Page 127 of Kane

“Yeah. So, I have a situation. I was hoping you might be able to help me out.”

Another pause. “What manner of situation, and how may I assist you?”

“Anjalee was kidnapped from the mall by the man she refused to marry. I have a license plate number and I’m hoping you have a way of tracking it, so I can go get her.”

“Anjalee was kidnapped.” He repeats it, monotone.

“Yeah, man.”

“You are not joking.”

“No, I’m not.”

Another pause. “I need the geographical coordinates of the last place the vehicle in question was seen, the name of the mall, and obviously the license plate number.” He pauses again. “Correction. I only need to know which mall. I can find the coordinates myself. It will be much faster.”

I tell him the mall we were at and the plate number, and I immediately hear typing—machine-gun fast. “Should I let you go so you can focus?”

A long pause. “No.” This is distracted. “A moment, please.”

I stay quiet. There’s typing.

“There you are.” More typing. “The vehicle is registered to a shell company, but the shell structure is rather clumsy—the primary shareholder in question is Jiwan Vardhamana.”

“That’s the guy. The fuckhole who kidnapped her. Or had her kidnapped. Highly doubt the bastard did anything himself.”

“Out of curiosity, would it be better if he had?”

I actually laugh. “I guess not. But if you’re gonna do bad shit, at least have the balls to do the dirty work yourself.”

“He is a rather unpleasant individual, it seems.”

“Not to be rude or ungrateful, but I don’t care what he’s like, man, I just want my girl back. I need to know where he took her so I can kick some ass and take her home where she belongs.”

“I am multitasking. I have software tracking the vehicle. As the software does its work, I am researching this Jiwan Vardhamana. I should have results for you in another few minutes.”

“You just had this software lying around?”

“Certainly not. I have another program which operates on similar parameters, and I merely tweaked the coding on the fly to perform the search in question.”

“Oh. Well, shit.”

“It is not as impressive as it sounds. I was doing this kind of thing in high school.”

“Well it’s impressive to me, I couldn’t even type half that fast, much less code shit.”

“And I could not go into a combat zone and come out alive. We all have different skills and experiences.”

“True enough. So, tell me about him.”

“Thirty years old. Born into a wealthy family in Mumbai. Made some risky investments as a very young man playing around with his father’s capital, and was the recipient of good fortune. His investments paid colossal dividends, rather by accident, if I were to surmise a guess at the situation. In an attempt to reproduce the event, it appears he fell in with a rather wrong crowd—a Mumbai version of the mafia. Organized crime. This seems to have appealed to him more than honest investment or other business opportunities, and now he is the business front for a rather extensive criminal empire.”

I glance at Rev—he’s as stunned as I am. “You discovered all this in a matter of minutes?”

“Information is easy to acquire if you have the means and the will.”

“Is Rohit Sharma in on the criminal stuff?”

“A moment. Rohit Sharma…Rohit Sharma.” More typing. “It does not appear so, upon a cursory inspection of his operations. He appears to be a legitimate businessman, focusing on real estate development. He has extensive holdings in Mumbai, Singapore, Tokyo, Hong Kong, and is making inroads here in the States, with more recent acquisitions and projects in LA, New York, Austin, and Las Vegas.” Another pause. “That is Anjalee’s father?”