The Famous and the Dead

by T. Jefferson Parker

  Half an hour later he drove around to the front and parked again in one of the guest spaces. Israel’s Flex wasn’t there. Hood wandered through the showroom, coffee in hand, admiring the new cars, then walked past the financing cubicles and past the just-closing service center. He found a restroom, then took the EMPLOYEES ONLY door that let him into a hallway that led to the parts and used-car offices and the new-car intake area.

  Hood walked across the compound, toward the spray of light coming from the intake bay. He came through the rolling door and nodded at each of the men, then approached the Explorer and stopped. The older of the two men slung a shop rag over his shoulder and walked to a workbench and turned off the radio. The other, young enough to be his son, continued peeling the film off the Taurus.

  “What I can help you?” asked the older man. His hair was curly and gray and his face etched by the sun.

  “I’m interested in this Explorer.”

  “You talk to sales. We are not sales.”

  “Does it have the same gas-guzzling six cylinder as the old one?”

  “No. Is V-eight. Now you go to sales. They make you a very good deal.”

  Hood walked around the car, frowning, fingers to his chin. When he had completed his circumnavigation the older man was still there, his polish rag still over his shoulder. Hood nodded and turned his attention to the two Lincoln MKZs and two Ford Tauruses that he’d seen delivered here a few nights ago.

  He pointed. “Better mileage if I got one of those.”

  “You decide, then go to sales.” The old man shrugged, then took his shop rag in hand and turned the radio back on and returned to the Taurus. Hood listened to the banda ballad, heavy on the accordion and tuba. He sipped his coffee and strolled closer to the MKZs and Tauruses. To him they looked showroom-ready, right down to the fresh tire black and the MSRP and Monroney labels. He threw open a driver’s side door and leaned in. The smell was terrific. He pulled the trunk and hood latches and had a look at the engine first. It was amazing how densely packed the compartment was. Around back he lifted the trunk lid and thought of Clint Wampler’s finger, and noted that the spare was not in its well but rather lying out in the open. The cover was loose and out of place. He pulled it up out of curiosity and saw the empty declivity where the spare would sit and the big bolt and plastic nut to hold it fast. He saw the dusting of off-white powder in the well, and he glanced over at the hardworking men before running his finger through it, then touching it to his tongue. The dust was cool and bright and a moment later the tip of his tongue was numb. I’ll be damned, thought Hood.

  He looked through the other MKZ and the two remaining Tauruses and he found another dusting of cocaine in one of the trunks, this time in a small tool compartment. He slammed the trunk lid authoritatively. He used the bathroom and strolled back through the bay. He found the delivery whiteboard propped on a long table between a water dispenser and a very stained coffeemaker. He saw that the MKZ/Taurus shipment of days past had originated at the Hermosillo Ford Plant in Mexico. He wondered if that was where they loaded in the magic powder, or if the new Hermosillo cars made another stop before Castro Ford. The next Hermosillo delivery was set eight days away at nine thirty A.M., a Saturday.

  Hood returned to the Explorer, wrote down the VIN in his notebook. “I really want this car,” he told the older man.

  “Then you go to sales.”

  “I might need financing.”

  “Go to sales and they give you it.”

  “Maybe I need to think about it. The GMC Yukon gets better mileage.”

  The man shook his head and turned his back to Hood and went back to his job.

  • • •

  Hood walked back through the dealership building to the showroom and paused again to check out the new Mustang. Over invoice but sweet. He stopped to talk to one of the salesmen about the Explorer back in the intake building, explaining how Consumer Reports had said buyers could sometimes save a few dollars by buying a vehicle that hadn’t been totally prepped yet. The salesman offered to bring it around for a drive, but Hood said he was in a hurry. He drove away, then circled back a mile down and parked behind the dealership again, with a view of the new-car intake yard. The rolling doors were still open, and when he rolled down his window, he could hear the radio sounds lilting across the desert toward him.

  He reclined his seat slightly and rested his head and watched. He called his mother, which he often did during surveillance. She was angry at the staff of her husband’s board-and-care there in Bakersfield because they’d stopped trying to give him solid food of any kind and Douglas was “wasting away.” Hood’s father had been struck hard by Alzheimer’s five years back. It seemed as if he’d live on forever like that, sound of body but stripped of mind, until the stroke. Since then, just a downward slide—partial paralysis, atrophy, cardiopulmonary decline, infection. He recognized his wife and son only occasionally and, when he did, he was venomous in his complaints about the care they were taking of him. He loathed and feared the staff people, hated the food. Hood let his mother vent and tried to be comforting. He felt bad for her because she had loved her husband and pledged to endure with him in sickness and health, and that pledge was irrevocable. Three of Hood’s several siblings still lived in Bakersfield, so at least she got some help, and Douglas got some company. Hood dreaded his visits, felt numbed by the dying, ghostlike oldsters and the knowledge that his turn for this would likely come. And his dread shamed him because the furious heap of skin and bone upon the bed before him, growing lighter by the week, was his father, who had been a funny and generous and gentle man, and Hood had loved him.

  Hood saw the young man come to one of the rolling doors and grab the rope and pull it down. Across the desert and over the music he heard the metallic clanking and one rectangle of light was replaced by darkness. He told his mother about Buenavista’s new Walmart and the surprisingly cold and wet winter they were having, and the unusual amount of seismic activity in Imperial Valley, but said nothing about world current events. She read no papers and watched no news and had little interest in the world outside her husband’s care, the garden in her backyard, and her two now-aging Chihuahuas. Hood warbled on about Beth, working hard but saving lives at the ER, and how he cooked for her when she came home and they traded tales of the day, how it was tough to figure out a good meal when you only knew how to cook a few things, but really the secret was to buy good ingredients and not overcook them. He watched the big man pull down the second rolling door. “I love you, Mom. I’ll be up soon to see you and we’ll visit Dad.”

  “When?”

  “I’ll be tied up this weekend. Maybe next.”

  “I have you down for next. I’ll make sure your room is clean. Beth can have Mary’s old room. I got a list of things I need for you to do.”

  “Terrific. I love you. Good night, Mom.”

  The young man pulled down the third door and the last rectangle of light was gone. Hood sat awhile longer, watching and thinking, feeling sadness for the world and the people in it.

  14

  Rovanna stood outside Neighborhood Congregational and read the weekly message off the marquee: HE KNOCKS BUT WE MUST OPEN. He followed the cement walkway to the front door of the church, which was set deep within a roofed portico. It was evening and already dark and through the wheel window above the transom he could see the colored spokes of light coming from within the church. He turned and scanned the street behind him. The traffic was sparse. An older woman stopped beneath a streetlight so her dog could do his business. Rovanna drew the Love 32 from his Windbreaker and knocked on the door of the church with the sound suppressor. He waited, then tapped again.

  He turned the knob and found the door unlocked and pushed it open. He backed flush against the wall and saw the dog woman watching him. She stared a moment, then yanked the leash and the dog sprang out of its squat after her. Rovanna saw that the woman ran stiff-legged and that her shoes had thick, low heels. A long moment later he po
inted the machine pistol up, then swung himself inside. The door shut behind him. The narthex was poorly lit but he could make out the worship program holders on the walls and the coatracks and the line of yellow light between the push-handled double doors. He passed through and stood inside the sanctuary, saw the pews waiting, the chancel with its simple railing, the altar overseen by a wooden cross that was lit by hidden spotlights in the ceiling above.

  “Hello. I’m Lonnie Rovanna. Is anyone here?” He heard the echo of his voice and thought the choir must sound good here. He heard the muted squeak of his sneakers as he walked the polished hardwood aisle toward the front of the sanctuary. He stopped where the pews began. “Is anyone here?”

  He heard a thump from somewhere behind the pulpit, where the choir would sit, and a man stood up and looked at him. He was young and stocky and dark-haired, dressed in jeans and a short-sleeve white shirt. He wore tiny reading glasses that sat far down his nose and he held a screwdriver in one hand. “Yes. Good evening. Can I help you?”

  “I’ve come to . . . ask a question.”

  “Oh? Well, I’m trying to get this outlet rewired before tomorrow, but I’d be happy to take a break and talk. I’m Steve Bagley, one of the ministers here. Lonnie, did you say?”

  “Yes.”

  The minister set the screwdriver on the communion table, slipped the readers into his shirt pocket and replaced them with a full-size pair of eyeglasses. He raised his head a little for a better look at Rovanna. “Oh, Lonnie, what is that you have in your hand?”

  Rovanna looked at the machine pistol. “This?”

  “Put it down. Or away. Is it real? Why is there a silencer on it?”

  “Don’t be alarmed. It’s only for self-protection. There are some very bad men who want to do bad things to me. Five of them, to be exact.”

  “Put the gun away. It is not necessary or welcome here.”

  Rovanna opened his Windbreaker, slid the Love 32 between his belt and his jeans, then snapped the coat up again He looked down at the conspicuous protrusion of the handle and the big curved magazine against his jacket.

  “Are the police after you?”

  “No, sir. I have committed no crime.”

  “This is very unusual.”

  “Trust me,” said Rovanna. In the good light from above he saw the changes of emotion playing across the minister’s face. The last one to register was a skeptical optimism.

  “Okay, please sit,” said Bagley, extending his hand toward the pews.

  Rovanna sat in the front row, first bench to the left of the aisle. The minister sat on the first of two landings that separated the sanctuary from the chancel. He rested his elbows on his knees and the light from above reflected off his glasses and Rovanna thought of Stren.

  “I’d like to know why God won’t answer me,” said Rovanna.

  “Perhaps he has.”

  “I’ve prayed almost every day for my whole life. Quietly, mostly to myself, but sometimes out loud. Starting when I was a boy. Sometimes in church and sometimes just wherever I happened to be. I always prayed for a good job and a good woman and to be a good man and to do God’s will and for peace on earth and for peace in my own mind. And I haven’t heard one peep back. I don’t have any job at all now, and I’m insane, and I’m twenty-nine years old. I haven’t been with a woman in four years and before that it was three. A good man? I don’t feel that I am a good man. I served my country, honorably, in Iraq, but does this make me good? I killed men I didn’t know. I have no idea what God’s will might be, unless it’s the things that happen every day right in front of me, but when I look at those things I don’t see anything close to peace on earth. What I pray for the hardest, and maybe this is selfish, but it’s for peace in my own mind because my mind has always been a mess. Filled with voices and visions and ideas and most of them are not happy or good. But God never sent me any peace of mind. He just sent more voices and visions so far as I can tell. Now, I got this thing I want to do. It involves this gun. There are plenty of reasons to do it. It has to do with taking back the country. Our country. And I want to know if God wants me to do it or not.”

  “I can assure you that God doesn’t want you to use that gun on any living thing.”

  “Why won’t he tell me that himself?”

  “Lonnie, the Lord doesn’t always answer directly. And he doesn’t always give us the answers we want to hear. What the Lord offers is steadfast love. This never wavers. It is constant and manifest in all the things around us, in every living thing and things not living. It is our duty on earth to listen, and to hear God. He speaks in a voice that is not always a voice we understand.”

  “I’ve had terrible dreams lately.”

  “Satan can send dreams as well as the Lord.”

  “The Bible says, ‘To he who has much, much will be given. And to him who has little even that shall be taken away.’”

  “This a statement of faith, not of material things.”

  “It’s an accurate statement of the way God has treated me in this life.”

  Rovanna heard the double door open behind him and he turned and looked the length of the sanctuary. A young man in a dark brown suit walked in and nodded, then sat in the back row, followed by another young man—same suit, shirt and tie, same face. Rovanna felt his heart break into a gallop and he wiped his eyes with both hands but the men remained.

  “Are you alright?” asked Reverend Bagley.

  “Don’t worry. I’ve seen them before.”

  “Who?”

  “The men in the back row. There are five of them and they are identical.”

  “Are they there right now?”

  “They follow me for coffee some mornings. They sit on my patio furniture in the backyard when the weather is good. They crowd into my living room when it’s cold out because I have a space heater. But you know what? They never used to come around when I had my guns. They only come out when they think I’m not armed.” Rovanna smiled conspiratorially and tapped the gun butt through his coat.

  “Would you be willing to see a doctor?”

  Rovanna glanced at the men in back—all five were now seated in the ultimate row. Then he turned to the minister and whispered, “I have doctors. Too many. They prescribe medicines that do nothing but cloud my mind even worse than it’s already clouded.”

  “You need more help than I can give you.”

  “I came here to speak to God, not you. You can go back to fixing the outlet if you want.”

  “I want to pray with you, Lonnie.”

  Rovanna looked at the men, then at the minister. He gestured toward the door beyond Bagley, at the back of the chancel. “Does that lead outside?”

  “To the sacristy first. Then, yes, there’s a door to the courtyard and the banquet hall and classrooms. Close your eyes. Let us pray together. Our Father who art in heaven, hear the prayer of Lonnie Rovanna, and grant him the sound of your blessed voice and the comfort of your love . . .”

  Rovanna listened and closed his eyes and ran down a dark path between dark trees under a black sky suddenly bursting with fireworks of many colors, some huge and some very small, but all of them were flowers made of sparks. The sky writhed in color. Then the sparks fell into the shapes of faces and these began to turn slowly within the wheel of heaven and they looked down on Rovanna but he could see by their expressions that these faces were preoccupied with the cares of giants because in fact they were giants, so they could not see him and they did not know he was here . . . and grant to Lonnie Rovanna some of the great peace only you, in your forgiveness, can give . . .

  Rovanna heard the Identical Men moving behind him and he stood and opened his eyes to see three of them coming up the center aisle toward him and the other two splitting off for the far sides and every one of them brandishing a gleaming orbitoclast. He leapt forward and pushed Reverend Bagley to the floor of the chancel, then dragged him by his shirt collar to the communion table and told him to stay down. He turned, unsnapping his coat a
nd pulling the Love 32. He fired a short near-silent burst into the closest man in the center aisle, blowing his feet out from under him and landing him on his back. Rovanna heard his sharp cry and the wallop of his body hitting but no more than a muted tapping sound from his gun, followed by the twinkling bounce of the empties on the floor. The Identical Men moved fast. He found the next one over his front sight and fired three quick single shots, which sent him sprawling back into the fourth row pew, kicking a hymnal and a batch of tithe envelopes into the air. The third center-aisle man tried to stop but his shoes slipped on the worn wooden floor and he slid toward Rovanna with the orbitoclast catching the light and Rovanna put him down with a rattling ten-shot fusillade.

  Rovanna looked down at the writhing Identical Man, then turned to the minister, who stared up at him wide-eyed from under the communion table. The Reverend Bagley aimed a thumb back toward the door to the sacristy. “Don’t shoot, Lonnie. I’m going for that door!”

  “I have you covered!” The words were scarcely out before the minister jumped to his feet and ran through the door and slammed it behind him. Rovanna turned on the last two men. They had stopped and seemed uncertain what to do. Rovanna felt his soldier’s heart take over and was not one bit uncertain what to do, charging the man on his left, who was closest, taking him down with a short burst, then cutting through the row of pews toward the last Identical Man who had turned and fled for the exit. He had just gotten his hands onto the door bar when Rovanna cut him down. He slumped and Rovanna saw the tight pattern of .32-caliber ACP rounds left in the white door among the sloppy red halos. Silence fell and Rovanna heard nothing but the beating of his heart in his ears and the short rapid draw of his breath. Speak to me speak to me speak to me. Help us help us help us. He closed his eyes and listened to the slow deceleration of his heart and the gradual settling of his breathing, but he did not hear what he had come to hear. There was no voice from God, not even a whisper, only the silence of his great indifference, followed by the whine of a distant siren.