Swift Vengeance

32

Hector Padilla’s house, at twilight: dark inside but the porch light on. If we were right about Caliphornia’s destination — and if he’d driven fast — he could be here in under an hour. We were parked half a block down from the house, shrouded by my blackout windows and a sycamore still trying to hold on to its big yellow leaves.

As darkness fell, most of the other houses on the block came alive with Christmas lights. Santa’s sleigh took off from a roof. A trio of lighted angels, winged and posed in song, stood on a lawn not far from us.

“Where would he be by now?” asked Taucher.

“North San Diego County. Maybe closer.”

Taucher had set her tablet on the floorboard, screen dimmed but angled optimistically up to her in case of a response from Ben Azmeh.

My phone stood upright in a cup holder, still logged on to Facebook, where we had followed Marlon Voss’s murder in Grass Valley. The online buzz was minor until the mainstream media caught Bill Immel leaving Sierra Nevada Memorial.

We watched the two-minute CNN video: Bill in a wheelchair in the hospital lobby, Alma behind him at the handles, and a uniformed guard trying to give Bill some space from the reporters. Hair awry, still bundled in his sweatshirt and parka. His mind wandered. He told about running almost every day, then this morning finding the headless body. He described the snow falling and the steam still rising from the bloody pool on the running path and the half-open eyes of the dead man. The reporter asked him how it felt to see such a thing.

Helpless and sick, Bill Immel answered. Then he said he’d forgotten the question.

“My dad got like that when he was about Bill’s age,” said Taucher. “Scattered. Scared. Lost his courage. Then dementia started to creep in. It really seemed to start when he fell from a ladder. Putting up Christmas lights. And the fall didn’t hurt him physically, according to the doctors. No concussion, no breaks, just a twisted ankle and a bruised shoulder. But it scared him. It made him think how fast things can change and what a hostile thing a commonplace ladder can be. And that’s what I saw in Bill Immel having to see Voss. Like falling off the ladder. You see something terrible, so fear rushes in, and you can’t easily get rid of it. And terrorists know that — one act makes a million fears. Tens of millions. Look at Nine-Eleven. Or the IS execution videos.”

A vehicle came down the street slowly, passed. I watched it in the rearview. Fog rolled in from the west.

On Facebook, Marlon Voss’s widow, Danella — apparently standing on the front porch of a home in lightly falling snow — said that her husband had been, “... a great husband and father. A great Air Force pilot. He was brave and patient and funny. He was the love of my life.” A twentysomething man who looked a lot like Marlon Voss appeared in the doorway behind her and gently pulled her back in.

Something in that moment got to me. The woman turning back into the house with her son. People and a house forever and terribly changed. The math was so wrong. Start with a brave and selfless doctor in Syria. Then a well-liked young man working as a landscaper in Bakersfield, a man with a lot of life still ahead of him. Now a pilot and his family. All of their relatives and friends. Next, a young mother? The math of vengeance, never balanced or even. Never finished. The scar on my forehead itched. I rubbed it.

A live local feed featured Nevada County sheriff’s detective Dave Bridgeman confirming that local Grass Valley resident Marlon Voss had been found beheaded on a running trail outside of town. No arrests had been made. He asked citizens to be alert to strangers and unusual activity but not to alter their daily routines. No, they did not recover a murder weapon, and he wouldn’t speculate on what specific type of weapon had been used.

Sacramento FBI spokesperson Minerva Dakis followed up, saying that they had found no evidence of this murder being a terrorist act, but the Bureau was not ruling anything out. She asked that anyone who had been in the area that morning report anything unusual, explaining that the first twenty-four hours are critical in crimes such as this. The FBI tip number ran as a footer across the screen.

“Minerva being there makes this look like a terror investigation,” said Taucher. “It’s the right call, though. It gives Caliphornia a stage to act upon. Puts his name on the playbill. But it puts pressure on him, too. We need the pressure.”

“He still hasn’t taken credit for Kenny or Voss,” I said.

“He will.”

There were several more Facebook posts and Tweets by Grass Valley residents. Some had stood behind the crime scene tape, posting videos and selfies as the sheriffs worked the murder site. Others had formed an ad hoc “Vigilance Committee” in the saloon of an old gold rush — era hotel — Victorian lamps and high-backed smoking chairs and bottles stacked behind the bar. The committee chairman said they were concerned that Voss’s murder could have been “terrorist in nature,” although the small Muslim community in Nevada County was known as peaceful and hardworking. He pointed out that there was also a “biker population,” though this didn’t seem like “their kind of crime.” Several of the Vigilance Committee members knew Marlon and Danella Voss, and spoke highly of them.

Taucher shook her head and sighed.

“Life is waiting, Joan.”

“How can you be so young and act so old?”

“Years of practice.”

She gave me her sharp-eyed predator’s once-over. “So what’s with that scar on your head? You touch it when things bug you. Then you furrow your brow like you’re expecting an explanation.”

“There’s a story behind it.”

“So cough it up.”

While we waited for Caliphornia to show, I told Taucher about my one pro bout. It took place in the then Trump 29 Casino down in Coachella, of all places, in 2005. This was when I was Roland “Rolling Thunder” Ford. Twenty-six years old, fighting heavyweight. I’d been out of the service for only a few weeks. Still thinking I was the world’s toughest Marine. I’d never been knocked down in a Marine Corps bout. I hadn’t lost life or limb in the hell of Fallujah. I’d never really been defeated at anything, in my own eyes, at least.

My opponent that night was Darien “Demolition” Dixon, and I knew after ten seconds of the first round that he was twice the fighter I was. He toyed with me for a time. I went down in the ninth to the jab, a cross, and a big left hook. I lay there flat on my back, still conscious and aware of the noise, the bright lights, and the ref counting over me. Time went slowly. I knew I could beat the count, get up and fight. Or stay where I was and call it quits. What bothered me most was realizing that my invincibility was gone. Even half knocked out, I was fully astonished by this. I was mortal. Utterly so.

Defaulting to Ford stubbornness and Marine Corps training, I got up, bounced on my feet, and glared at the ref, nodding. Bring it on. He held my gloves and stared back, then let me go. Demolition hit me with a big right hand I didn’t have the legs to slip. I saw it coming, all right. Saw my mouthpiece, too, flying through the lights. What I remember next is a bunch of faces looking down at me. A background of brightness. Then I was watching me sitting on my stool, somewhat pleasantly stunned and childlike, both outside myself and inside myself at the same time. A state of detachment and wonder.

The hospital, an MRI, twelve stitches to close the cut from the knockout punch, which left a nickel-sized, Y-shaped scar up on my forehead, left of center.

Sometimes I look at the scar just for a reality check. A mortality check. To remind me that sometimes it’s okay not to get up before the bell. Okay to not let blind reflex drive you into the punch that puts you down.

When I’m worried or afraid, that scar acts up. Itches, burns, tingles, grows cold — depends. On what, I haven’t figured out yet. But it’s both a reminder and a warning, and I value its input. Sometimes, a lot. And sometimes I feel again that odd state of post-KO wonder come over me, and I’ll be sitting on my stool once again, and at the same time observing myself from a safe distance.

“In some light, you don’t really see the scar,” I said. “Then, in other light, you can’t miss it.”

She listened with her stony expression and said not a word until I had stopped talking. A vehicle passed us from behind. Right taillight out. “I know all about that,” said Taucher. “How something can be almost invisible, then a second later you can’t take your eyes of it. Mine is about quarter-sized, shape of an oval.”

I thought it would be rude to look for the hematoma now, but somehow also rude not to. As if I wasn’t interested. Instead I stared out at Hector Padilla’s dark, still home.

“Don’t feel obligated to look, Roland,” said Taucher. “You can’t see it in a dark car. And thanks for telling me about the knockout. Your scar tells you to be deliberate and mindful of consequences. I admire that. After I got kicked down in my MMA match, my fear broke. It just vanished. So I really went after her. In the end that fight was mine and she was the one who never fought again. So what my scar says is never quit. Never negotiate, even with yourself. Isn’t it funny how similar experiences mean different things to different people? Maybe that’s why we work so well together.”

We watched the street.

Waiting for Caliphornia to show.

Waiting for Ben Azmeh to take the bait.

Waiting for Hector.

But no text messages to the Warrior of Allah, and no 4Runner just in from Grass Valley. I hit the wipers to clear the fog off the glass. Hector’s house sat squat and dark down the street. The angels continued their silent caroling on the lawn and Santa’s sleigh rose from the rooftop.

“Ben has to answer us,” said Taucher. “He’s Caliphornia. I know it.”

“Patience.”

Taucher studied me sullenly. My optimistic word seemed to hang in the quiet. A van went by. A young couple came from the house across from Hector’s place, nicely dressed, got into a small white car. On Taucher’s lap the tablet went to screensaver. I had the unpleasant realization that all our earnest striving and good tools and clever plans might not be enough. Taucher looked at her watch. The likely hour of Caliphornia’s arrival had come and gone and we both knew it.

“Patience was pure Dad,” said Taucher. “He was all patience. Me, you know — the opposite.”

We ate jerky and apples and energy bars we’d picked up at a convenience store. Stared at Hector Padilla’s house in silence, like it was the Church of the Holy Sepulchre and we were expecting a miracle.

Mind adrift, I thought about Justine and hoped that God was taking good care of her. Recalled my strong emotions just a few hours ago as I had landed Hall Pass 2 at Fallbrook Airpark. Just as I had done so many times with Justine in those brief and beautiful days. I like to drift, remembering the good and forgetting the bad.

Taucher brought me back to earth, stating that American Latinos were the fastest-growing group of Americans converting to Islam. Had their own mosque in Houston. Two hundred thousand Latino Muslims in the States right now. Mostly women, but guys like Hector, too. I wondered out loud why Islam was appealing to Latinos. She had no facts but said that Muslims and Latinos both felt like second-class people in America. Plus Latinas could then wear a hijab and hide their true ethnic identity, or some blemishes or scars, such as her own “pestilential” hematoma.

A light went on in the back of Hector’s house, then another in the living room. A faint human shape moved behind the curtains and was gone.

“Well, well,” said Joan. “Does he work Sundays?”

“He’s not scheduled, but he fills in a lot,” I said. This from my contact with the company that did security for First Samaritan Hospital.

Five minutes, then ten.

A Miata came past us, top down in the cold, older guy in a knit cap, surfboard riding beside him, heater probably pegged. Retirement in the Golden State, I thought, endless summer.

Fifteen minutes later Hector’s garage door rose and his gleaming black Cube backed into the foggy night.