The Third Rule of Ten: A Tenzing Norbu Mystery Read online

  PRAISE FOR

  THE THIRD RULE OF TEN

  “Tenzing ‘Ten’ Norbu may be the most interesting PI in modern crime fiction. The Third Rule of Ten, the third book in the series, is beautifully written and intricately plotted, but as always, it’s the heart and soul of Ten that carry the greatest appeal, drawing the reader on a spiritual journey that is as satisfying as the climax. I loved this book.”

  —Robert Ferrigno,

  New York Times best-selling author of the Assassin trilogy

  “The Third Rule of Ten will grab you by the throat and not let go. In Tenzing Norbu, Gay Hendricks and Tinker Lindsay have created a Buddhist action hero (yes, there is such a thing) who is sympathetic, moral, and self-reflective. Crackling with wit, superbly drawn characters, and a blistering plot, The Third Rule of Ten will keep you going until you take a deep, meditative breath on the last page.”

  —Diane Mott Davidson,

  New York Times best-selling author of The Whole Enchilada

  “I loved it!”

  —Jack Kornfield,

  author of A Path with Heart

  Copyright © 2014 by Gay Hendricks and Tinker Lindsay

  Published and distributed in the United States by: Hay House, Inc.: www.hayhouse.com® • Published and distributed in Australia by: Hay House Australia Pty. Ltd.: www.hayhouse.com.au • Published and distributed in the United Kingdom by: Hay House UK, Ltd.: www.hayhouse.co.uk • Published and distributed in the Republic of South Africa by: Hay House SA (Pty), Ltd.: www.hayhouse.co.za • Distributed in Canada by: Raincoast Books: www.raincoast.com • Published in India by: Hay House Publishers India: www.hayhouse.co.in

  Cover design: Steve Williams

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced by any mechanical, photographic, or electronic process, or in the form of a phonographic recording; nor may it be stored in a retrieval system, transmitted, or otherwise be copied for public or private use—other than for “fair use” as brief quotations embodied in articles and reviews—without prior written permission of the publisher.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the authors’ imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales, or persons living or deceased, is strictly coincidental.

  A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

  Tradepaper ISBN:978-1-78180-271-7

  Ebook ISBN: 978-1-78180-323-3

  Topanga Canyon, Calif.

  May 22, Year of the Water Dragon

  What have I done?

  The cell phone in my pocket vibrated. I glanced at the screen and saw it was Bill Bohannon, my ex-partner. In that moment, it felt like light years since we’d been Detective II’s in LAPD’s elite Robbery/Homicide division. Now Bill was a Detective III, and I was about to become one of his cases.

  “Hey,” I said.

  Bill’s voice was thick with sleep. “I thought I told you to stay out of trouble. Your buddy Mike said something triggered the security system. Everything okay?”

  I looked at the two still bodies.

  “Not exactly,” I said. “I got two men down, one more wounded and at large.”

  Bill woke up fast. “Two men down. How down?”

  “As down as they can get,” I said.

  Bill groaned.

  “The kills were righteous,” I said, but I wondered if that was true.

  A siren wailed in the distance, drawing closer. My night was about to get even more complicated.

  “Bill, I hate to ask, but—”

  “I’m on my way,” he barked. “Don’t say a word to anyone until I get there.”

  Don’t say a word. More secrets to keep. Mere days ago I had made myself a new rule: to be mindful of the darker side of secrets. To keep current with the truth, not just within myself, but also with those affected by my actions. And now I had manifested one of the worst truths I could ever have imagined.

  The two lifeless bodies lay sprawled on the ground like a pair of indefensible reproaches. As I studied them, an ice cold wave rolled through my insides. I shivered.

  What have I done?

  CONTENTS

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Acknowledgements

  About the authors

  An excerpt from The Fourth Rule of Ten

  CHAPTER 1

  TWO DAYS EARLIER

  “Ayúdame.” The high-pitched voice was edged with stress and close, as if the owner’s mouth hovered an inch from my ear. “Ayúdame.”

  My eyes snapped open, but my body knew better than to move. The muted light pressing through the bedroom window announced it was almost dawn. My eyes shifted right. The space by my side of the bed, where a woman in distress—a woman in distress who spoke Spanish—should be standing, was empty. I lifted my head and quick-scanned the rest of the bedroom. Empty. I rolled onto my left side, facing Heather. As usual, sometime during the night she had inched to the rim of the mattress and manufactured a rumpled bunker of bedclothes, within which her breath rose and fell in the steady rhythm signifying deep sleep. Her sloped silhouette was beautiful. I reached across the bed to trace my fingers along her curved side, but pulled my arm back. In the months we had been officially together, I’d learned at least one very important lesson: Never, ever wake up a forensic medical examiner on her one day off.

  At my feet, the feline puddle of fur and whiskers called Tank was equally still, so it wasn’t his meow I’d heard. Finally, I checked the small monitor on my wall, which was connected to a series of small cameras outside—my electronic eyeballs on any intrusive dangers. Nothing. No one else was here, inside or out. I was hearing things, experiencing some kind of auditory hallucination. Great: one more item to add to my list of worrisome new behaviors.

  Sunday or not, sleep was no longer an option. I slipped out of bed and pulled on a baggy pair of sweatpants and a long-sleeved, cotton T-shirt. Tank lifted his head. His green eyes narrowed in the soft light, observing me as I dressed. His whiskers twitched—the equivalent of a cat shrug. He curled like a cashew, tucked his nose between his paws, and went back to sleep.

  I tiptoed into the living room, grabbed the plaid blanket Heather had recently added to the sectional sofa, wrapped it around my shoulders, and padded through the kitchen and outside to the deck, careful to deactivate the Guard-on system first. After several months of living with this ridiculously expensive and hypervigilant organism of panoramic cameras and outdoor sensors, digital alerts and interconnected alarms, I was finally getting used to the thing. I still didn’t know whether to thank or curse my late client Julius Rosen for bequeathing me such a high-tech, über-expensive security system. It arrived with a handwritten note in Julius’s tiny, crabbed writing—one more symptom of his advanced Parkinson’s. “For my friend Tenzing Norbu,” the note read. “I deeply regret putting you on the radar of certain people and hope this will give you the protection you need and deserve.”

  When “certain people” include Mexican drug lords, four minisc
ule outdoor cameras and two indoor digital screens don’t exactly add up to safety, but in the end I appreciated the gesture. At $6,000 a pop, there was no way I would have paid for a Guard-on system myself. In any case, apart from a few startled raccoons, one terrified jogger, and several accidental triggers by me, nothing had yet proved cause for alarm. So to speak.

  I shivered and pulled my blanket tighter. The canyon was draped in its own blanket, this one of thick mist—the southern California June gloom had arrived early this year. A coyote chuckled. Another replied. Soon a jumble of feral wails and eerie shrieks filled the dawn air, like a chorus of frightened women.

  Ayúdame.

  I rubbed my arms and did a brisk stomping dance to shake off my mood. I had a big day ahead of me. No reason to start out, as my mother, Valerie, used to put it, “on a bummer.”

  A warm body brushed against my ankles.

  “Hey, Tank. Change your mind?”

  I bent down, enveloped 17 pounds of sleepy cat in a wool blanket, and hauled the dense bundle up to my chest.

  The coyote cries faded into silence. The mist thinned. Watery early morning sunshine barely pierced the layers of fog and darkness. Topanga Canyon seemed especially secretive today, as if unconsciously crossing her arms tight, holding any private thoughts deep in her shadowy folds.

  She’s hiding things. Just like me.

  I should meditate, I thought. It’s been a few days.

  I should contact Yeshe and Lobsang. Ditto.

  Even as I noticed these thoughts, I knew I wouldn’t take the actions. I also knew it hadn’t been days. It had been weeks, enough weeks to qualify as months. This was my new method of justification, ever since I’d returned from India: When in doubt, deflect. Avoid. Hedge the truth. Some might call it dissembling. I preferred to think of it as being mindful of my need for privacy, for allowing the time and space to figure things out for myself. I had ceased writing Yeshe and Lobsang letters. Technology, combined with their move back to Dharamshala, made snail mail redundant. But my retreat from communication had little to do with computer networks. When I had written them letters in the past, the simple act of putting pen to paper meant I was willing to connect with my feelings and listen to my heart. Not now. I preferred not to look closely at anything uncomfortable right now. Grief takes on its own form of healing—everybody says so.

  Only in my case, I wasn’t sure the grieving had even started.

  I’d returned from Dharamshala in December a changed man, with a new label to add to my growing arsenal of personal identifications: Tenzing Norbu, ex-Tibetan lama, ex-LAPD cop, licensed private investigator—and now, orphan.

  My father was dead, his body gone. I had been able to sit with him, chant with him, to the end. I helped prepare his remains and transfer them to the ceremonial palanquin. I helped carry his corpse to the hastily constructed “fire house,” helped place him inside the cremation stupa, close it up, whitewash it, and decorate it with bright swabs of paint and brilliant prayer flags. I had joined my best friends, Lama Yeshe and Lama Lobsang, in reciting prayers and performing rituals. I participated in the grand and strangely moving Buddhist ceremony of praise, release, and incineration. I watched my father ignite and transform into a tower of flames. I observed the lamas break open the fire house to retrieve his burned relics, and watched the ritual master—my old tutor Lama Sonam, bent with age himself—sift through Apa’s ashes for significant signs.

  My father was dead, his body gone. Before I left Dharamshala, I met with Lama Sonam privately, so he could share with me the evidence left in the remains: evidence, he assured me, that proved my father was a highly realized man. With shining eyes, Lama Sonam spoke of the special orb-like formation, associated with a refined mind, discovered in my father’s bone fragments and the small footprint, pressed into the sand mandala created for the ceremony, that faced southwest, indicating where my father would be reborn. Other proof I saw with my own eyes: the rainbow that arched across the sky the hour he left his body; the weird pliability of his shrunken bones and muscles—untouched by rigor mortis after death—that allowed the monastery’s resident healer, Lama Tashi, to manipulate my father’s limbs into lotus position before his cremation. All of us witnessed the dark smoke from the incineration rising straight up in the air and hovering there in an unwavering column, while all around it the prayer flags snapped and swayed. It was as if in one final, stubborn act my father’s smoldering residue ignored the laws of nature, choosing instead to aim for his own higher purpose. (Now, that was the father I knew.) Whether any of these things made Apa a venerated being, I couldn’t say. I was certainly not the right person to ask.

  My father was dead, his body gone. We had made our peace. But there were still some things I hadn’t dared ask him before he left his body, and he hadn’t chosen to disclose. I didn’t push; a man deserves his privacy. But I had yet to completely dispel the smoky darkness his passing left in my heart. The secrets imbedded there.

  The sun was finally up. Tank bolted from my arms and darted inside. Either his stomach or his bladder was making its needs known. Come to think of it …

  I stepped off the deck for a quick pee, promised my own growling stomach I would make it very happy, very soon, then returned to the kitchen to deal with the rest of my essential morning tasks. Namely: feed cat, feed cat, and feed cat.

  Back in the bedroom, I tried to change into my jeans and T-shirt quietly, but Heather hears like a hawk sees.

  “Where’re you off to?” Her voice was muffled with sleep, and sounded slightly irritated. I crossed to the bed and kissed her lightly on the forehead. Framed with a tangle of blonde hair, her face glowed in the pale light, ridiculously flawless.

  “Sorry. Work. Remember? I told you last night. I have another appointment with Mac Gannon. And you have no right to look like this on five hours of sleep.”

  Heather’s lips formed a little pout. “Oh, right. Your new best friend. Some people get to have all the fun.” She licked her index finger and touched the back of my hand, making a sound like hot oil hitting a skillet: Sssttt! “Hotshot. Okay then. Have fun. Keep me posted.”

  As was often the case with Heather these days, I couldn’t tell if she was fine with me going, upset, or somewhere in between. As was often the case with me these days, I chose not to investigate.

  Heather and I weren’t living together yet, but we probably spent four nights a week sharing a bed. Weekdays, I went to her condominium in Santa Monica. Weekends, she stayed with me. But our full schedules meant we rarely had time to really talk or better yet, not talk and just be.

  Time to get ready. I ran a brush over my cropped lawn of black hair. Not much more I could do there. This being Mac Gannon, I made a last-minute decision to swank up a little and grabbed the black cashmere blazer Heather had given me for my 31st birthday. I decided not to accessorize, however. My Wilson Combat Supergrade would remain locked in the closet safe for the time being. The only imminent danger at the moment was the result of my rampant imagination.

  “Heather?”

  “Mmm.”

  “You speak Spanish, right?”

  “Enough to get by.”

  “What does ayúdame mean?”

  She met my eyes; hers were a little troubled.

  “Ayúdame means Help me.”

  A small chill snaked up my spine. I shrugged it off. So someone was asking for help—it was probably my own troubled psyche.

  “I’ll call you later,” I said. “If you go out, don’t forget to—”

  “Reset the Guard-on. Got it.” She rolled away and buried her head in the pillow. Okay, upset. But hopefully not the kind of upset a few hours of deep sleep wouldn’t make right.

  I hustled out the kitchen door, passing a contented Tank nose-deep in a bowl of canned mixed grill. The air was still chilly, and I pulled on my blazer. Now I was warm but also uncomfortable, sideswiped by a cascade of unpleasant thoughts about the night Heather had given me the jacket. There’d been tension in the air t
he whole evening, and the off-center feeling still lingered, as if captured in the seams of the garment. My mind started to scamper down a familiar misery tunnel. I yanked it back like restraining a leashed dog. Whatever my girlfriend problems were, there was no way I could solve them right now. I hurried over to my loaner car, a smart little Tesla Model S. It was Sunday morning. I was apparently a hotshot. I had people to see, places to go.

  Secrets to keep.

  CHAPTER 2

  I was really zipping down Topanga Canyon. The Tesla was cruising at 70 miles per hour with an unnerving absence of engine noise. These all-electric sports cars are deceptively meek-looking, considering the power they contain—like that proverbial soft-spoken guy next door who harbors a cache of AK-47s under his bed and winds up unleashing a firestorm at the local mall.

  I whizzed past the Buddha wall, where a hand-stenciled mural of the seated Sakyamuni has watched over Topanga Canyon Boulevard for decades. The delicate painted icon, one hand cupping a bright blue earth in place of the usual begging bowl, seemed to raise his eyebrow at me. I checked my speedometer. Whoa, pushing 80. I eased off the accelerator.

  My Mustang was getting a weekend overhaul at the shop in Santa Monica, and I’d decided on an impulse to cross the street, slip the salesman a little cash incentive, and request a weekend “test-drive” of this merry little Tesla. I told the dealership I drove a lot for my work, which was the truth, and might be in the market for this car, which wasn’t. A silver Tesla Model S is almost as unusual as a bright yellow ’65 Shelby Mustang 350, and just as terrible a choice for surveillance. No, my next “work” car, and hopefully not for a while, would probably be another secondhand, drab Toyota, the only elegant thing about it the smoked glass finish I would give its windows.

  So far, so good: the main canyon artery, often clogged, was almost empty. The high hum from the electric motor created a jaunty duet with the whistling wind. Within minutes, I pulled into Pat’s Topanga Grill, my mouth already watering.

  With its rustic wood-slatted siding, the building looked more like a saloon than a coffee shop, although this saloon was flanked by asphalt on one side and California sycamores on the other. A pair of matching wooden sharks, nose-to-nose on the swinging double-door entrance, hinted further at Pat’s unique take on dining decor. Inside, designer surfboards floated overhead, and local artwork, most notably Pat’s, crowded the walls. As always, my eye went to the resurrected road sign hung near the kitchen area: “Topanga,” the reflective letters proclaimed, and underneath, “pop 3342 elev 720.” The population had probably tripled by now—which still made my community barely a hamlet by L.A. standards. I assumed the elevation hadn’t changed.