“I’ve been trying to contact her for four days now and she hasn’t responded,” he said. “Maybe she simply doesn’t want to communicate with me. If that’s the case, I’m fine with that. Still, I’m worried.”
He sounded reasonable and believable, I thought. “If something is wrong, do you have any idea where she would go?” I asked.
“I think she might have gone back to her previous address—your home in Fallbrook,” said Samara.
“Why do you want to find her?”
A beat. The Oceanside Boulevard exit sign rushed by above me.
“Why do you care? You find people for money.”
“Let’s say I care, Mr. Samara. We’re friends, and I value friends.”
“I value her, too. She’s important to me. Have you seen her?”
“Not in a year and a half.”
“Then I would like to hire you to find her.”
No way I could shield Lindsey and do an honest job for Rasha Samara. But I wanted him close, so I gave him my routine: twenty-four hundred dollars to start, cash only, good for three full days of work. If I got lucky before three days, he’d get a refund. If not, I charged one hundred dollars an hour for additional work. Major credit cards and PayPal accepted.
“Why cash to start?” he asked.
“So I can see the face I’m dealing with,” I said. “And change my mind if that face doesn’t look right. Right is kind of a broad term.”
We set the appointment for eight in the morning. Rather than use my Main Street office, I wanted Rasha to see my property, to see for himself that I had no Lindsey to hide.
I hung up, voice-dialed Burt, told him about tomorrow’s visitor. Asked him to get Lindsey and Zeno a motel for a couple of nights—something pet-friendly, not too far away but not too close.
21
SAMARA’S WHITE RANGE ROVER came up my driveway at seven fifty-nine the next morning. I’d had my run and punched the bags hard and well. Burt, walking down the drive with a cup of coffee, waved Samara through an open post-and-rail gate and into the barnyard. From where I sat under the big palapa I saw that Rasha had brought a second.
Samara got out of the passenger side and shut the door, then stood still, sizing up the ranch. Snapped his jacket arms down over his shirt cuffs as he considered. He was on the tall side, slender and wide-shouldered in a shimmering gray suit. Athletic and poised. Something like the shape of the man in the Bakersfield video. Sharp-faced, too, like the 4Runner’s driver the night before.
His confederate was an economy-sized block of muscle in a black polo shirt and chinos, with a gun in a paddle-style, inside-the-waistband holster at the small of his back.
I watched Burt introduce himself, shake hands, and motion toward me, Roland Ford, California Bureau of Security and Investigative Services license number PI 537668, firearm permit number 081211, six feet three inches tall, two hundred ten pounds, brown and brown, DOB 1/13/79. College grad, former jarhead, former professional boxer, former sheriff’s deputy, former husband. Likes: dancing, fishing, skiing, hiking, finding missing people, digging up the truth, a good bourbon, a good book. Dislikes: rudeness, ignorance, entitlement, cruelty, irresponsibility, cheating, sloth, parking tickets.
I felt good about myself right then. Early on a cool bright December morning. Watching the men come up the path toward me. I had a full set of teeth, a good cup of coffee, and a bright future so far as I could see. But there was something more, and it was this: last night, when I’d seen all that ammunition and understood that it was very likely to be used for wickedness, I’d felt needed. Needed to protect. To prevent. To vanquish. Nothing better than being necessary. I hadn’t felt that since the day Justine died. But last night, seeing Hector and his partner—whoever he might be—had jumped my adrenaline and my will. Now I felt light and nimble on my war footing. I’d been called again, and was soon to be deployed. My crusade. Roland Ford, paladin.
Rasha’s handshake was rough and strong, contrary to his sleek appearance. We sat opposite each other, midway down the long picnic bench under the palapa. I gave him the pond view. My view was of the old adobe brick house. The casitas stretched along the shore, Lindsey’s number three now without Lindsey, who had departed with Zeno and Burt at daybreak for a Best Western in Oceanside. I’d ordered Dick, Liz, and Clevenger not to interrupt in any way my meeting with Mr. Samara. To my right, Burt and Rasha’s bodyguard—Timothy—stood at ease by the barbecue, talking quietly. The top of Burt’s head came only to the midpoint of Timothy’s torso.
“This is all good,” said Rasha Samara, looking out to the pond and beyond. “It’s good you left it native and drought-tolerant.”
“I pretty much leave it alone,” I said. “You build landscapes for a living.”
“Golf courses. Nothing like this. How old is the house?”
“Well over a century.”
He smiled, more with amusement than warmth. “Americans have a shortened view of history.”
I shrugged. “A century is long to me,” I said. “This whole property was a wedding gift from my wife’s parents.”
“I’ve read about her and the accident,” he said. “Very sad. My wife died of cancer just a few years earlier. Both of them were robbed. So were we. We have a lot in common.”
I nodded. Rasha offered me a cigarette from a silver case. I declined. He lit the smoke with the case and slid it back into his suit-coat pocket. Through the slow-moving cloud I saw Burt and Timothy looking back at me. Timothy had taken on a new alertness, back straight, his big fingers intertwined softly in front of him.
I opened my briefcase and set between us a pen and two copies of my standard contract. It’s a simple document, stating the purpose of the investigation, responsibilities and limitations of both parties, and compensation. It sets forth the basics of my insurance policy—California requires one million dollars of insurance for any PI who carries a firearm while working. It covers injury and destruction of life and property. It felt odd to be taking twenty-four hundred dollars in advance for locating a woman who was living in one of my own rentals.
Rasha glanced through one copy without patience. When we had both signed and dated them, I gave him one, then checked the signature page of my copy. It had the same patient, artful, Arabic flair with which he’d signed his card to Lindsey. I put the contract and the pen back into my briefcase, set it on the pavers at my feet.
“Should I continue to call and text and email Lindsey?” he asked.
“Yes,” I said. “Obviously, I’ll need to know if she responds. But if she’s choosing not to communicate with you, do you have an idea why?”
He ground out his cigarette in my hand-collected clamshell ashtray. “We dated one time. Then she said, No more. She could think I’m stalking her now.”
I thought about that, let the silence sink in. “Tell me about it.”
“Lindsey was one of my son’s teachers,” he said. “At the back-to-school night I saw that she was strong and intelligent and beautiful. She also seemed to be in turmoil. I saw her for parent conferences. I saw her at fundraisers for the school, and some of our son’s athletic events. It was two years later that I asked her to go riding. That was just a few weeks ago.”
“How did it go?”
“I love Arabian horses,” he said. “The more time I spend with them the less time I want to spend with people. I’m not quite half joking. We rode from the stable where I live. It’s beautiful desert. Very Arabian. I was born in the U.S. and I learned English as my first language and modern Arabic as my second. But Arabia is in my blood. Like the horses are. My family spent many weeks there when I was a child. Whole summers. Parts of the American West remind me of the Saudi Peninsula. The weather, the flora, the geology. So we rode. Lindsey and I. She’s very good. We rested the horses. Talked. We shared cheese and salami, drank wine, and watched the sunset. When we rode back, we hardly said a
thing. I think we were lost in our own pasts, but something told me this was a beginning. That someday soon, I would be able to introduce Lindsey to Sally. In my heart. You probably know what I’m talking about.”
Burt led Timothy to the Ping-Pong table, and together they lifted off the fitted plastic cover. Burt got the paddles from a hutch and set the box on the table. I could see his bottom-toothed grin as he tightened up the net and big Timothy pawed through the box for the right paddle. Burt is a ferocious player, torqueing his short, muscular body into almost every shot, starting low and ending high. Mid-rally, he’s a lateral blur. Plays far back from the table and lets her rip. I try to crowd the table and hit early. Take away my opponent’s time. I can beat Burt, but not often. Timothy held up a dimpled/smooth two-sided paddle and a ball. Nodded. Lumbered smoothly to one end of the table, bouncing the ball on his paddle.
“Yes,” I answered. “You want to forget and remember. Sometimes, the same things.”
“The daily torture,” said Samara. “I dated a lot after Sally. Many expensive restaurants and destinations. And then I’d had enough. Something broke or healed. I don’t know which. It doesn’t matter. Then I spent three hours with Lindsey Rakes and welcomed myself back into the world again.”
Then came the ticka tocka, ticka tocka of Ping-Pong.
“How long did she live here?” asked Samara.
“One year.”
He studied me, sharp eyes in a sharp face. I thought of the phantom image behind the wheel of the Toyota the night before.
“How many casitas do you rent?”
“Five,” I said. “There are six, but I keep number three available for friends. Emergencies.”
“Which was Lindsey’s?”
“Two.”
Rasha regarded the casitas. Similar shapes. Different-colored doors and window trim. “Are these the rules, or are they a joke?”
He was looking up at my posted rules, framed and protected by clear plastic and screwed to one of the palapa’s thick palm-trunk uprights. When I’d first started renting casitas—two years ago now—I’d been serious about posting rules. It seemed to make good sense, to let everyone know what was expected and what wasn’t. Rules would put me in charge, but I could still be a nice guy. I watched Samara read them, something between a smile and a smirk on his face.
GOOD MANNERS AND PERSONAL HYGIENE
NO VIOLENCE, REAL OR IMPLIED
NO DRUGS
NO STEALING
QUIET MIDNIGHT TO NOON
RENT DUE FIRST OF MONTH
NO EXCEPTIONS
“They started out serious,” I said. “But now I’m not so sure. I haven’t had any rotten renters yet.”
“What about possession of guns and knives?” he asked.
“Implied by rule two,” I said, thinking: Interesting, the knives.
“Alcohol?”
“Rule one.”
“Obscenity and lewd conduct?”
“Rules one and five.”
I smiled, but Rasha didn’t. “Why is it that when I go online and to the Fallbrook Village News, I find no information about rentals here?”
“It’s all word of mouth,” I said. Which was true.
“Casita three is open?”
“Three and four,” I said. “People tend to sit tight for the holidays.”
“May I see one?”
“No. They’re not ready for tenants yet.”
He gave me a dark look. Maybe darker than the moment required. Maybe that was part of Lindsey refusing a second date. As much as fearing her own attraction.
“Do you love her?” asked Rasha.
I’d wondered if that question was coming. “As a friend.”
“But as more, when she was here?”
“Friends then and now.”
“You were so close to her beauty and power,” he said, eyes brightening. “You must have wanted them.”
I remembered the near-total wreck that was Lindsey Rakes when I first saw her at the roulette wheel that night. And the long weeks here as she tried and failed and tried again to put herself back together. She was beautiful in her damage, yes. Powerful? No. She was staggering. I had wanted to help her, and respectful distance was required.
“I tried to help her put herself back together,” I said.
“For yourself?”
“For her.”
“You behaved well.”
I looked out to the barnyard, and the long driveway leading away from Rancho de los Robles, then up to two red-shouldered hawks keening as they circled the pond.
“Now,” I said. “Why don’t you tell me about the UCI frat party in ’98? When you were arrested for brandishing a janbiya.”
22
SAMARA’S DARK LOOK grew darker.
Ticka tocka, ticka tocka.
“How do you know about that?” he asked.
“Anyone with a phone and a little money can find that out.”
Rasha shook his head slightly, then reached out and tapped his fingers on the table. “The party was called ‘Come as Your Own Cliché.’ This was before Nine-Eleven. I wore the knife in its scabbard in plain sight, on a belt, outside of my caftan. The janbiya was a dull family heirloom. I also wore a turban with a big fake diamond and a blue ostrich feather. I grew a crafty little goatee and trimmed my beard down to a thin outline of my jaw. A friend of mine, Anton Webster, came as an Eighteenth Street Crip, dissed me. Called me wooly-headed camel jockey. I drew my knife. He pulled a black plastic squirt gun on me, and I slashed at him. With much playful drama. Our acting was good enough for a call to the campus police from one of the Pi Phi sisters.”
Burt and Timothy had both moved back from their respective ends of the table. Burt moved in bursts, fast and animated. Large Timothy bounced on the balls of his feet, squatting deeply into his shots, easy of swing, head steady. The rhythm of their paddles on the ball slowed, as the ball arched higher across the widening distance, then dropped deep steeply to the table.
“Do you still have the janbiya?” I asked.
“Somewhere.”
“Do you know Kenny Bryce?”
A pause. “No.”
“Marlon Voss?”
“You’re accusing me of something.”
“I asked if you know Marlon Voss.”
“Why?”
“Do you know a man who calls himself Caliphornia? Spelled with a p and an h instead of an f? As in caliph?”
“Is he a singer or a comedian or something?”
“He’s a murderer who uses a knife.”
The dark look again. “Now I understand you. You are another fearful American who thinks every Arab is out to slaughter someone. I am Caliphornia because I own a decorative janbiya that I was dumb enough to take to a fraternity party over twenty years ago.”
Ticka. Burt, a corkscrew and a white tracer.
Tocka. Timothy’s topspin shot dropping like a stone.
I stared at Rasha the same way I used to stare down my opponents in the ring. I wasn’t looking for fear or weakness in him. You won’t find them in a fighter. Uncertainty is the best I ever got, and that, only rarely. Anger was next best because it made people behave stupidly. Rasha Samara stared back, as focused and determined as any opponent I’d ever faced. No hint of fear, but a nice dose of anger.
I threw a combination.
“The worry is he’s sponsored,” I said.
Another baleful stare, then his face relaxed. He smiled and sat back. “Why didn’t you just tell me, Mr. Ford? That I, through my family and its ties to other powerful families in Saudi Arabia, am a sponsor of Caliphornia, a knife-wielding terrorist?”
“I said nothing about terror.”
“I came here hoping to find a woman I think may be in trouble.”
“I’ve agreed to help,” I s
aid.
“Yes, you have,” said Rasha. He squared his copy of the contract before him, gave it a long look, then tore it into quarters. Swept them into a loose pile, facedown. From his jacket pocket he took a small plump envelope, pulled out a hundred-dollar bill, and slipped it under the pile. “This will cover the hour of mine you just wasted.”
I left the bill where it was, but I turned over the top quarter-page of the contract, where we had signed and dated. “Where did you learn your penmanship?” I asked.
“My mother,” he said. “She bought me a calligraphy kit when I was ten. Of course, you know that all Arab knife assassins train in calligraphy.”
Rasha rose, buttoned his suit coat, and nodded to Timothy. The big man let the ball go past him. Burt tossed his paddle to the table and kept his eyes on Timothy, not me.
“I think you’re covering for her,” said Rasha. “I think she’s been here.”
“I heard you were in Bakersfield on Monday,” I said. “And bought yourself a beautiful horse.”
Samara shook his head, his bitter humor spent. “I bought the mare at a Bakersfield auction by proxy. Her name is Clementa. Personally, I was in Bahrain that day.”
Timothy gave his paddle to Burt and they shook hands with some earnestness. I watched the big man and Samara march into the barnyard, Samara a step ahead. I watched him closely, gauging his light-footed gait against the balanced walk of Kenny Bryce’s killer. Captured on a very poor grainy black-and-white video. Similar? Somewhat. And his face, how similar to one I saw last night in the darkness of the vehicle? Enough to count as more circumstantial evidence that Caliphornia was now crossing my property toward his SUV? Maybe.
Burt came to my side, watching the two men board the white Range Rover. “That your cutthroat?”
“I don’t know yet.”
“Timothy said his employer has a temper,” said Burt.
“He didn’t quite hold it.”
“We split the first two games and I was up eighteen–fourteen in the third.”
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