T. Parker: The Famous and the Dead

“What happened to the fourth guy?” asked Bly.

“Went missing three months back. Not a trace. Disappearo.”

“Do you know what contraband they have to sell?” Yorth asked.

“Not exactly. But there’s plenty of crank since a lot of it’s cooked up right there in Russell County. It’s high-grade stuff so far as that kinda thing goes. I tried it once and didn’t like it. Then there’s always plenty of bud to be smoked. Heroin’s still pretty popular but the pharmaceuticals are taking it over. Two guys broke into, like, four Jefferson pharmacies in one weekend, helped themselves, but the state police sent the videos around and guess what? The crooks were from our own neck of the woods. So the Russell County boys busted their butts. Skull and his team grabbed most of the evidence when no one was looking and him and his crew sold almost all of it. Right out of Skull’s truck, he said, like a roach coach for drugs. Also I know they got lots of guns. Most of them were stored in the property room, some for years. I know this from Skull. And a course they’re supposed to destroy the guns once the trial’s over but Skull worked it so the paperwork for destroyal got sent but he took the guns himself. Don’t ask me what kind or how many. Except once we all went out the woods so they could try out this new gun they got, and it was a big honkin’ thing that had legs on one end and a big round doughnutlike thing on the top. Loud. And heavy, even for Skull, who is approximately two hundred pounds of solid muscle. He laid on the ground and fired. Then he got up and braced it on his hip and had to put some back into it. Shot up a bunch of watermelons. I don’t like guns any more than I like crank, though I don’t see any harm in putting food on a table, which a course ain’t what a gun like that gets used for.”

“Legs on the end?” asked Hood. “A bipod?”

“Yeah, the far end, like two legs. For when he laid down and shot.”

“And a black doughnut? Do you mean a drum attached on top, flat to the frame of the gun?”

“That’s what I mean, valentine.” She smiled, then winced and brought the tissue back to her mouth. “Ouch. That’s what I get for funnin’. Story of my life.”

He smiled back and shook his head. And thought, An old Lewis Gun? Not exactly state-of-the-art weaponry, though it was a bruiser. It was the only machine gun that he could think of with an ammo pan on top. Belgian. It was a popular machine gun in World War I, and into World War II, but they hadn’t made one in seventy-something years. Of course, if Pace Arms could make a thousand Love 32s in Orange County, anything could happen. He’d seen pictures of the Lewis Mark I, and a total of one in the flesh, in his entire life.

“Where do you think they’ll go when they get here?” asked Velasquez. He was the youngest of this team and the only one with a master’s degree, which was in economics.

“To a motel, I guess,” said Mary Kate Boyle.

“And to get the best burritos in the world,” said Hood.

Yorth leaned back and set his hands behind his head. He was a big man with short yellow hair that was dark at the roots. “You know the name of the restaurant?”

“I’da told you if I did. How many burrito restaurants can there be in El Central?”

“Probably twenty Mexican restaurants,” said Hood. “That’s just a guess.”

“Call Skull and ask him which restaurant, Mary Kate,” said Yorth.

Hood saw the tick of worry cross Mary Kate Boyle’s face.

Janet Bly rolled her eyes and groaned.

Velasquez tapped his fingers on the tabletop.

“Why not?” asked Yorth. “Call him on your cell and tell him things are just fine in here in Russell County but you miss him. You just want to talk. Hoping you’re okay, Skull. Just reach out. Get him talking to you. That’s all.”

“I ain’t doing that.”

“If you want Lyle locked away safe in prison, you better consider it. Because if you don’t cooperate with us, our chances of putting these boys away go way, way down.”

“I still ain’t calling him.”

Yorth stared at her. “What about testifying in court? You told the SAC in L.A. you’d do that.”

“Testifying is one thing, but sneaking up on a man you’re done with is something else.”

“You started sneaking when you bought that Trailways ticket, Mary Kate.”

Mary Kate colored and looked down for a moment and took a deep breath. When she looked up again, she had sharp anger in her eyes. “That isn’t sneaking. I never asked Skull to steal. I told him not to. I didn’t ask him to go bragging on and on about it. And I didn’t ask to go out to the woods to shoot that big old machine gun. And I didn’t ask-”

“For the cool stuff he bought you with money you knew he’d stolen,” said Yorth.

“Knock it off, Dale,” said Bly.

Mary Kate stood and slung her bag over her shoulder. Hood and Velasquez stood, too.

“There wasn’t that much cool stuff involved,” Mary Kate said. “I took a bus here to help and you call me a whore. You’re as big an asshole as Skull ever was.”

“Sit down,” said Yorth. “I was out of line.”

“I’m outta here and you can’t stop me.” She looked at each of the other three agents in the room. “You, you, and you got my number.” Then she aimed her battered face down on Yorth. “You don’t.”

• • •

“Way to handle a cooperative informant,” said Bly.

Yorth shrugged. “You’ve got her number.”

“Christ, Dale, put her back with him ? She should stay as far away from that guy as possible. Look what he did to her.”

“Then we have a difference of opinion. I cleared the idea with L.A. Now, here’s what these heroes look like.” Yorth handed out photo prints and bios of the cops, and mug shots and a criminal record of the third man. “I’ve sent these to your phones.”

Hood squared his sheets and looked through them. Two pictures of each bad guy per page, along with brief descriptions. The great leader, Lyle Scully, two hundred pounds of solid woman-beating muscle, had a shaven head and a goatee, and was a thirty-year-old sergeant-detective. Sgt. Brock Peltz was fifty-one and heavy. Clint Wampler looked chimplike, with big ears and small eyes and an early Beatles pageboy. Hood thought of his own pronounced ears. Clint was twenty-seven and unemployed, with convictions for driving under the influence, aggravated assault, and burglary. He’d done a year. Hood also saw that nineteen-year-old Clint Wampler had been questioned in the torching of a Russell County post office on April 19 of 2005. The FBI had charged two known associates but not Wampler. “That was the ten-year anniversary of Oklahoma City,” said Hood. “When Wampler’s buddies torched the post office in Russell County.”

“I see he’s got like-minded friends all over the country,” said Bly. “Militiamen in Montana, the Minutemen here on the border, and the good old Aryan Nation boys out in Idaho. Even the Covert Group-the old guys who wanted to poison a small town with ricin. Apparently he’s been in touch with them, too.”

Yorth groaned. “But not with Islamic extremists? They should throw in together and share expenses. Islamamerica, how’s that sound?”

“That’s ridiculous,” said Bly, then she muttered, “least I hope it is.”

This got a brief laugh. In the ensuing near silence the agents pored over the images. Hood heard the central heat come on. Two or three times a year Buenavista was the hottest place in the nation, but in February the little border town could get cold.

“So then,” said Yorth. “Where do we find Skull and his merry band?”

“Maybe through an informant we haven’t run off,” said Bly.