The Second Rule of Ten: A Tenzing Norbu Mystery (Dharma Detective: Tenzing Norbu Mystery) (33 page)

“Go on. Read it. It won’t bite you.”

Yeshe read slowly, his eyes shining. “The secret of happiness is knowing this: some things are within your power to change and some things are not. Place your attention on those things that are within your power to change.”

He looked up. “This man—he was Buddhist.”

“Nope. Greek. Epictetus. He lived in another time, on the other side of the world. I doubt he’d even heard of the Buddha,” I said.

“But he is teaching the Dharma, don’t you think? This is so . . . so . . . “ He returned to the page.

Lobsang patted my knee. “I think you have given Yeshe a medicine more powerful than the pills.”

Yeshe happily clicked through a few more pages before erupting into a huge yawn. “My eyes will not let me continue,” he said. He set the device aside.

The three of us lay side-by-side-by-side on the floor, friend next to friend, candle next to Kindle.

I thought about change.

I asked into the darkness: “My father wants to know if you’d like to come back to Dharamshala. He has shifted out of blame and into a place of greater awareness. Or so he says.”

I listened to their breathing—when I remember to listen, breath can tell me everything I need to know. Theirs caught for a split-second, then quickened slightly.

Finally Yeshe answered. “This you’ve seen with your own eyes?”

“He is dying. He wishes to be free.”

They met this news with a silence that was full of feeling.

“So what do you think?” I asked.

“This brings up a conflict of desires,” said Lobsang. “I am just now beginning to accept that here is where I live.”

“In one way it is better,” Yeshe added. “Not so many distractions, as your father suggested. But there is,” Yeshe lowered his voice, “growing fear here. Fear, and . . . “ Yeshe said a Tibetan word, foreign to me.

“Paranoia,” Lobsang translated.

“Paranoia,” Yeshe repeated. “The Chinese have started coming into our community disguised as lamas, pretending to be friends. They pave their way with gifts, offering money, food, even television sets, in return for information and cooperation.”

“And the monks go along with this?”

“Those who refuse are banished,” Lobsang said.

“Banished,” Yeshe said. “And worse.”

“We are hearing of protests breaking out in other provinces.” Lobsang quieted his voice to barely a whisper. “It is bad, Tenzing, as bad as long ago. From the outside, it seems peaceful, but inside, everything is boiling.”

“Some are setting themselves on fire,” Yeshe said. “Students. Monks. Twenty at least, in the last year alone.”

I raised myself up on one elbow. “Here? Here in Lhasa?” I could scarcely bear to think of it.

“Not here yet, but elsewhere in China. Our brothers in Labrang are expected to attend ‘patriotic education’ sessions. The authorities call it monastic management.”

Lobsang’s voice tightened. “Management! They kick in doors and tear up photographs of His Holiness, replacing them with portraits of Mao Zedong. Hang surveillance cameras from the temple’s eaves!”

“And I thought Los Angeles was scary,” I said. “You should seriously consider coming back with me.”

We laughed, and the air lightened a little.

“Maybe we will, some day,” Yeshe said.

Lobsang pushed onto one elbow. “Tenzing, we have had no stories from you for months. Tell us what you are working on.”

I gave them the short and not-so-sweet version of all my latest detective work, paid and unpaid, beginning with my first introduction to Marv Rudolph and ending with the brutal demise of Charlie Montoya.

“Good story,” Lobsang said.

“Not really,” I said. “It has no ending, and it doesn’t make sense.”

“Then change it,” Yeshe said, after a moment

“What?”

“Change the story. Isn’t that what they are always doing in Hollywood? Changing the . . . what do they call them? Plays?”

“Screenplays.”

“Yes. It’s just like the mind. Don’t like the story it is telling you? Change it!”

“I wish it were that simple.” I felt a little bubble of irritation rise and pop. Yeshe’s naiveté was legendary—and one of my favorite things about him.

I drifted toward sleep, when I heard Yeshe again. “Shouldn’t we . . . you know.”

“Yes,” Lobsang said, finishing the thought. “We should bless these problems you are working to solve. Especially as you are here with us.”

They began to chant quietly, Lobsang’s voice a lower scale than Yeshe’s. I absorbed the pure duet of ancient sound. Soon my own voice joined in, lower still. After chanting in harmony for a moment, we softened our voices until the notes melted into a linked silence.

“Go on,” Yeshe whispered.

I offered my questions to the dark: “What happened to Sadie Rosen?” I let the words settle. Then “Who killed Marv Rudolph?” Finally, as I was trained to do, I added, “It is my belief that knowing these things will help ease suffering and promote truth.”

Lobsang answered back with the ancient, familiar refrain. “If a monk’s desires are pure, the desires of the monk will become manifest.”

I thought about this.

“I hope I’m still enough of a monk to qualify,” I said.

“I think you probably are,” Yeshe said. “What do you think, Lobsang?”

Lobsang’s answer was succinct.

“
Brrraapppp!
”

C
HAPTER
22

I am here again, lying face down on a concrete floor. I look around. A man watches me from the shadows in the corner. Is it me? No. It is my father. He lifts a finger, as if in warning, then points outside.

I step into a garden. The garden is beautiful, lush with blooms. A cat runs by, not Tank, a black cat. I hold out my arms and spin around and around, and my arms lift me into the sky, until I spin far above the garden. The sky darkens around me. Is it day? Night? What time is it?

I look at my watch, but the numbers are distorted, like little scratches.

I am not surprised. I have been in this lucid dream before.

“Show me,” I say. And I am standing at the base of a tall stone watchtower. It is dark inside. Dangerous. I climb the steep stairs to the first level. It is as far as I am willing to go. I look out a narrow window, and see two dark-skinned men wrestling on the ground below. They look alike. Are they twins? No. But related.

A low voice speaks into my ear. It is neutral, neither male nor female.

“
What do we inherit?
” it says.

“Nothing,” I answer.

“
Everything,
” the voice replies.

The struggling men turn and stare up at me, and I am paralyzed, unable to look away, unable to move.

“Help me,” I say. “I don’t know what to do.”

“
Yes, you do,
” the voice says. “
Change the story.
”

I jolted awake, my eyes opening to strange smells, strange sounds. My heart thudded against my ribcage.
Where am I?
I touched the rough weave of my blanket. Became aware of Lobsang’s soft snores.

What time is it?

The glow of my watch told me, 3:20
A.M.
Of course. I’d slept only four hours, and now adrenaline sang in my veins. I sat up and again closed my eyes, allowing my breath to smooth.
That dream, again.
I’d had versions of it before. Recurring, disturbing, yet also, at times, illuminating. I allowed the dream to clarify from wispy image into description and stored the words as memory.

Fathers and sons. It always came back to that for me, didn’t it? Fathers and sons.

What do we inherit?

A deep shift started inside, and I wavered between fear and excitement. I was locking in on a homing beacon, I could feel it, though whether the shift was personal or professional, I didn’t yet know. But a new shape was forming, something bigger than anything I’d dealt with before. Maybe more sinister, too. I shivered.

It was action time.

Lobsang and Yeshe must have sensed my urgency, because they stirred awake.

I have to go,” I said. “I can try to arrange safe passage for you as well.” They met each other’s eyes. Lobsang’s shake of the head was slight.

“Not now,” Yeshe said to me. “Not yet.”

He pushed himself upright. I walked over, and we exchanged a warm hug.

“Take your pills,” I said.

Lobsang insisted I join him in the kitchen for a bowl of rice and a mug of hot tea before I left.

He walked me outside. I pressed some bills into his hand.

“In case,” I said. “Ask for Chubchen.”

“Tenzing . . . “

“Just think about it. Otherwise, buy Yeshe a Kindle, and yourself a computer. It’s the new way of keeping in touch.” I climbed onto the ATV. “E-mail, my friend. Skype. Everybody’s doing it, even His Holiness. Why not us?”

Lobsang laughed. “You seem to forget where we live, Tenzing.”

“Lobsang . . . “

“Go! Go!”

I left before I changed my mind and stayed.

It took me no time at all to get back to the airport—it was downhill most of the way, and the road through the village was deserted. That said, I still arrived at the lot feeling like I’d gone through ten rounds of kickboxing. I left my wheels with Chub, collected my refund, and jogged into the airport, three hundred dollars the richer, ticket in hand, ready to bargain my way home. I talked myself onto a flight to Katmandu, and by noon I was in the transit area, scanning the big board for Thai Air departure options. I got lucky again, and found a flight to Bangkok that left in 45 minutes, and connected with a nonstop to L.A. (Katmandu has fixers, too.) I boarded immediately and somehow snagged an aisle seat.

The next leg of my journey would take a little over three hours. Before I did anything else, I jotted down my early morning dream-thoughts. Then I sat back and let my mind twist and turn the pieces into different formations, a kaleidoscopic review. Julius would call it rumination.

Two men, grappling in a garden. Gardening. Gardener.
Julius has a beautiful garden.
My father. Me. Wrestling. A black cat, running away. Men.
I look like my father.
Fathers and sons.
What do we inherit?

My eyes snapped open.

Manuel, the gardener. Manuel, and the man who I thought was Manuel, both on Julius Rosen’s estate. Not one man. Two. Both broad-shouldered. Both squat. And those same wide shoulders on “the Man” in the back table at La Cantinela. Two men: the older one a gardener called Manuel, the younger a killer called Chaco.
El Gato.
The Cat. Not brothers, but related. Father and son
.
And working with Julius.

Why had I not seen this earlier?

Because you expected to see only gardeners in the garden. And friends inside the house.

What else was I missing? What other limiting thoughts were still blinding me? In how many other ways had I ignored my second rule?

I opened my laptop, my brain on fire. My fingers flew, and we were landing before I knew it.

I had to change planes in Bangkok, and without much time between. I was unable to retrieve my e-mails —the airport Wi-Fi was down. I did manage to take a quick paper-towel bath in the restroom, scrubbing off the top few layers of travel grime. I changed into my one remaining clean T-shirt. The rest of me would have to wait until I got home.

Window seat this time. As the plane climbed out over the ocean and banked toward the east, I had a panoramic look at the steaming mess called Bangkok. Streets choked with traffic, a thick haze of pollution—I could practically smell the rank air. It made me very glad I didn’t live there, until I realized a version of the same thing awaited me on the other end.

I was tempted to close my eyes and sleep, but I still had work to do. I started with the autopsy report. I scanned it quickly. Most of the information I already knew.
Careful, Ten. Don’t assume you know what it says.
I reread the report, slowly. Sure enough, a small item toward the bottom caught my eye: “Trace adhesion, upper left bicep.” It must have turned up when they used the ultraviolet light to scan Marv’s body, after Bill and I left.

So innocent: trace adhesion.

My skin tingled. Adhesion meant at one point Marv, or someone else, had stuck something on his arm. Something like a patch, maybe.

Another connection between Marv and Julius.

The flight attendant delivered a tray of food to the man on my right.

“Here is your special meal, sir.”

I eyed it curiously. Looked like ordinary food to me, though mighty tasty, even with the meat. My hollow stomach calculated the enormous gap between the here and now, and my meager, predawn breakfast bowl of Tibetan rice.

My neighbor answered my avid stare.

“Kosher,” he said. “I’m Jewish. We don’t mix meat and dairy, not even on planes. They are always to be eaten and cooked separately.”

“You mean in separate pans?”

“No. Separate ovens. Sometimes even separate kitchens.”

“Hunh.”

At that point I received my own, nonspecial meal, some kind of cheese-filled pasta this time. Not pretty, but my stomach didn’t care. I ate everything on my tray, including the ice cold dinner roll and a square of yellow cake glazed with a pink, translucent slick of unknown flavor and origin.

One final task awaited me, before I allowed myself a movie and a nap. I pulled out the screenplay to
Loving Hagar
, its pages slightly curled. I had read Shakespeare’s
Romeo and Juliet
soon after I arrived in America, as part of my crash course in Western ways. I’d liked it okay, though more as a cautionary tale regarding the perils of attachment than anything else. Talk about bad karma.

Anyway.

I leafed through the whole thing first, and saw that someone had not only highlighted all of Hagar’s lines, but also turned down the corners of every page that mentioned her. I was guessing that someone was Tovah. Very industrious of her.

I started again, from the beginning. FADE IN, it said. Okay . . .

This was my first screenplay, and it took me a little while to get used to the format. But I soon caught on—and soon was totally confused. I’d thought this was a love story between a holocaust survivor and a Palestinian refugee. Surely that was what Julius had told me? But when the young man of this love story was introduced, his name was Fernando, and he was described as “20s, hunky, think early Banderas meets Robert Pattinson, plus tats.”