“You are,” I said. “And with any luck, the last.”
“Don’t count on it,” she said. “Listen, can I come in? I might be able to help you with that.” She stepped inside before I could formulate an answer.
Her eyes darted from my office area to my sofa to my kitchen, as if she didn’t believe there wasn’t another reporter hunkered down in some corner. Then she seemed to relax.
“Your place is very neat,” she said, nodding with approval.
“Thank you,” I said. “I used to live in a Buddhist monastery. Tidiness was encouraged.”
Her eyes widened. “A monastery? Where?”
“India. Dharamshala, to be exact.”
“Where the Dalai Lama lives?” She practically thrummed with excitement. “I knew this was going to be good.”
“Uh, what is?” I sounded like an idiot. Cielo’s uncanny resemblance to Pema, coupled with her own sultry pheromones, were interfering with my brain-to-mouth connection. I tried to rein in the attraction. I had just shot two men in my backyard. What was wrong with me?
Her eyes gleamed. “Look, the word is the killings may be gang-related. Add to that, you’re an ex-cop. So I ask myself, what are a couple of cholos doing in the backyard of some ex-cop living way out in the sticks of Topanga Canyon?” Her eyes narrowed, as she started to weave the story elements together. “No, not just any ex-cop. A peace-loving, nonviolent, Buddhist monk ex-cop trying to get away from the madness of it all. This is huge.” She grabbed my hand. The electricity was palpable, at least to me. She didn’t seem to notice. “You’re a licensed private investigator now, right?”
“How did you … ?”
“I can help you play this any way you want to, Detective Norbu. You want to be an innocent pacifist forced to stand his ground? Great, my viewers love a reluctant hero. Or maybe you want publicity for your private detective agency. No problem, I’m happy to throw you a major plug. Hell, I’ll learn to meditate if you want. But only if you work with me. Me and nobody else. I want an exclusive, understand? I’m good at this. Really good. Maybe the best. Let me in, Detective. I know how to take care of you.”
I’m halfway there already, I almost said. I withdrew my hand, so I could think. For whatever reason, my close brush with death was making her particular brand of life force tantalizing.
She pulled some kind of release form out of a soft leather messenger bag. “Do we have a deal?”
A memory fluttered—something Julius Rosen once told me. “Some of the best deals you’ll ever make are the ones you don’t make at all.” I took this wisdom with a grain of salt at the time, seeing as how he dispensed it directly after getting us both almost killed over one of his non-deals. But for now, it was the only wisdom I had going for me.
I let the form hover in space until the right words came. “I can promise you this: I’ll never deliberately mislead you. But I can’t make any deals that limit what I can or can’t say.”
“Are you sure?” Cielo smiled, and her eyes seemed to darken. “There are definite benefits to giving me an exclusive.”
Was I reading her correctly? Bill hadn’t mentioned this aspect of media work. I felt my pulse accelerate. Whatever else was going on with me, I was still in shock, and even I knew not to assume anything.
“Sorry,” I said. “I can’t.”
A flash of amusement and, possibly, regret, registered on Cielo’s face. Or maybe I was imagining that, too. She snapped her smile back into place. She tucked the form back in her leather case, her professional-reporter persona once again in charge.
“Okay, no exclusive, but at least let me be your first.”
Everything that came out of this woman’s mouth was trouble. Her mother had a point.
“Deal?” she smiled.
“Deal.”
“Good enough for me,” she said. “My crew’s right outside.” She opened the door and shouted something. A couple of semi-dozing cameramen leapt to attention.
Forty-five minutes later, the interview was over. I had no idea how well I’d done, but thanks to Bill I didn’t smile too much, I wasn’t a complete wiseass, and I mostly told the truth. Cielo kissed my cheek and told me I was the best she’d ever had, but I’m sure she told that to all her interviewees. As she followed her crew out, she paused in the doorway. The sun framed her curves, and I was catapulted back to an equally breath-stopping glimpse of Pema silhouetted against sunlight, almost two decades ago outside the monastery kitchen. Yes, I had a girlfriend, but chemistry is still chemistry.
Cielo flipped her lustrous mane one last time. “You won’t be sorry we did this,” she said, and left.
Somehow, I doubted that.
I looked outside. Two news trucks were now parked in the driveway, with two more pulling in. The carrion-hunters were gathering.
I paced back and forth between my kitchen and living room until Tank emitted a low cat-growl from his bed. He doesn’t like it when I’m anxious. It disturbs his naps.
“Okay, okay,” I said.
I took a deep breath, sending oxygen down into the middle of my anxiety, and headed outside to face my inquisitors.
CHAPTER 9
“I’ve got some bad news.” Bill’s voice was grim on the phone.
“Mmff.” I rubbed my face and eyelids. It was just past noon. I’d done a face-first pillow-plant after the last news truck left, slept for two hours without moving, and now I felt worse than ever.
“That Ortiz kid?” he went on. “The one you winged in the thigh? He’s dead. He took a gang-style hit sometime before dawn this morning—big time. If you’re lucky, it may even knock you off the news. Which, by the way, you are all over. Have you been watching?”
“No. I don’t have a television, remember?”
“Luddite. Channels 2, 4, 7, and 9. Nine led with the story. CNN had a little something, too.”
“How’d I do?”
“Okay,” he said. “You obviously had a superior coach. Next thing, you’ll be on all the talk shows, spouting opinions as Mr. Crime Expert.”
“If that happens, you have my permission to plug me. At close range.”
Bill’s familiar bark of laughter was reassuring. “Martha’s loving every minute of this,” he said. “She’s predicting you’re going to get a lot of marriage proposals.”
“She would.” Martha Bohannon may have been a retired court reporter of German descent and the overworked mother of twin preschoolers, but her main job in life was to get me married. Probably so I could become an overworked father. As later-in-life parents, Bill and Martha had exhibited stunned, slightly awestruck expressions pretty much since the day the girls were born. “It’s like being on LSD,” Martha had confessed to me once after too much wine. “Only you never come down.” If that was the case, she and Bill were having a pretty good trip. That was the upside. The downside was that Martha suffered from constant sleep-deprivation, and Bill went from “first cop through the door,” in live-fire situations, to “cop stapled to a desk chair,” while other officers raced toward the action, hands reaching for their 9-mm Glocks. The only live fire Bill experienced these days crackled behind his fireplace grate. And who could blame him? One look at his expression when he had those two girls on his lap was enough to tell you what he’d come to this planet for.
I bolted upright, Bill’s earlier words sinking in.
“Wait. What? Miguel Ortiz is dead?”
“Like I said, big-time. Tijuana-style, no less. What they call a two-zip hit.”
“Two-zip?”
“Pure nastiness. They leave the head in one zip code and drop the body off in another. The Tijuana boys sometimes use two-zips as a way to let their rivals know they’re moving in on new territory. But here? This is new. Kid was also missing a few vital organs, so God only knows what message his killers were trying to send.”
The image of a slashed-up Miguel triggered a violent upheaval in my gut area. I spontaneously sent out an all-purpose prayer of protection: May I learn anything I
need to learn about two-zip executions by received wisdom rather than through personal experience.
Then I felt terrible about the semi-flippant route my mind had taken. I was using glibness to detour from fear, plain and simple. Miguel’s murderers were ruthless butchers.
“What do you think happened, Bill?”
“Best guess? He got punished for screwing up twice in a row. A lot of these gangs have no tolerance for error with new recruits. Bastards.”
This made sense. Miguel hadn’t looked or acted like an entrenched banger to me—just a scared kid dressed up as one, trying to find some way out of the ’hood. A second image flicked through my mind: Miguel’s grandfather buckled over in mourning. His future grief prompted a surge of my own, here and now. I breathed into the sadness, reaching for the compassion that often hides behind it, but instead I tasted the slightly cloying flavor of pity. Such a waste, I thought, picturing all the life events ahead of Miguel that he would miss. Such a pitiful waste of a lifetime.
I stopped myself. The calm voice of Lama Tashi, our resident healer at the monastery, came to me from long ago. “Lama Tenzing, we are all equal beings in the universe,” he’d told me more than once. “If you hold others in the thought that they are victims, you rob them of their power. If you hold others as fully responsible for their own destiny, you ennoble them by treating them as equals.”
I honor you, Miguel Ortiz.
“Anyway,” Bill’s voice broke in, “I thought you should know. I’ll call again as soon as we figure out who’s responsible. The gang squad here is saying Miguel was training to be a mule for a small-time guy by the name of Chuy Uno—sorry, that would be Chuy Dos. Chuy Uno is doing time in Tijuana. Which means he’s probably still running things, come to think of it.”
“Chewy, like gum?”
“C-H-U-Y,” he spelled. “Pronounced Chewy, short for Jesus, pronounced Hay-Soos. Do try to keep up. The thing is, my guys tell me this isn’t either Chuy’s typical calling card—Uno and Dos tend to be one-pop-in-the-back-of-the-skull kind of guys—so who knows?”
“Who, indeed.”
“Whoops, gotta go. Boss is calling. If you require more gory details, ask your girlfriend. Miguel came in on her shift.”
Heather. I never called Heather. Oh, man. This day had started out bad and was getting worse by the minute.
“And Ten?” Bill’s voice was laced with amusement. “I hope you remember all the little people who were here for you when you were just a humble private eye.”
“I’m sorry. Remind me again—who is this I’m talking to?”
Bill hung up laughing. I was glad I could still make someone I loved laugh.
I called Heather immediately, before I lost my nerve.
“Ten! Thank God! Didn’t you get my texts? Are you okay?”
“I’m fine,” I said. I checked my phone. Sure enough, there were several increasingly frantic texts from Heather, starting about two hours ago. “This is the first chance I’ve had to call,” I told her. “I’m sorry. It’s just been crazy around here.”
“But you’re really okay? Promise?”
“Yes. Promise.”
“And Tank?’
“Tank’s fine, too.”
“Good.”
The quality of communication seemed to change, as a sense of frostiness chilled the air between us.
“Heather? Are you okay?”
“I’m fine,” she said, but her tone indicated the opposite.
“What is it?”
“It’s nothing. It’s stupid, okay? I don’t feel like talking about it.”
I sensed real distress underneath the dismissal. I was tempted to ignore the signal, but I’d been doing far too much ignoring lately.
“Why are you mad at me this time?” I asked. Then I flinched; I should have left out the this time bit. In interpersonal combat, even the slightest passive-aggressive move can lead to instant escalation.
“Oh, let’s see. Besides the fact that you shot two men, almost got yourself killed, and didn’t think to call me—much less let me know you were going to be all over the news with this? I had to learn about it alongside my co-workers. Everyone’s been watching here at work. Asking me about it. I was mortified.”
“I said I was sorry. I am sorry, Heather. I just didn’t have a chance to.”
She interrupted her voice low. “You were totally flirting with her.”
“Excuse me?”
“That reporter. You were all over her.”
Leave it to Heather to sniff out a buried mine of potentially explosive material. I feigned innocence, as my inner negotiator scrambled for a toehold.
“Which reporter?”
“The hair-tosser with the big rack, as if you didn’t know,” she hissed. Her voice rose. “You were practically drooling!”
“I was not!”
“Oh, please.”
“I wasn’t!”
“Liar, liar, pants on fire!”
Now we had both regressed to squabbling kids. I put my mental brakes on and took a couple of deep breaths. “What’s your proof, counselor?” I said, trying for a little adult levity.
It worked. Heather’s voice lightened. “Ha! Exhibit One: the reporter in question kept cocking her head to one side. Women do that when they’re flirting. Exhibit Two: the interviewee had a little half-smile on his face while talking. As I happen to know from experience, said interviewee does that when he’s flirting.”
Or trying not to smile too much, I wanted to protest but didn’t. “Pretty slim evidence.”
“Shall I go on?”
“No need. You’ve made your case.”
I felt a little iron blob form in my belly, the one that can very quickly become a big iron blob. Heather was right, of course, but I didn’t want to discuss it. As far as I was concerned, my moment with Cielo, such as it was, had passed. I was sure if I tried to explain myself further, I’d be heading into a rat-maze that had no nutrition at the end of it.
“Heather, nothing happened. She interviewed me, and she left. Case closed.” Time to change the subject. “So listen, Bill tells me you’re doing the autopsy on Miguel Ortiz, the young gangbanger who tried to rob me.”
“Already did it. First thing this morning. Poor kid. Just like the others, only worse.”
“Can you tell me anything more about the cause of death?”
Heather sighed. “Ten, it’s an active homicide investigation that may or may not link back to the incident at your house last night. You know I can’t discuss the cause of death, or anything else about the autopsy.”
Neither of us spoke for a minute or so.
“Baby?” she said.
“Yes.”
“I’m really glad you’re okay. I meant to say that first, you know.”
For some reason, I suddenly felt like crying. Must be the tiredness.
“I’m working late again,” she said. “But I’ll call you. Be safe, okay?”
“Sure thing,” I said, my voice a little thick.
My office landline had been ringing constantly throughout our conversation. I checked the voice mail. I had 13 messages, a record for me. Work was picking up.
Or not. Three hang-ups, seven reporters wanting quotes, a matchmaking agency offering to represent me to a select crop of bachelorettes, and a car collector in The Valley salivating for the Shelby. Absent was anyone calling to hire me. I’d heard that fame and money went hand in hand, but so far I was getting only one handful—the absolute wrong one for my specialized line of work. Also missing: any word from Mac. The silence was a little deafening on that front. Only the final voice mail was remotely interesting: “Cielo Lodera here. Just wondering how you liked the interview.”
I’ll bet, I thought. But I saved the message.
I made a second round of hospital, jail, and morgue calls, just in case, but there was still no sign of Clara, alive or dead.
I jumped in the shower, finishing with a bracing ice-water chaser. I toweled off and put on a co
tton kimono, cinching it tight, like a shield. Time to address myself more rigorously to the task at hand: finding out exactly what kind of mess I’d landed myself in, and then finding out who was on the other end of this particular knotted string of karma, so I could maybe, maybe locate Clara Fuentes for my client. I had never before failed so miserably on a misper case, for so many hours in a row.
I began by applying myself to the actual mess in my living room. Having film crews on the premises is effectively like inviting a series of earthquakes into your home. It’s no doubt a by-product of my monastic training, but I can’t think if I’m surrounded by chaos. Anyway, the act of cleaning is itself one of my best investigative tools. Just the simple back-and-forth motion of pushing a mop across a wooden floor often generates aha moments for me. So I mopped, and I mopped. And I mopped some more, until I threw down the mop in frustration. The handle hit the floor with a bang.
Tank yowled and leapt from the windowsill.
“Sorry, buddy,” I said. “I feel like I’m running in increasingly smaller circles here.”
Tank responded by licking his right paw and drawing it over his face like a washcloth.
“I already showered.”
He strolled to the kitchen door and brushed his body up against it.
“Good idea,” I said. Call me crazy, but I knew exactly what he was saying, although the psychic communication between me and my cat was one secret I would take with me into the bardo realm and beyond.
I changed into my riding gear, packed a water bottle and a few snacks into a small, insulated nylon case that doubled as a bike pack, and grabbed my helmet out of the closet. Soon I was slipping and sliding along the gravel drive on my 21-speed, all-terrain cruiser. An exhilarating half-hour of downhill racing later, I braked to a halt in the parking lot at Zuma Beach. I locked my bike to a pole and took off along the packed sand, beginning with a measured jog.
I reviewed the past 16 hours of insanity. Something … An idea was niggling at me, but for the life of me, I couldn’t figure out what it was.
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