Karma Page 9

  “Semantics.”

  “It’s not like Braga eschews the limelight. When I was there with Ginny, it looked like the Braga and Padmasvana Show.”

  “Even so, you’re talking about an audience of a couple of hundred. Let me give you ladies an insight into the male ego.” Howard tilted back in his chair. “Every man has a certain vision of himself as President of the United States or the equivalent in his field. Like I see myself as chief—I know you see yourself as chief, too, Jill, but let’s not get into it, because I’m going to be chief.”

  I raised an eyebrow. It hurt my forehead.

  “Anyway,” he continued, “as a man gets older, the vision tarnishes and there comes a point when he’s middle-aged, and if he’s going to hang on to that vision, if he’s going to vindicate his existence, he needs one big success. For me, that one big success would be being chief, it would not be being public-relations officer. For Braga, I think it would be more than controlling an audience of several hundred.”

  “But Padmasvana’s movement could have grown. It could have become as big as Transcendental Meditation,” I said.

  “Not without Padmasvana,” Pereira said.

  “And so,” I went on, “when Rexford Braga hears that Padmasvana is planning to ‘go,’ he decides that he’ll be more useful if he dies in a splashy way.”

  We sat a moment. Pereira finished her beer, glanced at Howard’s, which was two-thirds down, and opened another can. My own glass was still half-full. I sipped thoughtfully. “The thing is, Braga’s not the only middle-aged man with an ego to solve. What about Felcher, waiting to build his apartment house on the site of the temple? Or Kleinfeld? He’s not so old, but he’s got a lot of ego tied up in Self-Over. And with Padmasvana in the picture, his students were in danger of being co-opted.”

  “Speaking of Kleinfeld,” Howard said, “you might be interested in what I’ve discovered about his finances.”

  “Yes?”

  “Well, it seems that Mr. Kleinfeld isn’t a total altruist, either. As a matter of fact, there’s a good deal of similarity between the finances of the temple and the Kleinfeld operation.

  They both put a lot of pressure on their followers. You know the temple wants converts to give over all their possessions—a lucrative setup if they had a better class of convert. They encourage older people, and when they get them, they really press tithing—I guess that’s the best they can do. You remember what Felcher told you about the old girl who willed them the property. Of course, she had so much money that leaving them the land may have been tithe for her. Still, Braga and company didn’t waste time. They’ve been here for what? Three years? And who knows how many more wills they’re waiting for?”

  Pereira set down her glass. “So what’s Kleinfeld’s racket?”

  Howard leaned farther back, balancing on the rear legs of the chair. “The Body-Over and other cute-named come-on classes are five bucks for a two-hour session.”

  “That’s no fortune,” I said.

  “True, though at one point he had over a hundred students a week. But the thing he does for big money is Self-Over itself—a three-month course where he pretty much takes over the lives of the students: morning classes before work, a diet of vegetarian meals, evening classes, all-day seminars on weekends. For this, students pay in advance—fifteen hundred dollars. About two-and-a-half years ago, before Padmasvana became well known here, Self-Over had a wave of popularity. At one point, Kleinfeld had forty students in it at a time.”

  “Whew!” Pereira and I said together.

  “And for an additional five hundred bucks, the students can come back to group raps or private sessions with the master himself forever. This is what keeps them untarnished.”

  I finished my beer. Recalling Kleinfeld as he talked about his new studio in Felcher’s building, I wondered if he was the type to kill to protect his establishment. Then I cautioned myself to forget that. “Types” didn’t hold up in police work. Guilty types turned up innocent with appalling frequency, and Milquetoasts murdered without regret.

  I looked from Pereira to Howard. They both sat caught up in their own thoughts.

  Finally, Pereira said, “I know what’s in store for me tomorrow—hours in the library with that symbol on the knife—but, Jill, where do you go from here?”

  “Back to the temple, I guess. I think it’s about time Mr. Braga explained in concrete detail just how he came upon Padmasvana.”

  Pereira nodded, picked up her bag and started out. But Howard stopped at the door. “You sure you’re okay, Jill? That bruise looks like a ripe mango.”

  “Yeah, it’s just…”

  He moved closer, looking down at the spot, brushing my hair back from my forehead. “Sure?”

  I hesitated. “I’m okay. Thanks.”

  He rested a hand on my shoulder, giving it a squeeze, then followed Pereira’s path outside.

  Chapter 12

  FRIDAY MORNING: A MERE forty-eight hours from Lt. Davis’s deadline for finding Padmasvana’s killer. I washed down my aspirins with coffee then checked with the station. They’d got word back from the Department of Motor Vehicles Kleinfeld’s visitor was one Katherine Mary Dawes, with an address off Telegraph.

  It was already late. If I changed into uniform now, I could squeeze in the interview before shift began at three. That was presuming Katherine Mary Dawes was at home waiting to be interviewed.

  But of course she wasn’t. Her address was a large faded post-Victorian, remodeled several times and now used as a commune of sorts. There were plenty of them in Berkeley, some with political, some with religious, some with merely economic focuses. But they had features in common: they were places where messages, once left, were rarely received, and where police were not welcome guests.

  “Where is Katherine Dawes?” I repeated patiently to the evasive, stringy-haired blond woman at the door.

  She stared down at her moccasins. “She’s not here.”

  “So you said.”

  “I’ll tell her you were here.”

  “I’m sure you will.”

  She moved back, and when I took a step forward she didn’t object, though her face wrinkled in wariness.

  “You don’t mind if I come in, do you?” I asked as I stepped into the littered hallway. To my left was a table nearly buried under old newspapers and letters. I wondered how many people were living here.

  “Listen,” I said. “I’m just trying to get some information from Katherine. She’s really incidental to what I’m looking for. It’ll save me a lot of time if you tell me where she is.”

  The woman glanced down the hall, as if trying to decide whether to seek reinforcement.

  Before she could do that, I said, “It’s a matter of time till I find her. I can have this house watched. I can run a Social Security check and see where she works. You’re not accomplishing anything by making it difficult.”

  “Well, I—”

  “Look, you know the officers on the Avenue, don’t you?”

  She nodded.

  “Have they ever hassled you?”

  “Well, no—”

  “Or anyone else on this beat?”

  “No, but the Health Department ordered—”

  “I’m not talking about other agencies, just the police. We’ve been straight with people on this beat, and we expect the same in return.”

  She ran her teeth over her lip. At the end of the hall, the kitchen door opened slightly, sending forth an aroma that suggested fried mud.

  “Okay. Kitty works at the Assessor’s Office, in Oakland.”

  I almost laughed.

  “If she takes the bus she should be home about five-thirty, right?”

  “Yeah, if she’s coming straight home tonight. Sometimes she has classes.”

  At least if she went to a class I had a good idea where to find her. Now I still had time before the staff meeting. If I moved fast, maybe I could catch Braga off guard.

  He was in his office, head lowered over
his books when I came in.

  “Is there something we missed, Mr. Braga?”

  He spun around in the swivel chair. If he was trying to disguise his displeasure, the effort was fruitless.

  I sat on the edge of the desk, looking down at him. “We got a report on you from the police in Los Angeles. Seems you had rather an unsavory reputation there.”

  Pushing himself up, he paced to the middle of the small office and stopped. “I’ve never been arrested.”

  “Not quite, but almost—three times.” I repeated the complaints Walden had told Pereira about. Braga listened silently, staring at the bruise on my forehead.

  “All right, I’ll admit I’ve made mistakes. Before I discovered Buddhism, I led an impure life. I did use people; I was competitive; I couldn’t go with the flow.”

  I sighed. I would have preferred almost any other role. I had had the party line coming out of my ears. But there was no sense wasting time on that. I asked, “Just how did you come in contact with Padmasvana?”

  “Do you mind if I have a cigarette? People are so fussy about smoke all of a sudden. Of course, I realize that smoking is an unhealthy habit, and I try not to do it in front of the Penlops, so the times I can smoke are severely limited.”

  I nodded, “About Padmasvana?”

  He brought the match to the cigarette, puffed, blew it out. “Well, the way it was, Officer, was that I was in L.A. I’d gotten interested in Buddhism, like I told you, and one night when I was expecting nothing out of the ordinary, I went to a lecture given by a holy man from India. It was a small affair. There must have been no more than thirty people there, mostly young people.

  “You see, Officer, young people are much freer, more willing to take a chance …”

  “Less set in their ways?” My sarcasm was evident.

  Braga stared, then continued. “This man was in Los Angeles just for a few days. He talked of well, I don’t quite remember what his topic was, but he impressed me as very devout and knowledgeable.”

  I realized my finger was tapping against the desk. I stopped.

  “He talked for maybe an hour, and at the end of that time he mentioned that he had come from a meeting with a young guru in Bhuta who was destined to be much greater than he.” Braga waited till he caught my eye. “That young man was Padmasvana.”

  “And so you went to Bhutan?”

  “No, no, Officer. Although I was deeply concerned with bringing such a leader to the spiritually thirsting young people of America, it was not propitious for me to travel to Bhutan at that time.”

  “Low on cash?”

  He directed his reply to the loftier region above my head. “I wrote to the monastery.”

  “I thought you didn’t even know how to pronounce the name of the place.”

  “I wrote through the good offices of the holy man in Los Angeles. He did the actual writing, in Bhutanese.”

  “Do you have a carbon of that?”

  Braga laughed, the genuineness of his expression cutting through his facade. “You don’t save carbons of letters to Bhutanese lamas.”

  “Did they answer?”

  “Yes, very rapidly. They said that an oracle had told them that Padmasvana was destined to bring the message to the West. As soon as I could raise the money they would be glad to ship to secure passage for him.”

  “And did you?”

  Braga nodded. “It took me some months, but I did without, limited my intake to rice and vegetables, spent my free time reading spiritual books rather than going to movies and shows, and soon I had the money and sent it to the monastery. In a month Padma was here.”

  I pulled out my pad. “What was the holy man’s name?”

  Braga stubbed out his cigarette. “I’d like to help you, Officer, but I just don’t remember. It was an Indian name, and I’ve run across so many since that I have no idea about his.”

  “What organization gave the lecture?”

  “It was in a backyard in Van Nuys. I think I found out about it from a flyer.”

  “Okay, okay. So what happened when Padmasvana got here?”

  “We started the temple. Of course, it was more modest than this. That was before Padma had a following. But we’ve found Berkeley to be a most receptive climate for Padmasvana’s message.”

  I could imagine. Berkeley and the surrounding East Bay area had accepted the Black Panthers and the John Birch Society, the Symbionese Liberation Army and scores of lesser-known radicals. There were gay men’s rap groups, lesbian mothers’ groups and Baptist churches of all shades. The only place more open to fringe groups was L.A. Interesting that Braga hadn’t tried there.

  Footsteps sounded on the basement steps. Without thinking, I poised my hand over my holster.

  Braga smiled, savoring my discomfort. I followed his gaze to the door where two Penlops had stationed themselves.

  Obviously, the knowledge of my presence had spread quickly through the complex.

  I turned back to Braga. “What about the tea? How much do you make from that?”

  He was still smiling. “Very little. It is our service to the community. But do feel free to check that again, like your colleagues did last year when the unfortunate Penlop passed from us. Here”—he flourished a tea label—“it’s packaged by Ho-Sun Teas in Chinatown. Thirty-one Drinnon Alley.”

  “I’ll do that, Mr. Braga.”

  As I pushed past them, the Penlops looked questioningly at Braga but made no attempt to stop me. In the basement room, I looked again at the cartons of tea that lined the walls. Surely Braga couldn’t be using them for anything so obvious as smuggling—smuggling from San Francisco, yet!

  But then, Braga was no master of subtlety. Unfortunately, not subtle wasn’t synonymous with dangerous.

  Equally, unfortunately, it was now nearly four. Even speeding, I couldn’t catch the end-of-shift meeting. And Lt. Davis wasn’t likely to consider that Braga’s information made up for my oversight.

  I hurried up the steps and across the courtyard toward my car and almost smacked into Heather Lee and Preston.

  She wore what from a distance could have been taken for a Penlop robe—a full-length brick-red garment tied with a bright cord. But up close the resemblance vanished. Heather’s robe was silk. Whereas the Penlop garments hung loose, Heather’s was fitted and featured a very unPenlopian plunging neckline.

  I hesitated, then decided arriving at the station at four-thirty was not much worse than four. “It looks like you’re taking the role of regent seriously,” I said.

  Heather boosted the baby up, ignoring my comment.

  “Preston is Padmasvana’s child, isn’t he?”

  When she still didn’t answer, I moved to her side and looked at the child. He had olive skin, a round face and Padmasvana’s eyes. In Bhutan, he might not have been distinguishable as Padmasvana’s son, but here, with the suspects for paternity limited, there was little question. “That’s why you were so angry when Chupa-da moved into Padmasvana’s room, isn’t it? That’s why you said Preston had more right to be there.”

  Shifting the child to her other arm, she said, “Yeah, okay. I didn’t want it to be public knowledge yet, but it has to come out eventually. This is Padma’s son, his heir, and the rightful person to follow in his footsteps. And if Chupa-da thinks he can just step in and take over he has another thing coming. I’m not going to let this baby be done out of his inheritance.” She strode back across the courtyard with me alongside.

  “What do you plan to do?”

  “I’m going to make sure Preston gets his proper place. I’m going to see that no ceremony goes on without his being there. I’m going to see that the Penlops understand who he is—and Braga too whether he likes it or not. I’m going to…” She had come to the ashram stairs. She paused momentarily, then, spotting Leah at the door, she bolted up the steps and deposited the baby in her arms. Noticing my ill-concealed skepticism, she said, “I’m going to do all those things. You think I don’t care about Preston. But you
’re wrong, wrong. He’s my child, and I care about him. It’s just that tonight I have to go out.”

  “And miss the ceremony?”

  “There isn’t going to be any ceremony.”

  “But I thought there would be memorials for days. Are you sure, Heather?” The idea of Rexford Braga’s missing an opportunity for another six hundred dollars was inconceivable.

  “Of course I’m sure. Otherwise I wouldn’t be rushing back to my tepee to get dressed, would I?” With that she began to hurry back to the tepee.

  I followed. “Where are you going?”

  “Tonight is the Chattanooga Charlie Spotts concert. Didn’t you see the posters? Chattanooga’s really far out.”

  Pushing back the flap of the tepee, she strode to the clothesline inside and extricated the sequined cowboy outfit. “I was afraid I wouldn’t be able to make the concert. I was really bugged.”

  “You thought Leah wouldn’t be able to watch the baby?”

  “Nah. Why wouldn’t she watch him? She likes that type of thing. She really gets off on picking up after people and being the big comforter. Besides, what else would she do? I mean, if she didn’t have this place and all those pimply adolescents running around needing her, what would she do? She’s lucky to have Preston to take care of. Someday when Preston is famous, when he’s more famous that Padmasvana, she’ll get a lot of points for having done a little something for him.”

  Heather slipped off the silk robe, revealing a silver lace bra and matching panties. She sat down at the dressing table and began rubbing cream on her body.

  I had the feeling she’d almost forgotten I was there. “Heather,” I said, “why does Braga bring in so much tea?”

  She rubbed the cream on her thigh. “Who knows? Chupa-da gets the stuff. He rides off into the sunset in the Padma-bus.”

  The Padma-bus. I had seen the multicolored old VW van.

  Somehow I hadn’t considered Chupa-da, the monk, as a licensed driver. “Only Chupa-da goes?”

  Heather finished the leg and began one arm. “Yeah, I think at the place where he buys it they only speak Chinese. Braga doesn’t speak Chinese. He has a hard enough time in English.” She laughed. “Besides, it’s Chupa-da’s thing. He thinks it’s a big deal, driving to San Francisco.”