Criminal Carma

CHAPTER THIRTY

When Evermore went to see Baba Raba at the Murshid Center for Enlightened Beings, he told her that he had met someone who knew her daughter. He said Christina had been living in Venice earlier that year and that the man who knew her didn’t want to come forward because he was a drug dealer who had sold Christina marijuana and cocaine. Baba told Evermore that the dealer would track Christina down if she would give him ten thousand dollars to pay off a pressing debt. During their first conversation, the guru mentioned several things about Christina’s past that he said the dealer had told him. The accurate personal details made Evelyn believe the offer might be legitimate. She wanted to get a private detective involved, but Baba said that would spook the dealer, so she left the matter in his hands, along with a cashier’s check for ten grand.

Through the late summer and early fall, a pattern had developed. Each time it seemed that they were on the verge of making contact with Christina, there would be some hitch that required another chunk of cash to smooth over. The amounts had increased to $15,000 and then $25,000. Under the stress of anticipation and repeated disappointment, Evermore began to drink again, which made it easier for Baba to manipulate her. Each time she got upset about the delays, Baba doled out a few more intimate facts about Christina that could only have come from her or someone who knew her well. He was aware of the incest and told Evermore things about Christina’s relationship with her father that even she didn’t know but which nevertheless rang true.

In early January, he had asked about the necklace. She wasn’t sure how he found out about it, but when she revealed the circumstances in which she had received the diamonds, he told her that she must get rid of them if she wanted her daughter back.

“He said a lot of stuff about crystals, how they focus and magnify psychic energy,” Evermore told me. “It didn’t make sense to me at first, but after I did some research, I understood what he was talking about. Crystals are very powerful and mysterious. They really are. That is how early radios worked, you know, with crystals that sent energy waves through space.”

Baba told her that the diamonds were contaminated with negative energy because she had taken them in exchange for her daughter’s innocence, and that the crystals were broadcasting a kind of force field that was keeping the girl away. That was why all their plans had fallen through and all the money gone to waste. He said that the best thing would be to give the necklace to him so that he could sell it and use the money in a worthy cause. That would destroy the force field and allow Christina to return.

“I know it sounds crazy,” Evermore said, “but I told him he could have the necklace after I wore it to this big charity bash we have out in the desert every winter.”

“How much is the necklace worth?” I asked her.

“I don’t know, exactly. It was valued at a quarter of a million the last time it was appraised for the insurance rider, but a jeweler who cleaned it several years ago told me it was worth twice that.”

“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 Santa 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.