The Famous and the Dead

by T. Jefferson Parker

  15

  Hood watched the News at Eleven segment on the malicious defacement of an El Cajon Congregational church by an apparently delusional man with a machine gun.

  “He walked right into the sanctuary with the gun drawn,” said Reverend Steve Bagley to the camera. “I was there doing some electrical work before going home. I asked him to put the gun away and he put it inside his coat and zipped it up. We sat and talked. We tried to pray but he claimed he saw five men enter the church, but there were no men. I crawled under the communion table when he started shooting. The gun was almost completely silent. I didn’t know what he was doing at first, until I saw the plaster and wood flying where he was aiming the gun.”

  The story cut to close-up footage of the bullet-riddled sanctuary door, then the bullet-pocked walls, then a pew chewed by automatic fire. The reporter was a tall blond woman who held a mic in one hand and pointed out the holes with the other.

  “Now, the gunman identified himself to the minister here as Lonnie Rovanna. A check of the phone book here confirms that a man with that name does live in an El Cajon neighborhood within walking distance of Neighborhood Congregational Church. San Diego police have not been able to locate the man and they are urging anyone with information to call nine-one-one or San Diego police at . . .”

  • • •

  One hour and twenty minutes later Hood cruised Rovanna’s street in his Charger. Lonnie had not answered his phone and Hood had left three messages. Overhead a San Diego police chopper circled and dragged its beam of light across the streets and yards and rooftops. He saw a stakeout plainwrap parked in front of the main house and another across the street, two men visible in each car. He slowed but didn’t stop.

  There were still cops and news crews there when Hood walked into the roofed portico of Neighborhood Congregational Church. A detective stopped him at the door and Hood produced his badge. “You guys find him yet?”

  The detective eyed him. “No. ATF. You didn’t sell him the machine gun, did you?”

  Hood smiled. “You’re not half as funny as you look.” He walked past the detective. In the sanctuary Reverend Bagley answered more questions and squinted into a videographer’s floodlight. Hood stood in the middle aisle, halfway to the chancel, and saw the pattern of bullet holes in the main door and another on one wall. The hardwood floor was marked with small circles of white chalk where the brass had been found and photographed and booked as evidence. He knelt and let his gaze wander beneath the pews but the light was poor and he didn’t find what he was looking for.

  When the news crews hustled out, Reverend Bagley sat down with a sigh in one of the pews near the back. As he approached, Hood saw him stifle a yawn. “Long night,” said Hood, sitting down the pew from the reverend.

  “Took an hour for my heart to quit racing.”

  “I guess it’s a semi-happy ending.”

  “I never thought he was going to kill me. Funny. I just never thought that about him. What I thought was, damaged goods.”

  “Young guy? Tall and slender? Blue eyes and thick blond hair?”

  “Yes, yes, and yes. I’ve described him a dozen times tonight. And he still hasn’t changed!” Reverend Bagley studied Hood’s badge in its holder. “I didn’t know the feds had diamonds in their teeth these days.”

  “They’re optional.” Bagley smiled. “Reverend, just one more time. Tell me everything that was said and everything that happened.” Hood set a small digital recorder between them.

  Half an hour later the Reverend Steve Bagley set his hands on his thighs and looked down at his watch. “I believe I’ve done my heavenly and civic duties today.”

  “Tell me again what he said he was planning to do. It’s very important.”

  “He was vague. I can’t remember the exact language, but he said there was something he wanted to do that involved his gun. He said he had many reasons to it. He said it was about taking back the country. Our country. And Lonnie wanted to know if God approved of his plan or not. And I said God does not approve of you turning that gun on any living thing.”

  Hood considered these words and what they might mean. Political, he thought. Take back the country. Everyone was saying that, it seemed. Back from the left. Back from the right. Back from godlessness. Back from religious zealots. But not everyone had a silenced machine gun. A public slaughter? An assassination? With permission from God to open fire?

  “What do you make of it?” asked Bagley.

  “It sounds ominous to me.”

  “Me, too,” said the minister. “The man was seeing things. Using a machine gun on imaginary enemies. Do you know him?”

  “Some. We’ve met.”

  “I can’t believe he lives just a few blocks from here.”

  “Reverend Bagley, I’m going to ask you four last questions.”

  “I am tired.”

  “Tell me once more what the gun sounded like.”

  “It made a rapid chattering sound. But muffled. It sounded toylike.”

  “How many shots did he fire? I realize it’s only a guess.”

  The reverend stood and looked at both walls, then the door. “Fifty. One hundred.”

  “Did he reload?”

  “Not that I saw.”

  Hood wrote down the numbers, then put his pen and pad back in his pocket. “Where do you turn on the lights for this sanctuary?”

  “There are switches up there, by the sacristy door, and on the other side of the double doors, back in the narthex. I need to lock up now, Agent Hood.”

  “I want to turn the lights up high for just a minute or two.”

  “I’ll do that while I lock up.”

  Bagley went through the bullet-pocked double doors and a moment later the lights on the sanctuary came on strong. The reverend came back in and watched him. Hood slowly walked Rovanna’s route, as the reverend had described it. He stopped at the little circles of chalk on the floor and he looked under the pews again. Then he walked all the way around the pews to the other side, where Rovanna had fired the second time. At these circles Hood knelt and put his face low and looked along the plane of floor. He stood and looked across the pews to the first shooting station. He squatted again and let his vision roam the flat horizon of the hardwood floor, studded with pew feet bolted to the floor. “That’s where he cut through,” called Bagley. “That’s about right. I was watching at that point.” Finally Hood’s gaze landed on the shiny brass object of his desire, having rolled, as casings sometimes do, surprisingly far from where the cartridge was fired. A moment later he had it on the end of his pen—.32-caliber ACP—a relatively small center-fire load, common and affordable. Just as he had feared. He let it slide into his coat pocket. “Thank you, Reverend.”

  “Good night, Agent Hood. I hope you find him. Soon.”

  • • •

  Hood backtracked to Rovanna’s neighborhood and parked across from the main house. The surveillance cars were still in place and Hood could see the outlines of the lawmen inside. The police helo was still in the sky. He dialed Rovanna’s number again and got the recorded message.

  Tapping his phone lightly on the steering wheel, Hood waited and wondered if Lonnie Rovanna had used a Love 32 for his rampage. Reverend Bagley’s description certainly fit the Love 32, and it was chambered for the .32-caliber ACP cartridge. If so, where had he gotten it? Hood pondered the confluence of Rovanna’s Love 32—if that is what he had used on Neighborhood Congregational—and Rovanna’s visitation a week earlier by Mike Finnegan posing as a doctor with the power to return Rovanna’s confiscated guns.

  Hood took out his voice recorder and found the part he wanted to hear again. “He said it was about taking back the country. Our country. And Lonnie wanted to know if God approved of his plan or not. And I said God does not approve of you turning that gun on any living thing.”

  He set the recorder on the seat and rolled down the window when one of the detectives walked up. Hood held out his badge holder and used it to push aside t
he flashlight aimed into his eyes. “Easy, Detective.” With the light out of his face Hood saw that the cop was tall and wore an SDPD Windbreaker and his shield on a lanyard: BENSON.

  “Hey, a real G-man.”

  “No Rovanna?”

  “I don’t see him. Do you? Let me guess—you’re after his silenced machine pistol.”

  “Good guess.”

  “Do you know him?”

  “I interviewed him two days ago. Part of an ongoing investigation. Do you?”

  “Local color. The state hospital cut him loose a few years back, some new program. He was quiet for a while, then he roughed up some Jehovah’s Witnesses who knocked on his door. We took away a dozen guns. Apparently we missed one. Somehow he’d flown through the background checks with flying colors. Now he walks around with a baseball bat. We told him, one bit of trouble and the bat goes, too. He’s actually a nice guy until something sets him off. Must have been a doozy, based on the what he did to the church. The reverend was lucky he didn’t catch a bullet.”

  “His car is gone. How long did it take your officers to get here?”

  “Not long once they talked to the minister and found out it was Rovanna. By then, though, no man and no car. How come ATF is interested in him?”

  “Connections to some bad actors.”

  “We don’t see silenced machine pistols every day.”

  “It amazes me what people can get their hands on,” said Hood. “And, Benson, don’t make some dumbass comment about letting guns walk.”

  The detective shrugged and looked back at his unmarked car. “Maybe three’s a crowd here, Agent Hood.”

  “Yeah. Good luck.”

  “You got a card? I’ll give a courtesy call on this if you want. I got an ex-brother-in-law with ATF. You guys earn your money.”

  Hood wrote his cell numbers on the back of an ATF card and handed it to the detective, who gave Hood one of his cards in return.

  16

  The black town car glided to a stop in front of Bradley Jones’s Valley Center ranch house, the dogs closing around it, barking but never touching the car. It was two days later, just before noon, and the sun hung in a blanched, cold pre-storm sky. Bradley sat at the long picnic bench on the covered deck. He had worked his four tens for the week and now had three days to himself. The call had come to his cell this morning just before sunrise: Chief Miranda Dez would be there at noon. The meeting would take one hour. Wonderful, he thought. She had taken the bait. Either that or she’d bring some big deputies and arrest him.

  A large uniformed deputy held open her door and Dez stepped onto the drive, straightened, and glanced up at him through her aviator sunglasses. She was forty, fit, and handsome, and reminded Bradley somewhat of his mother, Suzanne. It was more her attitude than appearance. She turned slowly, looking around the property. Her black hair was pulled back in a taut French roll. She wore a tailored tan winter-weight uniform with a necktie rather than the patrol-ready open-collared blouse and T. Her badge was polished, her chief’s collar stars were bright, and her tie clasp and nameplate were perfectly horizontal in relation to the necktie.

  She strode into the thicket of dogs without acknowledging them. They sprang and skulked out of her way and she climbed the steps to the porch. She carried a laptop in a black leather case. Bradley stood and pulled out the picnic bench opposite his and she set the computer on the table and sat.

  “Where did you ever get the money to afford all this?”

  “My mother and some good investments.”

  “You wouldn’t think a schoolteacher and part-time car thief would be worth millions.”

  “She was smart.”

  “Smart enough to get herself shot and killed? Jim Warren at CID has other explanations for your . . . comfortable lifestyle.”

  “My mother’s life is a past thing, Chief Dez. Jim Warren is a good old man with bad ideas. I hope you didn’t come here to talk about them. I hope you’re here to talk about our futures.”

  “Our futures. Good. But can you find me a cup of coffee here in the present?” She nodded down to the deputy, who was still standing beside the town car. Before going inside, Bradley watched him get in and drive to the far side of the parking area, which was shaded by an enormous oak tree and had a nice view of the pond.

  He set two mugs of coffee and a quart of milk on the rough, old picnic table. Dez already had her laptop up and booted and she positioned the machine so they both could see the screen.

  “First of all, Deputy Jones, where did you get this stuff?”

  “It was shot on location in the states of Baja California, Campeche, and Yucatán, Mexico, four months ago.”

  “By whom?”

  “Mexican law enforcers. The real ones, not the corrupt ones. There were several shooters. I can’t reveal my sources until later. The point is, the footage and images are authentic and untouched by editors or editing programs.”

  “Tell me what I’m looking at.” She slid the mouse across to Bradley

  “This is Charlie Hood. He’s one of our deputies, on loan to ATF. A very distant acquaintance of mine.”

  “He was involved with your mother.”

  “Here he’s involved with a crooked Tijuana cop named Rescendez. You can see the Jai A’lai Palace in the background. Hood doesn’t know there’s another TJ lawman working a cell phone camera from one of their police cars.”

  “What are the other cops looking at?”

  “This.” Bradley clicked the mouse and a picture of a duffel bag filled the screen. It was zipped open and there were bricks of plastic-wrapped cash inside. One of the bricks had been opened to reveal the hundred-dollar bills.

  “The TJ cops are on the payroll of the Gulf Cartel,” said Bradley. “The money is drug profits, collected in the United States. Hood drove it south. Remember, this was a few days before Benjamin Armenta was killed in the shootout.”

  “Armenta’s money.”

  “Correct. Now, here’s Hood in Juárez. The guy on his right is Valente Luna and the fat guy is Julio Santo. Both Ciudad Juárez cops, both button men for Armenta.” He clicked the mouse and the screen went to video. Like most of the video and stills on this memory stick, this clip had been shot from fairly far away by Mike, but he had used good equipment. Hood and his friends looked like small players on a small stage and Bradley felt Zeus-like looking down on mortal Charlie Hood. “Now, here they are leaving Reynosa.”

  “Where’s Santo?”

  “Killed in a shootout about five hours previous.”

  “Why no pictures of that?”

  “I have no idea. I was not the cameraman. My informants tell me that Carlos Herredia’s people found out about Hood and the money. Unfortunately, they sent mere children to take it away, and Hood and Luna killed all five of them.”

  Dez took off her sunglasses and set them on the table. “How could Hood have slipped off leash like this?” she asked.

  “When he attached himself to the feds, it gave him a chance to do what he wanted. Which, apparently, was to go private and upriver.”

  “Unreal.”

  “Real.”

  “How much money is he carrying?”

  “Beats me,” Bradley said with a smile. “They said a million but I wouldn’t know.”

  Bradley clicked forward through a series of still photos taken at some distance: Hood and a boy walking toward a city during high wind and rain; a shelter in a small Mexican town, where the boy hugs a woman; Hood and Luna waiting on a rooftop while a helicopter comes down from a troubled black sky. “This is the village of Tuxpan, just after Hurricane Ivana went through. Hood got swept away and came up with the boy. Next up, Mérida. See, he’s heading south still, toward Armenta.”

  The next video showed Hood on a busy street, buying from vendors, looking around, apparently nervous. The palms swayed with post-Ivana wind, and puddles of standing water pocked the old colonial streets. “Luna is at the hotel with the money,” said Bradley. “They took shifts guarding it. Now
, these next shots are of a camp in Yucatán, a few miles from Benjamin Armenta’s castle.”

  “That’s where the Mexican Army stormed in and killed him.”

  “Not exactly. The men you will see next are soldiers of the North Baja Cartel—far, far from home. With orders to take the castle and murder Armenta. Watch.”

  The camp wasn’t much more than a crude opening in a thick jungle. As the video rolled, Bradley saw the first sunlight coming down through the trees, and the dirty, exhausted faces of the men. They cursed at the cameraman in Spanish, gestured. The camera caught the SUVs, partially hidden from above, under cut fronds and branches. Then the camera panned left, where at a distance Charlie Hood and Valente Luna could be seen, trudging after a young man along a trail toward the camp.

  “Hood’s got a shotgun over his shoulder and no money,” said Dez, looking at Bradley.

  Mom’s eyes, he thought. Not how they look but how they see.

  “He was never going to give it to Armenta in the first place. Neither was Luna.”

  “Then where is it?”

  “At the hotel in Mérida.”

  “So there’s been a change of plans.”

  “I’d say so.”

  The next video was shot from an airplane, its engine working away with a high-pitched whine. There was a bounce to the picture and its subject was some distance away. Slowly it came into view, a multistoried building and compound surrounded by dense jungle.

  “Armenta’s fortress?” asked Dez.

  “For another minute or two.”

  The airplane overran the compound and a moment later it had turned around to approach again. Several men, each carrying a compact pistol with a sound suppressor, emerged from the green and advanced across a road toward the structure. “They’re sneaking in,” said Dez. “In broad daylight. Because their weapons are silenced.” The camera zoomed and Charlie Hood grew larger as he ran from the jungle. The shotgun was strapped over his shoulder. When a man ran into a courtyard and leveled an assault rifle at him, Hood blew him down with a burst from the silenced pistol.