Gay Hendricks - The First Rule of Ten

I opened my eyes, and the harsh tang disappeared as quickly as it had come. The whole experience had lasted ten seconds at most, but it left me wondering: whose death was I tasting?

I made breakfast without incident, thankfully, and took my second cup of coffee onto the deck. I sat and sipped. The morning air was crystal-clear; tiny boats floated like miniature toys on the horizon. But Lobsang hadn’t quite rung off, apparently, because his insistent voice kept nattering at me. Come on, come on, come on. Get to work, Tenzing.

“Good-bye, Lobsang,” I said out loud, but I went inside and got to work. I started by pulling up unopened e-mails on my phone. I quickly found one from Mike labeled “The Three Stooges.” It was a pretty good guess his cyber-chase of Florio, Barsotti, and O’Flaherty had brought results. Maybe the answer to everything was one message away. I felt a fluttering, a tremor down in my belly, signaling fear. But as my teachers used to say, fear is just excitement without the breath. I threw a couple of inhales at the dread, and it transformed into a happy caper of anticipation.

Staying in touch with my feelings can be a lot of work sometimes.

Before I had a chance to actually open the e-mail, Mike himself buzzed up my drive, balanced on his motorbike like an awkward insect. I watched from the window as he dismounted, popped off his helmet, and gave me a jaunty wave. I’d never seen him look so relaxed. He was clearly spending a lot of quality time, most of it between the sheets, I was guessing, with what’s-her-name.

Tricia.

He walked inside, helped himself to the last of my coffee, and plopped down at the kitchen table. He continued to grin, and his grin continued to irritate me, though I couldn’t say exactly why. Well, maybe I could.

Mike raised his mug to me.

“Ain’t love grand?” he said.

He set his mug down next to my aborted letter to Yeshe and Lobsang. Mike has no compunction about reading whatever’s around. He picked up the notepaper and examined my scrolled doodle.

“Feelin’ lucky are we, O’Ten?” he said, in a bad Irish brogue.

“Sorry?”

“Your doodle, boss. All these four-leaf clovers, otherwise known as shamrocks.”

“Shamrocks?” Mike always made me feel like I needed to spend a month-long retreat glued to an encyclopedia, a thesaurus, and a year’s subscription to Science magazine.

“Shamrocks. Irish clovers. Don’t play dumb. You’re the one who wrapped them around a Celtic cross.”

I snatched the paper, staring at what I had always assumed was a vine-wrapped sword.

“You’re saying this illustration is Irish?”

“As corned beef and cabbage,” Mike said.

My mind whirled.

“Mike, did you find anything more on O’Flaherty’s activities here in the States?”

“Not much. Like I said before, he kind of disappeared for a while, after he did his time in the motherland.”

My growing excitement consolidated into fierce certainty.

“Let me guess. You lost track of him for five years, right? Ending last year?”

“Right, but how did you-”

“Because that’s the same five years Eldon Monroe was serving time at Pelican Bay.”

Mike whistled. “You’re saying Liam O’Flaherty knows Eldon Monroe.”

I smiled. “No, Mike. I’m saying Liam O’Flaherty is Eldon Monroe.”

Mike opened his laptop. One click and a lot of things snapped into focus. He had collected more data on O’Flaherty’s activities, criminal and otherwise. He had also managed to collect images of Liam through the years, mostly mug shots, as it turns out.

Mike tipped the screen in my direction, and together we watched a slide show of Liam O’Flaherty’s steady descent from choirboy to felon. First, a pink-cheeked cherub, dressed in white.

“Catholic. First communion,” Mike muttered. There he was again, a few years on, holding a soccer ball high. There was the clean-shaven, unlined face of the petty thief, getting booked into adolescent detention. And booked again, this time with a smirk, and a small but nasty red goatee.

We watched as Liam grew meaner and scarier with each mug shot, like a nightmarish version of computer-generated age simulation. It culminated in a grizzled, 40-year-old Liam, beefy and bald, smiling defiantly into the camera, booked in Dublin for some felony or other. I sat back, as at least one jigsaw piece snapped into place with a satisfying click . My guess was correct. Young or old, Liam O’Flaherty was most definitely Brother Eldon Monroe.

I fished my checkbook out of my jumbled office supply drawer, directly beneath the silverware holder. I made out a check to cash, for $4,000, and handed it to Mike.

He studied the handwritten check as if it were a fossil. “Haven’t seen one of these in a while. You are so very old-school.” He looked at the amount and smiled. “Home office time?”

“Home office time. Keep the change, buddy. That’s all there is left.”

I sent Mike off to research home office equipment, and got to work.

First I called Zimmy.

“Ten, what’s the news?”

“I think I may be onto Barbara’s killer.”

“No kidding.”

“He’s a bad man, Zimmy.” I filled him in on Liam’s past, and the connection to TFJ amp; Associates.

“Can you prove this?”

“Not yet, but I’m getting closer, I can feel it.”

“You be careful, Ten.”

“Don’t worry,” I said. “I’m well protected, thanks to Bill Wilson.”

There was a long pause.

“I didn’t know you were a friend of Bill W’s,” Zimmy said.

“Well, not a friend exactly,” I said. “But he did custom-build me a fine thirty-eight-caliber Supergrade.”

Another pause.

“I think we got our Bill Wilsons confused,” Zimmy said.

I promised to keep him informed, and set myself the task of finding out more about Thomas Florio, the one Stooge I hadn’t yet laid eyes on. I made a few notes but felt a little hamstrung with only my phone as a search engine. This lack of proper equipment was getting old fast.

Tank batted his bowl with his paw.

Right. Lunch first, then Florio.

I slapped together an avocado and Swiss on rye for myself, and a can of mixed grill for my man. As I lifted the sandwich to my mouth, I heard the crunch of tires on gravel. Darn.

Then my gut twanged. I stepped out of sight just as a pewter-colored Maserati snaked up the drive like a sleek and shiny eel. The owner stepped out. He was equally sleek and shiny, a sharp-dressed guy in his 30s, slim and compact, with wavy black hair and gold-rimmed aviator shades. I disliked him on sight.

He minced his way to the house, taking care where he stepped. I was unsurprised to note that his shoes were made from the tanned and bumpy hide of some unfortunate two-toed African bird. So that’s what thousand-dollar ostrich leather loafers looked like.

I smiled. Talk about answers arriving by easeful attraction as opposed to stressful pursuit-this was the ultimate in effortlessness: the very guy I wanted to meet was making an actual house call.

I opened the door, and he stepped inside. Then he spotted Tank, and he backpedaled out.

“Allergies,” he said, pursing his mouth and sniffing, as if the word itself triggered a reaction.

I glanced at Tank. His whiskers were laid back and starchy, a sure indication of extreme dislike. I couldn’t argue with him. This guy was a weasel of the first order.

I joined the varmint outside, and he handed over a business card, pinkie curled in the air like a little flag.

“Thomas Florio,” he said, his nasal voice a high-pitched whine. I looked at the embossed card.

Thomas Florio, Jr., it read. Junior. That meant there was a Senior out there somewhere, responsible for this creep.