There wasn’t much traffic at that hour. Soon I was lurching along Wilshire Boulevard, traversing my way into Beverly Hills. I would be at Keith’s soon, if the drive didn’t put me in traction first.
I know. Beverly Hills and cracked pavements don’t seem to mix. And in fact, if you take Sunset Boulevard, the minute you approach Beverly Hills proper, the pavement magically loses its pockmarks as a thick profusion of multicolored flowers suddenly burst into bloom along the medians. Like an A-list actress, that area of Beverly Hills wouldn’t be caught dead in public without makeup and blond streaks. But drop south of there and it’s one big bad hair and acne day.
According to the latest city infrastructure assessment, there are over half a million unfilled potholes in Los Angeles at any given time, and maybe a dozen patch trucks to deal with them. Once a year the mayor announces Operation Pothole, and maintenance crews fan out across the city to patch and plug. They usually manage to repair 30,000 holes over a single weekend. That’s 30,000 down, 470,000 to go. It’s like doing battle with a wrathful Tibetan deity, the kind with never-ending multiple arms waving thunderbolts and skulls. When I was still a rookie on traffic detail, one jaded city official put it this way: “Potholes, like diamonds, are forever, son. So you tell me, how do you stop forever?”
Welcome to my brain when I’m driving around, dodging troughs, working a case.
I checked the map on my phone, zigzagging my way north and west, and eventually turning onto the bumpy byway known as Hartley Crest, set in the wooded hills off Benedict Canyon, where the houses are in the four-million-dollar range. As my beater car and I labored up the steep, winding street, a dim drizzle of wet fog slimed my windshield. The Toyota had a bum wiper on the driver’s side, which I kept forgetting to replace.
I started passing high-end luxury coupes and SUVs parked nose-to-tail along the narrow road. Considering the company, maybe I should have taken the Shelby after all. I squeezed into a space between a dark blue Mercedes and a silver Infiniti. I considered grabbing the .38 Super out of the locked glove compartment, just in case, but thought better of it. First of all, technically, I wasn’t allowed to carry it yet. Secondly, guns and teenagers don’t mix. I climbed out of my car and took a moment to collect myself.
A bottom-heavy hip-hop beat shook the night. Boom Boom thud, Boom Boom thud, Boom Boom thud. Raucous laughter. A girl’s high-pitched bray. I had found the party.
I passed between a pair of tall wrought-iron security gates, wide open and inviting any and all to enter, and picked my way up a driveway paved with antique cobblestones. Sherlock would have felt right at home. The house was a large two-story Mediterranean, stucco and red tile, with a second story turret. It looked like it had been built in the ‘20s and renovated this morning.
First things first. I tested the door to the attached garage. Unlocked. I looked inside. I was curious to see what an ex-rocker-turned-actor drove. I saw a gleaming black sedan I couldn’t immediately identify. I slipped inside. I had to take a look. Well, well, well. A Maybach 57 S. Maybe the most expensive car in the world. You don’t see that every day. I gave its flawless German features a respectful bow and continued on to the heavy, ornately carved front door.
The sound inside was deafening. I changed course—no one in the middle of that was about to hear the ring of a doorbell. I moved around to the manicured pool area in the back. Light spilled out of a large kitchen window. I took a closer look.
A young couple was engaged in a prolonged mouth-to-mouth exchange of oxygen and saliva. He had her pinned against a marble kitchen island, and she had her legs gripped around his waist like a monkey. Neither one paid me any attention as I slid open a glass door and slipped inside. I passed a row of gleaming, top-of-the-line appliances and moved into a large, arched entryway. To my right, a gigantic flat-screen television loomed over an oak-paneled den that was bigger than my house. Several young people, glassy eyed and still, were fixated by the flickering images on the screen. To my left was a step-down living room, where more kids sprawled on leather chairs and sofas, passing around an elaborate bong. If good looks were illegal, they’d all be locked up. I caught the eye of one young temptress, and she gave me a glazed once-over, followed by a dismissive smirk. I was barely 30, but already a fossilized life form to her, a curious leftover from the late Paleolithic. Ouch.
I scanned all the faces. No Harper. No Keith, for that matter. I mentally stepped into his shoes. If I were a rising hot actor about to hook up with my producer’s daughter, I’d want to do my hooking up in private. In the master bedroom, for example.
I bounded up the curved and carpeted marble staircase and was faced with three doors. Two of them were ajar. I headed for the closed double doors at the end of the hallway. I pressed my ear to the wood. Animated voices, one low, one high. Arguing? I cracked the doors open and spotted a muscular, naked man groping at a slight young woman, tearing her clothes off as she gasped and cried out. My mind screamed, “Two-six-one! Two-six-one in progress! Sexual assault!”
Adrenaline coursing, I threw open the doors and flung myself across the room. I peeled off the brute—Keith—and tossed him to the floor.
I turned to the victim—Harper—expecting to see relief and gratitude.
With a high-pitched scream, Harper launched herself at me, arms flailing. I had to hold her wrists aloft to prevent her from gouging out my eyes.
“Who are you? What do you think you are doing?” Harper shrieked. “I was about to fuck Keith Connor! Keith Connor! Are you completely insane?!”
I moved to a window seat, well out of reach of Harper’s talons. Keith watched me from the floor with a kind of stoned curiosity. He was stark naked and seemingly too high, or uninhibited, to care. My eye was drawn to a blue heron, tattooed just above his groin. Ooph. I turned my attention to Harper.
“My name is Tenzing Norbu. I’m a private investigator,” I told her. “Your father hired me to find you and bring you home.”
“I hate you,” she said.
“Dude,” Keith’s voice piped up. “For real?”
I met Keith’s reddened eyes. “For real. Dude. And you should be ashamed of yourself,” I added. “She’s sixteen.”
His eyelids drooped. His facial expressions flickered as several fuzzy concepts formed their way into an unpleasant pattern:
Marv.
Movie.
Underage daughter.
Detective.
He sat up.
“Shit, man,” he said. “You really know how to mess with a guy’s buzz.”
Irritation made the back of my neck itch. Entitled jerk. I glared at him, daring him to make a move.
Keith remained unfazed. He looked at me with interest.
“So, what, you’re like Jackie Chan? Chinese or something?”
“Tibetan,” I snapped.
“Awesome. Save the yaks, right? Some guy asked me to sponsor one last year. So, tell me, what’s it like in the Land of Snows?”
“I wouldn’t know,” I replied icily. “I was raised in a monastery in India.” Moron.
He blinked in confusion.
I opened my mouth to continue. Then I closed it again. There was no point giving him a history lesson about China’s brutal takeover of Tibet. One: the systematic destruction of Tibetan Buddhist culture and the exile of thousands of monks and nuns happened more than 30 years before I was born. And two: China’s war with Tibet was not to blame for my current state of mind.
Harper jumped in. “Hey, I’ve got an idea. How about if we just pay you some money and you go away?”
“Babe, he’s not going to do that. He works for your dad, okay?” Keith’s voice was patient.
He stood up and closed the doors. Scooping a rumpled pair of gray cashmere sweatpants from the floor, he stepped into them, cinching them with one hand. Harper’s minuscule panties and featherweight tank top left little—no, make that nothing—to the imagination. With her slim hips and small, firm breasts, she was beautiful, in a waifish orphan k
ind of way. My taste in women tends toward the voluptuous, not to mention legally aged, but there was no denying it: the girl was hot.
I was a monk, not a saint.
I quickly turned my attention back to Keith. He gave me a half wink, as if to say, “See what I have to deal with?”
“So, detective,” he drawled. “What’s Marv paying you, anyway?”
I found myself wanting to impress him. “I get five grand a day for jobs like this, three-day minimum.”
His eyes widened. I guess he momentarily forgot his own day rate. He gave me a friendly nod. He’d decided to have a little chat, man to man.
“Okay, so now, let me see if I’ve got this straight. You’re pretty much obligated to go back to Marv and tell him you found Harper here, and me about to bone her, right?”
“Pretty much,” I said.
In actual fact, I wasn’t sure about getting into the details. Fathers like Marv with sexually precocious daughters like Harper have enough to worry about. The fact that Keith was on Marv’s payroll further complicated things. I wasn’t exactly sure what my next move needed to be.
“Dude,” Keith said. “I’ve got twenty-thousand in cash in the top drawer of my dresser. I’ll hire you for four more days to forget all about this, and you can refund Marv’s money. Or you can keep his money, and take my twenty as a little bonus. I don’t care. I just don’t want to fuck up the movie. I don’t want any bad vibes between me and Marv.”
A $20,000 “little” bonus? He must have remembered his day rate after all.
Before I could respond, loud noises erupted down in the foyer. Heavy footsteps pounded up the stairs.
The double doors burst open for the second time, and there stood all 300 quivering pounds of Marv Rudolph, face clotted with rage.
As he swayed in the doorway, I was fascinated to see how wrath had transformed him. His left eyelid twitched, and a vein on his forehead swelled into a caterpillar of pulsing anger. Hot fury rippled from him like poisonous waves. Behind me, Harper whimpered.
An old monk’s teaching flickered through my mind: When in doubt, breathe. When not in doubt, breathe. I focused on my breathing. One. Two.
Before I got to three, Marv exploded. Screeching like a wounded pig, he broke for Keith, who desperately tried to scoot backward. Harper threw herself between her father and Keith. In the resulting collision, she and Marv tumbled to the floor. Keith leaped nimbly over them and trotted out of the bedroom, still holding his sweatpants up with one hand.
I stepped outside after him. He was at the stairs when Marv hurtled past me and made a diving tackle. No contest. Now Harper was screaming, “Daddy Daddy Daddy” at the top of her lungs, as Daddy and Keith bumped and slid down the stairs locked in a mutual choke hold. Finally they rolled to a halt on the landing. Both collapsed onto their backs.
“Fuck,” said Keith.
Marv was too winded to do much more than groan.
I was feeling pretty calm, calmer than they were, anyway. I took a seat on the bottom step and waited for Marvin’s panting to subside. Time for a little family mediation.
“You shouldn’t be here,” I told Marv. “But now that you are, you need to cool it. You’re going to hurt somebody, and the somebody I’m worried about is you.”
Marvin twisted his stubbled face toward me, then glanced away. “I can take care of myself,” he muttered. He pushed upright.
Keith, too, sat up, wincing.
“Does this mean I’m fired?” he asked Marv. I found the question absurd. Of course he was fired. Marv considered Keith’s answer longer than I would have.
“You do her?” Marv finally said.
“No!” Keith answered. “Swear to God, no. Ask the monk.”
Keith had assigned me a role in his personal movie: I was The Monk.
Marv grunted, mulling it over. Keith’s eyes entreated. Some wordless understanding passed between the film producer and his lead actor. Then: “Thanks, man,” Keith said. “I won’t let you down.”
Marv grunted again.
When it comes to how the movie business works, I know nothing.
I surveyed the scene: Marvin hunched on the floor, Keith clutching his ribs. A sullen, sniffling Harper, her cheeks striped with mascara, leaned against the banister, seemingly unconcerned with her father’s well-being or with the fact that she was the half-naked cause of all this.
Weariness fell over me like a heavy blanket. I wanted to go home. The sooner I took charge, the sooner I could leave. I stood up.
“Harper, go get dressed, please, then come right back.”
She glared at my authoritative tone but headed up the stairs.
“Marv, take Harper home and put her to bed. Then get some sleep yourself.” Marv stood, groaning under his breath.
“Keith, go into the kitchen and make yourself a cup of tea, if you know how. Sip it, and count your blessings.”
He shuffled into the kitchen, the too-long legs of his sweats dragging behind like reversed flippers.
“How did you figure out Harper was here?” I asked Marv.
“Two plus two equaled Keith,” Marv said. “She’s a star-fucker, just like everyone else in this town.”
I was sorry I’d asked. I marshaled the remaining revelers into the foyer. They were scattered throughout the downstairs like so many discarded empties.
“Party’s over,” I said. “And if I see one word of this on the Internet, I will not only track you down and have you arrested, I will serve your name to Marv Rudolph on a platter. And you don’t want Marv Rudolph as an enemy.”
They hustled out the door.
That was worth at least $5,000 in P.R. repair and maintenance right there. Operation Pothole, at your service.
It took me a few more minutes to shepherd the Rudolphs into Marv’s smoky gray Lexus, parked askew in the driveway. Touching. He drove an LS Hybrid. For over $100,000 he could be comfortable, as well as politically correct.
Father and daughter drove off together in stony silence. I went back inside for one last sweep. Everyone but Keith was gone. The house felt very empty.
“Hey,” Keith called from the kitchen. “Want a cup of Darjeeling?”
“I’m good,” I said. He rejoined me with his steaming mug.
With a sheepish smile, Keith offered, “I still want to pay you.”
“What for?”
“I owe you, man. Three more minutes and my big break would have gone right out the window.”
I thought it over for one, maybe two seconds. “Send it to the Tibet Foundation,” I said. “Twenty grand sponsors a lot of yaks.”
Brrtttt! My cell phone vibrated in my pocket, buzzing me back to the present. Me. Deck. Returned letter from my friends. The air was chilly, the sky as dark as ink. Tank leapt off my lap and stalked into the house. I rotated my neck and shoulders. I was a little stunned at the almost total recall I had just experienced, especially after months had passed since I had closed the case.
I grabbed my phone and glanced at the screen.
“Hello, Detective,” I said.
“Hey, Ten. How goes it?”
“It goes, Bill. It goes. I was just out here on the deck, taking in the view, winding down.”
“Rub it in.”
So I did. “Let me ask you something, Bill. Can you feel deep down in your bones that this is the only moment there is?”
Without missing a beat, Bill came right back with, “Yeah, I was sitting here looking at crime scene photographs, when suddenly this little voice inside me says, ‘Hey Bohannon—this is the only moment there is.’”
“And what did you say to that little voice?”
He adopted the thundering voice of a Pentecostal preacher. “I just said, ‘Thank ya, Buddha!’”
Bill Bohannon, newly appointed LAPD Detective III, Robbery/Homicide, is my former partner and one of my oldest friends in Los Angeles. He and I weathered a lot of weirdness together as Detective II’s, including the ultimate male-bonding experience, shooting back a
t thugs who were trying to kill us. He’d recently moved to a desk job. Me? I’d just moved on. Bill didn’t waste any more time getting to the point—one of his many virtues.
“We’re working a homicide, Ten. Messy one. Came in late last night. Some big Hollywood producer.”
My skin began to tingle.
“The Captain thought I should give you a call.”
Of course he did.
“The victim is a guy by the name of Rudolph. Marvin Rudolph.”
Of course he is.
CHAPTER 2
I pictured Marv the last time I saw him, face grim as granite as he drove his daughter home. All that angry bluster, and now he was dead.
“Any guesses on the COD?” I asked. Often the cause of death was pretty easy to determine at the crime scene.
“See, that’s what’s weird, Ten. Nothing is quite adding up.” Bill’s voice sounded strained, as if his chest muscles had constricted. I heard a high-pitched wail in the background, immediately joined by a second one, a lusty duet of protest from his twin toddlers, Maude and Lola.
“Damn it, Martha, I can’t think!” Bill yelled. Cop shoes clunked across the floor, and a door slammed shut.
My own chest tightened. This behavior from my normally unflappable friend was completely uncharacteristic. “Everything okay over there?” I said.
Either Bill didn’t hear me, or he wasn’t in the mood to respond.
“Bill?”
“Yeah, well, like I said, the crime scene makes no sense. Autopsy’s first thing tomorrow. They’ve put a rush on it—family’s super traditional Jewish, and the wife’s hoping to get the body buried before Saturday, though that will take a fucking miracle. Meanwhile, Marv is such a big shot in Hollywood, the media are swarming like a poked nest of hornets. I’d like to know how the hell I’m supposed to do my job when I can’t even walk into Headquarters without twenty microphones getting shoved in my face.” Bill’s voice was climbing the scales. I waited. Heard the unmistakable sound of chugging and the clink of a bottle being set down. Bill was drinking something. I was betting on beer. I thought yearningly of my own six-pack cooling in the fridge.
“Anyway, the Captain seems to think you might have known Rudolph.”
The Second Rule of Ten Page 2