The Famous and the Dead (6 page)

A
n hour and fifty minutes later Hood's Charger growled into the Walmart parking lot. He drove to the far end, near the home-and-furnishings section, and parked. The wire was built into his cell phone, invisible and impossible to find without destroying the phone. The cash was a messy booklet of small bills folded over once and shoved into the left butt pocket of his trousers. Before leaving the Buenavista field office, he had locked his Glock and holster in the trunk and made sure his ankle gun was loaded and ready. The winter noon was cool and blustery, but Hood felt hot and edgy and he ran the AC on high.

Skull called ten minutes later and told Hood to pull into a handicap space in front of the market section, near the main entrance. When a red Jeep Commander drove past behind him, Hood was to pull out of the space and follow.

“I'm not leaving the lot,” said Hood.

“I'm not asking you to.”

“Keep the monkey on his leash.”

“He's my secret weapon.”

“Is he for sale, too?”

“Hooper. We're going to back into our parking space. You don't. You park face in.”

Hood pulled into the handicap space, left the engine running. An old man limping toward his truck glared at him, and from behind his sunglasses, Hood placidly gazed back. Seconds later the red Commander had rolled past him and Hood pulled out and followed. The Jeep rolled along hesitatingly, as if the driver couldn't decide his course. Hood wondered if they were arguing. He knew that these men were as much on edge as he was because, as Ozburn had often noted, all gun deals had one dangerous thing in common: guns. Ozburn had also told Hood that on an undercover buy, if something could go wrong, it would. If Plan A failed, then go to Plan B, and there was never a Plan C.

The Commander wandered toward an exit then turned out into the far and uncrowded recess of the lot. A low painted concrete wall ran the perimeter and the Jeep backed into a space where a paloverde tree cast a small pool of shade on the asphalt. A sun-blanched Chevy Astro van slouched in the next spot of tree shade, several parking spaces away. Hood waited and watched. The Commander's windows were blacked out, but through the windshield he could see Clint Wampler behind the wheel and Skull riding shotgun. If Peltz was in the back, Hood couldn't see him. Hood figured he was in the raised F-150 he'd seen at the hotel, and when he looked around for it, there it was, not two hundred feet away, beyond the Astro, backed against the same wall. He pulled in and shut off the engine and got out as the Commander backed to a stop. On the far side of the Commander, Skull's door slammed and a moment later the liftgate was wheezing open on its pneumatic risers.

“Come on over, Charles.”

Skull lifted a dirty green blanket and Hood looked down at the Lewis Gun. The pan magazine was in place and the worn bipod legs were extended. “Must weigh thirty pounds.”

“Twenty-eight,” said Hood.

“It's not loaded.”

Hood looked up through the smoked Commander windows to see a small stout woman pushing a stroller toward them. She wore a pale yellow dress and her skin was dark. Plastic shopping bags of merchandise dangled heavily from the stroller handles. Three small children followed in tight formation. She seemed to be looking toward the Astro. The driver's side door of the Commander swung open and Clint Wampler slid out with a smile on his face and a pistol in his hand. He looked at Hood and jammed the gun into his belt, right up front where it would show, then walked a line that would intercept the woman with the stroller.

“Go ahead,” said Skull. “Pick it up if you can.”

Hood swung the gun up and out and pointed it at the wall. It was very heavy and not balanced well, and Hood knew that it had been made to be fired from a prone position or mounted to an airplane. The best he could do while standing was to hold the grip with his right hand and let the butt extend beneath his armpit and hold on to the cooling shroud with his left. He wondered how many seconds of fire it would take to melt his hand to it. Not many. He looked past Skull's shoulder at Wampler, nearing the woman and children.

“What's the imbecile doing?” he asked.

“He'll just run them off.”

“She's heading for the van. Probably trying to go home.”

“I'd agree.”

“Then why doesn't he just let her go?”

“He won't hurt her. He gets results because he looks cute but isn't very nice.”

“Can you control him?”

“Not really. So what do you think of the machine gun?”

“Have you fired it?”

“Heavy rain, man. It's a thirty-aught-six, but it feels more like a fifty cal. You're talking six hundred rounds per minute, and it's accurate at a thousand yards.”

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 Superior 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.”

H
ood sat on a whi
te 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 daughter. 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?”

“No. I can't see the street from here.”

“Did he give you anything?”

Rovanna looked up. “Give me? You mean like . . .”

“Anything.”

“No. No. He didn't give me anything. Nothing.”

Hood watched Rovanna's eyes lose their conviction and his gaze find the frayed carpet again. “He just said he was going to write up something to help me get the guns back. He said my chances weren't so good.”

“But he didn't give you anything?”

When Rovanna looked at him again, Hood saw the anger in his face. And something along with it he couldn't quite ID—sadness maybe, or guilt. “I said he didn't. Is there any way to be more clear on that?”

Hood nodded absently.

Rovanna again took the bat in his hands, choking his hands all the way down. “What is that supposed to mean?”

Hood stood and Rovanna leaned forward to stand also. But Hood put a hand firmly to his shoulder and pressed him back down to the couch. He took the bat from Rovanna and set it beside him. Hood walked into the kitchen and looked around. Having been invited into Rovanna's home, pretty much anything in plain sight he could legally take a look at. But there was nothing unusual in the small, poorly lit kitchen. He thought of another poorly lit kitchen, in Mike Finnegan's Veracruz flat, where they had fought and Mike had run the knife along his scalp. He remembered the bony grind of the blade, a sound he would take to his grave.

Hood came back into the living room and saw Rovanna staring down once again at the floor. Hood could sense the disorder in the younger man, the teetering imbalances inside him. He wondered,
If Finnegan would tear apart a young, strong, faithful man like Sean Ozburn simply because he could—then what might he do with Lonnie Rovanna?
Hood walked down the small dark hallway and poked his head into a bathroom. It smelled bad. He turned on the light and saw the counter dirty with soap scum and toothpaste and the white-brown toilet bowl and the water-stained tub choked at its drain by hair.

The first bedroom looked unused. He couldn't legally open the closet but he did anyway. A few clothes hanging. Scores of wire hangers. Some old sneakers on the floor. Nothing unusual. Nothing under the bed but dust balls. Back in the hallway he looked in to the living room and saw Rovanna looking back at him.

“I'm almost done, Lonnie.”

“Okay.”

He walked into the second bedroom. He smelled the unwashed sheets, cut with a popular antiperspirant. There were posters of baseball players and beautiful actresses tacked crookedly to the walls. A bookcase rested along one wall, its bottom shelf fallen at one end, the volumes slouching precariously but still contained. He read some titles. Then more. Half were paperback thrillers. But of the sixty or so volumes, the other half were accounts of the American wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Hood had many of the titles in his own library.

Rovanna stood in the doorway with the bat over his shoulder, his hands low on the handle.

“I'm not a threat to you,” said Hood softly.

“It's time to go, though.”

“I really want to thank you for what you did. Mike Finnegan can be imposing and sometimes downright scary. You did well with him. He didn't crack you. You did the right thing when you called me.”

“Good-bye, then.”

“Did you serve?”

Rovanna colored deeply and Hood saw his hands relax around the handle of the bat. “What makes you think I didn't?”

“You got your battalions mixed up.”

“Easy, if you experience the level of fire that I did.”

“No, Lonnie. Very hard to forget your own battalion, whether you go through heavy fire or not. I see your books here. You read a lot. You strike me more as a student than a soldier.” Rovanna looked down for a long moment, then shrugged.

“I don't care that you weren't in Iraq, Lonnie. It doesn't matter one bit to me. You don't need to be a soldier to be brave. I was there and I'm not one ounce more brave than you.”

“It's just too bad I'm crazy.”

“Yes, it is. I'll be walking out now, Lonnie. Careful with that thing.”

Rovanna backed into the hallway, and when Hood came to him, he offered his hand and Rovanna let go of the bat to shake it. His grip was strong and damp.

“If you remember something, call me,” said Hood. “If Stren calls or comes again, call me immediately. He's evil, Lonnie. He will hurt you.”

“I sensed that.”

“If you want to just talk, call me. Really. I mean it. I always have time to talk. I like baseball.”

“I have prayed and have never been answered. Not once.”

“I've never been answered, either. I think that's the way it's supposed to be.”