“You really think Caliphornia would ping me and track me down?”
“That’s what bad people do.”
We stood and she took the phone and gave me a look. “I like casita three,” she said. “I like those old Laguna paintings with the droopy eucalyptus trees and the sudsy waves. What’s rent, by the way?”
“Don’t worry about rent now.”
“I prefer worrying about it.”
“A thousand, then, with the running-for-your-life discount.”
“What’s with this Clevenger guy?”
“Old friend of Burt’s,” I said. “New Orleans, originally.”
“What’s he do for work?”
“Documentary nature journalist, he says. TV. Award-winning.”
“All TV people are award-winning.”
“He’s making a show about the coyotes of Fallbrook.”
“Plenty of subject matter around,” said Lindsey.
“He uses drones to shoot video.”
“You don’t do background checks on your renters, do you, Roland?”
“I believe in privacy.”
“That’s crazy, coming from a PI,” Lindsey said.
“Life is contradiction.”
“Hmmm.” Lindsey looked around my office. It’s filled with stuff I like. Books on history. Totems from the Northwest. Pottery from the Southwest. Photographs by Ansel Adams and Beth Moon. Pictures of my parents and siblings. Collars and tags belonging to the dogs I’ve had. A striking portrait of Justine by a well-known photographer, commissioned by her mother and father for her twenty-first birthday. Shots of Justine in Hall Pass. A maple stand for my fishing rods, reels, and related tackle in the drawers below. A model made from a picture of a large trout I caught in the Sierras, the fish jumping through a clear acrylic river, splashing clear acrylic water into the air. A genuine saber-toothed cat skull I accepted in trade for a job. A gun safe.
“Any leads on the cat?” she asked.
Tammy, the cat’s owner, had been given my number by a semiharmless sociopath I once helped out of a jam here in town. He thought I would be kind enough to help her, even though she had little money. Tammy had broken into tears in my living room. Oxley meant the world to her.
Now Tammy reported any and all possible sightings to me, as well as helpful stories and speculations from people she had talked to. Tammy was a talker. She had raised quite a posse through the Fallbrook Friends Facebook page.
“A possible sighting on Stage Coach,” I said to Lindsey. “Near the high school. Another on Alvarado. The best news is nobody’s found him dead on the road.”
“I don’t like the idea of coyotes tearing apart that poor tubby thing.”
“That’s another thing you’ve got, Lindsey. A good heart.”
She looked at my computer monitor. “Are you going to the mosque?”
“I need to.”
“So if Oxley and I are your two open cases, the mosque visit must be for me. Watch your back, Roland.”
“Always. Tell Rasha no on the horse show, but let him know you’re open to communication. On your swanky new Walmart flip phone. Call Brandon Goff, too. Tell him you’re still strongly in favor of joint custody. Tell me how he takes that.”
“It’s not Brandon.”
“Help me help you.”
When Lindsey had shut the door behind her, I checked the Arabian Horse Association website events calendar. All five of their big national events had already taken place for this year, from early summer through fall. But there was a Western Region “Native Costume” exhibition coming up next week in Tucson, Arizona. Among the featured competitors in the youth division was rider Edward Samara and his mare, Al Ra’ad. A check of Arabic names revealed that Al Ra’ad means “the thunder.”
As in The thunder is coming for you.
7
The Arabic word for mosque is masjid. Masjid Al-Rribat Al-Islami is on Saranac Street in San Diego, twelve miles from the San Diego Joint Terrorism Task Force building downtown.
It is a two-story stucco structure, rectangular and off-white, with pale blue tile accents. A chest-high stucco wall with small wrought-iron archways surrounds it. The main entryway to the compound is protected by metal gates with lancet arches in the same pale blue as the tile. It is neither defensive nor welcoming. Six years since I’d been there.
Today’s sunset prayer ended at 6:38. I watched the men exit the downstairs prayer room, a spacious, high-ceilinged, red-carpeted area with no furniture and few windows. The ceiling was stained glass, but at this hour winter’s early dark owned the colors. I smelled lamb and garlic faintly easing in from the dining room, felt my stomach approving.
The youth activities imam was the last man out. He’d put on some weight since I’d last seen him. Early thirties, bearded in the Muslim custom, dressed in a white thobe that reached the floor and a white turban tied at the back. We shook hands.
“A good thing to see you again, Roland.”
“And you, Hadi. Thanks for seeing me on short notice.”
His office was upstairs, small and warmly lit, two of the walls lined with leather-bound books. Hadi Yousef had always been open and candid with me — as far as I knew — and I had always kept his name out of larger JTTF circulation. He had been a very young imam in charge of youth activities when I first met him. He humbly dodged media and law enforcement in all of its many forms. He was my source because he had come to trust me. I’d done little to earn that trust, except state my respect and pity for the citizens of Fallujah while I was deployed there. Good enough. Yousef had been born in Iraq and thought terror was a scourge that infected not only America but also Islam. He told me once that the saddest time in his life was when the United States abandoned Iraq, leaving Islam to declare war on itself. He had told me something that rings true: that Islam is terror’s biggest hostage.
After pleasantries dictated by respect and distance, I came to the reason for my abrupt visit. “I’ve heard about a Latino man who has been coming here recently. I’ve heard that his behavior is causing some concern.”
“This came from Agent Taucher,” he said.
I nodded.
Hadi set his elbows on the desk and touched his fingertips softly. He wore heavy, black-framed glasses that looked old and unfashionable on his young face. “Hector Padilla. He has been coming for prayer and worship for two months now. Not every day, but two or three times a week. I don’t know where he lives. He is in his late twenties, and not married. He introduced himself as a lapsed Catholic. He said he had spiritual emptiness. He said he had recently broken up with a Muslim woman. He had purchased a Qur’an and some booklets on Islam. One was ‘Welcome to Islam.’ He also had an Arabic language learning program on CDs. He brought them all with him in a backpack the first time he visited us. He poured them out of his pack, right onto my desk here, as if showing me proof of his devotion. During his first few weeks here, he appeared meek and inquisitive. Earnest. He was interested in meeting single Muslim women. We have informal singles activities which are supervised, and Mr. Padilla has attended some of them. I’m not here for those, generally. I guide the youth, as you know.”
“Mind if I write some notes?”
“If you must.”
I slipped my leather notebook and a pen from my coat.
“How did that go over?” I asked. “Mr. Padilla being openly interested in the women here?”
Hadi flared his fingers and gave me a “you never know” expression. “Some of our worshipers find his interest in Muslim women to be... inappropriate.”
“Do you?”
“I try not to judge. But I find Hector himself to be annoying.”