That was right after Tank landed on my doorstep, or deck, to be more accurate, about five years ago. I had just made Detective I. My new partner, Bill, and I were sitting outside, watching the sky darken from pale blue to azure, when a loud thunk! announced the arrival of a heavy animal right behind my chair. I jumped to my feet, expecting a raccoon. Instead, I found a big, make that huge, cat, his blue-gray fur matted, his green eyes glowing.
“It’s a cat!” I crouched down.
“That’s not a cat. That’s a tank,” Bill said.
“Hey, there, Tank.” I wriggled my fingers. He walked right over and leaned into me, rubbing his head against my knee as he emitted a deep drone of contentment.
The next day, I posted fliers all over the canyon. I even placed a notice in the Topanga Messenger, but nobody surfaced to claim Tank, once he’d claimed me. You’ve probably heard the old joke: dogs have owners, cats have staff. I took pleasure in being Tank’s butler, chef, and valet. His main job was to hang out near me and purr. It was a good deal all around.
I replenished his water bowl and padded into my meditation room, a tiny alcove screened off from the living area, for a little contemplation time of my own.
I set out my meditation cushion and moved to the low makeshift table at one end. The base was a small, beat-up suitcase, the same one I was clutching as I departed the monastery over ten years ago, released from my monastic life, heading to Los Angeles to work at the dharma center. Excited. Scared. Feeling as if I no longer had a place to stand, like I had no roots anywhere.
On top of the suitcase I had placed two reclaimed redwood planks, leftovers from the deck construction. Then I draped the whole thing with the maroon robe that had marked my time as a lama.
Old and new. Past and present. Before and after. Monk and cop.
And now?
I eyed the small stone Buddha, the centerpiece of my table, for answers. He was silent, as always. He prefers to make me work for my own insights. Above him hung my painted silk thangka-a parting gift from Yeshe and Lobsang. It depicts Samsara, the “Wheel of Life,” or as my tradition prefers to remind us, the “Wheel of Deluded Existence.” Lobsang’s smile was wry as he handed me the portable scroll; “Think of this as your mirror, my friend.” I knew what he was saying. I might be entering an exciting new world full of personal freedom, but freedom always comes wrapped in its own set of challenges. As long as my actions remained dominated by anger, ignorance, or pride, I’d stay trapped in illusion, spinning in an endless cycle of suffering.
I let my eyes rest on the thangka. The jewel-colored images were rich and complex, a bold mix of insight and ignorance-animals, deities, fanged demons, compassionate Buddhas, and even two skeletons, tucked in a corner, distracting themselves from the inevitability of death with a merry dance. In all, a perfect visual rendition of what goes on between my ears most of the time.
I lightly touched the smattering of objects scattered like accidental offerings around my stone Buddha. A feather from a red-tailed hawk … a bright piece of coral … a dried sprig of wild lavender-small souvenirs from past adventures.
I placed the slug, a darker talisman, next to them.
I began my sitting meditation.
Before I settled into an awareness of my body, I sent out a wish for safety and happiness to Yeshe and Lobsang. Perhaps they, too, were sitting, far across the world in India. More likely, they were already in bed. I smiled, picturing their reactions when they read my latest letter, the one I wrote last night. I’d started this pen pal tradition when I was just a boy, shuttling back and forth between father and mother, Dharamshala and Paris, my first notes scarcely more than the word hello. They were my link between worlds, a way of touching my only consistent emotional anchors. Something about the act of writing Yeshe and Lobsang steadied me, and I’d never broken the habit.
Reading my latest news, Lobsang would no doubt scowl a little, sure that I was once again displaying too much obedience to my flighty mind. “Always unsettled, like a hummingbird,” he used to scold. Yeshe? His only wish would be that this change continue to deepen my understanding of the Dharma, of the way things are.
I closed my eyes and let the different parts of my body relax. My eyelids, jaw, neck, and shoulders. I let my attention circle the faint throb of pain in my temple. Moved past my chest and belly, to my thighs, feet, hands. Peace and spaciousness spread through my limbs like thick honey.
I winced, stabbed by a familiar anxiety. What if I fail? What if I am making a huge mistake? What if my father is right about me, that I am too lazy and unfocused to ever amount to anything?
I surrounded the thoughts with affection and let them float away.
Brought my attention back to the rise and fall of my breath.
I gave myself six months. A lot can happen in six months, right?
As it turned out, a lot can happen in 24 hours.
CHAPTER 4
“Hey, boss. Any luck?” I heard from outside my kitchen window, where Mike was fiddling with my newly installed data line.
I clicked the connection icon on my computer screen, one more time. Nothing.
“Nothing!” I called.
“Well, scroty-balls to that!”
As usual, Mike was an endless source of new expressions.
He was soon at my side. His fingers flew across my keyboard. Waves of incomprehensible numbers and symbols appeared and dissolved on the screen. He surfed through the data, nodding to himself and mumbling. He sat back. I could see him mentally dialing down the level of difficulty, so a primitive IQ like mine could understand his explanation.
“Your computer’s too old,” he said. “I could wave a dead chicken over it, but it will never, ever hold a high-speed connection.”
“So what do I do?”
“I suggest you send this up north. Silicon Valley.”
“Silicon Valley?”
“Yeah. They’re opening a computer museum up there. They can put yours on display, next to the abacus.”
I elbowed him, right in his bony rib cage.
Mike Koenigs was only 6 years younger than me, but it might as well have been 60. He was raised on data like I was on chants. When he was a little kid, he used to breathe on the school bus window and then trace algorithms on the foggy glass.
Mike was skinny as a rail, with a thatch of black curly hair and a Van Dyke beard of which he was overly proud. His workday, like a vampire’s, started at sundown, and he had the chalky complexion to prove it. He pedal-buzzed around on his eROCKIT, an imported electric hybrid motorbike, knees jutting from both sides. He was gangly, awkward, and tongue-tied around most people, but a flat-out genius when it came to computers.
Mike and I got acquainted the hard way, when I arrested him on a cyber-hacking beef. He’d compromised the database of his own bank, and the Glendale branch of the Bank of America was not happy about it. He said his intent was not malicious, unless you call exacting revenge for bad customer service malicious-some might call it instant karma. In any case, he was so ticked off at their inability to correct a computing error that left his balance several hundred dollars short, and their insistence that it was his own miscalculation, that he hacked into the bank’s system and transferred the exact amount in dispute from the bank manager’s account to his own. The cyber-prank resulted in a major panic for the bank, and an arrest for Mike. I was the one who persuaded the DA not to try him as an adult.
Mike was 17 at the time, just an overgrown adolescent wiseass, but I could see he was a burgeoning genius. He had the talent. He was still looking for the right stage on which to perform. I kept an eye on him in Juvenile Hall and encouraged him to use the time to get a degree in programming. On the day of his release, I took him out for a cup of coffee.