The First Rule of Ten (6 page)

“Barbara Maxey,” I said. “She was looking for her ex-husband, Zimmy Backus.”

I gave them the quick sketch of my brief interaction with her, leaving out my little
frisson
of attraction.

Morris scribbled in a small notebook. His writing was spiky and crabbed. It looked disappointed, too.

“This about the car?” I asked. Stealing a rusted VW didn’t usually warrant a house call by two cops from two different departments, but you never know.

Detective Tatum’s face narrowed. “What about the car?”

“It’s hot. She stole it. From the cult, she said.”

“That explains the expired plates,” Morris put in, and made another note.

Tatum just shook his head. “No. We’re definitely not here about the car.”

“What did she do, then?” Car theft aside, she didn’t strike me as felon material.

“She didn’t do anything,” Tatum said. “She got it done to her.”

A thin spear of dread drilled downward from my heart to my belly. I swiveled in my chair to look out the window.
I think something bad may be going on.
I took a deep breath. Turned back to Tatum. He was eyeing me closely.

“What happened?” I asked.

Tatum opened his mouth. Then closed it. One more silent exchange with Morris. I knew this look too well—Bill and I had shared it many a time when questioned by a well-intentioned citizen. I was the civilian now. Kicked out of the tribe, maybe for good.

Well, I would have to create my own tribe, then.

“We’ve got her on a slab downtown,” Morris said. “We need somebody to I.D. the body. She’s got no next-of-kin as far as we can tell, so that leaves you.”

I have nowhere else to go.

I stood up.

“I’ll meet you there.”

I headed south down Topanga Canyon, pulling a left on Pacific Coast Highway. Usually I loved to take the Mustang through her paces, but I was too distracted to enjoy the drive. I hugged the coast, glancing once or twice at the ocean to my right. It was dark and choppy today, like my mood. I wondered about Barbara’s connection to Zimmy, her concern about his royalties. I had been so quick to dismiss her fears. Too quick by far.

I continued onto the 10. It was smooth sailing for about nine miles, until I ran into the inevitable clog of cars that meant downtown was close. I zigged onto the 110 toward Pasadena, zagged onto the 5 South, merged onto the 101, and took the Mission Road exit. Driving in L.A. was like negotiating a labyrinth. It took me years to learn my way around.

I entered Boyle Heights, land of the gang, home of the disenfranchised. Last count, it was over 90 percent Latino, and who could blame them? Their forefathers were victims of restrictive covenants that limited land ownership throughout L.A. to only the whitest of lily-whites. South Central and Boyle Heights were the exceptions. Now these two neighborhoods marked their territories with spray cans and bullets.

I pulled into the County Coroner’s entrance and parked in an open slot in front of the emphatic “Visitors Only!” sign. That was me, now. A visitor only.

Ahead of me loomed an ornate confection of brick and cement that seemed better suited to an art academy than its singular, grim purpose. Eight hundred bodies passed through the County Coroner’s building every month—anyone whose death was sudden, unnatural, or suspicious in any way. Anyone not under the care of a doctor. Anyone who had fallen off the map.
I have nowhere else to go
.

I slowly ascended the stone steps, dreading the job ahead. The last time I came here, it was to buy a beach towel—among other distinguishing features, this was the only Coroner’s office in the country with its own gift shop. Skeletons in the Closet stocked an array of morbid but amusing knickknacks, from skull business-card holders to numerous items decorated with the ominous traced outline of a fallen homicide victim. Some of the proceeds raised money to educate kids about drunk driving; though it seemed to me a tour of the morgue after a bad pile-up might serve just as well. Whatever. At the time, I’d been invited to a retirement party for a fellow cop who was taking his pension and hightailing it to Hawaii. The Body Outline Beach Towel seemed like just the thing.

I entered the lobby. Passed a small cluster of people surrounding a young woman racked with sobs. Passed an elderly man, sitting, staring blankly ahead, at nothing. Took a deep breath in, then out. Mortality is hard to face, but impossible to avoid. Me? I’d been trained to view the inevitability of death as a goad to living a more meaningful life—by showing compassion to others, for example. I only wish it were that easy.

I headed for the morgue.

C
HAPTER
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.