Mumbai Noir by Altaf Tyrewala

hobby.
    “Heineken it is,” he said expansively.
    He got me the can of beer from the kitchen fridge and poured himself a large Teacher’s from the ornate bar across the sofa I was slouched in.
    “Cheers. To Pali Hill,” he intoned in a deep Bogart voice.
    “Cheers,” I said. “To Pali Hill.”
    After a full hour and a half of this nonsense of raising toasts to Pali Hill, I managed to get the list from him. It was touch and go. But I’ve been there many times. I promised to contact him—to look at the “once in a lifetime” properties he “exclusively” represented for his “reputed” clients—as soon as the missus was back from her shopping trip to Dubai. I patted the dogs—he had named them Google and Yahoo!—and got up to leave. They gave me doleful looks, almost imploring me not to go. But I had work to do. Find Jasmine—dead or alive.
    “Thanks for the beers.” I made a quick exit.
    At a cybercafé down the road I printed out the list he had given me from my flash drive. It made for fascinating reading: a Page 3 Who’s Who of Mumbai. Or was it, as a journalist once wagged at the Press Club, the Who’s Why ? The list was long and methodical—name, occupation, religion, sex, age, club membership, vegetarian or nonvegetarian, details of pets, names and domicile of domestic help, owner or tenant, duration of occupation, etc. The only information missing in the list was whether the residents—dominated by the Khans, Kapoors, Shahs, and Patels—preferred the missionary position or the Japanese one.
    For the next two hours, over coffee and sandwiches, I scrutinised the “occupation” column of the Excel sheet—the listing of film financiers was far too long for my liking. Salim Chingari could be under the benevolent protection of any one of them. I needed a short list of three for a fighting chance of finding Jasmine.
    I knew just the right man who could help me do that. I was going to use my social network, again, which I have assiduously cultivated over the last thirty years. A private detective is only as good as his contacts.
    “This is a surprise, Shorty! Where the fuck have you been recently?”
    “All over town.”
    “Looking for something?”
    “Yeah. Love and sympathy.”
    “Forget it. Even the Salvation Army is out of stock.”
    “Got to be somewhere. Dalal Street?”
    “Something on your mind?”
    “Need to find a film financier.”
    “Don’t choke me, Shorty. Are you thinking of making a movie about your life, Jab I Fart?”
    He laughed outrageously at his own witticism. I let him have a little fun at my expense—I’m not touchy. Besides, Rafique Irani knows everyone and his uncle in the city. I was at his spacious sea-facing office in Nariman Point. The corpulent and jovial Irani is India’s Recycling King and his life’s ambition is to be on the Forbes list of Asia’s richest entrepreneurs. I am sure he will get there. Besides collecting truckloads of old newspapers, plastics, and bottles every day and sending them to China by the shipload, he’s also a personal collector of antiques—especially Titanic memorabilia. He has quite a collection which he showed me once at his Worli residence.
    One of his kinks—in a long list—is that he doesn’t like neighbors. So he bought the whole building and converted it into a private museum with the top floor as his residence. He’s one moneybag in Mumbai I have a sneaking affection for. He has a sense of humour—the Parsi kind—and doesn’t take himself too seriously. I got to know him because I had once given him a hot tip that a certain liquor baron was moving in for the kill to buy a rare pair of Roman wine goblets from a source in Istanbul. Rafique Irani beat him to it in a photo finish. I was at his house that night when he opened one of the rarest single-malt bottles on earth—to celebrate. I really couldn’t figure out what all the fuss was about. It tasted like booze.
    After he had calmed down a bit, I showed him