Emily Kimelman - Sydney Rye 04 - Strings of Glass by Emily Kimelman Page A

you?”
    Her hand
trembled slightly as she raised the cigarette back to her mouth. “I think
so,” she said. “He knows who I am now.”
    “Who?”
    “Kalpesh
Shah.”
    “Who?”
Dan asked, standing in the doorway.
    Anita
swiveled her head to look back at him. “A very powerful, dangerous, and
evil man.”
    “Evil?”
Dan asked.
    I stood
up and brushed past him to grab the bottle of whisky. I was going to need more
of it if we were going to talk about good and evil. When I stepped back out Dan
was swaying gently in the swing, smoke from the joint following his slow
movements back and forth. He smiled at me and passed it over. I handed him the
bottle. He leaned over and refilled Anita’s glass.
    I took a
long drag off the joint, loving the taste of toasted tobacco and hash mixing
with the whisky fumes in my mouth. I leaned forward and passed her the joint.
“Tell me about him.”
    Anita
took the joint and inhaled, letting the smoke out in a plume
that floated over the candle and dissipated into the night. “Kalpesh Shah
is from one of the most powerful families in Gujarat,” Anita began.
“His parents died when he was sixteen leaving him a great fortune in the
care of his uncle, Anand Shah.” She took another
drag off the joint. “A hard man, Anand beat Kalpesh and made his life a
living hell.” Anita leaned forward and passed the joint to Dan.
“There is a scar on Kalpesh’s face that runs from his temple to his
jaw,” she ran a finger down the side of her face. “The story is that
Anand cut him with a broken beer bottle. I don’t know if Anand molested
Kalpesh, but I wouldn’t be surprised considering his proclivities now. Anand
raised the boy in his own image.”
    I felt a
chill run down my spine. “Nurture,” I mumbled.
    “What?”
Dan asked, leaning closer to me.
    I shook
my head then reached over and refilled my whisky glass taking a long sip,
feeling the warmth in my belly. The hash and the whisky made my thoughts
deeper, wider, they reached far and appeared rich,
picturing the scarred boy and his terrifying uncle.
    “When
Anand died, Kalpesh was in his early twenties. He was
the man’s only heir and at least publicly grieved his uncle deeply. Never
before had so many mourners been hired.”
    “Mourners
for hire?” I asked. Dan passed me the joint, only a nubbins now. I took
the last drag and then stubbed it out in a nearby ashtray.
    “Yes,
professional mourners. Simply, they cry for you.”
    I
nodded, sitting back into the swing seeing black-clad,
wailing women, writhing with imagined grief.
    “His
fortune is vast and there is no reason for him to work. So he takes his
pleasures as an occupation.” Anita closed her eyes and leaned her head
back against the wall.
    “What
pleasures are those?” I asked.
    “Perversion,
pain, children,” she said, moving only her lips.
“He buys them by the dozen, tires of them quickly, and releases them onto
the streets with nothing more than the clothes on their back.”
    “Jesus,”
Dan said. He reached across the swing, squeezing my shoulder, pulling me
closer.
    “No
one does anything,” Anita continued. “He owns the police and even if
he didn’t, the rights of children are hardly a top
priority,” she said her voice bitter with truth. “They matter less
even than those of women.”
    “Why
is a French magazine interested in this Shah
guy?” Dan asked.
    Anita
sat up placing the cloth wet from melted ice onto the coffee table.
“Several years ago he ‘hosted’ the Paris Children’s choir,” she
caught my eyes holding them. “They reported waking up without their
clothing, groggy, and bruised. One of the chaperones disappeared, the
other,” she flicked her eyes to Dan, “spent three days in a drug-induced
coma.”
    Dan
shook his head and drank deeply from his glass. “How could he get away
with it?” Dan asked.
    “There
is an extradition order for him but like I told you, no one can touch him in
Gujarat. He can do no wrong