Steven Thomas - Criminal Carma

“Rob!” he said, then pulled up short when he saw the pistol. “Why you got a gun?”

“There’s been some trouble. Have you seen Oz today?”

“Yeah,” he said, looking scared. “I saw Pete and Baba Raba taking him away somewhere. It looked like he didn’t want to go.”

“Why didn’t you stop them?”

“I would have, Rob,” he said. “But I saw them from upstairs and they took off before I could get out there. Where do you think they’re takin’ him?”

“What happened to your hand?” Reggie said.

“I bust it while I was drunk last night,” he said. “What’s going on, Rob? Why you guys’ rooms all tore up? Where they takin’ Oz? He ain’t gonna know how to act out there without someone to keep an eye him. He ain’t been off the beach in years.”

Tanned face puffy, hair tousled, eyes bloodshot, Budge looked hung-over and badly constipated. Viewing him in his board shorts and ratty Los Angeles Rams T-shirt, most people would have seen nothing but an over-the-hill beach bum who had drunk too much beer and wasted too much precious time to be good for much of anything, except more of the same.

I saw backup.

“Is there anyone else in the house?” I asked him.

“No.”

“Reggie, grab your pistol and a change of clothes for each of us as quick as you can.”

“Why we need clothes? I thought we were leaving everything.”

“We might get bloody.”

He nodded and jogged up the stairs.

I turned back to Budge. “Pete and Baba Raba are holding Oz for ransom. I can’t explain everything right now but they say they are going to hurt him if they don’t get the money they want in the next hour. We’re on our way to get him back. We aren’t planning on giving them any money. You can come with us if you want to.”

Budge’s fat-padded body stiffened and expanded, like Superman’s when he tears off his Clark Kent outfit. His face turned angry and hard. “Fuckin’ A,” he said. “Where are they?”

“We think they have him at Baba’s ashram over on Broadway. You have a weapon?”

“I don’t need no weapon for those two,” he said. “I’ll tear their fucking heads off if they hurt that kid.”

“I don’t doubt that,” I said. “But they are armed and a weapon might come in handy. You got a knife or a blackjack or anything like that?”

“I got a fish club in my room.”

“Grab it.”

Reggie came down the stairs at the same time Budge returned from his room, holding a smooth, hard skull splitter. It was a cross between a police billy club and a principal’s paddle, an inch thick and two inches wide, and flat, so that it wouldn’t roll on a boat. It was ash, the same kind of wood they use for baseball bats, twenty-four inches long, with a round handle at one end and a rawhide strip that slipped around the user’s wrist. Wielded edgewise by someone as powerful as Budge, it was potentially lethal.

We went back through the stinking kitchen to the Cadillac. Mary drove. I sat next to her, with Reggie riding shotgun. Budge climbed in the back with Evelyn, who I introduced as Oz’s grandmother.

“I didn’t know he had a grandma,” Budge said, wonderingly. “Especially not one that looks like you.”

We parked on Broadway, two houses down from the Murshid Center for Enlightened Beings. The girls wanted to come in, Mary to get a piece of Baba, Evelyn to make sure no harm came to her grandson, but I convinced them to stay in the car with the motor running.

“We’ll be in and out,” I said. “I’m not fucking around with these guys.”

I sent Budge with his fish billy to the back door, warning him to stick close to the house so he couldn’t be seen from the second floor and to duck below the first-floor windows. As Reggie and I crept across the front of the house, he pulled his pistol out of his back pocket. It was a little.25-caliber automatic that most SoCal crooks would have been embarrassed to be seen with.

“When you going to get a real gun?” I asked him.

“Hah!”

That was all he needed to say. There were three notches in the plastic handle, one of them only six months old. He carved it after killing a psycho slave trader who had been about to kill me.

We went through the front door that I had broken earlier in the day. There was no one in the hall or in the rooms that opened off of it. Ganesha’s body was gone from the gift shop.

I was heading for the stairs when I heard laughter in the kitchen.

It got louder as we went down the back hall and became recognizable as Pete’s nasty cackle.

“What’s so funny?” I said as I pushed through the swinging door into the sunny room with its tall wooden cabinets that hadn’t been changed since the house was built.

Baba was sitting at the table in his Armani suit, eating cornflakes from a mixing bowl. Namo sat across from him, poking at his bandaged arm. Pete was leaning against the counter by the sink. All three froze when they saw the guns.

“I hope you’re not counting your chickens before they’re hatched,” I said.

Pete opened his mouth as if to speak but then closed it without answering. He looked frightened. I saw him glance toward the back door.

“Don’t try it,” I said. “I’ll drop you before you take two steps. Where’s Oz?”

Pete, bug-eyed, stayed silent. I looked at Baba.

He swallowed a wad of cereal pulp and spoke. “Did Evelyn send you?”

“Yes.”

“Did you bring the necklace?” The day had pared still more fullness from his face. It had a lean, haunted look, and his flesh hung more loosely on his frame. He couldn’t keep his anxiety out of his voice.

“No,” I said.

“The money?”

“Sure,” I said. “We brought the money. Where’s Oz?”

“He’s at a safe location. Show me the money and I will tell you where to find him.”

I walked over to Namo. He was giving me a dirty look. He didn’t seem quite as worried as he should have been.

“Where’s Ozone?” I asked.

“Fuck you,” he said.

I lowered the muzzle of the Tomcat and shot him in his meaty calf. He exploded out of the chair with a shocked scream and landed on his back on the linoleum, clutching his leg and cursing.

Standing over him, my ears ringing, I pointed the.32 at his face. “Did you kill Ganesha?”

Face scrunched with pain, he shook his head back and forth so rapidly that his features blurred. I took the snubnose.38 from his belt and stuck it in my back pocket.

Reggie walked over to Pete.

“Where’s the kid?” he said.

“Don’t say anything, Pete,” Baba warned. “It’s a Mexican standoff! They have to pay for that information.”

Reggie’s left hand shot out suddenly and grabbed Pete by the throat. He bent the ex-sailor back over the counter, pushing the.25 against his cheek.

“Um gonna count to three,” he said. “One…”

“He’s in the closet under the stairs,” Pete shrieked. “Don’t shoot me. I’m a veteran!”

Jerking Pete upright, Reggie slung him toward the table. “Get over there with your punk friends.”

“Keep an eye on them,” I said, heading for the hallway.

“He’s not in there!” Baba said. “You’re wasting your time!”

The door, which had an angled top, wasn’t locked. Crowded in among folding chairs and cardboard boxes, Oz lay gagged, blindfolded, and bound hand and foot. I pulled the blindfold off first, so he could see who I was, then half-dragged, half-lifted him out into the hall, where I could get at the ropes to untie him.

“Baba Raba and Pete tied me up and put me in there,” he said in a trembling voice when I removed the gag. “I told them I wasn’t supposed to cross Pacific, but they made me come here. Why did they do that, Rob?”