Go West, Inspector Ghote. H. R. f. Keating
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Swami With No Name. Any name, he had explained in an interview the private eye had found in the files of the Los Angeles Times, was a link with the world, and he had long been free of all earthly ties.
It was a considerable claim. And it might, just possibly, be true. There were such men in India, the yogis, those who had taken the path to things unimaginably high. But in California? An Indian setting himself up as a swami in California, was it not more likely that he was nothing other than a confidence trickster? That name that was no name was just the sort of thing to impress people who had no knowledge of Indian philosophy, and it would serve nicely, too, to protect the fellow from awkward inquiries.
But, trickster or genuine yogi, one thing was clear: the Swami With No Name was not going to be easy to tackle.
“We are now entering the city limits of Beverly Hills.” Fred Hoskins’ slam-bang voice broke in on his thoughts.
He sat up and did his best to look as if he was delightedly taking in everything he saw. He must do what he could to keep the giant beside him on his side. They were going to be a team. The fellow had said so at the airport. He felt the thought descend like a mass of half-chewed chappatti to the pit of his stomach.
Oh, if only he could accomplish his mission in two or three hours of sweeping activity. End up, before this day was done, with a rescued Nirmala Shahani ready to fly at his side back to Bombay, to her father, to the arranged marriage awaiting her with the heir to R. K. Ajmani, import-export.
Dutifully he regarded the stately houses set back far from the road, itself bordered, not by pavements for people to walk along, but by wide, beautifully trimmed, implacably green lawns laid to separate the homes from the cars.
A niggle of doubt struck him.
Surely Fred Hoskins had declared that the sun shone without interruption in Southern California. How could it be then that these lawns were so green? In Bombay, where outside the monsoon months the sun also shone unrelentingly, grass on such open spaces as the maidans was always a uniform parched brown.
“Please,” he said, “how is it that these lawns I am seeing are altogether of such a fine green hue?”
“Sprinklers, Gan. Every day for about an hour these lawns will get a continuous sprinkling from pipes in the ground. The water comes from mighty reservoirs built in the hills that surround Los Angeles. They are some of the major engineering feats of the world.”
“Yes,” Ghote said, putting his head mentally between his arms to protect himself from the rain of hammer blows.
He made up his mind not to ask another single question, however much silence might cost him in his relations with the towering private eye.
He sat pretending to be struck dumb with amazement at the size and magnificence of the houses to either side, at spreading red-tiled roofs that reminded him of a little Catholic enclave he knew in Bombay only multiplied ten or twenty fold, at great white-pillared facades, at wide green gardens under gracefully bending palm trees.
Yet somehow even these palms were different. They ought to have been reassuringly familiar. But they lacked altogether the battered dustiness of the palm trees of Bombay.
He felt very far from home. A venturer making his way through territory that could all too easily hide every kind of unknown trap. And his only companion this giant beside him. Who seemed as much enemy as friend.
THREE
Uneasily Ghote looked at the jutting-bellied private eye grasping the wheel of his monster car. The fellow ought to be simply a help to him. Ranjee Shahani must be paying him two thousand rupees a day still to be exactly that. Yet his attitude so far had not really been at all helpful. He seemed to be an obstacle in the way, making things difficult, refusing to answer questions. He was yet one more hard hill to climb in a whole series of mountain ridges he felt lying between him and Ranjee Shahani’s daughter.
Why was the fellow behaving like this?
But the thumping muzziness in his head would not let him work his way to any clear answer. Perhaps, after all, it was no more than the fact that the fellow was so American, so Californian. There was this huge car of his. There was his enormous well-fed frame. There was his aggressiveness and that seemingly unshakable confidence in the kind of life he was living. Yes, perhaps it was just that the fellow summed up in himself this whole rich, different land.
And now another of those great, tumbling speeches was beginning.
“We’re now climbing.” Not that this was not perfectly evident, even though the huge car apparently needed no shifting of its gears to tackle the steep rise in the road ahead. “These are the Santa Monica Mountains. You’ll notice that even in this unhospitable terrain the citizens of Los Angeles have established their homes, trying to rise above the smog that stifles the city at sea-level. Now, look to your left. There on the hillside you’ll see a magnificent residence built on steel stilts to conform to the slope. Note that even at this distance from other homes the house is fully equipped with electrical power and is connected by pipeline to the city water supply.”
Ghote looked to the left. Yes, the stark white house on the hillside was raised up on stilts.
“Who is the owner of such a fine establishment?” he asked, at once breaking his just-imposed rule about asking questions.
“In a few moments,” Fred Hoskins replied, massively ignoring his question, “I will tell you to turn your eyes to the right. By that time we’ll have ascended the full height of the mountains and on the far side you’ll have a view of the famed San Fernando Valley. I will not at this time sing the song of that name.”
A spasm of anger shook Ghote from the base of his spine to the top of his ever more heavily thudding head.
“Mr. Hoskins,” he said, “kindly tell me. In the course of your inquiries on behalf of Mr. Ranjee Shahani did you interview the Swami With No Name himself?”
But again the hulking private eye ignored his question, leaving instead a massive silence in the big car.
Ghote, his anger yet more fuelled, would not have let him get away with it. Except that at that moment there came into view round a bend in the twisting road ahead an extraordinary sight.
It was a man. A man coming towards them close to the edge of the road, a road here as elsewhere without any sidewalk. He was running, thumping along at a steady even pace. And he was dressed in the smallest imaginable pair of bright red, shiny satin shorts topped by a white T-shirt with a printed message on it in red letters so big that Ghote had taken them in at his first single glance. FIGHT THE FAT. On the runner’s feet were bright red-and-white shoes, and round his head were what could only be headphones, a pair of huge headphones like two black dishes clamped over either ear.
Fred Hoskins, who since Ghote’s question had been concentrating ferociously on the wheel in front of him, appeared not even to have noticed the sight.
“That—that person,” Ghote said, as the big car moved past the runner, “what—what is he?”
“What person, Gan? Can’t you see I’m concentrating on the road?”
“There was a man in the road. Someone running. You would see him still in your mirror.”
Fred Hoskins jabbed a glance at the mirror.
“Jogger,” he said.
“Please, what is a jogger?”
“Jeez, Gan boy, where’d you come from? A jogger’s a guy who needs to cut down on the flab. So he gets out there and buys himself a pair of running-shoes and some shorts from one of the stores especially for joggers, and then he hits the road and pounds that extra flesh into the ground.”
“I see,” Ghote said.
He thought of asking whether it would not be better not to eat so much in the first place. But he felt that in his present jet-confused state he could not trust himself