Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine. Vol. 133, Nos. 3 & 4. Whole Nos. 811 & 812, March/April 2009

“And the weather — rain! Mohit, it was pouring down, no?”

“Yes,” he said. “Yes, it was raining.”

“So,” said Sohel with satisfaction, always keen to find plots and conspiracy in any event. “How, then, could the spark ignite?”

Mohit glanced at the charcoal fire, now extinguished to conserve fuel, and raised an eyebrow.

“Yes, yes, surely, with a match.” Sohel ran his fingers around his bowl, cleaning it, and nodded. “Are you even listening? I think you need to ask questions.”

Mohit considered. “Why?”

“Not of me! Ask, who gained by Hasan’s death?”

“No one.” Mohit sank back. “But many lost.”

“No.” Sohel raised a finger. “Someone has Hasan’s money.” He paused. “Your money.”

“My money,” Mohit repeated. He felt again the accusing glare of Hasan’s widow.

Darkness came with its accustomed quickness. The men rinsed their plates in streams of water coursing off the corrugated iron and entered their room, five square meters of packed dirt and a rough, splintery platform on which they slept. A murmur of other tenants came through the woven mats that served as interior partitions.

Standing, taking a few steps — the movement had stirred something inside Mohit. He looked at his bare pallet for a long moment, then turned back to the door.

“Where are you going?” Sohel sounded surprised.

“You are right.” Mohit acknowledged Sohel’s gratified expression, just visible in the murk. “The dacoit who robbed Hasan’s house — perhaps he simply took advantage of the opportunity. Perhaps it was organized, somehow. Either way, he took what is mine.”

“But... how will you find him?”

Mohit hesitated. Men drifted through Bhatiary by the tens of thousands, and missing fingers distinguished someone no more uniquely than missing teeth.

“I don’t know,” he said finally. A sense of resolution grew within him, at first faint and now increasing. “But I have nothing else to do.”

Sohel reached out to hold his arm, a light, hesitant gesture. “You are — I am sorry to say this, but you are behaving oddly. I know, the shock, Hasan’s death, your money, yes. Please.” He paused. “Do not make this worse for yourself. I should not have suggested absurd theories.”

Mohit grunted and pulled away. He felt Sohel watching him as he stepped back out into the rain.

It’s my life, he felt like saying. It’s not the money, it’s my life.

When Mohit first arrived at Chittagong, he would sometimes spend a few takas gambling — a casual wager on a kabaddi match, or maybe a numbers bet, bought from the same fellow who sold Bangla Mad moonshine. He stopped after seeing another Ghorarchari, a few years older, lose his entire savings on a national cricket test. The man disappeared two days later, either just ahead of his Thuggee creditors or a few unfortunate steps behind. Conveniently, the fasting month of Ramadan had just begun, and Mohit foreswore all games as well as the usual food and drink. He was not often tempted after that.

But he knew where to go. In the jammed lanes of Bhatiary no one had privacy or secrets. Organized vice was run out of a shack alongside the “cinema,” where members of the same gang screened Bollywood DVDs on a television screen before roughmade wooden benches. Along with others too poor to pay the admission, Mohit occasionally loitered in the lane alongside, underneath a bedraggled string of colored lights illuminated when the generator was running. Sometimes a gap might appear in the blackout plastic tied to the walls. When the police were absent, pornographic videos slipped into the schedule, their indistinct soundtracks both fascinating and embarrassing to the eavesdroppers.

Tonight Mohit ignored the moviehouse and went straight to the entrance next-door, which was overseen by a well-fed thug who nodded him to the door.

“I would see Chauhan saheb,” Mohit said.

The man’s gaze, which had wandered away, flicked back. “Would he know you, then?”

“No.”

“Well.” The man shrugged.

Yesterday Mohit would have retreated; yesterday he would never have come this far. Now, in the dark, his future demolished as thoroughly as one of the broken ships themselves, he found himself not just emboldened but reckless.

“It is about the men who died,” he said.

The gunda frowned. “Dead men,” he said. “So many of them, no?”

“The cutter, Hasan.”

“Ah.” After a long pause, the man stepped back and pushed open the door with one hand.

“At the carrom table,” he said. “Don’t interrupt the game.”

Inside benzene lamps cast dull light on a scattering of tables and perhaps twenty men. Several sat along one wall, drinking tari from unlabeled, recycled bottles. Rain pattered on the metal roof, eased, came down hard again. A roistering group in the corner laughed loudly, arms around each other’s shoulders. Mohit smelled sweat and oil and faint, bitter smoke.