Rovanna watched Stren walk back down the gravel drive. The doctor turned and tipped his hat, then disappeared around the main house. The lump in Rovanna’s throat had returned, and he realized how badly he had misjudged this man. He sat on the plaid couch and looked down at the Love 32 for a long while before picking it up.
2
Charlie Hood’s first big undercover assignment began with a nineteen-year-old girl living in a small town in Russell County, Missouri. Her name was Mary Kate Boyle and she had first told her disturbing story over the phone to a girlfriend recently moved to Los Angeles, who happened to have just read a piece in the Los Angeles Times Magazine about a cool G-man.
The G-man was the Special Agent in Charge of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives in Los Angeles, and Mary Kate took a very long Trailways journey to come find him. In conversation Mary Kate got the A, T, and F correct but kept getting the order wrong, calling the bureau FAT. It was her first time away from her little piece of Missouri.
The SAC heard her out before handing her down the line to an ATF-led task force working guns along the Mexico border. She told of four men-three of them Russell County deputies-who were stealing confiscated evidence and selling it. Mostly guns and drugs. Of course any cash they just put in their pockets. This had been going on for over a year. Three of them were headed to California to do some business, hoping to find some drug cartel “beaners” with money to spend. The city of El Central was the place to be, they had told her. They wanted to find straw buyers. Cash, cash, and more cash, all that profit from the drugs the cartels sold. Plus one of the deputies had a friend in El Central with a restaurant that had the best burritos in the world. So they could eat there for cheap. You know how cops are. Oops.
All of this she had overheard, in pieces, during the last months of her senior year of high school. Last week she had been assaulted by one of those men, beaten sharply, and thrown out of his double-wide. His name was Lyle Scully, Skull for short, the leader. Now here in the ATF field office in Buenavista she sat, skinny, fair, and freckled. Mary Kate had an eye swollen up the color of a plum and a deep continuous split in both lips, but still she talked more than a little.
“And I don’t think too high of that kind of treatment. Skull says I was born trash and will stay trash and it may be true. That sure didn’t stop him making me pregnant, now, did it? God knows it took him long enough and I thought maybe a ring would come attached. It didn’t. His divorce is long finalized. So I got the procedure. And now I’m here in California and that’s behind me and I’m not going back. Never. Except maybe to get some things. I always wanted to rent one of them U-Haul trucks and just drive away from Russell County. I like the ones with the palm trees and waterskiers on the side. I’m going to be an actor, model, or nurse, whichever happens first. I told all this to your boss up in L.A. and he told me you’re the people who can get things done down here.”
Hood kept notes but mostly he just listened. He was a Los Angeles County sheriff deputy assigned to the ATF Operation Blowdown task force. The people in this room were part of his Achilles team, Mary Kate notwithstanding. Fourth year now for Hood. He thought of ATF not so much as Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, but as GDT-Guns, Dust and Treachery. ATF was chronically understaffed and the caseload was heavy, but scandal had further lowered the bureau in the public eye and sent its supporters in high places running. Certain ATF supervisors had implemented some bad ideas in an operation dubbed Fast and Furious and gotten bad results. Even before this calamity, ATF had been an easy political target but now it seemed nearly friendless. Hood had always thought that, just for starters, ATF had it rough because most Americans liked alcohol, tobacco, and firearms-and disliked regulation. Hence the agency was spooked and defensive. He chuckled when Mary Kate called it FAT. But Hood enjoyed the work because there was action, and he felt it was necessary work. Hood wanted to be necessary. He was a Bakersfield boy and he had served in Iraq, Anbar Province. He was thirty-four, tall and loose, with an open face and strong eyes.
“El Centro?” asked Janet Bly. Janet had been the senior agent of this Achilles team and still seemed to think of herself as such. Last month ATF had brought in a more senior agent, Dale Yorth, who now sat at the head of the table with an eager look on his face. He’d come in from Miami and the team jury on him was still out.
“Yep. Skull said El Central, pretty sure.” Mary Kate dabbed her lips with a tissue.
Hood saw the still unhealed split and felt bad but he also thought that a beating and an abortion might in the long run be a fair trade for escaping a life tied to Lyle Scully. The womenfolk in her part of the world tended to bear the brunt of things, or so he’d read and seen in movies. But Mary Kate would have to stay escaped, of course. Would have to want to stay escaped. People had surprising needs and default settings.
“What happened to the fourth guy?” asked Bly.
“Went missing three months back. Not a trace. Disappearo.”
“Do you know what contraband they have to sell?” Yorth asked.
“Not exactly. But there’s plenty of crank since a lot of it’s cooked up right there in Russell County. It’s high-grade stuff so far as that kinda thing goes. I tried it once and didn’t like it. Then there’s always plenty of bud to be smoked. Heroin’s still pretty popular but the pharmaceuticals are taking it over. Two guys broke into, like, four Jefferson pharmacies in one weekend, helped themselves, but the state police sent the videos around and guess what? The crooks were from our own neck of the woods. So the Russell County boys busted their butts. Skull and his team grabbed most of the evidence when no one was looking and him and his crew sold almost all of it. Right out of Skull’s truck, he said, like a roach coach for drugs. Also I know they got lots of guns. Most of them were stored in the property room, some for years. I know this from Skull. And a course they’re supposed to destroy the guns once the trial’s over but Skull worked it so the paperwork for destroyal got sent but he took the guns himself. Don’t ask me what kind or how many. Except once we all went out the woods so they could try out this new gun they got, and it was a big honkin’ thing that had legs on one end and a big round doughnutlike thing on the top. Loud. And heavy, even for Skull, who is approximately two hundred pounds of solid muscle. He laid on the ground and fired. Then he got up and braced it on his hip and had to put some back into it. Shot up a bunch of watermelons. I don’t like guns any more than I like crank, though I don’t see any harm in putting food on a table, which a course ain’t what a gun like that gets used for.”
“Legs on the end?” asked Hood. “A bipod?”
“Yeah, the far end, like two legs. For when he laid down and shot.”
“And a black doughnut? Do you mean a drum attached on top, flat to the frame of the gun?”
“That’s what I mean, valentine.” She smiled, then winced and brought the tissue back to her mouth. “Ouch. That’s what I get for funnin’. Story of my life.”
He smiled back and shook his head. And thought, An old Lewis Gun? Not exactly state-of-the-art weaponry, though it was a bruiser. It was the only machine gun that he could think of with an ammo pan on top. Belgian. It was a popular machine gun in World War I, and into World War II, but they hadn’t made one in seventy-something years. Of course, if Pace Arms could make a thousand Love 32s in Orange County, anything could happen. He’d seen pictures of the Lewis Mark I, and a total of one in the flesh, in his entire life.
“Where do you think they’ll go when they get here?” asked Velasquez. He was the youngest of this team and the only one with a master’s degree, which was in economics.
“To a motel, I guess,” said Mary Kate Boyle.
“And to get the best burritos in the world,” said Hood.
Yorth leaned back and set his hands behind his head. He was a big man with short yellow hair that was dark at the roots. “You know the name of the restaurant?”
“I’da told you if I did. How many burrito restaurants can there be in El Cen
tral?”
“Probably twenty Mexican restaurants,” said Hood. “That’s just a guess.”
“Call Skull and ask him which restaurant, Mary Kate,” said Yorth.
Hood saw the tick of worry cross Mary Kate Boyle’s face.
Janet Bly rolled her eyes and groaned.
Velasquez tapped his fingers on the tabletop.
“Why not?” asked Yorth. “Call him on your cell and tell him things are just fine in here in Russell County but you miss him. You just want to talk. Hoping you’re okay, Skull. Just reach out. Get him talking to you. That’s all.”
“I ain’t doing that.”
“If you want Lyle locked away safe in prison, you better consider it. Because if you don’t cooperate with us, our chances of putting these boys away go way, way down.”
“I still ain’t calling him.”
Yorth stared at her. “What about testifying in court? You told the SAC in L.A. you’d do that.”
“Testifying is one thing, but sneaking up on a man you’re done with is something else.”
“You started sneaking when you bought that Trailways ticket, Mary Kate.”
Mary Kate colored and looked down for a moment and took a deep breath. When she looked up again, she had sharp anger in her eyes. “That isn’t sneaking. I never asked Skull to steal. I told him not to. I didn’t ask him to go bragging on and on about it. And I didn’t ask to go out to the woods to shoot that big old machine gun. And I didn’t ask-”
“For the cool stuff he bought you with money you knew he’d stolen,” said Yorth.
“Knock it off, Dale,” said Bly.
Mary Kate stood and slung her bag over her shoulder. Hood and Velasquez stood, too.
“There wasn’t that much cool stuff involved,” Mary Kate said. “I took a bus here to help and you call me a whore. You’re as big an asshole as Skull ever was.”
“Sit down,” said Yorth. “I was out of line.”
“I’m outta here and you can’t stop me.” She looked at each of the other three agents in the room. “You, you, and you got my number.” Then she aimed her battered face down on Yorth. “You don’t.”
• • •
“Way to handle a cooperative informant,” said Bly.
Yorth shrugged. “You’ve got her number.”
“Christ, Dale, put her back with him? She should stay as far away from that guy as possible. Look what he did to her.”
“Then we have a difference of opinion. I cleared the idea with L.A. Now, here’s what these heroes look like.” Yorth handed out photo prints and bios of the cops, and mug shots and a criminal record of the third man. “I’ve sent these to your phones.”
Hood squared his sheets and looked through them. Two pictures of each bad guy per page, along with brief descriptions. The great leader, Lyle Scully, two hundred pounds of solid woman-beating muscle, had a shaven head and a goatee, and was a thirty-year-old sergeant-detective. Sgt. Brock Peltz was fifty-one and heavy. Clint Wampler looked chimplike, with big ears and small eyes and an early Beatles pageboy. Hood thought of his own pronounced ears. Clint was twenty-seven and unemployed, with convictions for driving under the influence, aggravated assault, and burglary. He’d done a year. Hood also saw that nineteen-year-old Clint Wampler had been questioned in the torching of a Russell County post office on April 19 of 2005. The FBI had charged two known associates but not Wampler. “That was the ten-year anniversary of Oklahoma City,” said Hood. “When Wampler’s buddies torched the post office in Russell County.”
“I see he’s got like-minded friends all over the country,” said Bly. “Militiamen in Montana, the Minutemen here on the border, and the good old Aryan Nation boys out in Idaho. Even the Covert Group-the old guys who wanted to poison a small town with ricin. Apparently he’s been in touch with them, too.”
Yorth groaned. “But not with Islamic extremists? They should throw in together and share expenses. Islamamerica, how’s that sound?”
“That’s ridiculous,” said Bly, then she muttered, “least I hope it is.”
This got a brief laugh. In the ensuing near silence the agents pored over the images. Hood heard the central heat come on. Two or three times a year Buenavista was the hottest place in the nation, but in February the little border town could get cold.
“So then,” said Yorth. “Where do we find Skull and his merry band?”
“Maybe through an informant we haven’t run off,” said Bly.
“I hear you, Janet,” said Yorth. “I hear you, I hear you.”
“The Palomino Club in El Centro,” said Velasquez. “It’s popular with narcos and straw buyers. So are the El Pueblo Restaurant and the Fuzzy Dice bar.”
“There’s the Monterey Restaurant on Main Avenue,” said Hood. “They have a sign out front that says something about their burritos. ‘Best in the west,’ or ‘world’s best’ or something like that.”
Yorth smiled. “Has ATF ever gotten anything that easy?”
“L.A. should have the phone-tap warrant by this afternoon,” said Bly. “I’ll badger them, as I’m so good at doing. Then there’s the gun stores. These guys might just watch the customers come and go, pick out a likely buyer, and make an approach. They’ll want to get in and out and back home to their families and illustrious careers.”
“Charlie Diamonds should be that buyer,” said Hood. “He’s been in all those clubs and restaurants and stores, and others. He’s made some small legal buys. So now he needs a machine gun. And more. He’s a familiar face and a fat wallet.”
Bly nodded. “I like that idea.”
“I do, too,” said Velasquez.
Yorth locked his hands together behind his head again. “Ready to fly, Charlie?”
Hood smiled and the diamonds of his left canine caught the light.
3
Hood drove to the Monterey Restaurant in El Centro, just under an hour from Buenavista. The sun-blasted sign had faded from yellow to a kind of opaque cream and the lettering from black to pale gray, but "BEST BURRITOS IN THE WORLD" was still visible. He used the drive-through and parked in the shade facing the Monterey, the windows of his Charger down. Hood was a muscle-car guy and he liked it that ATF had a deal with Chrysler. The Charger had civie plates and black paint and plenty of get-up-and-go, though the Imperial County sun had no trouble finding it.
In the rearview he checked his diamonds. Five. They shined wicked cool and perfect for an arms dealer. Two months ago when they were installed, Hood was surprised by how different he felt: piratical, subversive, and an odd combination of marked and free. For those first two weeks his tongue had found the hard little chips every waking minute, reminding him of his new self. They were of course removable by a dentist.
He had also gotten on loan from ATF a diamond-studded Rolex. And grown his hair long, which added to his sense of separation and newness. He wore suits in pale shades, tailored to obscure the holster and weapon at the small of his back and his ankle gun. He wore striking shoes, often two-tone. Over the weeks it had become easier and easier to be Charlie Hooper-one dapper, unmistakable, and certainly unorthodox businessman. Hood was warming up to the tooth bling and the hair, which was almost to his shirt collar.
Using the rearview mirror again, Hood tilted his chin down and ran his hand under his forelock and lifted the hair. He studied the slender knife scar. It was nearly six inches long and nearly perfectly aligned with his hairline. Because it had been treated promptly by good doctors and sutured from the inside, the scar remained low profile, understated. His new long hair easily covered it. It still itched occasionally. When the cut was first made, it had bled terrifically, just as it was intended to, allowing a bad man to get away. Veracruz, Mexico, M. Doblado street. Four months ago. I’ll get back to you on this one, Mike, thought Hood. I will get back to you.
Hood enjoyed his lunch. He didn’t find the Missourians at the Monterey, but the burrito rocked.
• • •
He went down the street to Buster’s Last
Stand and talked to Buster about purchasing twenty-thousand rounds of.40 caliber. He balked at the price and wondered out loud why.40 caliber had gotten so popular lately.
“Latest answer to the same old question, Hooper,” boomed Buster. “Stopping power and how many cartridges you can fit in a magazine.”
Hood gave him a dismissive look. “Buster, you know I buy and sell. I’ve got a collector back in Virginia, licensed for automatics. Wants old machine guns like his great-granddaddy might have used in a war-full size, not the subs. Operational, not replicas. Something with the smell of history still in the barrel.”
“We don’t do much full-auto here. I’ll keep my eyes open, though. Try Crossroads of the West. It’s in Texas this month.”
“Sure. Good show.”
“Always a big ’un.”
Hood gave the man a card with “Charles Hooper/Firearms/New and Collectible/Ammo/Reloading/Accessories/Licensed” embossed on it and a phone number and website address handwritten on the back. No federal firearms license number was on it. “This is just in case you lost the last one. Let me know if you find some good old machine guns.”
“Hooper. I can come off that price a little on the ammo. Five percent. Best and final. You pick it up here you’ll save a fortune in shipping.”
Hood gave the man a disappointed smile and walked out.
• • •
Three more gun stores, no Skull. He went to Walmart and bought Beth a bottle of her favorite wine, the best box of chocolates he could find, and a flagrantly sentimental card. He had been trying extra hard to please her these last few months yet he’d come to feel obvious and exposed, like a magician who’d revealed a trick and the trick would no longer work. He knew she felt the same. Walking back to his car he saw the sun setting on this late winter day and felt a deeper chill settling in.
The Famous and the Dead ch-6 Page 2
