Swift Vengeance

30

Out in the barn, I banged the heavy and speed bags for a long while. Then showered and joined the Irregulars for cocktail hour under the palapa. They had a big fire going in the pit under the high part of the thatch, where the flames couldn’t catch it on fire. Dick poured me a forthright bourbon and added a few drops of water. We sat on chaise longues facing the hills. The night was cool and the stars were post-storm bright.

Dick swirled his glass and the ice clinked. “If those weren’t four feds sitting at that table this morning, my name’s not Dick Ford.”

“Friendly neighborhood FBI.”

“And what did they want with my favorite grandson?”

“Dirt on one of their own.”

“That’s low,” said Dick.

“I thought so, too.”

“Who was that earlier?” he asked. “The dapper Arab with the bodyguard.”

“Not important.”

“Something about Lindsey, I surmise,” he said. “And that’s why you sent her away for a while.”

“Need-to-know, Dick. Sorry.”

“I’m cool with that,” he said. “But I’m not sold on that dog of Lindsey’s. I don’t like him, and he senses it. Looks at me like he wants to eat my balls. Well, off to see how Liz is doing. That knee of hers doesn’t love the tennis court as much as it used to.”

I waved Lindsey over and she took Dick’s vacated chaise. Zeno lay between us, head up and facing me, a gray-eyed sphinx.

I told her about my visit from Rasha. That he physically resembled what I had briefly seen of Kenny Bryce’s killer. That his temper had boiled. That he had admitted to brandishing a janbiya at a college party. I told her that his claim of being out of the country on the night of the murder was yet to be vetted. She reminded me of his handwriting, so similar to that of Caliphornia’s.

I told Lindsey that I could find no motive for Samara to take Kenny’s life, and no reason for him to threaten her. I admitted that I found his interest in her genuine, if possessive and impulsive.

“My gut tells me he isn’t our man,” I said.

“How sure are you?”

“I can’t make any claims there,” I said. “Rasha could be enough of a sociopath and a liar to fool us all.”

“Comforting, Roland.”

I said nothing of Ben Azmeh.

The fact that we had only circumstantial evidence linking him to Caliphornia dripped in my mind, the sound of water hitting water. A constant reminder that something isn’t right.

I looked out at the placid black water of the pond and saw Ben’s strange dance behind the cheap plastic blinds of Del Sol unit 24-A.

But Rasha’s voice is what I heard, when I’d asked him if he still had his old janbiya: Somewhere.

Such are the vagaries of an uncertain soul.

Lindsey and I took on Burt and Clevenger in Ping-Pong, best of three, fought them to a one — one draw. Lindsey served to open the third. Burt’s high, long-distance spin-bombs made up for Clevenger’s slowness and poor motor skills. Lindsey had remarkable reflexes but was tactically unsound, trying to make winners of almost every shot. I stayed in close to the table, bringing my six feet and three inches to bear, hitting the ball early and flat at tough angles.

Zeno lay under the table on Lindsey’s and my end, positioned, of course, as close to Lindsey as he could get without being stepped on. I looked at him occasionally, a large, brindled, gray-eyed beast patiently sizing me up. A ball went off the table and click-click-clicked on the uneven pavers, finally rolling to a stop between Zeno’s huge front paws. I kneeled and thought whether or not to reach in. He studied me. Eyes inscrutable within the heavy folds of his face.

I didn’t know what to make of Zeno yet. I told him so.

He must not have known what to make of me, either, because he didn’t move when I reached in and took the ball. Just looked at me as if I was not really there.

Burt and Clevenger beat us in the deciding third game, twenty-four to twenty-two, a heartbreaker decided by cloddish Clevenger’s shot that came off his paddle and finger at an unintended angle, nicked the white baseline in front of me with an audible tick, and dropped uninterrupted to the floor at my feet.

I wanted to knock out Clevenger with an uppercut, but I’m a good sport, so I couldn’t, even if the bourbon suggested that I could. Instead I dropped the paddle to the table, went to the fire, did an Ali shuffle, and threw some punches into the flames. Felt good, hands and feet working together, heavy as they were from the workout. This drew hoots and claps from the Irregulars, who broke into Zevon’s “Roland the Headless Thompson Gunner,” a song I’d always liked but that now struck a hideously raw nerve. It’s an Irregulars favorite, along with “Money for Nothing,” in which they diss their landlord for charging rent but doing nothing. I might add that none of them except Burt pay on time. I have never once collected all rents by the first day of any month, as mandated by the rules posted on the palapa caisson not ten feet from here. But they have a point. I really do do almost nothing, though I always warn them of that before we sign a lease. Those Irregulars. You never know quite how they’ll come at you.

Grandpa Dick presented me with a fresh drink. “That Clevenger’s a lucky prick.”

Clevenger waved guiltily and headed off for the barn and his coming night of coyote hunting. Limping Liz and Dick took their towering drinks and reclined next to each other on the padded chaise longues, quickly falling into an argument about whether to ice or heat a sore knee: Dick for heat but Liz all ice.

When my phone vibrated in my pocket I hoped it was Joan saying that Ben Azmeh had responded positively to our offer of cash. Instead it was Tammy Bellamy, just to let me know that the gray striped cat spotted walking along Stage Coach Road turned out to be plain gray, and not Oxley at all. So he was still out there, somewhere, and Tammy was really hoping I hadn’t given up. A full moon was coming, and I knew what that meant. She asked me to keep an extra-sharp eye out, and offered to pay for my gasoline if I ever wanted to fill her up and patrol Fallbrook. I told her not to worry, said I’d keep an extra-sharp eye out, not to sweat the gas.

Lindsey, Burt, and I put on our coats and walked the pond under good clean moonlight. Zeno traveled at Lindsey’s left side, matching her pace exactly, anticipating her turns on the meandering path, a darkness within the dark. Breeze in the cattails. An owl sweeping low past us from behind, hefty but silent.

“About those bottles of Stoli on my kitchen counter,” said Lindsey. “They are there for a reason. They’re unopened, so that I can see them and they can tempt me. I can beat them. I’m a boozer, but I know I can. And Burt was in my casita, Roland. We’ve discussed it. One of Clevenger’s drones recorded him in high-def. I was in the barn looking for a Phillips-head and wasn’t supposed to see him.”

Burt cleared his throat. “I won’t apologize twice. I was trying to help you.”

“I know,” she said. “But it’s between me and the bottles now.”

We rounded the west bank and came to the outcropping of boulders that mark the halfway point from the house. “Thanks for sticking with me, guys,” said Lindsey. “We’re going to beat Caliphornia. I’m going to get joint custody of John. I’m going to be a good mom. But I’m not going to hit the bottle again. I feel a little bit stronger every hour, every time I look at those things. Sometimes I’m so damned thirsty for it my body wants to turn inside out. But I refuse. It’s not one day at a time, it’s one second at a time. Then the second passes and I think about tomorrow being better. Because it’s going to be. And you guys are bearing me up on your shoulders. I love you both.”

She stopped and knelt and scratched Zeno’s ears with both her hands. “I love you, too, Zeno. Yes, I love you, too.”

She jumped up and loped off toward her casita, the great gray protector bounding along beside her.

“Just FYI,” said Burt. “She drove back to Los Jilgueros earlier today, so she could see Johnny again. She asked me to ride shotgun and said she was going with or without me. I actually did bring a shotgun — the little sawed-off model you’re familiar with. Zeno in the back. Lindsey well protected. Her ex brought her flowers.”

Upstairs, I hit the computer hard, retracing my way through the many folders on “Martyr Statistics,” published by the Syrian Revolution Martyr Database to http://syrianshuhada.com, searching for Caliphornia’s companion, Kalima. I remembered Taucher’s office poster of the dizzying variations that a single Arabic name can have — in pronunciation and spelling. I followed the same twisting path through Aleppo, April 22 of 2015, to the page of the names of those martyred in the air strike on IH-One. I knew that a matrilineal first name would be an unlikely miracle, and in fact there was no Kalima killed that day. So I followed the names of the dead back to the Martyr Statistics for any mention of family. It took almost an hour, but when I tracked down the martyr profile for Dr. Mhood Amin, killed by the Headhunters that day in Aleppo, I found that he had been survived by four children, one of them a daughter — Kalima Amin.

I found six Kalima Amins on Facebook.

One of them was the dark-haired beauty who matched the picture we’d gotten from Marah.

Where on earth could I find her?

I struck out with TLO and Tracersinfo.

But did much better with IvarDuggans.com, which listed Syrian national Kalima Amin as a legal visitor, on a fiancée visa issued in February of the previous year. Age twenty-eight. Her U.S. address was the apartment that Ben Azmeh had abandoned less than twenty-four hours ago. Surprisingly enough, Kalima Amin’s fiancée-sponsor-retriever was not Ben Azmeh at all. It was Caliphornia’s cryptic associate, Hector Padilla. Her visa photo was included.

My heart thumped away with the thrill of the hunt — a solid connection between Padilla and Ben Azmeh. And thus between them and Caliphornia. I rolled back a few feet in my chair, then found the picture of Ben and Kalima on my phone again. Confirming the match.

Ben looked solemn and proud. So did Kalima.

I consulted my computer for the meaning of her name in Arabic.

Truthful witness.

I wondered if Hector had acted on orders from Ben, to secure the fiancée visa for Kalima, travel abroad, and bring her to America. As an employed, native-born U.S. citizen with no criminal record, as well as being a non-Muslim, Hector would qualify to obtain the special visa. Leaving Ben in the shadows.

Of course, I couldn’t let go of Alan Azmeh. Not with that white-hot rage surrounding him like an aura.

I ran him through my services again, keen to the “Known Associates” listings and any financial irregularities. I found the arrest report for the assault complaint that was eventually dropped. The officer had written that Azmeh had apparently been provoked by racial epithets and a “yank of” his headscarf. I saw that the alleged provocateur had been arrested as well.

Interesting. I wrote down the cop’s name and made a note to call him the next day.

I was back on the patio early the next morning, sun warming me through my sweats, coffee in hand, and bullish on the day. My plan was to run two miles through the hills, beat up on the speed bag and the heavy bag in the barn for a few rounds.

Then my phone vibrated, Taucher’s name and number greeting me. My first hope was that she was reporting that Ben was ready to do business with Raqqa 9. Or maybe she had found a home address for Kalima Amin.

I knew this day would be good.

“Voss went out for his usual sunrise run this morning,” Taucher said. “Another runner found him dead on the trail half an hour ago. He was lying on his front side, with his head removed and propped up on his back, between his shoulder blades. IS style. No witnesses. I’m checking the commercial manifests from Sacramento, Reno, and the Bay Area. Amtrak and Greyhound, too. No Ben Azmeh, and no Ben Adams or Anderson. Not yet. I’ve got his name on the hot watch. Son of a bitch, Roland! How long to fly us to Grass Valley?”

“Three hours,” I guessed. “I’ll be waiting for you at Fallbrook Airpark. Dress for the cold.”

A door banged shut behind me. Burt, starting down from casita number five, short and bow-legged, one arm swinging, the other bringing a cup of coffee to his face. Burt senses distress as surely as a shark. I told him what had happened and not to let Lindsey out of his sight.

“Don’t worry about Lindsey,” he said, clapping a strong little hand on my shoulder. “You just do what you have to do. You’re in a war, my friend.”