The Third Rule Of Ten: A Tenzing Norbu Mystery (27 page)

“Connecting with you is already helping,” I admitted. I sidled a little closer to honesty. “Lately, I’ve been noticing this growing tendency, you know, to keep things to myself. To isolate, go it alone.”

Lobsang finally allowed himself a small smile. “
Lately?
Forgive me for disagreeing, dear Tenzing, but you have preferred to go it alone for as long as I’ve known you, and I’ve known you for most of your life.”

I heard the echo of Lama Sonam’s voice, gently chiding me when I was a boy: “Trust the
sangha
, Tenzing. Let the sangha support you. You do not have to battle the world all by yourself.”

Yesterday I had witnessed Gloria Teresa’s
sangha
, her built-in spiritual community, surrounding her. They celebrated her transition from girl to woman, rejoiced in her growth, and publicly honored her love for her God. At Dorje Yidam, our
sangha
was also a community of like-minded practitioners, in our case dedicated to the spiritual teachings and liberating techniques of the Buddha. As with any such group, we were encouraged to feel at one with the
sangha
, to invite its support rather than rebel against its rules, as I had been in the habit of doing back then.

And now?

Then, I’d rebelled. Now, I’d rejected my spiritual family entirely. Given my current lack of any spiritual practice whatsoever, what
sangha
in their right mind would want me? And my sincere but misguided attempt to make Heather and me a
sangha
of two had backfired. No relationship can bear that weight, not if the foundation is shaky.

“You’re right,” I said. For a brief moment, it felt good to admit the truth, but almost immediately my inner defender stepped in with a lame excuse. “But it’s not easy staying connected to the
sangha
, living over here, doing what I do.”

Excuses, lame or otherwise, usually evoked the same reaction from Yeshe and Lobsang: absolute, utter disinterest. Their unwillingness to engage in my habitual defensiveness was one of the reasons I loved them and needed them in my life.

“Staying connected to the
sangha
is hard anywhere,” Lobsang said.

Yeshe’s big smile broke through. “Yes! Have you forgotten what it’s like living in a monastery?”

We all laughed at the truth of that. As novices, we made a daily sport of pointing out the inconsistencies and hypocrisies of the old monks who taught us. We defined ourselves as much by our opposition to the
sangha
as by our identification with it. Our favorite target was old Lama Jamyang, a lifelong celibate and sweetly harmless elder, who had the bad-luck assignment of informing us about matters pertaining to sex. As far as his qualifications for teaching such a course went, what can I say? Lama Jamyang was brilliant at making butter sculptures. Period. He knew less than we did about sex, and we didn’t know much. All secular courses at Dorje Yidam were taught in English, a language that the old monk spoke haltingly. No matter, because his fundamental lesson wasn’t complicated. His attitude toward any and all interactions with the opposite sex boiled down to one key concept: “Don’t stick thing in girl.” He didn’t elaborate—he just repeated the phrase over and over, accenting different words: “Don’t
stick
thing in girl!” followed by “Don’t stick thing in
girl
!”

As a self-appointed rebel, I, of course, had to press. “Which particular thing?” The shocked hush that followed was worth the sure punishment my father would mete out later on.

“
Any
thing!” Lama Jamyang bellowed, before banishing me from class.

Sadly, this severe approach to a natural instinct is not the sole province of Tibetan Buddhists. The world is rife with extreme, shame-based attitudes toward the opposite sex. Even Bets McMurtry’s born-again gang had a name for
Don’t stick thing in girl:
abstinence education. I doubt it works any better here and now than it did with me over there back then.

“Tenzing?”

I herded my wandering mind back to the present. I looked at the screen, at the openhearted concern radiating from my friends’ faces. Their unquestioning love tapped against the wall of resistance, and a small crack opened up.

“I need your help,” I said. “With the case I’m working on now. I’m a little lost.”

Without hesitation, they nodded in unison. “We are at your service,” Yeshe said. “Always.”

I rubbed my eyes. “I’m like a mongrel chasing his tail, utterly convinced he’s closing in on his target. I’m running in circles, and I’m running out of time.”

Lobsang said, “There’s also the small issue of bad men kidnapping you, of a gangster wanting you dead. Such things would affect any person’s serenity.”

I nodded.

“Can you tell us more about your adversary?” Yeshe’s eyes were steady. He, too, was maturing. There was a time not that long ago when he didn’t want to hear anything bad said about any other sentient being.

I told them what I could about my complicated foe, including what my research had uncovered: the hundreds of brutal deaths; the billions of corrupt dollars; the sense I had that there was no destroying this creature, that its tentacles were too numerous, too easily replaceable by others. They listened in silence, eyes closed, breathing in and out. They were Buddhist monks committed to
ahimsa
, to nonharming, but they were also Tibetans, victims of an enemy regime responsible for mass cruelty, if not genocide.

“But I have no visible proof,” I continued. “All the evidence keeps disappearing. He’s been one step ahead of me this whole time, and I don’t know what to do.” I reached toward the screen, as if to touch them. “Do you have any intuitions based on what I’ve told you so far?”

Yeshe opened his eyes. His head bobbed. “Something came to me as you were talking. When did this start, Tenzing? Can you remember when you first tugged on these particular strings of karma? Where were you when it happened? Can you go back?”

I blinked, as the voice in my dream came back to me, clear and low.
Go back.

“Back to the beginning?”

I reached back, sorting through the past week.

Impressions formed:
Mac Gannon’s estate … Bets McMurtry, Mac, and me drinking iced tea … Bets scratching her arms … Mark Goodhue’s pursed lips and stiff back … Melissa leading me to the forbidden nylon backpack, the tracker planted inside it like a ticking bomb … A maid delivering drugs to a woman with ongoing pain in her hip and probably her heart.

All that felt like eons ago. Had it only been a matter of days?

I shared the incidents with Yeshe and Lobsang. I told them about Bets and her missing housekeeper, and how the misper case had catapulted me into this underground world, linked to the first like a bardo state and filled with danger.

Lobsang, ever the practical one, said, “So, who is paying you?”

I started to say “Mac Gannon,” but then I realized I didn’t know the answer. He might be paying me, but then again, he might merely be funneling money from elsewhere, including from Bets. And the payment was specifically for finding a missing person, Clara Fuentes. Who was paying me to do whatever I was doing now, chasing down Chaco and Chuy Dos and the rest of them?

Lobsang saw the look on my face and said, “Nobody?”

“Bets, I think. Or Mac Gannon. I don’t even know anymore.” I sighed.

“Don’t waste time judging yourself,” Lobsang warned. “It is an indulgence. Whatever is, is. You know that.”

“Listen to you, venerable Lobsang,” I teased. “You’re starting to sound like a real abbot.”

He ducked his head and smiled.

Yeshe was following his own train of thought. “The real question is not who is paying you but what is driving you. I trust you have a higher motive. But Tenzing, if your motivation stems from lower intentions, from forces of your unconscious mind, you must bring them to the light right away. Remember what the Buddha says: we must always explore the root cause of our actions; to cling to our ignorance is to return to the mud. And in your case, to invite danger.”

I took a deep breath. Then another. I was sorely out of the habit of tuning in to myself. I closed my eyes and floated a couple of questions through my mind:
What is so important about this case? Why am I putting myself in danger?

Chaco’s flat eyes looked back at me. I opened mine and said, “One thing I feel is a drive toward completion. I don’t like loose ends. I can’t walk away from a situation unless I know order has been restored.”

They both leaned toward me. The slight bow meant,
You are on the right track. Please continue.

“It’s a feeling, deep in my belly,” I said, sensing further into the physical clues offered by my midsection.

Yeshe’s answer was prompt. “Then you are experiencing fear, hunger, or thrill. Those are the key sensations all of us feel in our bellies. Can you tell which one it is?”

I drew another slow breath down into my abdomen, trying to explore the river of sense impressions flowing through me. Talk about muddy. The only clarity available was the fact that I was really out of practice.

Finally I said, “Half fear and, uh, half thrill … maybe?”

Lobsang shook his head. “There are no halves in the belly. It’s all one thing.”

Aah.
I felt a shift, a bigger area opening up, and then a vast spaciousness. The sensation was disorienting, dizzying even. I realized how tightly I’d been separating my feelings, trapping fear inside one tributary, anger in another, excitement off to the left, shame to the right, and surrounding any hint of sadness with the strongest sea wall of all. For one brief moment, I felt all the barricades drop. I was liberated. Free. The expansion was dizzying: suddenly I could experience everything I felt, all at once. A deep wave of unity and calm washed through me.

Lobsang gave me all of three seconds to ride the sweet rush before marching, in his methodical way, directly into the heart of the matter. He’d always had a knack for gently nudging me into wisdom and then kicking my butt.

“Of all your feelings,” he pressed, “what is the one you have kept most hidden from yourself?”

Out of nowhere an overwhelming upsurge of sadness, like a rogue wave, loomed. I started to back-paddle furiously. Then I caught myself.
No, allow.
I was swept into a vast gulf of grief, awash with the ancient debris of my parents’ divorce and my mother’s suicide. I shuddered. Opened my eyes wide and looked into Yeshe’s, then Lobsang’s.

“Oh,” I said. “Sadness. My father and mother, their relationship. Her …” My voice trailed off, as a lump of hardened grief caught in my throat. They nodded. They knew my story.

“Do you know what your parents’ struggle and your mother’s suicide have in common?” Lobsang’s voice was kind.

My mind was blank. I shook my head.

“Both were beyond your control. You were powerless to help your parents get along with each other. You were powerless to make your mother happy.”

All that time, all that energy I’d expended, trying to cajole my mother out of her drinking and depression, trying to keep my parents from fighting.

“Tenzing, do not judge,” Yeshe broke in. I nodded, grateful for the intervention.

“There is another thing,” Lobsang said. “Your parents’ relationship and your mother’s suicide were both loose ends. Loose ends you could never tie up. No wonder you have chosen this line of work.”

I felt a prickle of irritation. “That’s not what’s driving me,” I said. “That’s not the only reason I’m a detective.” I bristled, a sure sign he was close to another truth.

They both laughed. Yeshe said, “I agree! Certainly not the only one! Fear, thrill, compassion, old family patterns—you probably have a dozen motives that drive you, just like the rest of us. Don’t think you’re so special all of a sudden. But whatever the motives, you must learn to recognize them and, who knows, maybe even make them your friends. Inquire into all your motives, Tenzing. Don’t wall them off from each other or yourself.”

Irritation shifted into grudging acceptance, which in turn moved into relief at hearing the truth.

Lobsang stifled a yawn, and I realized with a start how long we had been talking.

“I’ve kept you from your sleep,” I said.

Yeshe smiled. “Knowing you are better, I will sleep better.”

“But yes, we should go now,” Lobsang said. “Tomorrow, we welcome a new crop of novices. And do you know what I am certain of?”

“What?”

“They will be in every way just as maddening as we were at their age.”

“You have my sympathy,” I said. “All I have to deal with are gangsters and drug lords.”

“There are days when I would gladly switch roles,” Lobsang said.

I placed my hand over my heart. “You’ve helped me. Thank you.”

“
Yin dang yin
,” Yeshe answered. “You are most welcome. But Tenzing, thanks are not necessary among dharma brothers.”

“Be well, Lama Tenzing,” Lobsang added, reaching toward the computer. “And remember: whenever darkness draws you in, choose the
sangha.
Choose the light.” A blip and they were gone.

I sat back. I felt a little spaced out after our conversation, light-headed and light-bodied as if my physical form was inflated with helium. Deep conversations with Yeshe and Lobsang tended to have that effect on me. I was relieved when Tank wandered in and started to slalom back and forth between my shins. I reached down to stroke his back, using his warm body to ground me. My office telephone was blinking. Looked like once again, I had several messages. I stood, stretched, made myself a pot of coffee and Tank a bowl of wet food. I ate the last banana.

Finally I listened to my messages from the night before:

Heather, unable to reach me on my cell. Exhausted from dealing with multiple vehicular deaths. Turning in. Maybe we could talk tomorrow. (Which was today.)

Clancy, wondering why the hell I wasn’t answering my cell.

Bill, ditto.

Mike, ditto.

Cielo Lodera, asking, “How’s my hero of the hour doing?”

And finally, a sheepish-sounding Mac Gannon, just checking in.

I started at the end, which was also the beginning. I called Mac.