Just friends
of the lama

>> Kaimuki

The brown-skinned Kamasami Khan was turning pale from loss of blood by the time the ambulance arrived. In no time the crack crew had him on a stretcher and loaded into the back. While one member went to work on the gunshot wound that blew open his shoulder, another began pumping plasma into his veins. Leahi Hospital was close, but this was a job for Dr. Laurie Tang and the ER folks at Queen's. The driver hit the siren and lights.

The crime-scene investigators, led by detective Leina'ala Smashowicz, the former UH volleyball "Queen of the Roof," arrived just as the ambulance was departing, leaving Michael Tenzin Campbell to tell her what happened.

The FBI wanted photos of Fon Du, he explained, for questioning regarding two public attempts on the life of the second Lama Jey Tsong Khapa. Bodhicita Guzman, Fon Du's former lover, had photos on her computer. He and Khan had just checked the yard for signs of Fon Du. Michael was at the back door, waiting for Khan to reach the front of the house so they could enter at exactly the same time, when Michael heard shouting from the front of the house, then a gunshot. He found Khan slumping to his knees in the middle of 9th Avenue, saw the tail lights of Khan's truck turning right on Pahoa. As far as he knew, the lama and Bodhicita were still in the truck.

"And you and Mr. Khan were playing Secret Service because ... " the detective said in her usual tone of dark suspicion.

"Just friends of the lama," Michael said. "Actually, I was taking his place yesterday when they attacked at his parents' house."

"That was you?"

"Yeah, it got pretty exciting."

"That," said the woman known since her college days as Smashie, "was a helluva kick."

The one that had knocked a Te-Wu operative posing as a Buddhist monk unconscious, and began a tailspin for the previously uncompromised organization.

"We'd need a judge's OK to search Ms. Guzman's computer. But since she asked you to do it and gave you the key ... "

Inside, Michael turned on Bodhicita's i-Mac. Waiting for it to boot up, he noticed a man's aloha shirt and black shorts on the couch. In the pockets of the shorts was a cell phone and a money clip with license and credit cards. Later, the FBI would use the phone's calling record to further tighten the noose on Te-Wu.

Michael accessed Bodhicita's photo files, found several excellent images of Fon Du and various other Te-Wu colleagues relaxing at home. Soon he was e-mailing the photos to the FBI, which in turn would forward them to the four local news stations in time for the 10 o'clock news.

The question was whether Bodhicita and the lama would still be alive at 10.