Krishna finished the glass and poured himself another. "Well, you know what they say, you can't crap a crapper. Dor's running the oldest hustle in the books. A little drugs, a lot of sex, and a lot more of make everybody feel good. Wanna blow up your mother? Go ahead. It is the way to bliss. Want to rob your boss or cheat the stockholders? You must if you are to attain bliss."
"And you?"
"When I went to Patna, I had a pretty good idea of what to expect. And it didn't work. I've been on drugs, I've had enough sex, and he couldn't impress me with that. And feeling good? Man, I always feel good. Anyway, I faked it and acted like everybody else, and here I am, a chief arch-priest. And I think they're gonna try to beat me out of my 20 percent. They better not try. If they do, man, I'm going into transcendental meditation."
Remo stood up. "For what it's worth," he said, "I'll give you a good report on the security here. You've got a good operation."
"Thanks. You fellas have a place to stay?"
Remo shook his head.
"Well, stay here. We've got plenty of rooms upstairs. This place used to be a whorehouse."
"I think we'll do that," Remo said. "That way we'll be close to everything. Particularly if Blissful shows up. Tell me something. How do you get your skin that color?"
"Tanning lotion," said Krishna, who had put down his glass and was now trying to stuff his hair back under his pink turban. "You know, that chemical crap. Use a lot of it, it's perfect Indian color. Only thing is when I go to Malibu for the weekends, man, I look like I got yellow jaundice."
The telphone rang. Krishna cleared his throat, and then, in a mock Indian accent, said, "Divine Bliss Mission, may Krishna bring you happiness?"
He listened, then whistled. "No shit," he said. "Thanks for calling."
He hung up the telephone and smiled at Remo. "Christ, I'm glad you're here."
"Why?" said Remo.
"We heard a rumble last week that there had been some kind of trouble at the San Diego mission. But everybody was clammed on it. But I just heard. The arch-priest down there, Freddy, done bought the farm. Somebody crushed his neck."
"Who did it?" asked Remo casually.
"They're not sure yet. Everybody in the place split so they wouldn't have to deal with the fuzz."
"You think it might be an attempt on the maharaji?"
Krishna shrugged. "Who knows? But I'll tell you, I'm glad you're here. I don't need any crazy people going around killing up my folks."
"Don't worry," Remo said. "We'll protect you."
CHAPTER ELEVEN
"What is he, Elton?"
"He's an Indian."
"G'wan, Elton, they ain't no more Indians in this country."
"Not that kind of Indian. He's a from India kind of Indian." Elton Snowy leaned across the cigarette-scarred wooden counter and whispered into the florid ear of the bartender: "Like a nigger, he is."
"Sheeit. With your Joleen?" The cooked crab face of the fat man registered disbelief.
Snowy nodded glumly. "Drugs. He must have her on drugs. And I went and sent the nigger preacher to go and get her, and he never came back. He must be on those drugs too."
"Elton, I think things started to go bad when that peckerhead asked for that cup of coffee."
Snowy nodded his head, slowly, thoughtfully. He looked down at the glass of sarsaparilla in his hand.
"We shoulda shot him then," said the bartender. "Yep," he agreed with himself. "We shoulda shot him then."
Snowy, exhausted after a day of rounding up volunteer warriors for the posse to rescue his daughter, said sharply, "But how would that do anything to this little bastard from India?"
"Show him a lesson. Trouble was we let everybody get uppity. First it was niggers, and then it was Putto Rickens, and then it was real Indians, and now it's these funny Indians who are really niggers. Everybody's stepping all over us. Next thing you know, Catholics are gonna start getting uppity around here."
"Pray God it never comes to that," said Snowy.
"We'd better. 'Cause if they come, the Jews will be right behind them."
The horror of that thought stimulated Snowy's thirst, and he drained his glass of sarsaparilla and put it on the bar with a clunk.
"Want more, Elton?"
"No. That's enough. Well?"
"Whatever you want, I'm with you."
"Good," said Snowy. "Pack yourself a bag. We're leaving tonight."
"We?"
"You and me and Fester and Puling."
"Eeeeyow," said the bartender. "All of us going to San Francisco?"
"Yup."
"Won't that be one hell of a nut-busting time? No wives, neither. Yahoo." His voice was so loud that others further down the bar looked at him, and he moved closer to Snowy and said, "I can't wait, Elton."
"My house tonight. At six."
CHAPTER TWELVE
Out of Frisco, toward the west, toward Japan, which called itself the land of the rising sun but was really the land of the setting sun from America's viewpoint, which might have provided a clue about the ending of World War II, over the Golden Gate Bridge, awkwardly red in the daylight sun, the late morning heat having burned off the fog shroud, the ubiquitous workmen giving the bridge its daily dose of ugly red paint, out off the bridge, onto a highway, then into a tunnel, its open mouth painted with arcs of rainbow color, then back out onto the highway.
He drove with an easy discipline, his mind not on the car or the wheel, his finely tuned body and instincts reacting automatically to the swerve of the road, weighing the mass of the car against the centrifugal force, balanced by the coefficient of friction for the tires, all without thought, just through fingertips and palms connected to arms, connected to spinal cord and brain.
Ferdinand De Chef Hunt had never been on this side of San Francisco before. He had visited the city years earlier on business but had no ambition to see the surrounding countryside.
Hunt had learned early of his ability to manipulate objects, and he regarded places as just more objects, only bigger. He was not curious about places he had not seen.
Another tunnel up ahead. On the rock face above it, white paint had been splashed, like a gigantic Tom Sawyeresque attempt to whitewash not just a fence, but the world. Hunt's sharp eyes picked out an outline under the paint. He slowed the car. Yes, it was the outline of a woman, a forty-foot-high painting of a naked woman, and already the white paint was wearing off, and the woman's voluptuous outlines showed through the paint, and the woman was sexy.
Hunt gave the white paint two more weeks before the elements made it almost perfectly transparent, and he hoped he would still be in the area because he wanted to see the painting of the naked woman. He could tell, from the harshness of the lines used for the curves of the body, that the artist was a woman. Men painted women in all kinds of soft curves, curves that women never had, but most men never knew because they were afraid to look at women. It took a woman to measure a woman and to know the hardness underneath, and this was a woman's work.
The discovery of the covered-over painting made his day. It was like one of those fine details sometimes found in a corner of a Hieronymus Bosch painting, one of those details that you might overlook the first hundred times you saw the painting, and then on the 101st you would discover it, and the shout of surprise would rise in your throat, and you would not even care that other men had discovered it first. For you, it was your own discovery, real and personal and immediate. It made you a Columbus, and so Hunt felt as he tromped on the gas pedal and sped on.
On further, off the main highway, down into the working-hard-at-it artsy-craftsy towns that gave the north Bay area its bad name among art lovers, and then he was coming over a hill and then down a long grade and then, in a flash, he went from Marin County countryside into outskirt suburbs that could have been picked up and relocated anywhere in the United States, and then he was past that into a town center that was frontierlike and gallery-perfect.