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. 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? Like Charlie Chan?”
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 Chan? Chinese or something?”
“Tibetan,” I snapped.
“Awesome. 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 Tibetans’ 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.
Simply put, something about this guy was getting me way too riled up. I used my intuition like a metal detector … and found the cause of my unease.
Right. I was jealous. Keith Connor might be much closer to my age than Harper’s, but young lovelies were lining up for the privilege of throwing themselves at him. And not at me.
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, closed the doors, and scooped a rumpled pair of gray cashmere sweatpants from the floor. As he stepped into them, I snuck a closer peek at Harper. Her 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 kind 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’m an ex-monk. I never said I was 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 saw no reason to stonewall him. “I get five grand a day for jobs like this, three-day minimum.”
His eyes widened, as if he was impressed. 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 Marvin.”
He must have remembered his day rate after all.
Before I could respond, loud bellows erupted down in the foyer. Heavy footsteps thudded up the stairs.
The double doors burst open for the second time, and there stood all three hundred quivering pounds of Marv Rudolph, cigar in hand, face clotted with rage.
As he swayed in the doorway, I was fascinated to see how wrath 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.
Very unskillful. I countered with a few deep breaths. One. Two.
Before I could get to three, the room exploded. Marv, screeching like a wounded pig, 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 leapt nimbly over them and trotted out of the bedroom, 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.
Keith sat up, wincing.
“Does this mean I’m fired?” he asked Marv. I found the question absurd. Of course he was fired. Marv mulled it over, longer than I would have.
“You do her?” Marv finally said.
“No!” Keith answered. “Swear to God, no. Ask the monk.”
Marv grunted. 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 the movie business, I know nothing.
I surveyed the scene: Marvin still flat on his back like a concrete slab, 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 of 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 flinched at my sharp tone.
As she started up the stairs, she shot me a look I couldn’t quite read—half-resigned, half-pleading.
“Marv, take Harper home and put her to bed. Then get some sleep yourself.” Marv grunted and pushed himself up to a sitting position.
“Keith, go into the kitchen and make yourself a cup of hot beverage, if you know how. Sip it, and count your blessings.” He shuf
fled into the kitchen, the too-long legs of his sweats dragging behind like flippers.
“How did you figure out Harper was here?” I asked Marv.
“Two plus two equals 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 hollow.
“Hey,” Keith called from the kitchen. “Want a cup of Darjeeling?”
“I’m good,” I said. He re-joined me with his steaming mug.
With a sheepish smile, Keith offered, “I still want to pay you.”
“What for?”
“I owe you, man.”
I thought it over for one, maybe two seconds. “Send it to the Tibet Foundation,” I said. “Twenty grand sponsors a lot of yaks.”
My cell phone vibrated in my pocket, buzzing me back to the present. Tank leapt off my lap. I rotated my neck and shoulders. I was a little stunned at the almost total recall I had just experienced, especially after so much time had passed since I 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’m just out here on the deck, enjoying a spectacular sunset.”
“Rub it in.” Bill Bohannon, LAPD Detective III, Robbery/Homicide, is my former partner and one of my oldest friends in Los Angeles. He and I have weathered a lot of weirdness together, including the ultimate male-bonding experience: shooting back at thugs who were trying to kill us.
He’d recently moved to a desk job. Me? I’d just moved on.
“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.
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The First Rule of Ten Page 28
