Excerpt from the chapter The Lone Man at the Table
“Oh, you haven’t seen him yet? He’s already on his fourth drink this afternoon, probably many more to go before he leaves late at night.” The waiter pointed toward a small table near the bar area, where a group of standing customers were making it hard to identify the lone figure seated there.
The Kairali Club team members were a little confused, having expected Punnoose to be surrounded by his usual entourage. Instead, all they could see at the table was a man sitting alone, drinking by himself. It was clear that he was not expecting a lot of people to join him that day, or he would have been sitting at a larger table. He looked like a sad figure, and the club members were somewhat deflated, but they did not want that feeling to take over and make them lose focus. They took in what they saw and were now a little relieved because they were dealing with a much weaker enemy than the one they had come looking for. They stood up and walked toward him together, even though they still had no clear idea how to confront him once they reached his table.
When the Kairali Club team stood around Punnoose’s table and waited for him to lift his head and recognize them, the nearby customers noticed the unusual scene unfolding there. Local strongmen roughing people up and occasional fights between drunken patrons were not uncommon in that seedy bar. But a group like the Kairali Club team—now middle-aged, clean-cut, well dressed, and somewhat out of place—circling a desolate man sitting there looked like a scene out of a Malayalam crime thriller from the 1990s. The waiter who had served the Kairali Club team, genuinely believing they were there to meet Punnoose as long-lost friends, came closer and stood silently and uneasily, as if offering himself to defuse the tension in the air. It didn’t look like a reunion, a casual meeting, or a meeting to close some local real estate deal, as the waiter had wrongly assumed based on his earlier conversation with PK.
When Punnoose finally raised his head, he saw Hari and PK standing in front of him.
“So, you’ve come back?” He addressed Hari first. “I thought you settled the score at the funeral.”
There was sarcasm in his voice, a clear reference to Hari roughing him up at Abbas’s funeral.
“Happy to see everyone here. Sorry, I don’t have enough room for all of you to sit,” Punnoose continued.
PK slammed his hands flat onto the sticky table, leaning over the empty glasses in front of Punnoose. PK’s escalation was a little awkward and dramatic, but, in that situation, there was little chance of PK having a smoother conversation with Punnoose, as they had never even spoken to each other before.
“We didn’t come for a drink, Punnoose. We came for answers about Navas.”
Punnoose swirled the amber liquid in his glass, feigning a slow, easy sip before looking up.
“Is that right? I’m so glad that the great Kairali heroes, the heartthrobs of Chowara, finally found the time to check on that boy after twenty years. How can I help?”
Punnoose might have looked weak, but he had definitely dribbled the ball into the Kairali Club team’s half and forced them to defend, and PK was right there to win it back.
“Drop the act,” PK snapped. “We know about the monthly payments you make to Mammad to keep him mum. Does that clear your conscience for putting his son in a coma? Or is that the going rate for keeping the police away from you and your biker gang?”
Punnoose slowly stood up, faced PK, and said sternly, “I know you were a big shot in the police department. But don’t interrogate me like a petty thief. I don’t owe you any answers. You’ve disturbed my peaceful evening of sitting here and enjoying my drink, and so I’m getting out of here.”