The Famous and the Dead (4 page)

Three hours home in the evening traffic. And another hour forty to Erin, heavy with his child. Erin, fire of his life, his sin and soul.

H
ood
slowly climbed the dirt road to his Buenavista home. A sliver of moon faced him through the windshield and the serrated tops of the Devil's Claws reached into the black sky. The stars were radiant. He heard the gravel hitting the undercarriage of his car and when he topped the rise he saw that two of his three housemates were home tonight: Erin's SUV and Gabriel Reyes's pickup truck both sat in the dusty vapor lights. Beth would be home from her nightshift in the Imperial Mercy ER soon, unless catastrophe came knocking late as it often did.

Hood took his war bag and purchases and walked toward the stout adobe home. The night was cold by now and smoke rose from the chimney. Gabriel opened the door and two black mongrels heaved out.

“Bradley's on his way.”

“This is twice in one week.”

“I tried to talk her out of it but she agreed to see him. Beth's still at work.”

Hood called the dogs and followed them inside. He set his gambler on the rack while Reyes took a quick look at the parking area, then closed the door and slid the deadbolt.

They sat in the near darkness by the fire, Hood with a large bourbon on ice, Reyes with a beer.

“We've got some new bad guys in town, Gabe.”

“Tell me. I miss the action.”

Reyes had been Buenavista's police chief when Hood moved here three years ago but he was retired now. He was a heavy-bodied man and he limped from a rattlesnake bite suffered years back. A widower. Hood had asked him to stay here with Erin while he and Beth were working. After the Yucatán fiasco, Erin had left Bradley and moved in with Hood and Beth to recuperate and have the baby. But Hood didn't want to leave her alone all day, pregnant and still half terrified by her kidnapping and bloody rescue. Thus Reyes. He was garrulous, alert, excellent in the kitchen, and capable with his old service revolver, on the off chance that Erin's tormentors might return. Gabriel said he spent his time hovering about the house as Erin wrote and recorded her songs, and joining her on walks in the pleasant mornings and evenings. Hood understood that these unusual living arrangements, coupled with her intense work in the ER, were taking a toll on Beth.

He told Reyes about the Russell County entrepreneurs leading him to Israel Castro.

“I'd like to pinch all four of them,” said Reyes.

“Wouldn't that be fun? What do you know about Castro?”

Reyes recited the basics: Castro had grown up in Jacumba, saw his father shot down in front of his own restaurant, drug trade suspected but never proved. Family on both sides of the border. Relatives tight with the Arellano-Félix cartel in the early days. Castro into construction then building then real estate and property management. Later the Ford dealership in El Centro and a Kia-Hyundai place in Brawley—always does his own TV commercials, wears the sport coat with the fake jewels on it. Still has the restaurant in Jacumba—Amigos. Belongs to service organizations, big on charity.

“My San Diego cop friends suspect he's been laundering drug money for decades, but with so many legit businesses . . . hard to prove. He's smart guy, not a violent one. People like him. He was a San Diego Sheriff's reserve deputy for years. They also think he moved tons of heroin and cocaine north through Jacumba and Jacume back in the nineties when it was easy. They say Amigos used to crawl with narcos
.
Later he teamed up with Coleman Draper. But you know more about all that than I do.”

Coleman Draper
, thought Hood. An LASD reserve deputy who, along with his patrol partner, murdered two cash couriers up in the bleak Antelope Valley desert and framed an innocent man for the killings. All to take over a very lucrative cash run from L.A. to Mexico. Hood had trailed Draper to Castro in Jacumba. And almost caught up with them and the drug money that rainy night five years ago, but had gotten a bullet instead. A few days later Draper tried to finish him off and Hood shot him dead.

The past again
, he thought.
Barreling right in like it's welcome
. “So what does Israel Castro need with stolen drugs and small-time crime-scene guns? These Missouri guys aren't going to make him noticeably richer.”

“Something more's going on.”

Hood considered. He heard Erin in the back of the house, a door shutting and a sink running. Daisy and Minnie climbed off the couch and trotted down the hallway. The pipes in his adobe were old, and they telegraphed with groans and shudders the presence of those within. Erin was due in weeks but she still refused to see Bradley except for very brief visits, which she only allowed with Hood, Reyes, or Beth in attendance. The dogs invited themselves to all such meetings, positioning themselves between Erin and her husband, always facing Bradley, never quite sleeping.

Hood knew that Bradley despised him for this arrangement, but the whole thing had been Erin's idea. Although he did think it was a good thing. He himself despised Bradley's reckless endangerment of his wife, his prodigious greed and dishonesty, his crimes and arrogance and luck. Just four months ago he'd gotten her kidnapped and nearly skinned alive. Now it looked like LASD was about to cancel Bradley's ticket, and that was fine with Hood. Still, this was Bradley's second approved visit in a week. Erin was softening. Maybe ready to forgive, if not forget. He sipped the bourbon and looked out a window at the distant peaks faintly brushed by starlight.

“Got pictures of these new creeps?” asked Reyes.

Hood gave him his phone and while Reyes pawed back and forth through the pictures with a thick finger, Hood thought of Mary Kate Boyle and her big plum shiner, disappearing into the millions of people in Southern California. He had the nagging bad feeling that somehow she and Skull would reunite.

“When bad cops take over, it's the end of civilization as we know it,” said Reyes. He handed back the phone.

“They're not taking anybody over.”

“Too bad the girl won't cooperate.”

“She's done enough if you ask me.”

Reyes stood and yawned, then limped to the front door. He opened the deadbolt and looked outside for a long beat. Past his round shoulders Hood saw the stars flickering in the desert night. Reyes closed the door and locked up. “Anything new on Mike Finnegan?”

“Not for months.”

“You'll find him again.”

“Well, I won't stop.”

“I believe in evil.”

“I know you do.”

“I saw it in him. You young people might think that's quaint. But I grew up with idea that evil walks and talks. It's a good way to see the world and the things that happen in it. And don't happen.”

“I don't think of evil as quaint.”

“They'll say you're crazy.”

“Who will?”

“Everyone. The distracted and ignorant public you protect and serve. Your bosses and associates. You'll have to fight them off. And you still might end up believing them and not yourself. All you have is yourself and your faith.” Hood saw the darkness brush Gabriel's face. “I like the way you hold on to things, Charlie. I like the way you grab on and worry them over and over again. I don't know about the diamonds in your tooth, but you're a good man and a good cop. You'll find him again.”

•   •   •

In their bedroom Hood set the chocolates on Beth's pillow and put the bottle on her nightstand with the card propped up against it. Then he threw open the heavy window curtains, which left him facing not a window but a heavy steel door built into the wall. He pushed the combination code, then flipped a light switch and went down the stairs, his shoes twanging lightly on the metal steps. Sleek Daisy and stout Minnie impatiently clicked down behind him. At the base of the stairs was another steel door with a prison-style pass-through about waist high. This door he opened with a different code, then stepped into his new wine cellar.

Hood had built the cellar beneath his home at some expense, and it was only recently completed, though he owed twenty more monthly payments on the loan. He had sold his restored IROC Camaro to help pay for it. The four underground rooms were cold and high-ceilinged and there were no windows or doors but the light was incandescent and good. White walls—lath and plaster, hard as stone, not sheetrock—and a textured concrete floor. High in the ceiling of each room was a steel grate, but no light came through the heavy grids. The cellar was only minimally furnished, with racks and a few bottles of red wine aging. A couch and entertainment center with a TV and some DVDs. There was a small bath and shower, a kitchenette, and one of the rooms had an empty bookcase and a double bed, made up.

He sat in a folding chair at a folding table in the bedroom and let his eyes wander the tabletop: a laptop, an external hard drive, an envelope containing eight eight-by-ten-inch photographs of Finnegan, a row of identical photo booklets containing four-by-six copies of the same photos. A coffee cup brimming with pencils, a pad of graph paper dense with notes and scribbles, a stapler. It was all very neat. He'd had to move his work space down here with the arrival of Beth, Erin, and Reyes, but this had allowed him to discard the chaff and keep the wheat.

Hood looked up at the grate, beyond which was only darkness. He remembered Veracruz, and the quick grind of the knife blade against his skull, and the wash of blood that draped his eyes and blocked his vision while Mike fled down darkened M. Doblado Street. Hood ran his finger along the scar and thought,
I've got room for you
. He looked into the amber twinkle of the glass and he sensed that he could become lost in it, and he wondered again if his sanity was eroding, and he told himself again—for what, the thousandth time?—that no, no, no, his mind was sound and his mission was clear and right. Just look at the neatness and order of the tabletop, he thought, a reflection of sound thinking. He reminded himself that he had seen what few had seen. This is why he had been given the scar. As a seal of authenticity.
I'll find you
, he thought.
And when I do, you will never so much as brush up against another person on this earth
.

•   •   •

Back in the living room Hood saw the flicker of headlights coming up the steep dirt drive. “He's here,” said Erin. She sat at the far end of a long leather sofa, close to the fire, a Pendleton blanket over her. Even through the heavy blanket, her middle registered as a large, stout ball. Her face was pale and flushed and slightly fuller these last few weeks. Her hair shined red in the firelight. “Thanks again for waiting up for me.”

“You know I don't mind.”

“Beth should be home soon.”

A minute later the motion lights outside the house came on and Hood saw Bradley's black Cayenne pull into the carport. The dogs were already at a window, up on their back legs for the view. Hood undid the locks and swung open the heavy wooden door, then walked back to the living room and sat.

Bradley swept in, the untucked tails of his shirt trailing, his face pinched and hollowed, eyes hard until he saw Erin. He held a long spray of cut red roses in one hand and a white plastic sack in the other. He stopped and stared at her in silence. He set the flowers on the sofa beside her, then slid a colorful box from the bag and broke it open and bowed somewhat formally to hand her a chocolate ice cream bar on a stick. “Happy Valentine's Day.”

“Fudge Bars,” she said softly. “My hero. That's Charlie sitting right there, in case you didn't see him. Maybe you should offer him one, too.”

Bradley turned and took in Hood, then tossed him an ice cream bar. “Nice suit, bro.”

“Thanks for saying so.”

“You still look more like a cop than a gun dealer.”

“You look unhappy. Did they fire you?”

“They're trying.”

“Can't get used to you working for the North Baja Cartel?”

“Hood? I endure your piety only as a way to get into your home and visit my wife.”

“If it was up to me, that door would still be locked.”

“You'll make someone a sweet bitch someday.”

Erin snapped her empty stick and set it on the wrapper beside her. “Can't you drooling primates shut it off for just one minute?”

“I'll be in the kitchen,” said Hood.

He put the pops in the freezer and poured a light bourbon and sat at the stout wooden table. From back in the house Reyes's bathroom pipes thumped and whined. Hood listened to the soft voices coming from the other room. He couldn't hear the sentences, just fragments and syllables here and there, but the tone was of pleading and denying, apology and accusation. He looked into the living room where the couple faced each other from opposite ends of the long sofa, and he saw the firelight play upon their profiles—Erin's fine features and Bradley's tragic mask alike etched by light and shadow. He understood that Bradley would win this war because his need was larger. It was only a matter of time. He thought again of Bradley's mother, Suzanne, and the reckless need she had awakened in him. Maybe need was a kind of strength, he thought, though he had never heard it called that. Daisy and Minnie lay on the tile near Erin and facing Bradley, their muzzles to the tile but their eyes asparkle like bits of glass.

Using his phone, Hood checked his e-mail and social networks and his Mike-specific webpage but found only two new messages, chiding and familiar, from “Incipient Madness” and “Bonkers,” which he suspected to be Mike himself. Nothing else. Not one sighting, not one lead, not even a crank reply to his endless inquiries in the ether. In the last few months, roughly half of his contacts had asked him to cease and desist. But there were always new contacts. New hope. New blood. He turned off the phone and slid it back onto his belt. When he looked up, he saw Bradley on his feet, leaning over Erin to kiss the top of her head while she slept.

Bradley walked toward the door, then stopped and turned to her, and from where he spoke Hood heard his words clearly. “Let me make a home where we can begin again.”