Steven Thomas - Criminal Carma

Later in the afternoon, I picked up a fresh set of fake ID, becoming Stephen Michaelson from Sacramento, and drove to LAX with my partner. Wearing the sunglasses and hat I bought at the Hyatt, I rented a nondescript white Chevrolet from Enterprise, giving the clerk a five-hundred-dollar cash deposit in lieu of a credit-card number.

If we had to do an armed robbery, I didn’t want to be squealing away from the bank in my own car. Even with stolen plates, having the model and color identified so close to where I lived would have been dangerous. If someone got the license number of the rental, the cops would trace the vehicle to Enterprise. They might even dig up a videotape that showed me signing papers at the rental counter. But they wouldn’t have my real name and they wouldn’t be able to identify me behind the hat and glasses. Driving a rental would make a burglary less risky, too.

Reggie drove my car back to Venice from the airport and parked in one of the big lots by the beach. I rendezvoused with him there, and we moved the tools from the trunk of the Seville to the trunk of the rental. Afterward, Reggie took the Caddie to Mr. Parker’s lot while I stashed the rental on a side street near the flop.

Reggie was sitting in the broken-down armchair in my room, draining the last swallow from a quart of Budweiser when I got back. I spread a map of West Los Angeles out on the bed and showed him where the lawyer’s office and the restaurant were.

Outbound traffic would be light on Monday evening, but it would still take Hildebrand two hours to drive to Indian Wells, at least half an hour to do his business and two hours to drive back. If he left at four, that would put him back in Santa Monica around 8:30 p.m. If he left at five and stopped to eat on the road, he wouldn’t be back until ten or eleven. I decided to stake out the office from 7:30 on.

Norm’s was ideal for our purposes, a big, busy restaurant with plenty of in-and-out traffic and yet one where denizens of the Los Angeles night hung out for hours on end. We could sit in a booth by the window for a long time over coffee and pie without attracting attention.

“Once Hildebrand comes and goes, we can leave too,” I told Reggie. “We’ll go back around midnight and wait for the cops to do their drive-by.”

The Santa Monica police patrol a given street every four hours. Once they put in an appearance, we’d have time to do the burglary and be long gone before they returned.

“We’re gonna stick out like a sore thumb if we sit in that coffee shop all evenin’ and then come back and start hanging around after midnight,” Reggie said. “They’ll probably think we’re getting ready to knock them off.”

“Good point. We’ll split the surveillance up. One of us can watch until Hildebrand shows with the diamonds and the other one watch for the cops later.”

“I got dibs on the early shift,” Reggie said.

“Suits me.” There was something I wanted to do that evening.

“What’s this chump look like, anyway?”

“I don’t know.”

“What’s he drive?”

“Don’t know that either.”

Reggie made saucer eyes. “How am I supposed to spot the son of a bitch?”

“It shouldn’t be a problem. The office and parking lot will be empty after six or seven o’clock. If guy in a suit shows up with a security guard between eight and eleven and goes inside for a little while and comes back out, that’s him.”

“How am I supposed to see all that in the dark?”

“There are lights in the parking lot.”

When we finished going over our plans, I gave Reggie the keys to the rental car and warned him not to get any phone numbers or rub jobs from the waitresses at Norm’s.

“Don’t worry about me,” he said. “I’ll be quiet as a church mouse.”

We walked out the front door together and shook hands on the porch.

“Good luck,” I said. “I’ll be here from eight on. Call me as soon as he shows up.”

“Where you going now?”

“Over to the ashram to see what Baba Raba’s up to.”

“Baba Raba or that tight little blonde?”

I shrugged and smiled. “What are you going to do?”

“Stop by Chavi’s and see if she wants to get a burger and a couple of brews at Mulligan’s.”

“Make sure you are at Norm’s by seven-thirty, and make sure you’re sober.”

“Yes, sir!” Reggie said, giving me the sneering salute of an insubordinate sergeant.

The ashram was quiet when I arrived. The front door was closed but unlocked and I walked in through the foyer to the main hall. Ganesha was sitting behind the cash register in the gift shop, reading what looked like the same copy of the Bhagavad Gita he had been reading the first time I saw him. I was starting to like him. He was caught in an impossible situation, trying to maintain a legitimate ashram in the face of creeping corruption. He was lovesick over Mary and facing a crisis with Baba Raba, but he was still on the job. He was reading the right book, too.

Seeing the orange-robed twentysomething poring over the most famous Hindu scripture, I remembered the first time that I had read the Gita, in Florida years before. It was a little book with a light-blue cloth cover, and I could feel it changing me as I turned the pages, as if I were a clay figure being resculpted into a more functional and durable form. The fact that I’d never managed to live up to the book’s highest ideals didn’t diminish its value as a source of existential guidance in the least, and I was always glad to see another human being latch on to it.

Ganesha looked up as I walked into the shop.

“Hey,” he said.

“How’s it going?”

He shook his head. “Not so great.”

“What’s the problem?”

Our eyes locked and I could see that he wanted to confide in someone. I had gained some stature by fixing the roof, and by being cool about his lapse in manners, but he had no reason to trust me or even think that I was truly interested.

“It’s ashram business,” he said. “I can’t talk about it. I’m waiting for Swami Ramananda’s assistant to call me back from New York. Swami Ramananda will know what to do.” The last sentence was addressed more to himself than to me.

“Wasn’t Ramananda a disciple of Paramahansa Yogananda?”

“Yes!” Ganesha’s spiritual enthusiasm broke through his other concerns. “How do you know about him?”

“He’s mentioned in a biography of Yogananda that I read one time. Is this center part of the Self Realization Fellowship?” That was the name of the stellar spiritual organization founded by Yogananda. The group had a beautiful ashram in Hollywood, a shrine in Malibu, and a domed temple on a cliff overlooking the sea in Cardiff, in north San Diego County. Swamis have even better taste in real estate than gay guys.

“No. Ramananda studied at the feet of Yogananda when he was very young but eventually recognized Sri Brahmananda as his guru. This ashram is owned by the Divine Light Society.”

“What is the Murshid Center for Enlightened Beings?”

“That’s an organization Baba Raba founded. He operates it from here, but he doesn’t own the ashram.”

“Sounds like a complicated setup.”

“It has confused a lot of people,” Ganesha said somewhat grimly. “Baba is an ordained monk in the Divine Light Society, and Ramananda made him head of this ashram when Swami Sankarananda left his physical body two years ago. But he has his own organization, too, in which he calls himself the Murshid, which is a term for teacher that comes from Sufism. I guess he studied with some Sufi masters at one time and adopted some of their teachings. He has studied with many different teachers, including Trungpa and the Maharishi and claims to be a synthesizer of traditions.”