The Fourth Rule of Ten: A Tenzing Norbu Mystery (A Tenzing Norbu Mystery series Book 4) (8 page)

The dark space waited and watched, silent.

I crossed to Roland, Jr.’s office. It, too, was locked, but this lock was child’s play, and I quickly gained entry with the help of a paperclip borrowed from the desk of Miss Grammar-pants, and my trusty Starbucks card.

I crossed to the computer and used my flashlight to find the power source. I switched it on, and the computer hummed to life.

Let’s see what you’ve got hiding in here.

The screen lit up with some generic space-themed background, and I waited for the parade of icons—access files into Roland’s private world—to start marching across the screen.

And waited.

And waited.

After a minute, I realized that what I saw was all he had: a single icon denoting his hard drive, and a second image I ignored for the moment. His computer desktop was as empty of clutter as his real one. I clicked to open the hard drive, but it was password protected. I didn’t know nearly enough about the man to start guessing, and my computer-hacking knowledge was just as limited.

I focused on the second icon, which was purple and cream and shaped oddly, like an …

What on earth … ?

A faint sound outside chilled my blood. I powered down the computer, switched off my Maglite, and snuck back to the door. Peering around the doorjamb, I saw a dark figure leaning against the front entrance, his flashlight dancing from wall to wall. He tapped the flashlight against the frosted glass, then cupped his hands around his eyes to look inside.

I held my breath.
May I be safe and protected …

He moved on. A security guard, making his rounds. I stayed where I was until any immediate danger of discovery had passed. But I didn’t dare investigate further. Something had made the man suspicious. He’d be back this way soon.

I relocked Roland’s office door, slipped out the back exit, and was in the Neon and aimed toward home within minutes.

An onion.

For some unknown reason, Roland Conway, Jr. had a small, purplish onion icon on his computer desktop. I had no idea what it symbolized, but I had the next best thing: Mike Koenigs, cyber-genius extraordinaire. He was my source for all matters digital, and given his nocturnal habits, he was just about to start his day.

“Onion? Sure, I know what it is.” Mike’s voice rose from the cup holder, where my phone was nestled.

I sped along the 101 at 75 miles an hour listening to my phone while gripping a Starbucks egg salad sandwich with one hand and the steering wheel with the other, just another typical SoCal multitasking driver. A few years ago, I would have pulled me over in a heartbeat.

“Anything else on his desktop, boss?”

“No. Just that and his hard drive, which was password protected.”

“And what did you say the guy does?”

“Insurance adjuster. Works with life insurance claims. Why?”

“Because the man is flat-out paranoid. There’s only one other person I know who is that careful about keeping his digital footprints invisible, and you’re talking to him.”

A glop of egg salad dropped somewhere out of sight. Served me right.

“Explain, please?”

“Dude uses Tor.”

“I’m sorry … ?”

“The Onion Router. T-O-R. Get it? Spells Tor. I’m surprised you haven’t heard of it, especially now that you’re so buddy-buddy with that FBI agent.”

“First of all, Gus and I haven’t spoken in months—she’s way too busy with her promotion and her new girlfriend. And second of all, this is me, remember? I’m still getting the hang of my iPhone. Which is why I have you, my friend. So I repeat, explain, please? I have about twenty more minutes of driving ahead of me.”

I heard the distinctive pop of an aluminum top, followed by a slurping sound, followed by a sigh of pleasure. Mike was fueling up with his first Red Bull of the day.

“So, Tor started as a Navy project. Some smart dudes at the Naval Research Lab developed it as a way of protecting top-secret government communications. Ironic, right, because now Tor’s the only way Joe Citizen can protect himself from that same government.”

“But what
is
it?”

“It’s an anonymous routing tool. You know, so no one can analyze your traffic, get inside your virtual pants, so to speak.”

“How does it work?”

“Like any other browser, except unlike Firefox or Safari, say, this one doesn’t leave an obvious trail. So, most searches? They move in a straight line, from point A to point B, and leave a clear route back to a wealth of data for whoever wants it. Tor directs your requests onto, like, twisty impossible-to-follow paths. Virtual tunnels and anonymous circuit-hops and random encryption keys and erasable footprints. There’s no way anyone can trace your communications back to you, okay? The ultimate protection against Internet surveillance, in all its nefarious forms. It’s genius.”

“And you use Tor?”

“You bet. Me, plus, let’s see, the military, journalists, whistle-blowers, anarchists, human rights activists, corporate wonks, cops—lots of cops, especially underground ones.”

“And criminals?”

“Oh sure. Many, many criminals. Everybody’s got skeletons to hide.”

Roland, Jr. jumping up from his desk. His hot eyes and damp handshake. Everybody’s got skeletons to hide.

I turned into my driveway, tires crunching against the gravel. Bill’s old Volvo sedan was parked to one side of the garage.

“Thanks, Mike. This has been a huge help.”

“No problem, boss. Next time I come by, I’ll set you up with Tor if you like. Shoulda thought of it earlier—God knows what kind of file the NSA’s got on you.”

The kitchen light was on. Through the window, a weary Bill slumped at the table. He lifted a bottle to his mouth, and I could almost taste the cold snap of hops. I headed inside.

“Hey,” I said. I leaned down to stroke Tank as he wove figure eights between my ankles.

Bill half-hoisted the distinctive, chunky amber bottle belonging to one of my prize Redhook Pilsners. He grunted, as if toasting defeat. Two more empties stood guard, witnesses to his glum mood.

I quickly grabbed one of the two remaining Pilsners from the fridge and joined him.

“Martha still mad?”

“Good guess, Sherlock.”

I let the sarcasm pass, choosing instead to enjoy my first swallow of crisp honey and malt. A second long pull, and I was ready to try again.

“How about Mila? Any word from her?”

“Nothing yet.” Bill tipped his bottle sideways and watched as a final droplet of beer gathered and swelled on the glass-necked rim, as if preparing to make a jump for it. At the last possible moment, he stopped the spill with the tip of a finger.

“Ahhh, sooo,” Bill said, and wiped his finger on his pant leg.

“That’s supposed to be my line.”

“Not today, O Mysterious Man of the East. I’ve already had three Redhooks. My turn to dispense some Zen wisdom.”

I decided not to remind Bill, for the millionth time, that my Tibetan Buddhist roots, shared with the Dalai Lama, were from the Gelug—or Yellow Hat—tradition. For Bill, everything spiritual west of Long Beach was Zen.

I took another sip of beer and said nothing.

“I’ve been thinking about this whole marital communication thing, wondering if I ever actually understood the basics.”

“I hope you aren’t going to ask
me
what they are.”

His chuckle was hollow. “Didn’t used to be anything like it is now, you know? Way I was raised, you never showed your feelings, never let on what was really happening inside.”

I waited. I knew there was more.

“You know, because if you did, nine times out of ten, you’d get the crap beat out of you.”

I reflected on my own past experience, which was mixed to say the least. I’d learned early on not to reveal anything of significance to my father. He wouldn’t beat me, but for sure he’d mock, ridicule, or punish me in some other way. My mother was a different story. Personal confessions didn’t anger her, but rather tended to unleash dual tsunamis—of guilt on her part and shame on mine. I wasn’t sure which reaction made me crazier, but I did know the echoes of these past patterns continued to resonate, warping expectations of all my present relationships.

Bill crossed to the refrigerator and retrieved the last beer. Tank lifted his head from his cat bed. His emerald eyes blinked twice at me, as if to say, “Look out for your pal over there. He’s had three already.”

“I was pretty fucking good at toughing things out,” Bill said, sitting again. “Traffic. Patrol. Security gig at that hellhole called Bosnia—don’t even get me started on that. Then life in the L-A-P-fucking-D, where most days I see stuff I don’t want to think about, much less talk about after work. So I don’t do either. But Martha, she does. She wants to know how I’m feeling, every fucking minute. I don’t know how to talk to her about my feelings, Ten. I don’t even know how to talk about them to myself. Jesus, I’m so screwed up.”

I knew from past experience that at three beers, Bill had already sailed an unhealthy distance down the river of memory, toward the Sea of Infinite Regret. Pretty soon we’d both be adrift in the Meaninglessness of Life Itself and while we’re at it, Just What the Hell Was God Thinking When He Made It So People You Love Die?

I gently removed the bottle from his hand. His eyelids started to droop, and I was plotting how to get him onto the sofa when his cell phone buzzed. Bill snapped awake like the well-trained cop he was, and snatched up his phone to read the screen.

His face lit up, and he dropped several decades before my eyes.

“It’s Mila!” He answered. “Yes!” Listened for a few moments. “Thank God,” he said. Then, “Right, I’ll work on it and call you back.”

Bill slid his phone into his pocket, his eyes flashing. “Okay, here’s the deal.”

A blip of joy registered as the familiar words transported me to our early days in Robbery/Homicide, when Bill, fully engaged in a case, would present his latest findings to the team.
“Okay, here’s the deal.”
I was momentarily happy that the Bill I used to know and admire was back. But I dreaded the cause.

“Sasha finally got in touch with his mother,” Bill said. “He’s not dead and he didn’t get kidnapped. He told Mila not to worry, he’s safe. He’s gone underground, says he’s onto some traffickers.”

“That doesn’t sound safe.”

“Yeah, I know. The kid’s got game.” Bill’s pride was unmistakable. I hadn’t realized you could experience paternal pride when you’d only invested 20 minutes or so in being a father, but there’s a lot about being a father I didn’t know. Like, everything.

An unattractive little voice in my head, the one not wearing the red robe and Yellow Hat, piped up:
Yes, well, maybe the kid’s got game, or maybe he’s just as dumb as a bucket of bolts.
I kept the snarkiness to myself. All I needed was to be jealous of my ex-partner’s newly discovered son, on top of everything else. As it was, I was going to have to chant for days to clear out the growing pile of mental deficiencies I was generating around this current mess.

“I’m glad Sasha’s okay. Is he on his way home?”

“Not exactly. Mila told him to come back but he refused.” A small smile played across Bill’s face. “Looks like I gotta go to Bosnia. Want to come with?”

I covered my face with my hands. Maybe if I couldn’t see Bill, he’d go away.

“Kidding,” he said, “I gotta do this on my own.”

Now, perversely, I felt insulted. Wasn’t I the missing persons expert these days? I opened my palms like flaps and found his eyes with my own. “I remember a wise detective named Bill Bohannon telling me once to beware of those three-beer ‘gotta do’ somethings.”

“I hear you,” he said.

“Yes, but are you actually listening? Bosnia, Bill? Seriously? I can think of so many reasons why that’s a bad idea.”

“I know,” Bill said, but his eyes had taken on a gleam I recognized.

“Sasha doesn’t need to be rescued, he as much as said so,” I bleated. Stress was causing the pitch of my voice to rise, but I ploughed ahead. “He’s not a kid. He’s nineteen. Remember nineteen? Remember how convinced you were that you knew best? You do this, and you’re guaranteed to mess up your father-son relationship before you’ve actually even met. And what about Martha? What’s she going to say if you just take off?”

“And if I don’t go? What if I never hear from Mila or Sasha again? Ten, I need to know who my son is.”

My own skeletons stirred, trailing heavy feelings like chains: of powerlessness, of the constant push and pull between parents. I’d never been anything more than a pawn in a lifelong, ugly chess match, a game they were bent on playing out to the bitter end.

It’s hopeless. You’ll never fix it.

“Thanks a lot.”

I must have murmured the thought out loud.

I snapped out of the memory-trance. “Sorry, that wasn’t meant for you. Old wounds again. I spent my childhood caught between two parents. Now you’re caught between two families.”

“No, I’m sorry. I hate dragging you into all of this.”

“Forget it. Stuff comes up.” I shrugged. “Doesn’t mean I don’t still think you’re making the wrong decision.”

He rubbed the knuckles of his right hand with his left, as if itching to throw a punch. “It feels like a test, you know?”

“Of what?”

“I’m not sure.”

“Pretty tough to pass it, then.”

“I know.” Bill checked his watch and stood. “Shit, look at the time. Gotta go.”

Another
gotta.
His steam was up. I had one maneuver left.

“Sure you want to drive with three beers in you?”

“Really?” he said. “That old ploy?” And he was out the door, his steps light.

I was beyond exhausted yet too stirred up to sleep. This was becoming a habit. I moved outside to the deck. Tank leapt onto my lap. I read somewhere once that owning a cat lowers your blood pressure. I alternated between ruffling and smoothing the fur on Tank’s back as he purred, half-dozing. I waited for the medicine to take.

What if I was wrong? What if I was meant to go to Bosnia with Bill? I just couldn’t think straight.

“Here’s what I do know, Tank,” I said. “Going where you don’t want to go to do something you don’t want to do is a perfect recipe for resentment.”