Bad Karma (11 page)

The door was solid oak. No chance of breaking it down with his shoulder. Maybe he could kick it down, but not without at least splintering his shin. He was in what amounted to an eight foot by eight foot cell with no furniture, nothing but a small half-moon shaped window on one wall and it wasn’t nearly large enough for him to crawl through if he had to. He walked over to the window and tapped on it. It made the dull sound of Plexiglas. For the hell of it he smacked the glass hard with the edge of his hand. While it gave a little, it didn’t break.

Shannon sat on the floor and leaned against the wall. Taking out his phone, he prayed that the cult hadn’t thought enough ahead to have the room insulated with copper. A gnawing in his stomach grew until he saw that he had a signal to call out on. Feeling some relief, he tried Eli’s number at the Center and left a message, asking that his friend call him back as soon as he could. After ten minutes of waiting he considered whether or not to call Mark Daniels. A half hour later his internal debate had grown more serious and as he was making up his mind to try Daniels, his phone rang. It was Eunice Carver asking whether they were going to pay her.

“Excuse me?”

“
People
magazine. Are they going to pay me for my story?”

It took him a few seconds to remember what she was talking about, “I don’t know yet. I have a call in and I’ll get back to you when I hear from them.”

Within seconds of hanging up on her, his phone rang again. This time is was Eli.

“What’s so urgent?”

“Not much,” Shannon said. “Only that I’m sitting in a cell inside of True Light’s compound.”

“What do you mean a cell?”

“Just what I said. I’m alone in a room about the size of a prison cell. Door’s locked on the other side and the window’s too small even for Houdini to crawl out of. But that’s moot since it’s covered by Plexiglas.”

“Jesus, is there any way for you to get out of there?”

“Not that I can see.”

“I’m calling the police!”

“No, not yet. But do me a favor. Call me back in fifteen minutes. If I don’t answer send the police here.”

“Bill, I don’t like this.”

“Neither do I. Next thing I know they’ll be pumping poison gas into this room.”

“Shit, you’re scaring me.”

“I’m a little scared myself. This place is a fucking freak show. You hit it on the head the other day when you talked about cults in Boulder. The guy who runs this one is a pure megalomaniac. You walk into the compound and the first thing you see is an altar to him. Then the hallway leading from the altar is lined with paintings of Hindu gods, and of course, residing alone at the end is a marble sculpture of this megalomaniac. The one god I saw missing from the hallway was Vishnu.”

“Jesus, the reason for that is because he’s replacing himself as the supreme being. Sonofabitch. It’s no accident he named himself Vishna.”

“My thoughts exactly. By the way, I stopped off at their yoga studio before coming here. Not only wouldn’t they let me sign up for classes, but the girl working there–all five foot and one hundred pounds of her–looked like she was going to try to physically throw me out.”

“That is interesting.”

“I guess I didn’t fit the profile of what they’re looking for.”

“Or the girl could’ve had very good radar and picked up that you were a cop, or at least used to be a cop.” Eli hesitated, added, “Bill, you’ve got me worried. Why not call the police now?”

“I could, but I came here to talk to my client’s daughter. I still want to give that a shot.”

“Bill, if your life is in danger–”

“I don’t want to be too melodramatic about this. I don’t think I can make a claim at this point for false imprisonment since I was asked to wait. And to their credit, they did provide me nice plush carpeting to sit on. Let’s just give it another fifteen minutes. See what happens.”

A loud, unhappy sigh came from Eli’s end. “Alright,” he grumbled. “I’ll wait fifteen more minutes, but if you’re still locked in there I’m calling the police no matter what you say.”

“Deal.”

After talking with Eli, Shannon sat quietly and took deep breaths as he tried to calm the tension squeezing his gut. He had two reasons for calling Eli. First, he really was unnerved about being locked away in the room, which he assumed was the point of them doing it, and second, in case the room was bugged and he was being eavesdropped on, he wanted them to know he couldn’t be fucked with. Or at least make them think he couldn’t be fucked with.

Nine minutes after Eli had called back and almost an hour after being locked up, the door opened and two men walked in. These two were a different breed than the robe-wearing stooges he had encountered earlier. One was dressed in jeans and a polo shirt, the other had on slacks and a light sports jacket. There was a hardness about both men. The one in the sports jacket was in his forties and looked solid, as if he were a weightlifter, his hair cut close to his scalp and scars running down both cheeks. His nose had been flattened a number of times and was now smeared sideways across his face. He smirked at Shannon, his small gray eyes as dull as sand. When he undid the buttons to his sports jacket, he unveiled both a Tony Bahama Hawaiian shirt underneath it and the handle of an automatic that stuck out from his waistband. From the shape of it, Shannon guessed it was a .45 caliber.

His companion was younger, maybe early thirties. He was also taller and lankier, and had the wiry look of someone you didn’t want to mess with. He started laughing an ugly laugh as he pointed towards Shannon’s damaged hand.

“He must be nervous,” he said, wheezing from his laughter as he elbowed his associate. “Look, he chewed his fingernails to bone.”

“Is that right,” the other man asked Shannon. “You nervous?”

“Nervous as all hell,” Shannon said.

Both men had Russian accents. The one in the sports jacket seemed to be in charge. His accent was thicker, coarser, and his voice came out as a deep rumble. He continued to smirk at Shannon, his eyes lifeless.

“Maybe you should not come here to stick your nose where it don’t belong,” he said.

“Maybe, but I think my mistake was walking into a room without checking it out first.”

“Pretty stupid,” the man agreed.

The younger Russian laughed his ugly laugh again. It was muted, but still sounded like something you’d hear in an insane asylum.

“Why don’t you stand up,” the older Russian said.

“I like it down here.”

“Stand up anyway.” He took the automatic from his waistband. As Shannon had guessed it was a .45 caliber Smith & Wesson.

“Nice gun,” Shannon remarked.

The Russian waved the automatic casually at Shannon’s head. “I ask you politely stand up.”

“This is nice carpeting,” Shannon said. “Probably expensive. It would be a shame to ruin it.”

“Carpet can be replaced.”

Shannon started to stand up. Before he got to his feet, the older Russian stepped forward and threw a hard jab. Shannon saw the punch coming but wasn’t able to react fast enough to roll with it and it caught him flush in the eye. He felt like he’d been hit with a chunk of concrete and the punch knocked him against the wall.

“That wasn’t very nice of you,” Shannon said, his hand up against his eye.

“We not nice men,” the younger Russian said, smiling broadly and showing off yellowed, crooked teeth.

“My friend is right,” the other one said. “We are not nice men. But neither are you. It was not nice to come here and make trouble. Beating up devout followers of Vishna. These are holy men here.”

Shannon didn’t bother to respond. The area under his eye had already started to swell. He stood in a half crouch as he held a hand over his eye and tried to decide whether he had a chance of wrestling the gun out of the Russian’s hand.

The older Russian held his free hand out and snapped his fingers sharply. “Your wallet,” he ordered.

Shannon shook his head.

He trained his gun on Shannon’s chest and slid the safety off with his thumb. “You do not give me your wallet then this is the way it will happen,” he said, his voice calm, methodical. “You come uninvited here, and when asked to leave you beat up people. Then you charge inside and jump on poor innocent girl.” He turned to his partner. “You know her name?”

The younger Russian made a show of thinking about this while he tapped his skull. “Blonde girl, right? Meliza Coozan, I think.”

“That’s right.” The older Russian clapped his partner on the back. Smiling grimly at Shannon, he said, “Meliza Coozan. Unfortunately you beat poor girl to death. I shoot you, but too late.”

“That’s insane,” Shannon said. “No one would believe that.”

“Why not? Thirty witnesses, more even, will claim that is what happened.”

Something flickered in the Russian’s eyes. While Shannon wasn’t sure whether he would shoot him, he had no doubt that this man was a stone-cold killer. He handed him his wallet.

“William Shannon,” the man read slowly from his license. “It is nice to know where you live, William Shannon.”

“If you ever come anywhere near my home –”

“What?” He laughed as his partner grinned wickedly. He slipped Shannon’s wallet into his pocket. “What would you do?”

Shannon’s cell phone rang. “This is a friend of mine,” he said, holding up the phone. “He knows I’m here, and if I don’t answer he’ll be calling the police.”

The grin disappeared from the Russian’s face. He trained his gun again on Shannon. “Answer it. And don’t be stupid.”

Shannon told Eli to call him back in five minutes and hung up before his friend could ask any questions.

The Russian waved his gun at Shannon. “Get moving,” he ordered.

The two men escorted Shannon out of the room and back into the hallway lined with Hindu gods. The place was quiet—no sitar music or chanting coming from within the compound. As they walked to the marble foyer, there were no signs of any of the cult members. From behind, the Russian poked Shannon in the back a couple of times with his gun, his associate chuckling softly with each poke.

“See what happens when you stick your nose into other people’s business,” he said. “No good comes of it. Vishna is a great, great man. People here because they want to be here. So why you have to come and bother them?”

“Not a bad question,” Shannon said. “A better question is why are a couple of Russian mobsters involved with some half-assed cult?”

The gun was poked hard into the base of his spine, making him stumble.

“That is not smart thing to ask,” the older Russian said. His associate laughed his soft wheezing ugly laugh.

When they got to the foyer, the Russians followed Shannon outside. The older one slipped his gun back into his waistband and buttoned up his sports jacket. The younger Russian unlocked the gate and turned to Shannon with his hand held out.

“No hard feelings,” he said, a big smart-alecky grin etched on his face. Shannon could see in his eyes what he was intending. He took the hand that was being offered, and when the Russian jerked him forward and sent his knee heading towards Shannon’s groin, he stepped aside and swung his right leg around and behind the Russian, sweeping his one supporting leg out from under him and sending him hard on his tailbone. The Russian let out a loud “
oomph
” as he hit the pavement. Shannon, still locked in a handshake, was dragged down with him, landing with his knee on the man’s chest. Any sign of the Russian’s smart-alecky grin was gone. Using his free hand, Shannon threw quick rabbit punches to the Russian’s nose until the man let go of the handshake. 

Shannon heard scuttling noises from behind and was halfway to his feet when he took a hard shot to the side of his face. The punch knocked him to the pavement, and he took skin off his damaged hand using it to break his fall. He scrambled backwards, turned and saw the Russian approaching, his shoulders squared away and fists and feet positioned in a manner that showed he had boxed at a professional level. He shuffled forward quickly, throwing a combination, the first punch exploding as it hit Shannon in the chest, the second glancing off his skull.

Shannon was knocked to his knees. The Russian stepped forward again, a thin smile playing on his lips, his eyes completely dead. He threw a straight right hand at Shannon’s jaw, but this time Shannon blocked it with his left and at the same instance drove his right fist into the man’s groin. He could hear the explosion of breath coming out of the Russian as he doubled over in pain. Without giving him a chance to recover, Shannon grabbed him by his ears and slammed his face into the pavement. As the man lay still on the ground, he retrieved his wallet, then kept searching until he found the Russian’s. The driver’s license identified the man as Dan Smith and listed a Los Angeles address. Shannon handled the license by its edges and tossed the wallet on the ground. He stood up slowly, his body stiff, his head and chest aching. He felt like he’d been worked over with a baseball bat.

He turned towards the gate, a sharp pain sucking his breath away. The younger Russian had pushed himself up into a sitting position. Blood streamed from his nose and, like his associate, it was now pushed more to one side. He looked woozy but as he stared at Shannon, his eyes shrunk to small black dots. Slipping a switchblade from his pocket, he opened it and started to get to his feet, swaying as if he were on a ship in bad weather.

A string of Russian words were barked out from behind. Shannon turned. The other Russian had gotten onto his elbow while still clutching his groin. His face was a bloody mess, his nose looking like hamburger meat. With his voice breaking into a hoarse whisper, he barked out more commands to the younger Russian, who Shannon guessed was named Dimi since that word was used more than any other and with urgency. The younger man stared sullenly into space as he closed his switchblade with his thumb and slipped the knife back into his pocket.

“You were lucky today,” the older Russian yelled at Shannon in the same hoarse whisper. “You come here again, you won’t be so lucky. Trust me. Maybe you lose more fingers. Maybe you lose more than that.”

Shannon ignored him and continued through the gate to his car. When he got there, he went through his trunk and found a plastic bag to put the license in, then got himself seated behind the wheel. He watched while the younger Russian helped his partner to his feet and the two men hobbled back into the compound.