From Delhi with Love

Chapter 1 – The Fathers’ Blackmail

The Scratch

Eleven a.m., greater Dallas, seventy-seven degrees, practically brisk for Texas.

The sun lay on the chrome of the open 1969 Cadillac, and on the inside, Paul Rowland lay in a hammock. Mid-sixties. Rowland Holding ran like a Swiss watch.

Margaret, his wife of thirty years and still the only one, was waiting at home with lunch. Paul looked at his watch. In an hour he would be sitting on the porch.

The golf match against the two real estate men had gone according to plan. Paul patted his breast pocket, where something crackled. Handshakes, preliminary contracts, dry ink.

Paul heaved the golf bag onto the back seat, dropped into the sun-warmed leather, and started the V8.

The engine burbled low across the parking lot. Two caddies turned their heads. Paul raised a hand as if they had applauded.

At the same moment, the glass door of the clubhouse slid open. Rajesh Sharma stepped outside and squinted.

The members wore custom-made golf shoes. Rajesh wore sneakers with worn-down soles.

He was coming from the restrooms, where he had signed off on his crew’s work: every faucet, every grout line, every mirror.

He had run his index finger along the top of a towel dispenser, where nobody ever looked, and the finger had come away clean.

It smelled of lemon. That was what the Sharma Cleaning Services contract said, and that was how it was.

“Good,” he had told his forewoman.

“Just good?”

“Very good. Don’t spread it around.”

Today he wanted to go home and put his feet up. The business was paying for itself again. But it only paid for itself as long as he was standing next to it.

Nothing ran on its own, and some client always found a spot that wasn’t there.

Crossing the asphalt, he weighed the car key in his hand, and the bad years came along, the way they always did when things were going well.

Ten years ago a stock market crash had dragged his two biggest clients into bankruptcy and Sharma Cleaning Services almost with them.

After that: balancing on the edge. And the cut. The tuition for Clara’s private school, which he could no longer pay. His bright daughter had had to leave. He could still see the box with her notebooks on the passenger seat.

Now she sat in the windowless office at night or knelt on some industrial floor out on a job. Every time he saw her like that, he stopped in the doorway and then quietly went away again.

He climbed into the white Mitsubishi van, dented at three corners, started the rattling engine, and put it in reverse.

A few yards away, Paul was already home in his mind. Maybe she’ll surprise me again with the tight black skirt and the white silk blouse, he thought, and closed his eyes for a moment. The picture was too lovely for a parking lot.

That moment was one too many. His leather shoe pressed the gas pedal a shade too far. Two tons of Cadillac lurched. His foot hit the brake a split second too late.

Tock.

A nudge. Nothing more. In the back of the Mitsubishi, a mop bucket clanged against an aluminum pole.

Paul swore under his breath, switched off the engine, and heaved himself out of the car. Rajesh yanked up the handbrake and jumped down from the cab.

He already had the first sentence on his tongue, a sharp one, and the second right behind it.

Side by side on the asphalt, the two vehicles looked like a shark next to a loaf of sandwich bread. The Cadillac gleamed as if it would have happily gobbled up the Mitsubishi as a snack. Both men bent over the back of the van.

There it was. A scratch in the plastic of the bumper. Three-quarters of an inch. No thicker than a hair.

Rajesh crouched and rubbed it with his thumb. The scratch stayed.

He rubbed again, harder. The scratch stayed this time, too. Paul pulled out his phone and photographed it, from two angles, with flash.

“For the record,” he said. Rajesh looked at him as if he had suggested framing the scratch.

“I sincerely apologize,” Paul said at once, raising his manicured hands. “That was entirely my fault. My mind was somewhere else completely. Paul Rowland.” He held out his hand.

Rajesh looked up from the scrape. In front of him stood a Texan in a shirt that had cost more than the van, taking the blame before anyone had even asked. The first sharp sentence vanished. The second went with it.

“Rajesh Sharma,” he replied, and shook. His hand was rough from years of buckets and machines. “But my American clients just call me Ratchi. Don’t give it a thought, Mr. Rowland. The scratch is practically invisible. My mop buckets have survived a lot worse.”

Paul laughed, relieved. “Call me Paul. Are you really sure? Naturally I’ll cover even the smallest bit of damage. Business is excellent, but the family …”

He rolled his eyes with a wink. “Perhaps I could make it up to you with a coffee over on the club terrace? We’ll settle this little bruise like civilized men.”

Rajesh looked at his watch, its crystal as scratched as the bumper. His next appointment downtown wasn’t for three hours. Why not?

Paul backed his battleship into the space again. How annoying, he thought as he pulled the key. All that lovely anticipation of home. He took his smartphone out of his sport coat pocket and dialed Margaret’s number.

“Hi, honey. I’m afraid I’ll be a little late. I’ve had an accident.” He leaned on the word. He liked it when she worried.

On the other end, a short gasp. Then nothing. She had known her “tomcat” for thirty years and knew how much to knock off anything he said.

“Is the car okay?” she asked dryly.

“What do you mean?” Paul shot back, indignant. “The car? What about me, your beloved husband?”

Margaret laughed, bright and warm.

“No, seriously, I rolled into another car backing out. Just a tiny scratch. Your tomcat’s running a little late.”

“In the meantime I’ll get everything ready,” she purred, and her voice slid down an octave. “When you get here, then …” She hung up.

Paul looked at the screen. He put the phone away.