Randy White - Everglades

“I see.” Shiva was still smiling, showing us he was under control once again. “You seem so sure of yourself; so quick to judge. That’s such an endearing… childlike quality. I bet… I bet that you’re the kind of man who still plays children’s games.”

Tomlinson patted the cased shotguns. “You mean the kind of games that don’t involve metaphorical penis symbols?”

“Oh, now, now, now, please. I bet that, secretly, you like things that go boom. What child doesn’t like an explosion?”

He meant something by that. Which caused Tomlinson to stumble. It set me back a beat, too.

Shiva continued smoothly, “I don’t claim always to be accurate, but clairvoyance is one of my peculiar gifts. Give me a moment to concentrate…” Shiva had both of his palms pressed to his temples. After a few seconds, he said, “… the children’s game you play is baseball. Yes, baseball. And the position you play… I don’t know the American equivalent, but in the sport of cricket, you’d be called a ‘bowler.’”

Dimple-chin said, “A pitcher. That’s the same thing.”

DeAntoni said, “Is that true, he’s a pitcher? Come to think of it, he does look like a pitcher. I’ll be damned. How do you people do that?”

I was thinking: They did a computer search while we were waiting, as Shiva continued, “I perceive that you feel you are an excellent pitcher. In fact, I perceive that you feel superior in a number of ways. Ego-that’s a character flaw you should address, Mr. Tomlinson. In a book, I once wrote, ‘A large ego is the favorite habitat of a small mind.’”

Tomlinson replied, “Interesting. So tell me, what’s it like, having all that room for your brain to move around in?”

Shiva fired back, “You must be speaking of my Palm Beach Ashram. You should come and visit one day, experience it for yourself. You’d have a chance to understand that there’s a far more satisfying world waiting for someone like you. Many drug addicts-even unconvicted murderers -have found peace and health there. What would you say if I challenged you to come and sit through my Basic Auditing lecture?”

Pulling at his scraggly hair, not smiling and as troubled as I’ve ever seen him, Tomlinson replied, “I’d probably tell you the truth, Jerry: I’m just too fucking busy. Or vice versa.”

On our way to the skeet range, dimple-chin drove past the private airstrip, the Sawgrass minimall where trams were shuttling vacationing members, then into what Shiva called, “our nature preserve and the Cypress Ashram Center.”

The nature preserve consisted of several dozen Everglades animals caged in fiberglass dioramas that were constructed to resemble natural habitat. The zoo was on a boardwalk. The boardwalk was part of a self-guided nature tour. There were birds, mammals, gators and snakes. In one of the larger cages, an oversized male Florida panther watched us with glowing yellow eyes as we rolled past.

What Shiva called his “Cypress Ashram” was really an outdoor amphitheater. It was a stage attached to an acoustic dome that was elevated above concentric levels of seating. The place was big; had to seat a thousand or so people. The theater was built at the edge of what must have been a cypress stand, though only a few cypress trees remained growing knee-deep in red water.

At what was the equivalent of a ticket house, a life-sized bronze statue of a bearded and smiling Bhagwan Shiva welcomed visitors. In one hand, he held a lantern, in the other a globe. The statue stood along the cart trail entrance, and Shiva ignored it with a practiced and bored disinterest as we rolled past.

To Shiva, Tomlinson said, “Hey, Jerry! Has there ever been a time in your life when, just once, you’d love to be a bird?”

Shiva reacted as if it were a good-natured joke; played right along. “Do you like birds? Then you’ll enjoy our next stop.”

Which made no sense until dimple-chin steered us down a gravel service path where a wooden sign read COMMUNAL FARM.

It was an oversized garden, really, laid out in an odd shape-a pentagon, I finally realized. Two acres or so of tomatoes, beans, squash, corn and other vegetables planted in rows. There were compost bins, equipment lockers and a shed for a small John Deere tractor. There was also a long hutch screened with chicken wire.

“We grow a lot of our own food,” Shiva told us. “Organically, of course. For our restaurants, and for our church members. Plus, we raise chickens and our own special variety of pigeon.”

DeAntoni said, “Pigeons? Those things are like rats with wings. Why’d anybody want to raise pigeons?”

Shiva was getting out of the cart and used his hand to tell us to wait for him. “You’ll see,” he said.

There were three women working in the garden. All were dressed in white robes belted at the waist. Shiva called to one of them, “Kirsten! You are needed.”

I watched an attractive blond teenager hurry to him, her head bowed, not making eye contact. Then she knelt before the bearded man, reached, and kissed the back of Shiva’s right hand. She nodded as he spoke to her-I couldn’t hear what he was saying-and she remained on one knee as he turned and walked away.

Back in the cart, Shiva said to dimple-chin, “They’ll be ready for us in about twenty minutes.”

Then he turned and spoke to DeAntoni, saying, “Now’s a good time if you want to ask me about Geoff Minster. I don’t know what I can add, but I’ll help in any way I can. There’s a favor I need to ask in return, however-” Shiva turned his eyes to Tomlinson, then to me. His eyes were an unusual color, I realized-a luminous amber flecked with brown-and they jogged a recent memory.

It took me an instant to make the association. The panther we’d just seen; the caged animal with the golden, glowing eyes. Shiva’s eyes possessed a similar lucency.

Shiva said, “The favor I’m going to ask is that you allow us to record our conversation. A legal precaution-I’m sure you understand.”

I watched dimple-chin remove a digital recorder from his pocket as Shiva added, “So, if you wouldn’t mind stating your names and home addresses for our records…”

At first, Shiva said nothing about Minster that was unexpected. His versions of their first meeting, and of their business history were similar to Sally’s versions.

He talked along freely, answering all DeAntoni’s questions. But his manner was disinterested, almost bored. It was as if he were just marking time, waiting for something more interesting to happen.

There was one small revelation when he said, “Am I convinced that Geoff’s dead? Probably, but I’m not certain of it. He had a lot going for him here. I was about to appoint him to my Circle of Twenty-eight-a group of my most trusted advisors worldwide. That’s quite an honor.

“In terms of business, Geoff was doing better than he’d been doing for the simple reason that he’d turned over almost all decision-making responsibilities to me and my staff. If that sounds immodest, I apologize. But the fact is, we are good at what we do.”

Shiva added that, emotionally, though, Minster was having some problems. “I’m not a gossip, and I’m certainly not going to breach the confidential nature of my relationship with a student. But I will tell you what is publicly known: Geoff was not happy in his marriage. It’s possible that his unhappiness was reason enough for him to intentionally disappear.”

DeAntoni said, “What you’re saying to me is that the guy was having an affair. That he maybe ran off to be with another woman.”

Shiva said, “I’m suggesting no such thing. We teach that sex is healthy. He had no reason to hide it.”

“Then why do you consider it a possibility?”

The blond girl in the white robe was walking toward us, motioning for us to follow-they were ready for us on the skeet range.