The First Rule of Ten (35 page)

Half the time I have no idea what Mike is actually saying.

“Can you give me his address?”

“Give me a mo’. Celebrity cribs are tricky.”

In Mike-time, a mo’ usually equals two breaths in and out. Sure enough …

“Okay, here it is. Hartley Crest. One-five-five-two. Beverly Hills. I’m also sending you a link to Keith’s IMDB page.”

In another moment, my iPhone screen was filled with a Caucasian male, late 20s, light brown hair, hazel eyes, and a reddish sexy demi-beard that looked like he’d “forgotten” to shave for exactly the right number of days. He was gazing to his left, scowling slightly. He may have been going for a bad-boy heartthrob effect, but to me he just looked silly.

I sent Marv a text: L
OCATED
H
ARPER AT PARTY IN
B
EVERLY
H
ILLS
. O
N
MY
WAY
THERE
. S
TAY
PUT
.

I grabbed my Wilson Supergrade from the gun safe in my closet and headed out.

First decision: which set of wheels to use? I quickly settled on my faithful workhorse, the Toyota-that-would-not-die, but not without regret. I hated leaving my real car, the thoroughbred, stabled at home, but a bright yellow ’65 Shelby Mustang lends itself to surveillance about as well as a maroon monk’s robe would.

There wasn’t much traffic at that hour. Soon I was lurching along Wilshire Boulevard, traversing my way into Beverly Hills. I would be at Keith’s soon, if the drive didn’t put me in traction first.

I know. Beverly Hills and cracked pavements don’t seem to mix. And in fact, if you take Sunset Boulevard, the minute you enter Beverly Hills proper, the pavement magically loses its pockmarks as a thick profusion of multicolored flowers suddenly bursts into bloom along the medians. Like an A-list actress, that area of Beverly Hills wouldn’t be caught dead in public without makeup and blond streaks. But drop south of there and it’s one big bad hair and acne day.

According to the latest city infrastructure assessment, there are over half a million unfilled potholes in Los Angeles at any given time, and maybe a dozen patch trucks to deal with them. Once a year the Mayor announces Operation Pothole, and maintenance crews fan out across the city to patch and plug. They usually manage to repair 30,000 holes over a single weekend. That’s 30,000 down, 470,000 to go. It’s like doing battle with a wrathful Tibetan deity, the kind with never-ending multiple arms waving thunderbolts and skulls. When I was still a rookie, on traffic detail, one jaded city official put it this way: “Potholes, like diamonds, are forever, son. So you tell me, how do you stop forever?”

Welcome to my brain when I’m driving around, dodging troughs, working a case.

I checked the map on my phone, zig-zagging my way north and west, and eventually turning onto the bumpy byway known as Hartley Crest, set in the wooded hills off Benedict Canyon, where the houses are in the $4 million range. As my beater car and I labored up the steep, winding street, a dim drizzle of wet fog slimed my windshield. The Toyota had a bum wiper on the driver’s side, which I kept forgetting to replace.

I started passing high-end coupes and SUVs parked nose-to-tail along the narrow road. Maybe I should have taken the Shelby after all. I squeezed into a space between a dark blue Mercedes and a silver Infiniti. I considered grabbing the .38 out of the locked glove compartment, just in case, but thought better of it. Guns and teenagers don’t mix. I climbed out of my car and took a moment to collect myself.

A bottom-heavy hip-hop beat shook the night.
Boom Boom THUD, Boom Boom THUD, Boom Boom THUD
. Raucous laughter. A girl’s high-pitched bray. I had found the party.

I passed between a pair of tall wrought iron security gates, wide open and inviting any and all to enter, and picked my way up a driveway paved with antique cobble stones. Sherlock would have felt right at home. The house was a large two-story Mediterranean, stucco and red tile, with a second story turret. It looked like it had been built in the ’20s, and renovated this morning.

First things first. I tested the door to the attached garage. Unlocked. I peeked in. I was curious what an ex-rocker-turned-actor drove. I saw a gleaming black sedan I couldn’t immediately identify. I slipped inside. I had to take a look. Well, well, well. A Maybach 57 S. Maybe the most expensive car in the world. You don’t see that every day. I gave its flawless German features a respectful bow and continued on to the heavy, ornately carved front door.

The sound inside was deafening. I changed course—no one in the middle of that was about to hear the ring of a doorbell. I moved around to the manicured pool area in the back. Light spilled out of a large kitchen window. I took a closer look.

A young couple was engaged in a prolonged mouth-to-mouth exchange of oxygen and saliva. He had her pinned against a marble kitchen island, and she had her legs gripped around his waist like a monkey. Neither one paid me any attention as I slid open a glass door and slipped inside. I passed a gleaming row of never-been-touched, top-of-the-line appliances, and moved into a large, arched entryway. To my right, a gigantic flat screen television loomed over an oak-paneled den that was bigger than my house. Several young people, glassy eyed and still, were fixated by the flickering images on the screen. To my left was a step-down living room, where more kids sprawled on leather chairs and sofas, passing around an elaborate bong. If good looks were illegal, they’d all be locked up. I caught the eye of one young temptress and she gave me a glazed once-over, followed by a dismissive smirk. I was barely 30, but already a fossilized life form to her, a curious leftover from the late Paleolithic. Ouch.

I scanned all the faces. No Harper. No Keith, for that matter. I mentally stepped into his shoes. If I were a rising hot actor about to hook up with my producer’s daughter, I’d want to do my hooking up in private. In the master bedroom, for example.

I bounded up the curved and carpeted marble staircase and was faced with three doors. Two of them were ajar. I headed for the closed double doors at the end of the hallway. I pressed my ear to the wood. Animated voices, one low, one high. Arguing? I cracked the doors open and spotted a muscular, naked man groping at a slight young woman, tearing her clothes off as she gasped and cried out. My mind screamed, “Two-six-one! Two-six-one in progress! Sexual assault!”

Adrenaline coursing, I threw open the doors and flung myself across the room. I peeled off the brute—Keith—and tossed him to the floor.

I turned to the victim—Harper—expecting to see relief and gratitude.

With a high-pitched scream, Harper launched herself at me, arms flailing. I had to hold her wrists aloft to prevent her from gouging out my eyes.

“Who are you? What do you think you are doing,” Harper shrieked. “I was about to fuck Keith Connor! KEITH CONNOR! Are you COMPLETELY INSANE?!”

I moved to a window seat, well out of reach of Harper’s talons. Keith watched me from the floor with a kind of stoned curiosity. He was stark naked, and seemingly too high, or uninhibited, to care. I turned my attention to Harper.

“My name is Tenzing Norbu. I’m a private investigator,” I told her. “Your father hired me to find you and bring you home.”

“I hate you,” she said.

“Dude,” Keith’s voice piped up. “For real? Like Charlie Chan?”

I met Keith’s reddened eyes. “For real. Dude. And you should be ashamed of yourself,” I added. “She’s sixteen.”

His eyelids drooped. His facial expressions flickered as several fuzzy concepts formed their way into an unpleasant pattern:

Marv.

Movie.

Underage Daughter.

Detective.

He sat up.

“Shit, man,” he said. “You really know how to mess with a guy’s buzz.”

Irritation made the back of my neck itch.
Entitled jerk
. I glared at him, daring him to make a move.

Keith remained unfazed. He looked at me with interest.

“So, what, you’re like Chan? Chinese or something?”

“Tibetan,” I snapped.

“Awesome. Yaks, right? Some guy asked me to sponsor one last year. So, tell me, what’s it like in the Land of Snows?”

“I wouldn’t know,” I replied icily. “I was raised in a monastery in India.”
Moron
.

He blinked in confusion.

I opened my mouth to continue. Then I closed it again. There was no point giving him a history lesson about China’s brutal takeover of Tibet. One: the systematic destruction of Tibetans’ culture, and the exile of thousands of monks and nuns, happened more than 30 years before I was born. And two: China’s war with Tibet was not to blame for my current state of mind.

Simply put, something about this guy was getting me way too riled up. I used my intuition like a metal detector … and found the cause of my unease.

Right. I was jealous. Keith Connor might be much closer to my age than Harper’s, but young lovelies were lining up for the privilege of throwing themselves at him. And not at me.

Harper jumped in. “Hey, I’ve got an idea. How about if we just pay you some money and you go away?”

“Babe, he’s not going to do that. He works for your dad, okay?” Keith’s voice was patient.

He stood up, closed the doors, and scooped a rumpled pair of gray cashmere sweatpants from the floor. As he stepped into them, I snuck a closer peek at Harper. Her minuscule panties and featherweight tank top left little—no, make that nothing—to the imagination. With her slim hips and small, firm breasts, she was beautiful, in a waifish orphan kind of way. My taste in women tends toward the voluptuous, not to mention legally aged, but there was no denying it. The girl was hot.

I’m an ex-monk. I never said I was a saint.

I quickly turned my attention back to Keith. He gave me a half-wink, as if to say, “See what I have to deal with?”

“So, detective,” he drawled, “what’s Marv paying you, anyway?”

I saw no reason to stonewall him. “I get five grand a day for jobs like this, three-day minimum.”

His eyes widened, as if he was impressed. I guess he momentarily forgot his own day rate. He gave me a friendly nod. He’d decided to have a little chat, man to man.

“Okay, so now, let me see if I’ve got this straight.

You’re pretty much obligated to go back to Marv and tell him you found Harper here, and me about to bone her, right?”

“Pretty much,” I said.

In actual fact, I wasn’t sure about getting into the details. Fathers like Marv with sexually precocious daughters like Harper have enough to worry about. The fact that Keith was on Marv’s payroll further complicated things. I wasn’t exactly sure what my next move needed to be.

“Dude,” Keith said, “I’ve got twenty thousand in cash in the top drawer of my dresser. I’ll hire you for four more days to forget all about this, and you can refund Marv’s money. Or you can keep his money, and take my twenty as a little bonus. I don’t care. I just don’t want to fuck up the movie. I don’t want any bad vibes between me and Marvin.”

He must have remembered his day rate after all.

Before I could respond, loud bellows erupted down in the foyer. Heavy footsteps thudded up the stairs.

The double doors burst open for the second time, and there stood all three hundred quivering pounds of Marv Rudolph, cigar in hand, face clotted with rage.

As he swayed in the doorway, I was fascinated to see how wrath transformed him. His left eyelid twitched, and a vein on his forehead swelled into a caterpillar of pulsing anger. Hot fury rippled from him, like poisonous waves. Behind me, Harper whimpered.

Very unskillful. I countered with a few deep breaths. One. Two.

Before I could get to three, the room exploded. Marv, screeching like a wounded pig, broke for Keith, who desperately tried to scoot backward. Harper threw herself between her father and Keith. In the resulting collision, she and Marv tumbled to the floor. Keith leapt nimbly over them and trotted out of the bedroom, holding his sweatpants up with one hand.

I stepped outside after him. He was at the stairs when Marv hurtled past me and made a diving tackle. No contest. Now Harper was screaming “DADDY DADDY DADDY” at the top of her lungs as Daddy and Keith bumped and slid down the stairs locked in a mutual choke hold. Finally they rolled to a halt on the landing. Both collapsed onto their backs.

“Fuck,” said Keith.

Marv was too winded to do much more than groan

I was feeling pretty calm, calmer than they were, anyway. I took a seat on the bottom step and waited for Marvin’s panting to subside. Time for a little family mediation.

“You shouldn’t be here,” I told Marv, “but now that you are, you need to cool it. You’re going to hurt somebody, and the somebody I’m worried about is you.”

Marvin twisted his stubbled face toward me, then glanced away. “I can take care of myself,” he muttered.

Keith sat up, wincing.

“Does this mean I’m fired?” he asked Marv. I found the question absurd. Of course he was fired. Marv mulled it over, longer than I would have.

“You do her?” Marv finally said.

“No!” Keith answered. “Swear to God, no. Ask the monk.”

Marv grunted. Keith’s eyes entreated. Some wordless understanding passed between the film producer and his lead actor. Then:

“Thanks, man,” Keith said. “I won’t let you down.”

Marv grunted again.

When it comes to the movie business, I know nothing.

I surveyed the scene: Marvin still flat on his back like a concrete slab, Keith clutching his ribs. A sullen, sniffling Harper, her cheeks striped with mascara, leaned against the banister, seemingly unconcerned with her father’s well-being, or with the fact that she was the half-naked cause of all of this.

Weariness fell over me like a heavy blanket. I wanted to go home. The sooner I took charge, the sooner I could leave. I stood up.

“Harper, go get dressed, please, then come right back.”

She flinched at my sharp tone.

As she started up the stairs, she shot me a look I couldn’t quite read—half-resigned, half-pleading.