Steven Thomas - Criminal Carma

The Coachella Valley is the wettest desert in the West, with more swimming pools per capita than any other place in the country-not surprising since it routinely tops 110 Fahrenheit in the summer. There is abundant natural water, too. Away from sprinkler systems and maintained greenery, the valley floor is as dry and desolate as the most antisocial old prospector could hope for, but it is ringed by four mountain ranges-the Santa Rosas, the San Jacintos, the San Bernardinos, and the Little San Bernardinos, with the highest peaks over ten thousand feet. The mountains isolate the valley as surely as the sea isolates Catalina, giving it a far-off, Shangri-La feeling even though it is only a short drive from LA. The rocky, pine-clad peaks also provide an infinite supply of water, snowmelt that runs down underground to fill aquifers below the sand. Valley place-names-Palm Springs, Desert Hot Springs, Indian Wells-testify to the availability of this ironic water. Another example of things often not being what they seem.

When I came to Southern California in 1992, I couldn’t understand why people would go to the desert for a weekend trip or weeklong vacation when they had available to them mountain resorts like Arrowhead and Big Bear and one of the most dazzling seacoasts in the world, with 150 miles of bright, misty beach stretching from San Diego to Santa Barbara. Over the past four years, though, I had fallen under its spell. I loved the dramatic rise of the mountains from the dry seabed of the valley floor, the date palm groves, and the glittering resorts. I liked the desert nights especially, the stillness and mystery, but on that night I felt cut off emotionally from the world around me. Everything looked flat and mundane, the way it does when you are depressed.

The powerful charge of adrenaline that had gushed through me earlier in the evening as I burglarized the hotel room, fought with Jimmy Z, and then fled the scene had dissipated, leaving me listless as a speed freak crashing from a three-day run. I was depressed by the loss of the diamonds I had held in my hand, by Reggie’s almost fatal negligence, and maybe by the aftereffects of steel striking my skull. I still faced the problem of retrieving the Cadillac and getting out of town without a police escort.

To revive myself, I tried a technique I learned from a medicine man I met in the Palm Valley on my first trip to the desert, several years before. The valley is a true oasis at the base of the San Jacinto Mountains, where a clear stream rushes down through fan palm groves before disappearing below the desert floor. The Agua Caliente band of the Cahuilla Indians has lived there for more than a thousand years. Sitting beside me on the bank of the stream, the medicine man showed me how to look at the whole width and thickness of the flowing water, not just the surface, getting inside it in a magical way. I felt energy pour into me when I connected with his concept, a tiny circuit closing in the infinite universe.

Since then I’ve found that the trick can work in any environment. Whenever I notice that the world has gone flat, the landscape looking like a mural painted on a factory wall, I know that I am too wrapped up in myself, cut off from the healing flow of reality around me. When that happens, I use my imagination to grasp the third dimension of depth, visualizing the twisting branches and twigs in each bushy treetop, seeing the shaped space between the leaves and the space between successive trees, and suddenly the world regains a subtle animation. In an urban environment, I visualize the texture of the bricks, the depth of the mortar lines, the segmented spaces inside the buildings and irregular spaces between them, and it has the same effect of pulling me out of myself and bringing the world back to life.

Looking at the nearest palm tree, I let the twenty-foot spread of the crown take shape in my mind, imagining how the raspy, sharp-edged leaflets attached to the stalks of the fronds, and how the fronds merged into the fibrous structure of the trunk. I thought about the roots branching into the sandy soil, drawing a steady stream of water molecules and minerals up through narrow ducts to feed the green fans and grow the sweet dates.

That was all it took to bring depth and dimension back to the desert night. I sensed the lively, shifting distances between the first palm, swaying slightly in the breeze, and those around it, felt myself in specific proximity to the black mountains resting their unimaginable weight on the earth and to the massive balls of burning hydrogen flickering far out across the universe.

The rose-tinted diamond earrings hidden in the hotel room behind me would fence for five or six thousand dollars. The thought of those beautiful gems with their highly compressed value lifted my mood further. I stood up and gripped the rail of the balcony, fully inflating my chest with cool night air.

There were things I didn’t understand about the situation. Why was an elegant, wealthy woman like Evelyn Evermore traveling with a homicidal hood? Who was Baba Raba-one of the celebrity gurus California was famous for? Why had the lady carelessly left the necklace in an unlocked drawer, and where was it now? Why had Jimmy Z come back, and where had he left Evermore? They were the same questions that had been nagging me when I sat down, but now they were intriguing instead of unsettling, exciting instead of depressing.

I went to bed the way a criminal should, scheming.

The next morning, I was up in time to see the Santa Rosa Mountains stained red by the sun as it peeked over the Little San Bernardinos on the opposite side of the flat thirty-mile-wide Coachella Valley, horizontal rays skimming over the desert to fire the western peaks. While Reggie and I ate scrambled eggs with thick crispy strips of hickory-smoked bacon on the terrace overlooking the golf course, I leafed through the local newspaper. An account of the burglary and attempted theft of the diamond necklace was buried on page 6, where it wouldn’t frighten the millionaires. The paper mentioned Evermore’s name and reported that the jewels were worth half a million dollars. Any time the cops seize drugs or recover or prevent the theft of property, they inflate the value of the goods outrageously to make themselves look good. The article noted that the police were looking for two suspects. I hoped Tawny hadn’t talked.

The paper also reported that James Zerotski, who was injured in the attempted robbery, had been taken to Eisenhower Medical Center, where he was in serious condition. It didn’t mention the earrings.

I showed the article to Reggie. His lips moved silently as he read through it.

“Maybe we should go over an have a powwow with the punk,” he said when he finished.

“About what?”

“Maybe he knows where the rocks are.”

“I doubt it. He was out cold. It would be too risky, anyway.”

“Whadaya wanna do, then?”

“I want to get the Caddie and get the hell out of town.”

Back upstairs, I stuffed our bloody clothes and our shoes, which might have left identifiable footprints in blood or mud, into two plastic dry cleaning bags, then went down the back stairs and buried them in a Dumpster by the hotel kitchen.

At 8 a.m. we sallied out the main entrance of the Hyatt Grand Champions Resort and Spa like typical tourists with more cash than common sense, off to enjoy a day in wonderful wintertime Palm Springs. The front of the hotel was bustling with Saturday-morning arrivals and departures, bellboys wheeling suitcases into the lobby and hauling bags of golf clubs out to Mercedes idling with their trunks open.

“Have a grand day, gentlemen,” the doorman said.

You don’t get that at Motel 6, either.

A five-minute walk past hibiscus bushes with papery-red blossoms as big as dinner plates and flower beds full of yellow cannas and orange-flowering birds-of-paradise took us to the front of the Oasis, which was a mirror image of the busy Hyatt, cars two deep at the curb, laden luggage carts squeaking into and out of the hotel.