The First Rule of Ten Read online

  I headed for the morgue.

  CHAPTER 6

  Death wears many masks, and I’ve seen more than my share: from the smiling visage of an esteemed lama who, after a lifetime of compassion for all sentient beings, passed peacefully while seated in an advanced state of meditative luminosity, to the gaping stare of a young gangbanger, cut down in his neighborhood war zone by a blunt act of violence. I was at that scene within moments, and his dark spirit still circled his place of death like an angry raven.

  Then there’s my first. The death that marked me for life. When I found my mother, she was lying in a heap on the floor, her once-beautiful face mottled and puffy, misshapen from the toxic mix of prescription drugs washed down with a liter of Bordeaux. The stink of stale vomit and alcohol clung to her like a stain. I am still haunted by it. The cologne of death.

  “Ready?” Tatum asked.

  I nodded.

  The attendant tugged the sheet to just below the chin. Barbara Maxey’s features were pale, yet somehow defiant as well. Death had robbed her of her ruddy complexion but not of her fine bone structure. I shivered in the chill, antiseptic air of the morgue as I scanned her face. No visible signs of trauma, at least that I could see. I wanted to ask the morgue attendant to pull the sheet lower, but something told me to wait.

  I turned to Tatum and nodded again.

  “That’s her, then? Barbara Maxey?”

  “Yes. That’s the name she gave me, anyway.”

  Morris passed over a long-expired California driver’s license. Barbara smiled back at me, many years younger, glowing with the bliss of the newly clean and converted. She must have just joined the cult.

  “That’s the only I.D. she was carrying,” Morris said.

  “What was the cause of death?”

  They said nothing. I waited.

  “You want me to show him?” the attendant said, glancing at the cops.

  They were silent.

  “Guys,” I said, “I’ve only been a civilian for forty-eight hours. Give me a break.”

  So Tatum did. He nodded to the attendant, who drew the sheet down below her collarbone.

  The bruising was massive, and unmistakable; clear hand marks encircled Barbara’s slender throat. The larynx area was especially discolored, a violent contusion of purple and black. Whoever did this had been brutal about it. I took a few breaths to quell the surge of nausea in my gut.

  “Finished?” the attendant asked. The cops nodded, and he draped the sheet over her face. He took a moment to smooth out the wrinkles. I appreciated that he did that.

  I still held her license in my hand. I met Tatum’s eyes.

  “Can I have this?”

  He frowned. Government-issued identification of any decedents was usually returned to the issuing agency for disposal.

  “I’ll destroy it within the day. I promise.”

  Tatum glanced at Morris. Morris shrugged a halfhearted consent.

  “Thanks.”

  I pocketed the license.

  Tatum walked me out. He was through with me, but I still had a few questions.

  “Where did you find her?” I asked.

  “Topanga State Park. A couple of early-morning joggers spotted her. She was in a sleeping bag, set back a ways, near the creek. Looked like she’d spent the night up there. Or I should say part of the night. The ME says time of death was probably around 3 A.M. this morning.”

  We had reached my car. Tatum’s eyebrows arched. I could see him trying to figure out how the hell a guy like me had a car like that. It happens a lot—’65 Shelby Mustangs in mint condition are pretty rare. Then his cell phone beeped, pulling him back to reality. He’d have to leave this particular mystery unsolved. He turned to go.

  “Detective Tatum.”

  He glanced back.

  “Did he say anything about the manner of death? Did you do a tox screening to see if any drugs were involved?”

  “Let it go,” Tatum said. “You’re off the clock. You don’t need that kind of garbage floating around in your head.”

  “Was she clean?”

  “Let it go,” he said again, and walked off.

  I crawled home through early rush-hour traffic, but I was grateful for the time to think. To remember. To plan. I had Barbara’s license. It should be enough.

  Tank greeted me at the door with the throaty, indignant complaint of a domestic quadruped that hasn’t eaten all day. I made up for it with his favorite: a squeeze of tuna juice, straight from the can, drizzled over his bowl of food like a benediction.

  I grabbed a handful of satsuma tangerines and moved to the deck to clear my head. I sat for some time, peeling the loose, leathery skins, popping tart sections of citrus into my mouth. Thinking. What did I miss? What would I have done differently, had I known I was meeting Barbara Maxey on her last day on earth?

  Tank wandered out and climbed into my lap. He burrowed close. Soon he was purring, his big body vibrating against my belly. I pocketed the peels. The citrus oil on my fingertips smelled tart, and bittersweet.

  I knew what was bothering me. I had sensed a couple of things during my brief time with Barbara. Sensed them, and dismissed them. Made wrong assumptions, because of old ideas that still ran me. I’d picked up an impression of weary despair she carried with her, as if she knew time was running out. Despair and a deep loneliness. And yet, and yet. That final set of her shoulders, that last, light wave from her as she headed down the road, pointed to a woman with a renewed sense of purpose. She had been at a crossroads, where hope and despair intersected. Perhaps if I had invited her inside for a cup of tea she might have unburdened herself. Gone in a different direction. She might have locked in on the hope-beam and ridden it to a pear farm in Oregon, rather than ending her days in an old sleeping bag in a park.

  As for me, I’d broken my First Rule, already. Ignored the nudge to know more. Rejected the light tickle of attraction. Because to embrace our similarities might lead to intimacy, and there was nothing more dangerous than that. She’d been honest with me. I hadn’t, with her. She’d taken a huge chance. I’d played it safer than safe. She’d followed a hunch. I’d ignored my own.

  And now she was dead.

  “There’s no such thing, Tank,” I said, stroking his back. His spine rippled and rolled beneath my palm. “There’s no such thing as a minor lapse of awareness. You’re either present with what is—right here, right now—or you’re someplace else.”

  A swell of regret washed over me. Tank lifted his head, then nestled closer. Well, I couldn’t change the past. But I could address the present.

  “Sorry, old boy,” I said, spilling Tank onto the deck. “Duty calls.” I walked into the kitchen, reviewing what I needed. I put the kettle on to boil. I checked the fridge. Sure enough, I had some leftover brown rice from the other night, so that was okay. The cakes might be a problem. Then I remembered the tin of home-baked cookies, delivered by Martha on Christmas Eve. I opened it. Nope. Empty, except for a few sugar cookie fragments, remnants of edible snowmen, dotted with green and red sprinkles.

  I stood for a moment, frustrated. And realized the solution was right in front of me, in the form of half a loaf of moist, spicy pumpkin bread. Every few months, I make a special trip to Carmen Avenue in Hollywood to visit the Monastery of the Angels: a cloistered nunnery, incongruously located a mile south of the famous sign. Set apart from the neighboring world of tinsel and greed, two dozen good sisters prayed year-round for the lost souls of the City of Angels, and baked year-round to support themselves by selling pumpkin bread that rivaled the nectar of immortality.

  I cut three dense slices. I smiled. Not so different, in fact, from my own monastery’s torma, the sacrificial barley flour cakes used in every ritual.

  I divided the rice equally between three bowls. Grabbed a slightly used candle from my dump-everything-in-here drawer, and also a spare stick of incense. I was a little rusty on the details, but incense never hurts.

  A shrill squeal announced boiling
water. I filled the pot and let the green tea steep. I laid out the three bowls of rice, three slices of pumpkin bread, and two shallow saucers, one empty, one filled with water. I went into my meditation room and returned with my Buddha statue, hawk feather, and mangled bullet. Set them down as well. I lit the candle and melted enough wax on a small plate to set the taper upright. Propping up the incense presented a bigger challenge. Finally I moved the tiny potted impatiens I was coaxing to life on my windowsill to the table, and pressed the smoldering stick into its soil. Then I set two cups on the kitchen table and filled each one with the steaming, fragrant brew. I stood still for a moment, surveying my work. What was I forgetting?

  Of course. Barbara Maxey. She who has left life.

  I reached into my pocket for the driver’s license. I carefully leaned it against one teacup, so she was facing me.

  A little makeshift, but my intentions were pure. I was ready. I hoped she was as well.

  First I invited Barbara to unburden herself, as I wished I’d done the day before. I sipped my tea as hers cooled in her cup, opening my heart and mind to her, wherever she might be. I let the whisper of connection I’d sensed grow, and deepen.

  I felt her despair. I felt her hope. I felt something else that saddened me—the deep anguish of an addict who had traded one self-medication for another. She hadn’t escaped the monster; she’d sidestepped it for ten years. She’d locked herself up in a society where giving up personal freedom in exchange for staying clean seemed like a fair trade. She’d had to stay vigilant, obsessive about her abstinence. But she knew the monster was still out there, waiting for her to become vulnerable again. I bowed my head to her valor, and I acknowledged her courage at daring to leave her self-imposed prison, to make a new beginning for herself, to seek another path.

  I sensed her terror, to be back out in the world. To be helpless and unprotected, where monsters could find her. Where at least one did.

  I lightly touched her photograph. “I’m sorry,” I said.

  I couldn’t change the past. But I could address the present. Time to begin the bardo ritual.

  I dipped the hawk feather in water and sprinkled it over her smiling image. Mentally reciting what I could remember of the prescribed texts, ritual invocations to the deities of the spirit worlds, I alternated offerings: rice to the Buddha statue, who symbolized the higher realms, and cake to the smashed fragment of lead, representing shadow worlds peopled with dark forces. Rice, then cake, light, then shadow. Six realms. Six gifts. With each offering, I asked that she be allowed to pass through safely, released from peril, invited into joy.

  I recited the final blessing out loud, the closing words flowing from my heart to hers: “When the time has come to go alone and without friends, may the compassionate ones provide refuge to Barbara, who has no refuge. Protect her, defend her, be a sanctuary from the great darkness of the bardo. Turn her away from the great storms of karma. Provide comfort from the great fear and terror of the Lord of Death, and deliver her from the long and perilous pathway, into the light.”

  My eyes pricked with tears. I picked up Barbara’s smiling image, and carried it outside, with the candle. I swapped candle and license on the plate, and held the flickering flame to one corner of the plastic. Black smoke curled into the dusk. I had to reignite the image again and again, and it took a long time to reach critical mass, so it would burn on its own.

  Certainly longer than it took to strangle a woman to death.

  I tried to be patient. I owed that to Barbara. The laminated plastic bubbled, scalloped, and blackened. Small flecks of grit floated up with the smoke. Finally, all that remained were a few curled, incinerated bits of ash.

  The sky was growing dark. The air was still, though I could hear the faint hum of traffic below. I turned toward the ocean, where only yesterday Barbara had gazed with longing. I lifted the plate of ash to my mouth. I blew.

  When the time has come to go alone and without friends …

  I went inside and called Bill. Told him I’d be honored to share a meal with him and his family.

  CHAPTER 7

  “So, let me get this straight,” Bill said. “Your very first client as a private detective is a woman who didn’t hire you, and can’t pay you. Because she’s dead.”

  I was enjoying a predinner beer on the patio with him and Martha. Maude and Lola were just inside the screen door, sound asleep in their matching, battery-operated cradle-swings. They rocked back and forth in a steady rhythm, like infant metronomes. They were swaddled tight, tucked deep in their carriers. With their round faces and tufts of red hair, they resembled a pair of chubby leprechauns.

  The last time I saw them, they were tiny and bald. Barely hatched. Now they had hair, and two chins. Each.

  “I hadn’t thought of it in those terms,” I said, “but I guess that just about sums it up.”

  Martha said, “Bill, honey, be a little more encouraging. Everybody’s got to start somewhere.”

  “Good point,” he said. “And who knows? Maybe dead clients are the best kind to have. I can see real advantages to working for someone who can’t talk.” He took a swig of beer. “Too bad she didn’t have a pot to piss in.”

  Martha patted my knee. “Don’t take it personally—Bill worries about everything. He’s already figured out the safest route for the girls to walk to school, and they’re not even crawling.”

  “Don’t remind me,” Bill said glumly. “Next thing, they’ll have boyfriends with Harleys.”

  I pulled out my final paycheck and waved it at Bill. “Don’t worry. I’m still on the payroll one more week. Then I get unemployment, if I decide to register.”

  “What do you mean, if?”

  I shifted in my chair. “I don’t know,” I said. “It just doesn’t feel right to me somehow.”

  Bill shook his head. “You and your feelings, Ten. You’ve earned unemployment, and then some.”

  “But I haven’t. I got paid for the work I did. This is getting paid for work I’m not doing. I know it sounds crazy, but I feel like as long as I’m on the dole, I’ll be right back where I was. Not moving. Not changing. You know, stuck.”

  Now it was Martha’s turn to look concerned. “But how will you support yourself?’

  “I’ve got some money saved up. Anyway, I think I’ve figured out a new way to make money.”

  “I’m not buying lip gloss from you, buddy. I have a lifetime supply,” Bill said.

  Martha snorted. Her love of Avon products was legendary.

  Maude/Lola let out a little squeal and rustled around in her swinging cocoon. Then Lola/Maude caught the vibe and started to wail. Martha stood up and walked inside, unbuttoning her blouse.

  “So what’s the problem?” Bill asked.

  I tried to put the niggle into words. “I‘m starting to think maybe money, I don’t know, carries its own weight with it. Like karma. If I’m really going to make this leap into supporting myself through my own talent, I have to trust that the money will come. Either I believe I’m of value, or I don’t. My entire life, I’ve been supported by one institution or another. I want … no, I need to see if I can go it alone.”

  “Sounds like wishful thinking,” Bill said.

  “That’s right,” I said. “But sometimes wishing works.”

  Bill glanced inside at his nursing daughters, medical miracles tucked close like footballs, one on either side of his contented wife. He smiled.

  “I guess sometimes it does,” he said.

  The doorbell rang; both babies startled and broke into wails, and blissful calm became chaos in an instant.

  Bill grabbed one beet-faced daughter, and Martha held the other to her shoulder and patted her on the back. I opened the door to a laughing brunette, loaded down with groceries.

  “Ten, I’d like you to meet my sister, Julie Forsythe,” Martha called over the cacophony.

  I stuck out my hand. The sister gave me a look over her bulging shopping bags, then twisted and lightly elbow-bumped my
palm. Suave start, Tenzing. I relieved her of the two bulky bags. Her dark eyes were flecked with gold. A mass of soft brunette curls fell to below her shoulders. She was quite beautiful. Almost exactly my height, that is to say on the tall side for a woman, on the not-so-tall side for a man. Her arms were toned, her skin lightly freckled. She was strong, but her curves were full and feminine. I was very glad I’d changed into clean Levi’s and the dark brown T-shirt that Charlotte used to say matched my eyes.

  I wasn’t looking. This wasn’t a date.

  Julie said, “I don’t know if Martha told you, Ten, but I’m fixing dinner tonight. Want to give me a hand?”

  I followed her into the kitchen like a meek puppy. Bill and Martha headed to the bathroom to give the twins their bedtime bath.

  Soon Julie was briskly chopping carrots. I couldn’t help noticing the large butcher knife she was wielding expertly. Her hand was almost a blur. She was wielding her hips, too. Fascinating. She chopped with her whole body.

  I blurted out the first thing that came to mind.

  “How did you learn to chop like that?”

  “Culinary Academy,” she said, without looking up from her task. She organized a neat pile of carrots, and moved on to the celery.

  “It’s the first thing you learn in C-school—how to dice quickly without tiring your arms or hacking off your fingers.” She put down her knife and waggled her hands. “See? I’ve been a chef for close to ten years and I’ve still got all ten of my fingers.”

  “And here you are with a guy named Ten,” I said. “Must be your lucky number.”

  I winced. What had gotten into me? I was babbling like an idiot.

  Julie played it just right. “Ten years, ten fingers, guy named Ten. Coincidence or … ?” She let the sentence trail off dramatically. “Here.” She tossed me a Persian cucumber. “Show me what you got.”