Kali's Heel

By Carolyn Brown Heinz

In this first of the Annie Gilbert mystery series, Carolyn Brown Heinz masterfully fuses history, art, anthropology, and black magic.

A strange black stone is given to Annie Gilbert to carry into India at a turning point in her life. Her mission is to deliver it to a young woman ascetic in the holy town of Rishikesh in the Himalayan foothills, where she discovers a swami building a cult around a priceless image of the goddess Kali. When she arrives, the young woman is missing, others are being pulled into late-night rituals, and a team of antiquities smugglers is after the ancient goddess. This novel richly exposes the underside of religious devotion and the lust and abuse that often accompany it.

Against the backdrop of exotic India, Annie battles a charismatic adversary and grapples with a mystery that pulls her deeper into an ancient landscape of classical Indian art, secret passageways, and erotic rituals. Drawing from an India past and present, Annie races to find answers and decide whom to trust.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Imprintli
• Release date: Aug 9, 2013
• ISBN: 9780989489195

Carolyn Brown Heinz

Carolyn Brown Heinz is a cultural anthropologist and emerita professor of Anthropology, California State University, Chico. Her teaching and research areas are South Asia, religion, social organization, culture history, and women’s cultures. Carolyn is the author most recently of Asian Cultural Traditions (Waveland Press, 1999, 2018).

Book preview

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Chapter One

Delhi

At two o’clock in the middle of a steamy night, Annie Gilbert has her first encounter with India. In her luggage is an object that may or may not be contraband.

She is not prepared for the shock of a May night. Exiting from the icy arrival hall, she gasps for air as her lungs fill with steam and a sticky layer of earth and diesel fumes quickly settles on her skin. She stumbles forward, pushing her luggage cart out through the glass doors into India.

A mob is on hand vying for the dollars and euros of arriving passengers. She is accosted by a man with an enormous belly, pushing waves of sodden air before him. "Madam, where you go? I take you, chip." She shakes her head, he shrugs and disappears.

You got hotel, beautiful Miss? I have good one for you. Very clean, low price. A sweaty-faced man grabs her two suitcases and heads into the street where every kind of unsavory vehicle jostles for space.

Please, put those down.

Madam, I give you good price on taxi. What you pay?

Put them down!

Where you from, Madam? he asks with a grin. "Lawn-dawn? Um-reeka? I have family both places. You know Chick-kago?"

She spots a shiny clean BMW pulled up at the curb. Is it available? The uniformed driver holds a placard with a name scribbled on it--no doubt despatched by one of New Delhi’s luxury hotels for someone important traveling on an expense account. She has a reservation at the Green Hotel which is definitely chip but highly recommended on Travelocity. The BMW is not for her.

A man in a turban, a Sikh, approaches her next, and because he seems courteous and honest she takes a chance. Do you know the Green Hotel? She shows him the page from the website with its little colored map.

What is address? He leans in for a close look. Ah. Near Chandni Chowk. Very good location. Near my Gurdwara. And Jama Masjid, very famous mosque. Yes, I can take you there. I know this place.

Relieved, she gives herself into his care.

She settles into a wide back seat with torn leather cushions and no seat belts. Near the edge of the airport, he stops to let a second man into the car.

My brother, I am just giving a lift to home, he explains, leaning back and waving his arm at the new arrival. They chat in Hindi the rest of the long ride, leaving her free to form powerful impressions of India’s capital on the chaotic ride into the heart of the city. Horns, diesel, traffic lights diffused through air pollution, stop-start-stop-start-screech: by forceful footwork and vigorous horn work he makes his way through a form of urban life she has never seen before.

This is Chandni Chowk, most famous street in Delhi! the driver finally shouts. Even at this hour, the sidewalks and street edges are thronged with strollers, beggars, sleepers, sick dogs, rickshaws. A few vendors and tea stalls seem to be closing down. Every foot of forward progress risks someone’s life and limb. Overhead, dense tangles of electrical wires buy or steal power to the large buildings nearly hidden from view by the life on the street.

They turn into a narrow lane lined by an iron fence with carts and bikes tied to it, where whole families are asleep on the asphalt. A young man stands watch, leaning against the fence, a glow from the small bidi he is smoking. The driver rolls down his window to shout:

"Bhai sahib, Green Hotel kahan hai?" The bidi-smoker frowns, gazes around, waves his arms behind him, points up, and there is a large neon sign atop a building—‘Green Hotel’—that can be seen from a mile away but not from the nearest street.

She checks into the Green Hotel. There she finds a tiny but functional lobby and an elevator to her third floor room with a bed that could sleep a family of five. Its single other feature is one straight-back chair. A tall window overlooks a dead gray space in the heart of the building, and beneath it, an air conditioner rattles cold air into the room. In the bathroom there’s a western-style toilet with a faucet near the floor beside it. A shower head protrudes from the opposite wall, and there’s a sink with a drainpipe that stops one inch from the floor drain. Altogether a depressing setting for the launch of her new life.

The hotel’s web page promises free wifi. She opens her laptop, her only contact with any world she has known. She tries to get a signal. Nothing.

What have I done? she asks herself with dismay at 4 am in this utterly foreign city—in a no-star hotel room racked by a battered air conditioner laboring to create an icy breeze from a blank window. She thinks about her soon-to-be ex-husband, Ted. Would he have been a comfort, if he had come? She had learned, over two decades, to rely on his strength rather than her own. What would be different if he were here? There would still be no internet, though he might storm down to the desk to demand why not. Then she would have to patch things up with the staff in the morning, smiling in excess, feeling apologetic. No, Ted wouldn’t like anything about India. She was sure of that.

She opens her suitcase to pull out a nightshirt, and there beneath it is the red silk object that has brought her here. It’s about ten inches long and tied with jute string. She unties it. It looks like nothing much: just a chunk of carved black marble, smooth on one side, slightly ragged on the other; an isosceles triangle of stone. It gives off a faint scent of sandalwood and camphor. She only knows a little bit about its history: found in a field near Dehra Dun, then carried to Rishikesh for a time. It has had a trip to America and is now coming home. It has really gotten around. Whether it is an antiquity, and this carrying around and crossing international borders has been legal, she can’t say.

She carefully rewraps the stone in the red silk and stashes it back in her suitcase. Then she puts on the nightshirt, washes her face in cold water, and crawls into the family-size bed where she instantly falls asleep.

The trip—with the stone—was dreamed up by her best friend Karen, a professor of anthropology at the University of Washington. The previous summer Karen had been interviewing women ascetics in the holy city of Rishikesh, in the Himalayan foothills north of Delhi. As she was leaving at the end of the summer, one of these young women appeared at her door with the black stone in her backpack to plead for Karen to take it back to America with her.

Because it isn’t safe here, Shobha had said.

Intrigued, but worried about carrying a revered object like this out of India, Karen finally took it, with the understanding that she would return the following summer and bring it back. In the meantime, it would be safe in America. From what, she had no idea, and there wasn’t time to pump Shobha.

But by the next April, Karen’s return trip to India was off. She had gotten hijacked into organizing the annual meetings of the International Association of Cultural Studies, which knocked the Rishikesh trip off the calendar. And quite by chance, this coincided with Annie’s marriage breaking up.

Annie had come close to being an anthropologist herself, having reached the ABD--All But Dissertation--stage when her first and only child was born with a heart condition. That was the end of the PhD. As Annie was dealing with neo-natal surgeries, her husband Ted was beginning a political career by running for state Senate.

Good-looking, a fast talker, able to fake sincerity and spout a stream of witty diatribe against the other party, Ted beat the silver-haired incumbent by six percentage points. Annie and Ted moved to Olympia, even further from her PhD program, and as little Sam’s condition stabilized, she cast around for career alternatives. Before long she was writing for the main capital newspaper, at first cultural items—museum shows, gallery openings, community theatre—but eventually more serious pieces. Because of her insider connections, she could always get the backstories on political hijinks, and so her pieces began to take an investigative turn. Her byline became recognized, and then respected.

She uncovered a scheme to buy tracks of land forested in western red cedar, log it off, and then let the property quietly fall out of escrow. After that, some people didn’t like to see her blonde hair and blue eyes and notepad showing up in their places of business.

What blew up her marriage was the discovery that several significant hijinks traced themselves to Ted. Politicians like Ted—smart, handsome, self-loving—attract groupies, and Ted was having a second, post-adolescent, gonadal burst. At least, that’s how Annie put it during a knock-down-drag-out that culminated in her storming out one April night and driving straight to Karen’s.

I’m going to India, was the way Annie announced she was leaving Ted.

Well, how convenient. I have a mission for you, Karen replied.

And that is how Annie happens to be in Old Delhi during the very hottest month of the year with a black stone wrapped in red silk hidden in her luggage.

It happened like this. Annie was on the board of the local community theater, which every year at Halloween sponsors the Trickster’s Ball-o-ween, a safe alternative to trick-or-treating for pre- and elementary-schoolers, held in the tiny black box theatre in the hip--for Olympia--part of town. Every year toward the end of the party, round about 9 PM, the high point of the evening is reached, when Blair Witch zooms in on a broom, strobe lights flashing. Her routine is a lot of screeching and sweeping around the room to a scary sound track, then pass out gummy bears, candy spiders and worms, and popcorn balls. After that, the kids are taken home to bed, while the grown-ups stay around to party till midnight.

This year, the woman who usually plays Blair was down with the flu, and Annie got recruited at the last minute. Jeremy, the costume and make-up guy, moussed and ratted Annie’s shoulder-length hair until it stood straight out in all directions, then sprayed it solid. He rimmed her eyes and streaked her cheeks with crayon eye-liner and charcoal cremes, and Annie did a few practice swoops and cackles in the dressing room, arms spread and fingers splayed before taking her starring act to the primary school crowd in the black box. It didn’t take a lot of skill to scare the kids.

By the time the theater emptied out of parents and kids, Annie was feeling the same flu symptoms that downed the regular Blair, and she didn’t feel much like partying. She decided to go home early, take a shower to wash the gunk out of her hair, and sleep it off. Ted, she knew, was having a quiet late-night meeting with his staff because the elections were only a week away, although no one thought there was any doubt about his re-election. She drove into the driveway and stumbled into the house and up the stairs to the bedroom. It was here coming-down-with-the-flu state--a little headache, a little dizzy--that caused the misperception: somehow she and Ted were already in bed, talking post-passion about the coming election. She was seeing, or rather hearing, it from outside her body. Confused, she opened the bedroom door, and there was Ted and someone else--one of his election workers--lying in bed, stark naked. Her shock was only surpassed by theirs: a wild-haired medusa hovering in the doorway, catching them in the act.

What are you doing? Are you mad?

It’s not what you think, Ted said lamely.

At the absurdity of that, Annie gave out with a hysterical cackle inspired by her recent performance, and the girl in bed pulled the sheets over her face.

Between October and the May night that finds Annie in her Delhi hotel room, events unfolded as these political marriages in freefall do: the election won, followed by crisis management meetings among the staff, sniffing around by Annie’s journalist colleagues, denials, concessions, and the culminating televised confession of the public figure, his wife by his side. The next day she landed at her best friend’s house in Seattle, declaring she’s on her way to India.

Karen brought out the package that Shobha had given her, untying the jute strong and spreading out the red silk before Annie. Gazing at the black stone thus revealed, Karen told Annie what she knew about it. It had taken some time for her to gain the confidence of Shobha in her efforts to befriend, and then interview, the ascetic women of Rishkesh, she explained to Annie that fateful night. She was finally admitted to Shobha’s room at the ashram, with its little private shrine. There were cheap polychrome pictures of Kali that looked like calendar art or goddess pinups thumbtacked to the wall. There were other, smaller deities on a little tray, cheap pottery things, all covered in red sindur and sandalwood ash from burned-down incense. One of these objects was a rock.

A rock found in a field or while digging a pond, if it’s triangular in the least, is considered the most powerful goddess of all: a ‘self-revealing’ goddess. Shobha’s people had started out as prosperous landowners near Dehra Dun, with many acres and fields leased out to cultivators. They needed a pond to collect water for their cows and water buffalo, so they paid a crew to dig one. In the course of digging, the workers uncovered this rock. As soon as they saw it, work stopped and everyone gathered around it in astonishment and reverence.

The workers sent for the landowner, Shobha’s ancestor, and he sent for a Brahmin. The Brahmin announced that the stone was certainly the goddess herself, the most powerful kind because she showed up on her own, as if on a whim. That night the Brahmin had a dream, in which the goddess Kali appeared to him to say that she had come from Kamakhya Temple searching for her consort. The family couldn’t believe their good fortune. They took the stone and installed it in their house. And when Shobha entered the ashram, they sent it with her to protect her.

Could it have once been part of a carved image? Annie wondered.

It looks like it might have been, doesn’t it? Karen nodded, and pointed to one particularly smooth section of the base. I’ve sometimes imagined it might be a bit of arm or leg from a stone image. You know how the Muslim conquerors destroyed ‘idols’ in the thirteenth century. You see Buddhist and Hindu images with their noses and heads knocked off all the time. Well, we’ll never know, but it’s interesting to think it was maybe a goddess then, and still is.

They sit there for a while contemplating this ancient deity, exuding evocative smells of sandalwood and ferrous soil and something acrid, like kerosene.

A few weeks ago I had an email from a friend who lives in Rishikesh. She said she had a message from Shobha urging me to return it as soon as possible. Shobha assumed I was coming back this summer, which I had every intention of doing, but it isn’t working out. So … I’m hoping you will do this thing for me.

The May heat is a soggy blanket weighing on the whole city, and Annie stays in Delhi only long enough to find a bookstore and obtain a train ticket to Dehra Dun. It is hard to breathe once you leave the air conditioned Green Hotel.

Mukesh, the morning desk clerk, is cheery and helpful: Madam, for books you must certainly visit the Delhi Bookstore in Darya Ganj. It is not far. It has every kind of book in English.

Can I walk from here?

Mukesh takes a step backward as if shocked at the thought, and vigorously shakes his head. No, Madam, for such as yourself, it is not advisable. Just now I am calling you a taxi. He begins to dial.

Also, I need a train ticket to Dehra Dun. How would I do that?

Stopping mid-dial, he lays his hand on his chest. Madam! You must leave that to me! You will find it very overwhelming to do this yourself.

She doesn’t doubt that.

I will send my man. When does Madam wish to leave?

As soon as possible.

At the Delhi Bookstore she buys a guidebook, a couple of novels set in India, and a book on Hindu asceticism.

She reaches Rishkesh by the Hemkunt Express at 8 am after a thirteen hour trip from Delhi. Mukesh had purchased a sleeping berth for her. She arrived at the train station clutching a ticket printed on toilet paper, found the Hemkunt Express, and found her own name on a list glued to the side of one of the carriages. Her luggage took up almost all the footspace between facing seats, and she claimed a lower berth by putting her laptop bag on it. The upper berth was still folded tightly against the wall. By the time the train pulled out of Delhi, she was sharing this seat with a local couple and their two young children, all their luggage and bags with snacks and meals for the kids. After a while a railroad assistant came in to lower the upper berths and prepare beds. It all felt too intimate for Annie, this preparing for bed with a strange family in a space the size of her clothes closet. With the berth down, she and the husband sat hunched side by side, smiling at each other and trying to make conversation while his wife fussed with the children. His name was Romesh. Every year Romesh took his family to Rishikesh in May to the holy places, and to get away from the heat. She hoped that meant Rishikesh would be cool. Finally the family got itself settled, the two children sharing the upper berth opposite, and Romesh climbed up to his upper bed over Annie, tossed a few times, and at last there was quiet and darkness as the train chugged northward.

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Chapter Two

Antiquities

The BMW is waiting for a passenger on the British Air flight from London, which arrived shortly after Annie’s from Seattle. After a restful trip in first class, Nic Grayson makes his way through the familiar hurdles at Indira Gandhi International Airport, exiting to meet the driver from the Maurya Hotel in the embassy district where he always stays in Delhi.

Nic is in his late forties, a trim, savvy, and sophisticated traveler and businessman. He knows his way around, with the easy manners of privilege. At the Maurya, he greets the desk clerk, whom he really does remember from his previous trips, with what seems like warmth.

Welcome back, sir. Mr. Dominic Grayson III? Mr. Sanjay Mishra, says, reading from his computer screen. Executive club suite? How many nights, sir?

Six days, but perhaps longer. Incidentally, could you leave the numeral off? Not really necessary, is it? He doesn’t know how this numeral keeps turning up.

No, sir. No numeral. With a deferential smile, Mishra makes a note in the computer.

Nic’s family goes way back in India, at least six generations, to the time when a distant great-grandfather had come out to Calcutta in 1810 as a ‘writer’ for the East India Company. That ancestor had been known as simple Wm. Gray. That had been a good time to start out in India, when everything was still open and there were still undiscovered angles for getting rich. His great-great-great-grandfather had taken an interest in history and archaeology, making alliances with ambitious Brahmins and Kayasthas, the literate castes, who were willing to tie their family fortunes to the new British elite.

The angle Nic’s ancestors had figured out was antiquities. Almost any bronze or stone carving could be sold in Europe, and any fresco that could be stripped off walls could go to museums, and they began collecting everything they could get their hands on. These were packed in crates and shipped home by the score. The family business was passed down, each generation richer than the last, and Nic is the latest heir. They know everyone, with agents all over India, and they are extremely rich. Even so, it is still a small hands-on business, which Nic closely supervises, because he likes the work.

In recent decades, the antiquities trade has gone underground with the passing of protective legislation by the