Answers From Heaven or Somewhere

I don’t usually spend a lot of time around people who talk to the dead, but if psychics call, I don’t hang up.

The truth of the matter is there are probably as many psychics in L.A. as there are shrinks and agents, and to ignore them would be to ignore a large segment of our population.

So when the publicist for Char Margolis telephoned, I listened. Char, as she calls herself, is after all big-time in the world of mystics. She has a best-selling book out, is on all the talk shows and will appear on pay-per-view television Saturday.

She has this gift, see, that allows her to chat with the dearly departed and to sense things that others do not. There is always a market for that kind of entertainer, I mean medium, especially in a place like L.A.

Char is not the first psychic in my life. I have also consulted with flamboyant Kenny Kingston and his “sweet spirits,” and with James Van Praagh, the king of other-world best-sellers.

Both men also speak to the dead (Kingston is in constant touch with Marilyn Monroe), but when I asked Van Praagh to contact my dead dog Hoover, he got pretty huffy and refused. I recall him saying, “I don’t do dogs.”

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I met Char at a restaurant and asked her to “read” for me. She is an attractive, green-eyed woman of 48 who first realized her powers when she was sprinkled with fairy dust at age 8. More about that later.

I was tempted to ask her to predict what the new millennium would hold, but I am so sick of the millennium and arguments over when it actually begins that I didn’t.

Char’s reading did not involve palms, tea leaves, crystal balls or seances. She just looked off over her broiled chicken entree, contemplated for a moment and said, “Have you ever had anyone in your family named Mary or Maria?”

It doesn’t take a psychic to figure out that someone named Martinez is going to have a Mary or Maria in his family. It’s like being an Epstein and having an Isidor in the family. Then she wanted to know if I had eye problems and if I had been thinking about retiring.

“I am wearing glasses and I have gray hair,” I said. “It’s logical that I have some kind of eye problem and that I might have thought occasionally about retiring.”

She nodded wisely, unrattled by my challenging tone, and said, “Your mother says your eyes will be OK.” Then she took another bite of her chicken and chewed happily.

My dead mother, it seemed, was in the restaurant with us. I felt as though I should order Mom a cake. A whole cake. I never met a woman who could eat so damned much cake. Cake and chocolate chip cookies.

“I see something being published,” Char said suddenly. “A book? A first novel?” Now that was spooky. I’ve just written a first novel and it will be published. Cue the eerie music.

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Char says she was 8 when a figure appeared in her room one night and sprinkled her with gold lights. “It was like Tinkerbell’s fairy dust,” she recalled. “I realized instantly that he was from the spirit world.”

He was there, she guessed, not only to open her eyes to psychic powers but to encourage her to write her current book, “Questions From Earth, Answers From Heaven.” I experienced no such spiritual encouragement, but I wrote mine anyhow.

After finishing with me, Char turned to a waitress named Robin. “I can feel her energy,” she confided. She had Robin sit next to her and almost immediately determined that Robin has a boyfriend named Michael, an ex-boss named Robert and an alcoholic mother whose name she did not reveal. Robin was blown away.

Char proclaims she is not doing this for money, although she does charge $400 for a 45-minute reading. “I was offered millions to do the 900 psychic lines,” she says, “but I said no way, I’m too ethical.

“This isn’t about me and how great I am,” she adds, “but how great we all are. I see myself as an example of what everyone can do if they work at it.”

She was talking about intuition, not conversations with the departed. I have never tried communicating with the dead, although once or twice I have heard strange barks from beyond that sounded very much like Hoover.

I tried barking back in response one evening while working in my den. My wife heard me and hid my martini shaker. I won’t try that again.

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Al Martinez’s column appears Sundays and Wednesdays. He can be reached either by sprinkling the room with fairy dust or by contacting him online at al.martinez@latimes.com.