Criminal Karma (32 page)

The door, which had an angled top, wasn’t locked. Crowded in among folding chairs and cardboard boxes, Oz lay gagged, blindfolded, and bound hand and foot. I pulled the blindfold off first, so he could see who I was, then half-dragged, half-lifted him out into the hall, where I could get at the ropes to untie him.

“Baba Raba and Pete tied me up and put me in there,” he said in a trembling voice when I removed the gag. “I told them I wasn’t supposed to cross Pacific, but they made me come here. Why did they do that, Rob?”

“They’re bad men.”

Ganesha’s body was in the closet beneath the stairs, too, crammed in a cobwebbed corner. I had that curious urge to lay him out neatly on a bed or table, to cover his body with a blanket and make him comfortable. But he wasn’t his body. He never had been. His spirit was far in flight now, God knew where. And I didn’t want to leave my DNA on him in a stray hair or
drop of salt water. The police would be going over his body carefully, seeking his killer.

So I left him in the closet and took Ozone back through the swinging door into the kitchen. When he saw Baba Raba, his body jerked and stiffened.

“Don’t worry,” I said. “You’re safe now.”

“You are a bad man!” Oz said angrily to Baba.

Baba’s face flickered at the bitter words, registering an unwelcome stab of self-realization.

“Where’s my picture at, you fat baby robber!”

“I know where it is, Oz,” I said.

“Where?”

“I’ll tell you in a minute,” I said. “It’s the one you gave Evelyn, isn’t it, Baba?”

“Yes.”

“Where did you get the diary?”

“I found it,” Pete chimed in, eager to cooperate.

“Where?”

“In the crawl space under a house we tore down over on Navy. It was under what was left of the body.”

“Christina’s body?”

“I don’t know who the cunt was,” Pete said. “Her skull was smashed and there was nothing left but bones and clothes and that notebook I sold to—”

“You have a big mouth for such a little man,” Baba said. “You just squandered our last bargaining chip.”

“So you knew Evelyn’s daughter was dead the whole time you were stringing her along?”

“Yes, my criminal compadre, I did,” he said. “What’s wrong with that? I gave her hope and hid the ugly fact that her own actions caused the foolish girl’s demise, just as her earlier behavior contributed to the incest. If you read the diary, you know that Christina contacted Evelyn shortly before her death asking for a sum of money to settle a debt. When she was free of the people she had been involved with, she planned to go home to her mother. Evelyn sent the money and the girl was killed for it, leaving this pathetic child to fend for himself.”

“How long we gonna stay here jawin’?” Reggie demanded.

“I just have a couple more questions,” I said.

“I’ll tell you anything you want to know,” Pete said. “I’ll sing like a canary if you let me walk. I wasn’t in on any of the really bad shit. I just did what Baba Raba and Discenza told me to do.”

“Like burning down buildings and smashing the windows of inhabited dwellings to drive the tenants away?” Baba said.

“Discenza told me to,” Pete snarled. “You knew about it, fatso.”

“Knowing about it and doing it are two different things,” Baba said.

“Who killed Ganesha?” I asked.

“Namo did,” Pete said.

“You fucking snitch,” Namo said. He was sitting up against the wall by the table, holding a bandana over the bullet hole in his leg. “Yer gonna get shanked in the joint, you little faggot.”

“Fuck you!” Pete said. “I’ll keelhaul your blunky ass.”

“Why did you do it?” I asked Namo.

Namo shrugged, indifferent, hanging tough. “He was gonna call the cops.”

“About what?”

“The cunts.”

“Ganesha was a good man,” I said, raising the Tomcat so that it pointed at his head.

“Don’t,” he said, losing his nerve as he looked down the bore of the weapon. “Baba told me to do it.”

“Who’s the snitch now?” Pete said.

“I did not tell you to kill him!” Baba roared. “I told you to stop him!”

“What happened to you, Baba?” I asked the false teacher. “How did you go from studying with Muktananda to murdering monks in your own ashram?”

His shoulders lifted in a heavy shrug and then subsided back into the massive pyramid of his Buddha’s body.

“Judge not, lest you be judged,” he said sarcastically. “You don’t know what I’ve been through or how hard I strived to lead a Sattvic life. You don’t have any idea of the good I have done in the world, the spiritual heights I’ve scaled. I meditated eight hours a day for six months in the Himalayas. I saw into the center of reality and worked tirelessly for three spiritual organizations. And what did it get me? I was turned out of Naropa when Trungpa died with nothing but my robe and bowl. That was my reward for six years of service. They blamed me for the AIDS, but I was only doing the will of my guru!

“After Naropa, I came here and tried again. This place was a lukewarm backwater with no dynamism. I built it up. We have hundreds of students taking classes here. But half of them never pay, or pay late, and there’s a mortgage on the building, and utility costs are sky-high. I found ways to make money and keep it afloat, but it all became too much of a hassle. You serve only yourself, so you have no way of knowing. It is exhausting trying to do good all the time. Having people come to you constantly to solve their stupid problems. I just want to enjoy life a little bit instead of slaving for a bunch of rich dilettantes who can’t comprehend the first thing about meditation or enlightenment. They don’t have any idea of the discipline and sacrifice it takes. I’m fifty-five years old and I have nothing to fall back on if this place closes. Monks don’t have 401(k) accounts. I had to start putting something aside for retirement—or end up a crazy bastard on the street.”

“Is that why you started playing the stock market?”

“Yes. There is nothing wrong with that, or with what I am doing now. Tantra is a true spiritual path, and the resort will be good for the community. Jobs and a place for people to relax and forget their cares. I have decided to take my spiritual knowledge into the business world. That’s where the real energy is in this age. I will use the energy of money to better the planet. We will have hatha yoga classes and meditations at this resort, and others that I plan to build. It will be beautiful. I will be the first yogic billionaire. Wait and see. I’ll be on the cover of
Time
magazine someday. Ganesha should have been obedient and not tried to interfere with my activities. You should not be interfering, either.”

Baba’s anthracitic eyes glinted as he concluded his self-justification, and two things suddenly occurred to me. He was talking very freely, almost like he was stalling, and he was referring to the resort in the future tense, as if he still expected it to happen. That made me wonder what tricks he had hidden up the finely tailored sleeves of his suit.

“Let’s bonk these pricks on the head or lock ‘em in a closet and get the hell out of here,” Reggie said, picking up the same vibe.

“Get the rope from the hallway,” I said. “We’ll tie them up in here.”

Reggie hurried into the hallway and returned with the half-inch hemp that had bound Ozone Pacific. There were two pieces, ten or twelve feet long, unraveling at the ends. I took the rope and put the Tomcat in my other back pocket so that I had two hands to work with. Reggie stood near the hall door, well clear of the bad guys.

“Don’t give any warnings,” I said. “Anyone tries anything, just shoot them.”

I used a kitchen knife to cut one piece of rope in half. I planned to hog-tie Pete and Namo with those pieces, then use the uncut piece to cinch Baba’s thick wrists and ankles.

“You first, Pete,” I said. “Lie down on your stomach on the floor and put your hands behind your back.”

I was wrapping the rope around Pete’s wrists while he pleaded under his breath, offering to betray his companions if I would let him go, when a muscle-bound guy in a black leather jacket strode into the room from the hall, cradling a grocery bag in his left arm. As he barged in, the door hit Reggie’s elbow, knocking his gun from his hand, then struck his body, sending him stumbling several steps across the linoleum.

Sizing the situation up while the door was still swinging shut behind him, the newcomer dropped the grocery bag, which burst, sending cans of beer rolling, and whipped out an ugly black automatic before I could reach for my gun. The nose on his long narrow face was covered with a bandage. Above the cotton strip, his eyes sparkled with malice.

“Jimmy Z,” I said.

His voice, strained through a swollen larynx, was a gritty whisper: “The last one you think of. The first one to show.”

“I was beginning
to think you had abandoned us, Jimmy,” Baba said.

“Yeah, what took you so long?” Pete said, throwing off the loose rope and jumping up. “I thought we were going to have to deep-six these jack-offs ourselves.”

“You didn’t tell me it was eight blocks to the liquor store,” Jimmy growled. “I would’ve took the car if I knew it was that far.”

Namo was struggling to his feet, clawing at the wall for support. Now that Jimmy had the drop on us, he wanted to get at me as soon as possible.

“Wend you get out of the hospital?” Reggie asked conversationally, edging toward his gun.

“You can ask ‘em when they wheel you in,” Jimmy said.

Namo was hobbling toward me, his face like a rabid animal’s. As he passed Pete, he sucker-punched him on the side of his head, knocking him to his knees.

“Watch this bitch,” he said to Jimmy as he came toward me. “He’s got two guns on him.”

Jimmy raised the fascist pistol, targeting my breastbone. He was no fonder of me than Namo.

“Go easy!” Baba said. “We have to get the money from him.”

When the Muscle Beach moron was a step away, rearing back for a haymaker, and Jimmy’s finger was whitening on the trigger, the hall door swung in again and Mary burst into the room, blond hair streaming behind her, pearl-handled switchblade held low in her right hand.

Jimmy was quick. Keeping the gun trained on me, he lashed back with his left hand, hitting Mary in the face at the same moment she plunged the knife into the back of his thigh. He howled, dropped his gun, and staggered toward the table with the blade buried in his muscular leg. I ducked Namo’s awkward, time-delayed swing and sank my fist into his solar plexus, dropping him.

As Namo went down, Pete scrambled up, feet skittering on the lino like a cartoon character’s as he darted to the back door. When he jerked it open, Budge was waiting on the steps, slapping the fish billy in his hand. Stepping into the kitchen, he hit Pete with a tremendous uppercut. There was payback for a good many existential eye pokes and light pay envelopes in that blow, and it made an airman of the ex-swabbie, sending him flying halfway across the room. Landing hard on his back, he convulsed just once, then lay unconscious.

In the confusion, Baba sprang from his chair and charged the open back door with surprising agility and speed. Years of hatha yoga had kept him limber despite his size. His three hundred pounds of human freight train should have been unstoppable. But Budge still blocked the doorway. He dropped down to a three-point stance and met Baba head-on with the strength and leverage that made him all-city in 1973. Living up to Coach’s billing, he stopped the guru in his tracks and, after a brief sumo bout, shoved him back into the room, where he stood, slump-shouldered and panting, defeated.

Mary was sitting with her back against the wall, rubbing her cheek, watching Jimmy writhe on the floor. Namo was crawling toward the hall door. Ozone Pacific was crouched in a corner. Reggie had snatched up Jimmy’s cannon and his peashooter and backed himself against the counter, keeping an eye on all the players. I had the Tomcat in my hand.

“Are you all right?” I asked Mary.

“Yeah,” she said and then lit up the room with an amazed and amazing smile. “This is wild!”

While Reggie covered, I jerked the knife out of Jimmy’s leg, evoking a piercing scream and releasing a spurt of blood. I tied a piece of rope above the wound as a tourniquet and dragged him over to the wall by the table. With Budge’s help, I lugged Pete and Namo over and dumped them beside him.

Baba stood brooding, looking much sillier in his fine blue suit than he ever had in his ridiculous dhoti.

“You won’t get away with this,” he said. “I’ll turn you in for the burglary and grand larceny. That necklace belongs to me. If the police don’t get you, Discenza’s men will.”

“I’ll take my chances,” I said. “Turn around and face the wall.”

Before he could execute the maneuver, Evelyn came into the kitchen from the hall. It was getting to be like Grand Central station in there.

“Where is my grandson?” she asked the disgraced guru.

“He’s right here,” Mary said. She stood up and took Oz’s hand and led him to Evelyn.

“You’re the lady in the picture!” the boy said.

“She’s your grandmother,” Mary said. “She’s going to take care of you now.”

“I’m going to take the best care in the world of you, Kelly,” Evelyn said. “You are my precious jewel.”

Oz looked from the elegant lady to me, and then back at her and back at me again, wonder emerging from the confusion on his face. Behind the wonder, something sly flitted in and out of sight, like the flash of a fish turning just below the surface.

“I’m rich,” he said to me.

I nodded and smiled. “You were right, buddy.”

“Help me, too, Evelyn,” Baba pleaded. “Just give me a couple of the diamonds to get away with.”

“Where’s Christina? If you tell me, I will help you. I will help you get away.”

“He doesn’t know where she is, Evelyn,” I said. “He was lying about that.”

I didn’t want her to find out about her daughter’s death right then. The scene was fraught enough already. I could break the news to her later, in private, and let her explain it to her grandson.

Baba’s eyes darted to mine when I spoke, not knowing why I was covering up but accepting the lie as wise. He didn’t want Evelyn going banshee, either.