Hot Stuff Page 4

“Because I still don’t know about the curse, the blessing, or why everybody and their so-called business associates are willing to kill to possess this particular statue. Care to enlighten me on those points?”

  Brig paused. A tiny beauty in an orange sari had begun a cha-cha around our table. I’m sure it was meant to convey a fertility dance from the fifth century BC or so, but it more closely resembled a certain cat trotting around his dish from an old TV commercial. Brig seemed bewitched. He thrust a fistful of rupee notes totaling about forty dollars into the girl’s eager hands.

  I scowled at both of them.

  “Brig. Curse? Blessing? Hello?”

  “Sorry, luv. Got to help out the working class, you know.”

  “Right.”

  The girl writhed away, then headed for a table near the back of Curry’s where a new group of eager patrons had just been seated. I watched her progress, then gasped like a sappy heroine from a sappy melodrama. I slid under the table, then thumped hard on Brig’s knee.

  “Brig! Over there! It’s Patel and his crew! Oh hell.”

  Brig did not waste time asking questions. He joined me on the floor. We covered ourselves with the red-checkered tablecloth as best we could, then darted glances at this second, nastier member of the Shiva’s-Diva-is-mine buyers. Or thieves.

  “Damn. Do you think he spotted us? How did they know we were here? Is he working with Kirk Mahindra or on his own? Ouch. I think that’s the guy who threw the knife at me. No, wait, this guy’s thinner.”

  “Shh! Tempe, can you keep your voice down? You have a pronounced American accent. Not to mention you’re the only female not on stage. We don’t need Patel to recognize those sweet-soundin’ tones of yours. Which reminds me, you’ll have to sing me a wee lullaby soon. A fine seoithín to soothe me to sleep. ’Twould fair be enchantin’.”

  I ignored the lullaby comments and lowered my volume a good two notches. “Brig? What are we going to do?”

  “I’m thinking. And, for your edification about the thugs, darlin’, Patel is on his own. He and Mahindra have the same mindset of evil intentions, but they don’t cross paths ’less they have to. And on those occasions, they just try to kill each other.”

  Orange Sari wriggled away from Patel’s table with a pleased look on her face. It was evident the gentlemen enjoying her performance had rewarded her quite well. Brig’s eyes were shining. The twinkle worried me.

  “Tempe. Can you stay scrunched down and head for the door over there to the left?”

  “Why? Where’s it go?”

  I squinted. A small sign on the door said “Nartaki KapRepahannaa.” Hindi. The first word meant dancer. The second word’s literal translation was dressing. I opened my eyes wide at Brig. He nodded.

  “I assume, having seen Mr. Curry himself dart back there a few times tonight, that it leads to a backstage arena for the ladies. Which in turn leads to the stage. Which is where you’re going to end up.”

  “Are you nuts? Aside from the fact that I’m at least five inches taller than most of those girls, have flaming red hair and blue eyes, haven’t seen the sun all winter and don’t tan anyway, and all these girls have exquisite brown skin, what makes you think Mr. Curry is going to allow me into a costume and send me out to entice the customers? And even if he does, how does that get me past Patel? And what will you be doing, pray tell, while I’m bumping and grinding up there?”

  “And you say I rattle on? Hush, now. Follow me. All will be well.”

  In the shoot-out at Hot Harry’s, Patel and his goons had been recklessly quick on the trigger. Or, more precisely, the blade. Those knives had zinged past me, piercing vending machines, beer bottles, and the right eyebrow of Miss April. So, although creeping after Briggan O’Brien may have seemed a stupid thing to do, and indeed, was a stupid thing to do, it also seemed far better than the alternative, which was popping up and waving at Patel and company while pointing to myself and yelling, “Yoo hoo! Target! Over here!”

  No one noticed the two of us crawling on the floor between tables on our way to the backstage entrance. This might have been because the entertainment had clicked into a higher gear. The music had changed from Indian raga to dance music from the seventies. God bless America. We gave the world jeans, burgers with fries, and more than twenty years after its inception––disco. Gloria Gaynor sang out the classic “I Will Survive.” I was in complete agreement with the sentiment.

  Backstage at C.C. Curry’s was like backstage anywhere in the world. Tiny dressing areas with poorly lit mirrors. Performers chattering nonstop while applying copious amounts of rouge, mascara, and liner.

  A rack of saris had been placed in the center of the dressing room. I grabbed the one that looked the longest. It happened to be in a shade of red that clashed with my hair. I didn’t worry too much about choosing the best costume for my first time out as a would-be stripper. I scanned the room to see if any of the girls were about to yell “sari stealer!” at me.

  Brig, after leading me back here, had disappeared. No surprise.

  I removed what was left of my filthy, torn suit, then kicked it under a table. I squeezed into the little blouse, called a choli, that’s worn under a sari. I wrapped the piece of red silk around me, then wandered over to the table farthest from any living being and began to apply the darkest shade of foundation available. Many of the ladies kept their faces hidden behind veils. Whether this was for religious reasons or to add to the mystique of the dancing girl, I silently thanked whomever had kept this custom. It meant I could drape folds of silk over my hair, nose, and mouth. A pot of midnight blue kohl paint lay next to the foundation and black eyeliner. I slathered it on.

  By the time the cosmetics and I bonded, I looked like a drag queen in the Village preparing for a Halloween on the town as a belly dancer. Any resemblance to Tempe Walsh, American linguist, last seen in a business suit with hair pulled into a bun at the neck and with makeup consisting of blush, lip gloss, and a smidgen of mascara, had been extinguished.

  C.C. Curry arrived at my makeup table. He snarled at me in a Marathi dialect. Thanks to Louie’s Lingo, I was able to interpret most of his words.

  “You! New girl! You are next onstage. We are short two girls tonight. Hurry!”

  C.C. adhered to a free-and-easy hiring policy. You’re in the dressing room. You’re female. You’re in costume. You’re on.

  I began striding to the entrance to the stage, then realized that the other girls minced. I had to slow down and take much shorter steps and try to remember I wasn’t hauling down West End Avenue in Reeboks on my way to work.

  The beaded curtain parted and I stepped onstage. I glanced around the club. Fifty tables, each holding at least four men. Four hundred eyes staring at me.

  I closed my eyes. If I ever saw Brig again, I was going to kill him. No, scratch that idea. I should simply hand him the tote bag and yell “Shiva’s Diva—here!” in the vicinity of the Chor Bazaar—Thieves Market—only blocks away from C.C. Curry’s. Every faction interested in the goddess statue, and it appeared there were many, would be on the man like ants on crackers.

  Tote bag. I hit what I hoped was a seductive pose and realized I couldn’t toss that denim carryall at Brig in any bazaar anywhere. He still had it.

  The music for my improvised routine began as the riff for Donna Summer’s “Hot Stuff” sailed out across C.C. Curry’s sound system and around the club. My mother loves this song. Mom brought me up on disco. When I was a toddler, she taught me the Latin Hustle, the American Hustle, and the Harlem Hustle. Any hustle she knew. We’d dance around the kitchen to songs from Donna, Gloria, K.C., and the rest of the stars from the era. Doubtless Mom would be delighted to know her daughter was getting ready to do shimmies and rib-cage isolations for a crowd of eager gents while the queen of disco sang above.

  The speakers were situated in the ceiling next to the booth where the CDs and equipment were stored. I squinted to see who’d picked this number. Briggan sat beside a turban-crowned teenage boy
. Both gentlemen were grinning at me.

  Brig wanted me to give a show? He’d get a show. My major in college had been linguistics, thanks to my father, Mr. Practicality, who’d been grimly determined that I’d learn a skill that could earn a living. My minor had been dance. I’d been captain of the gymnastics team and had performed with the dance team too. The summer between my junior and senior years of college, I played the lead in Sweet Charity at a small professional theater in Syracuse. The choreographer had danced with Bob Fosse. She knew all the original moves from Charity. She taught them all to me, and I learned them well.

  I shrugged my shoulders up and down in time to the music. I did hip grinds and pelvic thrusts and head rolls and even got down on the floor and writhed a bit. That was a mistake. C.C. Curry’s floor made the dressing area look immaculate. But rupee notes were being tossed at me from all sides of the room.

  This had not been a fun night. Shots had been fired at me in Hot Harry’s around nine P.M. An upsetting experience. Make that damn terrifying. Yet, at eleven-thirty when the rupee notes started flying and the cheering swelled, I began to enjoy being onstage at C.C. Curry’s. I even tossed the veil and let my hair fly around me so I could do a few head rolls during the “hot, hot, hot, hot stu-ff” chorus.

  Patel stood and scraped his chair away from his table. His eyes narrowed. He leaned over and whispered something to one of the men with him. I recognized that face. He’d aimed a gun at me at Hot Harry’s. He’d been a lousy shot. Perhaps because knives were more his thing.

  Mr. Crummy Aim stood. He and Patel tried to storm the stage. They were hampered by a throng of drunken French sailors who’d decided to deliver rupees to me in person. I knew this would not deter Patel and his friends for long.

  I jumped off the stage and rolled under a table. A ridiculous amount of my time this evening had been spent hiding under tables, and I wasn’t pleased. I sneezed when I got a whiff of the odor from a pool of wine stinking up my latest hiding place. I then got to my feet and headed for the nearest exit that was also the farthest from my pursuers.

  Once again, I ran. Without clothes, other than a now wet sari. Without the rest of my samosas. Without my tote bag. Without Shiva’s Diva. Without Briggan O’Brien.

  Chapter 5

  I ended up outside C.C. Curry’s scanning the area that comprised Grant Road. To the west I could almost see the Opera House and a rail station. To the east lay the Chor Bazaar. In the middle stood the red-light district––and me. At least I was dressed appropriately. If one considered an ill-fitting bright red sari that stank of booze and sweat to be the correct attire for the area.

  The good news was that as a smart New Yorker I never went anywhere without mad money and keys hidden in my tiny belly bag, which in turn was hidden under wads of wet sari. And I could communicate to some degree in one of at least four different Indian languages. The bad news was that there was now a whole lot more of me than I felt comfortable showing. I was wearing more makeup than is displayed at the Macy’s cosmetics counters at Christmas, and I was disinclined to talk to anyone in any language.

  Oh yes. Add to the above that my feet were bare. My ruined pumps had been discarded in the dressing room of C.C. Curry’s, along with my suit and my sanity.

  The train station seemed my best bet. I began to walk. It was September, but in Bombay the temperature was still in the upper nineties even at this late hour. An enchanting time to take a stroll through this ’hood. Homeless beggars eyed me with interest. Had they never seen a redheaded American in a wet sari reeking of alcohol before?

  A late-night food vendor waved at me. Good idea. I changed course and began trotting toward his stand.

  “Tempe! Damnation! Where do you think you’re headin’?”

  I turned. “Brig! Well. My, what a surprise. I assumed you’d still be at Curry’s waiting out the enemy so you could retrieve my tips from the stage.”

  He smiled. When he smiled with all the charm of a thousand years of Irish pirates behind him, I melted. Anything could be believed of that smile.

  “Ah, darlin’, I wouldn’t leave you to fend for yourself here in the street. It’s not a safe place for a lady, you know.”

  He had that right. He gently wrapped his lightweight sweatshirt around my shoulders, then led me over to a bench on the side of the road. The pair of us shooed off at least twenty teenagers who were begging for anything we could give them. Brig handed them a fistful of rupees and the rest of the samosas he’d managed to sneak out of the club in my tote bag along with Shiva’s Diva. Very resourceful of him. I just wish he’d saved a bite for me.

  “Can I go back to that vendor before we talk? I really need something to eat.”

  “No, Tempe. You’d be sick in twenty seconds from the junk he’s selling. You ate at Curry’s. You should be fine.”

  “In your opinion. I’m famished.” I sighed. “Well, I’ll hold on for a while. What’s the latest plan? Do we have a latest plan?”

  “I’m hailing the next taxi I see. The train station is a terrible place this time of night. Full of felons and muggers. You’re lucky you got only a block or two before I caught up with you. What were you thinking? Standin’ here in that sari in the red-light district. You look like a treat waiting to be devoured. Damn, woman, you could have been snatched up by far worse than Patel.”

  “Excuse me! May I point out I’m standing out here in this damn sari in this stinking district because you had me bumping and grinding on stage only a few minutes ago?” I shook my head. “Oh, just forget it. How did you manage to leave Curry’s without Patel on your tail?”

  He leaned against the bench and smiled at me.

  “The sound booth has a back stair that leads directly to the alley behind the club. As soon as I saw that spectacular leap you took off the stage––one worthy of a Kirov ballerina I must say––I made my farewell to the child running the stereo system and dashed out. Patel never knew he’d been outfoxed. If he even knew the fox had been there to start with.”

  “So why isn’t he running down Grant Road looking for me, while I sit here on a bench with you, with the two of us planted here like pigeons at the shooting gallery?”

  Brig stretched out his long legs, then yawned.

  “I neglected to mention that while I searched through the pile of CDs for music that would inspire you to dance, I called Mr. Curry on the in-house phone from the booth. Told him Patel was the husband of one of his girls and that the man had riot and mayhem on his mind right there in Curry’s club. Said if Patel wasn’t hustled out immediately, there’d be a heap of trouble. I described Patel down to his ugly little scarred chin and bald head while you were in the middle of that marvelous hootchy-bumpy movement.”

  “Which one? The shoulder pulse or the pelvic ’round the world? Wait. What am I saying? It doesn’t matter which one. Thanks for getting rid of Patel, although I imagine that’s a temporary status.”

  He inclined his head. “You’re most welcome. And it was the pelvic rotation. Very nice. Fair distracted me so much I nearly forgot why I was after callin’ Mr. Curry in the first place. Ah. I see a taxi.”

  He stood. He didn’t bother to wave. The cab screeched beside us, scattering the remaining beggars back to the other side of the road.

  “Sea Harbor Hotel, please.”

  “Hold it. We’re going to your place?”

  “Remember I told you that no one knows where I’m staying? Since you walked into Hot Harry’s with your boss and it appears everyone knows where he was staying, as well as why the pair of you were in Bombay, and probably what you ate on the flight here, it’s a safe bet they now know where your hotel is too.”

  He was right. I knew he was right. Knowing did not make it more palatable.

  “Okay. We’ll go to your hotel. Where, if you don’t mind, I will take a shower while you go to my hotel and get my clothes. Or skip the hotel and hit any store still open and find me something other than a red sari and this damned tight choli thing. Jeez. No wo
nder the women of India stay thin. Who can eat while wearing this?”

  Brig gave me a long perusal, from face to toes.

  “You fit quite nicely into that. I do have to admire the way a sari hugs a lady’s curves. And you have them, luv. In all the right places, let me be addin’.”

  “Don’t start with the flattery, Mr. O’Brien. This is neither the time nor place for it. With as much trouble as you’ve gotten me in tonight, I’m not sure there’ll ever be a time or place.”

  He fluttered his long lashes. “Trouble? I got you into trouble? And just whom, might I ask, were Mahindra and Patel shootin’ at this evening? ’Twasn’t me, lass. I was an innocent bystander till you thrust your pretty face into mine in the storeroom at Hot Harry’s Saloon. Which became the first pleasant sight of the night.”

  I tried to focus on something other than the equally pleasant sight of him smiling at me in the back seat of this cab. I stared at the tote bag, then pointed to what appeared to be part of Saraswati’s lute. “Hey. You didn’t get to finish your story about Shiva’s Diva. Do we have time before we get to the hotel? Because, I swear, once we’re there and once I’m clean, I’m conking out for the night. Statue be damned.”

  “Which it is, you know, dependin’ on who’s got it.”

  I sat upright. “What do you mean? We’ve got it right now. Are we cursed?”

  He put his hand over mine and squeezed with a gentle pressure. I did not remove it.

  “We’re fine. There’s a whole set of rules behind all this. Where did I leave off?”

  “I don’t remember. I got all the stuff about Saraswati being pure and being the patron saint of music and speech and arts and all. Also understood that this particular statue is cursed and blessed. We never got to the why or the how.”

  “Ah. Well, then. A Portuguese sculptor from the seaport of Chaul carved Shiva’s Diva sometime in the seventeenth century. It was supposed to be placed in Parvati’s Temple. Parvati was Shiva’s main wife. Since Shiva the creator god liked Saraswati’s music, the idea was that Parvati would be kind to the lesser goddess, Saraswati, and treat her as though she were her own daughter.”