Criminal Karma

by Steven M. Thomas

  Before long, we came to Wave Crest. Antonio’s restaurant was halfway between the boardwalk and Pacific Avenue. Two men were talking by the entrance. The older one, about sixty, was dressed like a waiter, in black pants and a white shirt. He had thick, wavy gray hair and a drooping mustache. The second man looked even more Italian than the first, with an aquiline nose, olive complexion, and dyed black hair slicked straight back. He was wearing a dark, expensive-looking suit. When he smiled, his capped teeth and shark’s eyes looked familiar.

  “Who are those guys,” I asked Budge.

  “The old guy is Gianni,” Budge said. “The other guy is that crook Discenza. He’s the s.o.b. behind that hotel and marina they’re trying to build.”

  “What’s he doing down here?”

  “He owns Antonio’s,” Budge said. “You guys go on without me. I want to ask Gianni something. I’ll catch up with you.”

  Mary, Oz, and I walked a few blocks farther south to Westminster.

  “We’re going to peel off here,” I said to Ozone. “You want to walk back to the ashram with us and see if you can talk to Baba?”

  “No, I’ll wait for Budge,” Ozone said. “If you see Mr. Baba, tell him I said hello.”

  After we crossed Pacific Avenue, I looked back and saw Ozone standing at the curb on the west side, waving to us like a passenger at the rail of a cruise ship, setting sail on a voyage from which he would never return.

  “Bye, Rob. Bye, Mary.”

  “Bye, Oz.”

  “Goodbye!” Mary waved back at him.

  At the ashram, we went along the side of the house into the backyard. At first I thought all the karma yogis were gone, but then I noticed Johnny sitting on the bench where Mary and I had sat, facing the statue of the Virgin Mary. He was leaning forward with his elbows on his knees and his head bowed.

  At the bottom of the kitchen steps, Mary turned and kissed the corner of my mouth and looked up at me with her eyes sparkling.

  “Thank you so-o-o-o much, Robert,” she said. “I had a wonderful time!”

  Then, before I could answer or ask her for another date, she ran up the steps and disappeared into the sanctuary of the kitchen. It was a slick maneuver by an experienced girl who knew how to avoid entanglements. I was frustrated by her swift withdrawal but happy about the warmth in her voice and smile. She had enjoyed being with me and I thought I could probably coax her out again and maybe get her to try some tantra with me if time allowed.

  As I turned to go, my mind was already shifting back into crime mode, looking ahead to the meeting with Evermore and what I needed to learn there. Johnny was standing by the bench, facing the house. He raised his hand in greeting and we walked toward each other.

  “What’s up?” I said.

  “Just saying goodbye to the Lady.” He nodded his head toward the statue. His eyes were red.

  “Goodbye?”

  “Yeah, I’m through with this place.”

  “What happened?”

  “Baba and Ganesha got in a big fight. It was pretty ugly.”

  “What were they fighting about?”

  “Baba had that girl Gopi up in his room doing something to her and she started screaming and Ganesha went in there to see what was wrong. Then him and Baba started yelling at each other and Gopi ran out crying.”

  “Which one is Gopi?”

  “She is that tall skinny chick who wears her hair in a long braid that hangs down to her butt. She has black hair.”

  “What did Ganesha say to Baba?”

  “I couldn’t hear everything. I was fixing a leak in the bathroom sink down the hall and the bedroom door was closed part of the time, but from what I heard, Baba was bawling Ganesha out for coming into his room while he was doing tantra with Gopi and Ganesha said that it wasn’t tantra, it was sadism. Baba went nuts then. It was scary. He was snarling like an animal. He threatened to expel Ganesha from the ashram and said he would use his siddhis to destroy him spiritually, some shit like that. It was a real mess.”

  He looked around at the garden. “I love this place. It’s kind of like I found God here. When Swami Sankarananda was alive, it was a little bit of heaven on earth. But that shit today was too much for me. There is something wrong with Baba. He sounded crazy. He scares me. I don’t want to tell you what to do, but if I was you, I’d find some other place to learn yoga.”

  How’d it end up?”

  “Ganesha sounded pretty shaken up, but he stood his ground. He told Baba that unless he stopped his left-handed practices and returned to true Vedanta he was going to call the swamis in New York and tell them what was going on out here.”

  “What did Baba say to that?”

  “That took the wind out his sails. He quit yelling and started trying to convince Ganesha that nothing wrong was going on and that he was going to get himself in trouble if he called New York. He said that he was an enlightened master and that Ganesha was supposed to obey him and something about Gopi’s ego consciousness and attachment to her body, that it had to be reduced for her to advance spiritually. Sounded like a crock to me. One of them shut the door after that and I didn’t hear anything else.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  “I guess I’ll try the Ramakrishnas. They have a pretty nice place in Hollywood, right by the freeway.”

  “Good luck.” We shook hands. “Thanks for filling me in.”

  “Take care, man.”

  As he disappeared around the corner of the house, the backdoor opened and one of the flower girls came down the steps. She was wearing tight black stretch pants, a red blouse, and red high heels, clothes more suitable for clubbing than meditation. She gave me an empty look as she went along the flagstone path into the side yard. Her pupils were huge.

  I waited a few moments, then went to the corner and peeked around in time to see her walking up to a gleaming XJ16, the most expensive Jaguar on the road. The tough guy I’d met the night before was leaning against the red car with his back toward me, talking to the driver through his open window. The driver was wearing a real estate salesman’s blue blazer and a black toupee. He handed some cash out the window. While Namo counted the money, the driver stared at the girl getting into his car with a look of lust so naked that his face took on the raw lividity of a skinned animal.

  So the girls did outcalls as well as in-calls in the little rooms upstairs. I was surprised to see the operation so out in the open. Either Baba was getting reckless or he had police protection. Even if he had protection, his world was starting to wobble. His patroness was losing patience with him, his aide-de-camp was threatening to turn him over to the spiritual authorities, and I was closing in on his two most valuable possessions.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  I could hear Candyman and Pete arguing as I went up the front steps. When I pushed the door open, they were squared off in the middle of the shabby living room, on the verge of physical violence. Budge was standing to one side with a grim look on his face.

  “I want my goddamn money I worked for!” Candyman shouted.

  “Negative!” Pete shouted back, belligerent, looking up at his taller housemate. “I told you we haven’t been paid for that particular job yet.”

  “Then where you get the money for them new boots, huh?”

  “An old shipmate came into port and paid me back some money he owed me.”

  “Bullshit! No old shipmate of yours would have anything to do with your sneaky ass. Where’d you get the money to eat in Antonio’s?”

  “All that dope you did must of eat up your brain,” Pete said. “How many times I got to tell you? I wasn’t eating in there. I was talking business with Gianni, trying to find some work for you two swabbies so you don’t end up on the streets.”

  “No you wasn’t,” Budge said.

  Pete and Candyman swiveled their heads to look at him.

  “I asked Gianni if he had any work for us. Said I was following up for you. He didn’t know what I was talking about, Pete. He said his
cousin Carmen does all his work.”

  “The old wop must be getting senile,” Pete said. “He told me he was taking bids for a new patio.”

  Candyman took a half step toward Pete and leaned down, nose to nose. His coffee-colored hands were balled up at his sides.

  “Gimme my goddamn money,” he said.

  “Take it easy, guys,” I said. I didn’t want a blood-spattering brawl.

  Pete gnawed on his lower lip, looking into Candyman’s bloodshot eyes for several tense seconds, then flinched.

  “You want your money? I’ll give you your money, all right.” His face was red and furious. He yanked his wallet out and pulled out a thick sheaf of bills. Candyman’s eyes bulged. Pete peeled off five fifties and slapped them into the ex-junkie’s hand. Candy counted them quickly and shook his head.

  “Thirty more,” he said. “Budge and me both worked thirty-five hours at eight. That’s two-eighty apiece.”

  “I don’t pay for beer breaks,” Pete said.

  “Where’d you get all that money?” Budge said, awed. From where I stood it looked like the compact ex-sailor had a couple of thousand dollars in his hand.

  “I’m moving up in the world,” he said. “Too bad you won’t be going with me.”

  “Don’t be mad, Pete,” Budge pleaded. “We just want our money. There’s nothing wrong with that, is there? We got bills to pay, too.”

  “Here’s your money, you big corked-up bastard,” Pete said viciously, handing Budge some bills. “It’s the last you’ll get from me. You like talking to people so much, you can find your own work from here on out. The both of you are off my crew.”

  “Don’t be calling me names, man,” Budge said, thrusting out his big chest. “Um not gonna be a bastard, now.” His macho football player self had overcome his economic fear.

  “I don’t give a shit what you are,” Pete said. “I’m through with you. I’m moving out of this dump on the fifteenth. You sink or swim on your own.”

  “Where you moving?” Budge said, surprised.

  “That particular information ain’t your business,” Pete said. “But you better be looking for a new place, too.”

  “Why?” Budge asked.

  “Take my word for it,” Pete said, maliciously. “You’re all going to be in the street.” He looked at me. “That includes you and your smart-ass sidekick.”

  “How do you know?” I said.

  He sneered. “I got my sources. You aren’t the only smart guy around here.”

  “You pay this month’s rent?” Candyman demanded.

  “I’ll give the bitch the money tomorrow.”

  “You better.”

  Pete stalked out of the living room into the kitchen. A moment later the back door slammed, stirring the rats in the cupboards.

  “He’s full of shit,” Candyman said, counting his fifties again. “He don’t know what’s gonna happen. He ain’t nuthin’ but a bum like the rest of us.”

  “Yeah,” Budge said, still stung by the “bastard” remark. “He’s always riding us to keep the place shipshape but he’s the biggest slob in the house. He don’t even flush the toilet after he goes. I went in the head the other day after he came out and there was a turd as long as your arm floatin’ in the can.”

  “You don’t think he knows what he’s talkin’ ‘bout, do you, Rob?” Candyman said.

  “I guess we’ll find out.”

  Upstairs, I took a quick shower and put on clean clothes: gray slacks, a long-sleeve white pima-cotton dress shirt, black leather walking shoes that were comfortable but looked dressy, and my black leather jacket. The meeting with Evermore was critical. Time was running out. The lawyer would be bringing the diamonds back from the desert in a little more than twenty-four hours and our base of operations seemed to be getting shaky. I didn’t know exactly what to make of Pete’s mysterious malevolence and threatening prediction about the house, but they added to my sense of urgency.

  I glanced in Reggie’s room on my way back downstairs but there was no sign of him. The living room was empty too. Budge and Candyman were either on their way to the liquor store or just now sitting down on a couple of stools at Mulligan’s on the boardwalk. By the time an hour went by, all their problems would be dissolved in the solvent of ethyl alcohol. They would roar with laughter and nuzzle whatever warm female flesh was next to them. Tomorrow morning, their problems would be back with an extra set of horns, but tonight they would be blissful as two of Kerouac’s beatnik Buddhas, huffing a joint in the alley behind the bar with blurry companions, rejoicing in selfless oblivion.

  I didn’t have that luxury.

  Traffic on Pacific Avenue was lighter than it had been the night before, when Reggie and I had walked to the ashram, but there were still plenty of merrymakers going to and fro in the blended light of neon and stars. I covered the dozen blocks to Evelyn Evermore’s house at a rapid pace, arriving right at six-thirty.

  The front of her two-story bungalow was in good shape from what I could see in the light from the streetlamp and her porch light. The yellow shiplap siding looked sound. The steps and veranda, railed with a white balustrade, didn’t sag or creak.

  Evermore opened the door the instant I knocked, as if she had been waiting inside with her hand on the knob. She was wearing the red satin outfit she had worn on Friday night, which jarred me a little bit. There was a fruity tang of alcohol on her breath when she spoke.

  “Right on time,” she said with a glowing smile. “I like that.”

  Behind her I could see an entry hall and living room with dark-stained oak flooring, both empty. Her new home was unfurnished.

  “I hate to be late,” I said. “It makes me feel incompetent.”

  “Oh, no,” she said, stepping out onto the porch. “You strike me as very competent. The timing isn’t actually so great, though. I wasn’t thinking when we spoke earlier, but most of the work is on the outside. I don’t know if you will be able to see enough in the dark to give me a bid.”

  “Let’s take a look. If I have to come back in the daytime, that’s not a problem.”

  “Are you sure? It wasn’t very good thinking on my part.”

  “I’m sure.” I couldn’t be certain that I would find out everything that evening I needed to know for the robbery and I liked having the option of a return visit the next day open up like a photo album in front of me. “What needs to be done?”

  She walked me around the house, using a small silver flashlight to point out several areas where bushes had grown against the house, holding moisture and rotting some of the siding. I leaned on the wall at the third place she showed me, feeling it flex inward.

  “Part of the frame is bad, too,” I said.

  “Is that a big job?”

  “Depends on how much of the structure needs to be replaced. No way of telling for sure until the siding is removed.”

  In the back, we walked up onto a wooden deck that ran the width of the house and overlooked the Linnie Canal. It was surrounded by the remains of a balustrade like the one that enclosed the front veranda. Some of the balusters had rotted at the top and bottom and fallen out. Others were leaning. The whole structure was uneven and wobbly.

  “This is probably the biggest job,” she said. “What do you think it would cost to tear all this out and build a new deck and dock?”

  “I’ll have to see it in the daytime.”

  “I’m embarrassed to have anyone over the way it is now,” she said. “But I think it will be a beautiful place to entertain when it’s fixed up. I just love these old canals.”

  Strands of twinkle lights, stretched across neighboring docks and patios, reflected brightly in the black water. Canoes and paddleboats bobbed gently, and a mother duck with half a dozen yellow ducklings paddled past en route to some reeds where they would spend the night. A couple of houses down, a white wooden footbridge arched over the canal, adding to the storybook atmosphere.

  “It is a beautiful spot,” I said. “Is there anything e
lse that needs to be done? Anything inside?” I was itching to root through a drawer or two while she got me a glass of water or used the bathroom.

  “There are a few small jobs inside,” she said. “But the main stuff is all outside. After the repairs, the house will need to be painted and it may need a new roof, too—one of your specialties. It’s silly to try and look at that in the dark, though. I should have asked you come earlier, while it was still daylight.”

  “I don’t mind coming back,” I said again.

  “I know,” she said, softening her voice and standing close to me so that her breasts just touched my chest. “I just hate to waste your time. Could I possibly make it up to you by taking you out to dinner? If you’re not busy, I mean. I’m sick of ashram food. I would really love a good piece of fish.”

  I wondered if this was what she had in mind all along. Not that I cared. Taking her out to dinner, having a chance to talk, was perfect for me.

  “I’d love to go to dinner,” I said. “But you’ll have to drive. I walked over from where I’m staying at the beach, so I don’t have my car.”

  “That’s no problem,” she said, putting her hand on my upper arm and giving it a squeeze. “We can take mine.”

  The back door was locked, so we walked around to the front. She went in to get her keys and a wrap, while I stepped back and looked at the house from the curb. Sometimes I wished I still was in the remodeling business. I missed the pleasures of carpentry and concrete work, of analyzing and repairing structures so that they were better-looking and stronger than they had been to begin with.

  Evermore’s white Lincoln was parked on the street, two houses down.

  “Do you mind driving?” she said as we walked to the car.

  “Not at all.” Taking the keys from her manicured hand, I unlocked the passenger door and held it open while she got in, then walked around and slid in beneath the oversize wheel, taking the spot Jimmy Z had occupied two days before on the journey to Indian Wells. The bench seat was light-blue leather, soft and smooth and well conditioned. When I turned the key, the electronic dash display lit up like a video game and the Bose stereo popped on, playing saxophone jazz full of tender emotion. The intimate air was scented with Evelyn’s lilac perfume.