The Border Lords

by T. Jefferson Parker

  Dear Mr. Hood,

  I am sorry to report that I did not speak often with Father Joe Leftwich. He was a talkative man and often engaged in conversation. He was provocative in subtle ways and made some people angry. But he had a great curiosity about birds and bird-watching. Being Irish he knew that the English call birders ‘twitchers.’ I have gone through my many digital images of that trip and I have some unforgettable pictures of the trogons, but no pictures of this man. I am sorry I am not able to help.

  Sincerely,

  Heinz Tossey

  Hood looked outside to see another dirt devil spinning through the security lights. He wrote a thank-you e-mail to Heinz, then lay his head back on the couch top and looked up at the beam ceiling of the old home and listened to the wind outside; then he closed his eyes.

  When he opened them the baseball game was over and his beer was warm and his screen saver had long since engaged. The wind had gotten stronger. The telephone vibrated against his hip at eleven forty-five—Beth saying she’d be an hour late at least, so sorry, an extra-busy night again, an attempted suicide and a burn victim. She sounded upset and Hood took the phone into the kitchen, which was better protected against the wind.

  “I was really looking forward to you,” she said.

  “I miss you a lot. You hang in there, Beth. I’m going have some dinner and wine ready for you.”

  “I want you first.”

  “I won’t argue that, Beth.” Hood liked saying her name out loud. She was easy to imagine—lovely, tall, dirty-blond, chocolate-eyed. She was goofy and self-unimpressed. Hood leaned against the big butcher block and looked through the window over the sink, out to the silver-rimmed mountains in the east. There in the lee side of the house grew a grapefruit tree and Hood could see the big yellow orbs swaying in the wind.

  “I hate this job sometimes,” she said. “I mean, I love-hate it. If I went to days, I could see my guy more than once in a while, but then you’d get sick of me.”

  “Fat chance of that, Doc. But your guy has been plenty busy, too, so don’t blame everything on you. Just get here when you can.”

  “I’m there. I’m so there, Charlie.”

  Suddenly, behind him and out of sight, the front door blew open. It was a heavy mahogany-and-iron affair and Hood heard it whack into the wrought-iron hat rack, then heard the hat rack crash to the entryway tile with a metallic twang. It was not the first time this had happened.

  “What was that, Charlie?”

  “Hold on.”

  Hood went to the kitchen pass-through and looked out. The wind hurled a blast of sand through the open door and blew the hats that had spilled off the rack across the foyer and into the living room. Some slid and some tumbled end over end.

  “Just the wind.” He came around and out of the kitchen, walking across the living room for the front door. He could feel the cold wind hit him. He hooked a Stetson with one boot toe and flung it up into the cold front and caught it midair.

  “You get wind,” said Beth. “I get paramedics on a code three with a gunshot suicide attempt. Gotta go.”

  “Okay, Beth.”

  Hood put the Stetson on his head and held the cell phone in one hand and pushed the door closed with the other. He was surprised how strong the wind was and when he looked out at the vast desert before him he saw the ocotillo swaying and the cholla quivering like lambs’ tails in the moonlight and the blink of stars in the wind, as if they were squinting into it.

  He slid the dead bolt home and put his phone back in its hip case, then tilted the hat rack upright. He looked where the rack had hit the wall and there was a new impression there, and not the first. The old bevel and latch plate were worn smooth and the heavy door was prone to this. Another fix, he thought. The old adobe was full of them.

  Hood set out collecting the hats. He put on his favorite Borsalino fedora over the Stetson, then a nice Panama on top of that; then he got his Dodgers, Angels and Padres ball caps in one hand and a canvas breezer in the other and carried them back into the foyer for the rack. He set them back one at a time, thinking of Beth.

  When he walked back into the living room Sean Ozburn was standing back in the darkness in the far corner, two Love 32s slung over his shoulders and aimed in Hood’s direction.

  “I was standing on your porch and the door opened,” he said. “I took it as an invitation.”

  “Sean.”

  “Slide your Colt across the floor to me.”

  “The whole rig is in the kitchen, by the coffee machine.”

  “Then the AirLite on your ankle.”

  Hood took a knee and slid the revolver slowly from the holster on his left ankle, backhanding it across the tile to Ozburn like a shuffleboard puck. It clattered and spun to a stop. Hood failed to mention the two-shot .40-caliber derringer he carried in a tiny canvas holster on his right calf, just above the sock. He packed the ankle cannon on days he thought he might need it, and he had carried it twelve days running now. It was passably accurate within ten feet but would stop a man cold.

  He opened his hands to Ozburn and stood. “How do they fire, the Loves?”

  “Extremely well. The sound suppressors are ingenious—Ron Pace uses steel wool and aerosol foam inside the fiberglass tube, so they’re sponges acoustically, and super light. You can hardly hear these things, just the shells feeding in and spitting out. They clack like a child’s plastic machine gun.”

  “Where’s Daisy?”

  “Out in the truck watching our stuff.”

  Hood studied him. Ozburn let go one of the guns and pushed his sunglasses up onto his head. He studied Hood back, swaying slightly like a man just off a boat. “Good to see you, Charlie.”

  Ozburn looked leaner and paler than the biker-surfersnowboarder who had essentially vanished undercover fifteen months ago. His hair was longer and his gunslinger’s mustache was trimmed. His well-muscled body had always filled out his clothes, which he had worn snug in admitted vanity, but now the leather vest had some slack in the chest and his badass leather pants looked a size too big. Back from the crags of Ozburn’s face his eyes stared, blue and cool, and in them, even at this distance, Hood saw something haunted. Ozburn growled softly, then rolled one big shoulder up and wiped his mouth on the leather vest.

  “That was a shitty thing, sending me a picture of Seliah like that,” he said.

  “I hoped you’d see it and just give yourself up.”

  “Well, I’m not. And it was shitty of you tricking her into the hospital that first time, too. I’ve thought of punishing you for it. I should.”

  “You wouldn’t if you’d seen her that night. She was mean and crazy. She was dangerous to herself. She scared the hell out of me, Sean.”

  “So you say. Maybe you did the right thing. But maybe you staged this whole thing to get me to surrender. The whole thing, start to finish.”

  “That’s not rational.”

  “Rational means nothing after the things I’ve done and seen.”

  “I didn’t stage Arenal or Father Joe or the wound to your toe. I didn’t stage Seliah’s symptoms, or yours. I didn’t stage the tests they gave her. It’s all real, Sean—everything she told you. Nothing has been faked or staged. You just spent three days with her—was she the woman you used to know? Answer me. Was she?”

  Ozburn lowered the machine pistols and walked across the living room toward Hood. Gone was his easy athletic grace, replaced by a heavier, more conscious gait. He sat in a faux cowhide swivel chair, one of two that had come with the rental. He let one of the weapons dangle to his side on its sling and the other he rested across his lap, hand still on the grip, finger still inside the trigger guard. He nodded toward the other chair, which sat opposite across a big, tattered Navajo rug that looked two hundred years old. Hood walked to the chair and sat.

  “No,” said Ozburn. “She’s not the woman I knew. I’ll admit there’s something wrong with both of us. Big wrong. The list of ailments goes on and on. The latest is, I can’t fe
el my feet sometimes. And sometimes, I can’t feel anything below my knees. Can’t walk or even stand when that happens. Don’t get any big ideas, Hood, because they feel just fine right now. And everything I see is green. You’re green right now. The whole house, the whole world.”

  “Well, no shit, Oz—your nervous system is filled with the rabies virus. So is hers.”

  Ozburn wiped his face with his free hand, and when his hand passed over his eyes they were still fixed on Hood. “Okay. Okay. I’ve thought this through, Charlie. Whether what you say is true or not, Seliah is where she belongs right now. She can make it. She’s strong and good.”

  “And you?”

  “I’m right where I belong, too. I chose this path and I’m staying on it. I’m going to deliver ninety of these Loves to Blowdown. And you’re going to take down some nasty Mara Salvatruchas in L.A. and a hundred and fifty-seven grand in cash. It’ll be the best bust I’ve ever made. It’s the proof of my training and my skill and my value. It’s the reward for the last fifteen months. It justifies what I’ve become. After that? Well, I’m not spending the rest of my life in prison for taking out a few of our enemies. You wouldn’t. Which brings me to a proposal.”

  “Propose, Sean.”

  “Why should I surrender? ATF needs me now more than ever. I do things you regular agents won’t do. I’ve crossed every line that can be crossed except for one—I’ve stayed loyal to my cause and my people. If I know Soriana, he hasn’t gone upstairs with those videos of me in action. He can’t afford the fact that one of his best special agents has gone upriver and taken out some bad guys. If that got public, it would damage ATF. Badly. Soriana knows this. So, tell him to destroy the videos and fire me. They’ll have to put me on a cash payroll but they’ll never see me again. You’ll be my contact. We’ll talk in the ether. I can nurse Seliah back to health. For ATF, I’ll be the guy who does what it takes for you to win. I’ll be the black agent. When you need to cut a deal with the devil, you send in Oz. Makes sense, doesn’t it? Doesn’t it, Charlie?”

  Hood considered. The wind rushed the house and the sand ticked at the windows. He looked at Ozburn in the lamplight of the living room and saw a dead man. “It makes no sense that I can see.”

  “Tell Soriana.”

  “I’ll tell him.”

  “I’ve got some interesting news. Herredia wants to deliver the guns to me in California.”

  Hood thought about this. “Why?”

  “El Tigre says the U.S. is safer than Mexico. He’ll use his drug supply lines to move the weapons. He must feel solid in California.”

  “After two safe houses get blitzed?”

  “I’m not complaining,” said Ozburn. “Saves me a run from south to north with ninety new machine guns in my truck. I’m taking it as good luck.”

  Hood was caught short at the blunt irony of this: guns going not south, but north. Guns made in Mexico by an American businessman. Was the union now complete? Were they one now, the United States and Mexico, joined and made identical by drugs, money and guns?

  “When?”

  Ozburn stared into his face for a long beat. “None of your concern, Charlie. I’ll deliver the guns to the Gulf people sometime after. That’s when Blowdown sweeps in. That’s when I give myself up to you. If that’s what ATF wants.”

  “I’m supposed to believe that?”

  Ozburn looked at Hood for a long moment. “A deal’s a deal, Charlie. Don’t you forget that. I’ll e-mail or call you when I’ve got the units.”

  Hood heard the wind rise up outside and saw the ocotillo shivering in the moonlight.

  “Why did you come here, Sean?”

  “I want my things from Seliah.”

  “There are two bags in the extra bedroom. Foot of the bed.”

  Ozburn stood. “Let’s get them. You go first. Move slow, Charlie. I’m feeling kind of hyped up right now and I’d hate to have an accident.”

  “Roger.”

  Hood led the way to the hall, flicked on the light, and walked to the first bedroom. He turned on a light there, too, and stepped in. There was a loaded revolver under the bed pillow but the pillow was a long way away and Hood wasn’t sure what he’d do with it. He went to the foot of the bed and took a bag in each hand, then turned to face Ozburn.

  “Good, Charlie. Back out slow now and we’ll go back in the living room.”

  Ozburn stepped aside and let Hood go back down the hallway ahead of him. Hood held up a heavy reusable shopping bag and set it next to Ozburn’s chair. “Here are your guns.”

  “Excellent.”

  “Then, also . . .”

  Hood took a knee and brought out the items one at a time and set them on the floor: the ring boxes first, then the bundle of love letters, the journal. He hesitated on the items that Seliah had given to him to keep, but only for a moment, then set them out, too. “And here’s a bottle of wine she was saving for a special occasion, and Daisy the horse and Betty the doll, and the pressed leaves in this book, and a lock of your hair. She wanted those last things scattered with her ashes if she doesn’t come through this.”

  Ozburn stared at the things for a long moment. “Okay. Well. I never thought . . . this.”

  “I can have you up to UCI Medical Center in a little over two hours, Oz. They’ll knock you out, too, and try to let you fight off the virus. You’ll be with her.”

  “And if I’m lucky enough to live through that, it’s off to prison for this fine agent. No, thanks, Charlie. I won’t do that. And I’ve got a job to finish.”

  “I hope you’re clear on this, Oz. You’ve got a lethal virus multiplying itself in your brain. You’re going to die very soon if you don’t let those doctors treat you.”

  “Clear.”

  Ozburn waved Hood away with one of the guns, then picked up the two ring boxes. He opened them both, then closed them and tossed them one at a time to Hood. “If Seliah doesn’t make it, make sure these rings go with her ashes. I’ve got no use for them without her to wear them.”

  Outside the wind lashed the house. In between gusts coyotes yipped from the dark distance. Ozburn knelt and swept Seliah’s offerings into the bag with his big hands, going strictly by feel as he stared at Hood. When he was done he swung one of the machine pistols to his side and picked up both bags with one hand. He lifted the back of his gun hand to his face and wiped a rope of saliva from his chin. He bared his teeth at Hood and growled. Hood looked at Ozburn’s horrific face. Then movement outside caught his eye and he saw the lights of Beth Petty’s car coming up the rough gravel road.

  “Company,” said Ozburn. “You didn’t hit a panic button, did you?”

  “It’s Beth.”

  “That right? I’d like to meet her, Charlie.”

  “Gotta stay on your good behavior, Oz.”

  “Never lecture a man with two machine guns.”

  “She’s innocent of all this.”

  “So was Seliah. God, I miss her. You wouldn’t believe how much good old-fashioned lust builds up when you got whatever in hell I have.”

  “I read that.”

  “Seliah tell you about it?”

  “No.”

  “I thought she might have been coming on to you the night you put her in handcuffs.”

  “She put herself in them, Sean.”

  “Like Juan Batista.”

  “Like him, yes.”

  “The sex is like nothing you ever felt. It goes from pleasure to pain to something much bigger and stronger. You can’t get enough. There isn’t any word for that feeling. I can’t even describe it.”

  Hood watched the headlight beams swing across the window glass and go out. He saw Beth, wrapped in her long knit sweater coat, a brown bag in the crook of one arm, coming up the walkway toward the front door.

  “She’s pretty,” said Ozburn. He turned to watch her, gun in one hand and the bags in the other. His breathing got faster and in a smooth, quick motion Hood raised his right knee and slipped the derringer from its home, then
quietly set his right foot down again.

  “I’m going walk past you to the door and open it for her,” said Hood. “I’ll make the introduction.”

  Ozburn continued to stare out the window and Hood heard the rattling wet inhale of his breath as he passed behind the man. Ozburn swung around, the silenced machine gun pointed at Hood’s middle.

  “Hold your fire, Sean,” said Hood. “I’m a friend, remember?”

  Hood stepped to the door. He was between Beth and Ozburn now, the derringer cupped in his right hand and held firm by his thumb. He let her knock, then swung open the door with his free hand and cocked the hammer into the gust.

  “Finally!” Beth stepped in and threw an arm around Hood’s neck and kissed him. He broke it off quickly and put his mouth to her fragrant ear.

  “Beth. There’s someone behind me. Don’t be afraid. But if anything happens, run outside into the darkness and don’t stop. I’ll come to you.”

  “What?”

  He felt her body tense and he drew her by her hand into the foyer and pushed shut the door, then turned and presented Beth Petty to Sean Ozburn.

  “Pleased to meet you,” she said cheerfully. “Nice guns!”

  Ozburn stared at her. “You are an unbearable pleasure to my eyes.”

  “That’s the nicest thing I’ve heard all day.” She glanced at Hood and offered her hand to Ozburn. Hood’s heart was pounding.

  Ozburn set down the bag, took Beth’s hand lightly, bowed and kissed it. Then he let go of the gun and closed his other hand over hers and smiled at her. “You’re mine now and I’ll never let you go.”

  “Well, don’t tell him, but I’m kind of Charlie’s for the time being.”

  “I was the best of them once.”

  “Oh?”

  Ozburn pulled her closer and leaned into her, head tilted, nose to her temple, then her ear, then her neck. A thick ribbon of saliva swayed from his chin.