Dave Zeltserman - Bad Karma

“Are you okay with me asking you a few more questions?”

“I’m so sorry.” She waved briefly again at some imaginary fly. “Yes, of course. I’m being ridiculous.”

“No, you’re not. Under the circumstances you’re holding up damn well. Can you tell me what happened when you visited the True Light this morning?”

“They have an iron fence surrounding their property.” She looked away from Shannon, her face wax-like as she stared out the coffee shop’s front window. “It’s like a prison,” she continued. “I buzzed at the front gate and the girl answering wouldn’t tell me anything about Melissa. I told her I wouldn’t leave until I spoke with my daughter. I kept buzzing until two men came out. They were dressed in silk robes, their heads shaved. They looked so angry. One of them pushed me to the ground, and they threatened to do worse to me if I didn’t leave.”

“Do you want to go to the police?” Shannon asked. “You could file charges against them.”

She shook her head. “I just want to get Melissa out of there. I don’t want to do anything that could complicate that. So Bill, will you try to see my daughter?”

“Yes. Of course.”

She started to fumble with her handbag. “How much should I pay you?”

“Nothing right now,” Shannon said. “I’ll see if I can convince them to be reasonable. If I can, there’s no charge. I’ll just be happy to have helped. If I can’t convince them, then we’ll talk again and work something out.”

“No, really, let me pay you -”

Shannon put a hand out, stopping her. “Please, this is something I’d like to do,” he said.

Looking into his eyes, she nodded and put her bag down.

After getting her cell phone number and the True Light’s address, he told her he’d call after visiting them. “How long do you plan on staying in Boulder?” he asked.

For a long moment she stared at Shannon as if she didn’t comprehend his question. Then a grim determination hardened the muscles along her mouth.

“Until Melissa is safe,” she said.

Eli held a cheeseburger in his right hand and a napkin balled up in his left which he used to wipe the grease off his chin. His eyes sparkled as he smiled thinly at Shannon.

“I had less than an hour between my two meditation classes to uncover what I did,” he said. “If you worked half as fast you’d have the murders of those two students solved by now.”

“Or if I was half as lucky as you,” Shannon said.

“Luck? As my grandma used to say, Feh ! There is no such thing as luck, my boy. What you think of as luck is simply the tapping into of your psychic vision.”

“So if I find a ten dollar bill on the sidewalk, I somehow created my luck? That I psychically knew where that ten dollars was going to be?”

“Exactly.”

“Really?”

“Really.”

“Sounds a bit farfetched to me, but fine, enough lectures for now on metaphysics. Are you going to tell me what you found?”

“Such impatience. First let me enjoy the fruits of my labor.”

Eli started to take a bite of the burger but his eyes glanced towards Shannon and he shook his head, sighed and dropped the burger back onto his plate. “How can I enjoy my food when you’re staring at me with those big, sad puppy dog eyes?”

“I’ll close my eyes. How’s that?”

“Won’t help any.” Eli sighed heavily. He pushed his plate a few inches away. “So you want me to tell you how this fercockta cult recruits their members?”

“That’s why I’m buying you lunch.”

“A bargain. Trust me. They do it by running a small yoga studio up on the Hill.”

“You’re kidding.”

“I kid you not. The place is called Vishna Yoga. Notice how close that is to Vishnu, the bastards! Trying to catch the unaware off guard. They have a small storefront on Thirteenth Street.”

Shannon breathed out slowly as he thought about it. “Fucking insidious,” he said.

“It is that. Also a bit ingenious. What better way to find college students who are the most emotionally vulnerable than to set up a business that they’ll seek out. And then you have hours to work on them while they’re putting themselves in your hands. Of course, the so-called yoga classes they’re giving are as fraudulent as a wooden nickel.”

“And how’s that?”

Eli made a face. “The woman I talked with told me what they had her do, and while I don’t know exactly what you’d call it, it’s not yoga. Sounded more like the positions are meant to wear you down more than anything else. So let me guess, after all my attempts over the last five years to convince you of its benefits, you’re finally going to sign up for yoga classes?”

“Well, I guess at least some fraudulent ones.”

The Hill section of Boulder was directly across the street from the university and its businesses catered almost exclusively to students. Cheap to moderately priced restaurants, tanning salons, music shops, clothing stores, stuff like that. Vishna Yoga had a basement location in the heart of the Hill-off of Thirteenth Street, sandwiched between a music store and a nightclub. A sushi bar sat directly above it.

The signs in front of the yoga studio were innocuous enough in the way they advertised new approaches to achieving well-being and stress relief. Several blown-up photos showed classes filled with young women, all seemingly in a state of bliss as they stretched in the same manner and direction.

Shannon walked down half a dozen steps, opened the front door and entered a small vestibule where he was assaulted by a pungent overly-sweet odor. The smell seemed like a mix of musk and marijuana. He wasn’t sure what it was, but it was more powerful than any incense he had ever encountered and the air was thick with it.

From behind a set of curtains he heard people chanting in a low monotone. Something about Vishna being the one and true source. A woman stepped quickly through the curtains to meet Shannon. She was dark-haired, short, petite, in her early twenties and wearing yellow leotards. Her eyes were wide open and expressionless as she stared at Shannon in the same manner a morgue worker might look over an incoming body that needs to be catalogued. Then, nodding to herself as if she had finished sizing him up, she told him Vishna Yoga would not be for him.

“What?”

“What we do here would not be right for you. I am sorry, but it would be a waste of your money.”

“Why wouldn’t it be right for me?”

“Your energy is all wrong. Please leave.”

“Wait a minute.”

Shannon was taken aback by the woman’s reaction to him. To bide time, he picked up a brochure from the counter and started to thumb through it. Inside was a picture of their founder, Vishna the One True Source. He was a few years older than Shannon, maybe forty, with a shaved head, brownish skin and sharp features that were made even sharper by his piercing black eyes.

Shannon tried to act oblivious to the way the woman was staring at him and read aloud the marketing hype from the brochure. “Stress relief, improving my self-image, better sense of well-being.” Smiling, he added, “This sounds like what I’m looking for.”

“I am telling you this would be a waste of your money. There is nothing we can do for you.”

“It’s my money to waste.”

“No.”

Shannon gave her a hard look. “What if I stay to observe a class,” he said.

“Leave now or I will call the police.”

“I think I can stay for one class.”

“I said leave!”

An Asian woman, also very young, poked her head through the curtains and stared at Shannon with the same empty look in her eyes. With reinforcements now in place, the woman in the yellow leotard bent her knees, tensing, as if she were going to spring at him. A vein had started beating along her neck.