“Nothing,” he said, and the in-house red light on the phone lit up. “That’s the other reason I’m calling,” he went on. “There won’t be any efforts to shut you up or anything; you’re in the clear. All right? I argued your case, pal, believe it or not, I argued very hard for you.”
I sighed. “I believe you, Ross. I even appreciate it. It can’t be easy, with a mob of religious nuts. Hold on a second.” I pushed the button and said to Robinson, “Is that Oscar?”
“Yes.”
“Give him a drink and some finger food. I’ll be right out.” And I switched back to Ross, saying, “Sorry, Robinson was buzzing me.” But there was nobody there; he’d hung up.
37
Oscar, looking pleased and prosperous, stood by the glass doors at the back of the living room, gazing north at the hills. A vodka-mar was in his right hand, a pate on a cracker in his left. He smiled across the room at me, saying, “I always find your place so restful.”
“That’s because it isn’t moving.”
His smile forgave me my frivolity, and he looked out the window again, saying, “What a spectacular view.”
It is. The house was designed as much as possible to give discrete separate views from each section, with the best panorama saved for the living room. Facing north-northeast, with Japanese pines on the right to screen the garage and guest house while trellised vines on the left hide the pool area, the window wall of the living room opens onto a vista up into the Santa Monica Mountains. The tumbled bumpy hills alternate bare brown steeps with scrub-covered easier slopes, and only one or two barely visible rooftops up near the crests serve as a reminder of Man. Except for those, and the frequent white lines of vapor trail across the sky above the peaks, the scene is virtually what it was before the Europeans migrated west. “And only man is vile,” I said.
“For which, speaking as an attorney, I am grateful.” Oscar came reluctant but smiling away from the view, saying, “You’re not your sunny self today. That car attack still depressing you?”
“Probably.”
“Is that what you want to talk about?”
“Not exactly,” I said. “I want you to tell me about that mosque you were going to visit the other day.”
He frowned. “In connection with what?”
“It’s in Beverly Hills, isn’t it? Up a dead-end street? Looks like a golden flying saucer up at the top.”
“Very true,” he said. “Why?”
“I can’t remember the name of it.”
“Al-Gazel. Why?”
“You said there was a lot of extra security connected with the place. Why’s that?”
Oscar’s cheerful baby face was marred by a pout of exasperation. “Sam,” he said, “I do not answer any more of your questions until you answer at least one of mine.”
“The people who knocked my car all over the road is what,” I told him. “I think they’re connected with the people Al-Gazel’s security is all about.”
Frowning, Oscar put his drink down on the coffee table near us, beside the plate of canapés and my as yet unopened bottle of San Pellegrino. “Is this a coincidence,” he asked, “or am I going to be batted around the freeway as well?”
“Oscar,” I said, “how many attorneys have been involved with the construction of Al-Gazel? From the beginning.”
“Architect’s plans through completion? Hundreds.”
“All from the Los Angeles area? Most of them tending to be in three-piece suits, male, smooth fellas, expensive? Not the kind you’ll find down around the Second Street tunnel?”
He laughed, and picked up his drink. “And one of them will also be your attorney. All right. Why do you think what you think?”
I sat on the sofa and busied myself with opening the San Pellegrino and pouring, while I figured out how to word what I wanted to say. “A friend of mine got himself mixed up with these people,” I said. “I think they plan to do something at that mosque next week.”
“Good luck to them,” Oscar said without alarm. Seating himself in the chair to my right, he said, “A water beetle couldn’t get into that place without reciting name, rank, and serial number.”
“My friend’s property adjoins theirs. That’s why these people forced him to cooperate.”
“Still won’t help.” Oscar studied the plate of nibbles and chose one. “Robinson is a wonder,” he commented.
“Why won’t it help?”
“I’m not going to tell you all the security they have around that place,” he said, “because in the first place I don’t know it all. But I do know the perimeter is one hundred percent safe.”
“Why? A fence? Guard dogs?”
“Microwave,” he said.
All I could think of was ovens. “I don’t follow.”
“It’s like a more sophisticated electric eye,” he said, “but it’s a very low-level sound wave.”
“I’ve never heard of it.”
“No reason for you to. No reason for me to, either, except on this job. It can’t be used everywhere because some people claim it has bad side effects, everything from make your dog nervous to give your child birth defects, but it can be used in remote areas like the woods out behind the mosque, and that’s where they’re using it.”
“Okay.”
“My client, Mr. Catelli,” Oscar said, “got a letter at the beginning of the job saying his crew shouldn’t wander away back there because of the microwave alarm system. It’s sophisticated enough to tell the difference between a human being and a rabbit, and they’re using it with closed-circuit TV. If your friend leaves his own property, climbs over the fence, and takes a stroll toward the mosque, no alarms go off, nothing like that. But when he goes through the microwave field, several feet inside the fence, a TV monitor in the guard room at the mosque turns on, and there’s your friend on television.”
“Ah-hah.”
“At night it’s infrared.”
“The wonders of technology. Somebody tried to drive a truckload of dynamite up there last month, you know.”
He looked mildly interested, not particularly surprised. “Did they? I hadn’t heard about that, but they’re doing a good job of staying out of the news. They’re trying to keep the whole thing as quiet as any twenty-seven-million-dollar mosque in Beverly Hills can be, so they don’t advertise attacks.”
“Twenty-seven million?”
“That gold dome, for one thing.”
“You’re telling me it’s gold, Oscar.”
“There isn’t an ounce of papier mâché in the place, Sam.”
“All right,” I said. “But the security isn’t just because there’s valuable metal up there.”
“That’s right,” Oscar said, and sipped at his vodka-mar. “Some religious leader in the Middle East, I don’t remember the name, he announced about six months ago that Al-Gazel is a false mosque in a Satanic nation, and whoever destroys it gets Allah’s unlisted phone number.”
“Sure,” I said. “It had to be something like that. And six months ago, plenty of time to set up.”
“Not against that place.”
“What I think this group around my friend is up to, there’s somebody important going to be there next week some time, they plan to break in and kidnap him.”
“They’ll never get in, and they’ll never get out.”
“But they’re going to try,” I said. “The question is, who are they likely to be going after?”
“Beats me.” Oscar shook his head. “Next week? The opening ceremonies are this Friday, day after tomorrow, the first holy day’s activities, and from then on it’s a going concern. I suppose they’ll have important people in and out for some time, religious types, some politicos, affirming which side they’re on.”