Criminal Carma

by Steven M. Thomas

  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.

  “Stop by the flop,” Reggie said grimly after I explained the plan. “I got a piece there.”

  “What’s wrong with Baba’s gun?”

  Reggie shook his head. “Um used to mine.”

  “You live in this dump?” Mary said when we pulled up in the alley.

  “Not anymore,” I said. “Slide over here behind the wheel. I’m going in with Reggie. If any shit goes down, take Evelyn back to the hotel and wait for us there.”

  The back door was unlocked and we went in through the kitchen, slow and careful. I had the Tomcat in my hand. As we crossed the living room toward the stairs, Budge came rushing down the hallway from his room.

  “Rob!” he said, then pulled up short when he saw the pistol. “Why you got a gun?”

  “There’s been some trouble. Have you seen Oz today?”

  “Yeah,” he said, looking scared. “I saw Pete and Baba Raba taking him away somewhere. It looked like he didn’t want to go.”

  “Why didn’t you stop them?”

  “I would have, Rob,” he said. “But I saw them from upstairs and they took off before I could get out there. Where do you think they’re takin’ him?”

  “What happened to your hand?” Reggie said.

  “I bust it while I was drunk last night,” he said. “What’s going on, Rob? Why you guys’ rooms all tore up? Where they takin’ Oz? He ain’t gonna know how to act out there without someone to keep an eye him. He ain’t been off the beach in years.”

  Tanned face puffy, hair tousled, eyes bloodshot, Budge looked hung-over and badly constipated. Viewing him in his board shorts and ratty Los Angeles Rams T-shirt, most people would have seen nothing but an over-the-hill beach bum who had drunk too much beer and wasted too much precious time to be good for much of anything, except more of the same.

  I saw backup.

  “Is there anyone else in the house?” I asked him.

  “No.”

  “Reggie, grab your pistol and a change of clothes for each of us as quick as you can.”

  “Why we need clothes? I thought we were leaving everything.”

  “We might get bloody.”

  He nodded and jogged up the stairs.

  I turned back to Budge. “Pete and Baba Raba are holding Oz for ransom. I can’t explain everything right now but they say they are going to hurt him if they don’t get the money they want in the next hour. We’re on our way to get him back. We aren’t planning on giving them any money. You can come with us if you want to.”

  Budge’s fat-padded body stiffened and expanded, like Superman’s when he tears off his Clark Kent outfit. His face turned angry and hard. “Fuckin’ A,” he said. “Where are they?”

  “We think they have him at Baba’s ashram over on Broadway. You have a weapon?”

  “I don’t need no weapon for those two,” he said. “I’ll tear their fucking heads off if they hurt that kid.”

  “I don’t doubt that,” I said. “But they are armed and a weapon might come in handy. You got a knife or a blackjack or anything like that?”

  “I got a fish club in my room.”

  “Grab it.”

  Reggie came down the stairs at the same time Budge returned from his room, holding a smooth, hard skull splitter. It was a cross between a police billy club and a principal’s paddle, an inch thick and two inches wide, and flat, so that it wouldn’t roll on a boat. It was ash, the same kind of wood they use for baseball bats, twenty-four inches long, with a round handle at one end and a rawhide strip that slipped around the user’s wrist. Wielded edgewise by someone as powerful as Budge, it was potentially lethal.

  CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

  We went back through the stinking kitchen to the Cadillac. Mary drove. I sat next to her, with Reggie riding shotgun. Budge climbed in the back with Evelyn, who I introduced as Oz’s grandmother.

  “I didn’t know he had a grandma,” Budge said, wonderingly. “Especially not one that looks like you.”

  We parked on Broadway, two houses down from the Murshid Center for Enlightened Beings. The girls wanted to come in, Mary to get a piece of Baba, Evelyn to make sure no harm came to her grandson, but I convinced them to stay in the car with the motor running.

  “We’ll be in and out,” I said. “I’m not fucking around with these guys.”

  I sent Budge with his fish billy to the back door, warning him to stick close to the house so he couldn’t be seen from the second floor and to duck below the first-floor windows. As Reggie and I crept across the front of the house, he pulled his pistol out of his back pocket. It was a little.25-caliber automatic that most SoCal crooks would have been embarrassed to be seen with.

  “When you going to get a real gun?” I asked him.

  “Hah!”

  That was all he needed to say. There were three notches in the plastic handle, one of them only six months old. He carved it after killing a psycho slave trader who had been about to kill me.

  We went through the front door that I had broken earlier in the day. There was no one in the hall or in the rooms that opened off of it. Ganesha’s body was gone from the gift shop.

  I was heading for the stairs when I heard laughter in the kitchen.

  It got louder as we went down the back hall and became recognizable as Pete’s nasty cackle.

  “What’s so funny?” I said as I pushed through the swinging door into the sunny room with its tall wooden cabinets that hadn’t been changed since the house was built.

  Baba was sitting at the table in his Armani suit, eating cornflakes from a mixing bowl. Namo sat across from him, poking at his bandaged arm. Pete was leaning against the counter by the sink. All three froze when they saw the guns.

  “I hope you’re not counting your chickens before they’re hatched,” I said.

  Pete opened his mouth as if to speak but then closed it without answering. He looked frightened. I saw him glance toward the back door.

  “Don’t try it,” I said. “I’ll drop you before you take two steps. Where’s Oz?”

  Pete, bug-eyed, stayed silent. I looked at Baba.

  He swallowed a wad of cereal pulp and spoke. “Did Evelyn send you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did you bring the necklace?” The day had pared still more fullness from his face. It had a lean, haunted look, and his flesh hung more loosely on his frame. He couldn’t
keep his anxiety out of his voice.

  “No,” I said.

  “The money?”

  “Sure,” I said. “We brought the money. Where’s Oz?”

  “He’s at a safe location. Show me the money and I will tell you where to find him.”

  I walked over to Namo. He was giving me a dirty look. He didn’t seem quite as worried as he should have been.

  “Where’s Ozone?” I asked.

  “Fuck you,” he said.

  I lowered the muzzle of the Tomcat and shot him in his meaty calf. He exploded out of the chair with a shocked scream and landed on his back on the linoleum, clutching his leg and cursing.

  Standing over him, my ears ringing, I pointed the.32 at his face. “Did you kill Ganesha?”

  Face scrunched with pain, he shook his head back and forth so rapidly that his features blurred. I took the snubnose.38 from his belt and stuck it in my back pocket.

  Reggie walked over to Pete.

  “Where’s the kid?” he said.

  “Don’t say anything, Pete,” Baba warned. “It’s a Mexican standoff! They have to pay for that information.”

  Reggie’s left hand shot out suddenly and grabbed Pete by the throat. He bent the ex-sailor back over the counter, pushing the.25 against his cheek.

  “Um gonna count to three,” he said. “One…”

  “He’s in the closet under the stairs,” Pete shrieked. “Don’t shoot me. I’m a veteran!”

  Jerking Pete upright, Reggie slung him toward the table. “Get over there with your punk friends.”

  “Keep an eye on them,” I said, heading for the hallway.

  “He’s not in there!” Baba said. “You’re wasting your time!”

  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.