Criminal Karma

by Steven M. Thomas

  I raced across Pacific and along Horizon to Mr. Parker’s. He was situating a Corolla at the back of the lot. I grabbed my keys out of the shack and ran to the Seville, which was parked with its nose toward the gap in the chain.

  “Hey, now,” Mr. Parker said, hurrying toward me. He didn’t allow people to get their own keys.

  “Sorry,” I yelled as I hopped in. “I’m in a big hurry.”

  CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

  Things were bad. A slippery handful of lowlifes knew that Reggie and I had committed a series of felonies that could send us to prison for years, and they had at least one piece of potentially damning evidence. It was very possible that I had lost the necklace again, this time irretrievably. To have it and lose it and have it and lose it again was too much. I felt like I was flailing in quicksand. Baba might search the room and find it, along with the gold and bonds, leaving us nothing to show for our time and risk and effort and outlay on tools. Or the cops might move in, blocking a return to the flophouse, putting us on the run. And Mary. I didn’t know what Baba had done to or with her. I couldn’t think about it. To top it all off, there were homicidal gangsters moving in the shadows.

  Things were bad. And they were about to get a lot worse.

  I parked at Brooks and Seventh Street, one block over from Broadway, took a couple of deep breaths to slow my heart and calm my mind, then got out and took the tire tool from the trunk and jogged along Seventh to the ashram. There was a Magic Marker–scrawled sign on the locked front door that said the Murshid Center was closed for a staff retreat. No reopening date was mentioned.

  There was no one on this residential street at ten o’clock on a Tuesday morning. The wooden panel door was old and shrunken in its frame. I stomped it open, leaving a splintered jamb.

  I was headed for the stairs, intent on finding Mary, when something in the gift shop caught my eye. The French doors were closed and the lights were out, but when I glanced that way, scanning for enemies, I noticed something behind the counter.

  Something orange.

  Something still.

  It was Ganesha, a young man who had had the highest of human ambitions. He was lying on his back, one arm pinned under his body, the other stretched above his head as if he was reaching for something. The front of his robe was soaked with blood. I would never know how or why or when, but at some point after he came, shocked and new, into the blinding light of a hospital delivery room, he had looked out at the sunshine and trees, or down into the pages of an ancient book, and felt the joy of God sting his soul. Turning away from common desires, or most of them, at least, he had devoted his life to seeking knowledge of the divine, trying for the ultimate goal of welding his being to the infinite.

  He was in the infinite now, and I wished him Godspeed.

  “May Christ protect you and have mercy on your soul,” I said. “Sri Ramakrishna open the doors of heaven for this man. Yogananda and Muktananda receive his spirit. Saint Michael and all you angels of light surround him. Protect us now and at the hour of our death.”

  There are much better funeral prayers than the one I offered—in the Tibetan Book of the Dead and other traditions—but I didn’t know them. I did the best I could for him. His body was still warm, so I knew his spirit was in the early hours of its journey. His eyes were open as the eyes of the dead always are before the living compulsively close them, symbolizing their expanded vision. With the eyes of his Akashic body, he was seeing sights more amazing than any ever seen on earth, and I repeated my prayer fiercely several times, willing my words to pierce the veil between the worlds and find him in the place where his soul was hurtling.

  There was no smell of gunpowder in the air. It looked to me like he had been stabbed at the counter and then fallen and bled to death where he lay. There was blood on the stool where he usually sat and a few drops on the countertop and the phone book that lay on the counter. The phone book was open to the page that listed all the different numbers for the city of Venice, including the underlined number of the police department. He had been ready to blow the whistle, but someone had stopped him. Namo with his knife. I would settle that score if I got the chance. I was glad I had cut him with the razor blade.

  Leaving the young monk’s body where it lay, I pounded up the stairs, more frightened than before for Mary. I found her locked in one of the client rooms. She was gagged and hog-tied on the floor, half-dressed in what was left of the robe she had worn the night before. When she saw me burst through the door her eyes flashed heartrending relief that mirrored my own emotions.

  “What are you doing here?” she asked with a sob in her voice when I loosed the gag.

  “I’m here to rescue you, hot stuff,” I said, working on the ropes. Her slender wrists had been rubbed raw as she struggled to escape.

  “How did you know I was in trouble?”

  “Baba paid me a visit.”

  When I helped her up, she put her arms around me and gave me a long, hard hug, then stepped back and looked me in the eye.

  “Where is that fat motherfucker?” she said, all her maiden-in-distress emotion swallowed up in anger. “I am going to bash his melon head in.”

  “What did he do to you?” Rage seethed up inside me, turning my field of vision red around the edges.

  “I’m okay, baby,” she said, reining in her own outrage long enough to stroke my cheek and give me a quick kiss on the lips. “But he’s not going to be when I get my hands on him. Is he here?”

  The ferocity flashing in her flame-blue eyes reminded me that the worst fate a captured Native American warrior could face was being turned over to the women of his enemies for squaw torture.

  “He’s not here, but he’s probably on his way with some armed men. We need to get out quick. Are you sure you’re all right?”

  “I turned my first trick at Disneyland when I was thirteen years old, Robert. No pimp. Just me and a fat Shriner on the Small World ride. I can handle what they dish out. What kills me is that I fell for his bullshit. I can’t believe I let that bastard con me. You were so right about him. He’s a total fake.”

  “We’ll fix his wagon,” I said. “Don’t worry about that. Right now we have to move. Where are your clothes?”

  “In his bedroom,” she said. “He let me use his closet and his bathroom so that I could have some privacy from the other girls. He said it was because I had spiritual potential, but that was a lie. He was just trying to get in my pants.”

  “Gather up whatever you want to take with you while I toss his desk and file cabinet.”

  The oak file cabinet was sturdy but I got in, using a stone statue of Buddha to hammer the tip of the tire tool behind the lock, then prying until the tongue of the lock bent and the top drawer popped open.

  There was nothing but old books and files in the cabinet. Most of the file folders were stuffed with precomputer typed research notes and manuscript drafts dealing with esoteric topics: “Splitting the Atom of Religion in the Modern Age;” “Situational Ethics vs. Absolute Morality;” “Triumph over Tradition: Renegade Teachers and Holy Fools.” The books were dusty spiritual treatises in several languages, many of them annotated in a neat masculine hand. Baba had been an ambitious scholar earlier in his career, and all five drawers were filled with the remnants of his intellectual labors, nothing of use to me.

  The locked desk drawers yielded more: a loaded .38 revolver with a checkered wooden grip (nice prop for a guru to lean on); several 35-mm film containers full of black-tar opium (to fertilize the flower girls, no doubt); a shoebox full of pharmaceutical drugs, including lots of Valium and injectable Demerol, complete with a set of glass works (more fun for the girls, and maybe for Baba); several years’ worth of stock market trading records listing frequent margin calls (an explanation for Baba’s growing financial hunger); and a set of files with names and dated photographs of important-looking men engaged in rude behavior with one or more of the temple prostitutes.

  Some of the blackmail files had only one compr
omising photograph; some contained several. All included typewritten notes about the circumstances in which the photographs were taken—the names of the girls involved, their ages, the acts performed, and in some cases the places the men had told their wives they were while they were getting their jollies. Some also listed payment dates and amounts.

  I recognized several faces. One was Councilman Discenza. Another was the mayor of Venice Beach. There were high-ranking police officers and prominent local businessmen.

  The files explained a lot—how Baba was able to run a spiritual whorehouse with impunity and why the mayor had pushed the city council to promptly approve every phase of the Pacific City development despite voter outrage. They left other things unexplained. Had Baba converted his blackmail of Discenza into a business partnership or was he holding the photo of the churchgoing Italian engaged in anal sex with a teenager in reserve in case he needed leverage? Was Pacific City a project of Discenza’s that Baba had wormed his thick torso into, or was it Baba’s baby, which he was using Discenza’s influence to accomplish? Judging by the fear Baba had shown earlier, it seemed more like the former—like he had gotten a piece of the project by making himself useful to Discenza and found out that he had a tiger by the tail.

  “What did you find?” Mary said. She was dressed in a pair of blue jeans, a yellow blouse, and white sneakers with ankle socks. She had a small brown suitcase in her hand.

  “Drugs, a gun, some stuff he’s using to blackmail people.”

  She shook her head in disgust. “What a fucker. What’s that in the back of the drawer?”

  There was a leather-bound notebook stuck behind the hanging files in the bottom drawer. The leather was water-stained and scuffed, the cover latched with a rusty push-button lock.

  “It looks like an old journal,” I said. “Maybe Baba has been keeping a record of his badness.”

  I put the drugs, stock records, blackmail files, and the notebook in a pillowcase that I stripped from Baba’s bed. I checked the cylinder on the gun to be sure it was loaded, then stuck it in my belt beneath my shirttail. It felt good to be armed again. Taking Mary’s hand, I led her downstairs and back through the big white-and-yellow kitchen where we had made prasad together. Just inside the back door, I gave her my car keys and the key card from Le Merigot.

  “Do you know where Le Merigot is?” I asked her.

  “It’s just south of the pier, isn’t it?”

  I nodded. “I’m parked on the next block. If we go straight across the backyard and cut through the hedge and the yard behind us, we should come out by the car. It’s a dark-blue Cadillac Seville. If there is any trouble, drop your bag and run for the car. If I have to stop and fight, go without me. Drive to the hotel and wait for me there.”

  “Forget that, pal,” Mary said, stepping close so that her body touched mine. “I love tough guys who aren’t afraid of a fight. Especially really sweet tough guys. But if Baba shows up, I’m carving a piece of that blubber myself.”

  Reaching between the lower buttons of her blouse, she pulled out a pearl-handled switchblade and pushed the button, flashing four inches of razory steel.

  “You are one surprising girl,” I said. “And that is one impressive blade. But it ain’t smart to bring a knife to a gunfight. If there’s any trouble, please just get to the car.”

  “All right,” she said after a moment, putting her knife away. “If it comes to that, I’ll beat feet to your car and fire it up. But I’m not leaving without you.”

  We hustled out the back door and across the lawn and through the rose garden, passing the statue of the Virgin Mary. The hair was standing up on the back of my neck. I had a feeling that Baba was going to come bounding around the house at any moment, accompanied by wild-eyed Sicilians with machine guns. But we found a gap in the hedge and hurried across the adjoining yard and made it to the Caddie with no shots fired.

  Mary popped the locks and tossed me the keys.

  “Nice car,” she said as we pulled away from the curb.

  “I bought it to impress chicks.”

  “It’s working.”

  CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

  At Le Merigot, I gave the valet a five and told him to keep my car in front, then took Mary in through the lobby and up to the room I had rented the night before.

  “Very nice,” she said when she saw the marble whirlpool tub and the large luxurious room with a balcony and a view of the ocean. “Is this to impress chicks, too?”

  “No,” I said. “This is a hideout.”

  “I was right about you!”

  “Yeah,” I admitted.

  “That’s cool!” she said. “What are we going to do now? How are we going to get Baba?”

  With no discussion, it was understood between us that we were a team now, in the situation together. Briefly, I filled her in on what was at stake besides revenge—the jewels and gold and my and Reggie’s freedom.

  “I heard someone tried to steal that necklace in the desert,” she said. “That was you guys?”

  “Yeah.”

  I finished telling her about what had happened in Indian Wells, at the lawyer’s office the night before, and at the flophouse that morning. Most people would say it was foolish of me to take her into my confidence, but I was sure I could trust her. You don’t stay free as a criminal as long as I had without accurate intuition.

  “Do you think they found the necklace?” she asked.

  “We’ll know soon enough.”

  She knew Evelyn from the ashram and was riveted when I explained the rich lady’s part in the story—the picture in Ozone Pacific’s magazine, the missing daughter, Baba’s extortion scheme.

  “How does he know all that stuff about her daughter?”

  “That’s the sixty-four-dollar question. Maybe he read Evelyn’s mind. Maybe he actually came across someone who knew the girl. Maybe a combination of things.”

  Mary asked a couple more questions, then nodded decisively.

  “I like the safecracking,” she said, treating me to a radiant smile. “I knew you weren’t small-time. How can I help?”

  “Stay here until I get back, then we’ll see. As long as Baba hasn’t found the diamonds, we won’t have to worry about getting even with him. When the resort deal falls through and the Italians’ half million goes up in smoke, they’ll skin him alive.”

  “Sounds good,” she said, looking around the suite with pleased anticipation. Its decor contrasted favorably with the ashram’s faded ambiance. “Maybe I’ll take a bubble bath while you’re gone.”

  “Don’t say things like that. It puts thoughts in my head.”

  “I know.”

  Checkout time was noon, so I stopped in the lobby and paid for another day, then jumped in the Caddie and drove south on Pacific. The flophouse was quiet as I rolled by, no cops or gangsters in sight.

  I parked at a meter several blocks farther south and walked over to Chavi’s booth on the boardwalk, searching for my partner.

  He was standing near the fortune-teller, looking a tall thin black man up and down. There was an electronic bathroom scale on the asphalt in front of him and a sign tacked to the palm tree behind him that said “Guess Yer weight for five Dollers.”

  “Reggie,” I said.

  He held up a stubby forefinger to put me on hold, then punched the black guy lightly on the shoulder and tapped him on the chest with two fingers a couple of times.

  “One fifty-seven,” he said.

  A furtive look of surprise flashed across the man’s face before he veiled it with an expression of bored skepticism.

  “You way off, man. I weigh one sixty-five.”

  “Step on the scale.” Reggie pointed at the bathroom appliance.

  “Why I wanna step on the scale?” the man extemporized. “You probably got it rigged.”

  “How else we gonna know if I’m right?” Reggie said. “You got a scale with you?”

  “What you talkin’ about, do I got a scale? Who carries a scale around wit
h them?”

  “Then cough up the five bucks, chump.”

  “Oh, so now you don’t even want me to weigh in on your scale?”

  “Be my guest,” Reggie said.

  The man stepped up on the scale and all three of us looked down at the digital readout, which flickered to 158 and froze.

  “See? You off by a pound!”

  “Said I’d guess within two pounds. Cough up the dough.”

  “Aw, shit, I don’t care about no lousy five dollars.” The man pulled a crumpled bill from his pocket and handed it to Reggie, then walked off with an air of disgust.

  Stone-faced but with the hint of a smirk, Reggie straightened the bill out, snapped it once, then folded it and put it in his pocket.

  “When did you come up with this brilliant idea?” I asked.

  “This morning. Chavi’s been telling me I ought to have a hustle, so I borrowed her scale and made me a sign. What’s up?”

  “Trouble. We need to move fast.”

  Saucer eyes. “What?”

  “I’ll tell you on the way.”

  Engrossed in the palm of a bare-chested young man with blond dreadlocks, Chavi didn’t look up as we headed for the Caddie. Hurrying along the boardwalk and driving to the rental car, I told Reggie what had happened.

  “That skinny kid in the orange nightgown?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Who killed him?”

  “Probably Namo, the guy I cut with the razor blade.”

  “How’d you happen to be packing a razor blade?”

  “I got it from Ozone Pacific.”

  “That squirrelly kid who lives next door?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Why’d he give you a razor blade?”

  I shook my head. “I’ll explain later.” I wondered what had become of Oz in the hubbub at the house, if he was around when they ransacked the place.

  At the rental, I retrieved the Tomcat from the glove box and wiped down the wheel, dashboard, and door handles. I had planned to return the car to get my five hundred back, but that now seemed too risky. The detectives investigating the burglary at Hildebrand’s probably hadn’t had time to look at the previous night’s patrol reports and find out about the two Sacramento tourists who were questioned in Norm’s parking lot across the street from the crime scene—but they might have. If they had, they would have traced the rental to Enterprise and planted a plainclothes lurker near the airport return counter.