The Fifth Rule of Ten

by Gay Hendricks

  “No.” The thought rose again—I should mention Julie. I let it float away. “Thanks so much, Heather. This was really helpful.”

  “No worries. Anything for an ex-boyfriend. An ex, engaged-to-be-married, spineless-when-it-comes-to-talking-about-certain-things boyfriend.”

  “Heather . . .”

  “Body breaker, my ass.” And she hung up, laughing.

  CHAPTER 38

  I walked outside to the deck. Heather and I had smoked a joint here. Shared our first kiss here. Exchanged a few truths and a few more lies here. Talked. Talked some more. Talked endlessly, struggling to make things work. The fact that endless communication never led to actual connection should have been a clue.

  A motorcycle downshifted, shifted again—the back-stitched hum of a fine-tuned machine; someone nearby was riding into the day, rubber side down.

  Someone on a high-end luxury machine.

  Sharp gravel bit into the soles of my feet as I pounded down the driveway to the mailbox, kimono flapping.

  The steep ribbon of Topanga Canyon Boulevard was empty in both directions.

  I listened, my ribs heaving. A distant, mosquito-like whine was all that remained of the motorcycle’s presence. Dropping to my knees, I scoured the ground, where asphalt and gravel met the soft, grassy shoulder.

  Were those tracks? I couldn’t really tell.

  I opened the mailbox as if it held a scorpion.

  A white envelope awaited, my name on the front in block letters. Flap unsealed. Plump with something, but nothing good.

  I opened the envelope. A small vial of dark red fluid was capped with a black screw-top lid. I closed the envelope. Maybe I’d get lucky. Maybe the glass surface had retained prints.

  Can’t breathe! Can’t . . .

  Another voice broke in. Yes. You can.

  The iron clamp around my lungs loosened.

  That’s it . . . That’s it . . .

  I gulped hot air. The sun had burned off any remaining fog. But as I walked up the drive, I was shivering.

  A scanned photo attachment from DSI Garfield awaited me on the computer.

  I printed it out. The blurred forms of the female guru and her band of followers were almost impossible to decode. But the image gave me an idea.

  This time, Dave Smith answered my call.

  “Smith here.”

  “Corporal? Ten Norbu.”

  “I know. Says on the phone.”

  “How are you doing, sir?”

  “Fuckin’ balls out, thanks.” He sighed. “How the hell do you think I’m doin’? Lungs don’t work, my leg that I don’t got anymore aches, and I can’t see for shit.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Yeah, well, it is what it is.”

  “I have a favor to ask you.”

  He said nothing.

  “When I drove down last week, there was a flier on the bulletin board in the front lobby of your building. I’m wondering if you could check if it’s still there.”

  “Oh,” he said. “I thought maybe . . .”

  “What?”

  “I thought maybe you was calling about the kids. You know . . .” His voice hardened. “Why should I lift a finger for you? All you did was open me up to a world of hurt.”

  I considered his words. “If you hurt, that means you still care. Corporal Smith, I promise the next time I get a chance, I’ll put in a word to Kim and Bobby.” I didn’t extend it to a “good” word, but maybe just a word would be enough.

  He cleared his throat. “What you want me to do now?”

  “If the flier’s still there, I could use your help telling me what’s on it.”

  “What kind of flier?”

  “It’s got a picture of an Indian woman on it, and a website on the bottom, I think. What I need is any contact information.”

  “Call me back in ten,” he said. “I gotta strap on my leg.”

  I gave him 15, using the time to study the smudged form of Maha Mudra for clues, as if staring might sharpen her edges.

  Even so, he was gasping for breath when he answered.

  “Corporal Smith? Do you need more time?”

  “Nah. I got it right here. Hang on.” Something crashed. A distant “Shit!”

  “Okay, I’m back.”

  “Everything all right?”

  “Had to get my headlamp out of the closet. My eyes aren’t what they used to be.” He was still breathing hard. “She some kind of Muslim or something?”

  “I don’t think so. I don’t really know, actually.”

  “Reason I ask, there’s no phone number, but there’s one of those website links on the bottom. And a picture of something purple, looks like a mosque.”

  “A purple mosque?” My heart rate sped up. “Could it be an onion?”

  He wheezed through a few breaths. “Yeah. Maybe.”

  No wonder Maha Mudra was hard to trace. She hid out in the dark web. On Tor, otherwise known as The Onion Router. Where people with secrets liked to live. “Can you give me the website?”

  “Lemme . . . hang on, I’ve got a magnifying glass somewhere.” More silence. “Okay. It says ‘info at W W W dot R J R P R T R T dot com. That’s all. Plus the onion.”

  I wrote it down. The letters meant nothing to me. I sent Mike a quick text with the link. USE TOR, I typed.

  “Corporal Smith, I can’t tell you how much this helps.”

  “Any time,” he said. “Feels good to be useful, you wanna know the truth. What’s all this about?”

  “There’s a young man missing, and a father out there hoping to get him back.”

  Silence.

  “Corporal?”

  “We took this gook prisoner one time. Just a kid. Hell, we were all just kids. Anyway, he spoke a little English. Enough to tell us all about something called karma. Ever heard of it?”

  “Yes.”

  “I did some awful things over there. Picked up a lot of bad karma. Weighs on a man, you know?” His voice trailed off.

  “But not today,” I said. “Today, you let some of that weight go.”

  CHAPTER 39

  The sound reached me first. Metallic scraping, like copper cricket wings.

  Yeshe, TJ, and Lobsang huddled on the floor around the mandala blueprint. They had tied white scarves around their faces, makeshift masks to protect their lungs from any loose particles of sand. They looked like holy bandits.

  Scrape scrape scrape.

  Each monk held a silver funnel-shaped cone, called a chak-pur. They’d positioned the narrow ends over a curved quadrant of the mandala blueprint, which was sketched directly onto a framed board. Grasping thin metal rods in their right hands, they grazed the length of the serrated cones as if they were grating cheese. Particles of colored sand flowed from the tips like liquid sapphires, filling in the rimmed circumference with a steady stream of cobalt blue.

  About 30 onlookers observed in the gallery auditorium, some watching with their eyes, others through their phones. Julie and Homer were nowhere to be seen, but she’d texted me that she might take him for a waddle around the Rose Bowl.

  Scrape scrape scrape.

  I’d missed my favorite element of the ceremony, yesterday’s drafting of the design. Using rulers, compasses, white-leaded pencils, and an elastic chalk line, they laid down the intricate measurements by memory. Each pop of the stretched string not only left behind a guiding line of chalk, but also acted as a mindful alert to stay conscious of the profound nature of their activity. The process could take hours or days, depending on the size of the mandala.

  Once the blueprint satisfied the senior monk in charge—in this case, Lobsang—the chalk was brushed away, leaving behind a detailed penciled outline. All that remained was to fill in the lines with brilliant hues, as in a child’s coloring book. But in this case, rather than a unicorn or a butterfly, the final representation depicted an aspect of Buddhist cosmography powerful enough to tip the world on its axis.

  Scrape scrape.

  Yeshe pu
shed to his feet and arched and straightened his stiff spine. I waggled my fingers, and his eyes crinkled above his white mask. I smiled back. He moved to an oblong table set in the corner, where bowls of colored sand glittered. He tapped out a few loose blue grains, dipped the funnel into a bowl of brilliant orange, and returned to the mandala to kneel and abrade once again.

  The process was painstaking and had been for thousands of years—ancient designs taking meticulous shape, accompanied by the steady rasp of rods against funnels. The result was a flawless depiction of compassion, or healing, or some other universal truth. Then, in an act of mindful sabotage, the offering was swept away, a reminder that perfection, like everything else in this world, was impermanent.

  No wonder people found them spellbinding.

  I moved closer to study the central image of this mandala. Nested within a square formed by orange, yellow, maroon, and white triangles was a central chamber, a perfect circle made up of all four colors. Inside were two shapes: a cobalt blue vajra, or scepter, and to the left of it, a round red dot.

  I let my mind drift back to an earlier time. Scepter and orb, scepter and orb.

  Of course, they represented archetypal Buddhas, the masculine and the feminine. I looked closer, and saw that yes, the chamber rested on a bed of eight lotus petals holding eight more dots of color—the eight Shakti goddesses, generators of the compassionate and enlightened heart.

  Building outward, delicate white lines awaiting their filler of color marked an intricate path. Eight, twelve, twenty-eight petaled lotuses, upon which deities danced, but always around the central couple. At the circumference, there was a repeated pattern of seed syllables—mantras associated with the planets, the solar and lunar mansions, and infinite space and time. This outermost rim of perfection was critical—it protected the divine community within, 722 entities in total, all emanating from the central image of male and female, scepter and orb.

  I was looking at the building blocks of a Kalachakra Mandala: concentric circles moving outward, depicting earth, water, fire, air, and space. The shapes and symbols created a visionary map of the subtlest states of enlightenment. Kalachakra, and his consort Vishvamata, together embodied the highest form of Buddhahood; omniscient, omnipresent, all-powerful. And any bodhisattva who followed the Kalachakra path could expect nothing less than total transformation, inside and out. Or so I had been taught.

  The Kalachakra Mandala: my friends were constructing a visual ode to universal tantric power.

  Wangdue was manning another table, a movable store loaded with Tibetan treats—prayer beads, altar cloths, CDs, even packets of prayer flags the size of playing cards. He was busy making change for a woman with a substantial mound of purchases. In the clash between nonattachment and attachment, the latter had won hands down.

  She moved away, happily clutching her treasures.

  “Lama Wangdue, do you know where I can find Geshe Sonam?”

  “Chanting.” Wangdue gestured to a curtained area. I could just make out the hem of a red robe.

  “Thanks.”

  Sonam sat in a folding chair in front of a small tray table. On it rested the chant master’s three basic tools: scepter, handbell, and chants. His dorje was maybe three inches in length and shaped like an hourglass. Small, given that it represented the indestructible state of absolute reality. His drilbu, or handbell, was twice as big.

  But the real power lay in the stack of Tibetan termas, the sacred texts that imbued every ceremony with import. Without these teachings, an event like today’s was just monks playing with sand.

  Sonam moved his lips in silent concentration, eyes lowered to the rectangular, yellowed manuscript covered in rows of delicately hand-pressed characters.

  He raised his eyes, sensing my presence.

  “Lama Tenzing. Come, come! Sit with me!”

  “I’m not disturbing you?”

  “Our enlightened teachers have been listening to these mantras since the beginning of time. I’m sure they welcome any break from the endless entreaties.” Sonam leaned close, a glint in his eye. “As do I.”

  I moved a second chair across from him and sat. Anxiety collected at the back of my tongue like rust. I cleared my throat.

  “You are worried about something?” Sonam’s voice was gentle.

  “Yes.”

  “Many things?”

  “Yes. I can’t make sense out of certain events. Certain memories. I need to know what happened, if I’m right about them.”

  “Just so. You are suffering, because you are looking for labels.” A statement, not a question.

  “What do you mean?”

  “All negative emotion is the result of labeling. Of looking for a single definition, a final answer. We love to find meaning, to put importance on each moment. But everything is interdependent.” He wagged his finger. “Nothing is singular, or permanent, Tenzing. Except for impermanence.”

  “But my fears seem so real.”

  “They are. Because you make them so.” Sonam spread his hands. “But also not-real. The component that determines whether you have a pleasant or unpleasant experience is the same now as when the Buddha first taught. Come, Lama Tenzing. You remember this, surely? The root of all suffering?”

  “Grasping?”

  “Just so. Grasping. But grasping only makes sense if you believe in permanence, yes? Otherwise, what is the point? Either you let go of the idea of permanence, or you leave this world with your fists clenched tight, clinging to illusion.”

  My mind skidded sideways, as it had when I was a novice monk grappling with this same idea.

  Sonam pressed harder. “The minute we attach permanence to anything, suffering grows. The poisoned blooms are many—greed, jealousy, fear, anger. On and on, so many ways to feel unease. But pull up any one of them? You will find the same root.”

  “I don’t . . .”

  He held up his left hand. The tremor was quite visible. “This is my hand, yes?”

  “Of course.”

  “Ten years ago, it was also my hand, and yet a different hand, a hand that did not shake like a leaf in the wind. If I desire today’s hand to be my 10-years-ago hand, I suffer. I am resentful. I am afraid. Why is this hand not working the way it used to? What are these spots on the skin? Will my hand work at all in 10 years’ time? But if I accept that yesterday’s hand is gone, today’s hand is like this, and tomorrow’s, well, who knows? If the only permanent thing about the state of my hand is that it will never stay the same, I can relax. Enjoy my hand, just as it is.”

  A shift in perception tugged at the sleeve of my mind, tantalizingly close.

  “Just like the self. Essential nature is permanent, but actual existence is divisible.”

  “So our sense of who we are stays the same over time,” I said. “And yet in reality we are composed of nothing more than a series of present moments.” The profound truth of this resonated, bone-deep and beyond, triggering a flash of freedom.

  I grasped at the insight, and in the grasping, it was gone. I groaned in frustration.

  Lama Sonam touched my arm. “You have bad traffic here, yes?”

  “Yes.”

  “And when you sit in the long line of cars, nobody moving, the logical mind knows that you will not be sitting like this always, for the rest of time. The logical mind understands that traffic not moving is a temporary state. But the mind attaches eternity to the situation anyway. And the moment the mind does that . . . ?”

  “We start to suffer.”

  “Just so. We yell at other cars. We bang the steering wheel. We try to force the cars forward with our agitation.” Sonam’s eyes gleamed. “It’s the same with all suffering. Completely illogical!” He clapped his knees, delighted by the absurdity of human nature.

  For a second brief moment I was bathed in expansiveness. And also, insight: liberation arises from fully accepting reality’s absolute impermanence—if fear doesn’t get there first.

  “Okay, lesson on intrinsic nature of re
ality over,” Sonam said. “You have questions for me, yes?”

  It was easier to broach the subject, in light of my impermanent state. “I need to talk to you about Nawang.”

  Sonam flinched, as if recoiling from an unexpected assailant.

  “Geshe Sonam, please. I know my father forbade us to talk about that summer, but Apa has moved on. And memories . . . bad memories are arising in me.”

  “Maybe it’s better not to fiddle so much,” Sonam said. “Maybe it’s better to leave them there, Tenzing.”

  “I can’t,” I said.

  “Why not?”

  “Because I believe Nawang is coming after me. And I don’t know why.”

  CHAPTER 40

  Yeshe rounded the curtain on the stage. “Ahh. Here you are,” he said. “We go for lunch. You come?’

  Sonam spoke rapidly in Tibetan. Yeshe shot me a troubled look before hurrying out.

  “He will bring us food, and also Lobsang,” Sonam said. “They should be part of this conversation, yes?”

  “Sure. Yes.”

  “Good.” Sonam folded his hands in his lap and closed his eyes. For the time being, the conversation was on hold.

  I probably should have done the same, but the lure of the smartphone was too great. There was an e-mail from Mike, flagged as urgent, and a missed call and message from “unknown.” The number was local, a (310) exchange.

  I slipped out of the auditorium and found my way to the outside courtyard. A few plump koi traced circles in an overgrown fishpond, streaks of orange hinting of the joy to be found, even in murk.

  Mike’s e-mail was brief. “Hey boss, gave Lia Pootah your cell number. Contact info attached. Following another possible lead on M. M.”

  I added the contact to my address book. The last name, Chang, raised an eyebrow.

  I played her message: “Tenzing Norbu? Lia Pootah Chang here. And yeah, I’m Chinese. Get over it, I grew up in Monterey Park, okay? Call me back.”

  Her message was spring-loaded with hostility. No way was I calling her back. She would do me no good. She was my sworn enemy.

  Or was she?