The Second Rule of Ten: A Tenzing Norbu Mystery (Dharma Detective: Tenzing Norbu Mystery) (18 page)

I thought about Heather first. After Julie left, I wondered if I’d ever have another chance. Now, appearances seemed to suggest I might. It was exciting and alarming at the same time. What if this didn’t work out? What if it did? After ruminating on both thoughts for an unpleasant several yards, I filed them in the giant mental file folder labeled “Things I Cannot Control,” which sits right next to “Things I Can Control.” The former file is a lot fatter. I felt the usual wave of relief after letting go of the idea I was in charge of the world. As for Heather, I was determined to take things slower this time, and so far, so good. As she so aptly put it, we’d get there, if we were meant to.

No, the person I was worried about right now was Bill. He didn’t look like himself, and he wasn’t acting like himself. I couldn’t put my finger on what was wrong, though. His complaints about his job weren’t anything new—griping about the LAPD came with the territory, for all of us. So did frustration. I remembered one of my first conversations with Bill. We were halfway into a pitcher of ale, in that brief window of consumption when you’re feeling brave enough to broach personal questions, and happy enough with the
Ah-So
-ness of everything not to care what the answer is. Bill had already been a homicide detective for almost ten years, long enough to know the job in his bones.

“What’s it like?” I’d asked. “Really like, I mean.”

“You want to know what being in Homicide is like?” He’d studied the head on the beer, as if the foam contained the secret to life. Maybe it did. “Here’s the job, Ten. Ninety percent boredom, just putting one foot in front of the other, and one percent pure panic.”

“Ninety percent boredom, one percent panic.” I reflected on the proportions.

“Maybe panic isn’t the right word, but it’s pretty close. Things break out all at once, and you’re taking hairpin turns on the fly, inventing shit as you go, just hoping you stay inside the guard rail.”

I liked the sound of that. “So what’s the other nine percent?

“Fuck if I know.” Bill took a long swig. At that moment I realized we wouldn’t just be partners, we’d be friends.

And so we have been, watching each other’s backs, making each other laugh. As partners, our differences were unimportant, our similarities essential. Neither of those things had changed. So why was I feeling so cut off from him?

I had planned on capping off my run with a good long sit-down in my meditation room, but I made the mistake of checking my computer first. This time, the Skype icon was blinking and bouncing to get my attention. If it had arms, it would have been waving them frantically.

“All right, all right, I see you.”

I clicked on the icon and sure enough, I had a message from the mysterious Mr. Zigo.

HELMUTZIGO: OK TO CLL NW. USE PHNE.

I glanced at the time stamp. He’d sent the message fifteen minutes earlier. I followed Mike’s highly complicated instructions: I clicked on the phone icon. I heard a distinctive ring. For fun, I also clicked the video icon so Zigo could presumably see my Tibetan mug.
It can’t be this simple.

Apparently, it could. He answered right away. “Hello, Mr. Norbu.” A voice, but no visual. I regretted my impulse to try both features at once. I now felt at a disadvantage.

“Greetings. Can you see me?”

“Yes,” he said. “I see you just fine.” His English retained a trace of an accent. German? Swiss?

“Where are you located, Mr. Zigo?” A pause.

Finally, “Belgium.”

“Would you mind turning on your webcam so I can see you?”

“Yes,” he said. “I mind.”

My gut twanged at that.

“You’re acting like a man with something to hide,” I said. “Are you contemplating something illegal, Mr. Zigo?”

He chuckled. “What’s that expression? ‘You don’t beat at the bush?’”

“That’s right,” I said. “I’m not beating around the bush. You are dealing with the painful past and tender emotions of an elderly gentleman. A very fine man who’s done a lot of good in the world. So I hope you aren’t thinking of wasting anybody’s time, Mr. Zigo.”

“Your zeal is admirable,” he said. “And the answer is no, absolutely not.”

“Then let’s get right to it. What do you have and what do you want?”

“I’ve got proof that Julius Rosen’s sister, Sadie Rosen, is alive.”

“That could be interesting. What is the proof?”

“Slow down, Mr. Norbu. I’m getting there.”

I breathed through a contraction of irritation. He was right. I needed to shift gears.

“All right,” I said. “Let’s try this. How is Sadie? Is she well?”

“Reasonably well for a person of her age.”

“And what age is that?” I asked.

“You know very well how old she is,” he said.

“Humor me.”

He sighed. “Seventy-three,” he said.

I actually had no idea how old Sadie was, but 73 sounded right. I’d do the math later. “Okay,” I said. “What’s next?”

“What’s next is I outline my terms and you respond to them. There are other people involved in this transaction.”

“Transaction,” I said. “The magic word has been uttered.”

“You have an irritating tone of moral superiority, Mr. Norbu.”

I pictured Julius, his face lined with pain over his lost sibling.

“Maybe I do,” I said, “but you’re the one trying to sell something that an ethical person would give freely, for the pure joy of it. Maybe in this situation you actually, genuinely, are morally inferior.”

“Fuck you.” His icon disappeared from the screen.

Another stellar moment in my detecting career. Somewhere out there, in the sphere inhabited by kindred spirits, Sherlock sighed. “Next time, meditate first,” he seemed to say.

Should I try to call Zigo back? I vacillated, but in the end decided to wait.

It hadn’t helped that I was starving. I pulled my loaf of whole-grain bread out of the fridge and hacked off a couple thick slices. While they toasted, I was faced with another tough decision. Peanut butter was a once-a-year luxury in the monastery where I did most of my growing up, and I still found it amazing that I could walk into my local health food store and find six different brands of organic peanut butter.

I lined all six on the counter. I went with light-roasted crunchy.

After my snack, I moved to the deck, Tank padding after me. A little repair work was in order. I closed my eyes and settled into my body’s rhythmic ebbs and flows. The morning fog had burned off, and my skin warmed in the sun’s warm touch. After 20 minutes of quiet breathing, I opened my eyes, automatically searching for Tank. He was at the far end of the deck. I had to laugh. Tank likes to stretch on his back and catch rays with all four feet in the air, a position I have yet to master. He was snoring lightly, limbs aloft, en route to his first big nap of the morning.

I had brought my Julius Rosen file outside with me. I opened it and went through its meager contents again, wondering whether I should call him about this first contact, or lack of contact, with Helmut Zigo. I wasn’t sure what my policy with clients should be yet—I’d only had a few. My inclination was to give as much detail as possible, down to the nitty-gritty, boring details of the failed phone calls and dead-end leads that are part of every investigation. In other words, to include the 90 percent. I might drive them crazy, but at least they’d know I was earning my keep.

I called Julius. Predictably, given my train of thought all morning, his phone rang for a long time, without going to voice mail. I made a note in the file. I’d try later.

I paced the deck, fretting about my aborted communication with Zigo. This quickly led to worrying about my ongoing half status as a private investigator, which led to wondering what other productive careers existed where I could put my energy.

My deck isn’t that big; after a few laps I began to feel ridiculous.

“I need a sign, Tank,” I said.

I went back inside to check my computer. And sure enough, Helmut Zigo was back, this time offering a conversation in the flesh, or screen-flesh, I guess you’d have to say. A moment later I was face to face, digitally speaking, with a tanned, good-looking fellow of about fifty, a few days worth of fashionable stubble on his face. A pair of reading glasses perched on his head. He was sitting at what appeared to be a kitchen table. In the background I could make out a flowery curtain, dim light shining through the folds.

I asked him, “Still in Belgium?” Neutral enough.

He indicated the curtain. “Yes. And a very gloomy Belgium it is. Rain and thick fog for three straight days. I imagine it’s considerably different in Southern California.”

“I won’t torture you with the details,” I said, “but yes. Are you ready to talk business?”

“I am,” he said. “But, first, let me say that I took offense at your tone the last time we spoke. As a result, I allowed my emotions to get in the way.”

“Me, too,” I said. “And I appreciate . . . “

“Let me explain, please,” he interrupted. “I’m a businessman, Mr. Norbu—not some kind of criminal. Other than an unfortunate night of celebration back in ‘99, leading to me and my car sitting in a ditch, I have never once been detained by the police. I sell information for money, and if you or Mr. Rosen don’t want my information, you don’t have to buy it.”

“I’ll try to keep that distinction in mind, Mr. Zigo. And please, feel free to raise a warning finger if I get on my moral high horse. Now, what’s your information, and how much does it cost?”

He lowered his reading glasses and lifted a few sheets of paper. “I am holding the records of a tiny orphanage in Germany. It folded a few years after the end of the war. Sadie Rosen is mentioned in their records, as well as an indication as to how she might be traced. That is what I am selling, Mr. Norbu.”

“How did you know to look into the records of an orphanage, Mr. Zigo? How did you know to look for Sadie Rosen?”

“Excellent questions,” he said. “Some years ago I came across Julius Rosen’s inquiry regarding Sadie Rosen. It seemed like a useful business prospect. After all, if there was one Julius Rosen, there might be others. Wealthy survivors, I mean, looking for relatives. I filed the flier away, for possible future use. A few weeks ago, an associate of mine in Germany turned up these records. He gave me a call.” He spread his hands and shrugged. “No big mysteries.”

“Have you followed up, to find out if there’s anything to this new information?”

He shook his head. “I don’t want to get that far into it,” he said. “You’re a clever man, Mr. Norbu, so you probably have a sense of the kind of communication I deal in. Most of it inhabits the borderline area between business and extortion. Distinctions can be blurry, do you agree?”

I try not to blur too many distinctions, but I resisted the temptation to tell him. I wasn’t in the mood to be invited to fuck myself twice in one day. “You could get a lot more for this information if you had some verification that it was valid.”

“True,” he said, “but then I’d be in a different business, wouldn’t I? One a bit more like yours, perhaps. I’m happy with the niche I occupy and the commissions I can earn from it, Mr. Norbu. Let’s get on with it, shall we?”

“Just to be clear, what we’re buying is the written record of Sadie’s time spent in an orphanage, as well as what happened to her after she left.”

“I’ll be even more specific. You get the name of the family who adopted her.”

“And this is recorded on original documents I can see with my own eyes?”

He nodded. “That is correct. In broad terms, do you want to make this deal?”

“How much?” I asked.

“One hundred thousand dollars.”

Whoa.

“I’ll need to get authorization from Mr. Rosen,” I said.

“I’ll stay here while you contact him.” Zigo smiled, and sat back, as if he had all day.

I walked into my bedroom, far from the webcam’s reach, closed the door, and called Julius from the landline.

This time he picked right up.

“Mr. Rosen, it’s Ten.”

“Tenzing! Just who I was hoping it would be. Any luck?”

I explained the situation. Call me silly, but with $100,000 at stake, I’d want to sleep on Zigo’s offer. But I guess Julius didn’t get where he was by spending long hours mulling over financial decisions. He didn’t hesitate. “Offer him ten grand up front, no strings, and the remainder in two equal installments, two weeks apart, if, and only if, the information pans out. Tell him this isn’t a negotiation. He can take it or leave it.”

Right. I went back to my desk and sat down in front of the computer. Zigo’s face still filled the screen. He arched an eyebrow. “Well?”

“Mr. Rosen wants to make it clear that this is not a negotiation and that this is a one-time-only offer.”

He nodded. “I understand.”

I told him the terms. He pursed his lips. “What does that mean ‘if the information pans out’? Does that mean if you find Sadie Rosen?”

I felt like a minnow in a tankful of sharks. It was rapidly becoming clear I wasn’t cut out for a career in business, especially at this level. I ran back to my bedroom, had another quick chat with Julius, and returned.

“No,” I said. “It means if we find the family that took Sadie Rosen in. If that link turns out to be good, you get your money.”

He thought it over. “Okay. Deal.” He cocked his head at me. “Mr. Norbu, I need you to confirm.”

“Deal,” I said.

He dictated wire transfer instructions. I gave him my contact information, and said I’d get in touch when everything was finalized. I called Julius, who passed me on to an assistant to handle banking details. Then Julius came back on the line.

“What’s your gut telling you? You think there’s anything to this?”

I was tempted to hedge, to blur the line, as Zigo put it, between spinning the truth and speaking it. The temptation passed.

“I don’t have a good, clear read yet,” I said. “Maybe it’s too early for my gut to weigh in. Or maybe it’s never going to. I don’t know.”

“Fair enough. My lawyers will get everything in writing. I want to move fast on this. If all goes well, the money transfer should be complete sometime late tomorrow. You should have what you need in two days, max. Good work, Ten. Keep me posted.”