The Second Rule of Ten

by Gay Hendricks

  “Thirty more seconds,” Mike called to me, as I crossed the deck. “I’m about to snag something I’ve been chasing for an hour.”

  I stayed where I was, counting five slow, easy breaths while I waited.

  “Oh, snap!” He pulled away from the computer and grinned at me. “Come and get it.”

  I sat beside him and studied the screen, which was now a map of Europe.

  Mike had marked three places with red pushpin icons. He clicked on the first. Up came an image of what looked like a small European city, complete with cobblestones and a Gothic cathedral.

  “Cobblestones. Nice touch, Watson.” I said.

  “Schwerin, Germany. This is how it looked at the end of World War Two.”

  “Never heard of it.”

  “Me, neither,” he said, “but Sadie Rosen was sent to Schwerin, after the orphanage.”

  “So the Reinhold Milz family lived there?”

  “Yes. Turns out they were quite prominent. Mostly in the cheese business.”

  “Do you have actual, reliable evidence Sadie was there?”

  Another click, and another page—a computer scan of an ancient town hall record. On one of the lines, written in careful script, was the name Sadie Rose Milz, followed by: “adopted daughter of Reinhold Milz. Date of birth unknown.”

  She had found a family of sorts. I was glad. “Anything else?”

  “Boss. Please.” Mike’s hands flew over the keyboard. My printer whirred on my desk. I crossed the living room, and grabbed a printout of the name and phone number of Ulrika Milz in Schwerin, Germany. I looked over at Mike.

  “Ulrika?”

  “Great-niece. Working number. Hey, it’s the best I could do on an empty stomach. Hint hint.”

  “Right, I’ll check on the pizza. And Mike, I mean it. You put Dr. Watson to shame.” He had already moved on to the next challenge, but I could tell he was pleased.

  The pizza was “On its-a way! Five-a minutes! Five-a minutes!” Let’s-a hope.

  I checked local time in Germany. It was 7 P.M. over there.

  “Hey, Mike? Do I have conference calling?”

  “Does a wooden horse have a hickory dick?”

  I sighed. “Mike, a simple yes or . . . “

  “Yes, Ten. You do. Just push the button on your phone—the one that says ‘conference.’”

  Call one: Martha Bohannon. Martha was home, and happy to translate. “Don’t go away,” I told her.

  Call two: Ulrika Milz. Here goes nothing. I hit the conference button and initiated a second call, this one to Germany. A few moments later a female voice said, “Hallo?”

  “Martha?” Martha trotted out some German. I heard “Ulrika Milz?”

  “Ja,” the voice said. “Ich bin Ulrika.”

  “Sprechen sie Englisch?” said Martha.

  Now I knew two German phrases.

  “Yah,” Ulrika answered slowly, a thick accent coating her pronunciation, “but not so well. What this is about?”

  I jumped in and introduced Martha and myself. “I would like to ask you some questions about Sadie, a little girl from long ago,” I said.

  Ulrika fired off an excited stream of German. I heard “Sadie” several times.

  Martha translated. “She says certainly she remembers little Sadie. She says, ‘Who could forget the way she looked at you with those clear, gray eyes?’”

  Martha asked another question in German. The response was long and involved. Toward the end, Ulrika’s voice sank, as if weighted by sadness.

  “Oh,” Martha said. “Okay. Shorthand? Sadie was with Ulrika’s great-aunt for almost a year, until something schrecklich, umm, terrible happened.”

  “Schrecklich! Ja. Schrecklich,” Ulrika echoed, and rattled off another few sentences. I heard Martha’s sharp intake of breath, and feared the worst.

  “Mr. and Mrs. Milz were killed in a bad car accident,” Martha said. “Sadie was with them.”

  “And Sadie?”

  “Sadie survived.”

  That poor child. She’d endured more hardship and loss by the time she was six than most of us faced in a lifetime.

  “Who took care of Sadie after that?” I asked.

  Martha translated the question. Ulrika spoke quietly for nearly a minute.

  Martha said, “Here’s the gist. None of the other family members could take Sadie. According to Ulrika, different groups were combing Europe looking for survivors, especially children. She says a small group from one organization came to talk to Sadie. They concluded she was a Jewish refugee and took her away with them. Ulrika says nobody in the family ever heard from her again.”

  We digested this information in a silence, broken only by Ulrika’s halting English: “I am hoping you . . . finding?”

  “Find,” Martha said.

  “Yah. I am hoping you finding her.”

  We said our goodbyes and hung up. I called Martha right back. “Thank you. You have no idea how helpful this is.”

  “You have no idea what a treat this is,” she replied. “To be useful, I mean, outside of changing diapers and reading The Cat in the Hat for the seventy-five thousandth time.”

  “Hugs to the hooligans.”

  I returned to Mike and stood there until he registered my presence and surfaced from his computer trance. I’m always afraid if I interrupt too abruptly he’ll get the mental bends.

  “Breaking news,” I said. “I need Jewish charitable organizations with the mission of reclaiming Jewish children during or right after the war, in this case, from Northern Germany. According to Ulrika, Sadie got picked up by one of them.”

  He nodded, his fingers already airborne. Then Mike began to mutter. When Mike mutters, it’s a very hopeful thing. I felt a little thrill in my belly as I sat beside him.

  Like a concert pianist, he lifted his fingers from the keyboard with a flourish. He pointed to the screen. “Looks like there are quite a few. Any way to narrow it down?”

  “Let me check.”

  I called Martha.

  “I’m talking to you more than my husband,” she said.

  “This is a quick one. Did Ulrika say anything specific about the group that picked up Sadie?”

  “Not really. Wait a minute, she did use the word fremd.”

  “What’s that mean? Friendly?”

  “No. Foreign. As in not German. She didn’t seem to like them very much.”

  “Okay, thanks, that helps.”

  “You’re welcome. Ten?” Martha’s voice took on a tone I knew well, the not-to-be-denied tone. “Bill and I just had an interesting little chat on the phone. Are you planning on telling me about your new friend any time soon?”

  “My new . . . ?”

  “Don’t be coy, it’s not becoming. Heather. The good doctor Heather.” I couldn’t even blame Bill. Martha was a bloodhound when it came to sniffing out potential girlfriends, and Bill was a lousy liar.

  “Oh. Heather. Well. Nothing much to tell, really.”

  Martha snorted. “You guys are all the same. You have no idea how much ‘nothing much’ actually means.”

  Ooph. I hung up fast. Mike’s look was pointed. I purposely misunderstood.

  “You should concentrate on any non-German Jewish organizations that paid visits to northern Germany, specifically Schwerin, in 1946,” I said, as the crunch of tires announced a timely delivery. The boxy little Harpo’s Oven Cube rolled to a stop. Soon Mike was loaded up with pizza, Red Bull, and a new data trail to track.

  My phone buzzed. Bill.

  “Hey, traitor,” I said. “Remind me never to give you any state secrets.”

  “You know Martha. There isn’t a double-agent out there she couldn’t crack.”

  We laughed.

  “Want to join me for lunch? I’m thinking Mexican, specifically, La Cantinela, on First Street in Boyle Heights. The boys say we might find some interesting customers there. Can you get there in an hour?”

  “What’s the plan?” I asked.

  “F
uck if I know.”

  “Oh, goodie,” I said. “My favorite kind.” I left Mike hunched over his screen, Tank watching him from the windowsill.

  This was a job for me, my Wilson Combat, and my clean-engined Shelby Mustang. I wasn’t getting caught with my pants down again. Within the hour, I was at the restaurant. I circled around to the back and cruised by its private parking lot, set in a narrow alley. A young attendant stood guard over luxury Beamers, Mercedes Benz SUVs, and a couple of high-end, fully loaded choppers. I checked, but I didn’t see Pretty Boy’s there.

  I looped around again, and found Bill one block south, on the opposite side of the street. He had a clear sightline to the front of the restaurant. La Cantinela was a pristine stucco and stone structure the warm color of saffron. Like a beauty queen flanked by bums, it was tucked between a grimy pawnshop and a dilapidated check-cashing facility, both heavily tagged with the angry calling cards of rival gangs.

  I pulled in behind Bill, glanced up and down the block, and slipped from my car into his. My Wilson lay snug under my windbreaker, tucked in the Jackass rig shoulder holster. Bill scanned La Cantinela with binoculars.

  “Can’t see a fucking thing,” he grunted.

  “I have an idea,” I said. “There’s a private lot in the back. How about you position yourself near there, in case anybody decides to do a quick split, while I go inside for a look.”

  He thought that one over. “You know what I call that kind of plan?”

  “What?”

  “I call it ‘Ten having all the fun.’”

  “Maybe, but what I don’t have is Thing One and Thing Two back at home.”

  We’d had this debate before. I had a high desire to make sure Bill was around for the next 20 years. He had an equally high desire to prove that having kids hadn’t blunted his edge.

  “How about this? Give me ten minutes. If you don’t see anyone taking off, including me, you can join me inside.”

  “Deal.” Bill put away the binoculars and stuck on a Dodger cap. “Do I still look like a cop?”

  “Yeah, a cop in a Dodger cap.”

  He headed for the back alley. I strolled across First and up the block, and pushed inside the carved wooden doors marking the entrance. It may have been midday, but the room was dim. My eyes adjusted. The owner obviously had a lot of disposable income to spend on décor—the walls and floor were a stunning interplay of decorative tile and distressed wood. The hand-carved booths and tables were peopled with mostly well-dressed clientele of every nationality. Not your usual gangland eatery.

  I noticed an opening in the far wall, the size and shape of a large picture frame. It overlooked the busy kitchen, where cooks in hairnets chopped, fried, and folded various ingredients. A waitress passed me with a tray of sizzling, skewered shrimp surrounded by an assortment of salsas. The scent made me rethink everything I thought I knew about shellfish and Mexican food. I wondered if being a vegetarian was such a good idea after all.

  A dark-eyed beauty hurried up. “Do you have a reservation?”

  “Didn’t know I needed one,” I answered.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “We’re fully booked.”

  I leaned closer. “Chaco didn’t say anything about making a reservation.”

  She stared. “Wait here,” she said.

  She scurried across the restaurant, ducked into a side door, and reappeared inside the kitchen. I drifted left, shifting my viewpoint, until I found her again, standing over a table at the back of the kitchen itself. Six men were seated at the table. She was bent close, talking to one who sat with his back to me. He was of stocky build, and his hair was slicked into a kind of ducktail. Something about him seemed familiar. Intensity radiated from him in waves. I sensed it from across the room.

  Turn around. Turn around so I can get a good look at you.

  He made a small gesture, and the girl shot a glance in my direction.

  “Vayase,” a voice hissed in my ear.

  Way to stay alert, Tenzing. He was about my age, but a lot worse for wear, with flat, high cheekbones, teeth rotted by a steady diet of meth, and a Gila monster tat curled around his neck. He was so in my face, I could have tallied up his acne scars for extra credit.

  “That means get lost,” he said.

  “What about my lunch?”

  “Sorry. Kitchen closed.”

  “Fine. I’ll just get a beer,” I said.

  “Bar closed, too.” He moved even closer. He reeked. I thought about pulling my gun on him then and there. With body odor this deadly, I’d get off on self-defense.

  Instead, I backed off. I didn’t want him to feel the Wilson rigged against my chest. No need to pour accelerant on the situation, especially with Bill two minutes from joining me.

  “No problem. I’m going,” I said.

  “Good,” he said, and started to walk away, his limp pronounced.

  “Hey, Daniel?”

  He turned, startled.

  “Thunder sends his best.”

  Before he could respond, I slipped outside and trotted around back to grab Bill.

  “Time for us to vayase,” I said.

  CHAPTER 18

  We drove to Langer’s for a late lunch. Jean herded us to a corner booth and loaded us up with coffee. I ordered an egg salad sandwich, and Bill went with his usual, pastrami with pastrami, and a side of pastrami. I provided Bill with a soundtrack to the silent drama I’d watched in the kitchen.

  “So you think it was Chaco?”

  “I never saw his face, but I’d say yes. Whoever he was, he was ‘the Man’ in there. And the presence of Daniel Morales is definitely suspicious.” I frowned. “I keep feeling like I’ve seen that guy Chaco before.”

  “Mug shot? He’s been around a while.”

  “Maybe.”

  Jean plopped down our plates. She put her hands on her hips. “Ten-zing, don’t be mad, but look what I got.”

  She pulled a little keychain out of her pocket. I squinted at the logo.

  “L.A. County Sheriff’s Department? Jean, how could you go to the other side?” LAPD and County have kept a nice little feud going for years.

  “Sheriff Baca gave it to me,” she said. “You’re not the only regular in here.” She lowered her voice. “He also gave me a little pillbox. Empty, unfortunately. Should I be worried?’

  I laughed.

  “Only if he asks you out for dinner.”

  A man shouted from a nearby table. “Hey! Sweet Cheeks! Little service here, please?”

  I met Jean’s eye. “You want Bill and me to help that fellow with his attitude?”

  “Now, now, Ten-zing. You know what I always say. ‘Bless them, change me.’” Jean headed for the diner, armed with a smile.

  “Have you ever considered a career change,” I called after her. “His Holiness the Dalai Lama is looking to retire soon.”

  Bill’s phone buzzed.

  “Yeah? Yeah. Be right there.” He stood up. “Captain needs me. Another gang-banger just turned up dead. Fifth this month.”

  “Any idea what gang?”

  “Does it matter?” He strode out.

  I was itching to take action on some front, any front. I called Mike from the parking lot.

  “Do you know,” he said, “that there are about eight hundred Sadie Rosens in the world, and nine of them live in Beverly Hills?”

  “No, I did not know that,” I said. “Any luck on the refugee groups?”

  “Maybe,” he said. “You can’t rush genius, boss.” He yawned. “I’m beat. I’ll get back on this tomorrow, okay?”

  “Sleep tight.” I was getting another call. “Hello?’

  “Hey, Ten. It’s Clancy. Clancy Williams.”

  I waited.

  “So listen, sorry about bailing on you the other day. I mean, fuck. Look at what I spend my days doing. I don’t have a leg to stand on when it comes to moral superiority.”

  “Who does?” I said.

  “So anyway, I’ve been keeping an eye on
the Rudolph home, but Harper’s pretty much been in lock-down since her one little escapade.”

  I counted the days.

  “Right. They’re still sitting shivah.”

  “So I was just wondering if you, uh, if you can point me to some other work? I’ll do anything. Stake out anyone, anywhere.” He swallowed. “I’m desperate, man. The wife and I had a little sit-down today. We’re four months behind on the mortgage, and the bank won’t budge. Three years ago they couldn’t throw enough money at us, and now . . . “

  “I can send you a couple hundred,” I said. “For work done.”

  “Nah,” Clancy said. “Thanks, man, but a couple hundred isn’t going to cut it. I should pay you, for making me feel useful for once. Just keep me in mind for the future, a’right? And let me know how it all turns out.” He hung up gently, another potential drowning victim of the current financial tsunami.

  It was too late for the freeway, so I tacked and jibbed down Sunset. I was almost at Pacific Coast Highway when my phone made a booping text-received sound. I needed gas anyway, so I pulled into the 76 Station at the base of Sunset. I checked the phone screen.

  ARE YOU OUT OF YOUR FUCKING MIND? It read.

  Well, maybe, but I didn’t much care for the tone. Then my phone buzzed, announcing an incoming call.

  “Hello?”

  “You get my text?” The voice belonged to Raul Martinez, aka Charles Raul Montoya, biker-lawyer extraordinaire.

  “Yes.”

  “Well, then, let me ask you again, hombre. Are you out of your fucking mind?”

  Nobody’d ever called me “hombre” before. I tried it on for size. Hombre. Hombre Norbu. I liked it.

  “Why didn’t you stay the hell away from those guys?” he pleaded and let out a sound somewhere between a grunt and a hiccup. It occurred to me he might be drunk.

  “Raul, what’s going on?”

  “Aw, fuck,” he said. A gull cried in the background.

  “Where are you?” I asked.

  “I’m up on the bluffs. Point Dume. You know it? S’beautiful here,” he slurred.

  “What are you doing there?”