The Third Rule of Ten: A Tenzing Norbu Mystery

by Hendricks, Gay

  Personal intentions and new rules aside, I’ve found it to be generally unwise to lie to or stonewall a Federal agent, especially if she already knows that’s what you’re doing. On the other hand, I wasn’t about to give this woman the whole story. I’d be kicked to the curb so far and so fast I might never find my way back. This was my mystery to solve, my killer whale to land.

  Yeshe’s voice pleaded with me. You are weakened by your attachment to winning. Let this one go, Tenzing.

  I couldn’t.

  I resorted to the time-honored practice of not exactly telling the truth while not exactly lying.

  “I was fishing but for information, not for, you know, fish. I’m putting some pieces together in an investigation. That building in Baja is one of the pieces.”

  “You mind being a little more specific?” Gustafson’s gaze was steady. Huh. One of her eyes was blue, the other brown. Contact lenses or nature?

  I reeled in my wandering attention and tried a different tack. “Mind if I ask a question or two of my own first?”

  She waited.

  I pointed to the ATF insignia on her windbreaker. “Does your interest in the building concern alcohol, tobacco, or firearms? I’m guessing firearms.” I couldn’t picture the ATF sweating over, much less Chaco Morales smuggling, tequila and smokes.

  “You guessed right,” she said, after a pause. She’d chosen to be forthcoming, so I did the same.

  “Well, if it matters, my investigation has nothing to do with them, at least not directly.”

  She continued to observe me closely, her mismatched eyes alert to any sign I might be lying. She apparently decided I wasn’t. She nodded.

  “Sorry I can’t be more helpful,” I added. “But I’m in a bit of a hurry. I need to get back to L.A. Any chance we can wrap this up?”

  Gustafson’s mouth tightened. “So you’re not going to tell me what your investigation is about?”

  “I’d rather not,” I said, keeping my voice mild.

  “And I’d rather not run you in on an obstruction charge, but I will if I have to.”

  When people with authority dangle a threat, I am usually struck with the overwhelming urge to tug on it and see if they’re serious. As a child, my reactive behavior resulted in more missed meals and mandatory kitchen duty at the monastery than I care to mention. But as a grown man, sometimes calling a bluff worked. I hoped this was one of those times.

  I turned my back to Gustafson and crossed my wrists behind my back, ready for the handcuffs. I waited two long inhales and exhales.

  I heard Gustafson sigh. “Turn around, Norbu.”

  I faced her, relaxing my arms. Gustafson’s own were crossed, protecting her chest. She slowly lowered them, a conscious gesture of reconciliation. Her eyes were ever so slightly amused. “Let’s be on the same side here, Detective.”

  That was fine with me. I didn’t have any personal argument with the ATF. I just didn’t want them trampling over my investigation, not when I was getting close to some answers. From my LAPD days, I had firsthand knowledge of their deservedly bad reputation for obstruction, miscommunication, and generally making boneheaded decisions they later denied. Operation Fast and Furious was a perfect example, when they allowed weapons to be passed into the hands of suspected drug smugglers under the misguided assumption that the weapons could then be traced to cartel leaders. The ATF officials in Mexico hadn’t even known the score from their American counterparts. Speaking before Congress, one of the ATF’s own deputy attachés later called the entire gun-walking fiasco a “perfect storm of idiocy.” Bill and I had shared a laugh over that one. And for every exposed Federal blunder like Fast and Furious, 20 more dumb decisions remained safely barricaded behind unbreakable claims of national security.

  Although Gustafson didn’t strike me as dumb. Quite the opposite.

  My fellow cops referred to the FBI as either “the Feebs,” in honor of their dubious investigatory skills, or “the Shoes,” for the clunky wingtips they wore. I glanced down at Gustafson’s feet. She was pushing the edge of the ATF fashion envelope with a sleek pair of black running shoes. A rebel, like me. I liked that.

  Agent Gustafson waited. I made a decision. Who knows? Maybe she could help me find Clara. “I’ve been following up on a misper case. My investigation has to do with drugs, money, and some new information I haven’t quite figured out. Not yet.”

  “Okay.” She nodded. “So you’re saying, no connection to firearms? No bullets? No unusual weapons of any kind?”

  “Nope.” Maybe hers had to do with the rest of the Fast and Furious cache. Thousands of the weapons the ATF had allowed to walk were still at large and in circulation out there, the last I’d heard.

  “Who’s paying your fees?” Gustafson asked next.

  “I can’t tell you that,” I said. Then I got cute. “All I can say is he’s never been in trouble with the law. He’s one of the good guys.” My little inside joke backfired.

  She jumped all over my words. “Wait a minute. Are you your own client here? Some sort of … vigilante? Isn’t that against your religion?”

  Now I had proof. Gustafson was that rare and dangerous land mammal, the Smartus Agentus Federalus. She was also just a semantic hair away from the truth. I only quibbled over her word choice. Vigilante brought to mind crazed outlaws, enraged mobs looting, and killing innocent victims. I preferred to think of myself as a concerned citizen, willing to go the extra mile for the good of the community. In this case, I might have gone a little farther than the extra mile, but all for a noble cause.

  “Well?” Gustafson crossed her arms again.

  I tried smiling. “You make vigilante sound like a bad thing.”

  She stared back with bicolored eyes, neither color amused. “Detective Norbu, the sooner you talk to me, the sooner you can go.”

  I changed course. She clearly shared my own tenacious need for answers. Plus, she had the bigger badge. “Fine. As I mentioned, I was hired to find a missing person. A woman, an illegal alien as it turned out, named Clara Fuentes. I worked the case for several days, until my client called me off. In the course of my investigation I opened up a second, massive can of unexpected worms, having to do with Mexican gangs. I’ve got an active curiosity and a need to close my cases, paid or not, so I’m following up on things. I don’t know where any of this will lead, beyond Baja. Honestly.”

  Gustafson appraised me, puzzled.

  “Do I know you?” she said. “I feel like I’ve seen you before.”

  That’s all I needed. Once she realized I was the ex-cop on prime time who plugged two gang members in my backyard, all bets were off.

  I shrugged. “I don’t know why you would.” I changed the subject. “I’m curious, Agent Gustafson. When did that building go up, anyway? I haven’t checked the coordinates on Google Earth yet, but I’m betting it’s so recent, nothing will show up but empty desert.”

  Gustafson said nothing.

  “So, what?” I continued. “You just happened to be watching a bare patch of sand when boom, this building appears?”

  Gustafson still stayed silent. I recalled Sam’s commentary regarding the construction technique for putting up an insta-building.

  “Let me guess. A big hole in the ground suddenly showed up on some random satellite feed. Were you the one who picked up on that? Nice work!”

  Her eyes glinted, as if she appreciated running into another not-dumb member of the warrior tribe. “Close,” she said.

  I waited. She seemed to make a decision.

  “How much do you know about deeply buried facilities? Modern ones?”

  “You mean, like tunnels?”

  “Tunnels, caves, bunkers, hidden storage vaults.”

  I thought it over. “Not much,” I admitted. “The Tora Bora caves. Those facilities in Iraq, where the WMD’s weren’t, I guess. Why? Should I know more?”

  Gustafson chewed her lower lip, frowning. “Let’s just say I’m a little obsessed with the subject. To my mind, d
eeply buried facilities pose a great threat to our national security, maybe the greatest, and nothing’s more critical than finding and eliminating them before they are used to eliminate us.”

  “All right,” I said. “And you think you’ve found one?”

  “Don’t know yet. Can’t be sure. But that site sure looks like a potential cut and cover.”

  “Sorry. ‘Cut and cover’?”

  “There are really only two viable techniques for constructing deeply buried facilities,” she explained. “Tunneling, and cut and cover. Cut and cover’s exactly what it sounds like—dig a deep hole, reinforce it, fill it with whatever nastiness you want to keep secret, cover it up.”

  I pictured the Baja site. “Like with a building?”

  “Sometimes. More often soil, but yes. Sometimes. We call that dissimulation. Making the construction of an underground facility appear as if you’re actually building something else.”

  “So how do you know which one this place is?”

  “I don’t. It’s just, a hunch, you know? Unfortunately, there’s no silver bullet when it comes to detecting these fuckers. I mean, sure, we have our ways. Satellite imagery, heat-detecting intel, radio intercepts. The Defense Department’s even working on a quantum gravity sensor they can send into space to serve as a trip-wire, an early warning sign that will justify using our other intelligence assets.”

  “Uh-huh.” Have you ever met my friend Mike Koenigs? I wanted to say. My brain was starting to melt.

  “But unless you can get actual boots on the ground and eyes on what’s there, or intel from a mole, it’s almost impossible to prove anything.”

  I said nothing, because I had nothing to add. Not yet.

  “So, to answer your question, yes. I was the first one to spot an uptick in activity,” she admitted. “The digging of a big hole, the pouring of concrete, the building plopped on top. Satellites don’t lie. I was also the one to ask the question, why? Why that? Why there? No one else seemed to care, but I checked it out, found some anomalies, and I’ve been keeping an eye on that area from a distance ever since. My partner thinks I’m paranoid, and my superiors could care less, but something’s off. I just know it.”

  I nodded. I knew the feeling. “Anomalies? What kind of anomalies?”

  She shook her head. “Sorry, that’s as far as I can go. My boss finds out I’ve been briefing some lunatic P.I. obsessed with his own mission, and my ass is grass.”

  “I can appreciate that,” I said. “You’re probably better off avoiding a paranoid Tibetan vigilante. On the other hand”—I mentally thanked Mike and his T-shirt philosophizing—“you know what they say about paranoia …”

  At long last, Gustafson cracked a tiny smile. I handed her my card. She pocketed it without looking.

  “You drink coffee?”

  My look said it all.

  Her strong legs scissored across the blacktop to her helicopter. She climbed inside and soon returned with a thermos and two ATF mugs.

  “It’s been a long day,” she said and opened the thermos. The smell weakened my knees.

  “You’re not only smart, you’re a genius,” I said. “I think you just became my favorite federale.”

  Another smile. She filled our mugs with steaming coffee. I took a sip, and my body broke into a chant of gratitude as I savored the rich, bitter-yet-mellow liquid. The tiny, dry ache lodged between my eyebrows disappeared. Up until that moment, I hadn’t registered Gustafson as real, much less female. Her role was strictly two-dimensional. Simply put, she was Authority and I was not. One sip of this elixir, though, and she bloomed into a fully evolved entity of the female variety. Anybody who could make coffee this good was worth getting to know a little better.

  I registered the bright crinkle of laugh lines, a rarity in her line of work, and the way her lips moved as she savored her coffee. I noted her unusual eyes, themselves a pair of anomalies. She was very fit, though not the lean, wiry kind of fit. Her kind was sturdy and curvaceous, and it suited me just fine.

  Is she the one?

  “This coffee is outrageous,” I said. “Are you sure it’s legal, Agent Gustafson?”

  She brightened. “I always soak the ground beans in a little hot water first—hot, but not quite boiling. After forty seconds or so I pour the rest over the grounds. You wouldn’t believe how much difference that first little steep makes. It brings out all the natural oils.”

  “Wouldn’t want to stifle those,” I said.

  Her gaze stilled. “Detective Norbu, are you flirting with me?”

  I drew an indignant breath before realizing she was right. I was flirting with her.

  “Do you have a problem with that?” I smiled.

  She took my mug and emptied the coffee onto the tarmac.

  I took that as a yes.

  Just then, Sam poked his head out of the customs building and gestured me over.

  “Shall I call you?” I said to Gustafson, eliciting an expression bordering on panic. I quickly added, “If I find out anything more about that site in Baja. That’s all I meant.”

  She flushed and awkwardly fished out an ATF business card, scribbling a number on the back. As she passed me the card, her odd, bicolored eyes met mine. “Don’t go there again, Detective Norbu.”

  As I walked away, I wondered which there she meant. And if she really meant it.

  CHAPTER 19

  By the time I finally got home, I was too hungry, exhausted, and overwhelmed by the day’s events to pursue that thought, or any others. I’d spent the short flight back to L.A. persuading Sam I wasn’t a terrorist in the making. I think he believed me. The huge tip helped.

  The sun had long since dropped below the rim of the earth, leaving a sky wrapped in darkness. One lone star blinked overhead, or maybe it was one of Agent Gustafson’s wandering satellites.

  I peeled off my clothes, pulling on my cotton kimono and cinching the sash. I fed Tank, changed his box, and spent a mindless hour using a fine-toothed cat-comb on his thick fur while he yowled in low but steady protest. He was already mad at me, so it seemed economical.

  I checked my messages, both phones. I had two more from Heather on my iPhone and a third from Cielo Lodero, who had called my office line. My stomach began to ache, but I chose to blame hunger. As I made myself a grilled avocado, heirloom tomato, and cheddar cheese sandwich, I recalled a piece of wisdom I once heard, though I couldn’t say from where: You know your life is getting too complicated when you’re contemplating cheating on your mistress.

  My cell phone strummed. I didn’t recognize the number, but I had a feeling I knew who the caller was.

  “Yes,” I said.

  “Detective Norbu?” Her voice was lower, huskier than I’d remembered.

  “Tenzing. Call me Ten, please.”

  “Ten.” She tried it on. “Okay, Ten, but only if you call me Gus.”

  “Gus?” I said.

  “Gus. Take it or leave it.” Her chuckle sounded hollow.

  I heard the clink of ice cubes, a long swallow. She was drinking, and it wasn’t beer.

  “I mean, don’t get me wrong,” she said, as if continuing a conversation in her head. “I actually like you, Ten. So, but …” She cleared her throat. “I … I … Ah, shit.”

  I was growing increasingly baffled by the direction this conversation was taking.

  “Agent Gustafson, Gus, I mean, you don’t …”

  “I’m gay,” she blurted. “I’m a lesbian. A friggin’ … I’m a dyke, okay?”

  No, not okay. More like, acutely embarrassing. Take any crowd of admiring men, and Heather could always instantly identify which ones wanted to bed her and which were merely drawn to her beauty for aesthetic reasons. She called this skill her gaydar.

  My gaydar was obviously in need of serious adjustment.

  Now I was the one to clear my throat. “Well,” I finally said, “don’t take this wrong, but if I was a … a woman, you’d be my type.” Wow. Did that even make sense?

 
She laughed, although I could hear a current of pain underlying her mirth.

  “God, this is mortifying,” she said.

  “For you and me both.”

  “I just … You have no idea what a nightmare this is. A gay ATF agent. I mean, hard enough just being a woman there, never mind the rest of it. The never getting asked; the never telling.”

  “But they repealed that policy, right?” I said. “And anyway, I thought ‘Don’t ask, don’t tell’ was just for the military.”

  “It’s part of the whole macho, flag-waving bullshit.” She paused. “And the thing is, once you’re in the habit of keeping certain behaviors secret, it’s not so easy to change. That part’s on me.”

  I understood, all too well.

  “Unwritten rules,” she went on. “Meanwhile, my love life is nonexistent. Who wants to be with someone whose sense of normal includes living a lie? But I’m convinced, rightly or wrongly, that the minute I come out, I can wave any promotions good-bye.”

  Another rattle of ice on glass. I didn’t have to guess at her favorite nighttime companion, or why her tongue was suddenly loosened.

  “Listen to me,” she said. “Jesus. I hear you’re a monk, and next thing, I’m confessing right and left.”

  I laughed. “I don’t mind,” I said.

  “Well, true confessions aside, I’m also calling to say thanks.”

  “For what?”

  “For noticing that I’m smart, and for finding me attractive—I know, weird, right? But it’s been a while—and also, for backing off when I asked. I can’t remember the last time any of those things happened to me, especially with a man from law enforcement.”

  I felt a surge of compassion for Agent Gus Gustafson. What a lonely world she inhabited, pretending to be someone she wasn’t and feel things she didn’t.

  My irony alarm sounded a second time inside—my own little tripwire, to be pursued more fully later.

  “Thank you for your honesty,” I said. “I respect that. And I’m really sorry if I made you uncomfortable.”