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.
Hood 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.'
