Karma (5 page)

I thought about Braga and Chupa-da and Heather and the sedated housemother whom I hadn’t talked to yet. “Under the circumstances, I can’t see who. Unless … unless Chupa-da is going to succeed him. Then, instead of an obscure leader’s dying and being followed by a more obscure one, Chupa-da has a lot of publicity when starting his reign. It doesn’t sound very Buddhist, though.”

“Like you said, you don’t know much about Buddhism, Jill.”

“I will tomorrow. I’ll see Chupa-da first thing after the staff meeting. Maybe he can tell me about the markings on the knife, too.”

Howard looked up questioningly, but I was too tired to explain.

I stifled a yawn. “You want another drink?”

Before he could answer, the phone rang.

I
T WAS NEARLY NOON
when I awoke Thursday. Slowly the events of yesterday filed into my mind—the murder, the hours of interrogations, Howard drinking bourbon at the table and the 3:00 a.m. phone call from Nat.

The memory of my fury and awkwardness had prevented all but the most superficial suggestion of sleep. He had tried to call earlier, Nat had said. “It’s three in the morning,” I snapped. “That gave you a range.” And what was it that couldn’t wait till daylight? A death in the family? An act of God? (But I hadn’t said that, not in front of Howard.) The Cost Plus stainless, that was it. Nat couldn’t face another breakfast without it. “Try toast,” I’d said and depressed the receiver—quietly; Howard was just leaving. And when Howard was gone, I pulled out the plug from the jack. Maybe I did have all the stainless. There were a couple of cartons in the kitchen I’d randomly thrown things in when I moved out. But I wasn’t going to go through them at 3:00 a.m.

Now I pushed myself up, wandered to the kitchen and reheated the coffee. The dishes glared up from the sink. I rinsed a cup. Filling it, I realized that I had more than two hours to myself—one of the advantages of working the afternoon shift. There were plenty of things I could do. I looked back at the sink. Plenty I
should
do.

I dressed, threw half the coffee down the drain and headed for the ashram.

The temple was empty, and I went on across the grass past Heather’s tepee, to the Penlops’ ashram. As I mounted the steps I listened for voices, but there was nothing to break the silence. The door was open, the hall empty. I turned the corner into the dining room and stopped.

There lining the walls were the Penlops, squatted down, wooden bowls held in left hands and right hands shoveling some sort of paste from bowl to mouth. They were so incongruous, those street-hardened faces in the monk’s robes.

By the front wall near the door sat the gray-haired woman who had screamed in the audience last night. Her eyes were nearly as red as her robe; her loose skin was blotched; and perhaps as a lingering effect of the sedation, she appeared listless.

“I’m Officer Smith,” I said to her. “Are you the housemother, Leah deVeau?”

She moved to the door. “Come outside. It sets a bad example for the boys if I chat in the ashram.” She lowered herself onto the porch steps, leaning back against the railing. “I’ll do whatever I can to help. I’m very upset. I loved Padma. He was a son to me. More than that. He was a father, too. I loved him.” Her voice was shaky, but she held it under control.

When she looked up, I said, “Why don’t you start with what you do here?”

“Pretty much what I’ve been doing all my life,” she said slowly. “I keep the house running. I see that the meals are made. I make sure the boys are all right.”

“And did you take care of Padmasvana?”

It was a moment before she said, “Not really, I would have if there’d been anything to do, but Padma, he cleaned his own cubicle, he washed his own robes, he even took his turn at kitchen duty.”

“And you are a follower of Padmasvana?”

“Oh, yes. In my own way. I can tell, dear, that that seems strange to you. I guess it is strange, particularly when the others follow such strict rules. But, you see, they need those rules. They’re still children, really. Oh, they complain sometimes, and I have to talk to them. But I know that deep down, rules and certainty are what they need. Most of them have spent more time on drug trips in the last five years than they have straight. They need to be grounded. That’s what Padma and I did.” Her face paled at the mention of his name, and for a moment I thought she would break down. But she drew in another breath and said, “I don’t mean to suggest that I am equal with Padma; I just mean that I am a mother to these boys. It’s something I’m good at. You know, dear, when you’re divorced at fifty-three and you’ve never worked, you’re not prepared for much.”

I said nothing. It did occur to me that Leah deVeau was one of those women who seem to exist to nurture. But her view of her charges as “children” was not confirmed by their hardened faces.

“I was very fortunate to find Padma when I did,” Leah went on. “If I weren’t here, maybe I would be a clerk in budget dresses or a counter lady at Woolworth’s. And there’d be those awful lonely nights.” She shook her head, as if trying to rid herself of the thought. “My husband wasn’t much company, particularly in those last years, but there’s a big difference in knowing someone else is coming home, regardless of who it is, as opposed to seeing the days stretch before you, endlessly uninterrupted—like a desert.”

I, too, had been afraid of that once. But my days
hadn’t
stretched before me like so much sand. I had volunteered for overtime. I had read books I’d been putting off for years. I had gone to meetings, and lectures and, yes, ceremonies that didn’t interest me.

I changed the subject. “How did Padmasvana come here, to Berkeley?”

Leah deVeau seemed relieved, too. Taking a breath, she said, “Mr. Braga found him in Bhutan.”

“Why was Mr. Braga in Bhutan?”

“I don’t know. I’m really rather vague on this. All I know is that he was directed to Padma by an Indian guru—I forget his name—Indian names all flow together for me. Then Mr. Braga convinced Padma that his calling was in the West.” She pressed the nail of her left thumb between the fingers of her right hand.

“Did you know he spoke some English?”

Again she paused, the thumb still pressed between the fingers. I found the nervous mannerism distracting. “Yes,” she said.

“How much did he know? Did he talk to the boys?”

She pressed the thumb harder. “In the ashram, the boys—the Penlops—are supposed to speak only when absolutely necessary, and then mostly to me.”

The door opened and four red-robed Penlops filed out, pausing by Leah deVeau. Three, although differing in height and coloring, had the unmistakable mark of the Penlops—the bleary-eyed shuffle. I recalled one of them from a burglary on Telegraph a year or so ago. He’d been fifteen then, a juvenile. But the fourth Penlop, a blond, was alert, wary.

It was he who said to Leah, “We’re going to sell the tea. We’re behind.”

Sure, I thought. And what else? But if Leah recognized his intention, she gave no sign. She smiled and said, “Don’t go for too long this time. You boys had a hard time last night. Maybe you should stay…”

The blond put a hand on her shoulder. “No, Ma, we have our jobs.”

Behind his urgency to get out of the ashram, I could see a genuine fondness in his expression. Leah deVeau’s ministrations had not gone unappreciated.

As they crossed the grass, looking from the back like true Buddhist monks, I said, “It’s hard to imagine these boys never talking at all.”

A smile flickered among the creases of Leah’s face. “It’s hard for them, too. They haven’t been used to an internalized life. Their lives have been spent totally in groups—peer pressure all the way.” The smile broadened. “They have lapses. Some nights I hear whispers and even muffled laughter. Like the nights when my son had friends sleep over. I always heard them, even over my husband’s sneezing—he had terrible hay fever. … But I’m wandering. These boys here, they do try, and they work hard.”

“I’m sure they do,” I said. “You know, one of the things I wanted to ask you was about the altar. I understand you arranged it.”

The lines in her face tightened. “Arranged it?” She shifted her plump body on the step. I wondered if she was buying time. “The altar,” she said, “is a replica of the one in Padma’s monastery in Bhutan. He was already using it when I came here.”

“But its position—it’s not at the center of the stage. You decided that, didn’t you?”

“What?” She stared at me, her face pale. “Oh, no, you don’t mean…” The words came slowly. “The trapdoor.”

I nodded.

“Oh, no! You mean someone used the trapdoor? Padma didn’t kill himself? Someone came up through the trapdoor and stabbed…” She clutched her head, sobbing.

I waited and, when she wiped her eyes, said, “You did put the altar over the trapdoor, didn’t you?”

“Yes.” Her voice caught.

“Why?”

“It made sense at the time. I never dreamed anyone would … I just thought it was dangerous having that trapdoor on the stage. The temple is an old building. It hasn’t been kept up. The boys can get careless when they’re cleaning the stage. They run; they jump. I was afraid one of them would land on the trapdoor and fall through. I could see one of them breaking an arm or a leg. But I never … If I’d ever thought. But there was no reason to think of something like this. Who would want to stab Padma?”

“That’s what I’ve been wondering.”

“I don’t know. I just can’t imagine anyone intentionally harming Padma.”

I stood up, and Leah deVeau pushed herself up to face me, a weary movement.

“This schedule must be hard on you, Mrs. deVeau. It really isn’t meant for…”

“For old ladies?” She smiled. “The ashram’s schedule isn’t, but we do have other ways here. We have quite a number of older devotees. Mr. Braga seeks them out, and he sees to it that they are not pressed beyond their capabilities. That’s one of the things that separated Padma’s ministry from so many others.” A yawn escaped her. “Sometimes I envy their schedule.”

“I would have thought,” I said, moving down a step, “that if some sort of salvation is the goal, the older you are the faster you’d have to work and the more strenuously.”

Leah shook her head. “I don’t know, dear. You’d have to ask Mr. Braga or Chupa-da, our new leader—he’s the one to tell you about doctrine. I just keep the house.”

I stopped. “Chupa-da’s already the new leader?”

“Yes. He succeeded Padma.”

“Does he hold the position in his own right? I mean, is he the new guru, or is he just a caretaker?”

“I can’t say exactly. As I told you, it’s not really my domain, the spiritual side. Chupa-da’s in charge now…”

I followed her eyes as another line of Penlops snaked out of the ashram, tucking their wooden bowls into horizontal folds of red cloth over their stomachs. The resulting potbellies gave them the look of a row of red penguins. I turned back to Leah in time to catch her maternal smile as she watched them.

“I need to see Chupa-da,” I said.

“He’s upstairs.” She didn’t move. She looked very tired. “He’s in the study. On the third floor.”

There was a long pause before she added, in a tone of finality, “Padma used it as his room before I was here. He came to see it as unsuitable, so he moved down to one of the cells.”

I hurried up the stairs, past those tiny cells, to a second staircase that led steeply to what had once been an attic. I knocked on the carved surface of the door, and hearing what could loosely be construed as “Enter,” I pushed it open.

The room ran the length of the building, with windows at either end, but the real illumination was provided by a plastic skylight ten feet in length. The sunlight sparkled off deep-red Oriental rugs and burnished brass tables. A daybed stood opposite a desk, at which sat Chupa-da, looking like a clerk in a Turkish-rug emporium.

He turned his head toward me as I entered, mouth curling down, ruining the line of his round face. “We have no need of an investigation,” he said, in the same singsong delivery of the previous night.

“Your leader has been murdered.”

“No.” His voice was uninflected. “Padmasvana’s karma is complete. Nothing is permanent. We come. We go.”

“I’m sorry, but the laws of California require that murder be investigated. We don’t want to interfere with the operation of the ashram, but we must have your cooperation with our investigation.” I found myself unintentionally mimicking Chupa-da’s slow, precise speech.

“The days after the passing of a great leader must not be spent in the world but in contemplation of his wisdom and in marking well the lessons to be learned.”

I thought about the Penlops, out selling tea as usual, but said only, “We will interfere as little as possible, provided you cooperate.”

He glared at me with what could only be called a very unholy expression, then stood up. “Padmasvana,” he said slowly, “was—what is your word?—harassed by Westerners. It was his karma to come here, to help the unenlightened, but they did not make it easy for him. They
wanted;
all of them
wanted
all the time. They did not understand that to be enlightened is to
not
want. All the time, they
wanted.
”

“Who wanted what?”

“Names? Braga. He wanted more ceremonies—what you would call an assembly line.”

“Why?”

“To get more converts.”

“And did Padmasvana do the extra ceremonies?”

“No!” Chupa-da’s eyes flashed. “Padmasvana was part of a tradition that goes back many incarnations. It was not up to him to make changes.”

I realized that I was still standing in the doorway and had felt no unspoken invitation to enter.

“And the real-estate man—he was here, sneaking about because Braga had banned him from the premises.”

“What did
he
want?”

“Our land! The very temple we use for worship.”

“And his name?”

Again the glare. “I do not know. I did not want to know.” He gave a sharp flick of his head. “And the merchants, they accosted the Penlops when they sold tea in the street. They complained—me, mine, my business, my sidewalk. In this country people cannot walk along the street without merchants saying they walk on their land.” Slamming down his hands, he added, “ ‘Don’t sell tea in front of my store.’ They complained from stores on Telegraph Avenue. The peddlers who sell their goods from blankets there complained about their space. They said you must go on the computer to get space on Telegraph Avenue—to sit on the sidewalk!” He sat back hard in his chair. “And the Co-op market. The Self-Over man. And—”