In the next hour, he worked his way through Man 2 Man, The Back Door, Moby Dick and Rock Hard. In each, he mentioned Bernie Lang’s name to the bouncer at the door and showed a photo from The Marin Independent Journal, Lang looking smart and prosperous in a leisure suit. Three times out of four, the photo jogged a vague recall in the bouncer’s mind but no tangible information. Starrett repeated the process inside with bartenders and waiters. As his search elicited doubts or sympathies, Starrett was occasionally offered consolation by a number of willing substitutes. He didn’t know whether to credit this attraction to his appearance or the scent of Alfred Sung, but wrote it off to the latter, sparing himself the deeper issue of confronting the former.
Starrett visited another three clubs – Daddy’s, Pendulum and Midnight Son. It was after one o’clock and he was tired, ready to call it quits as he approached the last place on his list, a club called No Woman No Cry. Beneath the marquee stood a bouncer in his mid-twenties, a black guy with about two hundred pounds hard-packed on a six-foot frame, bare-chested and nipple-ringed, wearing white leather pants with rhinestone-studded suspenders and a white leather bill cap.
“I’m lookin’ for someone,” Starrett told the bouncer.
“Ain’t we all.” The bouncer ran a feral eye up and down Starrett, getting a noseful of his cologne.
“Name Bernie Lang ring a bell? Fifty or so, dot-com nouveau riche, likes to party, maybe into rough trade.”
“Sounds like a lot of people. I can’t do nothin’ with that.”
“Can you do something with this?” Starrett showed Lang’s photo.
“I know him. But he ain’t into rough trade. Trannies more his thing.”
“Yeah, that too,” said Starrett, keeping up with the pace.
“You look like a cop. What’s your angle?”
“I am a cop. Lang was killed yesterday in a hit-and-run. I’m investigating his death. I need to talk to anyone with whom he had a relationship.”
The bouncer held out his hand. Starrett gave him twenty bucks. The bouncer jerked his head toward the entrance. “Bobbi Chang. Slant-eyed cutie in red at the bar.”
Starrett went inside where a very big man, possibly a lesser cousin of Jabba-da-Hut, filled a cashier’s booth to overflowing with pale tattooed flesh. Starrett paid the cover, ignoring the pursed lips making kissy-faces like a blowfish in mating season, and entered the club.
The long bar up front was packed shoulder-to-shoulder with what looked to be both men and women. Beyond that, through an arched doorway whose steps descended into an urban Dante’s Inferno, was a maelstrom of bodies, stripped to the waist, squirming and heaving like a school of fish on a tsunami of techno-beat. Lights flickered and flashed like heat lightning, the smell of testosterone welling up from the dance floor like the wind that blows ahead of a heavy summer storm. Starrett hoped he wouldn’t have to go down there to look for Bobbi Chang.
He walked along the bar, running his eyes over the crowd, and saw that what he’d first taken for women were actually transvestites. Many were more beautiful than any woman he’d dated, their hair and makeup flawless, their hourglass figures sheathed in revealing dresses, their feet in expensive high heels. When he saw the oriental in a red dress being nuzzled by a fifty-year-old businessman, he said a silent prayer of thanks that he didn’t have to go dancing with the mob down under.
Starrett sidled next to Bobbi and gave her a closer look – jet-black page-boy haircut, curves swelling a red silk dress with a side slit almost up to her ass, matching red heels on rather petite feet. He wedged himself between Bobbi and the businessman to catch the bartender’s attention.
“Excuse me,” the businessman whined with irritation.
Starrett flipped his wallet open for the businessman to see his badge. The scowl on the guy’s face evaporated like spilt milk on a hot sidewalk, quickly replaced by resignation. He looked at his watch, downed his drink and vacated his stool. Starrett eased himself onto the seat and looked at Bobbi face-to-face. Damn, she was cute. He kept his gaze on her almond-shaped eyes, avoiding the distraction of her décolletage.
“Is that a gun in your pocket, officer,” Bobbi said, “or are you just happy to see me?”
“Both.” Starrett was dismayed he’d been made so readily but it simplified things. “Apparently you’re friendly with a guy named Bernie Lang?”
“Why are you asking? Has he done something naughty?”
“I’m not sure what he’s done, but he’s getting buried in a day or two.”
“No shit!” Bobbi raised her hand to her mouth. “I mean, oh dear...!”
Starrett waited to see what other reaction the news might provoke. But all Bobbi did was stare at her empty glass.
“What’re you drinking?” Starrett said.
“I’m partial to Sex on the Beach. What about you?”
Starrett took a twenty from his wallet and waved it at the bartender.
“How did it happen?” Bobbi asked.
“Car accident.”
The bartender came over. “What can I get you?”
“Bud Light for me. And whatever my little China doll needs to stay lubricated.”
“They don’t sell K-Y at the bar,” Bobbi said in a mock whisper, “but I have a tube in my purse...”
“Give it a break. This is business.”
The bartender delivered their drinks. Starrett drained half his Bud in one swallow. Bobbi took a sip from her SOB. Starrett looked down at Bobbi’s cleavage. Her nipples pushed against the thin fabric.
Bobbi batted her lashes. “Ever mix business with pleasure?”
“Whenever I can.” Starrett seized a nipple and gave it a twist.
Bobbi yelped and swatted his hand away. “Shit, man, that hurts!”
“Enough foreplay. Now let’s get serious. Tell me everything you know about Bernie Lang and don’t spare the details.”
Bobbi folded her arms across her chest and looked sullen. Starrett regretted his strong-arm tactic. How many times had he cautioned his own understudies, a carrot works as well as a stick.
As if reading his mind, Bobbi said, “I’ll tell you what I know, but be nice.”
“Let me buy you another drink.”
Bobbi drained her SOB. “Let’s go somewhere else. It’s so loud in here I can hardly think straight.”
“I thought maybe that was part of the attraction.”
~~~
Bobbi insisted on going back to her place, a one-bedroom apartment in a house hanging off the hillside a few blocks from Castro. It was furnished in neo-Oriental style, black lacquered furniture and Chinese art on the walls. Starrett had a quick look around, making sure there was no roommate with a loaded gun and a head full of meth to set it off. Less wary cops had been surprised with worse.
Bobbi made herself a drink. Starrett selected a Bud from the fridge and twisted the cap off. Last thing he wanted was a mixed drink and to wake up next morning in a dumpster without his clothes. A few years ago an Oakland detective had been doped with a loaded drink in an after-hours bar and woke up with a bloody machete and a dead hooker in a motel bed. Get too close and sometimes they feed you to your own keepers.
Starrett sat on the sofa. Bobbi put Sade on the sound system and sat beside him.
“Are you married, detective?”
“Only to my job.” Starrett drank from his bottle. “Tell me about Lang. How long have you known him?”
“It would have been our first year anniversary next month.”
“I’m sorry to hear that.”
“He was nice. He treated me well. We went out a lot. He loved to dance. Do you like to dance, detective?”
“I have two left feet.”
“I love to dance.” Bobbi stood and made a few turns around the floor. Starrett had to admit she was pretty smooth on her high heels. Bobbi beckoned. “Come on. Show me what you’ve got. You don’t have to do anything. You can just lean up against me and I’ll do all the moving.”
“This isn’
t my social night out. This is a criminal investigation.”
Bobbi pouted and made a few more turns around the floor before returning to the sofa. She laid her hand on Starrett’s thigh. He left it there, trying to be nice. If he didn’t think about it too much, it wasn’t hard to imagine she was a real woman. God knows she looked better than some he’d slept with.
“You know what Bernie told me last time we were together?”
“That you were hotter’n a Szechuan chicken?”
Bobbi made a face. “He was going to pull the plug on his terminal relationship and make a fresh start.”
“When was this?”
“Just last week. But he’d been thinking of it for months.”
“Had he discussed it with his boyfriend?”
“No, but he was working up the nerve. They’d been together a long time and Bernie’d put him in his will and everything. But things weren’t that great between them any more.”
“Ever since you came into the picture?”
“You must admit, I have a lot to offer.” Bobbi leaned forward, giving him an eyeful of her generous cleavage.
“You do have a point.”
“You know what else Bernie told me last time we were together?” Without waiting for him to reply, Bobbi pressed her mouth against his ear and whispered. As she leaned against him, her hand slid up his thigh to cup his crotch. Maybe she was searching for a concealed weapon, but Starrett didn’t think so.
Chapter 41
New York
In the Washington Square Hotel, Axel Crowe lay on the floor staring up into the darkness, wondering where to start the story of his life in astrology.
“When I was fifteen I answered a magazine ad to get a computerized astrological report on my chart. It was pretty basic but detailed enough to differentiate me from my friends, and it got me hooked. I bought books, taught myself how to calculate and interpret a chart. Pretty soon all the kids at school were calling me Zodiac the Weirdo.”
“There’s a Japanese saying,” Tracey said from above. “The nail that stands up gets pounded down.”
“I had an epiphany in high school, where I saw the world split in two – those who believed, and those who didn’t. For the man of faith, no proof is necessary, but for the man of no faith, no proof is possible. But I didn’t care. I already knew I was different.”
“What do you mean?”
“When I was little I used to see things. Shadows, auras, things that weren’t there...”
“Did you tell your parents?”
“My mother called it the Irish gift of second sight. One night I woke up to see a yogi, naked and cross-legged, floating in the corner of my bedroom. But when I told her that, she feared I was mental. That’s when I stopped sharing my visions with her.”
“Were either of your parents interested in astrology?”
“No. My father could do math in his head like a human computer, and was an amateur astronomer with a telescope. My mother wrote poetry and short stories for literary magazines. When she got something published she’d buy champagne and celebrate with friends as if she’d just made the New York Times bestseller list.”
“If you’re half Irish, shouldn’t you have been working with Celtic runes or something?”
“Been there, done that. Over the years I tried it all – tarot, I Ching, crystal balls, dowsing... I can work with just about anything, but astrology and palmistry work best for me.”
“So you’re a New Age kind of guy.”
“Please. Some of that stuff is too flakey. Indigo children are the savants of the new world? Most critical studies say they’re more likely to be diagnosed with ADHD. The Secret? Norman Vincent Peale wrote The Power of Positive Thinking fifty years ago. Nobody ever went broke by over-estimating the public’s taste for old wine in new bottles.”
“My ex was a follower of Master of Money, these motivational seminars that were supposed to make him a millionaire. He wasted tens of thousands of dollars. If he’d put it into property like I wanted, he’d have been further ahead. It was one of the reasons we broke up.”
“Most of these money-and-success gurus sell the same false promise – that if you just want it badly enough, it’ll come to you. So many people blame themselves for their failures, when in fact it’s just a natural consequence of karma. We can’t all be millionaires, married to perfect spouses, with two talented children.”
“Speaking of gurus, can you tell me how you met yours?”
Crowe hesitated. It was a personal story he’d told to only a few close friends. But there was something about Tracey, his sense of having known her before, that made him feel she was already part of his life. It was like picking up a thread that had been dropped, two high school sweethearts rediscovering each other at their 30-year reunion, realizing they’d never stopped thinking about each other.
So he told her the story, or at least part of it.
~~~
Sanjay was a well-known astrologer in Calcutta when his guru told him to leave India and move to Canada. Sanjay knew Canadians were polite people who played hockey and walked to work in sub-zero temperatures but he didn’t think Canada was the place for him. He was a warm-blooded Bengali and didn’t own anything heavier than a sweater. But his guru said he had karma to fulfill, to find in Canada a worthy student who would become a detective, using knowledge of the Vedas to solve crimes.
Sanjay said goodbye to family and friends and left for Canada, leaving thousands of clients mourning his departure. He barely spoke the language but within a week of arriving in Toronto he found a job as a night watchman and enrolled in English classes. After meeting people at a local temple he began taking on clients from Toronto’s large Indian community. Soon he was invited to dinner everywhere and his astrological practice became so successful he quit his security job.
Meanwhile he kept an eye out for this special student his guru had sent him to find. At first he thought he’d find his student within the Hindu community but all the bright young people were intent on becoming doctors, lawyers, engineers and computer programmers. Their parents had immigrated to give them a better life and the last thing they wanted for their sons and daughters was to spend years cross-legged on a mat, chanting mantra and memorizing verses from Brihat Parasara Hora Sastra, the bible of Vedic astrology.
Winter came and overstayed its welcome. Sanjay questioned a karma condemning him to exile in this icebox of a country. He watched the snow fall on his patience while he imagined his own guru back in Calcutta, drinking chai under a mango tree within a circle of rapt students, telling stories about sticky karma that could bind you to your fate like a wet tongue on a frozen iron gate. Life wasn’t fair but Sanjay refused to be discouraged. He threw a very ripe mango at his kitchen wall and interpreted from the way the juice ran down the baseboard that his special student would appear in three days time.
At that moment, a 23-year-old Axel Crowe was just getting off a Voyageur bus from Owen Sound, where he’d spent fourteen days in an off-season cottage on Georgian Bay, fasting and praying for the appearance of a guru.
He’d sought a teacher ever since high school. For five years he’d stopped every Indian he met on the street, asking if they knew anyone who could teach him jyotish, Vedic astrology. If his mother hadn’t been sick, he might have gone to India. In lieu, he’d been to Montreal, Boston, New York, Philadelphia and Chicago, all in vain. Now and again he’d meet someone, but within a day, a week or a month, he’d exhausted them of what little they knew, and the search was on again.
Faint with hunger, he caught a streetcar back to his one-bedroom apartment in the Annex, ate and crashed into a deep sleep of exhaustion. When he woke up he felt rested but depressed. His faith had been shaken. The chorus line from Born Under a Bad Sign came to mind – “If it wasn’t for bad luck, I wouldn’t have no luck at all.”
For two days he moped around the apartment, staring out the window and wondering what to make of his dreams. He wanted to learn jyotish but he
couldn’t penetrate the books written in quirky English, never mind Sanskrit. He was doomed to return on Monday to his low-level job as a court records analyst, pushing paper for the legal system. Where was the justice in that?
He played his guitar and broke two strings.
Saturday evening he got a call from his buddy Dave inviting him to a party in Parkdale. Crowe said he wasn’t feeling up to it. Too bad, Dave said, because my friends are having an Indian theme with all kinds of curry and stuff, and a couple of musicians playing tablah and harmonium. Hearing the call of the raga, Crowe perked up and said he’d go.
As soon as he walked into the house, Crowe saw an Indian man with very close-cropped hair sitting in one corner of the living room. Crowe went over and introduced himself. After a few minutes of polite talk, Crowe asked the man, whose name was Sanjay, if he knew any jyotish.
Whereupon Sanjay said something in Sanskrit and then told Crowe in halting English exactly where he’d been and what he’d done the last two weeks – the town, the cottage on the lake, the mantra he’d chanted, the color of the blanket on his bed, the book he’d read on the bus, what he’d eaten when he got home. And the wine-red bear paw of a birth mark on his right shoulder.
Crowe fell to his knees, clasped Sanjay’s hand and cried like a lost child who’d just found his father. And Sanjay patted him on the back and said, it’s going to be all right now, we’ve found each other.
~~~
“Are you all right?” Tracey whispered in the dark. “I heard your voice crack.”
“Memories,” Crowe said. “What they can do to you...”
Crowe knuckled his eyes, wiping his tears away. He should have known better. It had been a long time since he’d told his story. He’d forgotten how even its retelling could bring so much to the surface. But what lay beneath was more profound than what floated to the top. The beauty of his story was that it wasn’t really about him, but about a parampara – a lineage enlivened by the genius of Sanjay’s own guru, who’d seen across time to know the intertwined destinies of both his student and his student’s student.