Narcopolis Read Free

was wearing cowboy boots that he refused to leave at the door. I didn’t hear what the pimp said but the other man’s voice was difficult to ignore. He told the pimp that the laws of supply and demand applied everywhere, including the cesspools of the fucking Third World. You’re being childish, he said. You shouldn’t take it personally if your whores are unpopular. Ask yourself how you can remedy the situation. Could be all you need is a USP. Regular medical check-ups, that’s the answer, friend. Test result posted on the wall for all to see, but only if it’s negative. The pimp was a pockmarked giant with teeth that were too big for his lips. His mouth was open, as if he was panting, but he kept his voice even. He said, Did you call me childish? He used the same high-Hindi word the other man had used, ‘bachpana’. He could have reached over and broken his opponent in two without raising a sweat. The thing that stopped him was the expression on the other man’s face, which was serene, as if he had a gun under his shirt or at the very least a knife.
    ‘Just stoned talk,’ the man said when the dog-faced pimp had left. He was wearing a pair of headphones around his neck and I could hear strange music pumping into the air. ‘I said something, he got upset and then he calmed the fuck down. You want to know something?’
    He dropped his voice slightly, which only served as a signal to the men around us. He said: The thing to remember is one small but supremely important fact: pimps are cowards. Pimps are worthless. Pimps make their money from the weak and the diseased, from men and women whose will has deserted them, who will never fight or put up any kind of resistance, who want to die. Once you know this, that a pimp is a cowardly little fuck, there’s no problem; you can stand up to them like a man. You’ve got to face facts and the fact is life is a joke, a fucking bad joke, or, no, a bad fucking joke. There’s no point taking it seriously because whatever happens, and I mean whatever the fuck, the punch line is the same: you go out horizontally. You see the point? No fucking point.
    I thought: He’s trying to impress me. I thought: Chandulis are slaves to the pipe, which diminishes us in the world, and we make up the difference with boasts and lies.
    Then the tall man sat up and yelled across the room at Bengali. He said, ‘Can I get a pyali, boss, today sometime? I’ve been here half an hour and I’m tired of waiting.’ Someone coughed and the room became still. Bengali, very reluctantly, it seemed to me, put a pyali on Dimple’s tray.
    ‘I don’t think they like you very much here,’ I said.
    ‘Ah, fuck that, I wouldn’t come to a place like this without protection.’ He looked meaningfully at his briefcase. ‘So, where you from originally?’
    ‘Kerala, South India.’
    ‘Undu Gundu Land, I know where it is. You get any trouble?’
    ‘If I make the mistake of speaking Malayalam to the locals, yes.’
    ‘Locals? Like me, you mean? Well, not to worry, things are changing: you Southies will be okay. We’re going after bigger game.’ He dropped his voice and said, ‘Mozzies.’
    ‘Is that the new strategy, guaranteed to win friends and generate income?’
    He propped himself on an elbow to get a better look at me. ‘Chief? You should watch your mouth. Maybe you’ve got a bellyful of opium and you don’t care. Or you want to go off and you’re looking for an easy way. Or maybe your head is full of bugs, like me.’ He was smiling, a wide patronizing smile, and when he held out his hand, his grip was firm and moist. ‘ Anyway, name’s Rumi. And you?’
    ‘Dom.’
    ‘With a name like that, you’re fucked. All you have in common with these people is smoke.’
    I said, ‘What’s the music you’re listening to?’
    *
    He handed me the headphones. The sound was high-pitched, like the soundtrack of a movie in which random scenes had been strung together, or cut up and played backwards,