T. Parker - The Famous and the Dead

“I was earlier,” Hood said.

“The first deployment was the worst. Misplaced my mind. Still looking for it. Don’t know how I made it through that last rotation. But I got out, got meds and a good doctor. I’ll be fine. I filed my Firearms Rights Restoration application about three weeks ago. Dr. Stren came three days ago to ask questions. He’s assigned by the Superior Court. He had a signed affidavit from a judge. He interviewed me, wrote in a little black notebook, and said he would be writing up his report later that day.”

“What did he ask you? What did you talk about?”

Rovanna went to his kitchen and returned with two large superhero drink containers from Mr. Burger filled with ice and a plastic half-gallon bottle of vodka, new. He sat back down and cracked the seal and unscrewed it and poured half a glass for each of them. They touched the cups and drank. Hood felt the cold liquid burn down. He looked outside to the dirt-speckled Ford Focus in the gravel driveway and the big sycamore looming beyond.

Rovanna talked about Stren’s prying, know-it-all attitude, and his interest in Rovanna’s state of mind and behavior, his curiosity about the radios that Rovanna had locked away in the toolshed out back, and about his medications and alcohol use. He told Hood that his personal physician at the VA, Dr. Webb, had told Stren many private things about him-hearing voices from unplugged radios and demons in the walls, being followed by five men with identical clothing and faces. Rovanna said that Stren predicted his Firearms Rights Restoration application would be denied. Rovanna shrugged, then drank, then looked out the window to the sycamore standing almost leafless in the waning afternoon light. Hood studied him, trying to vet Rovanna’s words and his grossly faulty remembrance of the war and the thousand-yard stare with which he now gazed outside.

After a long minute Hood pressed on. “Why did they take your guns away?”

Rovanna drank again, then told Hood in more detail about his assault on the Jehovah’s Witnesses, who were quite possibly imposters. People were sometimes not what they pretended, he said with a bitter smile, like this Finnegan or Stren man. Rovanna spoke more informatively about his suicide attempt-flinched at the last second-then brushed aside his thick blond hair to reveal the brief scar above his right ear. “So after the Witnesses they put me in the loony bin for two weeks of evaluation. They always take your guns away when that happens.”

“What did you use the guns for?”

“Oh, nothing really. They mainly just stayed under the bed in their cases.”

“You didn’t brandish them to the men posing as Jehovah’s Witnesses?”

“Naw. No time. Slugged one and tackled the other. Neighbors ratted me out.”

“Did you use the bat?”

“I didn’t own a bat until they took my guns.”

“What kind of guns?”

Rovanna declared them, twelve in all, semiauto assault-style rifles, semiauto handguns. He gave makes, model numbers, calibers.

“Describe Dr. Stren in more detail.”

Rovanna addressed the navy suit and white shirt, the matching blue tie and patch, the small black shoes, the old-time gangster hat like Virgil Sollozzo wore in The Godfather.

“You said he wore glasses.”

“Big ones. Greek billionaire glasses. Or that movie director. They made his eyes bug out. He’s little, like I said. He has a deep, clear voice that seemed too big for this room. He wrote with a black pen in a black notebook. And that’s about it. I think I’ve told you everything I can think of about him. Now, Mr. Hood-it’s your turn to tell me what you know.”

Hood declined a refill and told Rovanna how he’d first met Mike Finnegan in the Imperial Mercy Hospital in Buenavista. Mike had been hit by a car while changing a tire out in the desert, and was nearly killed. Broken bones, severe concussion, serious internal damage. He was in a full body cast, head to toe except for one good arm. Mike had been carrying Hood’s address and phone number in his wallet. He claimed to have gotten the information from a mutual friend who worked part-time for Hood’s Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department. He said he sold bath and shower products in L.A.-Mike Finnegan Bath was the name of his company. For a man who had cheated death just a few days earlier, Mike was lucid and humorful and apparently unpained, Hood said. Mike had asked him to find his daughter-she had run away before and Mike was sure she had run away again. He even had a possible address for her but now, well, he wouldn’t be getting out of bed and walking anytime soon. That’s what he said he’d been doing out in the infernal Imperial County desert, Hood told Rovanna-looking for his daughter. Lovely, troubled Owens.

“He’s a good actor,” said Rovanna. “You should have seen the way he looked at me. And around this place. Just like a doctor. You can’t tell him anything he doesn’t already know. The only thing he got wrong was his signature. Doctors can’t write, they can only scribble. His signature looked like something an engineer would have-perfect slant and perfect letters.”

Hood poured himself a short second drink. He told Rovanna that Mike had broken out of his body cast and walked out of intensive care a few days later. Checked himself out of the hospital, paid ninety thousand in cash for his treatment.

“Broke out of a full body cast with half his bones broken?”

“Correct. I saw the remains of the cast. He’d ripped it off with his bare hands, dressed himself, and left. Scared the hell out of the nurses. The security camera caught him getting into his daughter’s car.”

“Those five guys who follow me around? I call them the Identical Men. They tried to tell me they were IRS. Like I’m going to fall for that. They’re not IRS. They’re Langley. Pure and simple. Or worse. I think Finnegan could be with them. They all have the same attitude. They try to treat you like a piece of shit. Same with the Jehovah’s Witnesses. Like they know God himself. Like they’re going to introduce you to Him. They’re all part of the same game, Mr. Hood. They’re all out to control our minds. They’ll use radios, they’ll hide inside the walls, they’ll change and morph and lie.”

“A year later Mike was in Central America, posing as an Irish priest named Joe Leftwich,” said Hood. He thought of the utter destruction that Leftwich had wrought upon his friends, the Ozburns.

“No surprise.”

“Where did he sit?”

“Here, where I am. I sat where you are.”

“Did he leave you a card? Or any way to contact him?”

Rovanna blushed and shook his head and looked down at the worn oval rug. “I forgot to ask. He didn’t offer. Sorry. You could just call the court.”

“Did you see his car?”

“No. I can’t see the street from here.”

“Did he give you anything?”

Rovanna looked up. “Give me? You mean like. .”

“Anything.”

“No. No. He didn’t give me anything. Nothing.”

Hood watched Rovanna’s eyes lose their conviction and his gaze find the frayed carpet again. “He just said he was going to write up something to help me get the guns back. He said my chances weren’t so good.”

“But he didn’t give you anything?”

When Rovanna looked at him again, Hood saw the anger in his face. And something along with it he couldn’t quite ID-sadness maybe, or guilt. “I said he didn’t. Is there any way to be more clear on that?”

Hood nodded absently.

Rovanna again took the bat in his hands, choking his hands all the way down. “What is that supposed to mean?”

Hood stood and Rovanna leaned forward to stand also. But Hood put a hand firmly to his shoulder and pressed him back down to the couch. He took the bat from Rovanna and set it beside him. Hood walked into the kitchen and looked around. Having been invited into Rovanna’s home, pretty much anything in plain sight he could legally take a look at. But there was nothing unusual in the small, poorly lit kitchen. He thought of another poorly lit kitchen, in Mike Finnegan’s Veracruz flat, where they had fought and Mike had run the knife along his scalp. He remembered the bony grind of the blade, a sound he would take to his grave.