T. Parker - The Famous and the Dead

“And you, Owens,” said Mike, glancing up at her with a gleam in his eye. “Something seems to have agreed with you. You look more lovely than ever. And that is saying quite a lot. I’ve always loved that dress, as you know.” The dress was a simple sleeveless shift that fell just above the knee, a white background with red chilies and green leaves. Her espadrilles were red and her bracelets were miniaturized, brightly enameled pieces of fruit.

Bradley heard the breath catch in her throat. “I loved you, Mike,” she said softly. “I always will.”

“Oh, out with the old and in with the new, Owens! You are doing a good thing. Bradley, have you told Erin?”

“Are you kidding? It’s going to be a while. Right now, it would just infuriate her more and she’d try to run off with Thomas.”

“We can’t have that.”

“I won’t let her take him,” said Bradley, recalling his first sight of the man who’d shot and killed his mother. Such anger he’d felt then. And later, cold revenge. He felt it again. Hear it, Mike-my anger at Erin.

Mike smiled at Bradley, then Owens. “Which leaves time for you two to learn about each other. You have such galaxies to explore within. I’m so proud to have introduced you. You will have very long and very exciting lives.”

Sitting near the handsome latticed Botanical Building, they ate the lunch that Owens had packed. By then the March sun was just strong enough to warm Bradley and he purposefully recalled moments of strong emotion that he hoped Mike would misconstrue. But except for that one interrogative glance early on, Mike seemed convinced of Bradley’s attraction to Owens. Not that he had to create that from scratch. He set a hand on her warm bare arm as she rearranged Thomas’s blanket just so.

Bradley doesn’t have to touch her like that,” said Erin. She rotated the focus on the binoculars. Hood and Erin stood at the window in a the third-floor office of the California Building Tower, looking down on Balboa Park. This hidden vantage point had been arranged by one of the Museum of Man curators, Erin and the Inmates having performed a gratis fundraiser for them just last year. The curator had secured a couple of hours for them, no questions asked, though he loitered in the break room with coffee and his laptop.

“I’m sure he’s thinking of you,” said Hood. Bradley was making his act look pretty easy, he thought.

“He better be. Look at Thomas. How small and perfect he is. Does he look like me? I’m a nervous wreck with him being so far from me and so close to Mike. I want Mike stopped. I want him. . whatever it is you’re planning to do with him. Do it, do it, do it.”

Hood lifted his big camera and zoomed in on the picnic below. Mike was animated, gesticulating with a drumstick in one hand, his other hand outstretched, apparently mid-tale. His shoes were brand-new and very bright yellow and green. Bradley had already finished his lunch and he now slouched on the bench with swaddled Thomas in the crook of one arm, ignoring Mike. A born actor , thought Hood.

“Soon, Erin.”

“Not soon enough. Maybe you can get Mike to shoot himself in the foot, like Clint Wampler. I’m so glad you stopped that rocket wacko, Charlie. Oh, look at my baby down there. He’s so cute. They say a woman’s IQ drops dramatically right after birth. I know mine has. What do you think, Charlie?”

“It’ll come back.”

“I hope so.”

“What are you going to do with Bradley?” he asked.

She lowered the glasses and studied him. “I really don’t know. Right now all I care about is Thomas. Do you know what Bradley has planned for later?”

“He won’t tell me. He just wants us all there in Valley Center.”

“I hope he doesn’t think we’re coming down to Valley Center to stay.”

“You made it pretty clear you’re not, Erin.”

“I want to stay on with you in Buenavista,” she said. “Can Brad spend some more time there with us? I know it’s a lot to ask. And it’s up to you and Beth, not me.”

“Beth and Minnie moved out. They want no part of what’s coming. It’s best for everyone, I think.”

“Then it’s up to you, Charlie.”

“You’re welcome in my home. All three of you.”

Erin studied Hood, then lifted the binoculars and looked down through the opening. Hood watched her watch, her hands on the glasses and her profile and the red cascade of her hair. He knew that in another time and place they would have been good together but he also knew this fact was useless at best. “I love him but I can’t love him,” she said. “And I resent him. What am I supposed to do with all that, Charlie?”

“You’ll know when you have to know.”

“Do you really, really think he’s changed?”

“I think he’d give his life for you and Thomas.”

“But do you think I can trust him?”

“I’d give him one hour at a time.”

“I’m serious.”

“I am, too.”

She lowered the binoculars and looked up at him. “You want him to pay for what he’s done, don’t you?”

“He will.” Hood nodded and lifted the camera.

• • •

That evening Hood parked his Charger outside the Valley Center ranch house. Bradley was standing on the deck with Call by his side, while the lesser dogs boiled around Hood’s car. Hood and Beth got out, and Beth held the door for Erin, who stepped into the cold and pulled her Navajo blanket coat tight around her. She put one knee on the seat and leaned in to work her sleeping son from the car. Bradley came bounding down the steps to help her. He wore a pale suede duster and moleskin breeches and a jacquard shirt and his polished boots caught the porch light. Hood wondered what the occasion was. He wondered if Beatrice had finished off the rest of the food in his pantry yet. He hadn’t figured on meeting an angel in his life, especially one with such a voracious appetite. A moment later Reyes and Owens pulled up in Gabriel’s pickup, rekindling the dogs.

Hood looked at the ranch house and thought of Suzanne, standing on that deck, summer of ’08. He was just a patrol deputy with a few questions to ask her about an investigation he’d been assigned. Her hair had been a mess and her nightshirt was periwinkle colored and revealed little while suggesting much. It was a Saturday morning and she was here at home with her boyfriend and three sons. Later that morning she’d flirted brazenly with him. She’d told him she was an eighth-grade history teacher, but was not like any eighth-grade teacher he’d ever had. First and last warning, she’d said. Later she teased him about his ears and almost touched her nose to his cheek. But not quite. He could hear her inhale. He felt judged. A minute later she excused him with a funny little backward wave as she walked away. The wave that said, See you later if you’ve got the courage . Turns out, he did. He had met Bradley that day. And Jordan and Kenny and his father, a big Hawaiian man named Ernest. And just a few short weeks later, Erin. More past that’s not even past at all, he thought. Thanks, William. You were right.

• • •

Now it was early evening and the sun was down. A rosy tint brushed the hills and lay flat and shiny on the pond. Doves creaked through the sky above them, disappearing into the big oak tree in the barnyard. Hood and Beth stood together looking to the oak glen beyond, where they had made love for the first time, in one of several tent cabins set up for Erin and Bradley’s wedding guests. “That was a night,” Beth said.

“And a morning and another night.”

“Things were perfect then.”

“Maybe again, Beth. How is it, back in your own home?”