The Border Lords

by T. Jefferson Parker

  “Then let me be perfectly honest with you, Mike. All the Murrieta stuff I told you in the Viper Room that night was bullshit. Like I’ve got an outlaw’s head in a jar. Like I’d tell you, a complete stranger, if I did. Well, I don’t have his head. I don’t know what got into me.”

  “I do. That night you were overstimulated by your proximity to Erin. You were throwing off sparks. I mean that literally—your thoughts were sparking and dying, sparking and dying. Like fireworks in the sky. Now, Bradley, if I’m within thirty feet of a person having clear, strong thoughts, well, I can hear them. And I can see what that person is imagining. It’s a gift, most of the time. But things can get a little cacophonous sometimes, if I’m in a crowded bar for instance. I’ve learned to isolate the thoughts and concentrate on what I need to know. But anyway, Bradley, you were not in control of your own thinking. You were only capable of reaction to her. I’ve seen that before, young man. It’s love with obsession in it. It’s the grandest love of all. And one of the most entertaining qualities a man or woman can have.”

  Bradley stared at Mike, thinking, Fuck you, Mike. You hear me now?

  Finnegan sighed and looked out toward the stage.

  “Okay, Mike, you must be right. I was not in control of my own thoughts. Why else would I make up a story about having the head of an outlaw in a jar?”

  “You are proud of the head, as well you should be.”

  “All lies.”

  “Oh?”

  “Made the whole thing up.”

  “Bradley? Can I tell you something?”

  “Anything you want.”

  “The head you have is not Joaquin’s. It belonged to Chappo, who rode with Joaquin’s horse-gang. Harry Love killed five of Joaquin’s gang that day at Cantua Creek, including Chappo. Harry chose the most frightening and dramatic head and collected it as evidence of his own heroism. Joaquin was fair-skinned and blue-eyed and his hair was light brown. This is not an uncommon combination in his native Sonora, where the Spanish influence is strong. He wore his hair long. He had a lined and soulful face for a man so young. He stood six feet three inches. He was a charming and even-tempered man until his wife, Rosa, was raped. Joaquin’s English was very good, having grown up near the border and working his early life in gringo company. El Famoso was struck by two bullets that day at Cantua Creek—one bounced off the vest that Owens delivered to you as a wedding gift.”

  Bradley felt his breath shorten. He looked long and hard at the little man.

  “From you?”

  “And Owens, of course.”

  “I’m running out of things to feel about you, Mike.”

  “Then stop feeling and listen—the other bullet went through the back of his thigh. We used kerosene to clean it out. It was not fatal.”

  “You must take me for a complete fool.”

  “I’m trying not to.”

  “You don’t know anything. You make it all up.”

  “I rode with Murrieta. Briefly.”

  Bradley started a smile but he couldn’t finish it. “Then when did he die?”

  “Twenty-two years later, in eighteen seventy-five. He was fifty-five years old. I was privileged to attend the funeral.”

  “Where did he die?”

  “In El Salado, where he was born. He lived out his life quietly, adored and protected by the villagers. He was well-off from his robbing and horse thievery. I was able to visit him there.”

  “Why didn’t you tell my mother about the head not being his? There was nothing about this in her journals. She wrote hundreds of pages about herself and about Joaquin, but there was nothing about him living out his life in Mexico. Nothing about his blue eyes and fair skin and light brown hair.”

  Mike reached into his blazer pocket and handed Bradley a leather-bound book. Jones opened it and recognized his mother’s beautiful handwriting. The date on the first entry was July 14, 1991, and on the last entry March 23, 1992.

  “I eventually told her, of course,” said Finnegan. “We must operate on the basis of truth. It’s all in the journal. She was delighted that Joaquin turned out to be even more mysterious than his legend made him out to be. She was fried with excitement, to be blunt. Later I took this book from her. I apologize to you for the theft. Though I have to chuckle when I say this: She was changing your diaper when I bagged it. Your unrepentantly useless father and I were killing off a bottle of vodka. He went to get a fresh lime and I just dropped that little book into my pocket.”

  “Why?”

  “Something told me that I would need to make an impression on you someday.”

  “I’m not impressed. You just gave her the same bullshit you’re giving me. Riding with Murrieta. Only she believed it.”

  “She came to believe it.”

  “You weren’t at Cantua Creek, Mike. That would make you a hundred and eighty years old.”

  “Your math is good but your context is faulty. This is like trying to prove the existence of a forest to a man who denies the existence of trees.”

  “More bullshit.” Bradley listened to his own voice and even he had trouble hearing the conviction in it.

  Finnegan drank and smiled very slightly. “Your great-great-great-great-great-great-great-grandfather was an imaginative man. He imagined his legend before he began to create it. He saw no difference between what he could imagine and what he could accomplish. He was prone to superstition, prone to gesture and romance, prone to belief. Your mother was the same way. They were both obsessive lovers, like you. You’ll be more like them someday. It will just take you longer to get there. In many ways human beings grow up much more slowly than they used to. I’ve seen this in just a few short generations. Evolution can’t be hurried. When you are ready to see, you will see, and when you’re ready to believe, you will believe.”

  Bradley felt surrounded by invisible terriers, unable to find a target. When you are ready to see, you will see. He tried to go cool instead. “Well, if I’m supposed to weep or something, I’m just not.”

  “I love your youth. Dearly. The journal is yours to keep with the others. Now your collection is complete. In the back of that volume are a couple of letters Suzanne wrote to me. Illuminating, perhaps. They’re yours, too.”

  Mike finished his drink and pushed away from the table. “Well.”

  “Where are you going?”

  “Out. November is my absolute favorite month.”

  “Hold on. Let’s get a bottle. We’ll talk about imagination and belief and El Famoso.”

  “Maybe another time, Bradley. I just want to spend some hours outdoors now, walking my city on an autumn night.”

  “Tell me more about him. I want to know.”

  “When you’re ready. You’ll be very busy soon. Hearty congratulations on Erin’s pregnancy. I’m very happy for both of you.”

  “Who told you?”

  “You did. You’ve spent the last hour telling me about your wife and your child to come—more of the mental sparks that you let off when you think of Erin. Just like in the Viper Room.”

  “But I didn’t tell you. I absolutely and purposely did not because she . . .”

  “She what, Bradley? She neither likes nor trusts me?”

  “Go to hell, Mike. Whoever you think you are I’m not impressed.”

  “You have such strong and beautiful names in your family—Joaquin, Rosa, Suzanne. Even Bradley. I wonder who will come next. He or she will be yours to name, young man. And Erin’s, of course. Consider carefully. Names have different polarities. Different weights. Different histories.”

  40

  Monday morning Hood and his Blowdown brethren began packing the ninety Love 32s back into their wooden boxes. By special order from the assistant director, the guns would be heading back to headquarters in Washington, D.C., soon, some to be saved but most to be destroyed. HQ had allowed them to keep four for study. The DOJ van was there and the driver was waiting to take the contraband to the airport for the flight to D.C.

  Ho
od held up one of the gleaming little handguns. The sound suppressor was screwed on, and the telescoping butt rod was extended, and the graceful, forward-curving fifty-shot magazine was in place. He tilted the gun to the brittle fluorescent light of the indoor range and looked at the name, LOVE32, on the slide.

  “I admire Ron Pace’s craftsmanship,” he said.

  “You can compliment him on it personally when we shut down his TJ factory,” said Bly.

  “All we have to do is find it,” said Hood.

  “Octavio says he knows,” said Velasquez.

  “Octavio says he knows a lot of things,” said Morris. “Still, he may be the best thing to come out of this mess.”

  Hood set the gun down with the others. “Sean delivered. Like he said he would.”

  A moment of silence. Then Morris: “I’d take this whole deal back if I could.”

  “Amen,” said Bly.

  “I’m taking this deal,” said Velasquez. “For Oz. And for us. It’s ninety machine pistols off the street. And a cartel man in jail with tales to tell.”

  “For Oz,” said Hood.

  He wrapped the gun in newspaper and set it into the wooden box and he thought of Sean Ozburn in his own.

  At home that night he hovered around his kitchen trying to help Beth make dinner. Mainly he watched. She was a tall woman with an aerobic approach to kitchen work—moving across the pavers in big fast strides, stepping over Daisy with a boiling saucepan in her hands, banging pots and pans while talking on without a comma. She could spin a yarn. And another. As an ER physician in Buenavista’s Imperial Mercy Hospital, she was rarely without compelling material.

  For instance, she had seen her first case of flesh-eating bacteria just last night. Just as ugly as it sounds. This segued into an account of still another stateside victim of the drug wars along the Iron River, a young courier shot to death outside one of Buenavista’s rougher saloons. In the last year Hood had grown accustomed to her peaks of energy and high spirits, and the valleys of quiet that separated them. He enjoyed the fact that between a cop and a doctor there wasn’t a lot that couldn’t be talked about. There wasn’t a queasy fiber between them and sometimes the grisly had its own forbidden but delicious humor.

  “. . . and I said, sure, there’s that and about a hundred other things it could be, too. I wish I was more like House on TV. Where’s the cumin up here? Didn’t I bring some over not too long ago? What’s on the computer, Charlie? Are you even listening?”

  “I can’t help you with the diagnosis but a cane would just get in your way. The cumin’s behind the steak seasoning. I’m just checking e-mail. Beth, it’s hard to assist a hurricane-like person in the kitchen.”

  “Can you mash potatoes?”

  With Daisy sitting next to him Hood mashed and looked out the window at the vast desert. There was a wash just beyond the back patio and he had seen wild pigs and coyotes and feral dogs and even wild horses passing through. And humans, of course—scores of the Mexican poor shuffling slowly north through the sand and rocks and cacti, the infernal heat and stunning cold.

  Beth started in on the asparagus, telling Hood that her father had called today to say he’d shot par for the first time on his club course. She said she was toying with the idea of taking up the game so they could do something together.

  Hood thought of his own father, almost gone now, no real perception of who he was. Douglas had been a generous and patient man but the dementia had turned him mean. They assigned him the biggest nurses to intimidate him. Every once in a while, on his visits to the home, Hood would see that old warm smile come to his father’s face and then he’d say something like, So, what’s your name, young man? Or, Fish come in all sizes but when your shorts ride up there’s no fixing the tractor.

  He wished his father would have taken up golf, or anything else he could love enough to brighten his days. He pictured his own life at seventy-nine. Golf? Tennis? Tinkering with cars? He’d read once of someone who had a “diminishing portfolio of enthusiasms” and he thought this applied to his father and, for all he knew, could someday apply to himself.

  “I was thinking of getting back into tennis,” he said.

  “You should. You don’t have enough recreation in your life.”

  “Neither do you.”

  “I’ll learn, too. We can play together, Charlie. Are you competitive and sullen if you lose?”

  “Usually.”

  “They say couples don’t make good doubles partners.”

  “I’d try to make an exception for you, Beth.”

  “Who knows? Maybe we’d be winners.”

  Hood reached across the counter and pulled the laptop screen to face him. He hit the “send/receive” tab and watched the new message drop into place as he slapped away at the potatoes.

  Instead of sitting down to eat when the food was ready they surrendered their pretenses of self-control and Hood led her by the hand to the bedroom in happy anticipation. The lovemaking was heartfelt and strong and to Hood well worth the cold dinner. He put the plates in the microwave and as it roared along noisily he looked at Beth in the candlelight pouring wine, her thick dirty-blond hair piled and pinned up and her white satin bathrobe open high at the leg and deep at the chest.

  “What are you looking at?” she asked, smiling.

  “You take my breath away.”

  “A girl could get self-conscious.”

  “I’ll avert my eyes.”

  “Please don’t.”

  They managed to clear the dishes before heading back to the bed again. There were stars beyond the windows and a moon still low. Hood looked up at her, facing away from him with eyes closed and lips parted and the loose strands of her hair swaying with their rhythm. His hands were free and he ran them down her face and neck and arms and over her breasts and rested them on her thigh tops, smooth and taut with strength. He watched her and felt the tides of pleasure pushing through him and when her breath caught and she began to shake he loosed them into her.

  They raided the refrigerator as lovers do. Beth poured chocolate syrup on the ice cream and Hood finally opened the lone message on his laptop. He didn’t recognize the sender.

  But he was pleased to read that one of the German birders at the Volcano View on Arenal had written back to him.

  Dear Charlie Hood,

  I received your e-mail of two weeks ago and was not able to find a picture of Father Joe Leftwich. I did find many superior images of birds and flora. Then Gretchen remembered that she had used her cell phone one day because she had allowed her camera battery to become uncharged. And to my satisfaction I found this picture of Father Joe, here attached. It didn’t turn out very well but you can tell who it is. We were all in the Volcano View bar and we were having Schnapps. I hope you are well. We are now making plans for a return visit. We have trogons and quetzals in our dreams!

  Hood was eager to see a picture of the man who had tortured and destroyed the Ozburns. He opened the attachment and looked at Father Joe Leftwich. His heart was beating hard and his breath came fast. “Oh.”

  “What’s wrong, Hood?”

  “Father Joe Leftwich, the priest.”

  She came around the counter and stood next to Hood. “I’ll be . . . He’s gained weight and dyed his hair black since he graced my ICU. But look. He’s got the Catholic priest’s shirt and collar but it’s still Mike Finnegan. No doubt. He’s Leftwich? What do you mean? When I treated him he was selling bathroom fixtures in L.A. What’s going on?”

  41

  Finnegan walked down South Olive Street downtown and ducked into the J Lounge. He sat alone and had a quick drink and looked out at the downtown L.A. skyline. My city, he thought. Would love to have been born here.

  Then over to West Eighth for another drink at the Golden Gopher. He talked to some people he knew there, bought a round, then excused himself and left. He hit the Broadway Bar and enjoyed his chat with another patron, a young guy named Marcus, wife had just passed on, had a brother in pris
on—interesting what strangers would tell you if you just asked the right questions and listened to the answers. But he didn’t stay long.

  The night was cool and there was a breeze and he loved being out of doors in the autumn. He hit the Edison on West Second, then La Cite on Hill Street, very much enjoying the ranchero music and the bartender, a handsome woman of Chilean-German extraction who held a degree in history from UCLA. She stood him a beer and they talked about the river-laced countryside of southern Chile, well below Puerto Montt, near the village of Coyhaique where Gisela had visited as a tourist and Finnegan said he had fly-fished. Chile was still struggling after the big oh-ten quake, she said. The worst thing was the looting. He told her about his daughter’s growing career in commercials and of course Gisela had an agent but not many calls so Mike said he’d pass along her number to Owens, and Gisela wrote it on a bar napkin and gave it to him.

  He looked in at the Redwood but the crowd was small. He decided against the Bordello, not wanting to wear out his welcome there or run into Bradley Jones, who was clearly hot to jump into Mike’s world. Bradley would keep. Bradley would be a father. Bradley would improve with age, like a good red wine.

  At Bar 107 he stood outside and listened to the murmur of the drinkers each time the door opened. The music of humankind, thought Mike. It was late but the bar was busy with people coming and going. He looked up at the sky and saw the stars faint above L.A. and when the door was held open for his date by a big man in a black leather jacket, Mike took hold of the handle and stepped aside, smiling, so they both could pass. The big man nodded and the woman said thank you.

  Mike held the door and looked into the bar. It was filled with people. My music, he thought. Some of them he knew, while the others, as with everyone else on earth, he would like to know.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  I offer sincere thanks to the following people for their generosity and patience in answering my endless questions.