Free Criminal Karma by Steven M. Thomas Page B

rich psycho in Newport Beach who brought her to California from Vietnam to be his captive plaything. We were together for a while afterward, but, despite her exoticism, she turned out to be conventional at heart. After she left me for a Vietnamese doctor with a profitable practice in Westminster, I swore offcaring, decided to just do my crimes and enjoy the cash without getting tangled up emotionally with people along the way.
    Brilliant idea, huh?
    Whatever was bothering me, I knew better than to wallow in it. I didn’t have time. The house was a depressing dump. I was forty years old and pretty much alone in the world. But I had diamonds to find. Pink ones. And I needed to find them quickly. After the attempted theft in Indian Wells, whoever owned the necklace would be more careful. Our best bet for consummating the crime was to strike fast while the owner was still off balance, before new precautions could be devised and implemented.
    There was a rap-tap at the bedroom door and Reggie walked in. He was wearing a white wife-beater, faded khakis, and the strap sandals, sans black socks.
    “You need me for anything?” he said.
    “Not right now, but stay available.”
    “I’ll be around,” he said. “I’m gonna go see what Chavi’s doing. What are you gonna do?”
    “I’m going to the library to see if there is anything about this Baba Raba character in the newspaper database. If the necklace really is his, we need to track him down fast. I’ll look for you at Chavi’s booth if anything turns up.”
    Reggie nodded and started back out the door.
    “Hey,” I said, “did you say anything to Pete about us going to the desert?”
    “Negative,” Reggie said, mocking the ex-sailor by using one of his characteristic responses.

CHAPTER ELEVEN
    Downstairs, I found Budge flopped on the couch, reading a week-old copy of the
Santa Monica Daily Press
. He was a former high school defensive lineman who looked like the first Curley. Candyman had told me that he got his nickname from the coach at Venice High School, who always said that no one could budge him when he was dug in on the line. A big strong kid, he had played varsity his sophomore and junior years before dropping out of school to surf and work construction. At forty, his high school football career was still one of his two biggest claims to fame.
    “Hi, Rob,” he said gloomily, tossing the paper on the scarred pine floor with the rest of the debris and hauling himself up into a sitting position. He was wearing a pair of flowered board shorts and a T-shirt with the letters AWOL on the front.
    “How’s it going, Budge?”
    He rubbed his fleshy face with large hands and shook his head. “I’mbacked up,” he said. Jolly most of the time, he became morose when he was constipated.
    “You eat any of those apples I bought?”
    “I cain’t eat fruit, Rob. Gives me a stomachache. I’m gonna go down to Rite Aid here in a minute and get something to push all that old mess out of there.”
    I shrugged.
    “Robby, mah man!” Candyman came into the living room from the hallway that led to the stooges’ bedrooms. “You missed a first-rate affair lass night.”
    “What transpired?”
    “We had us a couple of the cutest little surfer girls you ever seen—Mexican surfer girls, if you ever heard of some shit like that—and a whole case of strawberry wine. It was certifiably fine.”
    Candyman had been a major heroin dealer in Venice during the 1970s—Cadillac, fur coat, condo, and all. Cured off smack in the penitentiary, he confined himself now to sweet wine and marijuana. His main obsession was his ex-wife, who divorced him while he was in the pen. She lived nearby in a rent-controlled apartment in Santa Monica and the two of them maintained a complex love-hate relationship. Candyman was always on the verge of either suing her for something or getting back together with her.
    “Heard from Shoshana?” I asked, to see which way the wind was