Swift Vengeance

24

In the expected privacy of my pickup truck, I told Joan Taucher everything that had happened two hours earlier. The Saturday traffic was light and we were almost to Camp Pendleton by the time I’d finished.

Taucher sat hard-faced, looking out the windshield through aviator sunglasses, her makeup heavy and her white bangs trimmed bluntly at her brow. No hematoma in sight. Black suit with a flag lapel pin, black blouse, gun and holster temporarily on her lap for comfort. A charmless black purse on the floorboard in front of her.

“I know all about their crude tricks,” she said. “Frosts my balls. Lark’s a good kid. He tries to help me, but I see through him like a window. I don’t know about my office being miked, but I know the work phones are monitored. Randomly, they say. Policy. It just piles up in the Cloud. Metadata. Useless mountains of crap in the Cloud, generated by us. Nobody can listen to it all. Hell, we can’t even keep up with the domestic terror tips. You saw my walls. I watch what I say, wherever I am. The stuff I shared with you was small potatoes. They haven’t written me up for anything. Yet.”

“I’m surprised you take it so well.”

“And my choice is what?”

I thought about that and saw her point. I couldn’t picture Taucher doing anything other than what she was doing here and now in this city. Guarding the citadel. Tracking the ghosts. She was where she belonged. By fate, luck, or design. Blessing and curse.

As if at a loss for meaningful law enforcement activity, Taucher removed her gun, looked at it for a moment, then pushed it into the holster and snapped it shut.

Marah Ibrahim Azmeh was twenty-four years old and single and lived in Torrance, southwest of L.A. She worked for the County of Los Angeles Public Social Services Department, in payroll. She wore a yellow dress, yellow flip-flops with white daisies on them, and a pretty smile as she welcomed us to her small tract home. Taucher had told me that Marah meant “happiness,” and that Marah had been born to Madiyah and Dr. Ibrahim Azmeh while he was a resident at Centinela Hospital Medical Center in Inglewood. Dr. Azmeh himself had helped deliver her. She was a graduate of Cal State Northridge.

Waiting for us in the small living room was her older brother, Alan Ames. My quick IvarDuggans.com search revealed that he had been born in Inglewood as Alim Ibrahim Azmeh, and changed his name when he was eighteen. He was twenty-six years old, married, and a father of two. Employed as a surgical nurse at the UCLA Medical Center, where — I noted — his father had studied. Arrested for aggravated assault three years prior, charges dropped.

He sat at one end of a white couch, looking calmly over his teacup at us when we came into the room. He stood briefly, nodded without speaking as Taucher and I introduced ourselves, then sat back down. He was husky, dressed in jeans, a rugby shirt, and white athletic shoes.

“Tea?” asked Marah. “Juice?”

Taucher and I declined and Marah settled onto the couch opposite her brother. Their blood relationship was easy to see — slender faces, expressive brown eyes, coffee-with-cream skin. Their hair was black and straight, Marah’s streaked with henna. They both resembled their father in the one picture of him I’d seen. Not striking similarities, but even so. Different degrees of his aquiline nose.

The house was small, mid-fifties, probably three small bedrooms and two baths. Built in the era of Eisenhower, Elvis, and Khrushchev. Black-and-white TVs, green front lawns. Sears and Roebuck, Briggs & Stratton. Skinny ties and showing-top flattops. My grandpa Dick as a boy, playing catch in the street, Liz jumping rope.

Now a sun-filled living room. Polished windows. Facing the couch sat two wooden armchairs with red-and-gold Arabesque upholstery — one for Taucher and one for me. Persian rugs on a dark laminate floor. An entertainment center along one wall, a few CDs and DVDs and a modestly sized flat-screen TV. Bookshelves on another wall: college textbooks, sociology, psychology, American history, economics, art. More art. For the serious reader, I thought. For the searching young mind of Marah Azmeh. The other wall was densely hung with framed photographs — family and friends, at a glance.

Taucher thanked them for agreeing to meet us on short notice, although — she pointed out — it was their duty as American citizens to be vigilant against terror. Marah nodded. Alan didn’t.

“Tell us what happened to your father,” she said.

“You know exactly what happened to him, Agent Taucher,” said Alan. “You probably know more than we do. He was blown to pieces by an American drone on April twenty-second, 2015.”

“I’m sorry for your loss and I understand your anger,” Joan said briskly.

“You certainly do not,” said Alan. “I have less than one hour before work.”

“I’ll be direct,” said Taucher. “An assassin has murdered one of the three drone operators whose targeted strike killed your innocent father and eight others. That drone operator’s name was Kenny Bryce. We know that this assassin intends to murder both of the other operators as well. He has called his actions ‘justice’ and ‘vengeance.’ So we are here to find out — do you know who this assassin might be? Do you know any relatives or friends of the collaterals who died that day and who are angry enough to kill in revenge? Have you heard of any such person, perhaps even secondhand? A rumor, even. A suspicion.”

I wondered how Taucher’s calling their father a “collateral” would sit with them.

Marah collected Alan’s empty teacup and excused herself to the kitchen. I could see her back and hear the clink of porcelain and the faint sound of liquid being poured.

Alan Ames folded his hands on his lap. “I do not murder. My sister does not murder. We do not associate with murderers. Are we finished?”

“But you have other brothers and sisters overseas,” said Taucher. “Uncles and aunts and cousins. Have any of them ever communicated anything about avenging your father’s death?”

“Ask them if they are murderers,” said Alan.

Marah returned with Alan’s teacup and saucer and set them beside him. She sat again, her face passive, looking at me.

“They’re half a world away,” said Joan.

“Mr. Ames, do any relatives or friends of your father live in the United States?” I asked. It was certainly possible. My IvarDuggans.com search had failed to reveal both Marah and Alan as related to Dr. Ibrahim Azmeh, yet here they sat.

Alan’s face closed on his sister. “Marah? Speak to these people.”

She leaned forward. “Friends, certainly. Dad was a great man. He was fun and outgoing and popular. Tons of friends. Friends from his childhood in Damascus have immigrated here. Friends from his college days in Paris. People who laughed and argued and smoked and hugged you and talked about ideas and politics. And he had even more friends from medical school here in L.A. Like, I couldn’t count them if I had to.”

She cleared her throat. I sensed truth and gentleness in her, in the way her words and emotions and expressions came out as one. Authentic and undiluted. “He left my mother and the United States to return to Syria when I was ten years old. Which meant more friends and more children for him. He married twice again, but not through divorce. This is legal in most of Syria. I can’t even guess about my father’s friends in America, but none of his children are here that I know of, except for Alan and me and Ben.”

I glanced at Taucher, who eyed me back.

“Correct,” said Alan. “Our father was the stereotype of a Muslim woman-owner. He wasn’t devout. But he liked the three-wives idea. He was still married to all of them the day you slaughtered him.”

Marah took a deep breath and a shamed glance down, then politely changed the subject. “Ben is the youngest,” she said. “Benyamin. He lives in Santa Ana. I didn’t hear back from him about this meeting.”

“We’d like his address,” said Taucher.

“Yes, sure,” said Marah.

“Is there anything else to talk about, then?” asked Alan.

I hit him with a quick jab: “Did you ever think of getting vengeance for your dad?”

He considered, eyes hooded. “I was furious when I heard. I would have probably killed the messenger if it hadn’t been Marah. But serious, actual revenge? No. Impractical. I couldn’t see myself going up against the U.S. Air Force, or the CIA, or whoever was responsible for firing that missile into a group of doctors and nurses.”

“Never fantasized that you could get away with it?” asked Taucher.

A consideration, then a smirk. “We all have our fantasies, Agent Taucher. Maybe even you.”

“You’re a rude dude,” she said.

“I’ll be happy to report that remark to your superior.”

“I’ll give you his name and direct number before we leave.”

“Which will be soon, I hope—”

“Alan...”

Alan stood. “I can’t be late for work. I don’t want your boss’s name or number. I loved my father and you killed him for no reason. We received twelve thousand dollars for him. I will never forgive and never forget.”

Alan embraced his sister and whispered something in her ear and did not look back on us. The front door slammed. Marah sat back down on the couch, sat forward and lowered her head, then snapped back her mane of copper-black hair and looked at us.