32 LOS ANGELES

 1969 started slow, but by summer, America was celebrating an actual moment for the ages. In July, Neil Armstrong set foot upon the Moon, but three weeks later, Los Angeles and America were rocked by two sets of murders.

 One was the murder of a pregnant movie star and four of her friends after they had just returned home from a restaurant. The next night, there was a similar murder of the owner of a grocery store chain and his wife.

The first murder was less than four miles east, the second was about the same distance to the west. One of the victims was a hair stylist, Jay Sebring, who owned a salon on North Fairfax that Jonathan often visited. It was only two miles to the south. He had met many interesting men at the salon: Steve McQueen, Dennis Hopper, Peter Lawford, Henry Fonda and a dozen or other what would be called A-List actors and musicians.  You did not need to be a Devi to feel the fear. It was almost visible.

“Evelyn, what do you think about that? The killings. Do you think there will be more?

“At least half a dozen people die in this city every day, John. It was just the brutality of the murders that have you spooked.”

“Yes, Eve, I am spooked. what if it was some rogue Devi?”

“No, the girls and I would have felt something. This was not an act of rogue Devi; it was just unusual Standard on Standard rage.”

“I hope your senses are right on this.”

The horror of that summer passed and faded. The 1970s looked to provide everyone with a prosperous future, and none more so than Devi.

Memorial Day weekend in 1970, John and Eve went out to meet some friends in nearby West Covina.

JD Scott was an investment banker; his wife, Patricia, ran a tax accounting office specializing in charity work. The second couple, Wayne and Virginia Stewart, were employed as script literary agents and tax specialists, respectively.

Patricia and Virginia’s business, Zodiac Accounting, was a money-making front for a very high-end and exclusive sports gambling book. 

“John, you are in real estate and looking to make money. Wayne and I have come across a new proposal. We reviewed some details based on the last trip Patricia and I took to Mexico City. Virginia is not as grooved on the idea, but hear me out.”

St Croix shrugged. “If we are talking real estate, this is now a business luncheon and deductible. Start ordering more booze. What have you got?”

“The Mexicans are sitting flush on oil money and looking to diversify. Acapulco is a success on the West Coast, and they are considering resorts on the East Coast of the Caribbean. There is a current development called Cancun. Hotels, restaurants, music venues, marinas, a vacationer’s paradise. Private villas, group villas and the whole infrastructure package. The development is looking at a broad range of economic factors and tourists. The low end would be three stars and a row of five stars.”

“That sounds ambitious and likely a long-term project.” Eve piped in.

Virginia nodded in agreement, “That is what I said, long-term and expensive.”

“Wait until you hear the best notion that I suggested.”

JD continued, “Yeah, Wayne thought about how this can benefit the Devi. We invest in it and build a private gated community or apartment tower. And rent out only to Devi, the apartments we rent out, and the villas we buy. A Devi couple could, during their downtime, live without worry for 15 or 20 years.”

Eve, again playing Devil’s advocate, asks, “How? How could we live there and not worry?”

“That is magick of it. A Devi community of 15 or 20 villas. It's a private compound, like a gated community here. However, both the workforce and the residents are more transient. Five years at the most, and move on.

So, we stay there, and the Standards come and go. If we, as a community, not the Devi in the villas but globally, had the Authentic’s blessing, we would build hotels and resort areas. It would be a cash flow and a safe location.  

Eve again, ‘What about after John and I have been there 20 years or more? Where would we go?”

To another Devi tourist enclave in southern Spain, the French Rivera, the Australian Gold Coast, an alpine resort in the Alps, or Colorado.

Eve again, “Okay, in 20 words or less, give me the best pitch for this Cancun idea.”

“Think Vegas, but with beaches, not slot machines and crap tables. Oceans not desert, and hundreds of hot young bodies, tanned and in swimsuits, not mid-west old Bob and his puffy wife Holly-Ann in their coveralls work boots.

“That was over twenty words, but I think I am sold on it.”

Jonathan leaned back for a moment, looked down at the table, splayed the fingers on both hands and bounced his fingertips together a few times. “So, this is almost, if not fully, self-financing and will offer a long-term source of income for the Devi. It would also be a haven, and the idea is scalable globally.”

“Yeah, it is.”

“So, what do you want me to do? I don’t have millions to build a hotel, or at least not enough millions.”

Wayne answered almost immediately, “You and Evie have a pipeline to Paris. Both of you worked in relocation and, I don’t know, whatever it is called… procurement. Bounce the idea of the big boss lady.”

Patricia said, “Wanye, I doubt the Authentic would like you to call her that, and I also doubt she does not like things bounced off of her.”

“So, you want Jonathan and I to pitch this idea in Paris and get, let us say, ‘Devi Corporation’ funding and backing?”

“Yeah, that sums it up, but ‘wait, there is more.’ That is only one opinion. The resort thing is a money maker. But we need to be elsewhere than just holiday spots. Condominiums or condos, gated communities. Group ownership and homeowner associations.”

“Okay, I am familiar with the concept. How?”

“Say we build a fifteen to 60-condo estate of homes. We sell only to Devi. It is gated, so there is no outside interference. No one to notice our ageless beauty. We lived in a free-standing unit in San Bernadino, twenty years later in Adelaide, Australia, then a row house condo in South Africa and then Montreal or Vancouver.

There is a century of residences, toss in a two-decade stint in Cancun or someday Thailand or Brazil.

We do it like we do now, but not in single homes or farms, but on a more adaptive urban scale. It is easy-peasy.”

Evelyn grinned, “Paris in summer is not Paris in the spring, but I think I see shopping in my future.”

Los Angeles to Paris in under 11 hours. A new wide-bodied Boeing 747, with leg space, and an upstairs lounge. Not the cramped tin cans of the '60s, with adequate services, but a plane with four hundred happy and polite travellers. And not a Handley Page Halifax, with freezing temperatures and the wind in your hair. Not a sheepskin-lined leather jacket in sight.

The Authentic was surprised to get a phone call from Evelyn three days earlier, and she took the call directly as it was on her private line.

She was overjoyed to meet them. She had moved from Paris proper to the northwestern suburb of Saint-Germain-en-Laye.

“How are two of my favourite wandering people? I hope you like this new location. I purchased the old monastery adjoining it. There are large underground vaults on that land, so as an act of generosity to the French people, I bought it for a promise for the upper keep and preservation.”

“The less hectic life agrees with you, Madame.”

“Of course it does. Women like us need to relax and forget about the world's problems occasionally. A walk in the orchard does that for me.

“What is it you want to tell me, Jonathan?”

 “If we could sit on the terrace, it is a long story.”

She was exceptionally open to diversifying her assets, especially into money-making ventures. She had moved to this area a few years earlier and invested in local sports and arts. The local football team was about to merge with a Paris team and become Paris Saint-Germain, which proved to be a top-flight football team and the most successful team in France.

Eve suggested, “So, with the Devi-only condo proposal, we would have a block of urban land and control that no Standards are our neighbours? Maybe we should also create a buffer zone around them with medium long-term O.T.I.D. houses and pure short-term rentals to further isolate us from the outside.”

“I knew I saw something in you, sort of human shields against Standard intervention.”

“Yes.” Eve agreed.

“Jonathan, I just thought of something that may help a marginalized segment of the Devi.”

“You mean LaJade, Authentic.”

“Indeed, I do. I believe she is currently in Antigua. I would like you to visit her and make an offer for her. Explain the resort and hotel plan to her and tell her if she wishes I or we could finance the same thing in the Gulf, Caribbean, and Western Atlantic.

Then tell her I will not contest her control there for a reasonable continuing fee, and perhaps we can have peace for the first time in four hundred years.”

Sell her on the idea that her people can go from island to island every five or ten years. The hotel guests are transitory. It would be a win-win.” 

“What type of fee?”

“Well, Jonathan, we take 60 percent of the profits to pay off the initial loan, and after that, let her pitch you a number, and then you counter with two of three times it, and try to settle on about twenty percent. And hold that line. Because we have the power, the idea, the resources, and the money.”

Their arrival on the island was expected, and this time, they were met at the airport by a Mercedes-Benz W114. In the terminal, a man held a sign with their names on it.

Evelyn looked at the man and asked, “Are there any bars on the windows this trip? “

The man responded only with a slight grin.

“The Paris Prostitute wants to make a deal with me for peace? I will say she has grown a pair since we last met.” 

Jonathan leaned forward. “You met when, if I may be so bold as to ask when are where.”

Yes, a few decades or so, maybe longer. Yes, almost eighty-five years ago, in the summer of 1894, just before the Spanish–American War.”

Jonathan looked at Eve, who was looking back at him with an equally quizzical look on her face. They both thought the Authentic had said she had not left Paris since the 1816 wedding of Willem II, Prince of Orange-Nassau.

They both allowed that to slip by and over the next two days, they received LaJade’s agreement and blessing for the idea of building Devi back hotels and tourism zones, which would offer decades-long sanctuary to Devi for the Caribbean and elsewhere.

For most of the ten years, until the late 70s, there were no unmanageable crises for either of the Devi cultures. But that peace was shattered in November and December of 1979. The first concerning event was the fundamentalist and populist groundswell revolution against the Pahlavi monarchy in Iran. The second was the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. Those events coincided with a meeting with the Devi Communicators at the Monte Carlo casino on Lucayan Beach, Grand Bahama Island.

The invasion brought to light one of the issues with Devi that everyone wished to hide, and no one wanted to talk about—their origin theory.