The Third Rule Of Ten: A Tenzing Norbu Mystery by Gay Hendricks, Tinker Lindsay Read Free Book Online Page A

models have incorporated a form of GPS triangulation that pulls much more precise information from a cluster of satellites constantly low-orbiting around our planet. The rapid cross-referencing of data can identify and place a phone to within 328 feet. Why 328, as opposed to 327 or 329, I have no idea.
    Bill recited a street address on Serrano.
    “Koreatown?”
    “Close. Little Armenia.”
    “Thanks, Bill,” I said.
    “Don’t thank me. Thank Big Foot.” Big Foot, aka Melvin Skinner, was a Texas drug dealer whose “mule” was a deluxe motor home stuffed with thousands of pounds of marijuana. In 2006, the local cops used data from his throwaway cell phone to track him down en route to Alabama to make a delivery. He was arrested and charged for a laundry list of drug-dealing behaviors. His lawyers cried foul, claiming the DEA had violated his Fourth Amendment rights because they never issued a warrant, but those of us doing metropolitan police work cheered. The court ruled cell phone use to be a public, rather than a private act. That ruling was appealed, of course, and the case had been passed along to a higher court, but for now, no warrants were necessary.
    “Thank you, Big Foot,” I recited obediently.
    I heard twin shrieks in the background.
    “Gotta go,” Bill said. “Lola has Maude in a headlock.”
    I traded the blazer for a dark blue windbreaker and retrieved my .38 from its nylon gun bag, locked in the safe in my closet. I had cleaned the Wilson only yesterday, and the stainless steel barrel and walnut handle gleamed. I hefted the weapon once or twice in my hand. It felt snug there, at home. Other cops preferred bigger guns, but most of them had bigger hands. I pulled out the Jackass Rig shoulder holster as well.
    “I’m off,” I said to Tank. “Wish me luck.”
    Tank blinked. That counted, I guess.
    I activated the Guard-on deities yet again. They were armed for action, and so was I.
    I switched to my beater Toyota, entered the address in my phone, and called upon MapQuest to get me there—so much easier than trying to decode the microscopic squiggles of the Thomas Guide while driving. Not that I’m complaining—Sherlock didn’t even have that. Sunday afternoon traffic had started to build, and well over an hour later I was finally parked on Serrano Avenue, just around the corner from a massive church topped by multiple golden, onion-shaped domes that rivaled the Taj Mahal’s.
    Assuming Clara Fuentes’s phone wasn’t shopping in the Food 4 Less, there was only one building that made sense within my 328-foot radius of possibilities. The peeling three-story apartment house was a dingy rectangle, its faded tan the color of regret. A makeshift square of poured concrete out front housed a rusting pickup, canted to one side. Several swarthy old men, gray hair sprouting from beneath their undershirts, sat hunched on plastic lawn chairs dragged onto narrow balconies. They aimed rings of cigarette smoke at the pavement below. A baby was crying inconsolably, and a woman’s voice shouted in frustration.
    Across the street, graffiti disfigured the cement wall bordering the Food 4 Less, and a pile of blankets fenced in by overturned shopping carts indicated a homeless person had claimed one small piece of sidewalk real estate as his own. The whole block was derelict, the gleaming church around the corner a serious misplacement of priorities.
    I holstered my gun under my windbreaker and got out of the car. I strolled up to the building’s entrance, a metal gate meshed with chain-link, pushed it open, and walked to the front door of the apartment. The back of my neck prickled. I could feel the eyes of the old men following my every move, like silent prison guards.
    The front door was not quite closed, a piece of luck. I stepped inside and studied a directory of names and apartment numbers hanging over a metal case of mailboxes. Half the handwritten names were too faded to read, and the other half were