Baba nodded and smiled as satisfied a smile as he was capable of with Discenza and his men waiting in the wings, tapping their Italian loafers.

“It is as I suspected,” he said.

“Where is she, you fat fucking hypocrite?”

“Watch yer mouth,” Namo said.

“She is locked up, safe and sound,” Baba said. “We had a disagreement yesterday evening when she declined to participate in the culmination of a ritual. Her refusal to submit led to an argument about the role of sexuality in spiritual development and human relationships. Your name came up in that argument in such a way as to make me believe that you two have formed a mutual attachment. Considering our suspicions of you, I thought that might make her a useful tool. In addition, I didn’t want her running to the authorities with any wild tales. So I locked her up. Are you going to force us to knock you out and take you to watch her be abused in order to secure your cooperation? Would you enjoy seeing Namo have his way with her? Or will you play it smart, as they say, and turn over the necklace?”

When I didn’t answer, Baba continued, putting a powerfully persuasive note in his voice: “If you give me the necklace, I will give you the girl, only slightly the worse for wear. I will also let you keep the golden coins and any other booty you may have taken from Hildebrand. You and the girl can go your way, richer than you were, and I will go my way. Neither of us want police involvement, and that will give us a comfortable level of what could be called mutually assured destruction. You don’t have to worry about me turning you in for burglary and safecracking, and I don’t have to worry about the two of you making any allegations about illegal activity at the ashram.”

“All right,” I said, resignedly. “I guess you’ve got me over a barrel. I’ll give you the necklace, if you promise to let Mary go and let me keep the Krugerrands.”

The loving smile, tinged with relief, widened beneath Baba’s big nose. “This is wise, Robert. I knew from our first meeting that you were an intelligent man.”

“Be careful!” Pete said. “He’ll try and pull something.”

“Not while we have the girl,” Baba said. “And the gun. Where is the necklace?”

“I’ll get it,” I said, throwing back the covers.

Namo raised the snubnose as I put my feet on the floor.

“Tell this goon to step back so I can get out of bed.”

“I am not sure that is a good idea,” Baba said. “Why don’t you just tell us where it is?”

“It’s hidden under the house,” I said, standing up. “I’ll have to show you.”

“Watch him, Namo,” Pete said.

“I got him covered.”

Baba shrugged. “Let him get dressed. There’s no time to waste. The necklace has to be at the appraiser’s by the close of business today in order for the bank to provide the funds by tomorrow evening.”

The clothes I had worn the previous night were on the floor beside the bed. I stepped into my pants, put my shirt on and buttoned it up, then sat back down on the edge of the bed to put on my shoes.

Namo was hovering over me in a threatening way while Pete stood guard at the bedroom door with his sap in case I tried to make a run for it. He wasn’t a big guy, but he was in good shape. It would be tough to get past him without taking a debilitating blow from the blackjack.

When I stood up again, I patted my pants pockets. “One of you guys got a cigarette?” I asked.

“No, we don’t have a cigarette, asshole,” Pete said.

“You shouldn’t smoke, Robert,” Baba said, disapprovingly. “It is bad for your health.”

“I only do it when I am nervous,” I said, fishing in my front shirt pocket.

“Let’s go,” Namo said, reaching out with his free hand to grasp my shoulder and turn me toward the door.

As he grabbed my shoulder, the gun swung wide. When it was pointing at thin air instead of my navel, I whipped Oz’s razor blade out and slashed his left forearm and then his face with a quick back and forth motion of my hand. He screamed and dropped the pistol, using his gun hand to try and staunch the blood spurting from the arteries in his arm. I sprinted for the window.

“Stop him!” Pete yelled.

Baba bounded up from the chair to cut me off but jumped back when I slashed at his face.

I dove through the closed window. Its dry-rotted frame gave way like balsa wood and I landed among splinters and broken glass on the shed roof over the back porch, rolled down the roof, and dropped over the edge into the alley.

“After him!” I heard Baba roar, but no one came out the window. Baba was too fat, Namo too bloody, and Pete most likely too chicken.

I ran south half a block to Market, dodged over to the boardwalk and sprinted north, weaving around morning strollers. At Horizon, I circled back to Pacific, peeking around the corner of a brick building. There was no one in front of the flophouse. Namo’s wounds had slowed them down.

I raced across Pacific and along Horizon to Mr. Parker’s. He was situating a Corolla at the back of the lot. I grabbed my keys out of the shack and ran to the Seville, which was parked with its nose toward the gap in the chain.

“Hey, now,” Mr. Parker said, hurrying toward me. He didn’t allow people to get their own keys.

“Sorry,” I yelled as I hopped in. “I’m in a big hurry.”

CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

Things were bad. A slippery handful of lowlifes knew that Reggie and I had committed a series of felonies that could send us to prison for years, and they had at least one piece of potentially damning evidence. It was very possible that I had lost the necklace again, this time irretrievably. To have it and lose it and have it and lose it again was too much. I felt like I was flailing in quicksand. Baba might search the room and find it, along with the gold and bonds, leaving us nothing to show for our time and risk and effort and outlay on tools. Or the cops might move in, blocking a return to the flophouse, putting us on the run. And Mary. I didn’t know what Baba had done to or with her. I couldn’t think about it. To top it all off, there were homicidal gangsters moving in the shadows.

Things were bad. And they were about to get a lot worse.

I parked at Brooks and Seventh Street, one block over from Broadway, took a couple of deep breaths to slow my heart and calm my mind, then got out and took the tire tool from the trunk and jogged along Seventh to the ashram. There was a Magic Marker-scrawled sign on the locked front door that said the Murshid Center was closed for a staff retreat. No reopening date was mentioned.

There was no one on this residential street at ten o’clock on a Tuesday morning. The wooden panel door was old and shrunken in its frame. I stomped it open, leaving a splintered jamb.

I was headed for the stairs, intent on finding Mary, when something in the gift shop caught my eye. The French doors were closed and the lights were out, but when I glanced that way, scanning for enemies, I noticed something behind the counter.

Something orange.

Something still.

It was Ganesha, a young man who had had the highest of human ambitions. He was lying on his back, one arm pinned under his body, the other stretched above his head as if he was reaching for something. The front of his robe was soaked with blood. I would never know how or why or when, but at some point after he came, shocked and new, into the blinding light of a hospital delivery room, he had looked out at the sunshine and trees, or down into the pages of an ancient book, and felt the joy of God sting his soul. Turning away from common desires, or most of them, at least, he had devoted his life to seeking knowledge of the divine, trying for the ultimate goal of welding his being to the infinite.

He was in the infinite now, and I wished him Godspeed.

“May Christ protect you and have mercy on your soul,” I said. “Sri Ramakrishna open the doors of heaven for this man. Yogananda and Muktananda receive his spirit. Saint Michael and all you angels of light surround him. Protect us now and at the hour of our death.”