Criminal Karma

by Steven M. Thomas

  If we had to do an armed robbery, I didn’t want to be squealing away from the bank in my own car. Even with stolen plates, having the model and color identified so close to where I lived would have been dangerous. If someone got the license number of the rental, the cops would trace the vehicle to Enterprise. They might even dig up a videotape that showed me signing papers at the rental counter. But they wouldn’t have my real name and they wouldn’t be able to identify me behind the hat and glasses. Driving a rental would make a burglary less risky, too.

  Reggie drove my car back to Venice from the airport and parked in one of the big lots by the beach. I rendezvoused with him there, and we moved the tools from the trunk of the Seville to the trunk of the rental. Afterward, Reggie took the Caddie to Mr. Parker’s lot while I stashed the rental on a side street near the flop.

  Reggie was sitting in the broken-down armchair in my room, draining the last swallow from a quart of Budweiser when I got back. I spread a map of West Los Angeles out on the bed and showed him where the lawyer’s office and the restaurant were.

  Outbound traffic would be light on Monday evening, but it would still take Hildebrand two hours to drive to Indian Wells, at least half an hour to do his business and two hours to drive back. If he left at four, that would put him back in Santa Monica around 8:30 p.m. If he left at five and stopped to eat on the road, he wouldn’t be back until ten or eleven. I decided to stake out the office from 7:30 on.

  Norm’s was ideal for our purposes, a big, busy restaurant with plenty of in-and-out traffic and yet one where denizens of the Los Angeles night hung out for hours on end. We could sit in a booth by the window for a long time over coffee and pie without attracting attention.

  “Once Hildebrand comes and goes, we can leave too,” I told Reggie. “We’ll go back around midnight and wait for the cops to do their drive-by.”

  The Santa Monica police patrol a given street every four hours. Once they put in an appearance, we’d have time to do the burglary and be long gone before they returned.

  “We’re gonna stick out like a sore thumb if we sit in that coffee shop all evenin’ and then come back and start hanging around after midnight,” Reggie said. “They’ll probably think we’re getting ready to knock them off.”

  “Good point. We’ll split the surveillance up. One of us can watch until Hildebrand shows with the diamonds and the other one watch for the cops later.”

  “I got dibs on the early shift,” Reggie said.

  “Suits me.” There was something I wanted to do that evening.

  “What’s this chump look like, anyway?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “What’s he drive?”

  “Don’t know that either.”

  Reggie made saucer eyes. “How am I supposed to spot the son of a bitch?”

  “It shouldn’t be a problem. The office and parking lot will be empty after six or seven o’clock. If guy in a suit shows up with a security guard between eight and eleven and goes inside for a little while and comes back out, that’s him.”

  “How am I supposed to see all that in the dark?”

  “There are lights in the parking lot.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  When we finished going over our plans, I gave Reggie the keys to the rental car and warned him not to get any phone numbers or rub jobs from the waitresses at Norm’s.

  “Don’t worry about me,” he said. “I’ll be quiet as a church mouse.”

  We walked out the front door together and shook hands on the porch.

  “Good luck,” I said. “I’ll be here from eight on. Call me as soon as he shows up.”

  “Where you going now?”

  “Over to the ashram to see what Baba Raba’s up to.”

  “Baba Raba or that tight little blonde?”

  I shrugged and smiled. “What are you going to do?”

  “Stop by Chavi’s and see if she wants to get a burger and a couple of brews at Mulligan’s.”

  “Make sure you are at Norm’s by seven-thirty, and make sure you’re sober.”

  “Yes, sir!” Reggie said, giving me the sneering salute of an insubordinate sergeant.

  The ashram was quiet when I arrived. The front door was closed but unlocked and I walked in through the foyer to the main hall. Ganesha was sitting behind the cash register in the gift shop, reading what looked like the same copy of the Bhagavad Gita he had been reading the first time I saw him. I was starting to like him. He was caught in an impossible situation, trying to maintain a legitimate ashram in the face of creeping corruption. He was lovesick over Mary and facing a crisis with Baba Raba, but he was still on the job. He was reading the right book, too.

  Seeing the orange-robed twentysomething poring over the most famous Hindu scripture, I remembered the first time that I had read the Gita, in Florida years before. It was a little book with a light-blue cloth cover, and I could feel it changing me as I turned the pages, as if I were a clay figure being resculpted into a more functional and durable form. The fact that I’d never managed to live up to the book’s highest ideals didn’t diminish its value as a source of existential guidance in the least, and I was always glad to see another human being latch on to it.

  Ganesha looked up as I walked into the shop.

  “Hey,” he said.

  “How’s it going?”

  He shook his head. “Not so great.”

  “What’s the problem?”

  Our eyes locked and I could see that he wanted to confide in someone. I had gained some stature by fixing the roof, and by being cool about his lapse in manners, but he had no reason to trust me or even think that I was truly interested.

  “It’s ashram business,” he said. “I can’t talk about it. I’m waiting for Swami Ramananda’s assistant to call me back from New York. Swami Ramananda will know what to do.” The last sentence was addressed more to himself than to me.

  “Wasn’t Ramananda a disciple of Paramahansa Yogananda?”

  “Yes!” Ganesha’s spiritual enthusiasm broke through his other concerns. “How do you know about him?”

  “He’s mentioned in a biography of Yogananda that I read one time. Is this center part of the Self Realization Fellowship?” That was the name of the stellar spiritual organization founded by Yogananda. The group had a beautiful ashram in Hollywood, a shrine in Malibu, and a domed temple on a cliff overlooking the sea in Cardiff, in north San Diego County. Swamis have even better taste in real estate than gay guys.

  “No. Ramananda studied at the feet of Yogananda when he was very young but eventually recognized Sri Brahmananda as his guru. This ashram is owned by the Divine Light Society.”

  “What is the Murshid Center for Enlightened Beings?”

  “That’s an organization Baba Raba founded. He operates it from here, but he doesn’t own the ashram.”

  “Sounds like a complicated setup.”

  “It has confused a lot of people,” Ganesha said somewhat grimly. “Baba is an ordained monk in the Divine Light Society, and Ramananda made him head of this ashram when Swami Sankarananda left his physical body two years ago. But he has his own organization, too, in which he calls himself the Murshid, which is a term for teacher that comes from Sufism. I guess he studied with some Sufi masters at one time and adopted some of their teachings. He has studied with many different teachers, including Trungpa and the Maharishi and claims to be a synthesizer of traditions.”

  “It sounds like you have some doubts about him.”

  “I didn’t at first. He has so much spiritual insight, and his siddhis are so strong. But now …” His voice trailed off and he shook his head again. “I really shouldn’t be talking about ashram business. I’m sorry. What can I do for you? Meditation doesn’t start for two hours—if we even have it tonight.”

  “I came to see Mary. Is she around?”

  His glum face fell further. “She is here but she is not available.”

  “Why?”

  “She is with Baba.”
/>   “Doing what?”

  “He is initiating her.”

  My heart sped up and I felt the way a lion does before it roars.

  “What does that mean?” I asked.

  “I don’t know exactly,” Ganesha said, annoyed. I wasn’t sure if he was irritated at me or at his own ignorance or at Baba’s shenanigans.

  “Forget ‘exactly.’ Get me in the ballpark.”

  “He is giving her a personal mantra and making her a high rank within the Murshid organization. It is supposed to be a big deal that he only does for people with great spiritual talent. Mary was all pumped up.” He sounded angry and disgusted.

  “Why her?”

  “I don’t know! I don’t know what goes on inside that organization. It doesn’t make any sense to me. She is a girl off the streets who has only been in the ashram a few months.”

  It made plenty of sense to me—and maybe to Ganesha, too.

  “Where are they?” I said.

  “They just went upstairs.”

  I turned and walked out of the shop toward the staircase.

  “You can’t go up there!” Ganesha said, following me into the hallway. “Only staff are allowed up there.”

  “What’s the hubbub, Bub?” Namo drifted out into the hallway from the library, where he had apparently been lurking. He blocked the base of the stairs with his lumpy body.

  “We already been through this once, haven’t we, Bub?” Namo asked me.

  “Get ready to go through it again,” I said.

  Namo grinned. He was missing his top canine tooth and the one behind it on both sides. “Sounds like my kind of game,” he said, crouching flatfooted and bringing his clenched fists up in front of his chest.

  “Stop it, both of you!” Ganesha yelled.

  “You keep out of this, you fucking pansy,” Namo said.

  “Shut up,” Ganesha said forcefully. “I’m in charge here, not you!”

  “Yer the one better shut up,” Namo snarled. “The big man ain’t gonna be too happy when he hears how you been running your mouth to this prick.”

  “Doing a little eavesdropping?” I said.

  “What if I was?”

  “Sounds like something a snitch would do,” I said to get his goat.

  “Who the fuck you calling a snitch?” he yelled, shuffling toward me, swaying his overdeveloped upper body. A snitch is the lowest thing you can be in prison. Nobody wants to be called one because it can get you shanked.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “I didn’t mean a snitch. I meant a sissy.” That’s someone who has acquiesced to playing the female part in a prison relationship, either a homosexual who enjoys the role or someone who has been beaten into sexual submission.

  With an inarticulate but seemingly hostile sound, Namo charged me.

  I leaped back five feet, landing with my guard up and my left side toward the bodybuilder. Enraged, he had given up on the idea of a boxing match and was going for a tackle, coming in with his head down. I met his charge by pushing his greasy melon down and away from me with both hands at the same time as I skipped to the right, letting his momentum carry him past me, like a bull past a matador. As he went by to my left, I pivoted and kneed him solidly in the gut with my right knee, forcing a grunt out of his thick torso and sending him sprawling on the hall floor.

  When he scrambled to his feet, he had a sheath knife with a four-inch blade in his hand. Before he could make a move, Ganesha ran between us.

  “If you don’t stop, I’m going to call the police!” he shouted at Namo, then turned to me: “I mean it, man. We have enough problems around here without this kind of shit. I will have you arrested if you keep it up.”

  Namo shared my disinclination toward the Venice Beach police. The knife disappeared and he didn’t try to renew hostilities. Red-faced and panting, holding his side with one hand, he contented himself by giving me a threatening look as he stalked away, shoving past Ganesha and disappearing into the hallway beside the stairs that led back to the kitchen.

  “I’m sorry, Ganesha,” I said. “I don’t want to make trouble.”

  “You have a funny way of showing it.”

  “He attacked me. You saw that. I was defending myself.”

  “You shouldn’t have been trying to go upstairs.”

  “I know. I’m sorry.”

  He was right. It was stupid of me to try and charge upstairs and stop whatever was going on. What was I going to do? Mary was of age. If she let Baba take advantage of her, that was her karma, not mine.

  As if my mental image had conjured her up, the blonde appeared at the top of the stairs, paused when she saw us, then came tripping down. She was wearing one of the flimsy white robes.

  “Hi, Rob,” she said casually, hurrying past me on her way to the meditation room.

  “Hi,” I said to her back as she went through the French doors.

  When she reemerged a few moments later, she had two candles, some sticks of incense, and a bell clutched in her eager hands.

  “What are you doing?” I asked her.

  “Baba is initiating me as Murshida! He says we need this stuff.”

  “Mary—”

  “I can’t talk now.” She sounded excited and happy and a little dazed, like a girl getting ready for the big dance with her girlfriends, caught up in preparations and anticipation. As she passed me on her way back upstairs I noticed that her pupils were big.

  So the fat louse had outmaneuvered me. He was going to get in her pants by flattering her spiritual ambitions, making her some kind of assistant swami, and telling her how enlightened she was as he undressed her. And she was falling for it. I wondered if Baba would include any of the flower girls in the initiation ceremony or if he would save that for later, after he had fucked Mary silly and gotten her used to his perversions.

  I wished I’d never looked at her. I wished I had fucked Evelyn the night before. At the same time, I still wanted to follow her upstairs and smash Baba’s face and take her away from him.

  Ganesha’s gaze was directed toward the top of the empty staircase, same as mine, and he had the same expression of longing on his face that he’d had the night I met him, when he watched Mary moving lightly around the gift shop, snuffing out candles. But now the desire was tinged with bitterness. I didn’t think he would be at the ashram much longer.

  “Goodbye, Ganesha,” I said, heading for the front door. “I hope everything works out.”

  “Goodbye,” he said. “You are still welcome here.”

  “Thank you.”

  I didn’t think I would be returning. We would grab the necklace and get out of town. I didn’t know why I felt so bad about the girl. I’d only known her for three days. If she wanted to be with Baba instead of me, so be it. Southern California was well supplied with willing women. There were thousands of them everywhere, at the beach, in shopping malls, at dance clubs and restaurants and bars.

  If only the vibe between us hadn’t felt so special. There was no use lying to myself about that. It was hard for me to connect with people because of what I did for a living. Reggie was the only person in my life I could really talk to, and he was a mixed bag as far as emotional props go.

  Yoga teaches that detachment is the supreme virtue. Because all physical objects, including living beings, inevitably decay, attachment to anything in the material world leads to pain and sorrow. The ideal attitude is illustrated by an expression the swamis teach: Pleasure or pain, loss or gain, fame or shame, all the same.

  It’s easy to say—it trips off the tongue—but much harder to maintain as an existential stance. I had let my feelings for Mary run away with me, more than I knew, perhaps, and now I was paying the price, an ache in the center of my chest as painful as a stab wound.

  Walking down the dark street toward the ocean, I shook my head and shoulders to try and throw off the emotional oppression. Fuck her. Fuck him. Fuck everybody. I still had the robbery to look forward to.

  The jewels.

  The
money.

  The freedom.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  The lawyer must have stopped to dine in the desert, probably marking the meal up a couple of hundred percent and charging it to Evelyn’s account. He showed up at 10:30 p.m. and went into the building with an ex-NFL type in a suit carrying a briefcase. When they left, fifteen minutes later, without the briefcase, Reggie called me from the pay phone at Norm’s.

  “Cat’s in the cradle,” he said.

  “What?”

  “Shyster showed up with ice.”

  After he dropped out of school, Reggie had watched a lot of old gangster movies on daytime TV.

  He picked me up at the flophouse at eleven and we cruised north on Pacific Avenue to Le Merigot, a boutique luxury hotel a couple of blocks south of the pier.

  “Turn in here,” I said.

  When Reggie pulled up at the brightly lit entrance, I waved off the valets and went in to rent a room.

  “Whadaya want a hotel room for?” Reggie asked when I came out with the key card. “You got a date with Blondie later on?”

  “No. It gives us someplace to go besides the house if there is any trouble.”

  We continued north past the pier, hung a right on Santa Monica, and drove inland to Norm’s. Reggie planned to nap in the car while I went in and sat by the window to watch for the late-night patrol, but the cops showed up while we were still talking in the parking lot.

  Ten minutes after the doughnut eaters circled behind Hildebrand’s building and moved on to the next block, we pulled out of Norm’s, rolled across Santa Monica Boulevard, and turned into the alley they had just checked. Reggie parked in one of the spaces behind the building and I got out and opened the trunk. There was a pair of lock snips I’d never seen before lying on top of the other tools.

  “Where did these come from?” I asked Reggie.

  “I boosted ‘em from the bed of a pickup down by the boardwalk,” he said. “Never know when you’re gonna need a church key.”