T. Parker - The Famous and the Dead

Freeman smiled and waved and buttoned his blazer, then waved some more. Three couples in the front row stood and shouted in unison, “Right to life! Right to life! Right to life!”

“The choice belongs to all of us,” Freeman shot back.

Four people not far from Rovanna suddenly stood and shouted overlapping immigration slogans that were impossible for him to unscramble, though the words illegal, criminal , and no scholarships blasted through. They waved their fists in the air. Rovanna put his hands over his ears and turned back to the stage. Freeman had raised his hands for quiet and, odd as it seemed to Rovanna, all of the partisans eagerly sat down.

Freeman talked about American society returning to tolerance and a sense of fairness both at home and abroad. He said that good nations begin with good citizens, and the duty of the citizen was to be informed, open-minded, and skeptical. He said that the people must hold themselves responsible for the government they elect. He said that government should be smaller in the bedroom and bigger in the boardroom. He told an emotional story about people he knew, bankers and executives, reaping huge personal bonuses from bailout funds-tax money that all of us paid. This brought loud boos from all around Rovanna. Then Freeman told another emotional story about friends of his, a married couple in their forties, who decided to abort a child with Down syndrome. He said it was the hardest decision that they had ever made, it nearly tore them apart, but in the end they believed what they had done was moral and right. And that was why he believed abortion should be a choice made by couples, not governments. This brought boos from the front row and two of the couples rose to walk out. One of the men turned and raised his fist at Freeman: “Life begins at conception, you godless fool!”

Radio Voice: Freeman is blasphemy! End him. End Freeman!

Front Row: “You will not murder our babies! You do not have that right!”

Stren: You are vehemently against everything Scott Freeman stands for.

“I will never accept that right,” said Freeman. “And I will give my all, all of my being, to ensure that only you have the right to choose what is best for you. No government can do that for you. Do not cede your individual responsibilities or surrender your right to choice to any government, ever. Now, can I tell you a little bit more about my book? Please. There are people who want to hear what I have to say.”

Rovanna took his backpack and book bag and walked up the aisle. Freeman started telling a story about growing up in La Mesa. Without looking at him, Rovanna turned and walked along the front row, then took one of the seats vacated by the antiabortion shouters. It was still warm. He set the pack on his lap and placed his hands on top of it.

Stren: Have you ever just wanted to shoot him, Lon?

Hood: If you want to just talk, call me. Really. I mean it. I always have time to talk. I like baseball.

Alice Hood: That man looks so familiar to me. I do not feel comfortable being this close to him.

Identical Man: Maybe this is Dr. Freeman’s grandson, Lonnie! They look alike, don’t they? Remember the pictures! Don’t they?

Representative Freeman was talking about the racially mixed neighborhood he grew up in, how the two main cultures-European American and Mexican American-remained separate yet mostly tolerant. Rovanna thought of his own neighborhood in Tustin, which was all white and very conservative in the 1960s. It was white-flight central. Most of the people were Republicans, and some were outspoken members of the John Birch Society. The world communist conspiracy was a highly discussed topic, as were Soviet atrocities, the United Nations, Cuba, fluoridation, bomb shelters, and the Beatles. To Rovanna as a boy, the list of fears seemed to go on and on. He became unhappy. Shortly before his tenth birthday he had started his first fire.

Now as he watched Representative Freeman talking about racial tolerance, Rovanna saw Dr. Walter Freeman bent to his task, orbitoclast in hand, like a knitting needle, probing the eye socket of his sedated but conscious patient.

Identical Man: Now.

Hood: I understand your terror, Lonnie. But lobotomies are not performed anymore.

Alice Hood: Look at the doctor. He performs them still, every hour of every day.

Radio Voice: Freeman is a slippery character. Exterminate him!

Joan: It really was nice back on the little stream, wasn’t it? When you stood in that cold water and listened and there were no voices.

“No kidding it was,” Rovanna answered softly, though he rarely heard his own voice and couldn’t hear it now. He felt the black paint scalding down through him. He took the Love 32 from the backpack and stood and fired an automatic burst at Dr. Walter Freeman, then another one at his nurse and another at the big orderly who was already racing across the stage toward him.

Ten minutes later Hood got a call from Janet Bly, with a sketchy report about a political shooting on the SDSU campus. Bly forwarded a bystander’s video to Hood’s phone. Hood peered at the chaos onscreen-screams and a rush of bodies, then two men fighting over a gun, with a third man down and bleeding. “Channel Ten should have it any minute,” said Bly. She sounded breathless. “That was a Love Thirty-two, wasn’t it?”

“I think so,” Hood heard himself say. Beth and Erin came in quietly from the living room, drawn by his tone of voice. The dogs looked at him alertly as he turned on the kitchen TV. They watched the special bulletin. Channel 10 had been covering the book fair for the six-thirty news, and doing a sidebar on Scott Freeman. What Hood saw took his breath away: a gunman spraying bullets at the representative and others. The Love 32 was easy to recognize, and when the gunman’s wig was ripped off in the fight, Hood recognized Lonnie Rovanna. His heart fell. Yorth called next, then Frank Soriana from San Diego, then the SAC in L.A., then Fredrick Lansing back in D.C., who thundered into the phone: “Was that one of your goddamned Love Thirty-twos?”

“Yes, sir.”

“The ones that got past you and disappeared in Mexico?”

“I can’t answer that yet.”

“Answer it! What the hell is going on out there with you goddamned people?”

Hood stayed by the TV with Beth and Erin. Freeman , he thought. Representative Scott Freeman. Dr. Walter Freeman, Finnegan, the Identical Men. He remembered Rovanna’s soft voice. My very deepest fear is of Dr. Freeman and his orbitoclasts.

Congressman Scott Freeman had been rushed to Sharp Medical Center with multiple gunshot wounds. He was alive, in critical condition. His wife, Patricia, had been wounded as well and was listed as serious. Freeman’s assistant, who wrestled the gunman to the stage and disarmed him, had also been shot, condition critical. Three others, all book fair attendees, had been hospitalized and were listed as stable.

“The suspect is a Caucasian male, five feet ten, one hundred seventy pounds, in his mid-twenties. He is currently in the custody of the San Diego Police. .”

Hood walked outside into the cool Imperial County desert. The dogs bounded out ahead of him. He watched the cloud shadows move across the flanks of the Devil’s Claws and he wondered how Rovanna could have deceived him, how he could have missed the violence brewing inside the man. So much evidence: insanity, aloneness, delusions, violence, the bat, the confiscated guns. Hood had instinctively understood that Finnegan had given Rovanna something. He’d known it. He’d asked Rovanna more than once what Finnegan had offered him. Hood had thought that maybe it was only something for Rovanna to think about, something to be afraid of, or a task to do. Mike loved trading favors, tit for tat. It gave him control, a way into you. Now Hood realized that Mike had given him something much heavier. Something physical. And Rovanna had just used it on six innocent people at a book fair. Hood felt small and hapless and fooled. He had failed to listen to his own voice. He’d let it be smothered by his sympathy and sad affection for disturbed, delusional Lonnie Rovanna. “You should have listened,” he muttered. He called the dogs, and when he turned to go back inside, his phone rang again.