Criminal Karma

by Steven M. Thomas

  By the time I finished erasing our fingerprints, Reggie had moved the tools from the trunk of the rental to the trunk of the Seville. We climbed in the Caddie and headed north. There was still nothing unusual as we cruised back past the flop. Circling, I drove into the alley behind the house, alert for blue uniforms and black fedoras. My heart was pounding when I pulled up by the kitchen door.

  “Keep the engine running,” I said, handing Reggie Baba’s .38. “If you hear me yell or guns start going off, come in blazing.”

  Upstairs, my room and Reggie’s had been torn to pieces. They had cut the mattresses, smashed the furniture, scattered clothes everywhere.

  But they hadn’t found the stash.

  Besides the diamonds, gold, and bonds, the hiding place held several thousand dollars in cash, including two of the packets of hundreds from Fahim, two boxes of shells for the Tomcat, an extra clip (full), and my passport. I put everything in a shoulder bag and then looked around until I found a map of California in the debris on the floor. I opened it up and refolded it so that it showed the coast north of Santa Barbara, then circled the town of Pismo Beach with a pen, scrawled the following day’s date beneath the circle, and tossed the map back on the floor. After taking a last look around the place where I had lived for six memorable weeks, I picked up the shoulder bag and ran back to the alley with springs in my heels.

  “We’re still in business, bro,” I said when I got in the car. “Head for Le Merigot, that hotel we went to last night.”

  It was an overwhelming relief to have the diamonds back in my possession. If someone had dragged a bow across a violin, I might have wept for joy. I had spent four weeks and traveled hundreds of miles and been in three fights and committed at least a dozen felonies to get them and it would have been hard to remain detached if they had slipped through my fingers. I would have been bereft, as if I had lost a person dear to me, seeing the necklace in my mind’s eye like the afterimage of a candle flame, for years to come.

  Now I could turn them over to Fahid in exchange for a small fortune and we would leave town, riding high, for the time being at least, with a bundle of cash and a charming new companion. I hoped.

  The only blight on the rose was our legal jeopardy. It wasn’t clear exactly how much trouble we would be leaving behind us, but it didn’t look good. The doughnut eaters would be snuffing for whoever cracked Hildebrand’s safe. At some point my illustrious name would come up. Baba knew where I lived. Mrs. Sharpnick knew my identify. In the course of routine interviews, the cops would find out that I had had dinner with Evelyn and questioned her about the necklace. Two patrolmen had seen Reggie and me near the scene of the crime. With our mug shots, they would probably find people in the desert who could identify us, especially if the linebacker and her little man were still in town. Searching for me, the Santa Monica dicks would contact the Newport Beach police and get an earful from the family man. That would sharpen their interest. The two departments might pool resources to try and track me down. Warrants would be issued.

  We were going to get away with the loot, but if there was electronic paper swirling in the slipstream, our lives would be forever less enjoyable and free. Crossing a state line doesn’t do much good anymore. International boundaries put distance and probability on the criminal’s side but don’t block pursuit. Except in a few remote countries that don’t have extradition treaties with the U.S., modern fugitives can never really relax. There is always the fear of a hand on the shoulder from behind.

  Part of my mind started to catalogue which countries lacked treaties and how long a couple of hundred thousand dollars would last in a comfortable adobe. But I caught myself and shut down the mental travel agency to concentrate on the present moment. First things first: I had to make sure we did actually get away before worrying about the fugitive future.

  Back at the hotel, we valeted the car to get it out of sight and went up to the room. It was perfumed with the bergamot scent of the hotel’s expensive shampoo and lotion. Wrapped in a fluffy white robe, Mary was curled up in an easy chair by the French doors that opened onto the balcony, bent over a book that lay open in her lap. She looked faintly mermaid-like with her long damp blond hair hanging down and the blue sea splashing on the shore behind her.

  “Rob!” she said when we came in.

  “What?”

  “I found out how Baba knew all those things about Evelyn’s daughter.”

  “How?”

  “This is her diary!” She hurried across the room, holding out the leather-bound volume we found in Baba’s desk.

  “Is her name in it?”

  “No,” Mary said, “but look, it mentions the things you said Baba talked about—restaurants in San Francisco, a ranch where she used to go horseback riding with her mom … what her father did to her.”

  She was standing close beside me, flipping through the pages to show me passages she had marked. The tops and bottoms of the pages were water stained and deteriorated but the middle sections were legible. The entries were in both ink and pencil. The handwriting was a loopy, girlish script that deteriorated in places to a scrawl.

  “See there, where she mentions Kelly? Evelyn told you that was the name of her daughter’s baby, right?”

  “That’s what she said.”

  Turning the yellowed pages, I saw that she was right. The notebook, which looked like it had lain someplace damp and dirty for a long time, was the diary of Evelyn’s daughter and the source of Baba’s mysterious information.

  “Who is this ‘he’ Christina keeps mentioning?”

  “I think that’s the baby,” Mary said. “She says how beautiful he is and how much she loves him and wants to protect him.”

  “But I thought Christina’s baby was a girl.”

  “Kelly can be a boy’s name, too. Did Evelyn tell you it was a girl?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t remember her saying that, but she showed me a picture of a baby dressed in pink …”

  “Who gives a shit what the baby was wearing?” Reggie interjected. “We can buy it a blue bonnet and a binkie on our way out of town. Right now we gotta figure out the next move.”

  “It’s figured,” I said. “Just hold on a second.”

  I turned to the last entry in the diary, dated July 4, 1984. Scanning the final few scrawled pages, I felt a seismic shift in my psyche. As the mental landscape reformed, I saw a way out of our legal difficulties open up like a pass between two distant hills.

  “What do you want to know?” I asked Reggie.

  “How quick can we fence the loot?”

  “I’ll call Fahim right now and let him know I’m coming. I doubt if he has enough cash on hand, but he should be able to get it within a few hours. We’ll drop the jewels and coins off there this afternoon.”

  “We going back to the flop to get our shit or splittin’ from here?”

  “Anything there you can’t live without?”

  “Nada.”

  “Then we leave from here. We’ll have plenty of money to replace anything we leave behind.”

  “Where we going?”

  “South of the border.”

  “The cops gonna be on our tail?”

  I looked my partner in the eye. “Right now, I’d say they are after two guys from Sacramento who are supposed to be staying at the Georgian, but by the time they get done with their interviews in a day or two they may be looking for me and you.”

  Reggie gave me deadpan for a few seconds, then shrugged.

  “We’ll be long gone by then,” he said and smiled a smile that reflected torchlight, tequila, and dark-eyed señoritas.

  I turned to Mary. “I was hoping you’d come with us.”

  She sprang into my arms. “I was afraid you weren’t going to ask.”

  We kissed long and lusciously. When I slipped my hand beneath her robe, Reggie made an annoyed sound.

  “All right, you two,” he said with a sour look. “That’s enough of the lovey-dovey routine. Get it in gear.”


  CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

  Mary went into the bathroom to put her pants and shirt back on while Reggie walked out onto the balcony and stood at the railing with his back to the room, looking toward the ocean. I called Fahim.

  “It sounds like a most valuable item,” he said. “The same stones as in the earrings?”

  “Pink diamonds,” I said, “but better.”

  “Ah! Come at two-thirty. I will be ready for you.”

  I glanced at my watch. It was a few minutes past one.

  “See you then.”

  I called the valet desk and told them to bring the Seville around, then packed the stuff from Baba’s desk in Mary’s suitcase. I put the jewel case in my pocket and stuck the Tomcat back in my belt under my shirttail. A few minutes later, the three of us were strolling calmly through the richly appointed lobby and out into the portico, where the Caddie was idling.

  Rather than cruise the cop-infested streets of Santa Monica, I took the 10 east to the 405 and drove north to Wilshire. We had lunch at a sub shop in Westwood, then rolled along Wilshire into Beverly Hills. It was 2:25 p.m. when I pulled up at a meter a couple of blocks from Fahim’s shop and parked in the shade of a banyan tree. The banyan is sacred in the Hindu religion, its ever-expanding branches representing eternity. It is called kalpavriksha, “divine wish-fulfilling tree.” It felt lucky to park beneath it.

  “You guys wait here,” I told Mary and Reggie. “Fahim doesn’t like strangers.”

  Taking the canvas bag of coins from the suitcase, I walked away through the dappled sun and shade beneath the queen palms that lined the avenue. A well-to-do breeze stroked my forehead, cheeks, and bare forearms like an endless bolt of silk unrolling.

  Fahim examined the necklace as he had the earrings, running his various tests. It took all of his savoir faire to keep from showing his excitement.

  “Quality as always,” he said. “May I ask how heated the item is?”

  “How hot?”

  “Yes.”

  “Very hot. I wouldn’t even try to move the individual stones in Los Angeles.”

  “Thank you for your honesty, Robert.”

  He offered me $100,000, citing the difficulty of disposing of something so notorious. I scoffed and countered with $150,000, mentioning Evelyn’s jeweler’s $500,000 estimate of the necklace’s value. Very shortly we settled on a price of $120,000. He paid full value for the Krugerrands, minus a 10-percent handling fee. At the day’s quote, that came to another $22,600. He had all of the money on hand, in hundreds and fifties, and provided a sturdy leather briefcase with a combination lock to carry it in. It took all of my savoir faire to keep a calm demeanor in the presence of that much cash.

  I wrote the combination on a piece of paper and put it in my wallet and shook hands with Fahim. We walked from the back room through the shop, past a lady in a mink jacket who was being shown an emerald ring by Fahim’s daughter.

  “When will I see you again?” he asked at the door.

  “It may be a while.”

  “Ma’a salaame,” he said. Go in peace.

  “Allay salmak,” I said. May God keep you safe.

  Back at the car, Mary and Reggie were swapping stories about where their alcoholic mothers hid the bottle.

  “Whud we clear?” Reggie asked causally, playing it cool in front of the pretty girl.

  “A hundred and forty grand after expenses.”

  “Holy cow!” Mary said, snuggling up to me and making a purring sound in my ear that sent shivers down my spine.

  “That the gold, too?” Reggie asked.

  “That’s everything but the bonds.”

  “Not too shabby for a night’s work,” he said, as if six-figure jobs were run-of-the-mill for him.

  Mary turned her head slightly so that Reggie couldn’t see and rolled her eyes.

  I laughed and hugged her, then reached back and gave Reggie a solid punch on the shoulder.

  “It’s the best fucking score either one of us has ever made by a long shot,” I said. “You did great.”

  Reggie shrugged. “What now?”

  “I have one stop to make, then we’re in the wind,” I said. “We’ll leave the car here and take the Surfliner to San Diego. We can pick up some wheels there and cross the border at Tecate.”

  “Let’s swing by Chavi’s, too,” Reggie said. “She’ll worry if we just disappear.”

  “You got it, brother. Anything you need to do, Mary?”

  “I’m ready to ride, sweetie.”

  A promising double entendre, if ever there was one.

  I drove south to the canal district and pulled up in front of Evelyn’s bungalow. She would have to get someone else to fix it up if she stayed.

  “Who lives here?” Reggie asked, mystified.

  “Evermore,” I said. “You’ve been here before.”

  His eyebrows shot up to his hairline. “Whadaya want with her?”

  “I’m going to give her Christina’s diary,” I said. “And there is something I have to tell her.”

  Evelyn answered the door the instant I knocked, same as she had on my earlier visit, as if she spent her time poised at the threshold of her empty house, waiting for someone to arrive and fill it with life and meaning. She looked like she had been crying.

  “What are you doing here?” she asked.

  “I have something for you. What’s wrong?”

  “Baba called me.” Grabbing my arm, she pulled me inside, shutting the door behind us.

  When we came back out a little while later, new hope was twisted tightly with old fear in her expression.

  Reggie got out of the car as we came down the walk.

  “Everything all right?” he asked, glancing around the neighborhood to see if a trap was about to be sprung. “What took so long?”

  I opened the back curbside door of the Seville and Evelyn got in.

  “What the hell is going on?” Reggie said after I closed the door. “Are we kidnapping her? What’s she boo-hooing about?”

  “Baba Raba took Ozone Pacific hostage.”

  “Why? What’s he want with him?”

  “He’s trying to collect a ransom. He wants the necklace, or a hundred and fifty thousand bucks.”

  “Yer not going to give him the moolah, are you?” Reggie asked, horrified.

  “No, but I am going to make sure he doesn’t hurt that kid.”

  “Fuck that,” Reggie said. “Play Dudley Do-Right on your own time. What’s a homeless kid to us—or to her?”

  “Oz is Evelyn’s grandson.”

  “Her grandson?” His brown eyes went flat as he looked inward, thinking hard, then got bright as he glared at me. “So what? How’s that our problem?”

  “Baba told her we stole the necklace.”

  Reggie stiffened, hearing the clank of cell door in his skull. I nodded. “He has some evidence, too. But Evelyn will let us keep the necklace if we get the kid back and she’ll do what she can to stop the police investigation. If she and her lawyer don’t cooperate, the cops will be hamstrung.”

  Baba had seen Evelyn and me talking at the ashram on Sunday. Grasping at straws after I got away, he came up with the idea that she might have hired me to steal the necklace so that she wouldn’t have to live up to her agreement with him. When he called, he told her that he had found her grandson but that if she didn’t turn over the jewels or $150,000 in cash or securities by five that afternoon when he was scheduled to meet Discenza at the appraiser’s, the boy would be lost to her forever.

  Evelyn didn’t believe him at first, but he used his powers of persuasion to convince her, claiming he had DNA evidence proving Ozone Pacific was her grandson. He also told her that he knew exactly where Christina was and would give her the girl’s location as soon as the real estate deal closed. Evelyn told him she didn’t know anything about the necklace being stolen but that she would get the money if he swore to reunite her with Kelly and tell her where her daughter was. She tried to call Hildebrand for ad
vice and help in getting the funds together, but his office was in an uproar and she couldn’t reach him.

  When I showed up and admitted that I was, in fact, a burglar and not a contractor, Evelyn’s confusion whirled faster, but then gradually subsided. I convinced her that I was on her side and wanted to help her. She was too desperate to bother about moral judgments. When I showed her Christina’s diary, she saw that Baba had been lying to her all along.

  I told her about Ganesha’s murder and confirmed that Baba was telling the truth about Ozone. I also made it clear that he could not be trusted to return the boy. Even if she had been able to raise the money on such short notice, even if I was willing to use the money in the briefcase, I didn’t think it would get him back. Baba was going off his rocker, resorting all at once to murder and kidnapping. There was no telling what he might do—kill Oz to keep him quiet about the snatch, or hang on to him so that he could extort more money from Evelyn, or use the threat of harming the boy to keep her from going to the cops.

  With me coaching her, Evelyn called the guru and told him that she would be at the ashram with the cash by four-thirty. She swore that she hadn’t told anyone else about the meeting and that she didn’t care about the money, only her grandson and daughter.

  “Don’t hurt him, Baba,” she said. “I know you need the money for your work, and it’s worth it to me to get Kelly and Christina back.”

  I hoped the phone call would be enough to put him off guard.

  “We’re going to help her, aren’t we?” Mary said when Reggie and I got back in the car. In her eyes I could see our future together hanging in the balance. If I had been undecided about what to do, her attitude would have tipped the scale.

  “Of course we are.”

  It was 3:35 when I sparked the Northstar engine. My instinct was to charge. Go straight at the ashram, where I believed Oz was being held and take Baba by surprise while he waited complacently for Evelyn to deliver. We’d rescue the boy, find out if Baba really knew where Christina was, and then leave him incapacitated for Discenza to deal with.