The First Rule of Ten (11 page)

“What’s got you wondering, Roach?” His voice darkened.

“Oh, so now I’m back to being Roach, hunh?” The whine tightened. “Just because I’m the only one with enough balls to come to you and ask you to your face—”

A low growl made the hairs stand up on my arms. “Stop bumpin’ your gums and get to the point,” Thumbs snarled. His patience was proving paper-thin, as I’d suspected, but hapless Roach plowed on ahead.

“The point is, I’m wondering—well, not just me, a bunch of us are wondering whether you’re getting kinda confused about where God leaves off and Eldon Monroe begins?”

Oh, boy. This Roach needed to brush up on his survival skills. There was a moment of silence, then the creak of a chair, followed by the unmistakable
slap
of an open-handed blow across the face. With those paws, it probably felt like getting broadsided by a cast iron skillet. Roach’s yelp brought to my mind a whipped dog. Eldon Monroe thought so as well.

“You little cur,” he snarled, the words a hostile burr, “don’t you dare talk shit to me like that.”

Roach was breathing heavily through clenched teeth. I could hear the frantic hiss from outside.

“Don’t call me that,” he whimpered.

“I’ll call you a cur because that’s what you were when you came to me, a stupid lop, a chump nobody but me was willing to school. Is that what you want to go back to? The shoe?”

It sounded like they had served time together. But where? What did ‘shoe’ refer to?

“No.” Roach choked back a sob.

“I’m trying to make you a man and you want to be someone else’s bitch? That’s your goal in life?”

“No!” he moaned, louder this time.

“I can’t hear you, Brother.”

“NO!”

“If you’re not Roach, who are you?”

More heavy breathing. Finally, “I am Nehemiah.”

“That’s right. And
what
are you, Nehemiah?” Calm again. Almost seductive.

“A night watchman.”

“A night watchman? Is that all you are?”

“No.” As Nehemiah, this guy seemed to recover his confidence. “I’m a night watchman for God, Brother Eldon. I serve God. And I serve you.”

At times like this, I am grateful I somehow learned to value self-discovery over blind obedience to authority. The Buddha himself said we shouldn’t believe
his
words without question—we must discover the truth for ourselves. “Be a lamp unto yourself,” he counseled his disciples. “Find your own way to liberation.”

Brother Eldon saw things a little differently.

“Obey your God, Nehemiah. Obey me. Go! Guard God’s Paradise!”

I got a sudden urge to “find my own way” out of there, and quick. I scooted around the yurt and hoofed it back up the hill, moving as fast as I could without making any racket. I sprinted toward my wheels, only to slam to a halt, as if collared by the grip of dread. A man stood by my car, his rifle aimed directly at my head.

There was no question of reaching for the Wilson, so I settled for a rapid risk assessment. My opponent was elderly, but built like a barrel. His hunting rifle was an old Marlin, probably from the 1940s. An excellent option for bringing down venison.

Or an unwelcome trespasser.

My eyes further noted the worn jeans and work boots, and my mind tilted, seeking to reconcile his calm demeanor and choice of apparel with the other two members of the cult. The facts didn’t compute.

“Who are you?” I said, finally. It was the best I could come up with on such short notice.

He squinted at me, slowly lowering the rifle.

“You a cop?” he asked, his accent a rough Western twang.

“LAPD,” I said. I figured we could work out the finer distinctions later.

“Thought so,” he said. “Only a cop’d meet a pointing gun with a question. What are you doing way the hell up here, anyway? Them crazy hippies done something wrong?”

He proffered his right hand. “John D. Murphy. Most people call me John D.”

“Tenzing Norbu,” I said, returning his shake. “Most people call me Ten.”

John D worked his brain around my name a few times, then gave up and jutted his chin toward the fields beyond my car. “That’s my farm, across the way.”

“Okay,” I said. “I hope I’m not trespassing.”

“Naw. It’s just I don’t see many folks on the road this late, so I like to take a look.”

“Sorry. I didn’t mean to alarm you. Have you lived out here a long time, John D?”

“Yep, my whole life,” he said. “Made my living off ah-mens, till the blight came.”

For a brief, terrifying moment, I thought I had made a bad mistake and John D was a crazy cult member after all, one of those types who believed they were going to survive some cosmic disaster by rising up into the air, leaving the rest of us sinners behind. Then I realized he was saying the word
almonds
—his odd, nasal pronunciation a half-sigh, half-benediction—and by
blight
he meant an actual tree fungus.

“My daddy worked these fields, too,” he went on, “but my kids? They never wanted much to do with raising almonds, and I’m beginning to see their point.”

I opened my mouth to commiserate when a raspy voice rang out through the night air. We both reached for our weapons.

“That you up there, John D?” God’s favorite night watchman, Nehemiah, strolled up the hill, bathed in moonlight, shotgun at the ready.

“Hey there, Brother,” John D called down to him. “Sorry, but I can’t quite recall your name.” John D leaned his rifle against the side of my car, and I removed my hand from under my windbreaker.

“Name’s Nehemiah,” Roach called back. He swung his legs over the fence and sauntered toward us. His eyes darted in my direction. They were narrow and beady, like a ferret’s.

“Who’s this?” he asked, in a none-too-friendly voice.

John D didn’t miss a beat. “This here’s my son, Charlie,” he said. “My older son. You’ve prolly met my other son, Norman, that works for the county water department.”

“Don’t look much alike, do you?”

John D laughed that one off. “Charlie here, he comes from my first marriage, to my Chinese wife.”

Mild irritation spider-walked my spine. If you want to rankle a Tibetan, tell somebody he’s Chinese. I mentally exhaled—this wasn’t the time or place for petty sensitivities. There was a bad man with a gun involved.

Nehemiah strafed my features with his lifeless prison-eyes. He said, “What brings you here in the middle of the night?”

John D clapped me on the back and said, “Charlie here is thinking about coming home, getting back into the family business.” He could lie like a champ.

I played along. “It’s a fact. People are eating a lot more almonds these days.”

Nehemiah wiggled his jaw around. “I wouldn’t know. I got teeth problems. Ain’t crazy about real crunchy things.”

“Well, I guess we oughta get on home,” John D said. “Charlie just got back. Couldn’t wait to see the lay of the land again.”

“Where you been?” Shotgun asked me.

Yes, where had I been?

“Navy Reserve,” John D said. I straightened my shoulders. I was tempted to try out a salute, but that might be pushing things.

Shotgun shook his head. “That wouldn’t work for me. I get seasick.”

I could think of other problems that might interfere with Brother Nehemiah’s navy career as well, but I didn’t want to go there.

We turned to leave.

“John D,” Nehemiah said, “how come you ain’t never joined us for a service? We must’ve invited you a dozen times. It’s where the Real Word is being spoken.”

“You mean to tell me the rest of those words I’ve been hearing my whole life ain’t even been real?” John D’s eyes twinkled.

“Yes sir, that’s right.” Nehemiah’s voice grew fervent. Apparently, irony is no match for a brain washed clean by the Real Word.

John D smiled. “Well, Brother Nehemiah, you are a man of conviction. I respect that.” Nehemiah preened a little at that.

“You take care now,” Nehemiah said. He strolled back to the fence and walked off whistling.

John D looked over at me and grinned. “What do you think, son?”

“I’m impressed,” I said. “Where did you learn to fib like that?”

“I used to be in law enforcement, just like you,” he said.

Which explained his quick draw.

“I worked for the Sheriff’s department for a few years when I was just out of high school. Till I was old enough to take over for my daddy.” John D waved his arms at the dead and dying trees around us. “Good thing Nehemiah there don’t know squat about almonds. He woulda realized nobody’s gonna grow nothing on these trees.” The lines in his face deepened as he surveyed the ghostly grove. “Well, I’d best be off.”

“Want a lift back to your place?”

“I wouldn’t say no,” he said. “My knee’s tore up something awful.”

We got in my car and lurched our way back to the gravel. He directed me onto a second dirt road, just off to the left.

“Let me ask you something,” I said as we bumped up the drive. “What kind of interactions have you had with the Children of Paradise?”

“They never give me trouble,” John D replied. “’Bout the only time I see them is when I’m out walking my land. They’ll be down there singing or doing some ritual or other. I wave to them. They wave back. End of story.”

“Have they been your neighbors long?”

“They moved in maybe a dozen years ago. This other guy was their leader then—don’t recollect his name either—but he died a few years back. The new guy, I’ve just met him the one time, when they were having problems with the hog farm.”

“They were stealing power, right?” I said.

“Yeah, but they’ve always got some kind of fight going with the hog farmers. The Children of Paradise don’t eat meat, and when the wind blows the wrong direction, they get a face full of hog stink.” John D punched my arm lightly. “Hey, I’m not exactly a fan myself. When the wind blows southeast, I smell it all the way over here. Some L.A. outfit owns it, prolly the Mob, and like most business owners, they don’t have to deal directly with the stench they create.”

The Mob again.

He caught my look. “Don’t you know a lot of the big pig farms are owned by the Mafia?”

What I didn’t know about the Mob was clearly a trough-load. “Tell me more.”

“Oh, yeah,” he said. “The Eye-talians got into garbage collection a hundred years back. Nobody else wanted to haul waste. They saw the need, so they took it over. If you’re in the garbage-hauling business, why not pig farming, too? One hand feeds the other, you know? Pretty dang smart, you ask me.”

I didn’t know whether this was true or just the ramblings of an old man’s imagination.

An image flickered through my mind:
Ostrich loafers mincing up a dirt road with a basket of gourmet goodies, and a contract that stunk as bad as this hog farm apparently did.

I tucked the vision away for future reference. The correlation seemed far-fetched, but at this stage I was still just gathering dots—I’d start connecting them later.

The dirt road ended in the front yard of an ancient wooden one-story ranch structure set within a small cluster of trees. A dim light glowed on the porch. The rest of the house was steeped in shadows. It looked like a very lonely place.

“Care to come in?” His voice was casual, but I knew better.

“Sure.”

I followed him inside. His house was clean and sparsely decorated; a big recliner and a flat-screen television dominated the main room. A few family photographs decorated the mantel. John D gestured me to sit on a small leather sofa pushed against the wall, and disappeared into the kitchen.

He came back with two icy-cold beers. I knew I liked this guy. He sank into his recliner with a contented grunt. We sipped in silence.

The room seemed to darken a little.

I glanced over at John D.

He was deep in thought, and that thought was making him sad. I just waited. None of my business. He turned to me.

“I wasn’t lying,” he said.

“Excuse me?”

“I wasn’t lying, not completely. I did have a son called Charlie, and he was in the Navy Reserves.” I wasn’t sure how to respond, so I said nothing.

“Little bits of him are all over some godforsaken road in Al Asad,” John D continued. “The rest is buried at Arlington National Cemetery. He got blowed up, making the world safe, at least that’s what I used to think. Now I don’t know what to believe.”

I felt the ache of his loss, resonating deep in my own chest. “I’m sorry,” I said.

“So am I, son. So am I.” Then John D folded the grief tight and tucked it back in, wherever it was he stored it.

“So, Ten, you never did tell me what our robe-wearing friends did to get you to come all the way out here. Anything I oughta be worried about?”

I told him my Barbara Maxey bedtime story, taking my time. I was curious to see what he thought. He mulled it over, frowning as he drew the same conclusions I had.

“You’re thinking they might have sent someone after her,” he said. “Maybe kilt her because she broke away?”

“I don’t know,” I answered. “I don’t have any evidence to support that scenario.”

For the second time tonight, a vivid image invaded my cerebrum.

Flat, spatulate thumbs, pressing, squeezing, crushing the life out of Barbara’s fragile neck as she stared up in horror at a hirsute face and crazy, leering eyes.

I shuddered. Maybe my brain didn’t know enough yet, but my gut sure did.

“You figure something out?” John D was watching me.

“No. Maybe. I don’t know.”

We lapsed into a second silence, lost in thought.

“You ever see things?” I asked John D. “You know, with your mind’s eye?”

He thought about it. “Sometimes I see these streaks of light, like ghosts. Floaties, I call ’em. That what you mean?”

“More like actual visions,” I said.

“Can’t say that I do. Why? Do you?”

I was too far down the road to turn back. Anyway, for some reason I already trusted this man.

“Before I was a cop, I spent a lot of time in a monastery.”

“No fooling. You were a priest?”

“Not that kind of monastery. A Buddhist one. In India. My father’s a practicing monk over there. Anyway, my teachers encouraged me and my fellow novices to notice any pictures that sprang to mind—you know, visualizations that arose without even trying. The more I noticed them, the more they seemed to happen.”