Someone had arranged with senior cops to have me arrested, without charge, and imprisoned at Arthur Road. The same person had arranged to have me beaten-severely and often-while I was in the prison. It was a punishment or an act of revenge.

Khaderbhai had confirmed that much, but he couldn't or wouldn't say more, except to tell me that whoever it was who'd set me up hadn't known that I was on the run. That information, about the escape from Australia, had emerged from the routine fingerprint check. The cops concerned had realised, at once, that there might be profit in keeping quiet about it, and they'd shelved my file until Vikram approached them on Khader's behalf.

"Those fuckin' cops liked you, man," Vikram told me as we sat together in Leopold's one afternoon, a few months after I'd started work with Khaled as a currency collector.

"U-huh."

"No, really, they did. That's why they let you go."

"I never saw that cop before in my life, Vikram. He didn't know me at all."

"You don't get it," he replied patiently. He poured another glass of cold Kingfisher beer, and sipped it appreciatively. "I talked to that guy, the cop, when I got you out of there. He told me the whole story. See, when the first guy in the fingerprint section found out who the fuck you really were-when your fingerprint check came back with the news that you were this wanted guy, from Australia-he freaked out on it. He freaked out on how much money he might get, you know, to keep the shit quiet. A chance like that doesn't come along every day, na? So, without saying anything to anyone else, he goes to a senior cop he knows, and shows him the file report on your prints. That cop freaks out, too. He goes to another cop-the one we saw at the jail-and shows him the file. That cop tells the others to keep quiet about it, and leave it to him to find out how much money there is in it."

A waiter brought my cup of coffee, and chatted with me for a while in Marathi. Vikram waited until we were alone again before he spoke.

"They love it, you know, all these waiters and cab drivers and post office guys-and the cops, too-they love it, all these guys, that you speak Marathi to them. Fuck, man, I'm born here, and you speak Marathi better than I do. I never learned to speak it properly. I never had to. That's why so many Marathis are so pissed off, man. Most of us don't give a shit about the Marathi language, or who all comes to live in Bombay, or wherever the fuck they come from, yaar. Anyway, where was I? Oh yeah, so the cop has this file on you, and he's keeping it quiet. But he wants to know more about this Australian fucker, who escaped from jail, before he does anything, yaar."

Vikram stopped, and grinned at me until the grin became a playful laugh. He wore a black leather vest over his white silk shirt, despite the thirty-five-degree heat. In his heavy, black jeans and ornate black cowboy boots, he must've been very hot, but he seemed cool; almost as cool as he looked.

"It's fuckin' great, man!" he laughed. "You busted out of a maximum-security jail! Fuckin' deadly! It's the greatest thing I ever heard, Lin. It's tearing my heart out that I can't tell anyone about it."

"Do you remember what Karla said about secrets, when we were sitting here one night?"

"No, man. What was it?"

"It isn't a secret, unless keeping it hurts."

"That's pretty fuckin' good," Vikram mused, grinning "So where was I? I'm losing it today, man. It's this Lettie thing. It's driving me insane, Lin. Oh yeah, the cop in charge, the cop with your file, he wants to do some checking on you. So, he sends two of his guys around, asking questions about you. All the street guys you used to work with, they gave you solid support, man.

They said you never cheated anyone, never fucked anybody over, and you put a lot of money around with the poor street guys when you had it."

"But the cops didn't tell anyone I was in Arthur Road?"

"No, man, they were checking up on you to find out if they wanted to fuck you over, and send you back to the Australian cops, or not-depending on how you checked out. And there's more to it.

One of the moneychangers tells the cops, Hey, if you wanna know about Lin, go ask in the zhopadpatti, because he lives there.

Well, the cops are now real intrigued, like-a gora, living in the slum. So they go there, and they take a look. They don't tell anybody in the slum what happened to you, but they start asking about you, and the people say stuff like, You see that clinic?

Lin built it, and he's been working there for a long time, helping the people... And they say stuff like, Everybody here has been treated at Lin's clinic, free of charge, at one time or another, and he did a great job when the cholera came... And they told the cops about that little school you started, You see that little school for English? Lin started it... And the cops get an earful of this Lin, this Linbaba, this foreign guy who does all this good shit, and they go back to their boss, telling him what they heard."

"Oh, come on, Vikram! You really think that made a difference? It was about money, that's all, and I'm just glad you were there to pay it."

Vikram's eyes widened in surprise, and then narrowed into a disapproving frown. He lifted the hat from his back and examined it, turning it in his hands and flicking specks of dust from the rim.

"You know, Lin, you've been here for a while now, and you've learned some language, and been to the village, and lived in the slum, and even been the fuck to jail and all, but you still don't get it, do you?"

"Maybe not," I conceded. "Probably not."

"Damn right you don't, man. This is not England, or New Zealand, or Australia, or wherever the fuck else. This is India, man. This is India. This is the land of the heart. This is where the heart is king, man. The fuckin' heart. That's why you're free. That's why that cop gave you back your phoney passport. That's why you can walk around, and not get picked up, even though they know who you are. They could've fucked you, Lin. They could've taken your money, Khader's money, and let you go, and then get some other cops to bust you, and send you the fuck home. But they didn't do it, and they won't do it, because you got them in their heart, man, in their Indian fuckin' heart. They looked at all what you did here, and how the people in that slum love you, and they thought, Well, he fucked up in Australia, but he's done some good shit here. If he pays up, we'll let the fucker go. Because they're Indians, man. That's how we keep this crazy place together-with the heart. Two hundred fuckin' languages, and a billion people. India is the heart. It's the heart that keeps us together. There's no place with people like my people, Lin.

There's no heart like the Indian heart."

He was crying. Stunned, I watched him wipe the tears from his eyes, and I reached out to put a hand on his shoulder. He was right, of course. Even though I'd been tortured in an Indian prison, and almost killed there, I had been set free, and they had given me my old passport when I left the prison. Is there any other country in the world, I asked myself, that would've let me go, as India did? And even in India, if the cops had checked on me and discovered a different story- that I cheated Indians, say, or ran Indian prostitutes, or beat up defenceless people-they would've taken the money, and then sent me back to Australia anyway. It was the land where the heart is king. I knew that from Prabaker, from his mother, from Qasim Ali, from Joseph's redemption. I'd known it even in the prison, where men like Mahesh Malhotra had taken a beating in order to smuggle food to me when I was starving.

"What's this? A lover's quarrel, perhaps?" Didier asked, inviting himself to sit down.

"Oh, fuck you, Didier!" Vikram laughed, pulling himself together.