"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.
Mill Valley. He drove into the heart of town, past the modernistic lumber store. Stopped for a light at a corner, he could see an old corner pub. In front were three motorcycles with stickers proclaiming that Jesus Saves, and the savings must have been substantial because the bikes were customized Harley Davidson choppers that went for three thousand dollars each.
Another block and Hunt hung a left and began moving his old 1952 MG up a hill that was like riding along the back of a giant snake that had curled up on the roadway to die. And then he was upon the hidden driveway, almost past it, and he yanked the car down into second gear, spun the front wheels to the right to skid the rear end while he jammed the brake, then turned off the car key and released the brake just as the car lined itself up nose-first to go into the driveway, and the car raced ahead, but then slowed down of its own weight, and Hunt folded his arms and let the car roll, and he was not at all surprised when it stopped precisely one inch from a closed garage door.
Unlike civilized America where the garage is either attached to the house or in close proximity to it, the garage hung out over the edge of a cliff, and Hunt saw steps on the side, leading downward.
As he stepped onto the stairs, he was met by four men, large men with inscrutable brown faces, wearing long pink robes. Arms folded, they stared at him.
"I'm Ferdi…"
"We know who you are," said one man. "You will follow us."
Down, two stories below the garage, the house nestled on an outcropping of rock, a gray cedar sprawl surrounded by windows on all sides.
Wordlessly, Hunt was ushered into the house and taken to a small pink room on the second floor of the building. The room resounded with pings. He was pushed inside and saw himself looking at the back of a big metal cabinet that stood in the center of the floor. Jutting out from either side of the cabinet, he could see lightly polished English riding boots and plaid jodphurs.
"He is here, Blissful Master," said a voice behind Hunt.
"Get out, for Christ's sake," came a voice from behind the machine.
Then Hunt was alone. He felt the door close behind him. He heard another set of pings, ping, ping, ping, and then, "Oh, shit."
A fat face peered from around the machine.
"So you're the button man," it said.
"I am Ferdinand De Chef Hunt," said Hunt, who did not know what a button man was and did not know why he was here except that the two owners of his firm had put him on leave of absence with full pay and had paid his way to San Francisco.
"Are you as good as those two Wall Street dingalings say you are?"
Hunt, who did not know, shrugged.
The Maharaji Gupta Mahesh Dor stood up behind the machine. He had been sitting on a high barstool and, standing, he still was not as tall as the machine. He wore brown, red, and white plaid jodphurs, deep brown boots, and a tan T-shirt with three monkeys—hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil—on it, and the shirt was pulled tight across his soft, almost feminine-breasted chest.
"Grab a stool," he said. "You know what I want?"
"I don't even know who you are," said Hunt, moving to the black leather tufted barstool, matching the one Dor had been sitting on. Dor turned to face him and leaned back against his stool.
"You got a name besides Hunt?"
"Ferdinand De Chef Hunt."
"Okay. Ferdinand it is. You can call me Maharaji or Blissful Master or God, whatever pleases you." He looked at Hunt carefully. "There's trouble in paradise, pal."
"There's always trouble in paradise," said Hunt.
"I'm glad you know that. Then you understand why I need an avenging angel. Is that seraphim or cherubim? I don't know, I can never keep them straight. Theology was never really my bag; business administration was. Anyway, Ferdinand…" As he talked, Dor turned toward the electronic ping-pong machine, depressed a red button, and a white dot sprung from one side of the machine and moved slowly across the face of the television screen to the other side. Dor put one hand on a knob on the right, another on the knob on the left, and with a sidelong glance at the machine, intercepted the moving dot by turning the knob and repositioning the small vertical line. The dot seemed to rebound from the small line, back to the other side of the screen. Hunt watched, fascinated.
Dor kept speaking, paying only casual attention to the game. "Anyway," he said, "I got a big number to do here Tuesday night, and two guys are stepping on my skirt. They went to my place in Patna, that's our Pentagon in India, and laid all kinds of shit on my troops. Scared away some of my bodyguards and yanked back one of my broads."
"Who are they?" asked Hunt, still wondering why he had been sent here.
"I'm getting to that." Ping. Ping. Ping. "A week or so ago, one of my defectors was killed. And then one of my troops was killed. And then another one. Right here in the U.S. of A., which is a drag, man." Ping. Ping. Ping. "Anyway, these guys got killed with crushed necks, and all the old hankie heads with me are moaning and groaning about some kind of curse."
Ping. Ping. Ping.
"It's two guys been doing it, and I figure they're around here somewhere. That's why I'm hiding out here in the hills instead of being in the city."
"So what do you want from me?"
"I don't want these two messing up my number at Kezar Stadium, man. This is the big flagpole toot for my American scene, and I don't need interference."
"What do you want me to do?" asked Hunt.
Dor wheeled on the stool. His hands came off the levers, and there was the ring of a bell as the unintercepted dot hit the far side of the screen and scored a point. Score: 1 to 0, the top of the machine flashed. Dor looked at Hunt.
"Well, I didn't want you to cook them a meal, shmuck. I want you to off them."
Hunt watched the machine again as the white dot reappeared and moved from right to left. Unintercepted, it vanished at the left of the screen. The bell rang. The score changed to 2-0. Hunt could smell the heat from the machine.
"Off them?" he said.