"I'll need you to pick up a new girl from the airport tomorrow."
"As you say, boss. Domestic or international?"
"International. She will be coming in from Bangkok. Photo dekh lo (see the photo)."
I leaned over and took a look at the photo he was showing me on his phone screen. It showed a lovely girl with olive skin and shiny black hair wearing a denim top. I had been working with the old man - 'Daddy' as his colleagues in the film industry called him - for just over three years. He might be old, but he was a horndog all the same. Every so often he would meet some woman and bring her to Bombay for a week or two, have his way with her, and send her back. East European or Russian women, as often as not, with the occasional oriental. His wife and children never suspected a thing. Or perhaps they did, it's hard to tell.
I had started as a valet, more a driver than anything else, but of late he had been trusting me with tasks on my own. Driving his filmy contacts around. Agents, sometimes, his real estate buddies at others. Oh, Daddy was into a bunch of stuff, and most of it, I was pretty sure, was illegal, but that was none of my business. As long as I kept quiet and did what he told me to, I got paid.
"What time's the flight, boss?"
"Karkera will tell you. Take her from Airport to the Goregaon flat. And listen, Shah. Look after this one, yeh special hai."
As I turned onto the Airport road the next day, I wondered what was special about this one. Not his first Thai girl, and not the best looking either, but maybe she had shown him some special skills. I could only speculate.
I spotted her almost immediately - large suitcase, shirt shirt, black skirt. Looking almost like an air-hostess.
"Daddy sent you?" she asked, in accented English when I approached her.
"That's right. Nithyanala, right?"
