The First Rule of Ten (30 page)

I spun around. Jacob stood behind me, face grim. He lowered his arm. He was holding a Wilson Combat .38 Supergrade, and I was pretty sure it was mine.

The Huey banked hard and executed a lateral lurch, clipping a steep rock face. Suddenly it turned on its side and dropped like a stone into the canyon, sending up a cloud of dust and snow. A moment of utter silence was followed by an erupting ball of flame.

The air reverberated from the explosion, overlaying a welcome sound—that of approaching rescue helicopters.

Jacob handed me my Wilson. It felt just as good in my hand as I remembered. “Nice shot.” I said. “Iraq?”

“Afghanistan. Two tours,” he answered.

“Mind if I take credit for your aim?”

He nodded in relief and hugged his young companion close. She started sobbing uncontrollably.

“This is my wife, Cassie,” he said. His smile was both proud and vulnerable, and I remembered the same mix of emotions he displayed watching that young couple at the farmer’s market. “Cassie’s pregnant. We couldn’t go through with this. There’s been enough death.”

“Congratulations. And I’m very pleased to meet you, Cassie.” She pulled away from Jacob’s chest and gave me a watery smile.

“Your husband is a very brave man,” I said.

This provoked a fresh bout of wails.

“I’m sorry,” she blubbed. “I’m just so emotional these days.”

Even in the midst of all this craziness, another penny dropped.

The air shook with the deafening roar of the descending Sikorsky. Its belly opened and a paramedic was lowered to the ground, holding a canvas duffle. He ran up, unzipped the bag, and started pulling out individual white plastic antidote kits, packed like little lunchboxes.

“There’s only the two,” I said, pointing to the unlucky pair of swallowers. They were doubled over. One was starting to retch. The paramedic ran over with two kits.

More paramedics and emergency personnel dangled from the copter like wasp stingers and dropped to the ground.

“Norbu! Let’s go!”

I looked over my shoulder. Somehow the A-Star had managed to perch on the one strut again, and Dardon was bellowing at me from the opened door. I ran over and leapt on board. I finally had some answers, and maybe a solution. I was happy to go.

We lifted, and banked north. The clustered Children of Paradise watched us float away, their faces tipped to the sky.

C
HAPTER
28

I pulled into John D’s place at dawn. The sizzle of adrenaline in my body had dimmed to a background hum; I could feel the dull ache of fatigue in my shoulders and arms, but otherwise I felt pretty good.

I opened the front door and called his name softly through the screen. A slow scuff of footsteps announced he was up. He pulled the screen door open, turned, and shuffled back into the living room without a word. He looked crumpled, inside and out.

I followed him. Dozens of photographs lay scattered in small heaps around his recliner, like autumn leaves after a windstorm. He picked one up and sank heavily into his chair, tears tracing the deep lines in his cheeks.

I walked to his side. He was clutching the photograph of himself and the boys.

“They were like chalk and cheese, those two,” John D said. “But they loved each other something fierce. I gave them their own acre, on the far end of the property, and they dug every dang hole themselves. Charlie wanted to plant sweet almonds, and Norman, well, he was drawn to the bitter ones, of course. They’re still growing out there, two groves, side by side—the only trees that didn’t get struck by the blight. Ain’t that a kick?”

John D honked into a damp bandanna and cleared his throat. He raised his swollen eyes to mine.

“Norman begged Charlie not to enlist,” he said. “Not me. I was all for it. I told my wife the military was Charlie’s ticket to a better life. But the truth is, I needed someone to blame for those towers falling. I thought we needed to go over there and kick Saddam’s butt.”

“You and most of America,” I said.

“I urged him on, Ten, told him to make me proud.” The tears were falling freely now. “When we lost Charlie, it damn near destroyed us.” He slugged the arm of the chair with his fist. “What am I saying? It did destroy us. Norman fell apart. He and his mother both blamed me, and they were right to, you understand? Then my wife died of hypertension, and Norman … Norman just lost his way.”

“You were suffering. You’d lost your son, and then your wife.”

“And then my other son. Only that was on me most of all. Norman reached out a couple times right after his mother died, but when I looked in his face, all I could see was my own failure, and when I turned away, all he could feel was denied.”

John D let go of the photograph, and it fluttered to the floor.

“Ten, I got nothing left. And all I can think is Norman’s out there in the dark somewhere, full of fear and shame, and with no one to lead him into the light.”

“Send him love, John D. He’s sure to feel it.”

“It’s too late for love,” John D said.

I went to the kitchen and filled a glass with cold juice from the fridge. I brought it to John D.

“Drink,” I said.

He drank.

“It’s too late for love,” he said again.

I pulled up an address on my phone and wrote it down for him.

He read the name and address, then looked up at me, bewildered.

“Norman’s wife,” I said. “Her name is Becky. You need to pay her a visit. She needs you in her life, now more than ever. It’s never too late, John D.”

He nodded, and I could see a faint shaft of hope push from behind the pain.

“What about you? What are you going to do now?” he asked.

“I’m going to find my Mustang and two missing cult members. Not necessarily in that order.”

John D reached down for the discarded photo and handed it to me.

“Take us with you,” he said. “For luck.”

As I crossed the yard, my phone went off. I saw it was Wesley, Freda’s husband, and my heart clenched.

“Wesley?”

“She’s gone. They said there wasn’t any Freda left in there anyway, so we stopped all the machines. I thought you’d want to know.”

“I’m so sorry.”

“You any closer to finding out what happened?”

“Maybe a little.”

“Well, they’re cutting her up right now. I talked to her doctors about what you’d said, and they agreed with me that under the circumstances it made sense to do an autopsy, so …” His voice caught, and he hung up.

I felt a swelling sensation, building hot behind my eyes. Shame, this time. Another death. Another loss. Maybe not my fault, but I was in too deep not to feel responsible.

I sprinted across John D’s field, vaulted the fence, and raced down the hill into Paradise. I ran hard. It helped.

I stopped and listened. The faint
thrum-thrum-thrum
of some kind of industrial equipment echoed across the predawn sky. I pegged it as originating at the pig farm.

I jogged from yurt to yurt, beaming my flashlight into the dim curves. The cots were made. The floors were swept. The yurts were totally empty. I ducked into Liam’s headquarters and played my light across the floor. A couple of wooden cases with Italian lettering had been pried open and emptied—looked like they’d held some sort of liquor or wine.

I swung my light to the far side of the yurt and illuminated two still bodies. I ran over and knelt by the first, a young man, and checked for a pulse. The open-eyed stare belonged to the third cult member I’d seen at the farmer’s market. Up close, he was more child than man, and he was very dead. Sister Rose lay next to him, gray and still as a slab of granite.

I punched 911 and fired information at the operator: exact location, number of victims, extent of injuries, and cause of death.

“Strangulation,” I said, noting the necklace of raw bruising around the young man’s throat.
Om mani padme hum.
The violent hands of Brother Liam had been hard at work, choking life out of two more sinners. I was sure in this case their sin was a last-minute reluctance to get on a helicopter.

A ragged moan caused my skin to shrink-wrap with dread.

I looked around, then down. Sister Rose was working her mouth. I leaned my ear close to her mouth.

“Help me,” she rasped.

I took her hand, careful not to jostle her until help came.

“I’m here, Sister Rose,” I said. “You’re safe now. I’m here.”

I sat with her. I would sit with her forever, if necessary.

Forever turned out to be five interminable minutes. The Emergency Responders found us first. They said the cops were right behind them. Sister Rose’s breath was rough and labored, but an EMT checked her vitals, and said she’d live.

I waited until they had loaded her safely into the ambulance.

I ran to the far side of the Paradise property. Sure enough, my Shelby was right where Jacob had told me she was, parked under a tree, covered by a blue plastic tarp. From here, the thrumming sound was even louder. I jumped the fence and dashed across the far boundary of the pig farm, and up the steep hill, to my favorite vantage point.

Barsotti’s Mercedes was already in his designated spot. I checked my watch. Barely four in the morning. Barsotti was keeping monastery hours, though I doubted he was meditating in there. A familiar battered green pickup was also in the lot. Off to my left, a bright halo of light spotlighted the source of the thrumming. I started downhill in the direction of the light, but skidded to a stop when a pair of black-and-whites screamed by.

A door slammed. Barsotti burst out of the office building and ran into the lot just as a car squealed off the main road and up the farm’s driveway.

Florio’s silver Maserati, in a big, big hurry.

He fishtailed the curves, spewing gravel, and slewed to a stop. Tommy got out, mouth already wagging at Barsotti. He jabbed a finger to the south, then up in the air, then south again.

I had a pretty good notion of the subject matter.

Barsotti jumped in the pickup. Headlights off, he crept out of the parking lot and headed up the dirt road toward the back of the property, with Tommy following right behind. I was tempted to go back for my car, but the problem with that was literally easy to see: a bright yellow sports car was going to be hard to miss out here. I decided to leg it.

Two pairs of brake lights flickered and bumped to a stop a half mile away. I motored after them by foot, digging deep for my best pace given the uncertain terrain. I used one arm to press the Wilson tight against my rib cage.

It was a hard, four-minute slog. I stopped just outside the circle of light to catch my breath and reconnoiter. Two vehicles: one green pickup, one silver Maserati, both lit up by a bank of temporary lights. Two sounds: the throb of a gas-powered generator, and the
whunk-whunk-whunk
of a drill biting into the ground.

Three men.

I moved closer, taking cover behind an ancient, gnarly almond tree. Tommy Jr. stood leaning against his car with his arms crossed as Barsotti talked and gestured and talked some more to his favorite multitasking employee, man number three: José Guttierez—washer of cars, stealer of weed, basher of friends, and who-knows-what-of-what this particular morning.

Barsotti clapped José on the back in a hearty, good-job kind of way. He dug out his wallet and gave José a bill. Then he climbed into the Maserati beside Tommy and drove away.

José loaded the back of his pickup with tools, and killed the drill and gas generator. The dawn air was suddenly, inconveniently silent.

I ran for my car.

Ten minutes later, José’s pickup bumped its way down the hill, through the lot, and onto the main road toward town. I followed, hanging back as far as I could without losing him.

Streaks of light brightened the sky like luminous ribbons. José turned into a strip mall and parked under a blinking neon sign shaped like a sombrero. “Los Caballeros,” it flashed, promising an all-night refuge for bad boys and insomniacs. I parked on the street and followed José inside.

It was a dismal place, a virtual monument to loneliness. A jowly man in a dirty shirt stood guard behind the bar. I counted three customers, including me. José was already staring down a draft beer. A blowsy middle-aged woman, raucous and bleached blond, swigged straight from a bottle at the other end of the bar. The jukebox was playing a sad country song about liquor and losers.

I sat near Blondie and ordered a draft. Normally beer wouldn’t be my top choice for a breakfast beverage, but I was looking to fit in with the crowd, and it might help soften the edge of desperation in here. I paid with one of my Ben Franklins. The bartender had to go out back for change.

“Hey, Big Bucks. I’ll bet you’re even bigger where it counts. Name’s Olivia.” Olivia slipped onto the stool next to me and scissored her arms together so her cleavage pushed up under her tonsils.

I signaled the bartender to give her a refill. He gave me a look I interpreted as “You have got to be kidding, dude” and grabbed a cold one out of the refrigerator.

I was treated to the full radiance of Olivia’s smile, marred slightly by a missing eyetooth.

“What’re you doing out and about this time of night?”

“Sightseeing,” I said.

Her cackle was backwashed in phlegm. “You stay in this hole awhile, you’re gonna see some real sights.”

“How about you, Olivia? What brings you here?”

“Oh, this and that. I met with a couple clients earlier, if you catch my drift, and I’ll probably meet with a couple more when the breakfast crowd comes in.”

All I could think to say was, “I didn’t know they served breakfast here.”

I saw some movement to my right. José had moved a few stools closer. Olivia stood and waved her arm, her bingo-wing jiggling like Jell-O.

“Git on over here, sweet cheeks,” she yelled.

José pulled up a stool on the other side of Olivia, and I got my first close look at the man. He had dull eyes and a built-in sneer. His upper lip was so short as to be nonexistent.

Olivia didn’t seem to mind. She told him he was “lookin’ fine.” José just stole my chick. Oh, well, they come and they go.