The First Rule of Ten (28 page)

“We can do this hard, or real hard. Your choice,” he said.

Roach, aka Brother Nehemiah, stepped next to Liam, his expression feral. I glanced down. He was wearing the silver-tipped cowboy boots he’d used to kick John D.

“What’s the matter, boys,” I said, “Run out of old men to rumble?”

The blow whipped my head back. A streak of pain seared my jaw.

“Shut yer gob hole!” Liam thundered.

I did a quick risk-assessment. Three of them: Liam, Roach, plus the driver. All three were locked and loaded, I was sure. One of me: armed with a phone and a set of car keys. This was not going to be a fair fight, if in fact I got to fight at all.

Liam snapped his thick fingers at me.

“Cell phone,” he said.

As I reached into my pocket for it, my fingers felt the two-pronged cork opener, right where I’d left it. Now we’re talking. I maneuvered the opener so it lay fairly flat along the waistband of my jeans. I prayed it would stay put. I handed my phone to Liam, and Liam tossed it to Roach.

“Burn it,” he told Roach. Then he patted me down, and I could smell the sour sweat coming off him in waves. He must have been out of practice, because he found the keys, but nothing else.

He snapped his meaty fingers again, this time at the driver still inside the Escalade. “Brother Jacob!” he called.

The man who climbed out of the driver’s seat and opened the rear door was lean and muscled, and instantly recognizable as Sister Rose’s Lookout Man from the farmer’s market. I stared at Jacob, but he wouldn’t meet my eyes.

Liam herded me into the backseat, gun prodding the small of my back. I climbed in and settled next to public enemy number four, Norman Murphy. He was pale as a ghost, and pretty much scared to death.

“Hello, Norman,” I said. “I’ll take mine with cream and two sugars, please.”

“Shut up,” he whispered.

“Not in the mood for chit-chat?”

“You think I want to be doing this?” he hissed. “Just shut the fuck up!”

Roach slid in next to Norman, and Liam and Jacob got in front. One U-turn later, we were gunning it down Topanga. We turned onto Entrada, and I knew where we were headed. What goes around comes around, and all that.

Liam directed Jacob onto a rutted dirt road that angled toward the back boundary of Topanga Canyon Park.

“Pull over here,” Liam said. We bounced off road, and Jacob parked by a motley cluster of trees. I mentally recited their names, to calm me down:
scrub oak
,
blue gum
,
California sycamore
.

All four of us climbed out. I could hear the faint rush of moving water somewhere behind me. Maybe running water was the last sound Barbara Maxey ever heard. Maybe it would be mine as well.

Liam prodded me deeper into the woods, and backed me against the slender, peeling trunk of a young eucalyptus. The others filed after, meek as schoolchildren.

Roach was fiddling with my phone, yanking at it, as if trying to pry it apart. Liam reached one hand inside his coat and pulled out two coiled cotton ropes. Norman and Jacob stood aside, silent, as Liam wrapped the clotheslines tight. Legs first, then my chest, pinning my arms to my sides. Blood pounded at my temples and against my ribs. I felt sure my skin was visibly jumping.
Breathe. Focus.

I concentrated on stemming the flow of adrenaline, while expanding the presence of
prana
in each cell.
Breathe. Focus.
I flexed my biceps, triceps, and extensors, and curled my fingers under slightly, not enough for Liam to notice, but enough to create a slight expansion of muscle mass. I visualized a cellular swell of subtle body matter, creating the potential for give. I hoped it was enough.

Now lock it down.

“Fucking piece of cell phone fucking shit,” Roach snarled. “How do you get it open?” He threw my phone on the ground and stomped spider cracks into its face. Then he lofted it into the shrubbery with his silver-tipped boot.

There went my partner.

Liam stepped close. “So, young fellow, this is your big opportunity. We’re going to leave here in a little while, and you won’t be coming with us. The question you need to answer is, ‘Do I want to be alive and tied to a tree or dead and tied to a tree?’”

When there are only two choices, one of them involving pie-in-the-sky thinking, the other including one’s inevitable death, it’s time to change the subject.

“What are we all doing here, Liam?”

Liam turned to Roach, and I exhaled, letting my arms slacken and chest relax.

“You see what we’re dealin’ with here, Brother Nehemiah?”

I had maybe a quarter inch of give to work with. I shifted my arms back and forth.

“Mr. Ten is that most dangerous of all God’s creatures, the inquisitive human being. No wonder he and Sister Barbara got along.”

I again pressed hard against the rope, keeping one eye on Liam, the other on his friends. Roach’s reptilian smile made my skin crawl. Norman and Jacob stared fixedly at the ground.

Liam turned to face me. I stopped moving.

“I want to have a wee heart-to-heart with ya, my boy. Are ya feeling chatty?”

A faint chorus of crickets chirped from deep in the shrubbery. I got chatty in a hurry, raising my voice to cover the other sound. “I’m not going anywhere that I can see,” I said. “So I guess the correct answer is yes, I am feeling chatty. Let’s talk.”

Liam laughed out loud. “Listen to him, boys. This fellow here has right spunk!”

He moved in closer, so close I could smell the bloodlust seeping from his skin like musk.

“You ever done jail time?” he whispered.

Come on, Liam. One more inch, one more inch
.

He stepped back.

“Jail time? Sort of,” I said. “I did a dime in a Buddhist monastery.”

The forewings started sawing away again, and Liam’s eyes jagged to the right, toward the cluster of scrub oaks.

“It wasn’t so bad,” I said quickly. “At least I didn’t have to take it up the ass like all you altar boys—” The hook caught me square in the mouth. My lip swelled into tight-skinned sausage, and I tasted blood. I ran my tongue over my teeth, to see if they were all accounted for.

“Listen up, boyo,” Liam snarled. “You’ve managed to get your yellow nose right in the middle of my business, and that’s no place to be, is it?”

“Up yours, Liam O’Flaherty.”

The next stinging blow jerked my head sideways.

Breathe. Just breathe.

“You got a mouth on you. A blasphemer, that’s what you are. A blasphemer, and a sinner,” Liam called over his shoulder. “What do we do with sinners, Brother Nehemiah?”

“We smite them,” Roach said.

“That’s right,” Liam crooned. “We smite them.”

“Me? I prefer to be choked,” I said, and braced for the next blow.

But Liam laughed, holding up his hands like two raw-boned steaks. “I could do that,” he said. “I’ve choked the devil out of more than one person in my time.”

I stared into his eyes, and it was like looking into a pair of cesspools.

“Why? Why did you strangle Barbara Maxey?” I asked.

Jacob shifted, took a half-step back. I shot a glance his way. He looked shocked.

Liam shrugged. “Most junkies have a little streak of rebel in them, but Barbara was one of the worst. What she couldn’t get through her head is you’re not really committed to the church unless you’re willing to die for the church.” He jerked his thumb at Roach, Jacob, and Norman. “See these three? They’re committed.”

Norman started shaking his head. “Hey, leave me out of this! I told you, I’m not a member of your church, and I’m certainly not going to die for it.”

Liam licked his lips. He gave me a broad wink, pulled the snubnose from his pocket, and turned.

“Yes, you are, Norman,” he said.

“Norman, down!” I cried out. The air erupted and Norman jerked as a small hole bloomed ragged in his chest. He blinked once. Then he crumpled.

“Norman!” I called again.

He found my eyes, and I held his gaze. Blood was leaking out of him. Life was leaking out of him, too.

“Ten,” he said, his voice already thready.

I nodded, keeping my eyes locked in on his.

“Tell Dad I’m sorry. Tell him—”

A second shot cut short Norman’s apology—permanently.

Liam crossed to Norman’s body and poked at it with the toe of one boot.

I wrenched hard at the ropes. They gave another half inch, and I was able to move my right hand just enough to slide the forefinger into the waistband of my jeans.

“Drag him back a ways and hide him in the brush,”

Liam told Roach and Jacob. “Then wait for me at the car.”

I pushed against the opener. I almost had it hooked when my finger slipped. It fell halfway down my pant leg, blocked by the tight rope. I was screwed. He was going to kill me, and soon.

Liam turned and smiled a smile of pure evil. He cocked the hammer as he walked.

“There’s a lot of money at stake here, boyo. The hour is upon us. Life everlasting for they that believe. I cannot afford to have a crazy Chink mucking things up. Understand?”

“Tibetan,” I said.

“What’s that?”

“I’m Tibetan, dumbass.”

He stepped close, pressing his gun against my chest.

“I’m going to enjoy this,” he said.

I need a miracle.

The insects chirped in the brush. Liam hesitated.

“Crickets, Liam,” I said. “Guess what? Crickets bring good luck,” and I head-butted his fat Irish nose into pulp.

He dropped his revolver and grabbed at his face. Blood spurted between his knuckles.

Footsteps pounded up the trail, mixed with the faint wail of sirens.

“Liam, someone’s coming! We gotta split!” Roach yelled.

“Shoot this bastard,” Liam screamed. He blindly reached for the .38 and hurled it at Roach, who ducked instinctively as the loaded weapon arced over his head and landed behind him somewhere in the dark. The night lit up with a thunder-crack as the gun discharged on impact. The siren wails strengthened, and Roach took off again back down the trail.

If I weren’t lashed to a tree, with Norman gone and Liam wanting me dead next, I’d have maybe even enjoyed this three-ring circus.

Liam lurched up to me and wrapped his meaty hands around my neck. He started to squeeze, each finger an individual steel rod, conducting hurt. Looked like I was going to get my death wish. My eyes bulged. I squirmed and pushed at the ropes, burning and shredding skin. The cords gave maybe another half inch.

In one crazed motion I jammed my right hand down my pant leg, hooked the opener, wrenched it free, and jailhouse-jabbed six quick pops straight into Liam’s neck. The short deep cuts welled with blood, fang bites from my makeshift shank—a two-pronged knuckle-duster.

He howled and now we both heard the
thumpa-thumpa
of an approaching police chopper, and both saw the searchlight sweeping the area, and finally, finally Liam lumbered off. I waved my free arm and rasped out a yell and the helicopter executed a few turns before it found me and hovered, fixing me in a pool of light.

“Ten? Ten!”

“Over here!” I croaked as I flapped and struggled like a pinned moth.

Bill thrashed his way through the brush, followed by a swarm of uniformed cops and firefighters and ambulance attendants.

“Black Cadillac Escalade!” I called, as best I could. “License MV7XL2P.”

One of the cops spoke into his handheld, and the chopper rose vertically and banked off toward the park entrance.

“There’s a body in the scrub, Bill, maybe twenty feet due north, his name’s Murphy, Norman Murphy, homicide victim, the weapon’s a snubnose, S and W, he tossed it right around here, the shooter, he’s Liam O’Flaherty, and Bill, my phone, can you get it, my new phone is—”

Bill pulled my top half into a fierce hug to shut me up. I gasped, one quick sob, and it was done. He pushed away and busied himself unwinding the cords.

I stomped feeling back into my legs and breathed deep, in and out, in and out, as Bill hit the bushes with his flashlight. He returned with my phone. He raised an eyebrow at its smashed face before handing it over.

“You should have seen the other guy’s phone,” I said.

I pocketed it. Met Bill’s eyes. “Thanks.”

“Thank Julie. Whatever you did to piss her off this time, and I don’t even want to know, she called Martha to vent, and Martha said to just go over and have it out with you in person. That’s why Julie passed your Mustang lying all cockeyed to hell on the side of the road, and you nowhere to be seen. She knew enough to know something was very wrong, so she called me. And I called your phone, with its GPS locator, and here we all are. Smart girl, that Julie.”

An ambulance attendant started swabbing my face. As he butterfly-taped my split lip, one of the cops got off his handheld and waved Bill to his side. They talked quietly for a minute. Bill rejoined me.

“They found the Escalade,” Bill said. “It went off road, about two miles north of here. Did a nose dive into the canyon.”

“Good.”

“Not good. The Escalade didn’t skid off the shoulder, Ten. It was pushed. No sign of any driver, or passengers. Not there. Not anywhere.”

“But how did they …”

Bill just looked at me, with something like compassion.

“Don’t tell me,” I said. “They took the Mustang.”

C
HAPTER
27

I caught a ride home from one of the cops. As I let myself in, all my nerve cells clicked off, like a SWAT team standing down. The adrenaline and cortisol drained from my limbs, taking with them any ability to function. I was too tired to eat, too tired to shower, too tired to call John D with the bad news. I fell into bed like the dead man I very nearly had been two hours earlier.

And came wide-awake two hours later. It was three in the morning. The witching hour.

The hour is upon us. Life everlasting for they that believe.

I slipped out of bed, pulled on a sweatshirt and a pair of running pants, and stepped onto the deck.

The neighborhood was dead quiet. An owl hooted, a mournful call from another hillside. Through scattered shreds of cloud, the waning moon cast a faint, oily sheen on the ocean. I pressed three fingers to my neck. The skin was sore to the touch. Liam’s flushed face swam before me, eyes flat with hate.