Taucher listened but said nothing.
So I took a leap of faith over miles and years, landing on the eerie sense of familiarity and blame that Caliphornia’s threats contained. What if Caliphornia had originally been forged in that misbegotten air strike? So much of what we knew about him pointed to Middle Eastern roots and culture. What if he was a relative or friend of someone the Headhunters had killed? A brother, even. A father?
In the presentation of my thesis I began to see its wobbly structure. What if what we thought we knew about Caliphornia was invented as distraction? Were we being played? As if to strengthen my premise, I told Taucher the search criteria I’d used. I sounded exhausted even to myself. Doubted that I was making sense. Doubled down with false bravado.
“I’ve got thirty names in Bakersfield that need to be checked,” I said. “Sixty-six here in San Diego. Run them for me, Joan. I need this. I cut the list from seven hundred.”
Silence from her, the slot machine whirring. “You were right this morning about risk and trust.”
Heading into a storm you know is there.
I still wasn’t sure what had brought those words out of me as the rain poured down on us. Part of it was seeing the Grand Hyatt, where I’d first laid eyes on Justine Timmerman in a similar, spectacular storm.
But the bigger part was a storm of a wholly different kind — Caliphornia and his bloody Thunder. I had felt him down on the waterfront in the rain. A force of will. Gathering himself right here in my state and my city. For an attack against my own.
“Okay, Roland. Email the names to me. I can search phonetically, but it helps when the names are spelled correctly and consistently. I spend too much time trying to account for the quirks of Arabic and Farsi.”
“I owe you.”
“I’ll never get back to sleep now,” she said.
“You can brew up some coffee and watch the sunrise.”
“I’ll be in my office hours before the sun comes up,” she said. “I usually am. Doing more important things than watching the sun do what it always does.”
I heard her quick wispy laugh, then the line went dead.
Taucher returned my wakeup call at five fifty, just as the sun was pushing the darkness from my bedroom. I’d fallen asleep on the bed with my clothes on.
“One of the victims of the drone attack on IH-One has relatives living in California,” she said, speaking fast. “Dr. Ibrahim Azmeh was survived by nine children. Three live in France, three in Syria, and three live in Los Angeles, where they were born. Two brothers and a sister. We’ll interview them tomorrow afternoon. The older brother filed a State Department complaint after his father’s death and got twelve thousand five hundred U.S. dollars in condolence pay. He’s not on our radar and don’t ask me why. Pick me up by the elevator on the third level of the Horton Plaza parking garage, tomorrow, noon sharp. You can drive. I hate the L.A. traffic.”
“Good morning, Joan.”
“There’s no such thing as good, Roland,” she said. “Rasha Samara was in Bakersfield the day Kenny Bryce died. He bought an Arabian horse for two hundred and forty thousand dollars.”
I hadn’t even formulated a reply by the time that Taucher, master of the short good-bye, was gone again.
I stood in the kitchen waiting for the coffee to percolate, two hands on the counter, looking out at the grainy light that was trying to buoy the day. I’d been up most of the night and maybe that’s all it was, but Taucher’s dire pronouncement had moved me. Moved me from doubt and melancholy to some rough hybrid of anger and frustration.
There’s no such thing as good.
Thirty-nine years on this planet. Why hadn’t someone told me?
My phone rang and Jason Bayless’s name and number came up.
“Okay, Ford,” he said. “I found her. As you no doubt heard from your little friend. I gave my client your home address and collected a nice bonus I’d worked into the deal. The reason I’m calling is to say that my client is not my client anymore. When I told him that Lindsey Rakes appeared to be residing on your property, he wanted to know the layout of the place, which room was hers, when she was most likely to be home. He tried to hire me to get inside and take photos or video, or maybe fly over a drone. I told him I don’t fly fucking drones. He made a joke about her not needing a place to live for that much longer. Actually laughed. Ford, I didn’t like this guy from the start and I like him less now. I don’t know what your Lindsey has gotten herself into, but this little fart is bad news. Just my guts talking.”
“What’s his name?”
“Hector O. Padilla. El Cajon.”
No such thing as good?
“Talk to me, Jason.”
“When he hired me he said he was Lindsey’s cousin,” said Bayless. “Later he said Lindsey and he had been married once and he was paying child support and had to talk to her. He gave me those two different stories and I wasn’t even pressing him. Then he said Lindsey was important to his boss. Boss? Who exactly am I working for here? I had a bad feeling about him. I realized no, I can’t do any more work for this shitbird.”
“Where did you leave it with him?” I asked.
“Professional and cordial.”
“Did you talk in person?”
“Once. Then Telegram, mostly. Why?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “More bad feelings. I get ’em, too.”
17
An hour later Burt’s dog-breeder friend, Bruno Zacardi, came up the drive in a mud-splattered white crew cab and parked in the sun of the barnyard. The company logo on the truck was a bronze-colored Roman battle shield with an armored dog in the middle. Zacardi was arched over the top of the shield in ancient Latin letters and Cane Corsos at the bottom. There was a phone number and a Riverside, California, address.
As Lindsey, Burt, and I walked down to greet them, I could see the head of a large dark dog looming over the people in the front seat.
Bruno dropped from the vehicle and landed lightly, a small man with black hair sprouting out from under a newsboy’s cap, and a thick black mustache. A woman worked her way down from the passenger side. She was large and blond, wearing overalls over a blue plaid shirt, and black rubber mud boots almost to her knees. She slung a red backpack over one shoulder, then set her fists firmly on her hips as she looked around.
“That’s his wife, Rose,” said Burt. “And little Zeno there in the back.”
As we crossed the barnyard toward the truck, Bruno motioned for us to stop. He and Rose continued forward to meet us well away from their truck, in the backseat of which Zeno’s massive head and sharply cropped ears presided in keen stillness. He looked to be a pale gray. Burt introduced us and we shook hands all around.
Then a moment of silence as Lindsey stared at the dog in the truck. She stuck her hands into the pockets of her red Navajo blanket coat.
“The dog,” said Bruno. “At first he can be distracted by so many people. We leave him for a moment of thought. Lindsey, you are very lucky to have Zeno. You will be safe. You will come to love him very much. And of course he will be devoted to you, too.”
“Is he really as big as he looks from here?” she asked.
“Seventy-five kilos. Large for his breed,” said Rose. Her accent was not as pronounced as Bruno’s. “But the Italian mastiff is not a big mastiff. They are trim and athletic and extremely focused on their loved ones. They descend from the Molossers, Roman war dogs that are now extinct. Then the Italian mastiffs themselves almost became extinct. Our lines all derive from stock in southern Italy — from Basilicata, Campania, and Apulia. It has been our life work to preserve them. As you probably know.”