Swift Vengeance

30

Out in the barn, I banged the heavy and speed bags for a long while. Then showered and joined the Irregulars for cocktail hour under the palapa. They had a big fire going in the pit under the high part of the thatch, where the flames couldn’t catch it on fire. Dick poured me a forthright bourbon and added a few drops of water. We sat on chaise longues facing the hills. The night was cool and the stars were post-storm bright.

Dick swirled his glass and the ice clinked. “If those weren’t four feds sitting at that table this morning, my name’s not Dick Ford.”

“Friendly neighborhood FBI.”

“And what did they want with my favorite grandson?”

“Dirt on one of their own.”

“That’s low,” said Dick.

“I thought so, too.”

“Who was that earlier?” he asked. “The dapper Arab with the bodyguard.”

“Not important.”

“Something about Lindsey, I surmise,” he said. “And that’s why you sent her away for a while.”

“Need-to-know, Dick. Sorry.”

“I’m cool with that,” he said. “But I’m not sold on that dog of Lindsey’s. I don’t like him, and he senses it. Looks at me like he wants to eat my balls. Well, off to see how Liz is doing. That knee of hers doesn’t love the tennis court as much as it used to.”

I waved Lindsey over and she took Dick’s vacated chaise. Zeno lay between us, head up and facing me, a gray-eyed sphinx.

I told her about my visit from Rasha. That he physically resembled what I had briefly seen of Kenny Bryce’s killer. That his temper had boiled. That he had admitted to brandishing a janbiya at a college party. I told her that his claim of being out of the country on the night of the murder was yet to be vetted. She reminded me of his handwriting, so similar to that of Caliphornia’s.

I told Lindsey that I could find no motive for Samara to take Kenny’s life, and no reason for him to threaten her. I admitted that I found his interest in her genuine, if possessive and impulsive.

“My gut tells me he isn’t our man,” I said.

“How sure are you?”

“I can’t make any claims there,” I said. “Rasha could be enough of a sociopath and a liar to fool us all.”

“Comforting, Roland.”

I said nothing of Ben Azmeh.

The fact that we had only circumstantial evidence linking him to Caliphornia dripped in my mind, the sound of water hitting water. A constant reminder that something isn’t right.

I looked out at the placid black water of the pond and saw Ben’s strange dance behind the cheap plastic blinds of Del Sol unit 24-A.

But Rasha’s voice is what I heard, when I’d asked him if he still had his old janbiya: Somewhere.

Such are the vagaries of an uncertain soul.