Fiddlers

They did not know whether he’d heard about this from the newspapers or television. They merely wanted to know about the complaint she’d filed ten years ago. And why it had been dismissed.

‘Because it was fabricated,’ Kumar said.

His speech was clipped, more precise than singsong, undeniably Indian in origin. His native tongue might have been Hindi, Marathi, Kannada, Tamil, Gujarati, Telugu, Bengali, Gurmukhi, Oriya, or Malayalam. Here, in the land of the free and the home of the brave, he merely sounded like a foreigner.

‘In what way, fabricated?’ Brown asked.

‘Invented,’ Kumar said. ‘A lie. All of it a lie.’

‘Tell us what happened,’ Kling said.

What happened was…

She was coming out of the school, just approaching the sidewalk, where the large globes are at the entrance there on South Jackson, do you know the location?

There. A well-dressed woman in her late fifties, I would say. Carrying a briefcase. She gave me an address downtown, near the Financial District.

We began talking on the way downtown. She’d been to India only once, she told me, long ago, when she was a young girl. On an exchange program. For the summer. In the Rajahstan. I myself am from the south. I told her I was unfamiliar with that part of the country, it is a big country, my country. Well, a continent. She told me she’d had an exciting time there. She told me India was an exciting country. She used that word several times. Exciting.

Before she got out of the cab, she asked if I would like to come up for a drink. She said she would leave the lobby door unlocked. She said she would be waiting for me. Apartment 401, she said. She would leave the door unlocked. She would be in bed, she said. Waiting for me. Please hurry, she said. I’ll be waiting.

The streets down there are empty at that time of night. There are hardly any apartment buildings. Everything is closed that time of night. The offices, the shops, the restaurants. Everything closed. It was very cold in the streets. Empty and cold. I parked the taxi, and locked it, and went to her building. The lobby door was unlocked, as she’d promised. I took the elevator up to the fourth floor. The door to apartment 401 was unlocked. As she’d promised.

The apartment was dark.

I could hear her breathing in the dark.

I found her in bed. I took off my clothes and got into bed beside her.

When I climbed on top of her, she began screaming.

I ran.

I grabbed my clothes and ran.

I dressed in the elevator.

The policemen came to get me two hours later.

* * * *

‘It was consensual,’ Kumar said now, scooping foam out of his coffee cup, licking the foam off his finger. ‘The detectives realized that. She invited me. I don’t know why she changed her mind. This was an old woman! Who would want to rape an old woman?’

You’d be surprised, Kling thought.

And wondered if that was why the case had been filed away as ‘unsubstantiated.’ Because who would want to rape an old woman, right? A woman in her fifties? Easier to believe she’d invited the cabbie upstairs, and then changed her mind, and phoned the cops to boot.

But had she?

Or had Kumar, in fact, tried to rape her?

Had this been a matter of an elderly lady kicking up her skirts for one last fling, or a lonely young man tasting alien wine, however aged in the cask?

Had Christine Langston been reaching back to her lost youth and the exciting days she’d known as an exchange student in India? Or had Balamani Kumar been clutching at any kind offer in an inhospitable land? Fifty years old? Sixty? Who cared? A warm bed on a cold January night. In his own apartment, he slept with five other refugees like himself, three of them on the floor.

Who knew?

Who would ever know whether the lady had invited him into her bed - or been violated there?

And, really, who cared anymore?

The lady was dead, and the skinny young Indian was still driving a taxi.

One thing they felt certain of.

There was no resentment here.

No hidden grudge.

No old scores to settle.

Balamani Kumar was not the man who’d pumped two nine-millimeter slugs into Christine Langston’s head last night.

Or anyone else’s head, for that matter.

* * * *

The two priests sitting and drinking wine in the rectory of St. Ignatius Church could both remember celebrating Mass in Latin.

Father Joseph was seventy-six years old and already retired. Father Michael would be seventy-five in July. He had already advised his bishop that he planned retirement, but now he was having second thoughts. The Code of Canon Law set the age of retirement at seventy-five, but Father Michael still felt young and energetic, still felt he could lead his parishioners in celebrating Mass, hearing confessions, baptizing, ministering the sacrament, performing any and all things necessary to the advancement of the Church.

‘How is it where you are, anyway?’ he asked Father Joseph.

‘Actually, the center’s very nice,’ the other priest said.

‘I mean, what do you do all day long?’

‘Well, it’s not like having an active ministry, that’s for sure.”

‘That’s exactly what I mean,’ Father Michael said.

‘But it affords opportunity for contemplation and prayer…’

‘I contemplate and pray now.’

‘… without the rigors and demands of a priestly ministry. And I’m quite comfortable, Michael, truly. The Priests’ Pension Plan sees to my basic needs, Social Security gives me Medicare and additional income…”

‘I’m not worried about any of that.’

‘It’s you’re worried about not being active.’

‘Yes. It’s retiring, damn it!’

‘You know, you could always consider merely lessening your administrative responsibilities. Take an assignment as a senior associate for a period of time…”

‘Sounds delightful.’

‘Or just accept the path the good Lord has chosen for you,’ Father Joseph said, and made the sign of the cross, and finished his wine, and rose. ‘Michael,’ he said, ‘it was wonderful spending some time with you, but I must get back before they lock the doors on me and call the police.’

The two men shook hands.

‘Remember when we were at Our Lady of Grace together?’ Father Michael asked, and led the other priest out into the walled garden. The roses were in full bloom, and the Oriental lilies spread their intoxicating scent on the balmy June night. They shook hands again at the gate, and Father Joseph walked off to the next corner, where he would catch a bus back to the retirement center.

Father Michael took a deep breath of the night air, and then closed and locked the gate behind him. As he was walking back to the rectory, he thought he heard a sound behind him.

Turning, he said, ‘Yes?’

‘It’s me, Father,’ a voice from the shadows said. ‘Carlie. Remember?’