The First Rule of Ten (2 page)

My eyes drifted across the room to the big plate glass window framing the far wall. It was dark outside, but beyond that darkness lay the ocean, wide and expansive, mutable yet constant. I felt its spaciousness waiting out there. Just waiting for me to acknowledge it. I took a deep breath.

“Congratulations, Charlotte.” I said. “I wish you both well.”

I hung up gently. Then I just stood there, phone in hand, trying to digest this new chunk of information. I waited. After a moment, my insides shifted. The heaviness inside—that cold iron ball that had hardened around all the times we’d disappointed each other, pissed each other off—actually started to soften, to melt a little. Well, what do you know?

“Hey, Tank,” I called out to my favorite feline, curled up on his cushion. He opened one eye. “Guess what? She-who-hates-cats is getting married.”

Tank’s tail flicked once. He was pleased. So was I. Relief and something bordering on glee flooded through me. Now and forever, there would always be a buffer, somebody else she could blame for everything being wrong with her life, before she got around to blaming me.

I strutted around my house for the rest of the evening, feeling pretty good about my existence on this fine planet.

The next day I got shot.

Here’s how it went down. My partner Bill Bohannon and I were finishing up a quick lunch, steaming bowls of Pho at a Vietnamese place we like in Echo Park, before heading back to Robbery/Homicide. As I opened my fortune cookie—don’t ask me why, but Angelenos demand fortune cookies from any Asian establishment, Chinese or not—the radio crackled to life: “Code three, four-one-five. Possible DV in progress.” Headquarters was calling for any available patrol cars to investigate a Domestic Violence incident. The address was only a couple of blocks from the restaurant. I glanced down at my tiny strip of future: “Destino está pidiendo,” it said. A Vietnamese fortune, written in Spanish. Only in Los Angeles. I turned it over.

“‘Destiny is calling,’” I read to Bill. As if on cue, the radio crackled out a repeat of its call to action. “Let’s go,” I said.

Within minutes we skidded into the driveway of a dismal-looking little bungalow near Rampart, first on the scene. Ramshackle front steps led to a splintered porch boasting a couple of metal folding chairs so battered they were safe to leave outside, even in this neighborhood.

A siren wailed in the distance. I had a fleeting notion that we should wait for backup, but Bill was reaching for his door. That’s all it took. I rolled out of mine and hit the ground without missing a stride.

I was sprinting toward the porch, Bill somewhere behind me, when he yelped out in pain. I glanced back. My partner was hopping up and down on one foot, swearing a blue streak. Bad time to twist an ankle.

Here’s where things started heading south. And from there they careened even further, about as far south as things can go.

Loud shouts erupted from the house. I was caught between Bill’s gimpy ankle and the fracas inside. My gut begged me to pause, but the adrenaline screamed, “Go!” The split second of indecision ended with the unmistakable report of gunshot, followed by a wailing female scream. I drew my revolver and ran to the screen door.

“Hot shot! Hot shot!” I heard Bill yell into the radio behind me. “Code ninety-nine.”

I pressed my face against the thin mesh and peered inside. A man slouched on a sofa to my left, cradling a .45-caliber semiautomatic. He was around my age, maybe 30, lanky, Caucasian, with a scraggly beard and long, greasy hair. Pretty calm, considering. I followed his gaze across the room, where a second man was sprawled on his back on the floor, a ragged hole in his chest.

Not good.

A woman in her 20s, also lanky, also Caucasian, huddled in the corner, hand to her mouth. Her screams had subsided into a series of strangled, high-pitched yelps. I looked closer. One of her eyes was swollen shut, a purple and black protrusion under her brow.

Apparently I wasn’t the only one with relationship issues.

Bill called out, “What’s happening?”

“Stay put for a minute,” I called back. “We’ve got a situation here.”

“Ten, don’t you dare even think about going ins—”

I stepped inside, vaguely aware that the swelling volume of siren wails indicated at least two squad cars en route, and getting close. Not much time to try to resolve this peaceably before it turned into a goat rodeo.

“What’s your name?” I asked the guy, keeping my voice calm and friendly. He was lazily twirling the heavy automatic in his hand, like he was used to handling it. I saw it was a Springfield, an M1911. He wasn’t pointing it at me, though, so I kept my Glock at my side. “Leon,” he answered dreamily.

He canted his head in my direction. I checked out his pupils. Fully dilated. He was seriously stoned on something.

“What’s yours?” he asked.

“Ten,” I said.

“Say, what?” Leon said.

I inched over to the body. The guy wasn’t moving, and his skin was the leached gray-green that signals zero life force. But I had to be sure. I squatted beside him and lightly pressed his neck, where there should have been the steady rhythm of pumping blood.

Nothing. He wasn’t even circling the drain. Whoever he was, he appeared to be gone.

I sent off a quick, silent blessing:
Om mani padme hum. May you enjoy peace and joy in the afterlife and in all your future lives.
Reciting the mantra would hopefully plant the seed of liberation in him, sinner or saint.

I straightened up. “My name is Ten,” I told Leon. “Like the number.”

“Ten,” Leon said. “Never heard that one before.”

“Short for Tenzing.”

“Never heard of that, either.”

“There are lots of Tenzings where I come from,” I said.

“Oh, yeah? Where’s that?”

“Tibet, by way of India,” I said.

“No shit,” he said. Then, “I been to Iraq.”

It was like I’d landed on some television talk show, only this show had a real live killer-host, who was playing with a loaded hand cannon.

I started moving closer to Leon, careful to keep my weapon at my side. I didn’t want to turn this into a pissing contest. Or maybe I did. Tiny tingles of adrenaline started to dance in my bloodstream, the precursors to a full-on flood. My heart bumped faster against my ribcage. My senses sharpened. Delicious. A small voice inside whispered a warning—
Careful, Ten. You’re playing with fire here. Disarm him, and wait for the others.

I ignored it.

“Did you get that hardware in the military, Leon?”

He hefted the big pistol in his hand and looked at it with fondness. “Yeah. First time I’ve shot it since Fallujah.”

“Nice piece,” I said. “Right now, how about putting it down and let’s talk some more?”

This got a hard laugh out of him.

“No disrespect,” he said, “but I don’t want to talk to you that bad, Mr. Ten. Tell you what I’m gonna do instead. I’m gonna make your job a little easier by confessing to this crime here.”

He waved the muzzle toward the body on the floor. “See that piece of crap over there with the hole in his chest?”

I nodded. Took another baby step toward him.

“I shot him.”

“You did, hunh?” Another step, nice and slow.

“Yep…. Should’ve done it years ago. Should’ve done it the first time he beat the living hell out of my little sister.”

This provoked a fresh wail out of the woman in the corner.

“Shut the fuck up, Sis! I did you a favor,” Leon snarled. She slid down the wall and wrapped her arms around herself. Leon fixed his reddened eyes back on me.

“So I, Leon Monroe Taylor, hereby confess to shooting that asshole over there, Jeremy Pitts. And let the record show I wish I’d offed him a long time ago.” He blinked. “You got all that?”

“Yes, I got it, Leon. Now, how about putting the gun down?”

I was close now, maybe a yard away.

His face split into a wide grin. “Here’s where I really save you some trouble.”

He jammed the .45 up under his chin.

“Leon, no!” I lunged. The air exploded with a deafening roar, and what was left of Leon Monroe Taylor slumped sideways.

I felt a sharp sting on the left side of my head. Blood patterned the walls and floor. Leon’s sister let out a muffled scream and kept screaming as the door crashed open. Two uniforms burst inside, Bill limping along behind them.

My ears were ringing hard from the explosion. My hands were shaking. I moved to the body to check for a pulse, but there was no carotid artery left to check. I bowed my head, and mentally sent off a second invocation on behalf of a second victim in as many minutes. Leon had just killed a man and then taken his own life. He would need all the help he could get negotiating his way through the
bardo
.

Bill pulled me away from the body. He pointed at my head and mouthed something.

“What?” I said. “I can’t hear you.” He flinched. I must have been yelling.

“You’re bleeding,” he threw back at me, though it came out gargled, like he was shouting underwater. He gestured to my head. “You. Were. Hit.”

Roger that. I touched the side of my face. Sure enough, a thick rope of blood was streaming down my cheek and neck. I inched my fingers up and found the source, an inch-long, narrow wound traversing my left temple. That’s the problem with scalp wounds. They’re bleeders, shallow or deep. One of the cops pressed a wad of paper towels to the side of my head as a compress. The other one got on his radio and called for an ambulance. Bill took Leon’s sister aside, both to comfort and to question.

All I could think was:
What a complete and utter cock-up. Two bodies, three victims, and a world of explaining to do to the higher-ups. Way to protect and serve, Tenzing.

The side of my head began to throb. The adrenaline was already wearing off. Bill nudged me.

He jabbed at the floor with his finger, his expression grim. “Your lucky day.”

I looked down. Bill called it right, as usual. A single spent slug was imbedded in the wood. It must have traveled through Leon and ricocheted off a metal joist, grazing my temple. A half inch closer and I’d be getting my oatmeal spoon-fed by a nurse for the next 40 years.

As it was, I got a ride to the ER, four stitches, and a tube of ointment.

I emerged from the hospital an hour or so later. I inhaled deeply. The outside air smelled piercingly sweet. Bill rolled up in his new minivan and I climbed in and buckled up, like a good boy. We sat in silence for a moment.

“So,” I said.

“So,” he replied. “I sprained my ankle and you got shot. Not our best day.”

“I’m sorry, Bill,” I said. “I messed up, didn’t I?” Bill glanced over at me. After a moment, he clapped me on the knee.

“Nothing a cold draft beer won’t fix,” he said.

I know I’m supposed to practice nonattachment, but there are times the pull of an ice-cold pint of beer trumps the promise of a lifetime, maybe even two, of equanimity. I can attest that one of those times is right after somebody skins you with a speeding bullet. I’ve been shot at before, by people actually trying to kill me, but thankfully, they all missed. So it’s ironic that my one actual bullet wound in the line of duty came from a guy who was only trying to shoot
himself
. Never mind, though. Never mind that it was only a ricochet bullet and a four-stitch flesh wound. I’d been hit—come
this
close to losing my “precious human form.” My hands had stopped shaking, but my inner being hadn’t, and while a long meditation might calm me down, right now a beer sounded better.

We parked at the nearest watering hole and walked, or limped, in Bill’s case, into the cool of the semi-deserted bar. The barkeep set us up with two frosty glasses of ale on tap, and we paused for the Holy Moment of the First Sip. We took our swigs and sighed in unison as the spirit-reviving beverage gushed over our parched taste buds.

“Homework time,” I said. “Anything we can learn from all that?”

“Here we go.” Bill rolled his eyes, but the corners of his mouth twitched in amusement. After any kind of heat goes down, I like to think out loud, ask myself if there’s anything useful I can learn from the situation. Call it an old habit from my monastery days. The goal is not to assign blame, but to glean any learning that will help me handle it better next time.

Bill humors me, especially when I’m buying.

“Here’s one,” he said. “How about, ‘Wait for backup’?”

“
Touché
.” We each took another swallow. Bill said nothing as I sorted through the mix of reactions, giving them time to settle.

“There’s nothing like getting shot to make you start asking the big questions,” I finally said. “Even more so when you’re sitting in the ER as someone stitches up your temple—which is, by the way, the most fragile portal to your brain. You tend to wonder, ‘Why? What’s the point? What’s the real message here?’”

“And did you come up with anything?”

I focused on my glass, staring at the amber liquid.

“Yeah, I think I did. The way I see it, certain incidents are like cosmic alarm clocks, you know? They jolt us into awareness. ‘Wake up!’ they scream. ‘The time is ripe for your job karma to change!’ We ignore such moments at our peril.”

Bill was silent.

“The truth is,” I continued, “I’ve been ignoring too many mornings where I wake up filled with dread at the idea of going in to work. Wishing I had a cold, so I could call in sick. Taking unnecessary risks, once I got there. I’ve been pushing my luck, Bill, just like I used to do at the monastery. And today my luck almost ran out.”

“I don’t love where this conversation is heading,” Bill said.

I met Bill’s eyes.

“It’s time for me to move on. Like the cookie says, destiny is calling.”

“I don’t get it, Ten. It makes no sense. You’re already the best detective we’ve got and you’re barely thirty years old.”

“It’s not about that, Bill. It’s about the job moving in one direction and me moving in another.”

Bill dropped his head. A wave of sadness passed between us. After a moment, he looked up.

“Okay, then, partner. Okay. Better to get out now before this work starts killing off your brain cells.”