absence of vanity which is commonly associated with a happily married man. Here in the Taj, in the presence of such a buxom blonde in her bathrobe, Inspector Patel was obviously unmarried; he was as alert to the details of his appearance as he was to every inch of Nancy, and to the particular revelations of Nancy’s room. She didn’t realize he was looking for the dildo.
“May I see the thing you hit the taxi-walla with?” the inspector asked finally. God knows how the idiot Tamil had described it. Nancy went to get it from the bathroom, having decided to keep it with her toilet articles. God knows what the British couple had told the inspector. If the inspector had talked to them, they’d doubtless described her as a rude young woman brandishing an enormous cock.
Nancy gave the dildo to Inspector Patel, and again sat down at the foot of her bed. The young policeman politely handed the instrument back without looking at her.
“I’m sorry—it was necessary for me to see it,” Inspector Patel said. “I was having some difficulty
“Both drivers were paid their fares at the airport,” Nancy told him. “I don’t like to be cheated,” she said.
“It’s not the easiest country for a woman traveling alone,” the inspector said. By the quick way he glanced at her, she understood this was a question.
“Friends are meeting me,” Nancy told him. “I’m just waiting for them to call.” (Dieter had advised her to say this; anyone assessing her student clothing and her cheap bags would know that she couldn’t afford many nights at the Taj.)
“So will you be traveling with your friends or staying in Bombay?” the inspector asked her.
Nancy recognized her advantage. As long as she held the dildo, the young policeman would find it awkward to look in her eyes.
“I’ll do what they do,” she said indifferently. She held the penis in her lap; with the slightest movement of her wrist, she discovered, she could tap the circumcised head against her bare knee. But it was her bare feet that
