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

  I had another potential clue, but I was out of ideas. As I headed up the 101 North, I called Bill. He sounded out of breath.

  “Martha and I invested in an elliptical,” he said. “Let me turn this thing off before I kill myself.” After a moment, he said, “All yours.”

  “So, Bill,” I said.

  “Uh-oh,” he answered.

  I explained, in broad strokes, what had been going on. I left out the specifics of a certain backpack that was in my possession. No need to go crazy with the honesty thing.

  “Let me get this straight, Ten. Your missing person, who may or may not exist, may or may not be related to Mac Gannon’s maid, who may or may not be involved with a member of an alleged gang of gangs, a guy called Miguel Ortiz who may or may not have scoped out your home. Does that pretty much sum it up?”

  “Pretty much.”

  “Okay, well, first of all—” Bill broke off. “You know what? I don’t think I can handle this tonight. I’m going to finish my exercise routine, watch some mindless television with my beautiful wife, and call you in the morning. Think you can stay out of trouble until then?”

  “Absolutely,” I said.

  “Gang of gangs,” Bill muttered. “Shoot me now.”

  CHAPTER 8

  Beep-beep-beep!

  My eyes snapped open, the high-pitched warning tone piercing my sleep. It was 2:58 A.M., and somebody had just breached my perimeter. Again.

  I slid my hand under the pillow next to me and found the .38 right where I’d tucked it, an impulsive midnight decision but apparently a good one. I thanked the various gods that Heather hadn’t come over, we hadn’t had our talk, and she hadn’t spent the night. I swung out of bed. Sure enough, a shadowy figure was moving across the screen, captured in the eerie green glow of one of the infrared cameras. I couldn’t tell if it was my lawn-caring friend from yesterday, but whoever he was, he was heading straight for my garage. He tried the side door. Slipped inside.

  I am a creature of habit, and up until yesterday, it had never been my habit to lock the side door into my garage. I was tired last night and in a hurry to get to bed. Now my lack of mindfulness had boomeranged back to harm me.

  My cell phone buzzed. Mike. He was probably sitting at his computer, seeing just what I was seeing.

  “I’m on it, Mike. Can you call Bill for me?” He grunted and hung up.

  I pocketed the phone, pulled on my running shoes, and slipped out of the bedroom. Moving quietly, I crept across the slick hardwood floor, making my silent way through the living room and into the kitchen. I needed to get a better sense of what I was up against. I crouched low and looked out the kitchen window. About 100 yards away, past the trees that line my property, a sliver of moonlight glinted off the big, square windshield of a Hummer. Did that mean I had more than one visitor?

  Homeowner outrage hummed in my bloodstream. This is private property. This is my safe space. You don’t belong here. I racked a round into the chamber of the .38.

  I knew I should yell out—most intruders flee at the first indication of an inhabitant, armed or not. But I could feel the sizzle of adrenaline in my bloodstream urging me to deal with this the old-fashioned way. Besides, I was pretty sure I knew who was out there.

  I cracked open the kitchen door and swept the barrel of the pistol across the grounds. Nothing. I dropped low and snuck around to the back of the garage, hugging the shadows. I peered into the small side window. It was Miguel all right, squatting beside my Shelby, a crowbar in one hand and a flashlight in the other.

  He was about to jimmy a door I’d spent at least 20 hours restoring, on a car I’d just spent $1,500 tuning up.

  Not my Mustang, Miguel. Not in this lifetime.

  I took a deep breath and banged through the door, reaching over to hit the switch that illuminated the overhead light. I yelled at the top of my lungs and aimed the Wilson. Miguel jerked his head up. The flashlight clattered to the floor and rolled across the cement, coming to a stop at my feet as he groped in his pocket and pulled out a small pistol.

  I pointed my gun at his chest. “Drop it!”

  His arm jerked upward. Bad move. I lowered the sight and shot him in the meaty part of his left leg. He howled and fell hard, his head clunking against the Mustang’s back bumper as he went down. He stopped moving, out cold.

  I started toward him when two car doors slammed. Shit. I crouched down behind the Shelby and aimed into the inky darkness. Now I regretted switching on the light. It put me at a disadvantage. I could just make out a man—no, two men—sprinting through the trees and running straight for me. When they were about 20 yards out, I grabbed the flashlight and slung it to my right, aiming for the Toyota. It hit the sheet metal with a clang. They started firing in that direction but spotted me immediately when I stood up to return fire. Two muzzles swung my way.

  There was no time for niceties. I aimed for center mass, just like the academy taught me. Two shots, two hits, square in two chests. The guy on the right toppled backward with a loud cry. The other one must have been wearing Kevlar because he just staggered for a moment, stopped in his tracks, but still very much alive. He got his footing back and fired, hitting the wall behind me with a series of muted phut-phut-phuts.

  My police training sent up another instructional flare: Take cover and hold fire until you can get a clean shot to the leg. But I wasn’t a cop anymore, was I? By my count, this guy had some kind of semiautomatic weapon. He’d fired a dozen times, leaving plenty of zip in what was probably a 30-round mag. I didn’t like the odds.

  I sighted the Wilson in for a head shot but missed low, hitting him directly in the Adam’s apple. With no oxygen or equipment to make a sound, he sank to his knees and fell forward onto his face with a wet flop.

  I let out a deep breath I didn’t realize I was holding. With the smell of gunpowder lingering in the air, I realized I was witnessing karma happening right before my eyes. He’d gotten a reprieve when my first shot bounced off his bulletproof chest. But then he’d spurned that subtle gift from the universe and called in his destiny.

  I heard a loud thwock, and my left foot jerked. Miguel! I took cover and checked the thick bottom of my running shoe—the ridiculously expensive running shoes I’d just treated myself to a couple of weeks ago. A .25 caliber bullet was now imbedded in its ruined sole.

  Miguel was running out of strikes. Strike One: trying to jimmy the door of my Shelby. Strike Two: blowing away my new sneaker. The kid was clearly escalating.

  I scooted backward so the Mustang’s axle and wheels were between him and me. I heard the scuff of jeans against the concrete floor.

  “Hey, Miguel!” The scuffing sound stopped. “¿Habla inglés?”

  “Un poco.” A little. A little was better than nothing.

  “I don’t want to kill you,” I said. “And you don’t want to die. Give me the gun.”

  I waited. The silence grew. I curled my finger around the Wilson’s trigger. Then I heard the scraping slide of gunmetal across cement. I leaned around the back of the Mustang and saw the flimsy little Browning on the concrete. I stretched down and got it.

  “You carrying anything else?”

  “No. Don’ kill me, okay?”

  I stuck the revolver in my pocket. Miguel was lying on his back, arms overhead, palms facing upward. Blood had pooled under his left thigh, but I was pleased to see I had just grazed him as I intended. I did a quick over-and-under frisk and came up empty, as he’d promised.

  “Okay,” I said. “You can put your arms down.”

  He lowered his arms.

  “Now roll over. Put your hands behind your back.”

  I used a bungee cord to secure his wrists.

  “Stay put,” I said. I stepped outside to survey the damage to my other two assailants. It was extensive and permanent. The end for both of them had come quick. The first body had a hole in the chest, just right of center. The man lay flat on his back, so I couldn’t tell if it was a through-and-through. The other
sprawled facedown, his head at an odd angle. I half-rolled him over and saw that his throat was a ragged mess, before letting his body return to its original position. Two deadly MAC-10 semiautomatics—the earlier versions, complete with sound suppressors—lay next to their dead owners like attack dogs. Next to them, my Wilson looked like a younger, weaker breed. I was very lucky to be alive.

  I stood up, feeling slightly light-headed, and focused on my breathing to center myself. A river of feeling was flooding my body.

  Relief. Sorrow. Remnants of rage. Shame.

  Swimming up through it all was a deep and sure knowledge that this was a turning point in my life. I had never killed anyone—not in the line of duty as a police officer, not as a private investigator. Now everything was different. I had killed—not once, but twice.

  I had taken two lives.

  Nothing in my training as a monk or a cop had prepared me for the next sensation that welled up from my core—a hot wave of revulsion, as if my stomach was turning inside out. I tasted the bile on the back of my tongue and bent over to throw up.

  The sudden roar of a big engine broke through my nausea. I stood up just in time to see the rear lights of the Hummer receding, wheels spitting gravel like grapeshot.

  I ran back into the garage and saw the bungee cord on the floor, sliced in two. During my quick frisk of Miguel I must have somehow missed a hidden blade. I wanted to swear, but in my current overloaded brain state I had reverted to thinking in Tibetan, which has no real curse-words. My mind just kept repeating a Tibetan phrase that loosely translated as “I’m upset! I’m upset!”

  The Hummer swerved onto Topanga Canyon Boulevard. I decided not to give chase—he’d be long gone by the time I got my car cranked up and hit those steep turns myself. I could feel the adrenaline, nausea, and other feelings fading in my body, replaced by a faint, grudging respect for the kid. Miguel had managed to get away on a badly wounded leg. He’d done it quickly and so quietly I hadn’t even noticed. Even though he hadn’t come to my house for honorable reasons, he’d certainly made a skillful escape. He was one tough kid. I found myself wishing him, if not well, then at least no more harm, in spite of his abuse of my hospitality.

  Then that feeling subsided, replaced by a sharp twist of revulsion at my own actions.

  What have I done?

  I grabbed for my phone, to report the incident to the Malibu Sheriff’s Station and give them the word on the Hummer. The cell phone vibrated in my hand. I glanced at the screen and saw it was Bill Bohannon, my ex-partner. In that moment, it seemed like light years since we’d been Detective IIs 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. Shit, Mike must have also called 911. My night was about to get even more complicated.

  “Can you let them know about the Hummer? Black—no idea the license plate, but there’s a young kid at the wheel with a leg wound. And Bill, I hate to ask, but—”

  “I’m on my way,” he barked. “Do not say one word to anyone until I get there.”

  The two lifeless bodies lay sprawled on the ground like a pair of unanswerable reproaches. I studied them and felt a second wave of shivers pass through my body.

  Suddenly I remembered I wasn’t the only member of my household that might be having some feelings.

  Tank.

  I hurried across the driveway and into the kitchen.

  “Tank? Where are you, buddy?”

  I heard a muffled squawk from the living room. I ran to the sofa and dropped to my knees, peering underneath it. Tank was huddled flat in his place of ultimate refuge, usually reserved for the rare thunderstorms we have in this part of the world.

  “It’s okay,” I said. “I’m okay.” I stretched out my hand to stroke his head.

  He shrank against the far wall and made a small hissing sound. Maybe he was rattled by the smell of blood on me.

  As I sat back on my haunches, unsure what to do next, my computer made that odd Skype sound, like a bubble popping. I looked at the screen.

  It was a Skype video call from “lamalobsang.” My heart rose, choking my throat with bittersweet relief. Yeshe and Lobsang—my lifeline between past and present, Dharamshala and Los Angeles, monk and detective. I had neglected them for months. I didn’t deserve them, but here they were.

  Over the years since I’d moved to Los Angeles, we’d communicated through snail mail and the occasional whispered telephone call between India and California, until last summer, when my father discovered our ongoing, forbidden contact. His “reasoned” response was to banish Yeshe and Lobsang to Lhasa, Tibet, where even snail mail was impossible. But this past December, at Apa’s request, His Holiness had recalled them from Tibet to become head abbots of Dorje Yidam—my father’s final act of healing before his death. Their journey back was, of course, harrowing but ultimately successful, and their safe arrival coincided with my time there for a few precious weeks, as I buried my father and they prepared for their new roles.

  The change in leadership at Dorje Yidam brought with it many other changes, a lot of them technological. But I knew my friends’ decision to get in touch with me this morning had nothing to do with modern technology and everything to do with ancient intuition.

  I sat down at my desk and clicked on the Skype icon. Within moments, the gleaming, shaved heads and warm features of my two friends swam into view.

  “Tenzing, dear brother! Greetings to you.” Lobsang touched his forehead. Just to his right, Yeshe did the same.

  “Lobsang. Yeshe. I am happy to hear from you,” I said. As I said the words I felt my chest compress, as if two giant hands were squeezing it.

  “Are you all right?” Yeshe’s voice was breathless. “We had to reach you. I felt something … something dark.”

  I pictured the fresh corpses outside. I opened my mouth to answer, but the words stuck in my throat. These were my dearest friends in the world. But they were also Buddhist monks. They had dedicated their lives to the practice of ahimsa—to doing no harm to any and all sentient beings. How could I tell them that I had just killed two men?

  Was it only two days ago, sitting at breakfast at Joe’s, that I had made a new vow to be more mindful of the difference between privacy and secrecy, to make sure my natural reserve wasn’t causing me to hide things from others that I ought to be revealing? Hadn’t I just made a commitment to candor? Yet here I was at another crossroads, deciding whether or not to risk two more relationships by being totally honest. If I told the blunt truth to my brothers, would I lose the rock-solid respect we’d built up over a lifetime of shared secrets? And if I lied, would I lose even more?

  I swallowed hard.

  “I’m fine,” I said. “Everything’s great. But I can’t talk right now. I’ll call you as soon as I can.”

  I disconnected. For a minute I just sat, as the screaming siren grew closer and closer. I had spent most of my existence struggling with loneliness, but I had never felt more alone than at this moment.

  Instincts kicked in, and I walked into the kitchen, removing Miguel’s .25 from my pocket and placing it on the counter. My hands were shaking, as if I suffered from palsy. I laid my Wilson alongside the other gun, as a patrol car skidded to a halt in my driveway. I looked out the window. My gut clenched. The door of the black-and-white displayed a six-sided star and the word “Sheriff.” The Los Angele
s County Sheriff’s Department Malibu/Lost Hills Station had jurisdiction over this portion of Topanga Canyon, which meant I was screwed. If this fell under the jurisdiction of the L.A. Sheriff’s Department, being ex-LAPD not only wouldn’t help, it might hurt. The two agencies are notoriously competitive, with the Sheriff’s Department constantly feeling like the underdog. Now the underdog had the upper hand.

  The deputies remained in their cars, though the officer riding shotgun lowered his window slightly. I knew exactly what they were doing. Sheriff or police, we were all law enforcement, and the protocols for investigating a shooting incident were the same: observe; assess; be methodical; be cautious; protect the physical evidence; above all, treat the location as a crime scene until someone above your pay grade tells you otherwise. To which my frantic mind now added: if you were LASD and you could somehow stick it to the LAPD, so much the better.

  I tried to remember to breathe, but my lungs weren’t cooperating. The officers stayed put. I mentally went through the checklist with them: log relevant information; scan the perimeter for any suspicious people or vehicles; evaluate potential dangers, using your eyes, ears, and even your nose, to ensure there is no immediate threat; check victims for signs of life.

  I was in for a long night. I revised my own list of priorities and started a pot of very strong coffee, using my very best beans. Whatever this visit from the authorities meant for my future, coffee was bound to help. With two dead bodies and an escaped gang-recruit in the mix, I wanted to make the best coffee they’d ever tasted.

  I watched through the kitchen window as the deputies played their spotlight over the two sprawled bodies. They climbed out of the car, guns drawn. Time to make an appearance. I flashed my outside lights a couple of times to get their attention and inched onto the deck with my hands raised.

  The driver was about 40, with a thickset body and the bushy overhang of mustache favored by law enforcement. His thick, black eyebrows canted sharply upwards, as if attempting to fly off his face, using his forehead as a launching pad. The other sheriff was younger, with high cheekbones and a shaved head. Like me, he looked vaguely Asian. Both wore the LASD uniform: tan shirts with epaulets, black-and-yellow arm patches, and a six-sided sheriff’s badge pinned to the left front pocket. I had never laid eyes on either officer. This could get tricky.