T. Parker - The Famous and the Dead

• • •

Soon Hood was back at the field station in Buenavista booking the Lewis Gun and using a computer program to transcribe the digital recording of him and the Missouri profiteers. The recording was of forensic quality. Buster told me you want an operational machine gun. . forms are deal breakers for me, Mr. Hooper. .

“Nice work, Charlie,” said Dale Yorth. He held the Lewis Gun down low against his hip and made machine guns noises, spraying imaginary bad guys. “When you get the buy set up for the submachine guns and pistols, we’ll get the takedown team in place and pinch these rancid creeps.”

Hood looked up at him. To Hood, Dale Yorth was the combination of boyish adventurism and deadly adult mission that constituted law enforcement at most levels. Hood had long watched these traits ebb and flow, rise up and retreat, in himself and in others, often at odd and unpredictable times. As part of a takedown team, he had once been led by a senior agent who hummed the old Hawaii Five-0 theme as they ran through a parking lot, guns drawn on armed felons. Hood believed that these traits were good things for lawmen, so long as they were balanced by sound judgment.

• • •

After writing his reports Hood drove back to Castro Ford to see if Israel’s Flex was parked up front again. It was. Hood parked in the same spot that the Missouri men had used. He exchanged pleasantries with three salesmen waiting outside, one of whom looked disdainfully at the Charger and accused Hood of going over to the dark side. This got a laugh and Hood joined in. He could hear the pneumatic rasp of the power tools and the clank of steel coming from the service side and thought they weren’t bad sounds at all.

In the showroom he admired a very hot yellow Mustang, a loaded Flex, and a little Focus that gleamed like a jewel. The fierce showroom lights made them look not only beautiful but somehow eternal. There was a bin of soccer balls right there by the Mustang, their colored panels the same hot yellow as the Mustang, with CASTRO FORD SAYS YES! emblazoned on them. Hood occasionally thought that if his law enforcement career was to end he might sell cars.

He wandered past the sales cubicles and the service hallway and the awards case and found Israel Castro sitting, back turned, at his desk in the last office. He took off his hat and rapped on the door frame. “Coleman Draper.”

Castro swung around. “Who the hell are you?”

“Easy does it. Charlie Hooper. I worked with Draper at LASD.”

Castro looked at him for a long moment. He was balding and powerfully built and his expression was of curious distrust. He wore a short-sleeve shirt and a necktie. “You a cop?”

“Reserve. Like Coleman. We had some of the same friends, on and off the force. He spoke highly of you.”

“I’m reserve, too. Imperial County. Come in.”

Hood sat and Castro called for coffees. When the pretty girl had come and gone, Hood told Castro about meeting Draper back in ’08 when Coleman’s German car repair shop came recommended. They’d talked, found common interests, including cars and law enforcement, and Draper had later introduced him to the captain who ran the LASD Reserves. Hooper joined up for the action and the badge and the contacts. A year later, Coleman was gunned down by a deputy on his own force.

Castro nodded, his doubtful eyes roaming Hood’s face. “What brings you here?”

“Just business. I’m buying and selling.” He gave Castro one of his Charles Hooper cards. “It’s all squeaky clean. No toys for boys. Nothing going south illegally.”

“Do I look like I need a gun?”

“That’s entirely up to you. I’ve been in San Diego for a few months now, moved down from Seattle after L.A. I’m touching base with my contacts, just working the field. As I said, Coleman liked you a lot. He told me about when you guys were young in Jacumba. Amigos Restaurant and all. I always wanted to meet you. Now seemed like the time.”

“You’re not just looking for a deal on a car, are you? Because if you are, you’re in the right place.”

Hood smiled.

“I miss Coleman,” said Castro. “He saved my life and I saved his. Boys. He did things his own special way. Know what I mean?”

“I’d never met anyone like him. I haven’t since.”

“Alright. You want a car, see me and I will make you a deal. And if I need a shooting piece I’ll come see you.”

“I buy, too. If you know legit people with high-end firearms.”

“Why would I?”

“Coleman said you were full of surprises.”

Castro stood. “That’s me. I’ll walk you out. I want you just take one quick look at the new Taurus. Totally redesigned last year-they out-Germaned the Germans. Initial Quality? J. D. Powers went batshit over these things.”

• • •

Later that day, as he wrote up his report in the field office, one of his cell phones rang again. “Hood.”

“This is Lonnie Rovanna.”

“Hello, Lonnie.”

“I saw Mike Finnegan. He was Dr. Stren, from the Superior Court in San Diego.”

“When?”

“Two mornings ago. I was on your website months back. I like to check in on, well, unusual. . searchers. Like you. I enjoyed the way you described the changeability of Mike. I believe people can be not what they appear. That they can change. That they can have several names and personalities and professions and lives. I believe this happens all the time. And I saw him. Mike. He has black hair, not red. And big glasses. It took me a couple of days to realize where I’d see him before. It came to me in a dream, in fact. But there’s no doubt he’s the same man as in your pictures. So, I’m doing what you asked. I’m contacting you.”

“Where was he?”

“Here in my house. El Cajon. He came to talk about my firearms being returned. They were taken away without just cause.”

“May I come talk to you?”

“When?”

“I’m leaving Buenavista now. Give me your phone number and address and an hour fifty minutes.”

Hood sat on a white resin chair in Rovanna’s living room. The house was old and small and had the dusty burnt breath of the space heater that glowed orange in its corner. There was a layer of dust on everything-on the paperback thrillers grown plump with age and use, and the newspapers and magazines piled everywhere.

Rovanna sat on a slouching plaid couch with a baseball bat leaning against the pad beside him. He allowed Hood to place a digital recorder on the low coffee table between them. Then Rovanna spoke briefly of growing up in Orange County, California, his service overseas, subsequent troubles adjusting back to civilian life, a suicide attempt, and a later assault on two Jehovah’s Witnesses. The police had arrested him and the court had committed him involuntarily to a hospital for evaluation. He was able to keep up the rent because of his disability checks. When he got home, his guns were gone. Lonnie Rovanna seemed straight to the point and factual.

“Iraq?” asked Hood.

“Two rotations. Mahmudiya District, then Anbar Province.”

“Anbar and Hamdinaya for me. Infantry?”

“Five Hundred Second, Hundred and First Airborne.”

“Which battalion?”

Rovanna looked at him levelly, took up the Louisville Slugger, gripped it like a batter, then set it back down. “First. Bravo Company, First Platoon. Triangle of Death. We found PFC Tucker and PV2 Menchaca after the rag heads tortured and beheaded them. They put IEDs in one of their crotch cavities. That was oh-six. Then I deployed again a year later, but after the triangle I was already a wreck.”

Hood nodded. He remembered clearly that 1st Platoon of Bravo Company-Rovanna’s outfit-had suffered terrible casualties in the so-called Triangle of Death. They had been isolated, outnumbered, terrified by videotaped beheadings circulated by the insurgents, and castigated by other B Company platoons. Four of them finally snapped, raping and killing an Iraqi girl and her family. It had been one of the darkest and most reported episodes of that long, dark war. But Hood also knew that Rovanna and his men had not discovered the bodies of the soldiers Tucker and Menchaca-that was 2nd Battalion. This atrocity had been reported in agonizing detail as well. As a part of NCIS, Hood had studied both of the terrible incidents as points of both personal and world history. Now these two events occupied dark compartments in his psyche, as Hood figured they must for many of the enlisted men of the 502nd Infantry. So how could Lonnie Rovanna get them mixed up?