"That'll be quite a week. My friend Vikram gets married that week, too."

"You're coming to the weddings, Lin?" he asked with a small, tight frown. Johnny was a man who granted favours to others with selfless generosity. As is often the case with such men, he couldn't ask for them, or express his wishes, with anything like the same ease.

"I wouldn't miss it for the world," I replied, laughing. "I'll be there with bells on. I mean that literally-when you hear the bells ringing, you'll know I'm on my way."

When I left him, he was talking to Satish. The boy listened intently and stared into his face, his eyes as expressionless as a gravestone, and I remembered how he'd clutched at my leg on the day that Karla visited me in the slum; how he'd favoured her with a shy, sincere smile. The memory sliced into my dead heart. It's said that you can never go home again, and it's true enough, of course. But the opposite is also true. You must go back, and you always go back, and you can never stop going back, no matter how hard you try.

Needing distraction, I rode my bike out to the R.K. film studios, gunning the engine and swerving too often and too fast between the cars. I'd hired eight foreigners the day before, and had sent them to Lisa. It wasn't difficult for me to find and convince foreigners to fill non-speaking roles in the Bollywood films. The same German, Swiss, Swedish, or American tourists who would've reacted with mistrust and hostility to Indian casting agents responded enthusiastically when I approached them. In the years that I'd lived in the slum and worked as a tour guide, I'd met every kind of foreign tourist. I'd developed a style in dealing with them that won their trust quickly. That style was two parts showman, two parts flatterer, and one part philanderer, combined with a hint of mischief, a sniff of condescension, and a pinch of contempt.

The work as a tour guide had also given me friendships in several key Colaba restaurants. For years I'd steered my tour parties into the Cafe Mondegar, the Picadilly, Dipty's Juice Bar, Edward the Eighth, Mezban Restaurant, Apsara Cafe, the Strand Coffee House, the Ideal, and others in the tourist beat, and encouraged them to spend their money. When I needed foreigners to fill bit parts in the Bollywood films, I trawled those cafes and restaurants. The owners, managers, and waiters always greeted me warmly. Whenever I saw a suitable group of young men and women, I approached them with the offer of a chance to work in an Indian movie. With the restaurant staff vouching for me, I usually secured their confidence and agreement within a few minutes. I then phoned Lisa Carter to arrange transport for the following day. The system worked well. In the few months since we'd started working together, Lisa was drawing casting work from the major studios and producers. Finding the most recent group-the foreigners I'd hired the day before-was our first job for the famous R.K. studio.

I was curious to see the large, prestigious studio complex, and as I rode through the entrance gates my spirits lifted to the tall grey sails of the corrugated gable roofs. For Lisa Carter, and others like her, the dream world of movies inspired an almost reverential awe. I wasn't awed by the movie world, but I wasn't immune to it either. Every time I entered the fantasy-land of a film studio, a little of the magic that makes a movie caught in my heart and lifted me, bright with surprise, from the gloomy sea that, too much and too often, my life had become.

The guards directed me to a sound stage where Lisa and her group of Germans were waiting. I'd arrived during a break in the shooting, and found Lisa serving coffee and tea to the young foreigners. They were seated at two tables-two of several that were arranged around a stage, on a set that was designed to replicate a modern nightclub. I greeted them, exchanging a few pleasantries, and then Lisa took me aside.

"How are they?" I asked her when we were alone.

"They're great," she answered happily. "They're patient and relaxed and having a good time, I think. This'll be a good shoot.

You've sent some pretty good people in the last couple weeks, Lin. The studios are real pleased. We could... you know, we could really work this into something, you and me."

"You like this, don't you?"

"Sure I do," she said, giving me a smile I could feel on the back of my head. Then her expression shifted into something more solemn, something determined-the kind of determination you find in people who do it all the hard way, without hope. She was beautiful: a California beach beauty in the carnal jungle of Bombay; a pom-pom girl who'd pulled herself out of the death-by leeches of heroin and the sybaritic suffocation of Madame Zhou's Palace. Her skin was clear and tanned. Her sky-blue eyes were radiant with resolve. Her long, curly blonde hair was pulled back from her face, and held in an elegant coiffure that complemented the decorousness of her modest, ivory-coloured pantsuit. She beat heroin, I found myself thinking, as I met her stare. She beat it.

She got off the stuff. I was suddenly aware of how brave she was, and that the courage in her- when you knew it was there, and you knew how to look for it-was as palpable and riveting as the fierce, impersonal menace in a tiger's eye.

"I like this gig," she said. "I like the people, and the work. I like the life. I think _you should like it, too."

"I like you," I smiled.

She laughed, and slipped an arm through mine, leading us in a stroll around the set.

"The movie's called Paanch Paapi," she said.

"Five kisses..."

"No. paapi, not papi. That's the play on words. Paapi means thief, and papi means kiss. So, it's really Five Thieves, but there's a joke about it being Five Kisses, as well, because it's a romantic comedy. The female lead is Kimi Katkar. I think she's gorgeous. She's not the best dancer in the world, but she's a beautiful girl. The male lead is Chunkey Pandey. He could be good, real good, if his head wasn't jammed so far up his own ass."

"While we're on the subject, have you had any more trouble with Maurizio?"

"Not a thing from him, but I'm worried about Ulla. She's been gone for a whole day and night. She took a call from Modena the night before last, and left in a hurry. It was the first time he surfaced in weeks. I haven't heard from her since, and she promised to call."

I rubbed the frown from my forehead, up through my untidy hair.

"Ulla knows what she's doing," I growled. "She's not your problem, and she's not mine. I helped her because she asked me to. Because I like her. But I'm getting tired of this Ulla Maurizio-Modena thing, you know what I mean? Did Modena say anything to her about the money?"

"I don't know. Maybe."

"Well, it's still missing, and so is Modena. The boys on the street have been telling me. Maurizio's going around all over the place looking for Modena. He won't give up until he finds him.

And Ulla's no better. Sixty thousand bucks-it's not all that much, but people have been killed for less. If Modena's got it, he better stay clear of Ulla while Maurizio's still after him."

"I know. I know."

Her eyes were suddenly glazed and apprehensive.

"I'm not worried about Ulla," I said more softly. "I worry about you. If Modena's back, you should stay close to Abdullah for a while. Or me."

She looked at me with her lips pressed to white rims around what she wanted to say but couldn't or wouldn't.

"Tell me about the scene," I suggested, trying to shift us from the cold, black whirlpool that Ulla's life was becoming. "What's going on in this movie?"

"It's a nightclub, or at least it's a movie version of one. The hero steals a jewel from a rich politician, I think-something like that-and he runs in here to hide. He watches the girl, Kimi, doing a big dance number, and he falls for her. When the cops show up, he hides the jewel in her wig. The rest of the movie is about how he tries to get close to her, to get the jewel back."