The Third Rule Of Ten: A Tenzing Norbu Mystery (20 page)

Was Manolo referring to the leader of the rumored gang of gangs?

“Who is it?” I motioned with my gun. “Who’s the new boss, Manolo?”

He swallowed hard again. “Carnaté,” he whispered.

“Say that again?”

“Carnaté.” His eyes flicked across the sand, as if he thought the dunes had ears. I made a mental note to call my contact in the gang unit to see if a “Carnaté” was on their radar. I’d never heard of the guy.

“Carnaté, as in
meat
?”

His look was one of pity, mixed with genuine terror. “You don’ know shit, do you?”

I changed tactics. “So you worked for Chuy Uno, and then, what, he joined another gang?”

A flash of anger straightened his spine. “It’s bullshit, man. I was doin’ six months in juvie, and when I get out, it don’ mean shit. All that new money going straight to Chuy’s head. And less and less coming down here to us now.”

“All what new money?”

“Carnaté pay Chuy a lot of money to bring his
clica
over. I heard sixty thousand, all in hundreds, clean and pure as the Virgin Mary.” Manolo crossed himself.

“Ah, so Chuy’s
clica
, his gang, joined forces with this Carnaté.”

“That’s what I just said. And fucking Chuy, he went out and got himself a brand-new chopper. Rides that thing like he a king or something. Meantime, what do I get? A stinkin’ Ford van a few nights a week and a job driving
puta
s around like a pussy.”

“You can put your hands down,” I said.

He dropped them to his side. He still wouldn’t meet my gaze. “You gonna let me go now?”

“Not quite yet. Is Chuy Uno still in jail in Tijuana?”

Manolo nodded.

“Where can I find Chuy Dos?”

Manolo’s shifty eyes fired off a rapid set of blinks.

I let him blink.

Finally he said, “At work.”

“Where and when?”

He named a street very familiar to me and an address that Clancy was no doubt surveying at this very moment. Well, well, well.

“He there most days, eight to three. Can I go now?”

“Soon. Talk to me about the Guard-on unit.”

“Man!” He jerked his chin toward the dunes. “Pedro and me, after we busting in, we couldn’t find the dope. Instead, we grab the machine. Taking all the cameras out of the trees, like that.”

“I noticed,” I said. “So Chuy told you to steal my Guard-on unit?”

He shook his head. “Naw, man, Chuy just want his dope back, ’cause he know Carnaté gonna squeeze his nuts for losing track of product. Jacking the machine, that was my idea.” Manolo brightened, as if expecting praise.

Mike walked up.

“Are you almost done here? Tricia needs her car.”

At three in the morning?
I wanted to say, but didn’t. Vampires have their own mysterious nocturnal activities.

“Almost.” I turned back to my captive. “You’re not going back to Chuy with what happened here tonight, are you, Manolo?”

“You shittin’ me? He kill me for sure, he find out I got caught jacking, you know, stealing on the side. I can’ let him kill me.” His voice rose. “No way, man. You let me go, I’m gone. You and Chuy never see me again. You don’ know that man, what he like to do.” He made another sign of the cross.

I gentled my voice. This kid was clearly terrified of something. “What does Chuy like to do?”

A gentle salt breeze was blowing in from just over the dunes, but he shuddered, as if hit by an arctic blast.

“I’m done talking,” he said.

The image of a young banger’s butchered body, squeak-squeaking on Heather’s gurney, flicked through my mind. I prayed I was wrong about this. But if I wasn’t wrong, the kid had every right to be scared.

I turned my attention back to Manolo, whose skin was slick with sweat.

“I’m taking your pistol,” I said. I counted out eight $100 bills. “Here. That should cover it. I suggest you and your buddy Pedro use this money to get as far away from here—and Carnaté—as possible.

Manolo shoved the bills in his pocket, which hung down around his calves. He looked away, scuffing at the sand. Without his gun and bravado, he was just another lost, scared adolescent, wearing pants five sizes too big.

He licked his lips. “He gonna know you did this.”

“Chuy Dos?”

“Naw. Carnaté. Carnaté knows everything.”

Beyond the dunes, an ocean lullaby was ebbing and flowing, ebbing and flowing. “I hear Canada’s nice this time of year,” I said.

He finally met my eyes, dead serious. “Maybe I see you there, amigo.”

He ran across the dunes and into the darkness. I waited until he was out of sight.

Mike was snapping shots of the blasted side panel with his iPhone, for posterity.

“Mike, when you get home, can you call the Lost Hills Station and make an anonymous report on this van?” Let them deal with it.

“Sure thing, boss.”

I called Bill, and this time he picked up. Turned out, he hadn’t been asleep after all. He was called out on an officer-involved, drive-by shooting in Echo Park.

“I’m sorry, you’re saying what now?” Bill said, his voice low.

“I need to follow up on something,” I said. “It has to do with this gang of gangs. You up for a little joyride?”

Bill groaned, but I knew I had him. Anyway, he was already up.

I had Mike drop off my boxed Guard-on system and me at the 24-hour Jack in the Box farther up the PCH. I shoveled down a breakfast sandwich and a small greasy loaf of shredded potato generously called hash browns, and downed a scalding cup of bitter coffee. Bill pulled into the parking lot 40 minutes later, and I climbed into his car.

I turned the Herstal over to him. Maybe a trace would shed some light on this new gang.

“I’d forgotten this about you, Tenzing. How much you love to ruin a guy’s beauty sleep,” Bill said. He bagged the Herstal and locked it in his glove box. “Okay, Cowboy. Where to?”

I brought up the GPS tag on my phone and filled him in, as we merged onto the 10 and sped along the mostly deserted freeway and surface streets until we got to the Culver City industrial lot. I directed him to park up the block. The front of the lot was dead still, although the silence was underpinned by a constant, low-frequency hum. I couldn’t locate the source, but it was close by. I checked the office module, but there was no light on inside. In fact, the whole place was suspiciously bathed in inky darkness.

“Now what?” Bill asked, one eyebrow cocked.

I led him to the back alley. The guard’s hut, too, was dark. I looked up and down the alley. No pickup truck. No Tercel hatchback. I crossed to the spot in the fence where the guard’s entrance was masked by overlapping slats. I kicked at the hidden gate in frustration.

It swung open.

We called out a few times before entering the lot, on high alert, but the site appeared vacant. I led Bill to the first warehouse. It was locked up tight, but I was able to hitch Bill onto my shoulders so he could play my flashlight through one of the high windows. A youthful memory flared, only back then it had been me standing on Lobsang’s shoulders, stealing an ancient text from the monastery library. I shook the recollection off. Bill’s weight dug into my shoulders as he peered inside.

“There’s nothing in there, Ten. Just a big room.”

“Are you sure?”

“It’s empty, pal.”

All three warehouses were stripped clean: not a pill, pot plant, or mobile unit in sight. Back in the car, I sat in stony silence, my body stiff with disappointment. Bill finally cleared his throat.

“I’m going to assume you weren’t tripping on some special Tibetan juju medicine, Ten, and that those warehouses actually had something in them.”

“Someone must have gotten spooked by my earlier visit. I’m telling you, they were full of drugs and marijuana plants and … and portable operating units.”

“Emphasis on
portable
,” he said.

“Agh!” I hit the dashboard, realizing. “Everything—the shelving, the hydroponic systems—all of it was on rollers!”

“Modern gangs,” Bill said, philosophically. “They think of everything.” He yawned. “I don’t know about you, partner, but I’m ready to call it a night.”

C
HAPTER
13

The concrete floor presses against my cheek, cold and unyielding. I am stretched out, prone. I have been here before. I lift my head to look around. A man steps out of the corner shadows. It can’t be. But it is. My father lifts his right hand with the palm facing me. With his left hand, he points to the ground. The first gesture is meant to dispel fear, the other to call the earth as witness.

“You can’t be here,” I say. “You’re dead.”

“You only think I am,” my father answers, and his eyes turn the color of blood.

I run outside, into a barren stretch of desert sand. Sere. Lifeless. Carcasses litter the perimeter; maybe human, maybe animal, they’ve been left to rot by their attacker—me. I look at the horizon, which comes alive with whirling sand. The cloud of dust envelops me. The air swirls, dark and full of grit.

I start to walk, when a second man—more a boy, really—appears before me in the billowing sand storm. His hands are cupped in front of his chest. A beating heart rests in the shell formed by his palms.

Miguel. Dead Miguel.

And then I know. I am back. Back in my recurring lucid dream.

“Show me,” I say.

Then I am standing at the base of a tall stone watchtower. As I look up, the tower sprouts limbs, like a human. Or a cactus.

I step inside. It is pitch black. I feel my way up the steep stairs, past the first level, past the second. My legs are heavy. Climbing is like lifting concrete, but I force my way up the rough-hewn steps to the third level.

I can go no farther.

“Help me,” I say. “I am lost.”

A low voice speaks into my ear. It is androgynous, neither male nor female. For the first time, I wonder if it is my own voice I am hearing.

“Go back,” it says, and the impenetrable dark fills with the ringing of bells.

I was jolted awake. My cell phone was clanging—I had recently changed the ringtone to Bell Tower—and for a moment I was confused, straddling two realities.

I cleared my throat and answered. “Hello?”

“Tenzing? It’s Bets, Bets McMurtry.” Her voice was low but frantic and laced with fear. “Clara called me! I just got the message. She must have called last night after I went to bed! She’s still alive, but you have to find her! She’s in trouble!”

“Hang on,” I said.
Did I oversleep?
I checked the time, my heart thud-thudding in the disjointed rhythm of panic, but it wasn’t even 6:30
A.M.
yet. I’d been out for only a few hours. I was okay.

I sat up in bed, shoulder-hunched the phone under one ear, and grabbed a pen and my notebook.

“Okay. What did she say? Tell me exactly.”

“She said, she said,
‘Ayúdame,’”
Bets wailed. “She said it twice.
‘Ayúdame! Ayúdame!’”

Help me
. Something tightened across my chest, like a leather strap.

“That’s all she said. Then she hung up. Ten, she sounded so scared!”

“Can you give me the number of the phone she called you from?”

“I think so,” Bets said. I waited, but without much hope. “Oh, no. It says ‘number unknown.’”

“Bets, I’d like to come get your phone.”

“But that’s impossible … I mean, I don’t think I can …” I heard a doorbell ring in the background. “Shit! I have to go. Please, Ten. Find her before it’s too late.”

“Bets! I need that phone!”

I heard raised voices, and a man came on the phone.

“Detective Norbu? Mark Goodhue. I’m sorry, but we’re dealing with an emergency over here. We will get back to you shortly.”

Just like that, they were gone. Apologies to the Buddha, but I wanted to throttle both of them.

I jumped out of bed. My eyes itched with exhaustion, but there was no time to lose.

I coffee’d up and was on my way to East L.A. and Clancy’s lookout point well before 7
A.M.
The key to everything rested inside those cleaning vans, and I was not going to be caught flat-footed a second time. Clara had been missing for almost a week. The odds had been solidly against her survival. But as of earlier this morning, she was alive enough to beg for help. I intended to provide it.

I found the parked Impala and tapped on Clancy’s window. He lowered it, stifling a yawn. With his stubbled cheeks and raccoon eyes he, too, resembled—as Bets had so graphically put it—warmed-over roadkill. Three days of round-the-clock surveillance will do that to a man. I was right on his heels in that department. I’d even spooked Tank this morning.

“Yo,” Clancy said. “Just in time.”

“What’s their schedule?”

“Well, in about twenty, if all goes as usual, most of these puppies will pull out, empty. Not the one I been keeping my eyes on, mind you, but most of the rest. Your favorite hasn’t moved once. It’s like they know why we’re here and who we’re watching. Weird. Anyway, eight o’clock, out they go. Empty. Two hours later, back they come. Empty. Around three o’clock, same thing. Out, empty; in, empty. Whatever they’re transporting ain’t from here.”

Clancy yawned again.

“Thanks,” I said. “Now, go home. Get some solid in-your-bed sleep. Once you wake up, if you’re up to it, go to the Aon downtown and watch for this car.” I gave him the make, model, and license-plate number of Mark Goodhue’s Mercedes and showed him a snap I took of Mark. “If you catch this man on the move, follow him. Are you keeping track of your time?”

“Oh, I’m keeping track,” Clancy said. “This rate, I’ll be done with my hours and ready to set up on my own before next week!” He ran his hands through his hair, which was a good deal less halo-like. In truth, it more closely resembled a pelt from an unidentifiable animal. “Anything else?”

“You might want to take a shower.” I smiled. “You know, before your wife and daughter get back. You look like crap.”

“Now who’s callin’ the kettle black?” He drove off, laughing.

Sure enough, at 8
A.M.
sharp, several Hispanic men, all dressed in navy coveralls, a small white logo sewn on their front pockets, appeared like magic from the one-story office building and climbed into their assigned black Ford vans. Not my two bruisers, though, and sure enough, the van I’d spotted at the beach stayed put. I followed the exodus at a discreet distance, as they all drove maybe ten blocks east before pulling into another lot. Whoever was running this operation clearly understood the benefits of mobility in all things—moving targets are much harder to hit.