The Second Rule of Ten: A Tenzing Norbu Mystery (Dharma Detective: Tenzing Norbu Mystery) (11 page)

Julius’s front door opened. I looked over. Señor Beefy moved into the doorway and leaned against the frame. He crossed his arms, and his bicep muscles bulged against his suit coat.

I hopped in my Mustang and left Julius’s estate, intent on my gift-finding mission. I drove just over the speed limit, parked in an alley off West Third Street, and walked into freeHand Gallery, a store committed to selling handmade crafts, a scant hour later. I described what I wanted. The saleslady led me to a wooden rack against one wall, and within minutes I found almost exactly what I’d envisioned: a vibrant hand-dyed silk and wool shawl of swirling yellows, oranges, and reds. Most unmomlike. I threw in two little sparkling, beaded headbands for the twins. I had hoped to pay with cash, but the total was twice what I had in my wallet. I hesitated—maybe I should just go with a funny card.

No, this was Martha. I had to trust I’d be an earner again soon.

I handed over my little plastic debt-maker. The joy on Martha’s face would be worth forgoing months of Belgian Trappist beer.

I called Heather from the store parking lot, and got her voicemail.

“It’s Ten. Martha loves Gewürztraminer, or any good Pinot Noir. You can’t miss with either of those. Okay. See you tonight.” I hung up feeling smug. Nary a stutter out of me.

And nary a word from Clancy. I tried him again.

“
Yo, Clancy here. Wassup?”

Yo, yourself. Answer your damn phone!
my mind snapped. I shook the irritation off. Clancy wasn’t my employee. Not yet, anyway.

“It’s Ten, again. Call me.”

I stopped by the Urth Café, wolfed down a portobello panini, and raced home. Halfway up Topanga, my iPhone buzzed. I veered into a private driveway to take the call.

“Hey. It’s Clancy.”

“Clancy? Where the hell have you been?”

There was a long pause on the other end of the line. Great. I’d managed to piss off my first possible lead on Marv’s death before I even got the information.

“Really sorry,” I said. “Long day. Let’s start over. Hey, Clancy, thanks for your message. I really appreciate your keeping my proposal in mind. I could use a resourceful man like you in my life right now.” I paused. “And if you don’t tell me what the hell is going on I may jump right out of my fucking skin!”

Clancy laughed, and the tension between us drained.

“I told my wife about you,” he said. “How you’re, like, a monk, but then, not at all like a monk.”

“And what did she say?”

“She said, ‘Don’t look a gift monk in the mouth.’ Did I mention she hates what I do for a living?”

“I believe you did.”

“Right. Well, moving on. Like I said, no sign of Arlene all day. Just a lot of older women coming in and out with food and shit. But this afternoon the garage doors opened and Harper—she was wearing a baseball cap and shades, but it was definitely her—pulls out in a little red Mini Cooper. And guess where she winds up?”

“No idea.”

“Robinsgrove Apartments. And get this. Either she knew the code or she knew someone else in there, because she punched in a code and was buzzed inside. She came back out a few minutes later. I wasn’t sure what else to do, besides snap a few photos.”

“Are you still there?”

“Close. I went into Larchmont for a late lunch break. If I don’t eat every few hours, I smoke.”

“Meet me back at the Robinsgrove.”

So much for lowering my blood pressure before I saw the good Dr. Magnuson again.

C
HAPTER
9

I was back on the road by 4:30
P.M.,
leaving just enough wiggle room for traffic and a quick stop at Robinsgrove Apartments. Much as I loved my canyon retreat, on days like this it felt like I lived in Siberia. As I slalomed down Topanga, I did a body-check. I was still wound up pretty tight. I had scheduled a full half hour to sit on the meditation cushion, but by the time I’d typed up the barest essentials of the meeting with Julius, fed Tank, gathered material for Clancy, and thrown on my blue-striped cotton shirt, there was no meditation window left. I would have spent the entire sit looking at my watch anyway.

I checked the gauge on the Mustang. Her tank read empty. Well, guess what, so was mine.

I worried this knot of a thought as I pulled into a 76 station. I had quit the LAPD in part because the bureaucratic demands had left me with a constant sense that I would never catch up, that there were never enough hours in a day.

What was my excuse now?

I needed to take a good long look at how I was spending, or wasting, time. Usually when I feel like there’s no time, it really means I haven’t made time
for myself
. I decided to explore this topic further, soon. As soon as I had time.

Clancy’s black Impala was parked a block south of the Robinsgrove’s front entrance. I circled around and tucked my Mustang in a private church lot just north of the apartments. The last thing I needed was one of Bill’s little cop-helpers eyeballing my car in the vicinity—might as well wave a flag announcing my continued interest in this case. I strolled back to the Impala and tapped on the passenger window. Clancy leaned across and opened the door. I slipped inside. A fresh supply of empty Styrofoam coffee cups and a few crumpled receipts littered the seat. I set the pile of trash on the floor.

A vague idea plucked at my brain but refused to materialize.

Clancy reached behind and pulled up a smallish square camera, weighted down with a howitzer of a telephoto lens.

At my questioning look, he volunteered, “Canon Mark IV. This baby burst shoots at up to ten frames per second. It’s a beautiful thing.”

“What about the tuba on top?”

“I like keeping a low profile. With this 500mm Sigma and a 2x extender I can shoot from a quarter mile away if I want to.” He patted his lens. “eBay,” he said, “back when I still had scratch.”

“Can I see the shots?”

“Sure. No other paps around, that I can see. They must have moved on to greener pastures. So far I’ve caught maybe twenty-five in-and-outs. Here.”

Clancy pulled the compact flash card from his camera, plugged it into an adapter and slotted it into a laptop he’d retrieved from the back seat. Soon, a series of images marched in little squares across his screen. Sure enough, here comes Harper up the sidewalk, checking over her shoulder. Punching a code into the apartment entrance pad. Maybe talking to someone, couldn’t tell from the back. Entering. A few men and women of various ages and ethnicities followed, entering or exiting the Robinsgrove. They alternated between the elderly and the young-and-hip, what Mike calls doo-dah metrosexuals. And then Harper, leaving, head down, hat pulled low.

Clancy started to close the laptop.

“Wait,” I said. I scrolled ahead to a familiar pair.

Sully and Mack: bent close to the security speaker by the entrance, and then pushing through the front entrance, buzzed in by the manager, no doubt. How did they do it? They were famous for always showing up right after last call at the bar, or just missing the moment when the bad guy confessed. And these were the lead detectives on Marv’s case. Poor Bill. A few photographs later, out they came again, scowling. I wasn’t interested in the S & M show, though. It was the other residents who piqued my curiosity.

“Really good work,” I said. “Now, I have a big favor to ask you. It may be a dead end, but . . . “

I passed over the printouts of significant people from Marv’s past, downloaded from Mike’s research.

“These are the major players in Marv’s world. Producers. Actors. That kind of thing.”

He shuffled through the images. “Okay?”

“Any chance you can stick around here for a while longer? See if these jibe with anyone?”

“You mean figure out who let Harper in?”

“Smart man.”

“Why not?” Clancy stretched and smiled. “Beats circling Keith Connor’s hideaway or Brad Pitt’s gated estate 24/7, dodging fucking security guards,” he said. “It’s all good. I have a hunch about this whole deal.”

“A hunch?”

Clancy glanced at me, then away.

“I . . . I get these, premonitions sometimes,” he said. “Or I used to, when I was still kicking ass, nailing exclusives. Before Marv fucked things up for me. It’s like . . . I wake up early, barely have time to scratch my balls, much less kiss the wife, when I get yanked out of bed by a righteous thought. Like, one morning it was: Angie’s going to be at the Farmer’s Market in less than an hour. So off I go, and sure enough, there’s Angie, hiding behind sunglasses the size of Frisbees, kids hanging off every limb. Another time? I’m eating dinner with my wife and little girl when an image pops in my head: Tom, treating little Suri to Sunday brunch at the Scientology Celebrity Center. Sunday morning, swear to God, I positioned myself on Franklin Avenue—it’s all about the set up, man, staying three steps ahead—and
boom
. There they were, slipping into the back gates. Once in a while I doubt myself. Two days later I’ll open
InTouch
, and I’d see it. Same exact shot as I’d imagined, courtesy of some other lucky fucker’s camera.”

As he talked, Clancy kept one eye on the late afternoon traffic moving up and down Rossmore. “I mean, I was raised Baptist, but this is more, like, spiritual, you feel me?”

“Yes,” I said. “I feel you. I feel you a lot.” I considered telling him about my number one rule, to trust intuitive flashes, but it sounded like he was already living his own version of it.

Clancy’s eyes narrowed as a luxury SUV with darkened windows sped past us.

“Bieber’s people,” he said. “He’s in town all week.
Access Hollywood, Leno.
Full court press. Christmas album coming out.”

“No kidding.” I wasn’t sure who “Bieber” was, much less what “his people” drove, but I was still impressed. The more time I spent with Clancy, the more I realized how complimentary our jobs were and what an asset he could be.

“I got at least four hundred license plates in my head,” he added. “Lot of good it does me now.” He sighed. “Anyway, like I said, Ten, I’m betting tonight’s the night.”

“But we don’t even know who we’re looking for,” I said.

“Tonight,” he repeated. “Believe it.”

Before I climbed out of his car, I tried to recall my earlier thought-twinge, but nothing clear materialized. I’d figure it out later.

Meantime, party time.

I had planned my arrival at the restaurant carefully: early enough not to miss the main event, but late enough to avoid the awkward, prefood small talk. My hope was to slip in unnoticed.

The elderly host at the front had a wide smile and a stooped back. As he led me through the raucous crowd of diners, I glanced up at the hanging clusters of straw-covered Chianti bottles. They looked like they hadn’t been dusted since the restaurant opened—1949, or so the neon sign proclaimed.

The walls were lined with old-school Hollywood glamour shots, and the tables sported red-checkered tablecloths and flickering votive candles. A man was banging away at a grand piano parked on a raised dais in the center of the room. As I wove between crowded tables and booths, I caught a glimpse of Heather, wearing a party hat, sitting at the end of a long table in the far corner. She looked up, and her eyes met mine. Then hers widened. Before I could wonder why, a perky waitress sashayed to my side, microphone in hand. I caught the words
teaser
and
burning
. She was joined by two other waitresses. They surrounded me, wagging their fingers at my frozen face as they warbled about a dancing queen in three-part harmony. Martha’s entire birthday group burst into cheers and applause. So much for slipping in unnoticed.

Maude and Lola, up way past their bedtimes, sat in wooden high chairs on either side of Martha. Maude’s face was covered with red sauce. Lola gnawed on a piece of gummy bread. Martha, cheeks flushed with Chianti, appeared shell-shocked. She looked at the tables, filled with people who loved her, as if she didn’t know quite what to do. I added my present to the pile.

“Happy birthday, my friend,” I said, and kissed her cheek.

“Thanks,” she answered. “This one’s a little hard to process. But we’re having fun now,” she flung her arms around the twins, “aren’t we, girls? Look! It’s Uncle Ten!”

“Unh Tey! Unh Tey!” Maude chortled.

“Can you believe these monkeys are almost two years old?” she said. Both girls threw back their heads. “Chee, chee, chee!” they chattered. Martha hugged them close.

“I love you, you know,” she said, and planted one kiss each on their rosy, reachable cheeks.

I gave the girls their sparkling headbands. Maude grabbed hers, yanked off her party hat and stuck the band on her head. It nestled in her cloud of red hair like a tiara. Eighteen months old, and she already knew her headgear. Lola, ever the thoughtful one, studied her headband, turning it this way and that. She felt her head, confirming that it was already occupied. Then, as if coming to a major decision, she hung my present around her neck like a collar.

“That works, too,” I said.

“Say thank you to Uncle Ten,” Martha said.

“Ta, Unh Tey.”

“You’re most welcome,” I said. I wish all communication with girls could be this simple and satisfying. Bill walked up, two steins of beer in hand. “Dancing queen,” he crooned in my ear.

“Very funny.”

“It was.” Bill handed over one of the beers. “This’ll take the edge off.” He ushered me to an empty chair at the other end of the booth, right next to Heather.

I sat.

“Hi,” Heather said.

“Hi.”

Bill squatted between us. “So Heather, what do you think of my friend Ten?” he said.

“Don’t answer that,” I said to Heather. Luckily, she was laughing. “Exactly how much have you had to drink, Bill?” But Bill had already spotted another latecomer and was off.

“I hope it’s okay. I ordered you the veggie lasagna,” she said.

“Perfect. How’d you know?”

“I’m psychic, didn’t I tell you?” she said. “Well, and a little birdie may have also told me you don’t eat meat.”

We surveyed the group. I pointed out a group of detectives I knew from Robbery/Homicide, as well as Martha’s mother and stepfather. I knew Bill and Martha were part of some sort of parents-of-twins support group, and I guessed another table consisted of couples from there. I deduced this for two reasons. One, a second set of twins, little boys, also in high chairs, were the center of attention. Two, the adults surrounding them wore the same stunned we-don’t-get-out-much-anymore looks on their faces as Martha. As I watched, one of the little boys accidentally dropped a slice of salami on the floor. His lip trembled. The probable mother comforted him as the probable father snagged him another slice from the antipasti platter. No shaming involved. Remarkable.