The border Lords ch-4

by T. Jefferson Parker

  Betty coughed and sputtered and started up again but then she fell silent. Ozburn heard the wind whistling past the fuselage and the hiss of air on the wings. The night was immense beyond all his comprehension.

  He felt Betty's nose turn toward earth but he couldn't move his arms to correct her course. He looked down at his hands and ordered them into action but they refused. The altimeter reading plummeted and the compass needle circled crazily. He tried to move his feet and raise his knees but they had forsaken him, too. Instead he imagined his first real date with Seliah, breakfast at the Congress Hotel in Tucson, and they ate and sat and drank coffee for two full hours and at the end of it Ozburn knew his life had changed and she was to be the biggest part of it. That was in February and they'd run through a pouring rain to Ozburn's beat-up Dodge, and halfway back to her place the Dodge stalled at a light and they had to get out and push the thing to the roadside. They were drenched and half-frozen and the gutter was a torrent of brown water that pushed at the car like a big hand. Then their first kiss, both of them trembling with cold with the heater on full blast and the windows fogged and the rain belting the roof of the car. Now Ozburn could feel nothing of his body except the vertigo of that kiss, the warmth and softness of it so startling and right in a cold, hard world. He held his eyes open and steady and watched the spangled Pacific rising up to claim him.

  38

  Ten days later Dr. Jason Witt of UCI Medical Center decided to suspend Seliah's sedatives and wait for her to awaken from the coma. She had been under heavy sedation for sixteen days, metabolically sustained with infusions. She had been bathed daily, and moved several times each day and night to promote circulation and prevent bedsores.

  Witt wore a linen suit and white court shoes, and his tone of voice was more neutral than hopeful. "We've been monitoring regional cerebral perfusion using Doppler ultrasonography. Her serum, saliva and cerebrospinal fluid samples have been tested every other day for immune response and viral clearance. Her rabies-specific IgM and IgG and viral excretions in the saliva have fallen dramatically. The nuchal biopsy shows only very weak rabies virus antigen and the polymerase chain reaction was negative. What all that means is she's beaten back the virus. It's almost totally absent now. It has done its damage. If she awakens, she will be insensate to pain and touch, and paralyzed. But she'll be electrically viable. Her brain is functioning and it should continue to function. She'll have to learn many things again. She's going to have to boot up from scratch. So to speak."

  Witt explained this to Seliah's parents and two brothers, Sean's parents and two sisters, and to Charlie Hood, allowed by the families to loiter around the edges of the tense inner sanctum. There had been some long and painful hours. Hood felt spent. But the families had shown strength and deep feelings for Sean, and Hood had not detected any blame for what Seliah was now going through. Not of Sean. Not of ATF. Ozburn had been found by fishermen in the wreckage of Betty, twelve miles west of San Diego, eight days ago.

  "We do know," the doctor said solemnly, "that only a very few unvaccinated people have survived rabies after symptom onset. Very, very few."

  "Five," said Seliah's father, Glen.

  "Yes," said Witt. "We embarked on this protocol with both hope and awareness of risk. It has worked in the past. Sometimes it has failed. We've hoped and prayed it will work for Seliah. She is obviously loved very much and that is a great help. Now it's time."

  There was an uneasy silence during which eyes did not meet. "How long?" asked Seliah's mother, Shivaun. "If she's going to wake up, when will it be?"

  "In the best scenario, she should be able to blink or cough within twenty-four hours. After that, the chances of her waking go down significantly. We hope that she will respond to rehabilitation. You've been through a lot. So please stay. Wait together. Talk to her. Talk to each other. Pray. We'll wait for Seliah to come back." Deep into the first night they took turns sitting with her, waiting for her to cough, or maybe even open her eyes briefly. Sixteen hours came and went and she did not move except to breathe. Her pulse, respiration and blood pressure all registered low normal. The flesh of her face looked somewhat slack, as did her arms. Hood saw that she was pale now, beyond just fair, and with her platinum blond hair spilled back on the pillow, she was a ghostly sleeping beauty. And your prince came to kiss you, Hood thought. He heard Janet Bly's voice: We don't live in fairy tales, Charlie. She was right. But what did they live in?

  Hour twenty arrived with sunrise at its back and Hood looked out at the gray morning light. Beyond a knot of freeways he could see Arrowhead Pond and Edison Field and to Hood these temples of man seemed vain and superfluous. To the northeast the purple flanks of the Santa Ana Mountains sat heavily against the lightening November sky.

  Hood closed his eyes and listened to the thrum and mew of the intensive care unit. Sean's two sisters sat to his left and Seliah's two brothers on his right. He thought of his own brothers and sisters and his mother and father. They were spread across the map but they were still a family. For Hood there was some consolation in this.

  When he looked at her again he saw the glimmer of Seliah's open eyes. A week later she still could not move anything but her eyes. She tracked her visitors and gave no sign of recognizing anyone except her mother, whose little finger she was able to squeeze. The others she regarded with mute but unmistakable fear.

  Over the next eight days she slept in four-hour cycles and cried for hours in between. Witt said she was frustrated with her paralysis. He said she was like a baby, having to learn things again but she was in a hurry because she remembered how she used to be. She would learn patience. She would have to.

  Gradually Seliah began crying less.

  By the end of another week she moved her head, then her hands and feet. Her respiration tube was removed and she breathed on her own.

  She began looking at people with diminished fear, except for her mother, who held her hand and brushed her hair and rubbed the lotion on her body. Seliah stared at her with love unconditional.

  She whispered, then talked very softly, gibberish at first, then words, then sentences.

  She sipped water and broth.

  She appeared to remember some of the deep past but little of the recent.

  She was sleeping less. Slowly she could concentrate on a conversation-ten seconds, then twenty.

  What happened?

  Why am I here?

  I love you, Mom. Is that you, Dad?

  It's very loud in this place.

  Late one night Hood handed her a plastic cup of ice and water.

  She took it and looked at him with an expression of wonder.

  "Sean," she whispered.

  "I'm Charlie."

  She sipped and handed him back the cup and smiled very slightly. Then her eyes closed and she was gone again.

  39

  Bradley Jones met Mike Finnegan at the Bordello after his night patrol shift. Bradley had changed out of his uniform because he was welcome in this bar but his uniform was not. It was one in the morning.

  "I like it better here when Erin plays that stage," said Finnegan.

  "She can't play every night."

  "Of course, I liked it better here when it was a real bordello, too. Fantastic city, Los Angeles in the eighteen hundreds."

  Bradley looked at him and shook his head. "What can I do for you, Mike?"

  "I just wanted to hear more about the Lancaster shoot-out. The headlines and pictures and news footage have all been very thorough but I wanted your insider's story. What a mess that must have been."

  "It's all old news by now. And I wasn't there."

  "But surely you've heard a thousand stories. Share some with me!" Finnegan smiled and his face flushed. To Bradley, Mike looked every one of his fifty-two years, except when he smiled. Then he looked like an eighth grader who'd just gotten away with something-delighted and eager to try it again. Bradley realized that Mike's delight was what made him so easy to talk to. It made you want to help keep
that smile on his face.

  So Bradley told him what he'd heard: An informant had told an unnamed LASD deputy that a gunrunner was unloading a hundred new machine pistols to L.A. Mara Salvatruchas working for the Gulf Cartel. The deputy had told his boss and his boss had put together a seven-member take-down team and a cover team of four radio cars and a helicopter.

  "This must have been Commander Dez," said Mike. "She's the most quoted LASD officer in the papers and on TV-except for the PR people, of course. Attractive. Ambition written all over her pretty little face."

  Bradley nodded. "None of that's a secret."

  "But who was this mystery deputy, I wonder. The one with the very good information."

  Bradley shrugged and drank his bourbon.

  "Guess, Bradley. Offer up a guess."

  "We're the biggest sheriff's department in the country, Mike. What good would a guess do?"

  "Just tell me if you know him." Mike beamed and drank his scotch. He looked like a boy who had just gotten exactly what he wanted for Christmas.

  "I don't know him."

  "Well, his informant turned out to have the right stuff, didn't he?"

  Bradley nodded and smiled. "It was one hundred percent accurate, Mike."

  Finnegan rubbed his hands together and smiled up at the ceiling, then took another drink. "Two couriers shot dead by Gravas, and another by your people. And two very fine sheriff's deputies fallen in the line of duty. Five deaths. Five."

  "Vicky Sunderland and Bob Dunn," Bradley said, his voice lowered in respect.

  "What a terrible shame. And, to add to it, the precious cargo of machine pistols vanishes with Gravas, only to be intercepted by Charlie Hood and his ATF team two days later. With quite a bit of money, also. I couldn't help but feel that the glory should have belonged to LASD."

  Bradley sipped again but said nothing. It rankled him that Hood and ATF had gotten the guns, money and glory. He could live with the rankle. But Dez had quickly handed him over to Internal Affairs for the intel that had led to two dead deputies, and IA had landed hard. IA could exonerate him, or they could discipline him, or they could take his job. Bradley understood that they had power over him even the U.S. Constitution couldn't deflect. He couldn't plead the Fifth; he couldn't hire a lawyer. Larry King could not help now. The IA discussions were secret, their findings not subject to appeal. IA was clearly suspicious of Bradley's good luck in the Stevie Carrasco kidnapping. They wanted his car-wash shoot-out informant, and they wanted him now. So far Bradley had wriggled out of it by saying his man was back down in Mexico again. He promised to produce him as soon as he returned. He'd have to produce someone. He hoped that Herredia would be able to hook him up with a convincing actor, but Bradley hadn't seen El Tigre in two weeks, the weekly run to El Dorado now impossible to make with IA shadowing him to and from work and home and anywhere else he went. He worked his patrols diligently, wondering if a departmental suspension was on its way. He felt like a rat being tormented by terriers. All he wanted was to put this suspicion behind him and make his cash runs to Mexico again, bust some of the Gulf Cartel's L.A. soldiers, love his wife and prepare their lives for the baby to come.

  "Is the wounded courier going to make it?"

  "They say so."

  "I heard his name is Octavio."

  Bradley nodded.

  Mike leaned toward him and spoke softly. "Do you feel a division of loyalty?"

  "Division? Between what and what?"

  "Your department and your working relationships south of the border."

  Bradley shook his head and smiled but he couldn't stop the jolt of adrenaline that went through him. "Mike, you're an idiot."

  "Oh, but I did manage to help you and Ron get that product south last year, now, didn't I? In fact, without me, our friend Charlie would have found you out. Without a doubt. So instead of being a deputy right now, you'd be an inmate somewhere-and I don't mean in your wife's band. It's totally different on the other side of those bars, I can assure you. So don't call me names, Bradley. It makes you look shortsighted and mean-spirited. The sooner we can become totally honest with each other, the greater things we can do."

  Bradley said nothing. Rat, he thought. Terriers. He sipped his drink and glanced out at the singer, then looked at Finnegan. Mike's mouth was tight and concern lined his forehead.

  "Mike, I've been wondering about something. I don't think we met for the first time at the Viper Room last year. I'd never seen Owens before then. But I'd seen you. I'm sure of it now."

  Finnegan's blue eyes twinkled. "Well, now that you bring it up, I'd like to let you in on something-you and I first laid eyes on each other when you were less than a year old. I was acquainted with your mother. But I kept my distance as you grew up."

  Another shot of adrenaline ran through Bradley, this one cold and sharp. "How come you never told me that?"

  "A time for everything and everything in its time."

  "Talk to me."

  "I introduced your mother to your father."

  "Why?"

  "To give you a chance at magnificence."

  "What shit."

  "Really? I'm extremely proud of the way you came out."

  "My father is selfish and unaccomplished. The only skill he ever developed was the seduction of women. Then he exploits them."

  "But he was also strong and smart and charming and utterly without morals. The perfect partner for a"-Mike cupped his hand to Bradley's ear and whispered-"Murrieta!"

  "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 o
f 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."