It was true that Faisal, who ran the protection racket with Amir, was parking the car. It was also true, and more to the point, that Sanjay was enjoying himself, standing in our conspicuous group on a warm afternoon and sparking furtive but fervent looks from most of the girls passing us on the busy street. We were goondas, gangsters, and almost everyone knew it. Our clothes were new and expensive and cut to the edge of fashion. We were all fit. We were all confident. We were all armed and dangerous.

Faisal loped around the corner and wagged his head to signal that the car was safely parked. We joined him, and walked the three blocks to the Taj Mahal Hotel in a single, wide line. The route from Regal Circle to the Taj Hotel crossed spacious, open, crowded squares. We held our line easily as the crowds parted for us. Heads turned as we passed, and whispers whirled in our wake.

We climbed the white marble steps at the Taj, and walked through to the Shamiana Restaurant on the ground floor. Two waiters settled our group at a long, reserved table near a tall window with a courtyard view. I sat at one end of the table, nearest to the exit. The strange and overpoweringly dark mood that had stirred in me with Salman's little phrase grew stronger by the minute. I wanted to be free to leave at any moment, without upsetting the balance of the group. The waiters greeted me with broad smiles, calling me gao-alay, or countryman, the Indian equivalent of the Italian paisano. They knew me well-the gora who spoke Marathi-and we chatted for a while in the village dialect I'd learned in Sunder more than four years before.

Food arrived, and the men ate with good appetite. I, too, was hungry, but I couldn't eat, and I just pushed at the food to make a polite show. I drank two cups of black coffee and tried to bring my troubled, storming mind into the run of conversations.

Amir was describing the movie he'd seen the night before-a Hindi gangster picture, in which the gangsters were vicious thugs and the hero conquered them all, unarmed and alone. He described every fight sequence in detail, and the men hooted with laughter. Amir was a scarred, blunt-headed man with thick, tangled eyebrows and a moustache that rode the cresting wave of his full upper lip like the wide prow of a Kashmiri houseboat. He loved to laugh and tell stories, and his self-assured, sonorous voice compelled attention.

Amir's constant companion, Faisal, had been a champion boxer in the youth league. On his nineteenth birthday, after a year of tough professional bouts, he'd discovered that his manager had embezzled and squandered all the money he'd been entrusted to save from his boxers' fights. Faisal had tracked the manager down. When he'd found him, he hit him and then kept on hitting him until the man was dead. He'd served eight years in prison for the crime, and was banned from boxing for life. In prison, the naive, hot-tempered teenager had become a calculating, cold tempered young man. One of Khaderbhai's talent scouts had recruited him in the prison, and he'd served his apprenticeship to the mafia through the last three years of his sentence. During the four years since his release, Faisal had worked as Amir's principal strong-arm man in the burgeoning protection racket. He was quick, ruthless, and driven to succeed at whatever task was set for him. His flattened, broken nose, and a neat scar that dissected his left eyebrow gave him a fearsome appearance, and toughened what might otherwise have been a too-regular and too handsome face.

They were the new blood, the new mafia dons, the new lords of the city: Sanjay, the efficient killer with the movie-star looks;

Andrew, the genial Goan who dreamed of taking his seat on the mafia council; Amir, the grizzled veteran with the story-teller's gift; Faisal, the cold-hearted enforcer who only asked one question-Finger, arm, leg, or neck?-when he was given an assignment; Farid, known as the Fixer, who solved problems with fire and fear, and who'd raised six much younger brothers and sisters, alone, when his parents died in a cholera-infested slum; and Salman, the quiet one, the humble one, the natural leader, who controlled the lives of hundreds in the little empire that he'd inherited and held by force.

And they were my friends. More than friends, they were my brothers in their brotherhood of crime. We were bonded to one another in blood-not all of it other people's-and boundless obligation. If I needed them, no matter what I'd done, no matter what I wanted them to do, they would come. If they needed me, I was there, without cavil or regret. They knew they could count on me. They knew that when Khader had asked me to join him in his war I'd gone with him, and I'd put my life on the line. I knew I could count on them. When I'd needed him, Abdullah had been there to help me deal with Maurizio's body. It's a significant test, asking someone to help you dispose of a murdered man's body. Not many pass it. Every man at the table had passed that test; some of them more than once. They were a solid crew, to use the Australian prison slang. They were the perfect crew for me, an outlaw with a price on my head. I'd never felt so safe-not even with Khaderbhai's protection-and I never should've felt alone.

But I was alone, and for two reasons. The mafia was theirs, not mine. For them, the organisation always came first. But I was loyal to the men, not the mafia; to the brothers, not the brotherhood. I worked for the mafia, but I didn't join it. I'm not a joiner. I never found a club or clan or idea that was more important to me than the men and women who believed in it.

And there was another difference between the men in that group and me-a difference so profound that friendship, on its own, couldn't surmount it. I was the only man at that table who hadn't killed a human being, in hot blood or cold. Even Andrew, amiable and garrulous young Andrew, had fired his Beretta at a cornered enemy-one of the Sapna killers-and emptied all seven rounds of the magazine into the man's chest until he was, as Sanjay would've said, two or three times dead.

Just at that moment the differences suddenly seemed immense and unconquerable to me-far greater and more significant than the hundred talents, desires, and tendencies that we had in common. I was slipping away from them, right there and then, at the long table in the Taj. While Amir told his stories and I tried to nod and smile and laugh with the others, grief came to claim me. The day that had started well, and should've been like any other, had spun askew with Salman's little words. The room was warm, but I was cold. My belly hungered, but I couldn't eat. I was surrounded by friends, in a vast, crowded restaurant, but I was lonelier than a mujaheddin sentry on the night before battle.

And then I looked up to see Lisa Carter walk into the restaurant.

Her long, blonde hair had been cut. The new short style suited her open, honest, pretty face. She was dressed in pale blue-her favourite colour-a loose shirt and pants, with matching blue sunglasses propped in her thick hair. She looked like a creature of light, a creature made out of sky and clean, white light.

Without considering what I was doing, I stood and excused myself, and left my friends. She saw me as I approached her. A smile as big as a gambler's promise unveiled her face as she opened her arms to hug me. And then she knew. One hand reached up to touch my face, her fingertips reading the braille of scars, while the other hand took my arm to lead me out of the restaurant and into the foyer.

"I haven't seen you for weeks," she said as we sat together in a quiet corner. "What's wrong?"

"Nothing," I lied. "Were you going in to have some lunch?"

"No. Just coffee. I've got a room here, in the old part, looking out over the Gateway. It's a million-dollar view, and a great room. I've got it for three days while Lettie sews up a deal with a big producer. This is one of the fringe benefits she managed to squeeze out of him. The movie business-what can I say?"