CHAPTER 1 May 1990 San Francisco Day had cooled fast, and much of Telegraph Hill was already dark. Walker trudged alone in the shadows of the old Gold Rush, his shoulders heavy. Forty feet from the Embarcadero roadway, tugboats bobbed in the tide: Atlas, Minnie the Moocher, Devil''s Maid. Where was Vulcan ? Kozlowski must have gotten a charter, maybe for a little night fishing up on Suisun Bay. He squeezed through a gap in the cyclone fence onto Pier 17. The old freighter Iron Queen had been towed, leaving nothing but an oil slick to lap at the pylons. In the bay, the Sausalito Ferry eased across the water shedding light in its wake, the Bay Bridge a string of pearls beyond. In the broken window of a shuttered building, his reflection caught his eye.
The man looking back could do with a shave but was otherwise presentable--eyes barely lined, shoulders still square, the years and fatigue carried mostly on the inside. Walker sighed. Harrison Rose was dead. He still couldn''t believe it. He reached the end of the pier and a deep honeyed voice rolled over him, "George Krishna Walker, white man with a Hindu name! Hare Rama, Hare Rama ding dong, praise Lord Shiva and his pal Jesus Christ! Where''ve you been, child? Looking for Little Miss Perfect? I''m not tiny enough?" She shook rolls of abundant flesh and laughed. He stepped aboard her boat and bent to kiss her cheek. Indira Vivekananda was sixty and had been fishing on the pier far longer than he had lived in San Francisco, twelve years now. She claimed to be no relation to the famous swami of the same name.
Born in Pondicherry in southern India, she''d been raised in San Francisco among the beatniks her parents welcomed to the ashram they''d founded near Golden Gate Park. When the weather was good she lived on Pilot''s Ploy , an old orange and black steel-hulled tugboat from Lake Michigan, and when the weather was foul, in a white ''67 Ford Fairlane station wagon on the pier. After the Beat era, she''d lived in the Haight-Ashbury, where she realized she had powers of insight that her drug-addled friends did not. "I know you like the Asian girls, George. Was she yellow? I''ve heard some of them still have doll''s feet, can''t run very far." He chuckled. "Who''re you calling yellow, Mama Indi?" It was the name some of the hippies had given her when they came to her for readings. The name had stuck and was on her calling card: Mama Indi -- Advice You Might Not Want.
She moved her fishing gear to make room for him and handed him an extra rod. "Miss Yellow Feet, that''s who. You''ve got trouble on your mind, or else another China doll wore out your pecker. Did she have doll feet, like that Gold Rush whore, Ah Toy?" "They don''t do that anymore, Indi, and you know it. Bad for the economy, bad for the revolution, bad for the sweatshops." "I''m just making conversation." She spat onto dark waters. "But you know, that new janitor in the pier told me many a Chinese man still likes a dainty walk.
They used to call it lotus feet in the old days. Bedroom or kitchen as far as they could go, like you would hobble an animal. Then he says, as if it''s news to me, that in some places they cut a young woman''s privates before she''s even had a period. Is this some kind of religious ritual? he asks me, smacking his lips and looking down my dress. No, I say to him, it is mass hypnosis performed by men upon women. He says please tell me more Miss Indi! He wants to get in my bed, God knows why, but I don''t know how he thinks I''m going to like such perverted talk." She shook her head. "Why would anyone do that to a little girl?" He baited his line with anchovy and cast.
"Same reason they gave them doll''s feet." "I suppose you''re right, George. A lot of men don''t deserve a mother, present company excepted." She looked at him sideways and shook her rod. "What''s eating you, my big friend?" He reeled in the slack. "Harrison Rose, ex-DA. Remember him? Flattened by a cable car on Nob Hill two nights ago. Widower, one son, one daughter.
She doesn''t think it was an accident." Her eyes opened wide. "Good God Almighty! He''s the father of that girl who tied your balls in a knot once upon a time. What do our fine policemen say?" He frowned. It was not how he remembered Hannah Rose. He''d met her years ago doing investigative work for her father. Bright, mischievous brown eyes, caustic, funny. He''d liked her immediately.
Not long after they met, she went to art school in Rhode Island, and in the ensuing years became a successful painter, with showings at the Museum of Modern Art and a piece in the permanent collection. Then one day she called him out of the blue. Indi''s voice boomed, "I said , Mr. George Krishna, what about the police?" "Rose was drunk, no eyewitnesses, even the gripman didn''t see him. They''re going to wash their hands of it. Rule it an accident." "And may Pontius Pilate rest in peace." She took an orange from a huge handbag.
"So he was murdered?" "Are you telling me or asking me?" "I can tell you a grown man doesn''t play hopscotch on tracks." She bit the fruit to start the peel. "But then, I''m not like the wild naked guru snake charmers you were raised by." He didn''t reply. For years he''d been coming to Indi for advice, and even when she was wrong, she altered his thinking. He needed to know what she saw if only to bracket his logic. There were times she''d known more than a human being should, her tools of divination ranging from pendulum, numerology, tarot, and astrology to Vastu Shastra and I Ching and her own special interpretations of the Mahabharata and Ramayana. There was no form of insight he would refuse.
It was his heritage, as it was hers. In many ways they were mirror images of each other. He was the son of Catholic missionaries, born in San Francisco but raised in northern India. His parents spent decades there spreading the Gospel and gave him his middle name out of respect for Hinduism, with the hope it would remind him of the oneness of God. Her parents had crossed paths with his on a visit to Pondicherry, and not long after that had come to spread the message of Integral Yoga in the US. Years later they died in a car crash in Oakland, and Indi took their ashes back to India and spread them on the waters of Holy Mother Ganges. She had not returned to her native country since, said she felt smothered there, having grown up a raucous and outspoken American woman, even shameless, according to some of her relatives. Indi set aside the peeled orange and took three pennies from a pouch hidden in a fold of her dress.
"What''s his sign?" "Sagittarius, rising sign Scorpio." "You did your homework, good." She spread her skirt flat, shook the coins and tossed them five times. "Lulu, skip to the Lu, that''s the Wanderer, George, says our Orient bible, fire over the mountain with a change of nine in the middle." She pulled out a battered I Ching and read aloud: "Lu. The Wanderer. The judgment: Success through smallness. Perseverance brings good fortune to the wanderer.
"That you, George, this wanderer cat? Now for the Image: Fire on the mountain: The superior man Is clear-minded and cautious in imposing penalties, And protracts no lawsuits. "That means don''t waste much time with Mama Indi. And there''s a nine in the middle here that worries me. Let''s see what the Chinaman says about it." Pages rustled and the moon drifted behind high scalloped clouds. She read again: "The wanderer''s inn burns down. He loses the steadfastness of his young servant. Danger.
" She banged the book shut and split the orange, handed him half. "Little Miss Rose put the mark of Eve on you once, now she puts the mark of Cain on you. You said she has a brother." He nodded, popped a piece of fruit in his mouth. Philip Rose was an electronics prodigy who''d made a fortune before he was thirty. "He''s weak, dead in himself if someone else doesn''t oblige him." She reeled in her line. "You still love her.
Yes, I see you do." He frowned and didn''t answer. "What about the girl-wife in your dreams? The one who made you whistle with the devil, Suzie Q. I recall she was going to have your baby. Are you still worrying that bone?" He closed his eyes, didn''t want to talk about her either. This line of talk always ended the same, why don''t you settle down, get some kids? And Suzie Q was probably dead. The past, like Sandburg said, was a bucket of ashes. "If you''re talking about Jacob''s ladder, Indi, that''s wrestle with the devil, not whistle.
" She dropped her rod on the deck and turned to glare at him. "I don''t give one big ziggurat shit if the word''s wrong!" she shouted. "I''m not talking about Esau and his brother, I''m talking about things my friend George Walker won''t face! He''s too busy looking for truth for his neighbor but won''t have any himself!" He looked at her with raised eyebrow, reeled in his line and cast again. She wasn''t often like this. "Lord," she sighed, shaking her head, and picked up her rod. "Sweet Mother Mary help us, and om mane padme om while we''re at it. The heartache, the heartache. No one is happy where they are, we''re like cows shoulder-high in sweet grass, poking our heads through the barbed wire to get some weed just out of reach.
" She cast with a powerful flick of the wrist, cocked her head. "There''s an owl in the pier these days. Can you hear it?" He shook his head. "It doesn''t matter, he''s there, just like Brahman, Lord God of all things." She spat into the water again, gripped her rod between her knees, and turned back to the.