Elegant Arabic-styled calligraphy.
Slanting neither backward nor forward, but upright.
Feet and tails raised like candle flames.
Taucher’s hawk eyes unblinking.
Dear Marah,
I hope this note finds you well. Look at my calligraphy. I’ve been practicing for months. So much has changed since those happy times I spent with you. I’ve found a new passion. Bigger than me. Bigger than Allah. Maybe I will introduce you someday. I am well and strong. I am still in need of money, but I know that you’re not exactly rich working for the county. We are only as strong as the walls we climb.
Love,
Marah broke the silence. “Ben found something,” she said softly. “He was always searching.”
“Who the hell is Adams?” asked Taucher.
“Ben makes up names for himself,” said Marah. “Sometimes I do it back to him. Since being kids. Adams is one of his favorites. And Anderson, and Abraham. Always with an A.”
I thought: Whoever he’s calling himself, he needs money.
“You would have to know him,” said Marah.
“I think I’m beginning to,” said Taucher. “May I photograph this? Better yet, can I take it?”
I watched another dispute play out on Marah’s face. Family versus duty? Love versus fear?
“Take it,” she said. “Go.”
“And that picture you showed us,” said Taucher. “The one of Ben and his dark-haired lady friend? Will you text it to me?”
“When I get a chance.”
“How about now? I’ve got my phone right here. The woman is Kalima, correct? The one he wants to marry? How is it spelled?”
Marah spelled out the name.
“Last name?” Taucher demanded.
“I don’t know,” said Marah. “We’ve never met. But I do know that I’m sorry to have met you.”
We spent the hour’s drive south to Santa Ana in discussion of the brothers Azmeh. I was very interested in Alan’s aggravated assault three years ago — around the time of his father’s death — and his clear and present anger. Family man or not, his anger was real. Was it real enough to take him on a journey to Bakersfield? Taucher thought Alan was a “pissy hothead” and was more intrigued by baby Ben’s several mysteries. Most of all, his sudden silence after his father’s death, his handwriting, and his need of money.
Then miles of silence as we barreled south into Orange County. For a long while I didn’t read the road signs. Didn’t listen to the news. I was chewing on the big question: Whoever he was, one of the Azmeh brothers or not, how to get Caliphornia to come out into the open?
I worked long and hard on it, like a dog on a chew stick.
Kept chewing. That’s what PIs do.
27
Ben Azmeh’s address was a Santa Ana apartment not far from the Civic Center. The street curbs were dense with the cars of working people home for the weekend. A lunch truck was doing slow business in the shadow of the jail. Taucher and I ate standing up, burning through the napkins, watching the occasional jail visitor come and go. I think she caught me looking for the fabled hematoma under her makeup.
“Fifty bucks this address is a shell,” said Taucher. “Like World Pizza.”
“I’ll bet it’s a good address.”
“You’re such a Boy Scout.”
“Indian Guides. Comanche.”
“My mother wouldn’t let me join the Girl Scouts because they were too soft.”
“Maybe not a good fit for you, Joan.”
“I wanted soft. I was a girl.”
Del Sol Apartments was two short blocks south. Ben Azmeh’s unit was ground-floor, at the end of a two-story building. Taucher and I stopped well short, standing beneath skinny palms with shaggy heads. Some of the apartments were strung with Christmas lights. I looked along the sunlit stucco wall of the building, at the first-story patios and second-floor decks crowded with barbecues, bikes, toys, potted plants. Poinsettias in gold- and red-foiled pots, strings of lights on the balconies. The grass along the sidewalk was foot-trampled, and I thought of Blevins stepping in Zeno’s business. Felt happy.
“Follow my lead here, Roland,” she said. “If he’s cooperative, it’s just a friendly FBI talk with old Ben. We’re wondering how he’s doing. Wondering if he might have any concerns to share with us. Like, about fellow Muslims. I’ll get him onto Doctors Without Borders, Aleppo 2015. My guess is he’ll blather heatedly about that, if he’s anything like his brother. If we get inside, it’s strictly a plain-sight. Don’t touch, whatever you do. Don’t, don’t, put on any heat. Nothing about Lindsey, Kenny, or Voss. Nothing about knives, calligraphy, ammunition, or Hector Padilla. I lead. Let him answer my questions. Got it?”
“Got it.”
Taucher gave me a brittle grin. “A short leash for you, Roland. Just like they give me. Now, if Ben won’t cooperate, we’ll be back to fight another day. If he resists, threatens, or makes any kind of aggressive move — I’ll accept your physical help. If this is the guy who killed Kenny Bryce, then I’ll need it. We cuff his butt and call the nearest resident agency, which is less than half a mile from here. We can hold him seventy-two hours as a domestic terror suspect, no Miranda needed. You’ve got a gun back in the truck?”
I nodded.
“Get it.”
My leash was long enough to reach the toolbox bolted into the bed of my truck, from which I took my .45 autoloader, snug in its clip holster. Which I slid between waistband and flank, right side, grip resting in the hollow below my rib cage, snug and easily hidden by my coat. I have a two-shot ankle cannon, too — a four-ten shot-shell over a very hot .357 magnum — prodigiously lethal and made for only the most desperate of straits. I decided against it.
Taucher stood under the thin palms in her black suit, her back to me as she watched the apartment. Square of shoulder, platinum of hair. A businessperson, perhaps. A professional. An undertaker. She struck me as alone in her world, a solitary hunter, though she could have a rich family life, close friends, and strong interests that she had never once mentioned. And why should she? I probably had her all wrong.
We were halfway to unit 24-A when I saw the red “For Rent” sign hanging in the front-porch window. We stopped and for a long silent moment let the defeat sink in.
Caliphornia, I thought: dancing away, a step ahead of us.
As in Bakersfield.
As in last night after the Treasures of Araby?
In this moment it felt like Caliphornia could stay ahead of us for quite a while. I chose not to imagine the carnage that he could deliver with six-thousand-plus rounds of ammunition and a few guns to fire it with.
Who are you?
How can we bring you to us?
What will you fall for?
What do you need?
“So is this bad luck or fate?” asked Joan. “Maybe I should consult Al Ra’ad like Marah and Ben. I bought a Qur’an right after Nine-Eleven. Trying to get a feel for what I was up against. Maybe that was politically incorrect, but I reasoned that religious extremists start with religion. There’s a lot of violence in that book. It’s real us-against-them kind of stuff. I read parts of it. Not the whole thing.”
I thought of the good Muslims I’d run across in my life. From Fallujah to San Diego. “Islam is the hostage,” I said, quoting Hadi Yousef.
“Maybe.”
“Blame the terrorist, not the excuse,” I said.