Hood watched as Wampler stopped and set his feet widely and hooked his thumbs in his belt. He spoke but Hood couldn’t hear the words. The woman stopped and answered. The children closed ranks, practically hidden behind her. She pointed toward the van. Wampler said something and she raised both hands and Wampler stepped closer.
“You want the gun or not?”
“I want it.”
“Put it back in the Jeep and we’ll take care of business.”
Hood hefted the Lewis Gun back into the vehicle. Wampler was walking back toward him with something in his hand, and the family was hustling purposefully for the Astro. The woman moved at a near trot and the stroller bounced across the asphalt and the children were strung out single file behind her. When Wampler came closer, Hood watched him drive a large red apple into his face, heard the crack of the bite breaking off.
Hood looked at Skull, pretending that there was no such person as Clint Wampler. From his trouser pocket he dug out the slab of bills and handed them to Skull. The big man counted them patiently as Hood watched the family pile in to the van.
“Pleasure,” said Skull. “I’ll keep in touch if you’d like.”
“I’d like some submachine guns and good autoloading handguns.”
“I’ve got the two ARs, two MACs, and that Uzi, all dressed up and nowhere to go. That would be nine thousand. I’ll bring some handguns. Got some dandy home-defense shotguns, too. Big-ass ten gauges, drum fed. I’ll call.”
It dawned on Hood that Skull and company had a line on weapons far deeper than the property room at their cop house. With friends like Israel Castro, what was the surprise? Mary Kate Boyle didn’t know half of what her beau had been up to.
Hood unlocked the trunk of his car with a key fob. Wampler heard the lid click open and he stepped over and raised the lid and looked in. At the Jeep, Hood covered the Lewis Gun with the blanket, then carried the whole package to the Charger trunk and set it in.
“Gimme that blanket back,” said Wampler. He reached into the trunk just as Hood slammed the lid and it trapped the tip of Wampler’s left middle finger. Clint shrieked and grimaced and the once-bitten apple wobbled out of sight under the Commander. Hood found the fob in his pocket and hit the trunk lock. When the pistol appeared in Clint’s free hand, Hood kicked it away and it clacked and skidded across the asphalt.
“Shit, Hooper!” said Skull.
Hood pulled the key fob from his pocket. “Dirk, collect his piece and get into your car and I’ll let him go.”
Wampler was on his knees behind the Charger, gnawing out curses and alternatingly trying to work his fingertip from the trunk or lift the lid. Blood ran down his arm and off his elbow to the ground. Skull gathered up the gun and climbed into the Jeep. Hood hit the unlock button and the lid clunked open and Wampler whirled free and charged. Hood was ready and eager to fight this one out, but Wampler stopped short, breathing hard and clutching his bleeding finger. “You’ll pay,” he hissed. “You muckerfuthin’ loser.”
• • •
Soon Hood was back at the field station in Buenavista booking the Lewis Gun and using a computer program to transcribe the digital recording of him and the Missouri profiteers. The recording was of forensic quality. Buster told me you want an operational machine gun. . forms are deal breakers for me, Mr. Hooper. .
“Nice work, Charlie,” said Dale Yorth. He held the Lewis Gun down low against his hip and made machine guns noises, spraying imaginary bad guys. “When you get the buy set up for the submachine guns and pistols, we’ll get the takedown team in place and pinch these rancid creeps.”
Hood looked up at him. To Hood, Dale Yorth was the combination of boyish adventurism and deadly adult mission that constituted law enforcement at most levels. Hood had long watched these traits ebb and flow, rise up and retreat, in himself and in others, often at odd and unpredictable times. As part of a takedown team, he had once been led by a senior agent who hummed the old Hawaii Five-0 theme as they ran through a parking lot, guns drawn on armed felons. Hood believed that these traits were good things for lawmen, so long as they were balanced by sound judgment.
• • •
After writing his reports Hood drove back to Castro Ford to see if Israel’s Flex was parked up front again. It was. Hood parked in the same spot that the Missouri men had used. He exchanged pleasantries with three salesmen waiting outside, one of whom looked disdainfully at the Charger and accused Hood of going over to the dark side. This got a laugh and Hood joined in. He could hear the pneumatic rasp of the power tools and the clank of steel coming from the service side and thought they weren’t bad sounds at all.
In the showroom he admired a very hot yellow Mustang, a loaded Flex, and a little Focus that gleamed like a jewel. The fierce showroom lights made them look not only beautiful but somehow eternal. There was a bin of soccer balls right there by the Mustang, their colored panels the same hot yellow as the Mustang, with CASTRO FORD SAYS YES! emblazoned on them. Hood occasionally thought that if his law enforcement career was to end he might sell cars.
He wandered past the sales cubicles and the service hallway and the awards case and found Israel Castro sitting, back turned, at his desk in the last office. He took off his hat and rapped on the door frame. “Coleman Draper.”
Castro swung around. “Who the hell are you?”
“Easy does it. Charlie Hooper. I worked with Draper at LASD.”
Castro looked at him for a long moment. He was balding and powerfully built and his expression was of curious distrust. He wore a short-sleeve shirt and a necktie. “You a cop?”
“Reserve. Like Coleman. We had some of the same friends, on and off the force. He spoke highly of you.”
“I’m reserve, too. Imperial County. Come in.”
Hood sat and Castro called for coffees. When the pretty girl had come and gone, Hood told Castro about meeting Draper back in ’08 when Coleman’s German car repair shop came recommended. They’d talked, found common interests, including cars and law enforcement, and Draper had later introduced him to the captain who ran the LASD Reserves. Hooper joined up for the action and the badge and the contacts. A year later, Coleman was gunned down by a deputy on his own force.
Castro nodded, his doubtful eyes roaming Hood’s face. “What brings you here?”
“Just business. I’m buying and selling.” He gave Castro one of his Charles Hooper cards. “It’s all squeaky clean. No toys for boys. Nothing going south illegally.”
“Do I look like I need a gun?”
“That’s entirely up to you. I’ve been in San Diego for a few months now, moved down from Seattle after L.A. I’m touching base with my contacts, just working the field. As I said, Coleman liked you a lot. He told me about when you guys were young in Jacumba. Amigos Restaurant and all. I always wanted to meet you. Now seemed like the time.”
“You’re not just looking for a deal on a car, are you? Because if you are, you’re in the right place.”
Hood smiled.
“I miss Coleman,” said Castro. “He saved my life and I saved his. Boys. He did things his own special way. Know what I mean?”
“I’d never met anyone like him. I haven’t since.”
“Alright. You want a car, see me and I will make you a deal. And if I need a shooting piece I’ll come see you.”
“I buy, too. If you know legit people with high-end firearms.”
“Why would I?”
“Coleman said you were full of surprises.”
Castro stood. “That’s me. I’ll walk you out. I want you just take one quick look at the new Taurus. Totally redesigned last year-they out-Germaned the Germans. Initial Quality? J. D. Powers went batshit over these things.”
• • •
Later that day, as he wrote up his report in the field office, one of his cell phones rang again. “Hood.”
“This is Lonnie Rovanna.”
“Hello, Lonnie.”
“I saw Mike Finnegan. He was Dr. Stren, from the Su
perior Court in San Diego.”
“When?”
“Two mornings ago. I was on your website months back. I like to check in on, well, unusual. . searchers. Like you. I enjoyed the way you described the changeability of Mike. I believe people can be not what they appear. That they can change. That they can have several names and personalities and professions and lives. I believe this happens all the time. And I saw him. Mike. He has black hair, not red. And big glasses. It took me a couple of days to realize where I’d see him before. It came to me in a dream, in fact. But there’s no doubt he’s the same man as in your pictures. So, I’m doing what you asked. I’m contacting you.”
“Where was he?”
“Here in my house. El Cajon. He came to talk about my firearms being returned. They were taken away without just cause.”
“May I come talk to you?”
“When?”
“I’m leaving Buenavista now. Give me your phone number and address and an hour fifty minutes.”
8
Hood sat on a white resin chair in Rovanna’s living room. The house was old and small and had the dusty burnt breath of the space heater that glowed orange in its corner. There was a layer of dust on everything-on the paperback thrillers grown plump with age and use, and the newspapers and magazines piled everywhere.
Rovanna sat on a slouching plaid couch with a baseball bat leaning against the pad beside him. He allowed Hood to place a digital recorder on the low coffee table between them. Then Rovanna spoke briefly of growing up in Orange County, California, his service overseas, subsequent troubles adjusting back to civilian life, a suicide attempt, and a later assault on two Jehovah’s Witnesses. The police had arrested him and the court had committed him involuntarily to a hospital for evaluation. He was able to keep up the rent because of his disability checks. When he got home, his guns were gone. Lonnie Rovanna seemed straight to the point and factual.
“Iraq?” asked Hood.
“Two rotations. Mahmudiya District, then Anbar Province.”
“Anbar and Hamdinaya for me. Infantry?”
“Five Hundred Second, Hundred and First Airborne.”
“Which battalion?”
Rovanna looked at him levelly, took up the Louisville Slugger, gripped it like a batter, then set it back down. “First. Bravo Company, First Platoon. Triangle of Death. We found PFC Tucker and PV2 Menchaca after the rag heads tortured and beheaded them. They put IEDs in one of their crotch cavities. That was oh-six. Then I deployed again a year later, but after the triangle I was already a wreck.”
Hood nodded. He remembered clearly that 1st Platoon of Bravo Company-Rovanna’s outfit-had suffered terrible casualties in the so-called Triangle of Death. They had been isolated, outnumbered, terrified by videotaped beheadings circulated by the insurgents, and castigated by other B Company platoons. Four of them finally snapped, raping and killing an Iraqi girl and her family. It had been one of the darkest and most reported episodes of that long, dark war. But Hood also knew that Rovanna and his men had not discovered the bodies of the soldiers Tucker and Menchaca-that was 2nd Battalion. This atrocity had been reported in agonizing detail as well. As a part of NCIS, Hood had studied both of the terrible incidents as points of both personal and world history. Now these two events occupied dark compartments in his psyche, as Hood figured they must for many of the enlisted men of the 502nd Infantry. So how could Lonnie Rovanna get them mixed up?
“I was earlier,” Hood said.
“The first deployment was the worst. Misplaced my mind. Still looking for it. Don’t know how I made it through that last rotation. But I got out, got meds and a good doctor. I’ll be fine. I filed my Firearms Rights Restoration application about three weeks ago. Dr. Stren came three days ago to ask questions. He’s assigned by the Superior Court. He had a signed affidavit from a judge. He interviewed me, wrote in a little black notebook, and said he would be writing up his report later that day.”
“What did he ask you? What did you talk about?”
Rovanna went to his kitchen and returned with two large superhero drink containers from Mr. Burger filled with ice and a plastic half-gallon bottle of vodka, new. He sat back down and cracked the seal and unscrewed it and poured half a glass for each of them. They touched the cups and drank. Hood felt the cold liquid burn down. He looked outside to the dirt-speckled Ford Focus in the gravel driveway and the big sycamore looming beyond.
Rovanna talked about Stren’s prying, know-it-all attitude, and his interest in Rovanna’s state of mind and behavior, his curiosity about the radios that Rovanna had locked away in the toolshed out back, and about his medications and alcohol use. He told Hood that his personal physician at the VA, Dr. Webb, had told Stren many private things about him-hearing voices from unplugged radios and demons in the walls, being followed by five men with identical clothing and faces. Rovanna said that Stren predicted his Firearms Rights Restoration application would be denied. Rovanna shrugged, then drank, then looked out the window to the sycamore standing almost leafless in the waning afternoon light. Hood studied him, trying to vet Rovanna’s words and his grossly faulty remembrance of the war and the thousand-yard stare with which he now gazed outside.
After a long minute Hood pressed on. “Why did they take your guns away?”
Rovanna drank again, then told Hood in more detail about his assault on the Jehovah’s Witnesses, who were quite possibly imposters. People were sometimes not what they pretended, he said with a bitter smile, like this Finnegan or Stren man. Rovanna spoke more informatively about his suicide attempt-flinched at the last second-then brushed aside his thick blond hair to reveal the brief scar above his right ear. “So after the Witnesses they put me in the loony bin for two weeks of evaluation. They always take your guns away when that happens.”
“What did you use the guns for?”
“Oh, nothing really. They mainly just stayed under the bed in their cases.”
“You didn’t brandish them to the men posing as Jehovah’s Witnesses?”
“Naw. No time. Slugged one and tackled the other. Neighbors ratted me out.”
“Did you use the bat?”
“I didn’t own a bat until they took my guns.”
“What kind of guns?”
Rovanna declared them, twelve in all, semiauto assault-style rifles, semiauto handguns. He gave makes, model numbers, calibers.
“Describe Dr. Stren in more detail.”
Rovanna addressed the navy suit and white shirt, the matching blue tie and patch, the small black shoes, the old-time gangster hat like Virgil Sollozzo wore in The Godfather.
“You said he wore glasses.”
“Big ones. Greek billionaire glasses. Or that movie director. They made his eyes bug out. He’s little, like I said. He has a deep, clear voice that seemed too big for this room. He wrote with a black pen in a black notebook. And that’s about it. I think I’ve told you everything I can think of about him. Now, Mr. Hood-it’s your turn to tell me what you know.”
Hood declined a refill and told Rovanna how he’d first met Mike Finnegan in the Imperial Mercy Hospital in Buenavista. Mike had been hit by a car while changing a tire out in the desert, and was nearly killed. Broken bones, severe concussion, serious internal damage. He was in a full body cast, head to toe except for one good arm. Mike had been carrying Hood’s address and phone number in his wallet. He claimed to have gotten the information from a mutual friend who worked part-time for Hood’s Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department. He said he sold bath and shower products in L.A.-Mike Finnegan Bath was the name of his company. For a man who had cheated death just a few days earlier, Mike was lucid and humorful and apparently unpained, Hood said. Mike had asked him to find his daughter-she had run away before and Mike was sure she had run away again. He even had a possible address for her but now, well, he wouldn’t be getting out of bed and walking anytime soon. That’s what he said he’d been doing out in the infernal Imperial County desert, Hood told Rovanna-looking for his daughte
r. Lovely, troubled Owens.
“He’s a good actor,” said Rovanna. “You should have seen the way he looked at me. And around this place. Just like a doctor. You can’t tell him anything he doesn’t already know. The only thing he got wrong was his signature. Doctors can’t write, they can only scribble. His signature looked like something an engineer would have-perfect slant and perfect letters.”
Hood poured himself a short second drink. He told Rovanna that Mike had broken out of his body cast and walked out of intensive care a few days later. Checked himself out of the hospital, paid ninety thousand in cash for his treatment.
“Broke out of a full body cast with half his bones broken?”
“Correct. I saw the remains of the cast. He’d ripped it off with his bare hands, dressed himself, and left. Scared the hell out of the nurses. The security camera caught him getting into his daughter’s car.”
“Those five guys who follow me around? I call them the Identical Men. They tried to tell me they were IRS. Like I’m going to fall for that. They’re not IRS. They’re Langley. Pure and simple. Or worse. I think Finnegan could be with them. They all have the same attitude. They try to treat you like a piece of shit. Same with the Jehovah’s Witnesses. Like they know God himself. Like they’re going to introduce you to Him. They’re all part of the same game, Mr. Hood. They’re all out to control our minds. They’ll use radios, they’ll hide inside the walls, they’ll change and morph and lie.”
“A year later Mike was in Central America, posing as an Irish priest named Joe Leftwich,” said Hood. He thought of the utter destruction that Leftwich had wrought upon his friends, the Ozburns.
“No surprise.”
“Where did he sit?”
“Here, where I am. I sat where you are.”
“Did he leave you a card? Or any way to contact him?”
Rovanna blushed and shook his head and looked down at the worn oval rug. “I forgot to ask. He didn’t offer. Sorry. You could just call the court.”
“Did you see his car?”
The Famous and the Dead ch-6 Page 6