I threw a stone on the glass façade of the building. Kevin Santiago did not respond. I waited for ten seconds and threw a larger stone. For some reason, the phrase People who live in glass houses should not throw stones at others came to my mind.
Kevin Santiago reacted to the second stone. He walked towards the door and pushed it open.
I threw a third stone at the building.“Hey, you,” he said. He ran at a brisk pace towards me. I moved into the shadows cast by the trunk of a large tree. I was reasonably sure that I could not be spotted by any of the residents of the buildings around us. He came closer.
“Hello, Kevin,” I said politely.
He looked at me in a puzzled sort of way. He was trying to recognise me. I plunged the knife into the femoral artery of his left leg. For a few seconds, there was another man-made fountain in front of the building. However, it was one that was visible only to me.
But Kevin was a strong man. Most men would have fallen to the ground. Kevin merely stumbled like a drunk. He reached into his pocket and took out his iPhone. He pointed the phone at me and pressed on the screen. I heard the sound of a camera shutter.
I stabbed him again, in a more indiscriminate way.
He shouted loudly. If he were playing the role of a dying man in a movie, I would have said he was overacting. I slit his throat, not so much to kill him, but to kill his voice. This time around, he fell down.
I caught him as he fell to the ground. I stuck the “I found you on MyFace” sticker on his forehead. His fingers were curled tightly around the white iPhone, the phone that now had my photo in its image library. I needed to get that phone. However, even as I tugged at it, and tried to wrest it loose from his fingers, I heard people come out of the building.
Like a cab driver racing down a street, I broke into an indiscriminate run without any heed for who or what was in front of me. At the intersection with 10th Avenue, I turned around. There was no one following me. I turned right and walked south. The perpendicular change in direction helped me shift the incident that was Kevin’s death to another place, another dimension and another point in time.
I entered an Indian deli on 48th Street. The owner was from south India. Before he could even ask me if I was a fellow Tamilian (I am not; I merely have dark skin), I went into the restroom. I wanted to make sure that Kevin Santiago had left no discernible mark on me. There were three small drops of blood on my Alfani leather shoe. But they had already dried in the heat. I scraped them off with my fingernails.
I ordered a glass of tea with milk and cardamom. The milk had been simmering at boiling point for at least a few hours. With the first sip, my body temperature rose at least five degrees above the ambient temperature. The law of radiation necessitates that heat must flow from a hotter object to a cooler one. I began to sweat. I cooled down.
Columbus Circle station was crowded. At first glance, I could see at least three people who looked more suspicious than me. I was ignored by the policemen on duty.
I wondered if Kevin had clicked a photo of me with his iPhone. The answer to this question bore repercussions that were as terrible and final as an earthquake or a tsunami.
I would not be able to sleep tonight.
I poured a generous amount of Famous Grouse into a glass. I made a checklist of things I had to do.
Before anything, I had to clean the Global Chef’s knife.
I turned on the faucet. The force of the stream cleansed the blade of the day’s events, as though they had never taken place. The lemon-scented detergent accentuated the feeling of goodness. If only Palmolive could also wipe a picture off another man’s iPhone.
I had to hide Emily’s scarf in a safe location.
The closet was out of the question. It was the first place the police would search. I reached for the top of my bookshelf and got down an ancient Chinese chess set that Mr Clarkson had gifted me as I was leaving for America.
I unlocked the dark-brown box with ornate floral patterns. The two halves opened out to form the chess board. There was a compartment underneath each of the halves. They housed an exquisitely carved collection of wooden chess pieces. The king was an exact likeness of Emperor Chengzu of the Ming dynasty.
Chengzu was the third emperor of the Ming dynasty. He was renowned for sending large fleets of ships around the world. These ships had sailed to south-east Asia, India and Sri Lanka. They had even gone across the Indian Ocean to Africa. They had returned with gold, jewels and artifacts that had been gifted by the kings and queens of the lands they visited.
Most famously, they had once returned from Africa with a giraffe. With its long neck and gentle ways, the animal must have indeed been a wondrous sight to behold for the people of China.
I opened a hidden compartment located under the storage place for the emperor, his wife and retinue, and placed the ziploc bag containing Emily’s scarf in it. I placed eleven “I found you on MyFace” stickers over the bag.
I sent a text message to the boy. My flip phone lit up with a quiet and assured light in response.
“Northern and 72nd,” the message said.
I took the elevator down to the lobby of the building. I was about to open the door when I saw a most unexpected sight. Through the glass panel on the door, I could see Detective Crisafi. He was trying to blend into the shadow cast by the canopy of a gingko tree. But he was a white man in a brown neighbourhood. He stood out as clearly as the moon does in a dark sky.
He was clearly suspicious of me.
But that did not mean I would change my plans for the evening. I would meet the boy.
In fact, it was now more important than ever that I talk to the boy.
I went back up to my apartment. My neighbour began to play his customary procession of mindless music. This time around, I welcomed the loud beats. They sounded like the soundtrack of a Hollywood action movie. They made me feel as though I was playing a starring role in a scene of consequence. They prompted me to act.
I opened the window and stepped on to the fire escape. It creaked loudly as soon as I put my foot on its black railings. I wondered if I was breaking a New York City law by using this mode of exit. However, I reasoned that the fire escape had been developed for emergencies.
And this was one hell of an emergency.
I descended the wobbly stairs till I was directly above a small space that passed for the garden of my Albanian superintendent. A daisy on the flower bed looked sad. A tomato had died. I backed up on the platform of the fire escape. I jumped over the width of the garden and the adjoining wall.
I landed into a patch of weeds that grew in the backyard of the neighbouring house. It was a large and dilapidated mansion that hadn’t experienced human love and attention for what appeared to be hundreds of years. I fought my way through a large clump of rat-tailed grass. I pushed open the heavy gate with both hands and stepped on to 73rd Street. I was an entire block away from Detective Crisafi, who was presumably still staring at the entrance of my building with his eager, open eyes.
I had just finished dusting off the mud from my trousers when the boy arrived. Light travels faster than sound. However, the boy had managed to twist this fundamental law of nature. He played his music at such a loud volume that I heard him first. I only saw his red SUV much later.
“There’s something else,” I said when we had finished our customary exchange.
He immediately sensed I had something important to say. He turned down the volume. I stared at his patent brown leather shoes.
“Tell me,” he said.
“I need a fake passport.”
“For what?” he asked. It was a reasonable question. I regretted I would not be able to provide an honest answer. I felt bad I couldn’t say, “You see, Fernando, the strangest thing has happened. I have made the unfortunate mistake of killing three people. For some reason, the police are suspicious of me. I want to be able to leave the country at a moment’s notice.”
Instead, I gave that most Indian of answers.
“Just,” I said. “Just like that...”
If one billion Indians are able to live with one another in that tightly cramped nation in relative harmony, it is because they have learned to answer pointed questions with this most noncommittal and evasive of answers.
Why did you vote for the BJP?
Why did you covet his wife?
Why did you choose onion toppings for the pizza?
Just.
Excerpted with permission from Antisocial, Arun Krishnan, HarperCollins India.
