Criminal Carma

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

“Look who I found,” Mary said, putting her hand on Oz’s shoulder.

“Hey, little buddy,” Budge said, exchanging his constipated grimace for an affectionate grin. “What you up to today?”

“Hi, Budge. Hi, Rob,” Oz said, giving us his trademark smile. “I was thinking about taking a bus out to the country today to visit a farm or something. Do they have farms like that, Rob? Where you can see cows and horses and stuff and ride on a tractor?”

“They probably do,” I said. “I’ll find out for you. How’s everything else going?”

“Great,” he said. “It’s a bee-you-tee-full day at the beach!”

“I see you’ve been hanging with Mr. Parker,” I said.

Oz nodded happily. The old parking lot attendant sometimes bought the boy dinner after he knocked off for the day. I had seen the two of them sitting at the counter where Mary and I had Cokes, Ozone devouring a hamburger and french fries while Mr. Parker explained the finer points of backing big cars into tight places and removing scratches with rubbing compound.

“Where’d you get those cock boots?” Budge asked Oz. The boy’s ragged tennis shoes had been supplanted by a pair of brown cowboy boots with black stitching. They were a little bit run-down at the heels but still in good shape overall. The color matched the brown of his two-tone cowboy shirt.

“Mr. Parker gave them to me,” Oz said. “They were his grandson’s but he got too big for them. He’s a six-footer.”

“They’re really nice,” Mary said. “Those are just what you’ll need for a trip to the country.” Then, in a gentler voice, she asked: “Did your mom ever show up?”

The smile fell from Oz’s face, leaving it looking haggard and aged, like the face of a famine victim.

“No,” he said. “She didn’t come. I walked all the way down to Ozone looking for her, but I couldn’t find her. I waited all day but she never came back.”

The street he mentioned intersected the boardwalk a mile north of the palm tree where he hung out.

“Ozone isn’t that far,” I said, with false heartiness, trying to counter his mood.

“It sure seemed far,” he said in a small voice.

“Aw, cheer up, little buddy,” Budge said, slapping him on the back. “Maybe she’ll come see you next weekend.”

Ozone’s wide eyes were amazed and hopeful. “Do you think so, Budge?”

“Never can tell,” Budge said. “Come on, let’s walk back down to the house and get something to eat. You going that way, Rob?”

“No, I’m going to walk Mary back to the ashram.”

“Do you live at the ash farm?” Oz asked Mary.

“Yeah, for right now,” Mary said.

“Do you know when Baba Raba is coming back to the beach?”

“He’ll probably be down here in the next day or two. Why?”

“I just want to ask him about something”

“We’re gonna get going,” Budge said. “Come on, Oz.”

“Let’s walk with them,” Mary said, taking my arm in hers. “It’s such a pretty afternoon, I don’t feel like going back yet. Evening meditation isn’t for another couple of hours.”

“No argument here.”

“I shouldn’t have asked about his mother,” she said as Oz and Budge went on ahead. “It upset him.”

“Don’t worry about it.” I squeezed her hand. “He’ll be fine. She’ll show up one of these days.”

The four of us strolled leisurely southward, Oz telling Budge how beautiful the country was, Mary and I stopping occasionally to look at the vendors’ wares. I bought her a mood ring, and when she put it on it glowed bright green.

“That means a romantic feeling,” said the old woman selling the rings.

“Oh, really?” Mary said. She held her hand out in front of her to look at the ring, then looked over at me, smiling. “Maybe there’s hope for you, pal.”

Before long, we came to Wave Crest. Antonio’s restaurant was halfway between the boardwalk and Pacific Avenue. Two men were talking by the entrance. The older one, about sixty, was dressed like a waiter, in black pants and a white shirt. He had thick, wavy gray hair and a drooping mustache. The second man looked even more Italian than the first, with an aquiline nose, olive complexion, and dyed black hair slicked straight back. He was wearing a dark, expensive-looking suit. When he smiled, his capped teeth and shark’s eyes looked familiar.

“Who are those guys,” I asked Budge.

“The old guy is Gianni,” Budge said. “The other guy is that crook Discenza. He’s the s.o.b. behind that hotel and marina they’re trying to build.”

“What’s he doing down here?”

“He owns Antonio’s,” Budge said. “You guys go on without me. I want to ask Gianni something. I’ll catch up with you.”

Mary, Oz, and I walked a few blocks farther south to Westminster.

“We’re going to peel off here,” I said to Ozone. “You want to walk back to the ashram with us and see if you can talk to Baba?”

“No, I’ll wait for Budge,” Ozone said. “If you see Mr. Baba, tell him I said hello.”

After we crossed Pacific Avenue, I looked back and saw Ozone standing at the curb on the west side, waving to us like a passenger at the rail of a cruise ship, setting sail on a voyage from which he would never return.

“Bye, Rob. Bye, Mary.”

“Bye, Oz.”

“Goodbye!” Mary waved back at him.

At the ashram, we went along the side of the house into the backyard. At first I thought all the karma yogis were gone, but then I noticed Johnny sitting on the bench where Mary and I had sat, facing the statue of the Virgin Mary. He was leaning forward with his elbows on his knees and his head bowed.

At the bottom of the kitchen steps, Mary turned and kissed the corner of my mouth and looked up at me with her eyes sparkling.

“Thank you so-o-o-o much, Robert,” she said. “I had a wonderful time!”

Then, before I could answer or ask her for another date, she ran up the steps and disappeared into the sanctuary of the kitchen. It was a slick maneuver by an experienced girl who knew how to avoid entanglements. I was frustrated by her swift withdrawal but happy about the warmth in her voice and smile. She had enjoyed being with me and I thought I could probably coax her out again and maybe get her to try some tantra with me if time allowed.

As I turned to go, my mind was already shifting back into crime mode, looking ahead to the meeting with Evermore and what I needed to learn there. Johnny was standing by the bench, facing the house. He raised his hand in greeting and we walked toward each other.

“What’s up?” I said.

“Just saying goodbye to the Lady.” He nodded his head toward the statue. His eyes were red.

“Goodbye?”

“Yeah, I’m through with this place.”

“What happened?”

“Baba and Ganesha got in a big fight. It was pretty ugly.”

“What were they fighting about?”

“Baba had that girl Gopi up in his room doing something to her and she started screaming and Ganesha went in there to see what was wrong. Then him and Baba started yelling at each other and Gopi ran out crying.”

“Which one is Gopi?”

“She is that tall skinny chick who wears her hair in a long braid that hangs down to her butt. She has black hair.”

“What did Ganesha say to Baba?”

“I couldn’t hear everything. I was fixing a leak in the bathroom sink down the hall and the bedroom door was closed part of the time, but from what I heard, Baba was bawling Ganesha out for coming into his room while he was doing tantra with Gopi and Ganesha said that it wasn’t tantra, it was sadism. Baba went nuts then. It was scary. He was snarling like an animal. He threatened to expel Ganesha from the ashram and said he would use his siddhis to destroy him spiritually, some shit like that. It was a real mess.”

He looked around at the garden. “I love this place. It’s kind of like I found God here. When Swami Sankarananda was alive, it was a little bit of heaven on earth. But that shit today was too much for me. There is something wrong with Baba. He sounded crazy. He scares me. I don’t want to tell you what to do, but if I was you, I’d find some other place to learn yoga.”

How’d it end up?”

“Ganesha sounded pretty shaken up, but he stood his ground. He told Baba that unless he stopped his left-handed practices and returned to true Vedanta he was going to call the swamis in New York and tell them what was going on out here.”

“What did Baba say to that?”

“That took the wind out his sails. He quit yelling and started trying to convince Ganesha that nothing wrong was going on and that he was going to get himself in trouble if he called New York. He said that he was an enlightened master and that Ganesha was supposed to obey him and something about Gopi’s ego consciousness and attachment to her body, that it had to be reduced for her to advance spiritually. Sounded like a crock to me. One of them shut the door after that and I didn’t hear anything else.”

“What are you going to do?”

“I guess I’ll try the Ramakrishnas. They have a pretty nice place in Hollywood, right by the freeway.”

“Good luck.” We shook hands. “Thanks for filling me in.”

“Take care, man.”

As he disappeared around the corner of the house, the backdoor opened and one of the flower girls came down the steps. She was wearing tight black stretch pants, a red blouse, and red high heels, clothes more suitable for clubbing than meditation. She gave me an empty look as she went along the flagstone path into the side yard. Her pupils were huge.

I waited a few moments, then went to the corner and peeked around in time to see her walking up to a gleaming XJ16, the most expensive Jaguar on the road. The tough guy I’d met the night before was leaning against the red car with his back toward me, talking to the driver through his open window. The driver was wearing a real estate salesman’s blue blazer and a black toupee. He handed some cash out the window. While Namo counted the money, the driver stared at the girl getting into his car with a look of lust so naked that his face took on the raw lividity of a skinned animal.

So the girls did outcalls as well as in-calls in the little rooms upstairs. I was surprised to see the operation so out in the open. Either Baba was getting reckless or he had police protection. Even if he had protection, his world was starting to wobble. His patroness was losing patience with him, his aide-de-camp was threatening to turn him over to the spiritual authorities, and I was closing in on his two most valuable possessions.