The Third Rule Of Ten: A Tenzing Norbu Mystery (11 page)

“Ready?” I asked.

“Ready.”

We crossed the street and sauntered up the block and into the bar. We were greeted by the
clack
of colliding balls from a pool table installed somewhere in the dim depths of the room. The sound provided percussion to a lively Mexican melody playing from a jukebox, the tune a kissing cousin of a polka.

A smattering of Hispanic men, all middle-aged or older, sprawled around a handful of round wooden tables. Their eyes were fixed on the two guys shooting pool. Señor Cowboy was sitting by himself at the bar. His eyes were glued on the bartender, who carefully poured a Dos Equis into a glass as if every drop was precious, which it is. I felt an instant connection: Dos Equis is one of my favorites.

We sat down at the bar as well, a few stools away from our man. The bartender finished pouring and stepped away. My mouth watered as I watched a Beer Moment happen, that first sacred swig that brings such meaning and purpose to the beer-lover’s day. I was ready to encounter my own.

“Are you over twenty-one?” I asked Carlos.

“Twenty-three,” he answered.

“Good. You order. I’ll pay. Dos Equis for me.”

The bartender moseyed over to us. He was clearly his own best customer; his massive belly strained the buttons on a shirt that had probably been white, and had actually fit, a few years back.

Carlos pointed down the bar to the old man’s Dos Equis and said the Spanish equivalent of “We’ll have what he’s having.” The bartender pulled two frosty bottles out of the cooler and set them on the bar, along with a couple of glasses. He carefully poured the amber beer into the glasses and stepped back, as he had with Señor Cowboy
.

East L.A. isn’t so bad
, I thought.

I sipped, I savored, and I let out a sigh of satisfaction. You don’t want to overwhelm the taste buds with too big a swallow at first. They prefer a nice, gentle stretch to a frontal assault.

The bartender, who doubled as waiter, had just returned after delivering fresh beers to the pool table gang, swapping full glasses for empty ones. He stepped close to Carlos and said something under his breath. Carlos’s mouth thinned.

“What?” I said.

“Don’t ask me why, but he’s figured out you’re a cop. He says he doesn’t want any trouble.”

I offered my best Buddhist smile.

The bartender said to Carlos, “
¿No habla español su amigo?”
Carlos shook his head and rattled off an answer. The bartender said something back, and they both chuckled. Carlos was turning out to be a natural at this.

“I told him you were cool. Asked him how we could make friends with the old man real quick,” Carlos reported. “He says the guy loves ceviche but never has enough money to order it. He says they have great ceviche here. Should I order some?”

“Yeah,” I said. “Get a double order, and we’ll ask him over to share.” I’d try to watch them eat it without regretting breakfast. Eating meat was one thing. Raw fish flesh? I don’t think so.

The bartender disappeared into the kitchen and reappeared with a huge bowl of ceviche topped with slices of ripe avocado and wedges of fresh lime. He set it down in front of us. I slid $20 across the bar and waved him off making change. The bill disappeared into his pocket like magic. I glanced over at the old man. He was mesmerized by our bowl, a serious case of raw-fish lust if I’ve ever seen one. I made an exaggerated move of pushing the ceviche over to Carlos as I shook my head. Carlos turned to the old man, as if drawn by his longing, and gestured for him to come over and share. Moments later, we were seated three in a row—and ready for the next stage of interrogation.

Carlos seemed to enjoy the fishy concoction at least as much as Señor Cowboy did, but I didn’t hold it against him. Meanwhile, I found that by defocusing my eyes slightly I could maintain a benign outer expression while watching them eat belly-white chunks of raw fish. Even a lifetime of rice and lentils was preferable.

I sipped my beer and waited as they ate and chatted. Finally, the old man wiped his mouth with a faded but clean-looking bandanna and let out a satisfied belch. Carlos and he were quickly immersed in a longer, fairly animated exchange, a blur of Spanish that lasted for several minutes.

The old man pushed away from the bar and headed for the men’s room.

“I’m dying here,” I said to Carlos. “Talk to me.”

“Okay, well, I got him going by complaining about my two jobs, but he’s outdoing me big-time: he’s complaining about his job, his kids, his grandkids.”

“Focus on the grandson Miguel, if you can.”

The old man staggered back to his stool, and they finished up their conversation. Señor Cowboy was now into his third beer and clearly getting maudlin in any language. We slid off our stools and left our man staring down his weather-beaten reflection in the well-polished wood of the bar. One eyelid was drooping: he was closing in on bedtime, and fast.

Back in the Corolla, Carlos turned to fill me in. “Get this,” he started, his eyes gleaming.

“Nah, ah, ah,” I said. I passed over the bills. “A deal is a deal.”

“You don’t like to owe anyone, do you?” Carlos said, but he took the money. “Okay. So, his no-good daughter married a no-good man, and now their son, his no-good grandson Miguel, has dropped out of school and joined a gang. To make matters worse, his father, the son-in-law, has started running around with another woman, a
puta
, just as no-good as the rest of them. Miguel was the kid you were interested in, right?”

“Yeah. Did he say which gang Miguel joined?”

Carlos shook his head. “All he kept saying was it was a gang of gangs.”

Gang of gangs.
First I’d heard of it. Maybe Bill knew more.

Carlos laughed. “Maybe they’re forming a union.”

“Okay, I’ll look into it. Chances are, the old guy was just talking beer-talk, but you never know. Thanks, Carlos. Really good work.”

I drove Carlos home, both of us deep in thought. I was thinking about the bitter damage gangs inflict on families. Maybe he was, too.

I dropped him off on Serrano.

“Really, thanks,” I repeated.

“Any time,” he answered. His forehead creased. “Do you think I’ll ever see Sofia again?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “I really don’t.”

He opened the car door. An ear-splitting Armenian mishmash of electric guitars and wailing horns blasted from one of the third-floor balcony apartments. Carlos straightened his shoulders and walked inside.

I had another potential clue, but I was out of ideas. As I headed up the 101 North, I called Bill. He sounded out of breath.

“Martha and I invested in an elliptical,” he said. “Let me turn this thing off before I kill myself.” After a moment, he said, “All yours.”

“So, Bill,” I said.

“Uh-oh,” he answered.

I explained, in broad strokes, what had been going on. I left out the specifics of a certain backpack that was in my possession. No need to go crazy with the honesty thing.

“Let me get this straight, Ten. Your missing person, who may or may not exist, may or may not be related to Mac Gannon’s maid, who may or may not be involved with a member of an alleged gang of gangs, a guy called Miguel Ortiz who may or may not have scoped out your home. Does that pretty much sum it up?”

“Pretty much.”

“Okay, well, first of all—” Bill broke off. “You know what? I don’t think I can handle this tonight. I’m going to finish my exercise routine, watch some mindless television with my beautiful wife, and call you in the morning. Think you can stay out of trouble until then?”

“Absolutely,” I said.

“Gang of gangs,” Bill muttered. “Shoot me now.”

C
HAPTER
8

Beep-beep-beep!

My eyes snapped open, the high-pitched warning tone piercing my sleep. It was 2:58
A.M.
, and somebody had just breached my perimeter. Again.

I slid my hand under the pillow next to me and found the .38 right where I’d tucked it, an impulsive midnight decision but apparently a good one. I thanked the various gods that Heather hadn’t come over, we hadn’t had our talk, and she hadn’t spent the night. I swung out of bed. Sure enough, a shadowy figure was moving across the screen, captured in the eerie green glow of one of the infrared cameras. I couldn’t tell if it was my lawn-caring friend from yesterday, but whoever he was, he was heading straight for my garage. He tried the side door. Slipped inside.

I am a creature of habit, and up until yesterday, it had never been my habit to lock the side door into my garage. I was tired last night and in a hurry to get to bed. Now my lack of mindfulness had boomeranged back to harm me.

My cell phone buzzed. Mike. He was probably sitting at his computer, seeing just what I was seeing.

“I’m on it, Mike. Can you call Bill for me?” He grunted and hung up.

I pocketed the phone, pulled on my running shoes, and slipped out of the bedroom. Moving quietly, I crept across the slick hardwood floor, making my silent way through the living room and into the kitchen. I needed to get a better sense of what I was up against. I crouched low and looked out the kitchen window. About 100 yards away, past the trees that line my property, a sliver of moonlight glinted off the big, square windshield of a Hummer. Did that mean I had more than one visitor?

Homeowner outrage hummed in my bloodstream.
This is private property. This is my safe space. You don’t belong here.
I racked a round into the chamber of the .38.

I knew I should yell out—most intruders flee at the first indication of an inhabitant, armed or not. But I could feel the sizzle of adrenaline in my bloodstream urging me to deal with this the old-fashioned way. Besides, I was pretty sure I knew who was out there.

I cracked open the kitchen door and swept the barrel of the pistol across the grounds. Nothing. I dropped low and snuck around to the back of the garage, hugging the shadows. I peered into the small side window. It was Miguel all right, squatting beside my Shelby, a crowbar in one hand and a flashlight in the other.

He was about to jimmy a door I’d spent at least 20 hours restoring, on a car I’d just spent $1,500 tuning up.

Not my Mustang, Miguel. Not in this lifetime.

I took a deep breath and banged through the door, reaching over to hit the switch that illuminated the overhead light. I yelled at the top of my lungs and aimed the Wilson. Miguel jerked his head up. The flashlight clattered to the floor and rolled across the cement, coming to a stop at my feet as he groped in his pocket and pulled out a small pistol.

I pointed my gun at his chest. “Drop it!”

His arm jerked upward. Bad move. I lowered the sight and shot him in the meaty part of his left leg. He howled and fell hard, his head clunking against the Mustang’s back bumper as he went down. He stopped moving, out cold.

I started toward him when two car doors slammed. Shit. I crouched down behind the Shelby and aimed into the inky darkness. Now I regretted switching on the light. It put me at a disadvantage. I could just make out a man—no,
two
men—sprinting through the trees and running straight for me. When they were about 20 yards out, I grabbed the flashlight and slung it to my right, aiming for the Toyota. It hit the sheet metal with a clang. They started firing in that direction but spotted me immediately when I stood up to return fire. Two muzzles swung my way.

There was no time for niceties. I aimed for center mass, just like the academy taught me. Two shots, two hits, square in two chests. The guy on the right toppled backward with a loud cry. The other one must have been wearing Kevlar because he just staggered for a moment, stopped in his tracks, but still very much alive. He got his footing back and fired, hitting the wall behind me with a series of muted
phut-phut-phut
s.

My police training sent up another instructional flare:
Take cover and hold fire until you can get a clean shot to the leg.
But I wasn’t a cop anymore, was I? By my count, this guy had some kind of semiautomatic weapon. He’d fired a dozen times, leaving plenty of zip in what was probably a 30-round mag. I didn’t like the odds.

I sighted the Wilson in for a head shot but missed low, hitting him directly in the Adam’s apple. With no oxygen or equipment to make a sound, he sank to his knees and fell forward onto his face with a wet flop.

I let out a deep breath I didn’t realize I was holding. With the smell of gunpowder lingering in the air, I realized I was witnessing karma happening right before my eyes. He’d gotten a reprieve when my first shot bounced off his bulletproof chest. But then he’d spurned that subtle gift from the universe and called in his destiny.

I heard a loud
thwock
, and my left foot jerked. Miguel! I took cover and checked the thick bottom of my running shoe—the ridiculously expensive running shoes I’d just treated myself to a couple of weeks ago. A .25 caliber bullet was now imbedded in its ruined sole.

Miguel was running out of strikes. Strike One: trying to jimmy the door of my Shelby. Strike Two: blowing away my new sneaker. The kid was clearly escalating.

I scooted backward so the Mustang’s axle and wheels were between him and me. I heard the scuff of jeans against the concrete floor.

“Hey, Miguel!” The scuffing sound stopped. “
¿Habla inglés?
”

“
Un poco.
” A little. A little was better than nothing.

“I don’t want to kill you,” I said. “And you don’t want to die. Give me the gun.”

I waited. The silence grew. I curled my finger around the Wilson’s trigger. Then I heard the scraping slide of gunmetal across cement. I leaned around the back of the Mustang and saw the flimsy little Browning on the concrete. I stretched down and got it.

“You carrying anything else?”

“No. Don’ kill me, okay?”

I stuck the revolver in my pocket. Miguel was lying on his back, arms overhead, palms facing upward. Blood had pooled under his left thigh, but I was pleased to see I had just grazed him as I intended. I did a quick over-and-under frisk and came up empty, as he’d promised.

“Okay,” I said. “You can put your arms down.”