T Parker: The border Lords

Bradley stared at Mike, thinking, Fuck you, Mike. You hear me now?

Finnegan sighed and looked out toward the stage.

"Okay, Mike, you must be right. I was not in control of my own thoughts. Why else would I make up a story about having the head of an outlaw in a jar?"

"You are proud of the head, as well you should be."

"All lies."

"Oh?"

"Made the whole thing up."

"Bradley? Can I tell you something?"

"Anything you want."

"The head you have is not Joaquin's. It belonged to Chappo, who rode with Joaquin's horse-gang. Harry Love killed five of Joaquin's gang that day at Cantua Creek, including Chappo. Harry chose the most frightening and dramatic head and collected it as evidence of his own heroism. Joaquin was fair-skinned and blue-eyed and his hair was light brown. This is not an uncommon combination in his native Sonora, where the Spanish influence is strong. He wore his hair long. He had a lined and soulful face for a man so young. He stood six feet three inches. He was a charming and even-tempered man until his wife, Rosa, was raped. Joaquin's English was very good, having grown up near the border and working his early life in gringo company. El Famoso was struck by two bullets that day at Cantua Creek-one bounced off the vest that Owens delivered to you as a wedding gift."

Bradley felt his breath shorten. He looked long and hard at the little man.

"From you?"

"And Owens, of course."

"I'm running out of things to feel about you, Mike."

"Then stop feeling and listen-the other bullet went through the back of his thigh. We used kerosene to clean it out. It was not fatal."

"You must take me for a complete fool."

"I'm trying not to."

"You don't know anything. You make it all up."

"I rode with Murrieta. Briefly."

Bradley started a smile but he couldn't finish it. "Then when did he die?"

"Twenty-two years later, in eighteen seventy-five. He was fifty-five years old. I was privileged to attend the funeral."

"Where did he die?"

"In El Salado, where he was born. He lived out his life quietly, adored and protected by the villagers. He was well-off from his robbing and horse thievery. I was able to visit him there."

"Why didn't you tell my mother about the head not being his? There was nothing about this in her journals. She wrote hundreds of pages about herself and about Joaquin, but there was nothing about him living out his life in Mexico. Nothing about his blue eyes and fair skin and light brown hair."

Mike reached into his blazer pocket and handed Bradley a leather-bound book. Jones opened it and recognized his mother's beautiful handwriting. The date on the first entry was July 14, 1991, and on the last entry March 23, 1992.

"I eventually told her, of course," said Finnegan. "We must operate on the basis of truth. It's all in the journal. She was delighted that Joaquin turned out to be even more mysterious than his legend made him out to be. She was fried with excitement, to be blunt. Later I took this book from her. I apologize to you for the theft. Though I have to chuckle when I say this: She was changing your diaper when I bagged it. Your unrepentantly useless father and I were killing off a bottle of vodka. He went to get a fresh lime and I just dropped that little book into my pocket."

"Why?"

"Something told me that I would need to make an impression on you someday."

"I'm not impressed. You just gave her the same bullshit you're giving me. Riding with Murrieta. Only she believed it."

"She came to believe it."

"You weren't at Cantua Creek, Mike. That would make you a hundred and eighty years old."

"Your math is good but your context is faulty. This is like trying to prove the existence of a forest to a man who denies the existence of trees."

"More bullshit." Bradley listened to his own voice and even he had trouble hearing the conviction in it.

Finnegan drank and smiled very slightly. "Your great-great-great-great-great-great-great-grandfather was an imaginative man. He imagined his legend before he began to create it. He saw no difference between what he could imagine and what he could accomplish. He was prone to superstition, prone to gesture and romance, prone to belief. Your mother was the same way. They were both obsessive lovers, like you. You'll be more like them someday. It will just take you longer to get there. In many ways human beings grow up much more slowly than they used to. I've seen this in just a few short generations. Evolution can't be hurried. When you are ready to see, you will see, and when you're ready to believe, you will believe."

Bradley felt surrounded by invisible terriers, unable to find a target. When you are ready to see, you will see. He tried to go cool instead. "Well, if I'm supposed to weep or something, I'm just not."

"I love your youth. Dearly. The journal is yours to keep with the others. Now your collection is complete. In the back of that volume are a couple of letters Suzanne wrote to me. Illuminating, perhaps. They're yours, too."

Mike finished his drink and pushed away from the table. "Well."

"Where are you going?"

"Out. November is my absolute favorite month."

"Hold on. Let's get a bottle. We'll talk about imagination and belief and El Famoso."

"Maybe another time, Bradley. I just want to spend some hours outdoors now, walking my city on an autumn night."

"Tell me more about him. I want to know."

"When you're ready. You'll be very busy soon. Hearty congratulations on Erin's pregnancy. I'm very happy for both of you."

"Who told you?"

"You did. You've spent the last hour telling me about your wife and your child to come-more of the mental sparks that you let off when you think of Erin. Just like in the Viper Room."

"But I didn't tell you. I absolutely and purposely did not because she…"

"She what, Bradley? She neither likes nor trusts me?"

"Go to hell, Mike. Whoever you think you are I'm not impressed."

"You have such strong and beautiful names in your family-Joaquin, Rosa, Suzanne. Even Bradley. I wonder who will come next. He or she will be yours to name, young man. And Erin's, of course. Consider carefully. Names have different polarities. Different weights. Different histories."

Monday morning Hood and his Blowdown brethren began packing the ninety Love 32s back into their wooden boxes. By special order from the assistant director, the guns would be heading back to headquarters in Washington, D.C., soon, some to be saved but most to be destroyed. HQ had allowed them to keep four for study. The DOJ van was there and the driver was waiting to take the contraband to the airport for the flight to D.C.

Hood held up one of the gleaming little handguns. The sound suppressor was screwed on, and the telescoping butt rod was extended, and the graceful, forward-curving fifty-shot magazine was in place. He tilted the gun to the brittle fluorescent light of the indoor range and looked at the name, LOVE32, on the slide.

"I admire Ron Pace's craftsmanship," he said.

"You can compliment him on it personally when we shut down his TJ factory," said Bly.

"All we have to do is find it," said Hood.

"Octavio says he knows," said Velasquez.

"Octavio says he knows a lot of things," said Morris. "Still, he may be the best thing to come out of this mess."

Hood set the gun down with the others. "Sean delivered. Like he said he would."

A moment of silence. Then Morris: "I'd take this whole deal back if I could."

"Amen," said Bly.

"I'm taking this deal," said Velasquez. "For Oz. And for us. It's ninety machine pistols off the street. And a cartel man in jail with tales to tell."

"For Oz," said Hood.

He wrapped the gun in newspaper and set it into the wooden box and he thought of Sean Ozburn in his own. At home that night he hovered around his kitchen trying to help Beth make dinner. Mainly he watched. She was a tall woman with an aerobic approach to kitchen work-moving across the pavers in big fast strides, stepping over Daisy with a boiling saucepan in her hands, banging pots and pans while talking on without a comma. She could spin a yarn. And another. As an ER physician in Buenavista's Imperial Mercy Hospital, she was rarely without compelling material.