Emily Kimelman - Sydney Rye 04 - Strings of Glass (14 page)

We
continued down the hall. As we reached the end, noises from the two men became
louder, the thumping more insistent and then with a heavy sigh, a soft cry, the
sounds stopped. We ducked left and tried the first door. It was unlocked and
the room we stepped into was pitch black once the door closed behind us.

We
waited in the darkness, our ears straining to hear the outer door close behind
Shah and his young lover. I took long deep breaths trying to slow my heart
rate. Dan reached out and laced his fingers through mine, a loving and chaste
move.

In time
we heard footsteps and low voices. What we both agreed sounded like the outer
door opening and closing followed. Waiting another beat I opened our door and
listened. I heard the lock turn on our exit. Shit.

My feet
hardly made a sound as I padded down the hallway, Dan behind me, his hand
linked with mine. The door was indeed locked. Without a sound I steered us back
down to the T, but Dan pulled me toward the room Shah had left. He pushed open
the door and pulled me in. The room was dark and smelled like sex and
computers. Dan closed the door behind us, then flicked on a light.

An
office was revealed - wooden
filing cabinets, a couch, and three desks
all with computers on them. The one I’d seen Kalpesh humping on looked
disturbed, but only slightly. A couple of pages of
paper were littered on the floor and the lamp was askew.

Dan
looked at the computers and smiled. “What?” I asked.

“Maybe
there are records on these bad boys. Maybe we can get some of these kids back
to their families.”

“Didn’t
their families sell them?” I asked.

“Not
all of them,” came a soft voice behind me. I whirled around,
but didn’t see anyone. Dan stepped close behind me.

“Hello?”
I said.

He
unfolded himself from between two filing cabinets. It was the little bodyguard
from the Kite Market. He wore the fitted black suit and stern face of the rest
of Kalpesh’s body guards but this guy was obviously different. He moved like something
out of a dream, completely fluid, never off-weight,
never weak, always ready.

I
tensed, unsure of how this was going to go. He didn’t seem on the verge of
attacking me. Hell, he could have killed me while my back was turned. Nor did
the little man seem worried about me attacking him, though he kept his eyes on
me as he moved toward us. “You won’t find the records on the
computers,” he said. He cocked his head, listening. “We must
go.”  The little guy reached his hand out to me. When I didn’t take it,
he said, “I know Anita.” He turned and listened again.
“Please,” he said, turning back to me.

I took
his hand, Dan took mine, and we followed the small man
out a side door. He hurried us along an exterior hallway, big windows looked
out onto the street. At the last one he pushed aside the curtains, flung open
the window, and gestured for me to jump. I heard commotion behind us.
“They know you are missing. Quickly.”

I leaned
over the edge and saw a balcony ten feet below. We were in a corner of the
building but there were no drainpipes around. I
didn’t know how he expected us to get down there without breaking a leg. Seeing
my look of concern the bodyguard vaulted over the edge and, using the corner of
the two buildings, bounced from one side to the other until alighting
silently onto the balcony below. 

The
sounds of doors opening and closing behind us urged me forward. Better not to
be tentative, I thought. Slipping out of my
leather sandals I dropped them down to the balcony and
following the small man’s moves vaulted myself hard over the edge against the
other building. I hit it like a spider and immediately pushed off, launching
myself at the other wall, feet and palms out, ready to push off. One more and I
found myself on the balcony, knees bent, still alive.

Dan
looked down at me, forlorn. I beckoned for him to follow as I slipped back into
my shoes but Dan didn’t train like me. The guy did some pushups, crunches,
and the occasional laps in the pool. He could not bound off walls. He looked
over his shoulder and realizing he had no other choice,
lowered himself out the window. With his arms fully extended he was less than
three feet from the balcony.

“Bend
your knees,” I said as he let go, landing hard on the balcony with us.
Before Dan even had a moment to enjoy his escape the little guy was moving
again. He opened up the balcony doors and we walked back inside. This was a
different building, I realized quickly as we
crossed dusty, rotting wooden floors. Only one fluorescent
bulb lit the hall, showing off peeling paint and dark corners.

The
guard turned again, opened a door and led us
through a large, dark, and, as far as I could tell by the echo of our feet,
empty room. He crouched down and motioned for us to follow. I dropped into a
squat, my eyes straining in the darkness to find the danger he sensed. After a
moment he stood and continued without explanation.

We
climbed a set of stairs, followed another dirty hallway to its end,
where the little guy opened another window. A rickety wooden ladder led past
dark windows to the roof where the moon powered through the city’s
light pollution, a fat, low- slung crescent of white.

As we
moved across the metal roof the guard stopped and held his finger to his lips,
pointing down to Dan’s feet. “Sorry, but I’m not a…”
Dan pursed his lips looking for the right word.

“A
ninja,” I whispered. “You’re not a ninja.”

“Exactly,”
Dan whispered. But the little guy was already moving across the roof again. He
jumped a short distance onto another roof and then slowed, padding over to the
opening of an interior courtyard.

He waved
us over and we crouched next to him. Leaning over the edge I looked down onto a
nursery. Single, child-size beds lined the courtyard;
kids ranging in age from toddlers to early puberty sat around,
probably a dozen or more. They didn’t make any noise. No
talking, no laughing, no playing. It was like looking down onto an art
installation; wax children at play.

“You
will help us?” I asked the small man at my side as I placed a camera on
the roof’s edge, aiming down at the children.

He
turned to me, “I believe it is you who are here to help me,” he
answered. Motion below drew our attention as black-suited
men entered the space, moving through it, looking for something. The small man
backed away from the edge, Dan and I followed him across the roof and down the
rickety wooden ladder. He motioned to the street below and then jumped,
bouncing off a wall to the ground.

“Guy
ever heard of steps?” Dan asked. I shrugged and followed the little guy,
landing next to him in the narrow alleyway. Dan clung to the last rung of the
ladder, stretching out his full height, dropping the final few feet and
stumbling forward, catching himself with his palms.

Standing
up he wiped his hands on his suite pants leaving streaks of brown dust. Dan
looked around. “Just wide enough for the van. But we will need a
ladder,” he said.

“No,”
the guard said. He pointed to a metal, reinforced door down the street.
“We bring them out there.”

“How?”
I asked. The little man pitched his head to the side again and then said he had
to go. “Go straight home now.”

“But
Anita-”

“Go
now.”
He made eye contact and held it. “Do not wait for her. This is
important.”

“Wait,”
I said,
but he was already back up at the window. He didn’t look down at us before
disappearing inside.

Dan and
I stood for a moment staring up at the empty window. “So that’s Anita’s
source,”
Dan said.

“Yeah,”
I said. “But I don’t think we should leave without Anita.”

“Seems
clear he’s on her side. And it sounds like they are onto us. By staying we may
be endangering her.”

I bit my
lip. “I guess you’re right.”

We
placed cameras in the alley and then after circling around,
managed to find Anita’s house.

W
e sat
at the kitchen table with a bottle of Old Monk rum between us. Dan and I drank
in silence waiting for Anita. After my first glass I stood up and began to
pace. “This isn’t good,” I said. “She’s not back yet.”

Dan
nodded and refilled his glass. “Did we make a mistake trusting that
man?”

I sipped
at my rum, the taste reminded me of maple syrup,
of childhood, of innocence.

“I
think we can trust him,” I said.

“Why?”
Dan asked.

“Just
do, don’t know why.” I put down my glass and stretched my arms over my
head, feeling tight muscles rebelling against me. Blue growled at the stairs
and then barked, his hackles rising high on his back. I bent my knees and
raised my hands facing the darkness. The small guard stepped out of the
shadows. “OK, Blue,” I said. He stopped
barking but a growl still rumbled in his chest.

When Dan
stood, surprised by our visitor, he looked like a giant. The guard’s posture
was rigid, but his legs loose. I bet he was almost impossible to knock over. I
didn’t want to fight him, but I wanted to see him fight. I wanted to see him go
crazy on someone. I knew he could bounce off walls;
I bet he could fly through the air like an animal, a panther as much as a man.

I said, 
“Hello.”

“Hello,”
he replied.

His
voice was soft, the opposite of his hard physique. He
looked like he was carved from a single piece of wood.

“I
am Mana,” he said.

“Sydney,”
I said,
pointing to myself, “and this is Dan.”

“You
are here to help with the children,” he said. “I
appreciate your kinship.”

Kinship,
I thought. I wasn’t sure that’s what we were offering. But I liked the way it
sounded from his mouth.

Mana’s
black hair hung almost to his shoulders, covering his ears.  Short bangs stayed
out of his eyes. He had broad cheekbones, a flat nose, and dark eyes that
were
penetrating,
bright, like black quartz in a sunlit cave.

“Anita,”
he said. “Kalpesh is holding her.”

“What
do you mean ‘holding her?’” Dan asked.

“She
is his prisoner.”

“Prisoner?”
I said,
my heart beating faster.

“I
could not help now. But tomorrow. Tomorrow we will help her and free the
children.”

“She
said that wouldn’t happen. That he had to pretend everything was normal.”
I looked over at Dan. “I never would have, we never should have—” I
turned back to Mana. “We should go now.” I looked around the kitchen
thinking about what I needed.

“Tomorrow
is the day,” he said.

“We
can’t leave her there overnight,” I said. “God only knows what they
will do to her.”

“You
and she will die if you go now.”

“You
don’t know me,” I said.

“I
see that you are a very brave warrior, but
there are too many men. You will not survive.”

“I
can’t just leave her there,” I said, hearing
my voice raise into almost a screech. Breathing in through my nose and out my
mouth, I tried to calm down, to think about how to do this.

“She
will suffer, yes,” Mana said. “But not so much that she will not
live.”

I stared
at him. Dan came to my side. “What’s your plan?” he asked Mana.

“Tomorrow
at 10 a.m.
the guests will begin to arrive. At noon
lunch will begin to be served. Three
seatings of no less than twenty,
no more than forty. At 4  the
chai will be served. I will put sleeping powder in the guard’s
tea so that at sunset when the fireworks begin, the guards will sleep. All
except two.
Me and Mugloo.”

“Mugloo?”
Dan asked.

“He
is called the Bulldog,” Mana said. “He only drinks from the water at
his hip, trusts no one.”

“Why
are you doing this?” I asked.

“My
brother,” Mana said. “Kalpesh bought my brother. Now he has arrived
and I will take him.”

“What? I
don’t understand. How did he get your brother?”

Kalpesh’s
face tightened. “I left my village five years ago to work and send money to my
family. My father is,” his jaw clenched before he continued. “he was
desperate.”

“Your
father sold him?”

“Yes.”

“But how
do you know he is coming to Kalpesh? How did you trace him?” I asked.

His eyes
met mine. “The work I did when I left my village was not honest, but it was not
this.” He sneered and I saw strong emotions rise in his eyes but he quickly
brought himself back under control. “I started working for Kalpesh as soon as I
found out where my brother was going. Safer to wait then to track.”

“How
long have you waited?” I asked.

“Five
weeks,” he answered. “I hope that you can wait one day.”

“We
have a van to get the kids out,” Dan said. “Can you open the
door?”

“Yes,
but I will take my brother myself.”

Dan
nodded.

“Wait,”
I said,
stepping back. Blue stayed close to me. “Are you OK
with leaving Anita there?” I asked Dan.

He shook
his head. “Of course, not but I don’t think we can get her out now. We
need Mana’s help.”

“But
they will rape her!” I yelled.

Dan
paled. “What can we do?”

I
grabbed my leather jacket off the back of my chair and headed for the door,
Blue stayed with me.

“Wait,”
Dan followed me. “Where are you going?”

“I’m
going to get her.”

Dan
grabbed my arm. “You can’t, we have to wait.”

“Wait?”
I spat at him. “Wait, for what, until they kill her?”

“No,
no, if you go to get her now we won’t be able to save the children or grab
Kalpesh. And you’ll probably get killed.”

“I
won’t.”

“Please,
think about the bigger picture.”

“I
can’t just sit here while she’s being tortured or raped or whatever those sick
fucks are doing. I am not waiting an entire day to save her.”

“You
have to.”

I shook
him off. “No, I don’t.”

Blue and
I walked out the door, Dan following behind us. But as I strode down the block
I realized I didn’t have a plan. And I didn’t have enough bullets. I stopped
and clenched and unclenched my fists so hard that I left half-moon
indentations in my palms. “Fuck!” I said.

Dan
stood a couple of steps back. “Come inside. We’ll come up with a plan, I
promise.”

“She
is priority number one. Is that clear?”

“Yes,
we will save her. But we can’t do it until Mana knocks out the guards. There
are too many.”

I
pictured Anita somewhere deep in the bowels of Shah’s complex. How would I find
her, I wondered with a shiver.

“Let’s
go back inside,” Dan said, taking my elbow lightly.

I let
him lead me into the house and watched as he poured me another shot of rum.
“What about Shah?” I asked Mana who still stood by the dark
stairwell. “We plan on taking him with us.”

“You
want to take him?” Mana asked.

“Yes,
to France where he will be prosecuted.”

“You
can have him. I want my brother.”

“It’s
important that the man faces justice,” I said.

“I
planned to kill him. Isn’t that justice? His life for theirs.”

“But
he can be a symbol so that others will know not to try the same. That they
can’t get away with it.”

The
little man studied me for a moment. “Your gods
and mine see things differently. If you want him you can have him. For my
brother’s freedom, and for Anita, that is why I fight. As long as you promise
me justice.”

I
nodded. “Yes.”

“Your
justice will serve me fine.”

“Thank
you.”

“Please
sit down,” Dan said to Mana. “We need to go over the details for
tomorrow.”

Mana
agreed,
taking a seat at the table. Blue circled around and sniffed the small man.
Finding him the right smell he sat on his foot and looked up at him. Mana
petted Blue’s head and my sense that we could trust him was confirmed.