The Third Rule Of Ten: A Tenzing Norbu Mystery (24 page)

The burly bodyguards surveyed the street, finally empty of scurrying last-minute guests, and stepped inside the church. The tall wooden doors closed behind them. I thanked Carlos and hung up. I stared at the doors, my mind racing.

“Clancy, any idea who the girl’s parents are?”

Clancy shook his head. “Hard to tell. But I did snap just about everyone who came in. Only one dude wearing a corsage, and his old lady, too. Here, take a look.”

Clancy pulled up his pictures and scrolled through them one by one. “Here’s Goodhue,” Clancy muttered. Mark Goodhue had arrived solo, looking like a stiff penguin in his tuxedo. The sequence of shots showed him quickly entering the church, head down, not talking to anyone. I kept skimming the long parade of dressy couples. Some went straight inside; others clustered by the entrance to chat.

“Stop!” I said, pointing. “There’s Chuy Dos!”

Chuy Dos was almost unrecognizable in his immaculate tuxedo, without his cowboy hat, but his bowlegged, puffed-chest stance gave him away. He held the arm of a slight woman in a long turquoise gown, crowned with an elaborate crest of matching feathers. Chuy Dos was half-waving at someone ahead of them and smiling, but there was something off about his smile.

“Clancy, can you zoom in on his face?”

Clancy filled the screen with the narrow features of Chuy Dos. Now it was clear as day. His mouth was as much grimacing as smiling, his eyes wide and frozen. He resembled a mongoose facing a cobra.

“Who is he looking at?” I wondered out loud.

“Lemme see if I can figure it out,” Clancy said. He clicked back and forth between photographs, before giving a short nod.

“I think maybe it’s this dude. Arrived right before them. Look how the bodyguards … how everyone’s eyes are on him and his old lady. And like I said, they’re the only ones wearing flowers. Wow, she is one hot mama!” He tipped the screen toward me.

I stared. The woman was stunning, although she hardly looked old enough to have a teenage child. Her skin was like amber honey, and thick black hair cascaded in soft waves over her toned shoulders. A pair of delicate eyebrows perched over dark, fathomless eyes, and her lips were lush and mysterious, curved ever so slightly upward, as if inviting you into a secret world of promise. Her sparkling, emerald-green dress clung to her curves and then flared out, spilling onto the sidewalk in sequined waves. A small spray of roses, cream and pink like those in the girl’s bouquet, was pinned to one shoulder.

She resembled a sea goddess. A married sea goddess—a huge diamond solitaire and thick gold wedding band took up most of her ring finger. If she was the mother of that stocky, self-conscious girl, I understood why I had felt a commiserative twinge; glittering tiara or not, the child would never outshine her mother in anyone’s eyes, most especially her father’s. I, too, had grown up under the shadow of two larger-than-life parents. Makes it hard to thrive.

I shifted my attention to the woman’s companion, presumably her husband and the father of the girl. His left arm was locked around her shoulders, and his ring finger, like hers, sported a thick band, this one studded with diamonds. He was wearing dark glasses, and his chin was tucked, so it was difficult to make out his features. His hair was a fuzzy nest of curls, a lighter shade of brown than his fashionable, three-day-old beard. His shoulders were wide, his torso trim. He looked about 35, maybe a touch older than his wife. As I studied his image, though, my gut sounded a warning, like sonar detecting hidden danger beneath the surface of things.

I wish I could see his eyes.

He had a single scarlet rose, the color of fresh blood, pinned to the lapel of his tuxedo. His right arm hung at his side, thick fingers slightly curled. In fact, his whole body seemed coiled. I scrolled through the next few photographs and noticed, as Clancy had pointed out, the tension, if not terror, emanating from everyone around this quietly threatening man. His mere presence activated an internal Code Red, the highest state of readiness, reserved for terrorists.

Terrorists—and cartel kings.

I was looking at Carnaté.

“I’m going inside,” I said to Clancy.

“For real?”

“Don’t worry. My mother was Catholic,” I said. And I crossed myself, to prove it.

I slipped inside the church. It was at least ten degrees cooler than outside and as dim and dusky as I’d hoped. As my eyes adjusted, I counted some 60 wooden pews, 30 on each side of the carpeted middle aisle. Each pew seated about eight or ten people, and almost all were full, which meant there were close to five hundred people in the church. At first, the bodyguards were nowhere to be seen. Then I spotted them sitting about halfway up on the far left, their broad shoulders and thick necks unmistakable.

The back pew still had a couple of empty seats on the aisle. I moved to it and paused. My body reached back decades to retrieve the muscle memory of genuflecting while making the sign of the cross on my chest. The 11-year-old me had been briefly entranced by the mysterious rituals in Saint Joseph, the Catholic church in Paris my mother had dragged me to during one of her “confused” spiritual phases, this one brought on by a short-lived attempt at sobriety. After a few months, her belief had lapsed—right before she did—but the ingrained shame and longing for forgiveness remained alive inside her to the end. She died of a massive drug-and-alcohol overdose a year and a half later. When I found her, collapsed on our living-room floor, I also found a tiny gold cross I had never seen before hanging from a delicate chain around her mottled neck.

I looked around the church. The architecture was simple but elegant. Several small shrines lined the walls, complete with clusters of votive candles and fresh flowers—offerings laid at the feet of statues of Mary, with or without her infant child. Mary as a bride. Mary as a mother. Mary as a wife. Mary grieving the loss of her son. The natural light was muted, filtered through tall windows of brilliant stained glass. Looming over everything was a large wooden crucifix above the altar.

Standing at the front, the girl in white faced the crowd, her shoulders hunched with self-consciousness. Her retinue spilled out on either side of her. Mark Goodhue, Chuy Dos, and Chuy’s wife sat in the front left pew, and the Sea Goddess was seated on the right. Up by the altar, an elderly priest gazed up at the lectern, where the man I suspected to be Carnaté was reading a lesson in accented but understandable English. He kept his eyes firmly pinned on the text in front of him; so once again, I couldn’t get a clear look at his eyes.

He seemed to be sneering. Then I realized that a thin scar, probably from a knife wound, had pulled the left corner of his mouth into a permanent sneer. Or maybe he’d always had the sneer inside, and the scar had merely allowed his mouth to catch up.

To my surprise, the service was in English, perhaps as a favor to Goodhue.

“‘Then the Lord extended my hand and touched my mouth,’” the man at the lectern read, “‘saying, See, I place my words in your mouth.’”

He turned up the volume, and people shifted in their seats. “‘This day I set you over nations and over kingdoms! To root up and to tear down! To destroy and to demolish! To build and to plant!’”

The ringing voice faded into silence, but there was no peace in the collective stillness. More like a palpable sense of suppressed dread.

“The word of the Lord,” he concluded, his misshapen mouth in a half smile.

“Thanks be to God,” came the reply from the assembled. The man slipped on his sunglasses and rejoined his goddess, draping his arm around her shoulders possessively.

It was the
quinceañera
’s turn next, but she fared less well. Her voice was trembling and barely audible. I caught a few words, like “daughter” and “Mary, Mother of Jesus,” before she blurted out “Amen!” loud and clear.

The priest smiled at that and proclaimed, “Gloria Teresa Garcia, may God, who has begun this good work in you, bring it to completion.”

Good. I now had a first, middle, and last name with which to work. The priest sprinkled Gloria Teresa with water. She maneuvered to the right of the altar and placed her bouquet of roses at the foot of a statue of the Virgin Mary, draped in blue. The priest then motioned to the left front pew. Chuy Dos joined Gloria Teresa at the altar and handed her a black leather Bible. Goodhue stiffly followed suit, passing over a delicate set of prayer beads with a silver cross dangling from one end.
Rosary beads
, I corrected myself.

I looked around. The closed eyes, the carved deities, the flowers and beads, the memorized words of devotion and thanksgiving, the chanting in unison, the hymns of praise—was any of it so different from the Buddhist rites and rituals that defined so much of my early life? Each tribe comes with its own spiritual instructions and safety measures, but all are aimed at assuaging terror around the inevitability of death. The only real difference I could see was that other tribes felt justified in killing their enemies in the name of their beliefs, while mine was more likely to immolate itself.

The deep blast of a pipe organ startled me out of my reverie, as the congregation joined in on a haunting hymn about a soul magnifying its lord. People were reaching for their coats as they sang; the service must be winding down. I had escaped notice for now. Time to return to my car and post Clancy at the other end of Union Avenue, in order not to lose the troops en route to the party. As for me, if I managed to lose two white stretch Hummers in Echo Park, I would personally shred my P. I. license, with Tank as my witness.

C
HAPTER
15

Clancy left first, and I fell in several cars behind the girls’ Hummer. Within minutes, we were back on the 101 South, but not before the first limo’s sunroof opened, and the birthday girl popped her tiara-clad head out to blow kisses at a couple of astonished homeless men stationed at the freeway entrance. I liked her more and more.

I had no idea where we were going, only that our destination was somewhere west of downtown, off the 10 freeway. Forty minutes later I had my answer, as both Hummers, followed by a steady stream of Beamers, Benzes, and rented town cars, exited on Fourth Street in Santa Monica and snaked their way seaward, until they crossed Ocean Avenue and passed underneath the iconic arched sign of the Santa Monica Pier.

The cars were headed for the pier parking lot, half of which was taken up by a giant, blue-striped tent. Beyond the tent I could see the smaller neon sign announcing the local carnival of delights called Pacific Park. Beyond that lay the ocean, swabbed with a broad brushstroke of gold by the setting sun. A pale crescent moon was barely visible above the skyline.

I called Clancy.

“Yo,” he said. “I haven’t been to the Santa Monica Pier since high school, when I rode the old coaster, high on weed.”

“No rides for you today. Sorry. I need you to keep your eye on the lot, in case Goodhue or Chuy Dos takes off. Especially Goodhue,” I said. “He’s still our main target.”

“What about you?”

“Be a shame to waste my party clothes,” I said.

“Sounds reckless,” Clancy warned.

“I’m running out of time,” I said.

Uniformed parking valets were checking the cars against their lists, so I detoured up the hill then drove back down Appian Way and into the public “Hot Dog Stick” lot, named after the tiny shack next to it that is famous for its corn dogs.

I made my way back to the entrance to the pier, as more and more cars inched along the boardwalk leading toward the parking lot. The empty Ferris wheel, roller coaster, and numerous other rides awaited the onslaught of guests, as did a courtyard of fast-food franchises. Whoever was paying for this had booked the entire pier and had no doubt bought off all the concessions as well. Paid them handsomely, I thought, given the benign expressions on the vendors’ faces. A small fleet of catering trucks told me that high-end food was also on the menu; stacked crates of champagne, tequila, and Mexican beer promised a high-octane party. I estimated the price tag for Gloria Teresa’s fiesta at well over $100,000. Pretty nice party.

A familiar clip-clopping sounded behind me. I turned, half-expecting another pair of reins to be handed to me. Instead, I was greeted by the startling sight of Gloria Teresa sitting sidesaddle on a gigantic white horse at the far end of the wooden byway, her skirt spilling down one flank like a blanket of roses. Her escort was holding the bridle and looked about as happy doing so as I would be.

iPad Lady directed them off to one side, as the two Hummers let out the rest of the entourage at the pier entrance, reversed course, and drove away. The pedestrian walkways flanking the wide wooden thoroughfare were rapidly filling up with guests entering on foot. Gloria Teresa’s royal court hustled past the guests and into the tent.

Meanwhile, several harried uniformed guards were checking people against their guest lists. It seemed as good a time as any to join the crowd. I affixed myself to a large, multigenerational family shuffling up to the entrance. As soon as we reached the checkpoint, I bent down to “retrieve” a quarter I had palmed from my pocket and then tapped one of the young daughters on the shoulder.

“Excuse me, did you just drop this?” I asked, smiling and holding out the quarter.

She shook her head, smiling as well.

“Are you friends with Gloria Teresa?” I continued.

“Yes,” she said, as our guard tried to count heads. “She’s in the class ahead of me at school.”

And we were inside.

Just in time, it seemed.

“Señoras y Señores, ladies and gentlemen!” The female leader of a mariachi band tapped on her microphone and beckoned everyone to the front of the tent. Like her nine male bandmates, she was dressed in a ruffled white shirt with a soft red tie, black tuxedo pants striped with silver studs and belted in red, and a black-and-silver bolero jacket with a jaunty matching sombrero. Behind her, I counted several horns and electric guitars, as well as a hefty drum set. “Please join Gloria Teresa’s family in welcoming their
princessa
to her ball!” the leader called out.