He nodded as he gave my story some thought. Then he asked if I could show him where we’d met in the slum.

I shook my head. “Sorry. He made me wear goggles. Motorcycle goggles. He’d taped over the inside of the lenses so I couldn’t see anything. Then he put me on the back of his bike and took me somewhere inside. I have no idea where.”

Lokhande stared me down for a long moment.

“Goggles? Sounds fishy to me. You’re not lying, are you?”

I’d told him the truth. Okay, maybe I’d withheld a key detail. The photographs. I wasn’t a photographer, so I doubted he suspected there were pictures. I’d used a borrowed camera for the interview.

I figured he’d want to see what I’d written about the meeting. Or my notes of what Bikas had said. But he surprised me. He already knew.

“So, this Bikas fellow told you he killed a CID officer?”

CID was a branch of the state police, the Criminal Investigation Department. And that was exactly what Bikas had told me.

“Yes,” said Lokhande, “we know he planted the bomb that killed that officer last year. These anti-government revolutionaries … Cowards. Sub-inspector Gokhale was a bright young man. A fine policeman.”

I risked a question about jurisdiction, even as I feared it might rile him. “Isn’t this a matter for the CID? Not the Bombay Police?”

He finished his second cup of tea and placed it on the corner of my desk. Then he moved his chair closer to me.

“I’ve made this case my business, Jacobs-ji, because I am Bala Gokhale’s mama. His uncle. He wasn’t just a fine officer. He was my sister’s only son.”

“I’m sorry for your loss, Inspector.”

He wagged his head then rose from the chair. I stood. He looked up at me, again rocking on his feet.

“Your name also turned up in the agenda of a young associate of JP Narayan,” he said. “You have all the wrong friends, Jacobs-ji.”

I feared he might wrap his arm around my neck and shake me the way he’d done to Ramu the night he arrested him. But I was too tall. And maybe the gora thing. He turned on his heel to leave instead, then stopped just as soon, glaring at Onkar. Lokhande lit into him in Marathi. I can’t say for sure what he was steamed about, but he dressed him down in his high-pitched voice. Onkar, for his part, nodded in the Indian fashion, his head wobbling from side to side, as the cop screamed at him.

Once he’d said his piece, Lokhande turned to address me one last time. “For your story on Bikas … Pity you didn’t think to take a photographer with you.”

And then he was gone.

“That was scary,” whispered Janice in my ear. “You were great, Jacobs-ji.”