Iron River (27 page)

“You’re getting exasperated. The same as Reyes.”

“How did you hear it?”

“He told me weeks ago, Charlie!”

“Where? Why?”

“I was right there in the Viper Room. Owens was with me. It was the night the band changed its name to Erin and the Inmates. I was very much minding my own business. But Bradley Jones is immensely vain and immensely proud of Erin McKenna. He told me everything—the date, the location, the early Californio fiesta theme. I couldn’t shut the boy up.”

Hood drank some of the wine.

“Charlie, I’ll let you in on a little secret: I can’t hold my liquor. Nor can I resist it. May I?”

Mike slowly extended the cup, and Hood refilled it and handed it back. Finnegan took a long sip, then let go of the straw and sighed. “In Napa we grew a grape called carignane. It was a filler grape, like merlot, and we mixed it with the big cabs and petite syrah and some zinfandels. A very strong, very opinionated varietal. Personally I loved it better than all of them. I wanted to bottle and sell it. But commercial wine making is driven by marketing, and the marketers could never even pronounce carignane, let alone sell a bottle of it to a blockhead in a supermarket. So merlot won out. Merlot got to be the new star. Largely because the name is easy to pronounce and fun to say. It’s got that subversive little
t
at the end, silent and suggestive and a little French. But as a grape, it’s gutless next to my beloved carignane.”

“You never lived on a vineyard in Napa, Mike. You made it all up. Even Owens stopped believing that story years ago.”

Mike stared at Hood for a long beat. In his eyes Hood saw broad contemplation but of past or future or of this moment he couldn’t guess.

“True, to a point,” said Mike. “But it’s a good memory, made up or not. I need all of those I can get. Don’t you?”

Mike sipped again. Hood saw a sparkle in his eyes now, the joy of getting caught in a lie and truly not caring.

“Tell me another story,” said Hood.

“Once there were two powerful brothers who lived hidden in a forest. From there, they and their loyal helpers watched over a village. No one in the village ever saw them, but the brothers and their helpers made the sun rise each day and the rain fall and they caused every seed to grow or not grow. The brothers loved the village and every person and animal and plant and every living thing in it.

“These brothers were not equal in their powers. The stronger was not the smarter, and the smarter was not the stronger. The stronger called himself the King, and the smarter called himself the Prince. They argued constantly about the best way to guide and watch over the village. The King believed that his rules should be revealed and followed, while the Prince believed that the villagers should be free to discover and be true to their own nature. One day they fought, and the King drove the Prince and all of his followers out of the forest and into the desert beyond.

“Now the strong King from the forest revealed his rules to the village, and many believed and followed. Unbelievers were tortured and slain though the King did not approve this. So the smart Prince from the desert sent his followers into the village, disguised as citizens. These helpers tried to sway the villagers away from the King, using words and song and dance and art of every kind. Many men and women came to believe what the Prince’s helpers said—that the King was nothing but a cruel old fool and that men were noble enough to make their own good rules. And the King, seeing that his might alone was not enough to rule the village, likewise sent his helpers disguised as citizens to persuade with words and song and dance and art of every kind.

“And the village became a city, and the city became a state, and the state covered the earth.

“So life on this earth became a contest between the King and the Prince, each unseen but each represented by his helpers. They compete for the hearts and minds of humankind. They are envious of humankind. Neither King nor Prince is powerful enough to defeat the other absolutely. This, Deputy Hood, is a way to understand what you see around you and what you do not see.”

Hood sipped his wine. “Stories are lies.”

“Through which we see the truth.”

“It’s a Christian parable.”

“Christ is neither mentioned nor implied.”

“It reminds me of some Native American myths.”

“A very insightful people. Doomed by trust, disease, and alcohol.”

“I suppose there’s more you want to tell me.”

“Surely you’re curious, Charlie.”

Hood had the thought that he could indulge Mike Finnegan’s fantasies in exchange for whatever truth Mike might offer about himself, and about Jimmy Holdstock. “Which are you, Mike, the King’s helper or the Prince’s?”

Finnegan chuckled, raised the cup again, drank, and lowered it to his belly. “Why not a simple villager?”

“I’m appealing to your arrogance so you’ll tell me who you are and what you know about Jimmy.”

“Charlie, I can’t tell you who I am. Nondisclosure agreements, you know. Most organizations have them. But I can tell you what I
do
.”

Hood waited, sipped the wine. “What do you do?”

“First you have to understand that I’m part of a huge bureaucracy. There are high levels and middle levels and then just basic workers. I’m a journeyman, a midlevel pro. Mainly we influence. Mostly we just talk. We certainly listen, very closely, I might add. We encourage. We dissuade. We cajole. We will at times frighten. We arrange meetings between key villagers without their knowing it. But we have no huge powers. We can do dream placements, which I told you about earlier, which are risky because they are unpredictable. We can cause or cure minor illnesses—colds and headaches and some allergies. Our senses are keener than those of most villagers, so it appears that we are prescient but we are not. We can read a villager’s thoughts so long as those thoughts are clear and strong and we are physically close to the person. For example, if I am within eight feet of someone, I can hear what they think and see what they see. Sometimes very clearly. It’s like hearing a radio or looking at a video. There is much clutter to sort through, I will tell you; on a crowded street, for instance, one thought intrudes upon others just like conversations going on at once. That’s why we live and work only in our assigned geographical divisions—because often we need physical proximity with our contacts. We develop relationships with some villagers, though far fewer than you might think. We can’t waste our time with the petty, the small-minded, the insane. We can easily use them when we need them, but they have no lasting value. We seek relationships with those of ambition and force and monstrous desire. We like to begin with children. Our relationships can become what we call partnerships. These partners come to accept who we are and what we stand for. My division, of course, is California. I got lucky, because I really love California—its geography and history and its various peoples. I inherited Holly-wood and all its glorious powers of persuasion and suggestion. See, our only real power is our influence over the villagers. Villagers run the village. Their will is free. Nothing is fated nor preordained. No one is possessed. Men and women are in most ways much stronger than we will ever be, much more capable of tremendous good and tremendous evil. You are our work.”

Hood felt the same odd and indescribable sensation that he had felt when he saw the escaped tiger walking the street in Bakersfield. It was the feeling of being unprepared for this experience, ignorant and surprised and awed.

“We’re six feet apart, Mike. I’ll think a clear thought and you can tell me what it is.”

“I don’t do parlor tricks. More wine?”

“It’s gone.”

“For the best. I’ve already talked too much.”

Hood took Finnegan’s empty cup and poured some wine into it from his own. “Do you go to hell when you die?”

“We don’t die. We heal. It’s the one small advantage we have over humankind. There is no hell.”

“So you saw Tiburcio hang. Personally. You were there.”

“Oh, yes. Half a century before that, I was helping Father Serra teach agriculture to the Cahuillas.
Trying
to teach them, I should say. The missions were important to both the King and the Prince because faith is amplified by numbers, but it is also very easy to manipulate and to corrupt. But you know this. I took part in Fremont’s Bear Flag Rebellion, though, to be honest, I was little more than a spectator. Two years later Mexico gave up Alta California and the fun really started. I was at Sutter’s Mill a week after gold was discovered. I rode with Harry Love and the California Rangers and was there at the shoot-out at Cantua Creek. Love never killed or beheaded Murrieta. The severed head that Bradley now possesses belonged to a bandit named Chappo. I knew Bradley’s mother, Allison Murrieta, fairly well. What a woman. She had courage and beauty and such . . . appetites. In fact, I introduced her to the man who first seduced her, Bradley’s father. Nature took its course from there, as it usually does. She shot him in a bit of a rage, though not fatally. I can relate to that, the being-shot part. I’ve kept an eye on Bradley over the years, from a distance. When I introduced myself to him in the Viper Room that night, he had no idea I’d helped his parents meet. But Allison lacked vision. She was a solo artist, not a team player. I know her mother, too, who has vision but no courage and no talent. Their progenitor Joaquin, El Famoso, was blond-haired and gray eyed, nothing like swarthy Chappo. I intercepted Earp late in his days in San Diego, as I did Frank James in L.A. Ditto Bugsy, Dragna, Mickey, Bompisiero, all the gangsters a few years after Frank. Later, Sirhan Sirhan, Manson, I knew them all, some well, some not. Small, selfish criminals don’t interest us because they’re of minimal utility and they’re everywhere. I’m not allowed to go gallivanting across the nation in search of partnerships. I have to look for them nearby. I’ve never been east of Utah. I mention these individuals because they have become known. They were the apparent stars. But the overwhelming majority of my partners you, Charlie, have never heard of. The men and women who make the history books are simply the ones who manage to commit the final act, stumble across the finish line. Unseen machinations both large and small are the stage on which they act. Making history is like painting the inside of a house—it’s mostly prep work.”

“You’re with the Prince.”

“Isn’t it
interesting
that you’re not quite sure?”

“Then what’s your goal?”

“Annihilation. The annihilation of the King’s law and all his followers.”

“You just made a hash of that nondisclosure agreement, Mike.”

“It was the wine.”

“No, it wasn’t. So why? If you’re who you say you are now, why tell me all this?”

Finnegan was quiet for a long moment. “First, because I know you won’t believe me. I’m completely safe with you. I’ve told the truth to law enforcement officers before, but you refuse to listen and hear. Which is half the reason we’re able to get anything at all accomplished—people in general just will not believe. Second, I tell you all this because you are just the kind of person I would love to form a relationship, then a partnership, with. It likely wouldn’t happen—you’re much too strong-willed and law-abiding for the likes of me. Unless, of course, there was something that you wanted very, very badly . . . something I could help you with.”

Hood thought for a moment. “What about the King’s helpers? Are they like you?”

“By and large. We follow the same rules. They outnumber us badly. They are not terrifically intelligent, more like frat boys in a way. We have opposing goals, of course. We don’t mix. To us, the King’s men and women smell bad. And we smell bad to them. It’s an evolutionary thing, rather doggish actually. I can ID one of Bigfoot’s helpers just by smell alone from ten, maybe fifteen feet away.”

“Bigfoot?”

“We make up other nicknames for the King because we don’t enjoy saying his true name, and to bring some sense of humor to things—Bigfoot is popular now. The Fist, Big Bore, the Fat Lady. These days, Bigfoot’s helpers are calling the Prince the Queen, or the Shitbird, or Slimebucket, things like that. Some of those names they got from you in law enforcement. We all love TV and crime novels. You’ll hear some pretty colorful language fly when we get to drinking.”

“Like a bar full of you?”

“Exactly. We socialize some, trade information, mostly just get sloshed and complain about the hours and the bosses. I have my sympathies for the workingman and -woman, I can tell you.”

“I’d like to sit in on one of those,” said Hood.

“Those are private, Charlie,” Mike said quietly.

“What did you do while the Zetas stormed in here?”

“What do you mean, do? I can’t move.”

“Did you know when it would happen?”

“Only that it had to. The nature of things. When I heard the first shots, I summoned the nurse with the CALL button and tried to dial the phone for security, but with one hand it took a while. Five dead. It sounded like many more. I’ll give you some advice if you want it. Don’t count on Luna for help again. Don’t count on him at all.”

Hood got the tiger feeling again. “How do you know about Luna?”

“Oh, that’s funny, Charlie. My beat doesn’t stop at the border!”

Hood took Finnegan’s cup and poured the last of his wine into it. “Has Owens heard all this?”

“Bits. Hints. I don’t want to burden her. She believes fully in my alleged madness. She’s beautiful, isn’t she?”

“I don’t believe she’s your daughter.”

“She is not. But she believes she is my daughter, Charlie. And my heart sinks every time I see those scars.”

“Then what is she to you?”

“Do the scars draw you to her or push you away from her?”

“Is she a partner?”

“She’s too damaged.”

“I went to your place on Aviation. You’re not running a bath products business out of there. If you are, it’s small and disorganized and occasional.”