Chase Baker and the God Boy: (A Chase Baker Thriller Series Book No. 3) Read online

  “People are assholes.”

  His eyes light up.

  “Excuse my French, Doc.”

  He appears to be suddenly aghast. A man who’s clearly not used to being one of the guys.

  “But then something else happened to Rajesh,” he goes on. “News of his condition leaked to a nearby collection of Jain Dharma, who did not consider him a freak of nature, but instead, something extraordinary. They consider him a living god. ”

  “Jain Dharma?”

  “Purists who walk the earth without clothing, and depend entirely upon handouts for their very existence. They assume the five major vows.” Raising the fingers on his hand, dropping one finger per vow. “Non-violence, non-stealing, honesty, chastity, and non-attachment.”

  “They’re always naked? Sounds like some of my girlfriends at the Elbow.”

  “Yes. Always naked. The representative symbol of Jainism is something that might shock you as a westerner, Mr. Baker.”

  “Try me.”

  Extending his index finger, he runs it through the condensation that’s collected on the tabletop, sketching out the symbol. The sketch he produces makes me slightly nauseous considering the extended family I lost in World War II, not to mention six million Jews exterminated over their religious beliefs.

  “The swastika,” I say.

  “The ultimate symbol of peace. Stolen by the Nazis….bastardized. Nearly ruined.”

  “The naked swastika guys see Rajesh as a God.” It’s a question.

  “The reincarnation of the Hindu God, Brahma, in fact. What this means is, Rajesh has gone from causing shame to his family and village to being revered by all who lay their eyes upon him. For this reason, I’ve had to deal with a very new and very different concern over keeping him away from public gatherings. Until recently that is, when his existence could be shielded no longer.”

  I steal another glance at the picture. “He doesn’t seem entirely unhappy.”

  “Indeed, he is famous now. And wealthy, for Indian standards. Even your New York Times and USA Today has picked up on Rajesh’s story. Wherever he goes, he attracts huge crowds of worshippers. Many people come from miles around to receive just a quick glimpse of him. The hungry come to be fed. The sad come to be happy again. The sick and the infirmed come to be healed. He lays one or more of his hands on them, and they experience something out of this world.”

  “But, of course, it’s just an illusion,” I say. “Mind over matter. He’s not really a God. He just plays one on TV, right?”

  He nods. “Under normal circumstances, I might agree with you. After all, I was educated in the states…at Harvard, and I am in possession of multiple psychology-related degrees, as I mentioned. We have little room for hocus pocus, religion, or mysticism in my working world. It is a field pertaining to the nuances and chemical reactions inside the greatest mystery known to mankind…the human brain.” He pauses to take a breath. “But something is different with Rajesh. His condition is not just physical, Mr. Baker. It is, let’s say, out of this world.”

  “You saved my life, Doc, and now you’ve my attention.”

  He lifts up his tea again. This time when he does, his hand is trembling as if in his revealing the sacred truth about Rajesh, he has bared his very soul. He sets the cup down without drinking.

  He says, “Rajesh has indeed healed people, Mr. Baker. I’ve seen it with my own eyes. He has healed the infirmed, made the blind see again. He has even…” His voice trails off as if what he’s about to say is too painful for words. Or too unbelievable maybe.

  “Go on,” I say.

  He stares into his tea for a while. Until he raises his head, peers into my eyes with his big brown eyes.

  “With his touch, he has given new life to the dead,” he says.

  My mind races with the possibilities. I’ve been to India. With my dad when we were sandhogs for some of the archeologists working along the northern border with Nepal. I know first-hand that India is a land of reincarnation. Where death is celebrated as much as life. I’ve witnessed men and women who are transported to what will be the site of their burial by fire along the banks of the Ganges days, sometimes weeks, before their hearts cease to beat. This is not a callous or even morbid act. It is instead a celebration. People do not die in that vast, congested land, so much as they are reborn. Flesh and blood dies and burns. Souls live on.

  But I’ve never before heard of a child, regardless of how many limbs he was born with or how much he mimics the legendary appearance of Brahma or Kali, raising someone from the dead. That act was reserved for one historical man and one man only.

  Jesus of Nazareth.

  It’s precisely how I put it to Dr. Iqbal Lamba Singh.

  “You are correct about that,” he says. “But did you know that evidence exists of Jesus’s travels in Nepal and India? Between his twenty-fifth and thirtieth year, there is a strong possibility that he studied with the Jainists, became indoctrinated in their belief system, and at the same time, became a master of Indian mysticism. Something he applied with great success and also great tragedy to his ministry once back in Jerusalem.”

  “If that’s true, then Jesus did not raise Lazarus, or even himself, because of his connection to a Hebrew God. He acted on behalf of Brahma.”

  “Just like Rajesh. Like the historical Jesus, I have seen him heal the blind by applying an eyepatch of mud created of loose earth mixed with his own saliva. I’ve seen him cure a malignant tumor just by laying his hands upon it. I have seen him create many loaves of bread from one single loaf. You just don’t forget such instances, Mr. Baker.”

  “Have you seen the kid turn water into booze?” I smile. “Now, there’s something I’d like to see.”

  The man just stares at me, like my comment is entirely inappropriate. And I suppose it is. In any case, I find myself biting down on my bottom lip. Something I always do when nervous, or my interest is entirely piqued, which it most definitely is.

  “So what’s the end all to this, Dr. Singh? Why did you rescue me from my lovely afternoon of drinking beer and playing cards if you wanna call it that? Why are you telling me all this?”

  “Mr. Baker, I have read your books and also read about your exploits in Egypt and the Amazon Jungle. I know what you are capable of both as an investigator and as a man who fears nothing.”

  Raising my hands, making a time-out T.

  “I am most definitely not fearless, Dr. Singh,” I say. “Christ, I don’t even like to fly…Damn, sorry about the Christ reference.”

  He issues the subtlest of smiles. A man not without a sense of humor, but also a man who takes pride in his dignity.

  “It is okay. I do not consider my boy the modern Christ. Instead, I consider him the gifted flesh of his very mortal parent’s flesh, and they love and miss him so very much.”

  My truth detector lights up. “What do you mean they miss him?”

  “In answer to your question of why you are here with me now,” he says, “Rajesh is missing. Gone. Kidnaped by those who wish to abuse his power for their own dark purposes.”

  “Who precisely?”

  “The Thuggee and their black-hearted God, Kali.”

  3

  I get up from the table, push in my chair.

  “Look, Dr. Singh, I know precisely where this is going. Like I told you, I’m good with finding missing people, and I’ve even been known to dig up an archeological relic now and again. But I do not, will not, battle a satanic cult that will string me up and dissect me alive as easily and thoughtlessly as cooking up some chicken tandoori on the grill. Only thing that distinguishes the Thuggee from ISIS is they’ve been around far longer and have perfected their killing techniques. If my history serves me right, they were responsible for the slaughter of more than two million innocent souls before the British put an end to them in the mid-nineteenth century.” I start walking on Via Guelfa towards my home. “Thanks for saving my ass at the bar and thanks for the coffee, but I’m not your man. You nee
d the fucking Expendables…excuse my French times two.”

  “Mr. Baker!” he shouts, so loud his voice echoes off the old stone and stucco-faced five-story buildings.

  I turn to find him standing by the table. “There is something I’m not telling you that might change your mind.”

  “What exactly is that?”

  He stares not at me, but into me. His eyes not blinking, drawing me into their powerful gaze like he managed to do with psycho-Calum only minutes before.

  “Elizabeth,” he says. “Elizabeth Flynn.”

  The name hits me like a sledgehammer to the head. A name that goes with a face I’ve tried my damnedest to forget about over the last five years.

  “How do you know that name?” Gravel in my voice, profound heaviness in my heart.

  “Let’s go someplace and talk more. This is not the place.”

  A car passes. Then a motorbike. Following that a truck. Foreign exchange and Junior Year Abroad Students fill the sidewalks with their school bags slung over their shoulders. The bells inside Giotto’s Tower in nearby Piazza del’ Duomo are tolling the five o’clock hour. They toll for me. Ominous rings to say the least.

  “Elizabeth,” I say, the name slipping off my tongue like warm water. It’s a name I have not uttered out loud since the day I left her on a train platform in the Varanasi station, but a name I have no doubt spoken countless times in my mind and in my sleep. It’s also a name I heard again, just last month, in a disturbing letter that I received at my Florence address. But now, this…

  “I can lead you to her probable whereabouts.”

  “But that’s impossible, Singh. She’s dead.”

  “No one dies, Mr. Baker. Not really. Perhaps we should talk more.”

  The cobbles beneath my feet feel like they’re turning to liquid. This conversation is creepier and creepier with each vowel uttered.

  Don’t do it, Chase. Don’t take the bait…Don’t…You…Do…It!

  “Follow me,” I say, my mouth suddenly gone dry. So much for resolve. Chase the weak and the whipped.

  As Dr. Singh approaches me, I turn away so that he doesn’t see the tears welling up in my eyes.

  4

  It’s a three-minute walk to my second-floor apartment on Via Guelfa. But in that time, I relive an all-too-short lifetime of memories with Elizabeth. Our meeting in Paris. Me just coming off a particularly difficult dig in Turkey, having assisted in uncovering an underground city in the Nevsehir Province and trying to make an overdue novel deadline. Her trying to work up cash for her one and only project: The precise location of the legendary Golden Kali Statue.

  The statue was said to be important not only as a priceless piece of man-sized gold statuary but also for the map it supposedly contained on its upper back. Legend has it that the map illustrates the exact whereabouts of the infamous India blue diamond deposit. Folklore to be sure. Hell, maybe even fantasy. But a fascinating prospect all the same.

  There was more to the puzzle. A kind of key that accessed the interior of the statue. And Elizabeth was in possession of it. But what secrets the interior of the Kali Statue held, nobody knew. Without the statue, the key was nothing more than a useless piece of ancient jewelry. It wasn’t a key in the traditional sense, but instead a four-inch long by one-inch wide piece of bronze with dozens of diamond chips embedded inside it. Elizabeth had discovered it, of all places, in a family-run antique shop in Rome, Italy. She purchased it for two-hundred Euros, the owner having no idea of its real worth. But if it were the authentic key to the true Kali statue, then its value was potentially priceless.

  But I’m getting ahead of myself. Way ahead.

  As I approach my apartment, I spot several young couples seated at a little round table at an outdoor bar, drinking wine, smoking cigarettes, engaged in passionate conversation with smiles on their faces. Smiles that tell me their future is unwritten and, from the vantage point of their tables, entirely rosy. As it once seemed for Elizabeth and I, when we first met.

  She already occupies a stool inside the sparsely populated Paris Ritz Bar Hemingway when I come in for a late afternoon ’76er, one of my favorite summertime cocktails. She’s chatting it up with Colin—the bar’s tall, semi-bald, white jacket-attired proprietor—while I ask her if the seat beside her is taken.

  “By all means,” she says in an American accent, brushing back shoulder-length strawberry blonde hair.

  My old friend, Colin, who’s emigrated from a Welsh farm to devote his life to mixing cocktails and even writing about them in magazines like Travel and Leisure, shoots me a smile and starts mixing my drink without asking for my order.

  “And how is the writing progressing today, Chase?” he asks while carefully placing cubes of ice into a tall glass with silver tongs. “Or are we still recovering from sandhogging in those nasty, arid foothills?”

  Looking up, I see the many photos of Papa Hemingway that adorn the cherry wood paneled walls. Papa battling marlin, shooting pheasant, drinking martinis in this very bar during the Paris liberation of ’44, flirting with adoring women and, of course, typing away at his beloved Remington portable. How is it he made everything that’s hard in life, look so easy?

  “Little of both, Col,” I say. “I don’t know what’s harder, beating my head against a Turkish rock ceiling or beating it against a typewriter.”

  He places the worth-every-penny twenty euro drink before me. “This will help cheer things up a little.” Leaning in to me, whispering for my ears only. “And kill the nasty little black bug up your arse.”

  The woman turns to me, then peers at me with hypnotic green eyes.

  “Now there’s something you don’t witness every day,” she says. “A man who gets to hang around beautiful Paris and still find reason to complain.”

  My face fills with the red blood of embarrassment. Stealing a swallow of the cold, effervescent, lemon-lime, champagne and vodka-laced drink, my outlook suddenly turns optimistic once more.

  “You’re absolutely right,” I say. “My apologies for bitching on this beautiful day in the city of lights. Trust me, I’m not normally this charming.”

  She holds out her hand.

  “Elizabeth,” she says.

  She’s wearing a lightweight linen shirt and the open sleeve gently glides down her forearm to her elbow when she lifts her hand. She’s also wearing a half-dozen silver bracelets that jingle musically when they collide with one another.

  I take the hand in mine, feel its softness, smallness, and warmth. I also notice her calluses. For as beautiful and put together as she is, this girl is no stranger to getting her hands dirty. Take it from one who knows.

  “Chase,” I say out the corner of my mouth. “Chase Baker.”

  “This is Elizabeth’s first trip to Paris,” Colin says while wiping out a glass with a white bar rag. “And since you, the local Renaissance Man, are also a licensed tour guide, I thought perhaps you’d like to show her around a little. That is your license is good in Paris.” The wink that follows is so subtle, I come very close to missing it altogether.

  “You asking or telling?”

  She sets her hand on my forearm. “Now I’m totally embarrassed. You’re probably way too busy, Mr. Baker.”

  “I just might be way too expensive. And please, call me Chase. Mr. Baker was my dad.”

  “Money’s no object,” she says with a wink. “Us anthropologists just pick it off the trees on our college campuses back Stateside.”

  “Anthropologist,” I say. “So you are not just Elizabeth, but Dr. Elizabeth.”

  “Academically speaking.”

  “Tenured?”

  “My own corner office, a key to the faculty lounge, and unlimited access to the copier and fax machines.”

  “In that case, you’re on.”

  I feel her fingers on my arm, inhale her rose-petal scent. For certain, she’s younger than me. Maybe even by ten years. But that doesn’t seem to matter. All I know is that I’m immediately attracted to her. And
perhaps our meeting inside the Paris Ritz bar could be considered mystic karma at work.

  “What time shall I pick you up tomorrow?” I say, stealing another generous sip of my ‘76er. “And where?”

  She relays the name of her hotel and what time she’ll be ready.

  “Pleasure to meet you, Doc,” I say, finishing my drink.

  “Pleasure’s all mine,” she replies. Then, “And, Colin, it’s quite the pleasure being served by a master drink mixer and matchmaker.”

  “Pleasure’s all Mr. Baker’s.” He smiles.

  Exiting the bar, I feel slightly tipsy, but also lighter than air. Like a teenager who just asked a girl to the prom…a beautiful girl who said Yes.

  The next day is bright, pleasant, and not overly warm, even for summer, as if God has personally scripted it for us. I meet her at the Place de la Concord end of the Tuileries and together we walk the gravel footpaths that separate the green gardens, slowly revealing little tidbits about our lives. Me, the man with too many jobs…the sandhog, the private detective, the walking tour guide, and the novelist. Also the man who is divorced.

  “Happily, I assume,” she says, not without a giggle.

  “Yes, happily. But I’m not happy about missing out on much of my daughter’s upbringing.”

  “And the Renaissance man is a dad, too,” she says as we pass by a fountain spouting streams of water into a circular pool that looks inviting enough to swim in. “Will the surprises never cease?”

  Her, the anthropologist, was born and schooled in Philadelphia by a middle-class Irish Catholic family who thought she was nuts for spending as much time as she did in India, Nepal, and other parts of the world that she described as “difficult.” She’s thirty-four years of age and never had time for marriage, not to mention children, but looks forward to the day when some little rug rat is running around the house, calling out “Mommy” every few seconds.