The Jaguar

by T. Jefferson Parker

  Hood knew that this was more than possible. It was happening more and more in the narco kidnappings—murder left less witnesses and ignited even more terror in the living, more submission and compliance.

  “How are you going to find her while you lug forty pounds of cash from California to God knows where?”

  Bradley looked at Hood and offered a small smile. “I love your optimism, Charlie. I love your can-do attitude.”

  “That’s not an answer.”

  Bradley marched out and a car door opened then slammed and a moment later he was back, pulling a piece of wheeled luggage across the pavers behind him. Daisy’s head was up and she was watching. Bradley stopped in front of Hood and pushed down the handle and flipped the luggage over at Hood’s feet. He squatted and unzipped the flap and threw it back.

  “The answer is teamwork,” said Bradley. “You and me. You deliver this while my friends and I are coming in the back door. If I can find the back door, that is. When Heriberto’s men contacted me late this morning, I told them I have the money but I don’t have the stomach for delivering it. This produced great laughter and witty insults. I am now a fag without balls with a kidnapped wife who desires real men. And many other things almost as bad. But I can dispatch a brave friend to deliver. Because money is money, after all. So, what do you say, Charlie? What do you say?”

  Hood thought. He knew Bradley was brash, fearless, and lucky. Knew that he was strong and bright and tainted. Hood suspected him of murder and lesser crimes but could prove none of them. Bradley’s highest allegiance seemed to be to himself. He studied the young man’s face. In it he saw Bradley’s mother, Suzanne. He and Bradley had been trading blame and suspicion for the three years since her death, and now Hood wondered if he should just forgive and help him through the harrowing future.

  “Why me?”

  “Because you love my wife. In a chaste and honorable, Charles Hood kind of way. I know you wouldn’t do it for me. But I think you’ll do it for her. Will you?”

  Hood looked down at the suitcase. Daisy sat beside it looking at him. He pictured himself waiting for a call in the parking lot of the Jai Alai Palace in Tijuana, three P.M. the next day. He thought of Gustavo Armenta, Benjamin’s innocent, college-bound son, killed by an errant ATF bullet during an undercover buy that went bad. He thought of Armenta’s vengeance upon ATF agent Jimmy Holdstock, of his own bloody journey across the border to Mulege, of the carnage enacted by the Zetas, of Sergeant Raydel Luna, his counterpart, slaughtered by his own countryman to prove that honesty and bravery and integrity were weaknesses in their world. And of course he thought of Erin.

  “There’s fifty grand extra in there,” said Bradley. “Yours for trying. And another fifty for expenses. Fifty more waiting here if we actually get her back alive.”

  “I don’t want your money.”

  “Donate it to Save the Dinosaurs or something. Her passport is in there, too. I’m bullish. It’s all I can afford to be.”

  “This is all wrong, Bradley. How did Benjamin Armenta know where you live? And that you and Erin would be home? How did he know about the hidden room? How did he know to pick a night when the dogs were kenneled and you didn’t have guests? How did he know that your gate was wired for security but the fence wasn’t? How did he know the security code for your house? Or that you had a million in cash just kind of handy? Why did he take such huge risks and lose two men for a million dollars? He makes that in an average week. So why the pyrotechnics? What did you do to him to deserve all the special attention?”

  Bradley gazed down at the money and toed the suitcase with his boot. “Maybe we’ll find out. But I’m not going to beg. If you don’t want to help, don’t.”

  “Where were your homies last night—Stone the car thief and Clayton the forger?”

  Bradley looked at him sharply. “Stone is a car salesman, Hood. There is a small difference. And Clayton is an artist. You know that.”

  Hood stared at him.

  “Anyway, Erin encouraged them to find other lodging after we got married.” Bradley walked to a window and looked out at an orange sunset. When he turned back Hood could see his silhouette framed in the falling light. “Hood, if I don’t make it back but Erin does, I want you to take care of her. She’ll be a mother by February and she’ll need help. Take good care of her and of my boy. The ultrasound showed him healthy. There’s plenty of money in the bank. She’s the most wonderful person you will ever know.”

  “You can’t pass her like a football.”

  “But I couldn’t protect her, either, could I? It was my number-one thing to do in this life and I didn’t. I’ll do anything to get her back. I’ll die down there to make it happen.”

  “You know I’m in.”

  Bradley pulled a cell phone from his belt and tossed it to Hood. Daisy watched its flight. “Their phone. Pre-paid Mexico minutes, non-traceable by Mexican law enforcement. Just answer it when good old Gonzalvo calls and do what he says.”

  Hood pictured himself alone in Mexico with a million dollars and maybe a handgun, lined up against the Gulf Cartel. He felt the dread leaking into his brainpan like rainwater through an old roof.

  “And here’s a phone just for you and me.” Bradley unclipped the satellite phone and handed it to Hood. “Best satellite job money can buy. I’ve signed us up for unlimited Mexico calling for the next two weeks. My number’s already programmed in. They promised reception in all thirty-one Mexican states, plus the federal district.”

  Hood considered the two phones, the million in cash at his feet, and bright, lovely Erin McKenna in the hands of killers. “We’ll make it work.”

  “It has to work. By the way, I thought the name Charlie Hood might get Armenta buzzing after what ATF did to his son last year. So I told them your name was Charlie Bravo. Charlie the Brave. That okay?”

  “It feels like an unfair advantage.”

  Hood watched Bradley’s smile go from wicked to haunted. “Deliver her, Charlie. And if I don’t come back, well, you three figure it out.”

  They stood outside on the stone porch while the bugs slapped against the light and the mantids walked their elongated shadows on the adobe.

  “Any luck with Mike Finnegan, Charlie?”

  “No luck with him.”

  “He’ll turn up. He always seems to. Crafty little guy.”

  “Tell me if you see him.”

  “You bet. That’s a promise, Charlie.”

  Bradley walked down the gravel path toward his Cayenne, then stopped and turned. “Thanks for doing this, man. I knew you would. I’ll pray to God in heaven for you. And to anyone else who might help.”

  6

  LATER HOOD TOOK HALF OF the extra fifty grand and distributed the cash among his wallet, his shave kit and his Expedition.

  Out on his patio in the dark he felt the temperature finally drop. He called Frank Soriana, his managing ATF superior in San Diego, and cleared the next eleven days for personal time. He also talked Soriana into issuing him a diplomatic pouch to carry his gun into Mexico.

  “Personal, huh?” asked Soriana. “Sounds like you should be on ATF time.”

  Hood laughed quietly. He pictured Erin in the hands of cutthroats. He wondered if the million dollars was all Armenta really wanted from Bradley Jones. “See you tomorrow early, sir.”

  Next Hood called his mother in Bakersfield. She was a talker. The Buick was making a funny sound and the strawberries at the market were plenty big but almost tasteless. His father was doing okay in assisted living but he had tackled an orderly that morning. He was an Alzheimer’s sufferer and his mind was nearly gone but his body was fit and strong. His mother was trying to forget the man he was now, but to remember the man he used to be, trying to steel her heart, but Hood knew that this was breaking it instead. He invented a story about going back to D.C. for ATF meetings.

  “Then I’ll see you in a week?” she asked.

  “A little over.”

  “Less than two, though?” />
  “Less than two, Mom.”

  He called Beth and left a message on her home phone. He rarely called her at work because she was a night-shift emergency-room doctor at Imperial Mercy in Buenavista and she was almost always busy. In the last year Hood had been working more and more assignments for the ATF Blowdown task force so it wasn’t unusual for him to be out of touch. He told her he would call just as soon as he could. Although Beth had never said so, Hood knew that absences like this were taking their toll on them. She wanted more closeness not more distance, but he could only give her what he had. Thus he felt bad. The cool fog of disappointment had begun to settle down upon them. And Hood had started wondering if he worked long and sometimes dangerous hours so he could remain a distance from the demands of love and family and friends.

  He told Beth’s answering machine that he’d be gone ten days and asked her to come get Daisy if she could. He promised her he would call and write. As he rang off he pictured her face and his breath caught achingly and he doubted that he knew even one thing about love. He set a box of stationery and an elegant pen she had given him in his duffel, beside his gun and holster and three plastic wrist restraints, and the CD slipcase for the most recent release from Erin and the Inmates.

  When he was done packing he sat on a bench in his home office—a picnic table in his dining room. He checked his website, Facebook page and Twitter, hoping for a tip that might lead him to a man he had been trying hard to find for the last year. The man had introduced himself as Mike Finnegan, a bathroom-products wholesaler based in L.A. But as Hood came to learn, Mike had also gone by other names and claimed other occupations. It was very possible that he was insane, as someone close to him had said. And it was likely that he had done some very bad things to some good people—good friends of his, in fact. Then Mike had vanished.

  Because of his dual citizenship with the Los Angeles sheriffs and the ATF, Hood had many contacts in law enforcement. Once a week he would blast:

  Dear Paul (John, Barbara, Philip, Donna, Friends…),

  Charlie Hood checking in. Anything on Mike Finnegan? Here again are the six known photographs of him. Please continue to distribute. I hope this note finds you well and I truly thank you for all the help you’ve given.

  Sincerely,

  Charlie Hood, Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department;

  Alcohol, Tobacco & Firearms Blowdown Task Force,

  Buenavista Field Office

  But no e-mails back today. And no messages on the website. There were several useless postings to his Facebook page, where he trolled the general public, and some more irrelevant tweets.

  A year ago, his opening inquisitions had led to some promising “tips” about Mike. But these had trailed off quickly and Hood had been forced to face a numbing truth: not one of his hundreds of contacts had anything at all on the Mike Finnegan he had met in L.A. He was in no database. Not the IRS, not the DMV, not the Social Security System. No one in law enforcement, intelligence or security had anything. No fingerprints, no dental records, no DNA. And apparently, the world outside of law enforcement knew even less about him.

  Hood sat straight-backed on the hard picnic bench and looked at his wall, where he had tacked copies of the eight photographs he had of Finnegan. Three were extracted from security video, and showed a small, thick, middle-aged man and an attractive younger woman. Possibly his daughter, as Hood knew, but likely not. The video was taken a little over two years ago as they were leaving Imperial Mercy Hospital in Buenavista. Finnegan had been critically injured in a car accident just weeks prior and had checked himself out of the hospital against doctor’s orders. His “daughter,” Owens, had picked him up. In the three pictures Mike looked pale and relaxed and maybe a little tired after having half the bones in his body broken, his skull cracked in two places, life-threatening internal damage, and being in a full body cast for almost three weeks.

  Hood studied the other pictures, one at a time, still hoping to dredge out some helpful detail he had missed, or achieve some insight that only repetition could spark. One was taken by a German bird-watcher in an eco-resort on the Arenal Volcano in Costa Rica, where Mike was billing himself as Joe Leftwich, an Irish priest. And Arenal, Hood had learned, was where Leftwich had commenced the almost unimaginably cruel destruction of two of Hood’s closest friends.

  Another picture showed Finnegan/Leftwich at a home Dodgers game in July of the previous year, roughly one month before he arrived in Costa Rica. The subject of the photographer was not Mike at all, but a small boy and his parents, sitting two rows in front of him. Mike was trying to avoid the camera, turning his face away in clear annoyance at being shot. This image was submitted by the boy’s mother, a Ventura County assistant DA who recognized the face from one of Hood’s insistent e-mails.

  Another picture was of Mike and Owens, standing arm-in-arm at a cocktail party in Beverly Hills. In the picture Owens was a full head taller than he was. Finnegan was smiling resignedly, as if he didn’t want to be photographed but knew he should submit to it, but he also appeared happy. The photographer was a professional freelancer who had come across Hood’s plea for “Finnegan/Leftwich images” buried in a “Photographs Wanted” search of Google, and recognized Mike.

  Hood had not posted the other two pictures, and it wasn’t likely he ever would. In some ways, they were his favorites.

  One was a group shot that showed Charlie Manson and some hangers-on at Spahn Ranch in the summer of 1969. An L.A. assistant district attorney had come across the picture while digitizing old forensic photos, and seen that one of Manson’s groupies looked a lot like the guy that Charlie Hood had been badgering her about. The groupie was obviously a different man, but she sent a digitized copy along as a lark. Hood was flabbergasted to see a dead-ringer for Mike Finnegan right in the middle of the hippies, sporting a “Freewheelin’” T-shirt, and his hair grown out in a frizzy halo. He looked to be about forty years old. Hood knew that if Mike had been forty in the Manson picture he would have been around eighty when they met at Imperial Mercy Hospital. Not likely. But even allowing for his own gnawing obsession with Mike Finnegan, Hood could see with his own two eyes that the faces belonged to the same man.

  The last image was an even worse conundrum. It was taken in San Jose, California, in 1875, at the hanging of the outlaw Tiburcio Vasquez. It was one of several taken by a newspaper photographer who covered the event. Mike was among the onlookers gazing up at the gallows in a dramatic composition that used the noose itself as a blurred up-front framing device and focused on the well-dressed spectators waiting for the execution. Finnegan. Clearly. Dressed and groomed in the fashion of the day. He looked about fifty years old. Which would have made him 184 years old when, two years ago, lying in his Imperial Mercy ICU bed and tipsy with wine, Mike had recounted for Hood the hanging of his friend, Tiburcio. Mike had quoted the outlaw’s last words by memory and this had haunted Hood. So, a few months ago, on a long shot, he had finally ferreted out this collection of photographs. In so doing he had found this image and begun to question the soundness of his eyes and of his reason.

  Yet he saw what he saw.

  He had had his eyes examined and had spent fifty expensive minutes with a psychiatrist. His uncorrected vision was his usual 20/15. The shrink told him he seemed “sound,” given his stressful occupation, ailing father, and troubled relationship with Beth. He said depression was possible, and that Hood should try to experience his emotions rather than direct them. He recommended pleasant outdoor activities but no medication.

  In addition to his digital searches, Hood had been handing out Mike Finnegan photo albums wherever he went for about six months now—to law-enforcement people he met through work, to his contacts and informants, to people he met socially through Beth and their growing circle of friends, to waiters and waitresses, clerks and bartenders, once at his own door to Jehovah’s Witnesses, trading them for their Watchtowers. Two hundred and forty-eight booklets distributed so far. To manage costs he ordered
fifty at a time from the print shop. But the picture books had gotten him nothing, nothing and more nothing.

  A familiar chill ran through him as he stared at the Vasquez photograph. He breathed in deeply then slowly out. “Back in ten days,” he said. “But you’ll keep, Mike, won’t you?”

  Daisy’s tail slapped the tile three times, then stopped. She looked at Hood with a devotion that made him feel undeserving. She sat up and encouraged his self-forgiveness by letting him scratch her throat.

  He checked the e-mails and Facebook again and found nothing helpful regarding Mike Finnegan. He got less of everything these days. He wondered if in another year there would be nothing at all. But he knew that Finnegan had not vanished. He knew the man was real and living, perhaps still in L.A. Bathroom fixtures. It’s not nearly as exciting as it sounds.

  In one of the e-mails on his screen now, Hood’s contact suggested that he would notify Hood if anything popped, that the weekly reminders were not needed and in fact were a bit of a nuisance. He sent out a fresh blast anyway—982 friendly reminders of who he was looking for, all with the six photographs attached. And another Facebook posting—2,499 people like the last one! More tweets in the thinning search for Mike.

  He sighed and found Erin’s webpage and looked at the pictures of her performing, and played a video. Not for the first time he was angry at Bradley for putting her in harm’s way, and not for the first time he wished that he’d met her first. He felt some shame in this.

  Later Hood watched the clear desert stars awhile, then slept poorly, visited by dreams he did not own or understand.