The Famous and the Dead ch-6

by T. Jefferson Parker

  Hood heard the squeal of sirens leaving the clubhouse.

  • • •

  He aimed Skull through the open gate. Prowl car floodlights lit the clubhouse, and the colored flashers of the paramedics and fire-and-rescue units raked the walls. Hood heard a generator. In the parking lot he snatched up his hat and put it on and delivered Skull to two El Centro cops, who roughly deposited him into the back of a car. One side of his face had swollen prodigiously and hate was in his eyes. Brock Peltz glared at him from the back of another police car.

  The Blowdown team and six cops stood outside. Yorth looked stricken and Bly argued with a plainclothes detective. Hood could see Marquez inside, talking with a uniformed sergeant. Velasquez stepped away and Hood saw that he was breathing hard and his shirt was untucked.

  “Wampler shotgunned Reggie. Paramedics made it here fast but it looked bad. No word.”

  “Where is that sonofabitch?”

  “He lost us in the dark.”

  “Let me guess, with one of the Stingers. Out the back door.”

  “Yeah. I don’t think he’ll get far in this desert with two yard-long crates.”

  “He’ll hijack the first motorist he finds.”

  “The cops have called up every available unit. There’s a helo on the way from San Diego. There’s no way that kid can get out of here.”

  “Did he get the money, too?”

  “Not enough hands, apparently. It took Marquez a minute to take down Peltz and that’s when Wampler got away. By the time we got there and saw he was gone, he was way in the dark somewhere. With a launcher and a missile. But Marquez got the money.”

  “Cepeda’s that bad?”

  “Shot twice and pretty close up, man. If it was buckshot. .”

  Hood stood at the entrance and looked into the clubhouse. The fire-and-rescue team had set up floodlights. There were more uniforms trying to figure out where to string the crime-scene tape, and a woman shooting video. Hood saw the launcher and missile crates on the floor where Skull had dropped them. He saw the blood-smeared floor were Cepeda had fallen, and the holes in the wall plaster where some of the shot had gone through. Big holes, he saw. Made for a man, not a pheasant. He saw that if he had waited a second or two to go after Skull, he would have been hit. Suddenly Hood’s adrenaline was gone and he felt ugly and tired and luckless.

  For the next ten minutes Hood and Velasquez cruised southeast El Centro in the Charger, hoping for new luck. Just after nine o’clock, the police issued an all-units watch for Clint Wampler and a stolen white Sequoia. At the intersection of Imperial and Ross, he’d pistol-whipped the vehicle’s driver, who confirmed that the carjacker was in possession of a pistol and two wooden crates.

  Velasquez called Yorth at the hospital and Cepeda was critical and in surgery. Hood worked his way outward from the Imperial-Ross intersection in a series of right-hand turns. The wind stiffened and the night went cold.

  They were quiet for a long while. Hood worked his way back toward the place where Wampler had carjacked the SUV, willing the white Sequoia into his field of vision. His heart sped up as a white Yukon sped across the intersection of Adams and Brucherie. Damn. “What if Wampler decides to use it for something spectacular?” asked Velasquez. “Because that’s what guys like him want. To do something unforgettable. Because they themselves are so utterly and totally forgettable.”

  Hood nodded. He hadn’t forgotten the Murrah Building catastrophe. He’d always remember the date because he was sixteen years old, learning to drive his father’s pickup truck on a lightly traveled farm road outside of Bakersfield, when the news came over the radio. His dad had told him to pull over so he could listen. Hood had watched the anger building on his father’s face and that anger Hood would never forget because his father was an otherwise gentle and generous man. I hope they hang those fuckers, he had said. Years later Hood’s mother told him that his father had flown an American flag on the day they put the bomber to death.

  “There used to be something in me like there is in Clint,” said Hood. “When I was young, I wanted to make a statement and be a hero. But I had no statement to make and I had no idea what a hero was. There’s nothing in the world scarier than a young man with bad ideas.”

  “Yeah. I get that.” Velasquez answered his phone, listened silently, and punched off. “Reggie didn’t make it.”

  Hood drove for a while in silence, doubling his willpower to conjure the white Sequoia with the murderous young man inside.

  Velasquez asked him to pull over, so Hood steered the Charger onto the white, broad shoulder of the avenue. Velasquez set his head back against the rest and closed his eyes. Hood looked out at the stars and the cotton field and the windblown sand inching across the asphalt.

  20

  Rovanna holed up in the mountains where he didn’t think the cops would look for him, a little village not far from San Diego called Wynola. Rovanna, meet Wynola, he thought. He got a weekly rate on a motel cabin because it was off-season and cold. The owner was in no way curious about him and she accepted his cash and his story of stolen ID. He signed in as Donnie Archibald. That first night he saw the eleven o’clock news story with the Reverend Steve Bagley. Rovanna saw now that it was careless to use his real name inside the church.

  His cabin was small and mostly clean. He took in his suitcase, prepacked before the Neighborhood Congregational visit just in case of trouble. He waited until nightfall to bring in the radios, six of them, various shapes and sizes-two powered by nine-volt batteries, three by AC, and the other a hand-crank unit meant for emergencies. All of which he found amusing because they didn’t need external power to be heard.

  Now he sat in the darkness with the radios deployed around him and the Love 32 loaded with a full magazine and hidden under a bed pillow. His motel was built up close to the busy road, and there must be some kind of biker rally, he thought, because the Harleys growled and grumbled and roared at all hours, singles and pairs and big convoys of them twenty and thirty at a time. So the voices coming from the radios picked their moments to be heard. They were all soft, reasoning voices, two men and four women today, the opposite of yesterday. Though he only understood the English, the radios spoke several other languages that Rovanna recognized, and others not necessarily of this planet.

  Later he walked to the pizza place and sat in the back, spiking his soft drink with vodka from a water bottle he carried in a cloth market bag along with the Love 32. The pizza was excellent. A woman dining alone gave him a hard look as she walked out. She was older than Rovanna but not old, and she wore a heavy black knee-length sweater and black gloves and leggings. Her hair was auburn, touched with gray. Avoiding her eyes, he noted her boots, old-fashioned lace-ups with low heels, something he imagined Belle Starr might wear. The leather looked ancient and worn of color, and could have been suede or finished, he couldn’t tell, though the modern, lug-pattern soles looked new and squeaked on the floor as she went by.

  He watched the TV for a while, then went outside into the surprising cold. As always he wore cargo shorts and slip-on sneakers but he did have his hoodie. He walked down the curving mountain highway, past his motel and a saloon and a beauty salon and a restaurant. The trees were high, jailing the quarter moon, and invisible patches of ice waited along the roadside. A pack of motorcycles snarled by. Rovanna followed a dirt road down into a swale surrounded by trees but open in the middle. He stood still for a while in the close darkness and listened. No voices out here. Not one. What a strange thing. He picked his way through the rocks and skidded where the road was steep and found himself locked in by the trees again, trees so high when he looked up he couldn’t see the tops against the black sky. He heard the distant gurgle of running water. Down the slope he stepped and slid as the rocks clattered beneath his feet and the cloth shopping bag knocked against his leg.

  Suddenly he found himself standing directly in a stream. The water was vividly cold and his sneakers were instantly soaked through. The water rippled
over the stones, sending up bright sounds-chirps and bell-like ringing, and the clear tinkle of glass. He had avoided bodies of water his entire life because he couldn’t swim but now, hearing the water music, he felt no fear. He heard something behind him but when he turned he saw nothing. He put one foot in front of the other and walked into the current. The stones were smooth and extremely slippery. After a few yards he couldn’t feel his toes. Then his feet. He stopped again to experience the voicelessness around him. The stream warbled and the highway was just a faraway hiss. He thought of the Identical Men and what had happened when they attacked him in the church and he felt that he had done the right thing. Stren’s voice joined the stream and highway, a three-part harmony: There is nothing wrong with you, Lonnie. Sometimes friends are all we have. And voices speak to all of us at different times. Listen to them and do what you think is right. . use this gift to protect yourself and those around you and to advance the ideals you believe in.

  He waded farther upstream. His ankles were aching but not unpleasantly, because Rovanna could separate himself from himself at times, just observe. He heard rocks clatter behind him but when he turned, again there was nothing. Then another a voice broke through but it wasn’t a voice he was expecting. He could see the owl hunched black in the sere branches of a cottonwood, and he could see the flat metallic eyes blink when it adjusted its head to better behold him. “Owl. Don’t say anything more. Too much talk on earth. Plainly.” Rovanna sloshed along until he was almost under the owl, then he stopped and looked up. The animal watched him for a long while. Then without warning its wings spread and it rose from the branch as if pulled by strings and disappeared into the blackness. Rovanna saw the feather spiraling down toward him and he caught it and put it in his bag.

  Back at the roadside a car was waiting. It was a newer economy car like Rovanna’s, but red. The passenger door stood open and inside Rovanna saw the woman from the pizza place. Her sweater was buttoned up tight, the cowl almost covering her ears. Her auburn hair had a coppery sheen in the weak interior light. “I’m Joan,” she said, her breath fogging. “Get in.”

  Rovanna sat close because the car was small. The defroster was set to roar. Before shutting his door he looked at her face, which was grave and prettier than he had first thought. She did not smile. He glanced at her aged boots encrusted with brown dirt, one on the brake and one on the clutch. The car smelled faintly of cherries. He set his market bag on the floorboard and fastened his restraints.

  The little car revved high and jumped onto the asphalt and sped up the mountain toward Julian. “Lonnie, you have no chance if you try to do this alone.”

  “Do what alone?”

  “Survive. In the glove box there’s a book, and your meds from the El Cajon house. Take them out. Put the pills in your pocket and the book on your lap.”

  Joan turned on the interior light, and Rovanna found the small leather-bound Bible and his Tramadol and Zoloft and did as she said. He saw the cherry-shaped cardboard air freshener on top of some maps. He looked at the backseats and saw the neatly rolled sleeping bag resting on a bed pillow, a laptop computer, two milk crates overflowing with electronic pads and pods and gadgets and cords and chargers.

  She turned off the light. “First, you must take your medications. They work for you. Over time you can teach yourself to live without them. But for now you must take them or your mind will betray you into foolish actions.”

  “I left them behind in El Cajon on purpose.”

  “That was bad decision-making, Lonnie. Second, do not talk to Stren again. If he shows up, hit him with that Bible. Literally pound him with it. It will repel and sicken him. The Torah and Koran can be used also. Electronic editions are not effective. But, the most important thing you can do is to not stalk Representative Freeman at the Alternative Book Fair in San Diego.”

  At the word Freeman, Rovanna flinched inwardly. “How do you know about-”

  “I don’t have the time to explain myself to you in a way that you’re ready to understand. But I know you. Believe me, I know you. It really was nice back there on the little stream, wasn’t it? When you stood in that cold water and listened and there were no voices. For a short time, at least.”

  “I haven’t experienced that in years-no voices for minutes on end.”

  Joan wound out the little four-banger on an uphill run. Rovanna watched the pines sweep past. She came up fast on a couple of belching Harleys, downshifted, and gunned the little car into the oncoming lane, passing them on a blind rise, then veering back into place ahead of them.

  “I got a blue Focus,” he said.

  “These new economy cars are really something,” said Joan. “The mileage and power and comfort. I put between eighty and one hundred twenty thousand miles a year on cars. This is like my third or fourth one.”

  “What do you do for a living?”

  “Sales. Look, Rovanna, I can’t take that gun away from you. You know, the machine pistol in the shopping bag at your feet right now. I’m not authorized to take it. But I can tell you this: You are a troubled man now being manipulated by a devil, and the final cost to you will not be the pain you inflict, but the pain that you will receive. It will be utterly unbearable and you will not survive it. Take your meds, read that Bible, and keep it with you always. Most importantly, stay away from Scott Freeman.”

  Again Rovanna flinched. It was a physical reaction to the word and the man it identified.

  “Do not attend the book fair,” Joan continued. “I implore you to leave that gun with me tonight. Just leave it where it is when you exit my car. If you are not strong enough to do that, then do not attend the book fair for any reason.”

  “I’m not going to let some stranger take away my last gun.”

  “I didn’t think so.”

  With this Joan braked and downshifted, then threw the little coupe into a tire-screeching U-turn that ran them onto the dirt shoulder, then back to the pavement. When they passed the bikers coming up the mountain, Joan honked her horn on the way by. She looked into the rearview and smiled as if she’d really shown them.

  She pulled into the motel lot and drove to his cabin. Rovanna looked out where the headlights hit his front door. “Would you like to come in?”

  “No, thank you.”

  “I want to thank you for helping me.”

  “I don’t feel like I’ve done enough.”

  “I never feel like I’ve done enough.”

  “Bible. Meds. No Stren. No book fair. Pray, Lonnie, pray with all your heart. Start simple, with these seven words: I thank and praise God. Help us. That’s all you need to say.”

  “Can I kiss you?”

  “Open your door.”

  Rovanna unslung his harness and opened his door, then turned to kiss her only to find the sole of her lace-up boot planted in the middle of his chest. She pushed him out of the car so hard he flew halfway to the cabin before hitting the ground butt-first. He felt the strength of five men in her. He crabbed away, momentarily belly up and on all fours, then struggled upright, pissed off. He felt his anger and shame flare and his face flush. He marched forward and braced himself with one hand on the door frame in case she tried anything else and, without taking his eyes off her, he snatched his shopping bag from the floor mat.

  “God will bless you if you let him, Lonnie Rovanna. He has spoken to you through me.”

  He slammed the car door and didn’t look back. But he did peek out the cabin door half an hour later, just to see if there were tire tracks in the packed dirt where Joan had let him off. Hard to say. So he stepped onto the landing and looked down in the dim porch light and saw what could very well be the neat narrow tracks of an economy car. And he saw a two-orbed impression right where he remembered landing, hard, at least ten feet away from the car tracks. He thought of her astonishing strength and the smell of cherries. An incredible woman. She had known exactly what he was thinking while he stood in the freezing little creek. Still, he knew that he was not sane and tha
t sometimes he saw things that weren’t really there. Then, almost embarrassedly, he turned square to the porch light and looked down at his sweatshirt. There it was, plain to see, the proof he wanted-the dirty outline of her boot on his chest.

  21

  The following night, in the stately, chandeliered lobby of the Biltmore Hotel in Los Angeles, Mike greeted Bradley with a strong hug and a grand smile. His tuxedo was notch-lapelled and expertly fitted and somehow gave him added height. With Mike was his lovely associate Owens, inches taller than he was, in a sleek pewter-colored dress that matched her eyes. Pearls around her neck. Bradley hadn’t seen her since she came to visit Erin, shortly after helping her survive the ordeal in Yucatan four months ago. He took her hands and kissed her cheek and glanced at the scars on her wrists and furtively inhaled the scent of her though he tried not to.

  “I like your new dental work,” she said.

  He’d certainly needed it after Yucatan. “The new teeth complete my smile.”

  “And I like your conservative haircut. Are you an old-fashioned conservative, or just one of the new ones out to wreck the country?”

  “I love this country. And look at you-the same old beauty you always were.”

  “Why, thank you. I hope you don’t find it tiresome.”

  “Boys and girls?” Mike handed Owens a small silver flask and she smiled, then sipped.

  Bradley took it and swirled and smelled it. Cream? Cucumbers? Mint? It was perhaps nonalcoholic and very cold, in spite of being inside Mike’s breast pocket. Bradley thought of the absinthe bar he’d had at his and Erin’s wedding down in Valley Center. What a night. And another day and another night and morning until the last celebrants were gone. Tents in the hills and all the guest casitas full and someone getting the fighting bulls drunk and letting them out of the corral. They’d made Bacchus proud. “What is this stuff?”