"Okay," I laughed. "If that's the way you're gonna play it, I don't forgive you!"

"But when you see this surprise," he called out, laughing with me, "you will forgive me completely, with a full heart. Now, come on! Stop asking me about it, and tell me, what did Salman say to Sanjay about that pig-that Chuha?"

"How did you know that's what we were talking about?"

"I can see the look in Salman's face," he shouted back. "And Sanjay, he told me, this morning, that he wants to ask Salman- again-to make business with Chuha. So, what did Salman say?"

"You know the answer to that one," I replied a little more quietly as we stopped in traffic.

"Good! Nushkur'Allah." Thanks be to God. "You really hate Chuha, don't you?"

"I don't hate him," he clarified, moving off with the flow of cars. "I just want to kill him."

We were silent for a while, breathing the warm wind and watching the black business unfold on the streets we'd both roamed so often. There were a hundred large and small scams and deals going down around us every minute, and we knew them all.

When we found ourselves twisted into a knot of traffic behind a stalled bus, I looked along the footpath and noticed Taj Raj, a pickpocket who usually worked the Gateway area near the Taj Mahal Hotel. He'd survived a machete attack years before that had all but severed his neck. The wound caused him to speak in a rattling whisper, and his head was set at such an ill-balanced angle that when he wagged it to agree with someone he almost fell over. He was working the stumble-fall-pilfer game with his friend Indra serving as the stumbler. Indra, known as the Poet, spoke almost all of his sentences in rhyming couplets. They were deeply moving in their beauty, for the first few stanzas, but always found their way into sexual descriptions and allusions so perverse and abhorrent that strong, wicked men winced to hear them. Legend had it that Indra had once recited his poetry through a microphone during a street festival, and had cleared the entire Colaba Market of shoppers and traders alike. Even the police, it was said, had shrunk back in horror until exhaustion overcame the Poet, and then they'd rushed him as he paused for breath. I knew both men, and liked them, though I never let them get closer than an arm's stretch from my pockets. And sure enough, as the bus finally grumbled to life and the traffic began to ease forward, I watched Indra pretending to be blind-not his best performance, but good enough-and stumbling into a foreigner. And Taj Raj, the helpful passer-by, assisted both of them to their feet, and relieved the foreigner of his burdensome wallet.

"Why?" I asked, when we were moving through free space again.

"Why what?"

"Why do you want to kill Chuha?"

"I know he had a meeting... with the men from Iran," Abdullah shouted over his shoulder. "People say it was just business- Sanjay, he says it was just business. But I think more than business. I think he work with them, against Khader Khan. Against us. For that reason, Lin."

"Okay," I called back, pleased to have my own instincts about Chuha confirmed, but worried for my wild, Iranian friend. "But don't do anything without me, okay?"

He laughed, and turned his head to show me the white teeth of his smile.

"I'm serious, Abdullah. Promise me!"

"Thik hain, Lin brother!" he shouted in reply. "I will call you, when the time is right!"

He coasted the bike to a stop and parked it outside the Strand Coffee House, one of my favourite breakfast dives, near the Colaba Market.

"What the hell's going on?" I demanded as we walked toward the market. "Some surprise-I come here nearly every day."

"I know," he answered, grinning enigmatically. "And I am not the only one who knows it."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"You will find out, Lin brother. Here are your friends."

We came upon Vikram Patel and the Zodiac Georges, Scorpio and Gemini, sitting comfortably on bulging sacks of lentils beside a pulses stall, and drinking chai from glasses.

"Hey, man!" Vikram greeted me. "Pull up a sack and make yourself at home."

Abdullah and I shook hands all round and, as we sat down on the row of sacks, Scorpio George signalled a chai-runner to bring two more glasses. The passport work was often keeping me busy at night because Krishna and Villu-both of them with young children in their growing families-had taken to staggering their shifts, giving themselves valuable hours at home during the day. That work with the books, and other commitments to the Salman council, prevented me from going to Leopold's as often as I once had.

Whenever I could, I'd met with Vikram and the Georges near Vikram's apartment on the edge of the Colaba Market. Vikram was there most days, after his lunch with Lettie. He kept me up to date with the news from Leopold's-Didier had fallen in love, again, and Ranjit, Karla's new boyfriend, was becoming popular- and the Georges filled me in on what was going down on the streets.

"We thought you weren't coming today, man," Vikram said as the chai arrived.

"Abdullah gave me a lift," I replied, frowning at my friend's mysterious smile, "and we got stuck in traffic. It was worth it, though. I had a front row seat for Taj Raj and Indra doing their stumble routine on MG Road. It was quite a show."

"He's not what he used to be, our Taj Raj," Gemini commented, hurling South London at us in the vowels of the last two words.

"Not as nimble, like. Since the accident, y'know, his timing's a bit off. I mean, it's only reasonable, innit? His whole bleedin' head was damn near off, an' all, so it's no wonder his timing's got a kink in it."

"At this point," Scorpio George interrupted, lowering his head and assuming the solemn piety we all knew well and dreaded more, "I think we should all bow our heads in prayer."

We glanced at one another, our eyes widening with alarm. There was no escape. We were too comfortable to move, and Scorpio knew it. We were trapped.

"Oh, Lord," Scorpio began.

"Oh, Gawd," Gemini grumbled.

"And Lady," Scorpio continued, "infinite yin-yang spirit in the sky, we humbly ask you to hear the prayers, today, of five souls that you put into the world, and left in the temporary care of Scorpio, Gemini, Abdullah, Vikram, and Lin."

"What does he mean, temporary?" Vikram whispered to me, and I shrugged in reply.

"Please help us, Lord," Scorpio intoned, his eyes shut and his face raised to heaven, which seemed, roughly, to be in the middle of the balcony on the third floor of the Veejay Premnaath Academy of Hair Colouring and Ear Boring. "Please guide us to know what's right, and to do the right thing. And you can start, God, if you're of a mind, by helping out with the little business deal we're doing with the Belgian couple tonight. I don't have to tell you, Lord and Lady, how tricky it is to supply customers with good-quality cocaine in Bombay. But, thanks to your providence, we managed to find ten grams of A-grade snow-and, given the real bad drought on the streets, that was a mighty slick piece of work on your part, God, if you'll accept my professional admiration.

Anyway, Gemini and me, we sure could use the commission on that deal, and it would be kinda nice not to get ripped off, or beaten up, or maimed, or killed-unless, of course, that's in your plan.

So, please light the way, and fill our hearts with love. Signing off now, but keeping the line open, as always, I'll say Amen."

"Amen!" Gemini responded, clearly relieved that the prayer was far shorter than Scorpio's more usual efforts.

"Amen," Vikram sobbed, nudging a tear from his eye with the knuckles of a balled fist.

"Astagfirullah," Abdullah muttered. Forgive me, Allah.

"So how about a bite to eat then?" Gemini suggested cheerily.

"There's nothing like a bit of religion to put you in the frame of mind to make a pig of yourself, is there?"