There are much better funeral prayers than the one I offered-in the Tibetan Book of the Dead and other traditions-but I didn’t know them. I did the best I could for him. His body was still warm, so I knew his spirit was in the early hours of its journey. His eyes were open as the eyes of the dead always are before the living compulsively close them, symbolizing their expanded vision. With the eyes of his Akashic body, he was seeing sights more amazing than any ever seen on earth, and I repeated my prayer fiercely several times, willing my words to pierce the veil between the worlds and find him in the place where his soul was hurtling.
There was no smell of gunpowder in the air. It looked to me like he had been stabbed at the counter and then fallen and bled to death where he lay. There was blood on the stool where he usually sat and a few drops on the countertop and the phone book that lay on the counter. The phone book was open to the page that listed all the different numbers for the city of Venice, including the underlined number of the police department. He had been ready to blow the whistle, but someone had stopped him. Namo with his knife. I would settle that score if I got the chance. I was glad I had cut him with the razor blade.
Leaving the young monk’s body where it lay, I pounded up the stairs, more frightened than before for Mary. I found her locked in one of the client rooms. She was gagged and hog-tied on the floor, half-dressed in what was left of the robe she had worn the night before. When she saw me burst through the door her eyes flashed heartrending relief that mirrored my own emotions.
“What are you doing here?” she asked with a sob in her voice when I loosed the gag.
“I’m here to rescue you, hot stuff,” I said, working on the ropes. Her slender wrists had been rubbed raw as she struggled to escape.
“How did you know I was in trouble?”
“Baba paid me a visit.”
When I helped her up, she put her arms around me and gave me a long, hard hug, then stepped back and looked me in the eye.
“Where is that fat motherfucker?” she said, all her maiden-in-distress emotion swallowed up in anger. “I am going to bash his melon head in.”
“What did he do to you?” Rage seethed up inside me, turning my field of vision red around the edges.
“I’m okay, baby,” she said, reining in her own outrage long enough to stroke my cheek and give me a quick kiss on the lips. “But he’s not going to be when I get my hands on him. Is he here?”
The ferocity flashing in her flame-blue eyes reminded me that the worst fate a captured Native American warrior could face was being turned over to the women of his enemies for squaw torture.
“He’s not here, but he’s probably on his way with some armed men. We need to get out quick. Are you sure you’re all right?”
“I turned my first trick at Disneyland when I was thirteen years old, Robert. No pimp. Just me and a fat Shriner on the Small World ride. I can handle what they dish out. What kills me is that I fell for his bullshit. I can’t believe I let that bastard con me. You were so right about him. He’s a total fake.”
“We’ll fix his wagon,” I said. “Don’t worry about that. Right now we have to move. Where are your clothes?”
“In his bedroom,” she said. “He let me use his closet and his bathroom so that I could have some privacy from the other girls. He said it was because I had spiritual potential, but that was a lie. He was just trying to get in my pants.”
“Gather up whatever you want to take with you while I toss his desk and file cabinet.”
The oak file cabinet was sturdy but I got in, using a stone statue of Buddha to hammer the tip of the tire tool behind the lock, then prying until the tongue of the lock bent and the top drawer popped open.
There was nothing but old books and files in the cabinet. Most of the file folders were stuffed with precomputer typed research notes and manuscript drafts dealing with esoteric topics: “Splitting the Atom of Religion in the Modern Age;” “Situational Ethics vs. Absolute Morality;” “Triumph over Tradition: Renegade Teachers and Holy Fools.” The books were dusty spiritual treatises in several languages, many of them annotated in a neat masculine hand. Baba had been an ambitious scholar earlier in his career, and all five drawers were filled with the remnants of his intellectual labors, nothing of use to me.
The locked desk drawers yielded more: a loaded.38 revolver with a checkered wooden grip (nice prop for a guru to lean on); several 35-mm film containers full of black-tar opium (to fertilize the flower girls, no doubt); a shoebox full of pharmaceutical drugs, including lots of Valium and injectable Demerol, complete with a set of glass works (more fun for the girls, and maybe for Baba); several years’ worth of stock market trading records listing frequent margin calls (an explanation for Baba’s growing financial hunger); and a set of files with names and dated photographs of important-looking men engaged in rude behavior with one or more of the temple prostitutes.
Some of the blackmail files had only one compromising photograph; some contained several. All included typewritten notes about the circumstances in which the photographs were taken-the names of the girls involved, their ages, the acts performed, and in some cases the places the men had told their wives they were while they were getting their jollies. Some also listed payment dates and amounts.
I recognized several faces. One was Councilman Discenza. Another was the mayor of Venice Beach. There were high-ranking police officers and prominent local businessmen.
The files explained a lot-how Baba was able to run a spiritual whorehouse with impunity and why the mayor had pushed the city council to promptly approve every phase of the Pacific City development despite voter outrage. They left other things unexplained. Had Baba converted his blackmail of Discenza into a business partnership or was he holding the photo of the churchgoing Italian engaged in anal sex with a teenager in reserve in case he needed leverage? Was Pacific City a project of Discenza’s that Baba had wormed his thick torso into, or was it Baba’s baby, which he was using Discenza’s influence to accomplish? Judging by the fear Baba had shown earlier, it seemed more like the former-like he had gotten a piece of the project by making himself useful to Discenza and found out that he had a tiger by the tail.
“What did you find?” Mary said. She was dressed in a pair of blue jeans, a yellow blouse, and white sneakers with ankle socks. She had a small brown suitcase in her hand.
“Drugs, a gun, some stuff he’s using to blackmail people.”
She shook her head in disgust. “What a fucker. What’s that in the back of the drawer?”
There was a leather-bound notebook stuck behind the hanging files in the bottom drawer. The leather was water-stained and scuffed, the cover latched with a rusty push-button lock.
“It looks like an old journal,” I said. “Maybe Baba has been keeping a record of his badness.”
I put the drugs, stock records, blackmail files, and the notebook in a pillowcase that I stripped from Baba’s bed. I checked the cylinder on the gun to be sure it was loaded, then stuck it in my belt beneath my shirttail. It felt good to be armed again. Taking Mary’s hand, I led her downstairs and back through the big white-and-yellow kitchen where we had made prasad together. Just inside the back door, I gave her my car keys and the key card from Le Merigot.
“Do you know where Le Merigot is?” I asked her.
“It’s just south of the pier, isn’t it?”
I nodded. “I’m parked on the next block. If we go straight across the backyard and cut through the hedge and the yard behind us, we should come out by the car. It’s a dark-blue Cadillac Seville. If there is any trouble, drop your bag and run for the car. If I have to stop and fight, go without me. Drive to the hotel and wait for me there.”