Dark Rivers of the Heart (18 page)

The first was being conducted out of a tricked-up van with an extended wheelbase and chrome-plated wire wheels. The side of the vehicle had been decorated with an airbrush mural of palm trees, waves breaking on a beach, and a red sunset. Two surfboards were strapped to the luggage rack on the roof. To the uninitiated, it might appear to belong to a surf Gypsy who’d won the lottery.

The clues to the van’s real purpose were apparent to Roy. All glass on the vehicle, including the windshield, was heavily tinted, but two large windows on the side, around which the mural wrapped, were so black that they had to be two-way mirrors disguised with a layer of tinted film on the exterior, making it impossible to see inside, but providing agents in the van—and their video cameras—a clear view of the world beyond. Four spotlights were side by side on the roof, above the windshield; none was lit, but each bulb was seated in a cone-shaped fixture, like a small megaphone, which might have been a reflector that focused the beam forward—although, in fact, it was no such thing. One cone would be the antenna for a microwave transceiver linked to computers inside the van, allowing high volumes of encoded data to be received and sent from—or to—more than one communicant at a time. The remaining three cones were collection dishes for directional microphones.

One unlit spotlight was turned not toward the front of the van, as it should have been and as the other three were, but toward a busy sandwich shop—Submarine Dive—across the street. The agents were recording the jumble of conversations among the eight or ten people socializing on the sidewalk in front of the place. Later, a computer would analyze the host of voices: It would isolate each speaker, identify him with a number, associate one number to another based on word flow and inflection, delete most background noise such as traffic and wind, and record each conversation as a separate track.

The second surveillance operation was a mile from the first, on a cross street. It was being run out of a van disguised as a commercial vehicle that supposedly belonged to a glass-and-mirror company called Jerry’s Glass Magic. Two-way mirrors were featured boldly on the side, incorporated into the fictitious company’s logo.

Roy was always gladdened to see surveillance teams, especially super–high-tech units, because they were likely to be federal rather than local. Their discreet presence indicated that
somebody
cared about social stability and peace in the streets.

When he saw them, he usually felt safer—and less alone.

Tonight, however, his spirits were not lifted. Tonight, he was caught in a whirlpool of negative emotions. Tonight, he could not find solace in the surveillance teams, in the good work he was doing for Thomas Summerton, or in anything else that this world had to offer.

He needed to locate his center, open the door in his soul, and stand face-to-face with the cosmic.

Before he spotted a 7-Eleven or any other convenience store, Roy saw a post office, which had what he needed. In front of it were ten or twelve battered newspaper-vending machines.

He parked at a red curb, left the car, and checked the machines. He wasn’t interested in the
Times
or the
Daily News.
What he required could be found only in the alternative press. Most such publications sold sex: focusing on swinging singles, mate-swapping couples, gays—or on adult entertainment and services. He ignored the salacious tabloids. Sex would never suffice when the soul sought transcendence.

Many large cities supported a weekly New Age newspaper that reported on natural foods, holistic healing, and spiritual matters ranging from reincarnation therapy to spirit channeling.

Los Angeles had three.

Roy bought them all and returned to the car.

By the dim glow of the ceiling light, he flipped through each publication, scanning only the space ads and classifieds. Gurus, swamis, psychics, Tarot-card readers, acupuncturists, herbalists to movie stars, channelers, aura interpreters, palm readers, chaos-theory dice counselors, past-life guides, high-colonic therapists, and other specialists offered their services in heartening numbers.

Roy lived in Washington, D.C., but his work took him all over the country. He had visited all the sacred places where the land, like a giant battery, accumulated vast stores of spiritual energy: Santa Fe, Taos, Woodstock, Key West, Spirit Lake, Meteor Crater, and others. He’d had moving experiences in those hallowed confluences of cosmic energy—yet he had long suspected that Los Angeles was an undiscovered nexus as powerful as any. Now, the sheer plenitude of consciousness-raising guides in the ads strengthened his suspicion.

From the myriad choices, Roy selected The Place Of The Way in Burbank. He was intrigued that they had capitalized every word in the name of their establishment, instead of using lowercase for the preposition and second article. They offered numerous methods for “seeking the self and finding the eye of the universal storm,” not from a shabby storefront but “from the peaceful sphere of our home.” He also liked the proprietors’ names—and that they were thoughtful enough to identify themselves in their ad: Guinevere and Chester.

He checked his watch. Past nine o’clock.

Still parked illegally in front of the post office, he called the number in the ad. A man answered: “This is Chester at The Place Of The Way. How may I assist you?”

Roy apologized for calling at that hour, since The Place Of The Way was located in their home, but he explained that he was slipping into a spiritual void and needed to find firm ground as quickly as possible. He was grateful to be assured that Chester and Guinevere fulfilled their mission at all hours. After he received directions, he estimated that he could be at their door by ten o’clock.

He arrived at nine-fifty.

The attractive two-story Spanish house had a tile roof and deep-set leaded windows. In the artful landscape lighting, lush palms and Australian tree ferns threw mysterious shadows against pale-yellow stucco walls.

When Roy rang the bell, he noticed an alarm-company sticker on the window next to the door. A moment later, Chester spoke to him from an intercom box. “Who’s there, please?”

Roy was only mildly surprised that an enlightened couple like this, in touch with their psychic talents, found it necessary to take security precautions. Such was the sorry state of the world in which they lived. Even mystics were marked for mayhem.

Smiling and friendly, Chester welcomed Roy into The Place Of The Way. He was potbellied, about fifty, mostly bald but with a Friar Tuck fringe of hair, deeply tanned in midwinter, bearish and strong looking in spite of his gut. He wore Rockports, khaki slacks, and a khaki shirt with the sleeves rolled to expose thick, hairy forearms.

Chester led Roy through rooms with yellow pine floors buffed to a high polish, Navajo rugs, and rough-hewn furniture that looked more suitable to a lodge in the Sangre de Cristo Mountains than to a home in Burbank. Beyond the family room, which boasted a giant-screen TV, they entered a vestibule and then a round room that was about twelve feet in diameter, with white walls and no windows other than the round skylight in the domed ceiling.

A round pine table stood in the center of the round room. Chester indicated a chair at the table. Roy sat. Chester offered a beverage—“anything from diet Coke to herbal tea”—but Roy declined because his only thirst was of the soul.

In the center of the table was a basket of plaited palm leaves, which Chester indicated. “I’m only an assistant in these matters. Guinevere is the spiritual adept. Her hands must never touch money. Though she’s transcended earthly concerns, she must eat, of course.”

“Of course,” Roy said.

From his wallet, Roy extracted three hundred dollars and put the cash in the basket. Chester seemed to be pleasantly surprised by the offering, but Roy had always believed that a person could expect only the quality of enlightenment for which he was willing to pay.

Chester left the room with the basket.

From the ceiling, pin spots had washed the walls with arcs of white light. Now they dimmed until the chamber filled with shadows and a moody amber radiance that approximated candlelight.

“Hi, I’m Guinevere! No, please, don’t get up.”

Breezing into the room with girlish insouciance, head held high, shoulders back, she went around the table to a chair opposite the one in which Roy sat.

Guinevere, about forty, was exceedingly beautiful, in spite of wearing her long blond hair in medusan cascades of cornrows, which Roy disliked. Her jade-green eyes flared with inner light, and every angle of her face was reminiscent of every mythological goddess Roy had seen portrayed in classical art. In tight blue jeans and a snug white T-shirt, her lean and supple body moved with fluid grace, and her large breasts swayed alluringly. He could see the points of her nipples straining against her cotton shirt.

“How ya doin’?” she asked perkily.

“Not so good.”

“We’ll fix that. What’s your name?”

“Roy.”

“What are you seeking, Roy?”

“I want a world with justice and peace, a world that’s perfect in every way. But people are flawed. There’s so little perfection anywhere. Yet I want it so badly. Sometimes I get depressed.”

“You need to understand the meaning of the world’s imperfection and your own obsession with it. What road of enlightenment do you prefer to take?”

“Any road, all roads.”

“Excellent!” said the beautiful Nordic Rastafarian, with such enthusiasm that her cornrows bounced and swayed, and the clusters of red beads dangling from the ends clicked together. “Maybe we’ll start with crystals.”

Chester returned, pushing a large wheeled box around the table to Guinevere’s right side.

Roy saw that it was a gray-and-black metal tool cabinet: four feet high, three feet wide, two feet deep, with doors on the bottom third and drawers of various widths and depths above the doors. The Sears Craftsman logo gleamed dully in the amber light.

While Chester sat in the third and last chair, which was two feet to the left and a foot behind the woman, Guinevere opened one of the drawers in the cabinet and removed a crystal sphere slightly larger than a billiard ball. Cupping it in both hands, she held it out to Roy, and he accepted it.

“Your aura’s dark, disturbed. Let’s clean that up first. Hold this crystal in both hands, close your eyes, seek a meditative calm. Think about only one thing, only this clean image: hills covered with snow. Gently rolling hills with fresh snow, whiter than sugar, softer than flour. Gentle hills to all horizons, hills upon hills, mantled with new snow, white on white, under a white sky, snowflakes drifting down, whiteness through whiteness over whiteness on whiteness…”

Guinevere went on like that for a while, but Roy couldn’t see the snow-mantled hills or the falling snow regardless of how hard he tried. Instead, in his mind’s eye, he could see only one thing: her hands. Her lovely hands. Her incredible
hands.

She was altogether so spectacular looking that he hadn’t noticed her hands until she was passing the crystal ball to him. He had never seen hands like hers. Exceptional hands. His mouth went dry at the mere thought of kissing her palms, and his heart pounded fiercely at the memory of her slender fingers. They had seemed
perfect.

“Okay, that’s better,” Guinevere said cheerily, after a time. “Your aura’s much lighter. You can open your eyes now.”

He was afraid that he had imagined the perfection of her hands and that when he saw them again he would discover that they were no different from the hands of other women—not the hands of an angel after all. Oh, but they
were.
Delicate, graceful, ethereal. They took the crystal ball from him, returned it to the open drawer of the tool cabinet, and then gestured—like the spreading wings of doves—to seven new crystals that she had placed on a square of black velvet in the center of the table while his eyes had been closed.

“Arrange these in any pattern that seems appropriate to you,” she said, “and then I’ll read them.”

The objects appeared to be half-inch-thick crystal snowflakes that had been sold as Christmas ornaments. None was like another.

As Roy tried to focus on the task before him, his gaze kept sliding surreptitiously to Guinevere’s hands. Each time he glimpsed them, his breath caught in his throat. His own hands were trembling, and he wondered if she noticed.

Guinevere progressed from crystals to the reading of his aura through prismatic lenses, to Tarot cards, to rune stones, and her fabulous hands became ever more beautiful. Somehow he answered her questions, followed instructions, and appeared to be listening to the wisdom that she imparted. She must have thought him dim-witted or drunk, because his speech was thick and his eyelids drooped as he became increasingly intoxicated by the sight of her hands.

Roy glanced guiltily at Chester, suddenly certain that the man—perhaps Guinevere’s husband—was angrily aware of the lascivious desire that her hands engendered. But Chester wasn’t paying attention to either of them. His bald head was bowed, and he was cleaning the fingernails of his left hand with the fingernails of his right.

Roy was convinced that the Mother of God could not have had hands more gentle than Guinevere’s, nor could the greatest succubus in Hell have had hands more erotic. Guinevere’s hands were, to her, what Melissa Wicklun’s sensuous lips were to
her,
oh, but a thousand times more so,
ten
thousand times more so. Perfect, perfect, perfect.

She shook the bag of runes and cast them again.

Roy wondered if he dared ask for a palm reading. She would have to hold his hands in hers.

He shivered at that delicious thought, and a spiral of dizziness spun through him. He could not walk out of that room and leave her to touch other men with those exquisite, unearthly hands.

He reached under his suit jacket, drew the Beretta from his shoulder holster, and said, “Chester.”

The bald man looked up, and Roy shot him in the face. Chester tipped backward in his chair, out of sight, and thudded to the floor.