Bestiary

by Robert Masello

  “We’ll leave everything just as it is,” he said to Jakob, placing his brush and palette back on the supply table and standing up. But it was a promising arrangement that he would return to tomorrow.

  He wiped his hands on the linen cloths, drained the last of the Boodles gin in the chilled glass, and turned toward the house. Jakob, as usual, was three steps behind him.

  “Why don’t we pay a visit to our guest?” al-Kalli said without turning around.

  Jakob didn’t answer; he knew it wasn’t a question.

  “Perhaps he has some new stories he wishes to share.”

  Al-Kalli skirted the black-bottomed swimming pool, crossed the wide portico behind the main house, and was just about to go inside when he bumped into his son, Mehdi, who was sauntering outside with a towel, emblazoned with the al-Kalli peacock on it, thrown over his arm.

  “Have you done your homework?” Mohammed asked him.

  “If I said yes, would you believe me?”

  “No.”

  “Then what difference does it make?”

  Al-Kalli had to concede the point, but not the actual battle. “Have you done it?”

  “It’s not due till next week; it’s a long report. I have time.”

  Mehdi scooted past before they could go another round. Mohammed loved him with all his heart—he was literally all of his family that he had been able to spirit out of Iraq—but ever since the boy had become a teenager, he had been surly and argumentative, and their relationship had become one of bickering and evasion. Mohammed wondered if that was how it was in all families; he wondered if his own parents had felt the same way.

  But there was no one left to ask, was there?

  Al-Kalli led Jakob to the back servant stairs, but left it to him to open the padlocked door. After they had made their way through several storage rooms beneath the house, they came to another sealed door; this was the wine cellar, built in this cool, out-of-the-way spot decades before, by the oil tycoon who had once owned the Castle. He had designed it to hold ten thousand bottles of his finest wine. Al-Kalli had never been much of a wine connoisseur, but now, quite unexpectedly, he’d found a novel and imaginative use for this cellar.

  Jakob flicked on the overhead light—an incongruous chandelier—and the room suddenly sprang from utter blackness into twinkling, bright light. There were indeed a few hundred bottles gathering dust on wooden racks along one wall—after all, al-Kalli did do a fair amount of entertaining—but the most startling feature of the room was the metal stool against the back wall, on which al-Kalli’s guest was seated. His head was thrown back against the concrete, his eyes closed, and a chain, bolted to the wall, shackled his hands. Jakob had gone to a lot of trouble, and asked a lot of odd questions at Home Depot, in order to find out how best to install the bolt and chain.

  “Sleep well, Rafik?” al-Kalli asked, in Arabic. The room reeked from the chemical toilet stashed in the far corner. Beside it lay several plastic bottles of Calistoga water and the remains of a sandwich. His guest didn’t seem to have much of an appetite.

  “You can open your eyes,” al-Kalli said, again in the tongue he had barely used since leaving the Middle East. He was rusty, but it came back well enough.

  Rafik didn’t respond. He was as still as death—though al-Kalli hadn’t decided to bestow that gift on him yet.

  “We’re just here to talk,” al-Kalli went on, in entirely reasonable tones. “To pick up where we left off.” He cocked his head at Jakob, who slapped Rafik on one cheek, and then the other; his head lolled forward, his eyes slowly rolling open.

  “That’s better,” al-Kalli said.

  The prisoner’s face was bruised, and his lip had been split. His black hair hung down over his forehead in limp tendrils.

  “Do you remember what you were telling me the last time we talked?”

  Rafik’s head kept lolling around as if it were barely connected to his neck.

  Al-Kalli nodded at Jakob, who picked up one of the Calistoga bottles, opened it, and then held Rafik’s head back; he poured the water over his broken, half-open mouth, and only stopped when the prisoner began to sputter.

  “We were talking about that party at Saddam’s palace.”

  Rafik’s tongue touched his parched, cracked lips.

  “The one where you served my daughter her soup.”

  Rafik’s head dropped, but held steady.

  “I was asking if you knew that the soup had been poisoned.”

  Rafik didn’t move.

  “You were saying, as I recall, that you were just doing what you were told.”

  “Why,” Rafik muttered, in barely audible Arabic, “don’t you just get it over with?”

  “Because we’re not in any rush,” al-Kalli said, sharing a half smile with Jakob, who stood, hands folded, to one side of the metal stool. “And I still want to know who the other waiter was—the one with the mustache, who served my wife.”

  “I told you,” Rafik croaked, “I don’t know.”

  Al-Kalli barely had time to signal his desire to Jakob before the bodyguard lashed out, knocking Rafik off the stool with a single punch to his face. The man fell, the chain dangling, to the concrete floor.

  “Oh, I don’t think Saddam would have entrusted such an important job—murdering my family—to strangers.” Al-Kalli shook his head, as if debating the point with himself. “No, I think you were all well trained, together. I think you were specially chosen.”

  Rafik didn’t stir.

  “I’ve already found the other two.” He didn’t say what he had done with them. “And I went to a lot of trouble to track you down.”

  Indeed, the search had cost him nearly a million dollars in bribes, and as much again in transportation costs. Rafik, at the time he found him, was living in Lebanon, under another name, working as a garage mechanic. He had been smuggled across several borders tied in a sack, under the floorboards of a van that had been in the shop for repairs.

  “Straighten him up,” al-Kalli said; Jakob bent down and, with unexpected care, righted Rafik with his back against the wall. Above his head, hung there many years earlier, was a framed Campari poster, covered with dust.

  Al-Kalli crouched down in front of him, so he could look directly into his eyes. What he saw there was defeat, resignation, even the acceptance of death. What he didn’t see—and had hoped for—was fear. Out of fear, he would talk.

  But that could be remedied easily enough.

  “Rest,” al-Kalli said, first in English, and then, remembering himself, again in Arabic. “You’re going to need your strength.”

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  WHEN SADOWSKl SUGGESTED that Greer rendezvous with him at the Liberty Firing Range that night, Greer smelled a rat. And once he got there, he knew he’d been right.

  About a dozen men—all of them white, all of them service vets of one kind or another—were milling around in what Burt Pitt called the classroom. But between the poster for gun safety and the one that showed you how to clean your weapon, there now hung a banner showing the Liberty Bell and proclaiming SONS OF LIBERTY—ARISE! It was the same image Greer had seen tattooed on Burt’s arm.

  The table in back had some chips and salsa, a cooler filled with cold beer, and a thick pile of stapled materials. Greer had the impression they were expecting more people. He picked up one of the packets; it was a hodgepodge of stuff, xeroxed copies of speeches by guys like Tom Paine and Patrick Henry and Pat Buchanan—wasn’t he that guy with the funny, high-pitched voice that Greer sometimes saw on TV?—along with pictures taken at Sons of Liberty rallies held in Green Bay, Wisconsin; Butte, Montana; Gainesville, Georgia. The last page was a picture of Charles Manson, with the words HELTER SKELTER across the bottom. Greer was still mulling that one over when Sadowski stepped up and said, in a louder voice than necessary, “Brew, Captain?”

  He was holding out a can of Coor’s, and Greer noticed that several bystanders perked up—as Sadowski no doubt had hoped—at his saying “Captain.”
It was as if Sadowski wanted credit for bringing in an officer.

  Greer took the beer.

  Burt waddled to the front of the room and called for order. Everybody but Greer, who had commandeered the sofa in back, took a seat on the folding chairs.

  “First of all, I want to thank you all for coming,” Burt said. “I know you’re busy guys.”

  Yeah, Greer thought, looking around at the motley crew nursing their free beers. These were guys who’d come straight from their delivery trucks and factory jobs, or, better yet, the local welfare office.

  “Some of you already know all about us”—a couple of heads nodded sagely—“and some of you are here tonight because you’re wondering. You’re wondering who we are, you’re wondering what we stand for . . . and you’re wondering what the hell is happening to our country.”

  Oh boy, Greer thought, here it comes. And he was right again. Burt launched into a long speech (better, actually, than Greer thought it would be) about the founding of the country by our noble forefathers, about the contributions made by men and women from all over Europe and Scandinavia (Greer noticed that Burt glanced at a guy in the front row who looked like a Viking when he said that), about how the culture was built on Christian values, and about how that culture—“once the highest in the history of the world”—was now in terrible danger.

  “What is it in danger of?” Burt asked, looking around the room. Everybody stopped crunching on their chips or sipping their beers. “It’s in danger of falling apart.”

  Not even a chair squeaked.

  “And from what?” Burt asked. “Why is it gonna fall apart?”

  “Because you can’t carry a gun anymore,” someone called out.

  “That’s true,” Burt said. “In L.A., they’ve got more laws about guns than you can shake a stick at. But that’s not what I was talking about.”

  “Pornography,” another guy threw out. “Ever’where you look, there’s nothin’ but porn, porn, porn.”

  Especially under this guy’s bed, Greer thought, sipping his beer in back.

  “That’s a problem, too,” Burt said, “but I’m getting at something else.” He clearly felt he had led his audience to the brink and then started to lose them. When another guy said something about divorce law and the rights of fathers, Burt jumped in and said, “Race, gentlemen, race.”

  They all got quiet again.

  “We’re in a race war, and most people don’t even know it.”

  That dog’s too old to hunt, Greer thought.

  “We’ve got a border with Mexico that’s nearly two thousand miles long, and it’s about as protected as . . .” He paused, trying to figure out how to complete his thought. “About as protected as anyone here would feel at midnight, on the corner of Florence and Normandie.”

  A few obligatory chuckles, but his hesitation had killed the joke.

  And, Greer considered, he was mixing his message. Who were we supposed to be worried about? Blacks in South Central L.A., or wetbacks sneaking into America through the back door?

  “Every day hundreds—hell, thousands—of illegal immigrants just wade across the Rio Grande, stroll into San Diego or up here to Los Angeles, and flood our systems. Our schools, our hospitals, our highways.”

  Now he was back on the more likely track. You could always get people fired up about the border, Greer reflected. If they weren’t worried about terrorists coming in, they were up in arms about all the spics taking those great jobs picking tomatoes and mopping floors. You could see Burt warming to his task, too.

  “Just look around you the next time you go to the mall. I was out in Torrance last night, at a Denny’s, and I was the only white guy in the place. And I counted—there were sixteen customers, and maybe three waitresses—and I was the only authentic white guy in the whole damn place.”

  He waited for that alarming news to sink in. But if Greer was any judge, only half the crowd—probably the ones who were already charter members of the Sons of Liberty—seemed moved. Two or three others glanced down at the sheaf of papers they’d picked up from the table, one glanced at his watch, then stared blankly out the window, undoubtedly wondering if he could have one more beer before getting the hell out.

  But Burt was just hitting his stride. For another twenty minutes or so, he outlined the darkening skin, and the resulting decline, of the United States of America. Most of his warnings were about the Mexicans, the Guatemalans, the Salvadorans. Greer had never been able to tell one from the other, not that it mattered. For a second, he thought about Lopez, the guy he’d lost on that mission outside Mosul. The guy who’d just been . . . carried off in the night. Had he felt one way or the other about him? As opposed to, say, Donlan, or Sadowski, or anybody else in his unit? He took a long pull on his beer, and decided that he had not; there were even times when he felt bad about having gotten the guy killed.

  As if he’d been reading his mind, Sadowski was now turned around in his chair, smiling at Greer, with an expression on his face that said, Isn’t this guy Burt great or what? Greer just tapped his wristwatch. Sadowski, looking disappointed, turned around again.

  But Burt was finally wrapping up. “I hope you’ll all take a copy of the Sons of Liberty membership packet—you’ll find a new members form inside—and if you’ve got any questions, or you just want to shoot the shit, I’m here . . . all the fucking time!” He laughed, and a few of the audience members, maybe just because they were so happy to be free again, laughed along. “And don’t forget, when you join, you get a ten percent discount every time you come to the range.” Same discount Greer was offered as a vet.

  While a couple of interested candidates milled around the front of the room with Burt, and the others grabbed a beer or headed for the men’s room, Sadowski ambled back to the sofa. “You got any questions for Burt?”

  “Yeah. How come he talks so much?”

  Sadowski started to look pissed. “You didn’t believe him? You don’t think it’s time we woke up and smelled the coffee?”

  “I think it’s time we got in your little patrol car and did what we’re supposed to do tonight.”

  Greer got up—damn, his leg had locked again, and he had to stop to rub some life back into the knee—and headed for the door. He saw Burt, busy recruiting a guy in a UPS uniform, look his way, and Greer raised a hand, giving him a thumbs-up. Yeah, right—he’d be joining up real soon.

  In the parking lot out front, Greer waited by the Silver Bear Security car until Sadowski, after muttering something about the Fourth of July to another Son of Liberty, came over and unlocked it. He still looked pissy.

  “I don’t know why you won’t listen,” Sadowski said as they got into the car and strapped their seat belts.

  “Because it’s a crock of shit.”

  “It’s not.”

  Greer wondered if it was his turn to say, “Is, too.” Instead, he said, “Just give me the jacket.”

  Sadowski, pulling into traffic, said, “It’s in the bag.”

  There was a Men’s Wearhouse bag on the seat between them. Greer opened it and took out a gray Silver Bear windbreaker, with epaulettes and silver snap buttons, and a visored cap. A growling bear, rising up on all fours, was emblazoned just above the brim. He put the cap on and turned the rearview mirror to check himself out.

  “I need that,” Sadowski said, turning the mirror back.

  Greer laughed. “What, did I hurt your feelings?” he said.

  Sadowski, his jaw set, just kept driving.

  Greer shook his head; it was too weird. Sadowski didn’t mind Greer getting a lap dance from his girlfriend, but he got bent out of shape if you dissed his secret society. He looked out the window, trying to focus himself; there wasn’t time for this bullshit right now. He had to concentrate on what was ahead. He reached into the pocket of his dark gray jeans—as close to the jacket color as he could find at the Gap—and took out a couple of pills; one to kill any pain from the leg, and another to raise his internal alert level. This wasn
’t like that job in Brentwood, when he’d stumbled into the dog-sitter at the doctor’s house. This was big time.

  This was the al-Kalli estate.

  And he would need to be as hyped and vigilant as he had ever been.

  Once they’d passed under the arched gateway to Bel-Air, Greer started to take careful mental notes on the terrain, the street layout, the avenues of escape. He’d already studied the map of this area in his Thomas Guide, and pulled it up on MapQuest, too, but there was nothing like checking out the lay of the land for real. And the maps didn’t tell you just how dark—he guessed the locals would call it tasteful—the street lighting in here would be. No high-crime, low-sodium glare here, no rows of towering poles, humming softly, their heads bobbing in the ocean breeze. The street lamps were few and far between, and the light they cast was more like amber pools. As far as Greer was concerned, that was ideal.

  The higher they went, the darker it got, and the less Greer could see from the patrol car. If there were houses back there, behind the high hedges and brick walls and iron driveway gates that bristled with warning signs and intercoms and surveillance cameras, you’d never know it. Once in a while, especially when they passed a Silver Bear sign, Sadowski told Greer what movie star or pop singer or athlete lived there. Greer could only imagine what kind of pickings those houses would provide. Why had he been bothering with guys who were just doctors, in Brentwood? He’d have to discuss that, later, with Sadowski.

  “See that? Sadowski said, slowing on a narrow curve, beside a high stone wall.

  “See what?”

  “The gates.”

  Greer saw an unmarked solid steel-plated gate, and a door, barely visible between some thick bushes, set into the wall beside it.

  “That’s the back service entrance to the Al-Kalli estate. That’s where I’ll pick you up.”

  “How do I get out without setting off an alarm?”

  “Only the driveway gates are alarmed, and the door can only be opened from the inside,” Sadowski said, driving on. “You see any other car come by, just hide behind the bush.”