Criminal Carma Read online

  “That’s quite a gift to give someone you’ve only known six months.”

  “My sister would kill me if she found out.”

  “I can see her point,” I said. “Has it ever occurred to you that Baba is conning you?”

  “Of course it has!” Evelyn said sharply, with a flash of alcoholic anger. “I wonder about it almost every day. But I have to believe him. If he is lying it means I will never get her back. I couldn’t live with that now, not after coming so close. And he must be telling the truth. How else could he know all those things about her? He knew the name of her horse and the kinds of trees that grew along the trails we rode on at the ranch. He knew which suite we stayed in that winter at the Fairmont and the names of the kids she ran away with. He even gave me a picture of her and little Kelly that he got from one of those people. I’ll show you.”

  Half leaning, half falling sideways, propping herself up on her elbow, she opened the nightstand drawer and took out a snapshot. It was a photo of the girl whose pictures I had seen in the jewelry box at the Oasis Palms. The girl was holding a baby dressed in pink footsie pajamas and smiling toothlessly at the camera.

  “Baba’s psychic powers could explain some of what he knows about Christina, but not this picture. I took it myself the Christmas before she ran away.” Evelyn paused, looking down at the creased photograph. “Those pajama’s were Christina’s when she was little. She dressed the baby in them for the picture. We had a wonderful time that day. Everyone was happy. Look at the way little Kelly is smiling! Christina kept the picture in a frame on her dresser, and she took it with her when she ran away. It could only have come to Baba through someone who knows my daughter.”

  “What kind of psychic powers does he have?” I asked, still worried about him rummaging around in my neurons.

  “They’re called siddhis in yoga,” Evermore said. “He can tell what you are thinking sometimes, and he knows about things that are going to happen ahead of time. He sent a kind of a bodyguard to the desert with me because he sensed danger. I told him it was silly, but he insisted, and it turned out he was right. Someone broke into my hotel room and tried to steal the necklace. They would have gotten away with it, too, if the guard hadn’t gone back to my room.”

  “Why did he go back?”

  “When we were on our way to dinner, he asked me if I had put the necklace in the room safe. When I told him no, he got angry and turned around and went back to the hotel. That’s when he caught the burglar in the room and got beat up. He is still in the hospital out there.”

  “Where were you when he went back up?”

  “In my car in front of the hotel, why?”

  “It’s just lucky you didn’t go up, too,” I said. “You could have been hurt.”

  If she was in her car in front, Jimmy must have gone in through the lobby as I suspected and slipped past my partner.

  “Were you able to wear the necklace at your charity event?” I asked.

  “No. I was too upset to go. The Indian Wells police have it now. My lawyer is driving out to get it tomorrow afternoon so Baba can have it appraised on Tuesday.”

  “Why is he having it appraised?”

  “So he can use it as equity in a real estate deal. He and Councilman Discenza are planning to build a resort down at the beach. That is his worthy cause. He says he is going to use the money he makes on the deal to fund yoga centers all over the world.”

  “Who is your lawyer?” I asked casually.

  “Armand Hildebrand.”

  “Where’s his office?”

  “In Santa Monica,” she said, looking befuddled. “Why are you asking all these questions?”

  “I need to find a good lawyer up here to help me set up a limited liability partnership,” I said. “Does Hildebrand handle that kind of work?”

  “I’m not sure. Probably.”

  “Where does Baba have to take the necklace to get it appraised?”

  “I don’t know and I don’t care,” she said, suddenly weary, retreating into the arms of intoxication. She had been talking lucidly for someone with at least two bottles of wine in her, the way drunk people often do when booze dissolves mental barriers and lubricates the hesitant tongue. But the emotional pressure driving her confession had run down when I steered the conversation to business details. She finished her chardonnay, set the glass on the floor, and looked at me, blinking slowly. “I don’t care about the jewels or the money. I have more money than I can ever spend. I just want my daughter back. I’m lonely, Robert. I need someone to love, someone to love me.”

  We were looking into each other’s eyes and the look became intense and expansive, with that feeling of falling into the other person’s irises.

  “Could you love me?” She mouthed the words silently.

  I moved from the chair and sat beside her on the bed, putting my arm around her as she leaned heavily against me, turning her face to mine. I felt more compassion than lust as I kissed her the first time, a sense of sharing in her loss that was so like my own. But when she took my hand and placed it on her breast, a chakra well below my heart chakra began to whirl.

  We merged in a second deep wine-flavored kiss while I felt her breasts, thumbing the nipples stiff through red satin. Rubbing against Mary at the beach had stirred me up. The latent sexual charge that had gathered while we walked and touched and talked about tantra surged back to the forefront now, urging me toward Evelyn.

  Besides being amorous, I was angry at Mary for not giving in to me. She had known that she was driving me wild and had played hard to get, in part because of the globular guru, in part for other reasons of her own. Now I had a lovely woman in my arms, another of Baba’s victims, who wanted to give me the gift that Mary had withheld and I was tempted to take her not just for the physical pleasure but as a form of revenge.

  When Evelyn reached for my genitals, though, I pulled away. She was too drunk. She wanted sex now, but when she woke up tomorrow she might feel degraded. I didn’t want that. Also, surprisingly, despite my resentment toward Mary, I couldn’t bring myself to betray the connection I felt between us.

  I lifted Evelyn’s hand and kissed it, then kissed her lips again, lightly, and stood up.

  “You’ve had a lot to drink,” I said. “I don’t want you to do anything you’ll regret.”

  “Please,” she begged. “I know what I’m doing. I don’t want to be alone tonight.”

  In her pleading face I saw early signs of the decay that would overtake her if she kept drinking. Another year or two on the polish would transform her from a svelte middle-aged siren to a flabby old woman. And it was Baba who was driving her to drink.

  “I’ll stay until you go to sleep.”

  “Will you lie down with me and hold me?”

  “Yes. I’ll wait in the hall while you get ready for bed.”

  “Don’t bother. I can sleep in what I have on. I’m too tired-too drunk-to change. I just need to use the restroom.”

  She walked unsteadily into the adjoining bathroom and closed the door. After a few minutes I heard water running. A little while later the toilet flushed. She came back out with her hair brushed and her lilac perfume reinforced. I peeled the bedspread and top sheet back so that she could lie down, then sat on the edge of the bed to take off my shoes.

  “Thank you for being so nice,” she said, placing her hand flat against my back, with her fingers spread.

  That stung.

  I lay down beside her, still dressed in gray slacks and white dress shirt, and put my arms around her. She laid her head on my chest and snuggled against me. I was glad she had given the necklace to the guru, because I didn’t think I could have stolen it from her after hearing her story.

  When she started to snore softly, I slipped out of bed and put my shoes and jacket on and searched her desk. The seashell jewelry box was in the top-right drawer, along with her wallet and checkbook. Her bank, where the necklace would be dropped off on Tuesday morning, was the B of A on Wilshire in S
anta Monica.

  In the jumble of papers on top of the desk, I found one of her lawyer’s cards paper-clipped to a note she had written him about the lease on her Bel Air property. Her handwriting was as elegant as her hands, expressing a private-school education in the 1950s.

  I wrote the address of the Bel Air mansion on the back of the embossed card, stuck it in my pocket, and headed for the exit, passing through bare room after bare room, leaving Evelyn all alone in her empty house.

  Outside, the brisk sea air revived me. Walking back to the flop through quiet streets, I tried to bring Baba and the situation into clearer focus. I had found out a lot about him, but he was still surrounded by a dangerous mystery. I now knew how he had convinced Evelyn to give him the necklace and when and where he was supposed to take possession of it. That seemed to give me the upper hand. But the wild card of psychic powers was still in the deck.

  Anyone who doesn’t believe in some type of ESP isn’t paying attention. Even if they are unaware of it, everyone has had premonitions, not necessarily clear or of cosmic significance, but to some degree accurate. I’d had many such glimpses. The ability to see around existential corners was as much a part of my stock-in-trade as a cheerful smile and a loaded gun. Sometimes that meant carefully thinking through the likely stages of a scenario, action and reaction seen several steps ahead, as in chess or politics. Other times, though, it was a flash of insight, a visual or emotional sense that there was danger behind a locked door or something well worth risking danger for in a darkened building.

  And I knew from my study of yoga years before that spiritual masters often have a second sight far more penetrating than my blurry guesses, the ability to perceive both past and future and to divine people’s inner thoughts and intentions. That’s what worried me about Baba.

  The con job he was running on Evelyn made his spiritual stature doubtful. No true guru would exploit a mother’s grief for personal gain. But it was possible he had developed siddhis through sincere spiritual striving and then succumbed to the temptations that came with them.

  According to the ancient texts, exceptional spiritual development instills tremendous charisma. Baba’s stroll along the boardwalk the previous evening showed how people flock to the spiritually electric, ready to surrender themselves body, mind, and soul. Gaining complete power over people sometimes revives a guru’s lower self, presenting one of the last and most insidious challenges on the path to enlightenment. Those destined to merge with God resist the temptation and use their powers selflessly for the good of humanity. Others succumb and begin to gratify the ego’s hunger, exploiting disciples for sex or money or influence behind a cloak of rationalizations.

  Baba was hard to figure. The only thing I knew for sure as I felt the loose boards of the flophouse steps beneath my feet was that a battle with him was coming. We were both reaching for the same prize piece of merchandise, and one of us was going to get his fingers broken.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  Up early on Monday, I met Chavi in the hall as I headed downstairs. She was on her barefoot way back to Reggie’s room after using the bathroom. Her face was glowing and I knew that Reggie wouldn’t have to worry about doing his own laundry for the next week or so and that he would probably be coming in for a new shirt or pair of pants.

  Chavi smiled when she saw me.

  “Who is the lucky lady?” she said.

  “What do you mean?”

  She held my chin and turned my head, her eyes roving over my face.

  “You look like someone who is falling in love.”

  “You’re good,” I said. “What do you and Reggie have planned today?”

  “I’ll be at my booth,” Chavi said. “We both know what Reggie will be doing.” She shrugged, smiled good luck with the girl, goodbye, and see you later, then went on down the hall.

  The Santa Anas had blown again during the night, whisking away the smut of expended sighs and sad memories, leaving the seaside world sparkling. It was still windy, palm trees thrashing. The front door of the abandoned house next door had blown open. I stepped into the littered living room and called Ozone Pacific’s name. I wanted to ask him something. When he didn’t answer, I went down the hall to the room where he camped out, following an orange extension cord that Budge had run over from the flophouse and spliced to an old mechanic’s drop light that he hung from the ceiling. The light operated with a pull string and held a forty-watt bulb, bright enough for Oz to see what he was doing after dark.

  His sleeping bag was empty. Already out panhandling. The lining of the child-size bag was decorated with cactuses, bucking broncos, and cowboys with whirling lariats. His conglomeration of homeless-person junk-magazines, a few old books, some canned goods, and a gallon container of water-was piled in a corner. Looking at his living quarters, I wondered again how he had ended up this way. He had been an infant once, held in someone’s loving arms. There had been people who cherished him and dreamed of a different future for him than the one he had found. Or maybe not. Maybe he had been born unlucky to someone who didn’t want a child or who lacked the emotional or financial resources to raise one.

  A short walk down Pacific Avenue, lively with people plunging into the workweek after the fantasy of the weekend, took me to the lot where the Seville had been parked since our return from Indian Wells.

  Mr. Parker had a young black guy in a double-breasted beige suit cornered by his shack.

  “Parking lot ‘tendant,” he said to the young man, scanning his face for any sign of amusement. “Mr. Parker. Get it?”

  “Oh, yeah, that’s funny,” said the guy, who looked like the manager of a men’s boutique or a small hotel. “I’ll see you this evening, then.”

  “Some people got no sense of humor,” Mr. Parker said as I walked up.

  “Nice car, though,” I said, nodding at the gleaming black Maxima pulled up in front of the shack.

  “Yes, sir!” Mr. Parker said, forgetting his disappointment at the man’s failure to appreciate his perennial joke. “She’s slick all right. Not as slick as your Caddie, though. You need your keys?”

  “Yes, please.”

  “Nice day for a drive,” he said when he came back out of the shack. “This wind dies down in a little while it’ll be another bee-you-tee-ful day at our beach.”

  “Sure will,” I said. “Have you seen that kid Oz this morning?”

  “Not this mornin’. That young man don’t come this far over. I only see him afternoons when I eat lunch, or evenings after I close the lot.”

  “What do you mean he doesn’t come over this far?”

  “Don’t you know ‘bout him?”

  “No.”

  “He don’t come this side of Pacific or go beyond Ozone, up yonder. That’s how he got his name, you know? Ozone Pacific? He stay right on the beach.”

  “Why?”

  If Mr. Parker was right, Ozone was confined to a strip of real estate no more than a quarter-mile wide and at most two miles long, if he ranged all the way south to the Marina del Rey channel, where Venice Beach ended.

  “Guess he juss like it down there.”

  “How long has he been there?”

  “Ain’t sure, Mr. Rivers. I don’t like to pry too much ‘bout a man’s bidnis. He was hanging ‘round down by that palm tree of his when I opened my lot eight years ago.”

  “He hasn’t crossed Pacific Avenue in eight years?”

  “Not that I heard of.”

  I wheeled the Caddie out onto Horizon, jogged through the neighborhood to Lincoln, then took Lincoln north to Wilshire. When I thought of Ozone trapped in his tiny world I felt pity as sharp as panic and turned my mind away from his strange plight, focusing on the present moment, a remedy for mental and emotional distress recommended by spiritual teachers in all traditions.

  I was on my way to an exciting meeting. It was a beautiful morning, if a little windy, and I was driving a new Cadillac. With its smooth leather, silky ride, and rocket-ship power, the Seville m
ade every trip a pleasure, and I relaxed into the sensation of piloting the car along Wilshire through Brentwood and Westwood, past sidewalks crowded with UCLA coeds, serious and sexy, to the ultimate name-brand city of Beverly Hills. A bronze Bentley pulled away from the curb on Crescent Drive just as I turned off Wilshire, and I slid into the convenient spot. Most of the stores along Beverly and Rodeo wouldn’t open for another hour or two, but I knew Fahim would be in his shop.

  When I rapped on the glass door at the corner of Beverly and Brighton, he looked up from a catalogue and came around from behind the glass case to let me in.

  “Sabaah al-kheir,” he said. The morning is good.

  “Sabaah an-noor,” I replied as he had taught me. The morning is light.

  He was a Lebanese immigrant jeweler in his fifties with whom I had been doing business for several years. Medium height and build, short gray hair, gray goatee and rimless glasses.

  “What can I do for you, Robert, my friend?” he asked, his gray eyes sparkling.

  “Let’s go in the back.”

  When he saw the pink diamond earrings his face shone.

  “You always bring quality, Robert,” he said, inclining his handsome head. Dressed impeccably in Brooks Brothers threads, possessed of the excellent manners typical of Middle Easterners educated in Europe, he was a pleasure to do business with. He had plenty of legitimate customers, but he took special pleasure in illicit deals, partly because of the Bedouin currents deep in his blood, partly because those deals were the most profitable.

  Fahim examined the diamonds lovingly, using a loupe, a microscope, and some kind of scanner to make sure their rare rose color had not been enhanced by radiation or heat. After his technology had backed up his jeweler’s eye and intuition, we haggled for a few minutes for form’s sake, arriving at the price he had in mind all along. He paid me in cash, six bank-banded packets of crisp hundreds, a neat and generous 30 percent of the likely retail value of the two stones. I wasn’t sure what he did with the jewels he fenced but suspected that he sold them overseas through family connections, eliminating the chance of any blowback from the local cops.