The Third Rule Of Ten: A Tenzing Norbu Mystery (35 page)

Kestrel angled away from me. He closed his eyes, resting his cheek on the back cushion. The message was clear: our conversation was done.

The chopper flew steadily south.

Kestrel appeared asleep, despite the diet pills. He let out a soft snore.

I picked up the headset tucked beside my seat and slipped it on. I adjusted the mouthpiece.

“Sam?”

The headset crackled.

“This shit’s fucked up,” I heard. “I was eavesdropping a little bit. Caught the gist.”

“I know,” I said, my voice low. “Listen, I don’t have much time. After we land, are you supposed to stay put or return to your headquarters?”

“Stay put,” he said. “Not Jack; he was drop-off only. But they told me I might be needed for a medical transfer.”

“Good,” I said. “I’m glad.”

Kestrel shifted positions, his eyes fluttering. I quickly removed the headset and moved across to the curved window.

Behind the curtains, the sky was light. The sun must have risen. I dared a quick look below, parting the sheer material. Recognizably inhospitable terrain streamed beneath us. I craned my head to look frontward, and soon a small speck of white appeared, swiftly growing larger and larger up ahead. The chopper began to lose altitude, just as the other Premier Helicopter floated by at a distance, already heading back to California.

I hurried to my seat and buckled up, using deep, slow breaths to keep the descent-flutters from erupting into full-blown nausea. My phobia was slightly better but by no means cured. The story of most of the challenges in my life.

Kestrel checked his iPhone and frowned. “Do you have service?” he asked.

I powered up.

“No,” I said. I hadn’t banked on that. An added wrinkle.

We settled on the ground with a light bump.

Sam hurried to the side door and pulled it open. Scalding air flooded the cabin. A man in green scrubs waded through the heat toward us.

Kestrel was hurriedly unbuckling his seat belt. He pushed to his feet. He held out his hand.

I passed the container over to Dr. Kestrel. He, in turn, handed it to the other man, who turned and took off. Kestrel followed him.

“I’ll be back,” I said to Sam.

And I followed Kestrel.

C
HAPTER
21

The heat was unbearable. Every inhale was a mouthful of seared oxygen. The nylon coveralls didn’t help. My left armpit, harboring the .38, was literally streaming sweat by the time we reached the entrance to the building. The man in scrubs pushed inside, and we followed. He was Hispanic and harried-looking, his thick black mustache hooking around both sides of his mouth like twin scimitars. He set the cooler down.

“You’re late,” he barked, echoing Kestrel. A second man appeared, a stone-faced soldier boy. He was dressed in short-sleeved black fatigues; his uniform included handcuffs and a Heckler & Koch self-loading pistol. No safety vest—probably too hot for one. Finally, an older woman hurried up, in nurse’s white.

Mustachio Man frowned in my direction. “¿
Quién es este
? Who’s this?”

Kestrel waved toward the inside of the building. “He’s one of theirs.”

He said it, not me. I tried to look as crisply official as possible, given the rivulets of sweat freely flowing down my body.

“Dr. Gomez is assisting me,” Kestrel said to me.

I nodded to Gomez. “Good to meet you.”

The expression on his face stated otherwise. “Our nurse, Señora Delgado,” he said. Delgado, at least, had a kind face.

Niceties over, Gomez waved us in, past the security guard. I checked out his uniform. Mexican Municipal Police. Probably moonlighting as a hospital guard. If I got paid less than $600 a month, I’d moonlight, too.

The air was as icy inside as it was scorching out. I shivered, surveying the interior with interest. Impressively clean and painted a pale hospital gray-green, the structure was basically one large box. The left side was divided into ten rooms, with ten closed doors. An assortment of unfinished office cubicles in various states of construction lined the other side. A freestanding, diesel-fueled generator hummed away from the far corner of the building, the kind normal hospitals used as backup, in case of a power outage. Maybe these guys had two.

At present, we seemed to be the only people in the building. It had the hastily vacated appearance of a schoolyard during an air raid.

Kestrel said, “Have you concluded the pre-op?”

“Yes,” Dr. Gomez nodded. “Just administered the hundred milligrams of Demerol.”

I jumped in. “I need a word with Assemblywoman McMurtry before she goes under. Where is she?”

Gomez checked with Kestrel. He shrugged his okay. “But make it quick,” he said. He nodded to the nurse. “Take him.” She reacted to his order with an adoring gaze. I guess his particular brand of sex appeal crossed borders.

Nurse Delgado led me across the empty floor. One of the side doors was ajar, and I saw open cardboard boxes and an empty hospital bed, the mattress still wrapped in plastic.

“Is Goodhue with the patient?” I asked. My hand crept toward my shoulder holster, hidden inside my coveralls.

“No. Señor Goodhue take a jeep into town. Doctor Gomez tell him to come back when la Señora is in the recovery room.”

We reached the last door. She knocked lightly, before opening it. “Señora, your friend would like to speak to you.”

She withdrew. This room was not only finished but it was a replica of any state-of-the-art pre-op room in any top medical facility. I crossed to the hospital bed, where a very different version of Bets McMurtry lay. No make-up. No sunglasses. No fire. I would have walked right past her on the street without recognizing her. Her skin was parchment and had the telltale yellowish tinge of a liver on strike. Her tawny eyeballs told the same tale. She looked ten years older than the day before.

The Demerol had worked its magic, and she eyed me with benign amusement, stoned to the gills. “Detective,” she said. “I think I’m mad at you, but I’m not remembering why.” She rested her head back on the pillow. “What are you doing here?”

“I’m here to help you,” I said.

“Sweet of you. Why?”

“Bets, you’re in business with a really bad man.”

She groaned. “Ah, shit—not that again. Now I’m remembering why I stopped liking you, Norbu.”

“Listen,” I said. “You have big dreams. If you’re lucky, an even bigger future. Do you really want to tie that to a drug lord and a killer?”

She rested her eyes on mine. Her pupils were like pancakes. She was too under the influence to think straight, and her next words proved it. “Here’s what I know. Everybody’s hiding a nasty secret or two. My last drug run I was so desperate I gave a stranger a blow job for fifty bucks. Brought me to my knees”—her smile was beatific—“in more ways than one. The next day, I got down on those same knees and accepted Jesus as my Lord and Savior. Best day of my life, right after the worst one.” She tried to focus on me, with little success. “I got news for you. I’m going to die without this procedure, and I need someone who’s willing to break a few rules to save my life.”

“Break a few rules? Is that your definition of what he’s up to?”

She sank into her pillow. Her eyelids were at half-mast, and I knew my time was almost up.

“Don’t you worry about me and Mr. Morales. They got crooks in the White House that eat guys like Chaco for breakfast.” She lifted a forefinger, pointing vaguely. “That’s where I’m going, Ten,” she intoned, like a stoned seer of the future. “Sacramento first, then D.C. You’re looking at the second governor of California who will make it to the White House. Morales is nothing. Just another blow job, so I can live long enough do the real work God’s got planned for me.”

I heard a brisk knock. Dr. Gomez stepped inside. “Almost time,” he said to Bets. She barely nodded. He caught my eye and beckoned toward the door.

“You’re wanted,” he said. His mouth twitched strangely.

I stepped out the door and into the point-blank range of a pair of guns at the end of a pair of extended arms. One pistol, the Heckler, belonged to the security guard; the other, an older but equally deadly Beretta 92, to Mark Goodhue.

Gomez withdrew, closing the door softly behind me.

A cop can always tell whether a person aiming a gun is an amateur or a professional. The “tell” is the steadiness of the shooter’s hand. The security guard’s grip was stable as a rock, and the quiet gleam in his gaze informed me he had experience pulling the trigger and it was an experience he’d enjoyed.

In contrast, Goodhue’s two-plus pounds of pistol fluttered and waved like a flag in a fickle wind.

Police Academy training teaches a variety of complex physical maneuvers that should work when faced with a close-range, armed perp. Should is one thing. Reality is another. I’d learned the hard way that the wisest way to disarm a dangerous shooter was with my mouth. In this situation, though, I was hampered by the fact that the expert shot and I were fluent in different languages. Where was Carlos when I needed him?

The language barrier was the least of my worries. Goodhue concerned me more. He’d probably never pointed anything heavier than a Montblanc pen before now. Berettas aren’t light, and some 92s don’t have manual safeties.

The gun waggled in the general direction of my head.

Criminals aren’t used to the truth. It confuses them. “You’re scaring the shit out of me, Goodhue,” I said.

“What?”

“Could you point your Beretta somewhere else, before you shoot me in the face?”

Goodhue had an MBA and a designer suit, but he was still a criminal. He blinked, as if suddenly realizing how much his gun hand was wobbling.

He said something in Spanish to the guard, who stepped back two feet and raised his second hand to steady his first. The new angle gave him a better direct shot. Goodhue lowered his own arm with a visible sigh of relief. He reached a hand to massage his shoulder muscle before replacing gun-wielding with a more familiar weapon of choice: honcho arrogance.

“Representative McMurtry and I are deeply disappointed that you are meddling in our affairs again,” he sniffed. “Against explicit orders.”

I wasn’t all that happy at the moment, either. The only thing that gave me cheer was that nobody had frisked me. I could feel the comforting touch of my pal and partner, the Wilson Supergrade, tucked alongside my rib cage.

“Who told?” I said.

He jerked his head toward the guard. “He called me in town. Said there was some Chinese-looking guy here. I knew right away.”

He turned to the guard and fired off another sentence in Spanish. I may not speak the language, but I know bloodlust when I see it. The guard practically licked his lips, as his hand tightened on his weapon. So Goodhue was giving him my killing orders.

For the third time this week, I was in the company of a stone-cold shooter, with a target on my chest. The guard jerked his chin toward the door. I stayed put.

Goodhue said to me, “Don’t worry. He’s just taking you to the helicopter.”

Right.

Goodhue turned, as if to walk away.

“Mr. Goodhue?”

He stopped. Faced me, his eyebrows raised.

“Why? Why Chaco Morales?”

If he talked, I knew I really was dead. But at least I’d die knowing a little more about the nature of greed. Goodhue’s look danced between smugness and pity. “You haven’t been around politics much, have you?”

I shook my head.

“You ought to hang around Washington for a while. Or even Sacramento. You deal with those guys for a few years, and you’re grateful to do business with a guy like Chaco. At least he doesn’t waste your time pretending he’s not a crook.”

“That’s your justification?”

“You can’t possibly be that naive, Detective Norbu. Hell, no. My justification is the same as everyone else’s. I want to be rich, and I want to be powerful. I was just an entrepreneurial peon with an MBA, trying to get a small medical supplies business off the ground, when I stumbled onto Chuy Dos’s cleaning-service model. We met, and we hit it off. The more he told me, the more I liked what I was hearing. He and his partner were sitting on a gold mine with this concierge cleaning–slash–drug delivery scheme they’d hatched, and I told them so. They had a database of a couple thousand wealthy people around L.A. who didn’t mind bending the law to get their special treats. It was a niche opportunity of a lifetime. I pitched the idea of using the same model to locate and satisfy transplant candidates. Put together a business plan, combined forces, formed a new company under their umbrella one, and
voilà
, here we are. We’ve got over four hundred people on the waiting list. Once we’re up and running, we’re talking half a billion a year. Net.”

Just saying the numbers made him shine with glee.

“And the organ suppliers?”

“That’s Chuy’s end of the business. I don’t ask. But gangbangers are vermin, Tenzing. You show me someone who says otherwise, and I’ll show you a liar. Mr. Morales is a generous man. The family of every dead banger gets five thousand in cash. It’s a triple win.”

“How does Bets feel about that?”

“Bets doesn’t know the details. She doesn’t want to. She’s got long-term political plans, and so does our PAC, New Americans for Freedom. With a rising star as our political mouthpiece, one who literally owes her life to us, we can keep all our business models nice and lucrative. I’m sorry, did I say triple? I should have said, home run!”

“All very impressive,” I said.

You’re a stain on this little patch of the universe. I’d like to …

Settle down
, I thought.
You need this stain to keep talking.

“So, what about the other thing, the heat under the building? What’s that about?”

He frowned. “I’m sorry?”

“What are you guys storing down there?”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” he said.

This, I wasn’t expecting. Now what? I decided to rattle his cage. “The foundation showed up hot on a satellite heat scan. A drone confirmed it.”

Goodhue reddened. “What are you … ?” His voice climbed the scale. “What satellite? What drone?”