“Can you tell me what her mantra was?”
“The Stilled Tongue gathers no Blisters.”
“Can you tell me what her mantra wasn’t?” Regina pinged back to his pong.
“What is not, is not, and is not easy to define.”
“Was ‘AHHH LOO-OO-OO’ Faith Venable’s mantra?”
“In the East we have a saying: ‘Daisies never tell’.”
“Was ‘AHH LOO-OO-OO’ not Faith Venable’s mantra?”
“What are you, rneshuginah?” The Maharishi’s equanimity was disturbed. “Sister Faith was an Aries! ‘AHHH LOO-OO-OO’ indeed! What kind of Guru would hand down an ‘AHH LOO-OO-OO’ mantra to an Aries?”
“Sorry. No offense meant,” Regina apologized.
“Wrong Thinking!” the Maharishi grumbled. “Go and Meditate on it. You have disturbed my tranquility, which is to disturb the tranquility of the Whole. I must rejoin the Universe now.” He closed his eyes.
It took Regina a moment to realize that the interview was at an end. Her mind had been focused on the importance of what she had leamed. “AHH LOO-OO-OO,” the mantra which Faith had chanted just before she died, was not her mantra. Then why had she died with it on her lips? There could be only one answer. “AHHH LOO-OO-OO” was the mantra of the murderer! If Regina could find which of Faith’s disciples had been assigned that chant, she would find the killer! The right mantra, the right murderer! It was as simple as that!
Regina left. Outside, on the street, she bumped smack into Lieutenant Raoul Rodriguez of the Homicide Division. The dark-skinned, handsome plainclothesman was openly suspicious at Regina’s emerging from the Maharishi’s temple. “Are you mixed up with this Guru?” he demanded to know.
“No. I simply came down to ask him some questions.”
“Questions about what?”
“About the murder, of course.”
“What did he tell you?”
“Find out for yourself.” Regina found the Lieutenant’s attitude annoying. Then, as she realized what was facing him, she chuckled. “All Answers are Questions rearranged,” she told Rodriguez. “If it is the Right Question, it will be its own Answer.”
“Huh?”
“The Wisdom of the Questioner is the Knowledge of the Answerer.”
“Smart-ass!” Rodriguez snorted. He started to enter the temple and then turned back to Regina. “You’ve got no business fooling around with this case,” he told her. “And I’m warning you, if you get in my way, I’ll cream you!”
“Shame, Lieutenant! Always thinking of sex!” Regina wriggled her hips provocatively. “But I'll have you know that my interest is legitimate. I’m employed by ATOMICS, the most reputable agency in the business.”
“Is that so?” Rodriguez threw her the zinger. “And are you licensed to conduct private investigations?” he asked. “Because if you’re not, you could be in very serious trouble.”
“I didn’t know I had to be licensed,” Regina confessed.
“State law.” Rodriguez filed her reaction away in the back of his mind. He entered the temple, reassured with the knowledge that—-
Regina is not queen of all she surveys. . . .
CHAPTER TEN
Have Gum, Wm Travel
Tex Kincaid got around. Regina Blue first met him in Saigon. During the two years since then, Tex had turned up in such far-flung places as Nigeria, Brazil, Greece and Northern Ireland. At the present time, according to an ATOMICS check requested by Regina, Tex Kincaid was in Dacca, the capital city of East Pakistan.
“Tex Kincaid” was the second name on the list the dying Faith Venable had handed to her brother with the words: “the murderer.” He was one of the two people on the list whom Regina knew personally. That was why Regina decided to fly to the embattled city of Dacca to interview him.
It was a starting point. Not much of a starting point, but she had to begin some place. Tex had been in New York the night of the murder and had left for East Pakistan the following day. Prior to that he had met with Faith Venable privately on several occasions. The doorman of the building had identified him from a photograph which ATOMICS had also provided with Regina.
On the flight to Calcutta, where she would have to change planes, Regina went over in her mind all that she knew about Tex Kincaid. A native of Texas, twenty-five years old, he suited his name physically as well as if he’d been assigned to play the part by Central Casting. His appearance smacked of the open range, the prairie past, the good old days when the West was won by men who were men who sat tall in the saddle.
Tex was tall—a bootless six-foot-three—and rangy — one-hundred-ninety lean and muscular pounds-— and had eyes as blue as a prairie sky, the buck-toothed grin of a gopher, and wind-whipped skin like saddle leather. He was the son of a small cattle rancher, and had grown up outdoors, on the range. And while he was growing up, all around him, in the land of LBJ, oil wells were sprouting up and shooting off geysers of dollars in fulfillment of the American Dream.
Alas, the gushers missed the Kincaid ranch. Fate’s oversight might have made some boys bitter, but not Tex. If the Money Mountain wouldn’t come to him, he decided, he’d just have to go climbing after it on his own. So Tex enlisted in the Army and got himself sent to Vietnam.
Of the half-million GIs rotating their way through ’Nam at that time, only a canny few saw it as a Land for Milking Money. Tex was one of the select. He’d planned it that way.
As a volunteer, he’d been granted his choice of service: Ordnance. By immediately re-upping, he’d contrived to have himself stationed permanently in Saigon. He arrived with a footlocker filled with Chiclets, caught onto the ropes quickly, and parlayed his gum into a case of booze which he used to persuade a homeward-bound Lieutenant to assign him to the Purchasing Department of the PX.
From there on it was sheer Texas initiative and know-how. A crate of Baby Ruths here, a box of Hershey bars there, a swap for a side of beef with an obliging mess sergeant, a deal with a South Vietnamese Colonel for a crate of grenades which brought good American dollars from a Cong agent on the black market—it all added up to a Swiss bank account with regular deposits made in the name of Tex Kincaid. Before his first year in Saigon was out, Private Kincaid had established himself as the man to see, the man with the contacts to handle goods that were too hot even for the black market, the wheeler-dealer to whom all other wheeler-dealers paid deference—and a goodly percentage of the take.
He stayed a Pfc. Deliberately. Rank might have made him obtrusive, and he didn’t want that. So Tex himself killed all promotions before they could be officially tendered. Such modest string-pulling was easy for him since those with whom he regularly dealt included all ranks from Sergeant-Major through General.
Among these was a certain Major with important connections back home. One day the Major came to Tex with a problem. The Air Force was due to bomb out a certain village in the hinterlands. The Major didn’t want this particular village hit because he’d arranged to have a crop of copra stashed in it and a Cong agent was due to arrive at the village to pay hard cash for the copra the day after the scheduled raid. Could Tex do anything about having the raid delayed?
Tex could. And he did. The price was the wipe-out of a crap table debt incurred by a Lieutenant Colonel of the Air Force.
The Major was grateful. He was so grateful that he decided to give Tex a present. The gift was Regina Blue.
She was flown to Saigon especially as a surprise for Tex Kincaid’s twenty-third birthday. Naked, she was wrapped in cellophane, tied with a red ribbon, and delivered to Tex by an Army van commandeered by the Major. When Tex opened the package, she sang “Happy Birthday to you” while he guffawed heartily.