The Second Rule of Ten: A Tenzing Norbu Mystery (Dharma Detective: Tenzing Norbu Mystery)
Authors: Gay Hendricks
Tags: #ebook, #book
PRAISE FOR
THE SECOND RULE OF TEN
A fast-paced thriller with a heart. Great storyline,
refreshingly different characters and dazzling insights
when you least expect them. I highly recommend
The Second Rule of Ten!
— David Michie,
author of
The Dalai Lama’s Cat
ALSO BY GAY HENDRICKS
AND TINKER LINDSAY
The First Rule of Ten
Available from Hay House
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Copyright © 2013 by Gay Hendricks and Tinker Lindsay
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Cover design:
Charles McStravick
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced by any mechanical, photographic, or electronic process, or in the form of a phonographic recording; nor may it be stored in a retrieval system, transmitted, or otherwise be copied for public or private use—other than for “fair use” as brief quotations embodied in articles and reviews—without prior written permission of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the authors’ imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales, or persons living or deceased, is strictly coincidental.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Hendricks, Gay.
The second rule of ten : a Tenzing Norbu mystery / Gay Hendricks and Tinker Lindsay. — 1st ed.
p. cm. — (Dharma detective series ; bk. 2)
ISBN 978-1-4019-4102-4 (pbk. : alk. paper) 1. Mystery fiction. I. Lindsay, Tinker. II. Title.
PS3608.E5296S43 2013
813’.6—dc23
2012035331
Tradepaper ISBN: 978-1-4019-4102-4
Digital ISBN: 978-1-4019-4103-1
16 15 14 13 4 3 2 1
1st edition, January 2013
Printed in the United States of America
Topanga Canyon, Calif.
Aug. 2, Year of the Iron Rabbit
Lama Yeshe and Lama Lobsang
Dorje Yidam Monastery
Dharamshala, India
Venerable Brothers,
I find myself reaching out to you because my heart lies heavy in my chest this evening. A few weeks ago a pair of cops in a city just south of here answered a call about a vagrant breaking into parked cars. They arrived on the scene and found the culprit at a bus depot nearby. He resisted arrest. They threw him to the ground, shocking him multiple times with their stun guns. Backup cops arrived, mob instinct took over, and soon six cops had Tasered and clubbed him into a coma as he cried out for his father . . .
. . . who was at home, mere miles away, oblivious to the unfolding catastrophe.
. . . who was, it turns out, a retired member of the police force.
Three days later, this heartbroken retired cop took his son off life support, finishing what his brethren had started. And today’s paper tells me the perpetrators are themselves under investigation by the FBI.
Multiple tragedies built on false assumptions. A homeless young man with a mental disorder, beaten to death by my other brothers, the ones in blue who carry badges. And all because they couldn’t see what was actually in front of them—a suffering human being gripped by paranoia, in need of medical attention. They saw the ground-in grime and ragged filth of the chronic vagrant, and assumed “homeless” meant abandoned and disposable, like trash. Maybe even dangerous. Their preconceived prejudices stripped the victim of all humanity.
His confused brain must have told him these officers were monsters. They obliged by responding monstrously.
Here’s the thing. As I sit here on my deck, watching the sky darken, I understand. I understand how those officers got caught up in the moment. How the flood of adrenaline swept aside reason and fellow feeling. How the twitch of an outstretched limb could seem as threatening as a cocked trigger. I want to believe that I am incapable of that kind of delusion, but I know better. As do you, my dear Yeshe and Lobsang, who know the deceptive capabilities, the hidden mines of the mind, better than most.
Lately I’ve been seeing more clearly how I use my false beliefs to deceive myself. I’ll notice self-critical thoughts running through my mind, labeling me as incapable of discipline, when suddenly I’ll realize that it was my father who’d always labeled me lazy. Or I’ll look at a beautiful woman and assume she is needy, then suddenly recognize it’s my mother’s neediness I’m seeing. It happens in my work, too. I found a missing 16-year-old I was searching for—found her pushed against a wall by a man twice her age, and assumed she was being raped. Nothing could have been further from the truth, but my unconscious assumptions kept me from seeing reality as it was.
So, I’m making a new rule for myself—a reminder, really, of a truth I tend to forget: From now on, I’m going to be on the lookout for unconscious beliefs, the kind I hold so closely, I mistake them for reality. As familiar as they are, as safe as they make me feel, too often these convictions serve as blinders. They prevent me from understanding what is actually happening in my life. I’m taking a new vow to challenge my old, limited models of thinking. To be willing to release them. Their job may be to protect, but more often than not they mislead and in some cases, even endanger. In the split second it takes you to figure out the difference between your perception of reality and reality itself, a lot of bad things can happen. In my chosen line of work, that split second can mean the difference between living and dying.
The lost-and-found teenager Harper Rudolph was my latest such lesson in humility. I’m not complaining. The job paid well enough to see me through several lunar months. I can now report that I am more than holding my own as a private investigator. I’m grateful for that. And I guess you could say I closed the case successfully, though Harper didn’t see it that way. She may have been missing in her father Marv’s eyes, but the last thing she wanted was to be found.
After maybe three minutes of face time with Marv Rudolph, I felt like heading for the hills myself.
But that’s another story for another day. The air grows cool and moist against my skin. An eyelash of moon has just materialized, low on the horizon. Can you see it as well? I like to think so.
I miss you, my friends, even as I hold you close in my heart. Not a limiting assumption. Reality.
90
Ten
C
ONTENTS
I flipped the envelope over, rechecking the address in Dharamshala, making sure I had it right. But of course I did. How many letters, over how many weeks and months and years, had I mailed to my friends in just this way?
The original postmark was still there, stamped and dated almost three months earlier. Yeshe’s and Lobsang’s names were x-ed out.
Return to sender!
blared across the envelope in black ink, with a slash of arrow pointing to my Topanga Canyon address.
I recognized the handwriting. I had grown up with it, the jagged letters gouged into small index cards summoning me to the monastery headquarters once or twice a week, so that my father, or should I say my father the senior abbot, could chastise me for yet another infraction. His stiff, angry scrawl was permanently etched in my brain. I would know it anywhere. Raw pain flared, deep within my solar plexus. From across the ocean, my father had hurled yet another judgmental spear. And once again, he had hit his mark.
I refolded the letter and slipped it back inside its paper pocket. A low sigh escaped, originating deep in my chest. Now that I knew Yeshe and Lobsang hadn’t received my latest letter, I felt a little lonelier than before. Nothing had changed, yet everything felt different. The sweet feeling of clarity I had been savoring, the one that often lingers after a deep afternoon meditation, was clouded now by a sense of loss.
I allowed it in.
In the distance, the ocean was quiet and majestic, the lights of distant boats just beginning to twinkle in the fading dusk. I took a sip of green tea. It had cooled in its cup as I sifted through my mail, turning tepid as I mulled over this unexpectedly returned letter.
Marvin Rudolph and his daughter, Harper. What a pair.
I felt my lips purse with taut disapproval, and I forced myself to relax into a half smile. Whenever my mouth tightens in judgment like that, I look a lot like my father. That tells me I’m thinking like him, too.
I tried to recall the case. After half a year, it had turned somewhat tepid in my mind as well. I closed my eyes and opened my other senses. Sometimes I have to let them do the remembering for me.
An acrid scent filled my nostrils.
Bad breath and potholes, that’s how it started. . . .
“Find her. She’s just a kid.” Marvin Rudolph leaned close, wheezing from the effort of walking the ten yards from his car to my living room. I wanted to recoil from the fetid combination of sushi and cigar smoke. My 18-pound Persian housemate, Tank, darted under the couch, probably for the same reason.
“Don’t you mean, find her again?”
“Whatever.”
Marv had already filled me in on his elusive daughter, Harper—at 16, a newly converted connoisseur of the seedy and the derelict. Six months earlier she’d made her first escape, bolting the family mansion to savor the dark side, in this case Adams Boulevard, near Skid Row. He’d discovered his daughter hunkered in a downtown loft with a drug dealer by the name of Bronco.
Marv handed over a photograph of Harper. I studied it. She must have gotten her looks from her mother. Dark wavy hair framed a heart-shaped face dominated by huge gray eyes.
“How did you know where to find her?”
Marv settled back in his chair. His long-sleeved black linen shirt, one size too small, encased a belly that billowed over his jeans. He was close to 70, but he dressed much younger.
