Chapter One

 Stakeout. Is that what it’s called these days?

        I looked at the watch and found out, impressively at these times and age, that I was able to gauge that it was 3.15pm despite the fact that it had needles in them. I am literate, mom.

       Why not CCTV, dammit! You old fashioned punks. Relax, Shankaran, you took the job, you sit your ass out in there.

       It’s getting hot. A cop car passed by and recognised me. I recognised the driver. He nodded and I showed him the finger. He laughed and drove off.

       There’s only so much cool my trusty old Jag’s air-conditioner can deliver. It’s an old car, XJ6, a ’74 model. I loved the car, and it was only a year younger than me. One relationship that lasted long, except, maybe her affair with the mechanic.

      A stray dog appeared within my sight (180 degrees, I am not a chameleon). It’s a mongrel. Yes, I was so bored that I actually made it out as a Mongrel. It could be a pitbull, bot no, Shankaran, the bored private eye wants it to be known as Mongrel.

      It sprinted over, and suddenly disappeared from my vision. Goddam you, Fido. I leaned out slightly and there it was doing its business on my tire. I gave a mighty honk, a honk to end all honks, and the stream of urine turned to jet power and swished the goddamn Mongrel out of side into the bush besides the road. Good riddance.

      What am I doing here? Why am I here? Who am I? Why did Fido chose my car, and there was a frickin’ fire hydrant nearby, to do his business? Well, Shankaran, you are a dick that’s why. You are here because you are a dick.

       I recall the disgust in a lawyer’s face few months back when I told him that I was a private dick.

      “Eww, peeping in other people’s personal lives. Digging up dirt. That’s a terrible job. How you can you live with yourself,” she said.

       “Actually, I live with a cat,” I said.

       But it’s my cat, Ray, that almost always seemed to be disgusted with what I was doing. I remember encountering it one rainy day in my apartment.

       “Come on, Ray. Spit it out,” I said. The black Persian just looked at me pitifully.

       “Bounce it off, Ray, come on,” I said. Ray looked slightly disgusted but controlled it with a twitch of his ‘tache.

       “Come on Raymond. Speak now or forever hold your frickin’ piece, whatever it is”. My mom would have been proud of my intonation. The goddamn cat just wiggled its ass and layed its weary, pitiful looking, disgusted head down.

       I couldn’t take the non-verbal abuse further and grabbed a beer from the fridge.

       3.30pm.

       One of the perks of this job is that you get to do nothing. You get paid to do nothing. You do surveillance, grab couple of pictures, yawn a lot, step out of the car if you need to follow the target, and then come back and warm your ass. Private dick. Wrong anatomy. Ass warmer more like it.

       Most work are done over the phone, and with more and more information appearing over the Internet, you are half armchair dick. You get to be your own computer expert, none of those assistance you see in movies typing furiously without using the mouse. It’s all there online, your hacking solutions, your Google Earth, everything.

       Suddenly, I felt very old. Years ago, you have to bribe some computer expert to do hacking and stuff. Your GPS was the petrol station clerks. And it takes months to gather some information that I can now get in minutes through my laptop and my smartphone.

       Gosh I’m getting old. Time to move on, Shankaran. Enough with this. But then, what else can I do? Security guard? Fuck you.

       The USJ houses mostly looked alike. But this one was renovated and made to look like millions. It does, being at the corner and all. Pushpa and her husband really made use of every inch of land available and got concrete and rooftop over them.

       From a distance, a black Mercedez, S series, not too old, slowed down in front of the house. I grabbed my camera and started snapping. Snapitty, snap, snap. Well, the digital camera was set to not emit any snapping sound, so I made the sound myself. Snapitty, snap, snap. So, Shankaran, if you own an ultra-modern silent car, would you make the “brrrrr….” sound as you drive?

       The car switched off the engine and a man stepped out. Middle aged, between late 40s and early 50s, of Indian extract and he was really scanning the place. At one point he saw my car, and the reflection of the tree branch and leaves should cut his view off from me.

       But he did stared at my car for sometimes. He started to walk over, and I gently shifted the stick to reverse. He stopped suddenly. The passenger side of the car opened and woman stepped out.

       She stopped him. There was a brief calm exchange and both of them walked towards the house. The man pulled out some keys, and opened the gate. The woman, also of Indian extract, but way younger than him, walked in with the key.

       The man got back to his car and drove the car into the porch. He got out and followed the woman, who had just opened the front door and stepped in.

       So, Shankaran, finally. Now’s the time, ey? Or do you want to wait a little bit longer, get into the heat of the things?

       I grinned and looked at my watch. Well, one thing is for sure, they are not the owners of the house and I was hired to figure that part out. In a short moment, things are about to get ugly. I grabbed the very warm beer from the holder and gulped down the rest of that shit.

       Ten minutes, Shankaran? It shall be so.