The Third Rule Of Ten: A Tenzing Norbu Mystery (22 page)

I didn’t tell her this, but whatever evidence I found as a private investigator through pretexting would be inadmissible in any court of law. “I’m not going to take away anything from you,” I said. I would pass this information along to Bill, but that would be the extent of my intrusion.

“You’re not?” She stared, her features as motionless as a lizard’s.

“No. I just needed to see what was in the backpack. You can keep it.”

“Oh,” she said, sounding genuinely relieved. “Well, then.”

“But I do have some questions. What is your maid’s name?”

“Maria.”

“Maria what?”

She waved the question off. “Garcia? Gonzales? You’ll have to ask her. I pay the agency directly. In cash.”

I stored that particular piece of information for later. I indicated the drugs. “And does the agency provide these every week as well? For cash?”

“I’d prefer not to say.” She lowered her voice. “Confidentiality agreement.”

“I understand,” I said.

“But I’m not addicted,” she went on. “If you’re careless, these pills can get a real grip on you. I watch how many I take. I have extraordinary self-discipline.”

“I believe that.”

“I wouldn’t have married and buried four husbands if I didn’t have will power.” Her perfectly pointed nose quivered, as if daring me to challenge her.

“And this method of purchasing painkillers, it’s legal?”

Her eyes blinked twice, allaying my earlier concern. But rather than answer, she changed the subject. “I’m sorry, Detective. Where are my manners? Would you care for a little something to drink or eat?” Her hands fluttered. The way she was eyeing her stash, I suspected she had some other snack in mind for herself.

“No, thank you, I’m fine.” I excused myself and stepped into the kitchen as Hilda et cetera, et cetera, et cetera Sweeney grabbed the vial of Oxy and disappeared up the curved wooden staircase.

I found Maria hunched over a clunky old-fashioned cell phone, a discarded sponge and spray bottle on the counter next to her. She shoved the phone in her uniform’s front pocket as I walked to her side.

“
Hola
, Maria.
¿Habla inglés
?” I asked. She gave her head a shake, her body language somewhere between a scowl and a cringe. I pointed to her pocket.

“
¿Teléfono?
Who were you just calling? Chuy Dos?” She shook her head again, a little too quickly, and a red flush crept up her neck. Some people should never try to lie.

Well, maybe she was lying about speaking English as well.

I tried again. “Maria. Do you speak English?” I enunciated each word slowly. “Tell … the … truth … and … you … won’t … get … into … trouble. Trouble. Do you understand?
Comprende
?”

She glanced at the kitchen door. “No trouble, please,
señor
,” she whispered. “No leave country. Chuy Dos, he promise.”

My mind started to race.

“Chuy Dos has promised to keep you here, in America?”

“
Si.
We working for Chuy Dos. He making us legal.”

“Working as a maid, cleaning houses?”

“
Si
. Cleaning. And also,” she nodded toward the doorway, “bringing the
drogas
.”

Why was she telling me this? My inner alarm went off. I grasped her arms, my grip firm.

“Were you talking to Chuy Dos, Maria? Just now, on the phone?”

Her eyes filled, and I felt terrible, but I had to know.

“What did you say to him? Tell me, Maria,” I ordered, raising my voice slightly. I stepped away and pounded my right hand into my left fist, as I had seen Chuy Dos do earlier. It worked.

“He tell us to look for white man! I tell him white man coming here,” she cried. “In this house!”

I took off, charging up the hill to my car, even as a small part of my brain had to chuckle. I’d been called a lot of names since moving to Los Angeles but never “white man.”

I fired up the Shelby. Which way, which way? North or south? I decided to retrace my path toward Sunset and pulled off at Chatauqua to watch and wait. Within moments, Chuy Dos’s two favorite burly enforcers screamed by, the driver’s meaty paws gripping the steering wheel. I counted three breaths and peeled down Chatauqua until I was safely on the coast highway and headed for Topanga Canyon Boulevard once again. My mind frantically rearranged the tiles on this complex mosaic of a case.

I had encountered a period of several fallow months between leaving the force and fulfilling the numerous legal and professional requirements necessary to become a licensed private investigator. I’d used the unexpected free time to read up on a few things, including starting your own business. I needed help if I was going to start my own; “How to be an Entrepreneur” was nowhere to be found in Dorje Yidam’s Buddha-centric curriculum. To my surprise, I’d found that I really enjoyed studying entrepreneurial success stories. And now I couldn’t help but admire the business model coming into focus before me, even as it horrified me: procure an army of illegals willing to
do
anything to achieve legal status and have them deliver drugs to upscale clients willing to
pay
anything for a high-quality product and absolute confidentiality. Quality and privacy. With a start, I realized my own little business promised clients the same two services.

Legal and moral issues aside, this distribution system was highly viable, the potential margin of profit enormous. And the cash-based economy meant other drug money could be laundered through the maids-for-hire business. “We Bring Clean to You,” indeed. Add to these the possible organ-transplant connection, not to mention who knows what other medical procedures, and you were potentially generating a lifelong need for prescription pain medication that you then would provide. All they needed to do was add babysitting and funeral homes (We Bring Serene to You?), and they’d have a perfect cradle-to-grave operation. As it was, the vertical became horizontal, the horizontal vertical, as business upon business stacked on and supported one another. Sitting high atop this very lucrative pyramid were guys like Carnaté. No wonder so many cartel leaders were popping up on the Forbes list of billionaires. With illegal models like these, they were easily taking home multiple millions every month.

I shook my head at the intricacy. If drug lords—at least the ones who survived over time, like “El Chapo” Guzman, the late Pablo Escobar, and my personal nemesis, Chaco Morales—ever put the same energy and time they invested in creating and executing crimes into building a legitimate empire, they would probably be equally successful, without blood on their hands and a bounty on their heads. But who could truly understand the labyrinth of the criminal mind? The Buddha, maybe, but he was long gone, and as far as I know, he didn’t leave a teaching on this subject.

Probably 98 percent of criminals are driven by poverty, addiction, and the misguided notion that they remain invisible while breaking the law. The L.A. jails are full of them, cycling in and out of locked pods, sure that things will be different, the next time.

Then there are the remaining 2 percent, masterminds like Chaco. A rare and dangerous breed, he was truly evil—a modern Moriarty. His addiction was to power, his morality that of a highly intelligent, stone-cold killer.

For me, Chaco was more than just a really bad, bad guy: he was the one who got away. I let him slip, even though I had him wounded on the pavement. It rankled me deeply, like a taunting itch I couldn’t quite reach.

I clung to the idea of him, in a most un-Buddhist fashion.

During Chaco’s fairly brief reign, at least during my interactions with him, he had built an impressive empire, one that rivaled Guzman’s and even Escobar’s. Chaco was obviously capable of what entrepreneurs call outside-the-box thinking. Now, apparently, there was a new dog on the block: Carnaté. This new model in front of me—using maids as dope distributors to the wealthy; carving up gangbangers to provide other rich clientele with desperately needed organs; manipulating people’s innate greed, on the one hand, and desperation on the other to loosen their moral fiber—had the fingerprints of another Chaco all over it.

Heightened alertness tap-tapped the edges of my mind, coupled with a feather-tickle deep in my belly. I balanced on the borderland between excitement and fear.

According to Bill’s sources, including the DEA, Chaco had completely disappeared off everybody’s radar, here and in Mexico. Then word came down from the Mexican Army, as well as Los Zetas, the Mexican crime syndicate: Chaco was dead.

I didn’t believe it. Chaco and I were hooked at a level I might not understand, but I trusted my instincts on this one. I would know if Chaco Morales had died, as surely as I sensed he was still alive.

C
HAPTER
14

I called Heather as I turned into my driveway.

“How about Langer’s, say four o’clock? Can you get away that early?”

“Perfect,” Heather said.

Once home, I followed the advice I’d given Clancy and took a very long, very hot shower, scrubbing the past two days from my body with multiple rounds of soap and shampoo. I toweled off briskly and scraped what few whisker bristles there were from my non-white Tibetan cheeks. I was still bone-tired, with the charcoal smudges under my eyes to prove it, but at least my skin and hair were clean.

I met my dark-ringed eyes in the mirror. “Are you really ready to tell Heather the truth?” I said out loud. “The whole truth?” Just the words alone made my stomach tighten and the inside of my mouth go dry. As I turned from my reflection, Tank wandered in and gave my ankle a light bump with his nose. He always senses when my emotions start gyrating.

I reached for him, lifting him into my arms as I moved to the edge of my bed to sit.

“Heather and I used to take showers together,” I told Tank. “I can’t even remember the last time we did that.”

Tank turned his emerald green eyes toward me.

“I know. It was so good, and now it isn’t.” I gathered up the loose fur on Tank’s neck, gave it a little tug, and then released it. “I’ve been trying, Tank. Really trying this time.”

This was crazy. In the past week alone I’d been burgled, shot at, stalked, and struck with a pipe. Yet the thought of telling Heather the truth—of upsetting her, maybe even making her cry—was far more terrifying then any one of these assaults. My chest literally clenched with fear at the thought of what lay ahead.

My eyes felt scratchy, and I rubbed them with my palms.

Why was I so scared? Why was I so bad at reading relationship clues? I was a trained detective. Why couldn’t I act like one, instead of a … a … ?

Tank meowed.

“Right, a complete idiot who knows nothing about women.”

I rubbed at my eyes again. And suddenly I understood what was going on. I had seen Lola and Maude make exactly this gesture when they were trying hard
not
to cry. Ooph. Maybe it wasn’t Heather’s tears I feared. Maybe it was my own.

The simple act of owning the truth seemed to be directly connected to a deep well of feeling inside. I took a deep breath and dove further.

My guilt, my avoiding Heather wasn’t about eating meat or feeling judged or even sleeping with Cielo. These were evidence of a deeper, much more serious reality. The truth was, I didn’t love Heather anymore. I hadn’t for some time. And Heather deserved to know. I really didn’t want to fail at this relationship, but I was holding onto a chimera, an idea of closeness, as opposed to actual intimacy. One of the biggest clues? I had been in several life-threatening situations, had actually killed two men, over the past few days, yet I hadn’t thought to call her, had barely even missed her.

Worse, I had been keeping things from her for months—things I did, things I felt—because I didn’t want to upset her. But the more I hid this growing pile of issues from her, the more compelled I was to find fault with her. My mind marveled at this mechanism, all the more amazing because I hadn’t been aware of it until now.

And she’s been doing the same with me.

I breathed in the painful truth of this and exhaled.

Heather and I were victims of the same patterns, pre-programmed to create the same cycles of suffering in our relationship. Somehow both of us got love and pain entangled at an early age and felt bound to keep repeating the same equation over and over and over again. But it was a lousy form of arithmetic: Love + Pain = Life.

I was way too familiar with this formula. In fact, only one woman had ever offered me an alternative, and I had run Julia off before we could test whether hers might lead to a happier result. The tears finally flowed, for Heather’s wounds as well as my own, and the release made room for a sense of calm I hadn’t felt in some time.

I put on a clean pair of jeans and a sky-blue dress shirt Martha had given me last year. She’d told me Bill didn’t like the color, but I knew better. Bill hadn’t worn a shirt this size in decades. Martha was sick of seeing the same three T-shirts every time I came over for dinner. I tucked my shirttails in and added a belt. It was a little warm for the cashmere blazer, but I set it on the bed to take anyway. I felt as if I was getting ready for a first date, rather than a probable breakup, but I wanted to look my best, even if I was heading for the termination of our romance. All rites of passage deserve respect.

I still had two hours—and the unexpected gift of calm. Who knows how long it would last? I moved to the deck and sat in the afternoon haze, mentally sorting through all the recent twists and turns of this case. For a detective, this, too, is working. I had a real mess on my hands. Time to try and make some order out of it and, if I was lucky, work out what to do next. Tank jumped onto my lap, and I let him stay, digging my hands into his soft blue-gray fur. His heartbeat was strong and steady, and his purr sounded like a tiny buzz saw.

Here’s what I knew:

CLARA FUENTES.
Status: missing, but still alive as of this morning. Last seen in the apartment of her relative, Sofia. Clara’s last call on the day she went missing was from her iPhone to an untraceable cell number. (I should call Mike to check on his progress tracking down that number.) Clara had made another call to her boss this morning, a cry for help. This time, the number was blocked, possibly also untraceable.