Holdstock tried to smile at Hood as he walked in. He was unshaven and his hair was aslant, his eyes vacant. His hands were heavily bandaged, each finger thickly delineated by gauze, and they rested beside him like the root balls of trees upturned.
Hood held up the music CD he’d bought for Jimmy, then commenced opening it with his pocketknife. It was a collection called The Bakersfield Sound and Hood thought Holdstock would like its emotional straightness and down-and-out humor.
“Thanks,” said Holdstock. “Isn’t that where you’re from?”
Hood sat in a visitor’s chair and yapped about growing up in Bakersfield for a minute or two. Heat, wind, oil fields. Good music and good people. It was late Sunday afternoon, and Imperial Mercy was quiet. He could see Holdstock’s interest drifting, so he stopped talking and looked along with Jimmy through the window to the blue Buenavista sky. They were six stories up.
“The deputies are still here, right?”
“Yeah, Jim. Two of them outside and two inside the stairwell. They checked my badge before they let me in. Don’t worry.”
“When I dream about my family, Gustavo is with them. He holds the girls’ hands. He’s white. He’s in charge of them. He’s going to escort them to either the grave or heaven. I can’t tell by his expression what he’s thinking.”
“You won’t dream about him forever, Jimmy. It was an accident. No one on earth blames you.”
“Benjamin does. Honor. That’s why they’ll come to get me.”
Hood had learned that in his seven days of capture and torture, Jimmy had been injected with adrenaline and other stimulants so he would remain conscious and endure more pain. A doctor said this would induce a psychotic state that would take some time to abate. Not only had his fingernails been pulled out but they had crushed two of his molars and hobbled him by breaking both of his big toes. A psychiatrist had told Ozburn that Jimmy was more devastated emotionally than physically. The doctor had treated prisoners of war and said that in some ways this was worse because Jimmy had been singled out, perhaps by chance only. No fellow soldiers had gone through this with him. He had been utterly alone. He had only himself to blame. That was why it was important to visit him often and let him know that there were other people who were on his side. It was going to take time. Much longer than the fingernails that would or would not grow back, depending on the damage done to the germinal matrix, or the healing of the bones, or the building of crowns to fill the place where his teeth had been.
“Charlie, can you get me a gun?”
“I can’t, Jimmy. Oz and I asked about that, and they turned us down.”
“You’ve got yours.”
“I’m not a patient here, Jimmy.”
The truth was that Holdstock had no way to fire a handgun with the gauzy stumps of his fingers, and the psychiatrist had said that if he could, Jimmy might use it on himself.
“Because if they come after me here, I’m going to need a gun,” said Holdstock.
“They won’t come after you here.”
“I have no defense.”
“You’re not ready to shoot yet, Jimmy.”
“These bandages won’t be on forever.”
“I’m not going to bring you a gun.”
“Well, then fuck you, Charlie. And fuck everybody who looks like you.”
“I had a friend in high school who used to say that to me all the time.”
“I’m sorry, man. But you try lying here, can’t pick your own nose. And your wife cries when she looks at you and you know she notices other men. And your kids stare at you like you’re some kind of pathetic freak. And you pray and you pray and you pray, and so what?”
“I know it’s bad, Jimmy.”
“Bad? I’ll tell you what’s bad-I think those Zetas are going to come through the damned door any minute and drag me back down there. It’s irrational. It’s crazy. It won’t happen. But none of that matters. I spend the night with my eyes wide open, and sleep a few minutes during the day. They got into my head, Charlie. I keep hearing ’em.”
Out of respect for what Jimmy believed and heard in his mind, Hood said nothing.
“Would you ask Jan or Oz to bring me a gun?”
“They won’t. It’s not about guns now, Jimmy. It’s about you getting healthy enough to go home.”
“I won’t go home. They’ll break into my house and kill me in front of my wife and girls.”
In fact, Hood knew that this had just happened to a Baja policeman, and that such things were happening to cops and prosecutors throughout Baja, and now that Benjamin Armenta and his Gulf Cartel had crossed the U.S. border to capture Jimmy Holdstock, the rules had changed.
And again, out of respect for Jimmy and the newly possible, Hood said nothing.
“I asked Jenny not to come today,” said Holdstock. “It’s too hard on me.”
“I understand.”
“How can you understand?”
“Sometimes it’s better not to see people. You have to be ready.”
“I love them.”
“They know you love them.”
“I want my life back, Charlie.”
“You can get it back.”
“How?”
“Want it. It’ll just take time.”
Hood heard Luna’s powerful voice: Does hope or lack of hope cause anything that happens?
“I’d still rather have a gun.”
Hood looked out the window to where the vast horizon met the blue heat of the sky. “You know an L.A. guy named Mike Finnegan?”
“No.”
Hood told Jimmy about the small man hit by a car while changing a flat out on Highway 98, and how this man had Hood’s name and his new post office box number written on a piece of paper folded in his wallet.
“Why would I know him?” asked Jimmy.
“He knows your name and a little about you, and who you work for.” Hood immediately regretted his words.
“Then he’s probably a fucking Zeta,” said Holdstock.
Hood saw the fear on Jimmy’s face and it was genuine. “He’s in bathroom products. He’s in a cast pretty much head to toe. His daughter is an actress.”
“Or maybe a reporter snooping around Blowdown, looking for a scandal.”
“I don’t think he’s that important, Jimmy.”
Jimmy looked at Hood, and Hood could see his fear subsiding. Holdstock sighed and shrugged. “Charlie, just tell me some Blowdown stuff. How are the field interviews going? You tried Hell on Wheels? Did you meet Dragovitch and his weird-ass wife yet?”
Beth Petty and Police Chief Gabriel Reyes sat on either side of Mike Finnegan’s bed. There was one window to the north, and Hood could see the distant hills corrugated by centuries of rain now shaded to blue by a great white cloud. He noted the stack of books on a stand by the bed, not one title the same as last week. And a fresh stack of magazines with the latest Scientific American on top. Finnegan’s new head bandage revealed slightly more of his face, but the rest of him was still encased in plaster, and his head was still immobilized by the steel skull clamp and rods.
“Come in, Charlie,” said Finnegan. “They’re interrogating me about the bullet.”
Petty smiled at Hood, and Reyes nodded. They were both in street clothes. Hood had never seen Beth Petty without a white doctor’s coat and a stethoscope. A nurse rolled in a chair, and Hood sat at the foot of the bed.
Finnegan’s eyes were blue and his nose and cheeks were freckled. An orange stubble covered his face. His lips were full, and Hood thought they might be swollen still from the accident. He saw the clench of the wired jaw and the difficulty with which the man spoke.
“There is some problem with the age of the thing,” said Finnegan.
“He means the bullet,” said Petty.
Reyes looked at Hood. “It was manufactured sometime between 1849 and 1862.”
“A cartridge can remain viable for centuries,” said Finnegan. “This idea confounds Chief Reyes.”
“What confounds me is how the bullet got into your face,” said Reyes.
“Isn’t that self-explanatory?” Finnegan smiled fractionally, a labored maneuver of lips and stationary jaws.
“He said he was shot by his lover,” said Reyes. “He said she just happened to be packing an ancestor’s thirty-one-caliber Colt repeating revolver.”
“Percussion repeating revolver,” said Finnegan. “Which was introduced by Colt in 1849. It helped settle the West.”
“Why did she shoot you?” asked Hood.
“Failure to leave my wife. The bullet was deflected by a stout grapevine. Cabernet Franc. Marie was plotting an al fresco suicide scene, I realized later. At any rate, after hitting the vine, the bullet flew with reduced velocity. It knocked me ass over teakettle, but I righted myself and kept running. I made it to a fire station and they took me to a hospital. The doctors believed it would be more dangerous to take it out than to leave it in. That was thirty years ago. In the wilder days of my youth.” Finnegan chuckled.
“The FBI told me that bullet is over a hundred years old,” said Reyes. “You don’t find 1849 thirty-one-caliber Colts just lying around. You find them in museums and collections. Nobody carries them.”
“Marie dug it out of an old trunk,” said Finnegan. “There are thousands of old trunks in this world. And don’t forget that a good gun is eternal. There are harquebuses and snaphaunces still every bit as deadly as they were the day they were forged. In gun years, our history is much shorter and condensed than any of you seem to realize.”
Hood stood and leaned over the bed and on Finnegan’s cheek found the scar attributed by Owens to a Napa vineyard mishap. The little man stared at him.
“No, you misunderstand,” said Finnegan. “The bullet entered from behind. I was running for my life.”
Hood looked into Finnegan’s clear blue eyes. The light that had shone from behind the layered gauze was still as lively now as it was when the darkness had amplified it. He remembered what Owens had said about learning to read the insanity in Mike’s face, but if such a thing was possible, Hood saw none.
“You said Marie was the whore I reminded you of,” said the doctor. “At Wyatt Earp’s saloon in San Diego.”
“Is that so?”
“Charlie was in the room.”
“I think you can solve this mystery, doctor. We’re talking about women living roughly a century apart.”
“Two Maries.”
“You’re a sly one.”
“I think almost everything you say is a lie,” said Reyes. “You’re just making it up.”
“I didn’t make up the bullet,” said Finnegan.
Reyes shook his head, then looked at Petty and Hood and back to Finnegan.
“I don’t mean to exasperate law enforcement,” said Finnegan. “And back to the other night, Gabriel, you must offer all the love you have to your son. All sons need a father’s love. He needs it more because he is a homosexual and the world has little love of them. But you are his father.”
“I never told you he was homosexual.”
“I listened carefully.”
Reyes sighed. “We got to talking a few nights ago.”
“There’s nothing to be ashamed of,” said Finnegan.
“No, there isn’t. But if that thirty-one-caliber slug entered from the back of your head, it had to pass through your skull and brain to get where Beth found it.”
“I like the way you chew on things,” said Finnegan. “Good lawmen are always good chewers. But it’s common for a foreign object to migrate through the body over the decades.”
“No, really,” said Reyes. “Your X-rays should show a hole where the bullet went through.”
“I’m sure they would,” said Finnegan.
“I’ll get them,” said the doctor.
A minute later, she was attaching them to the reader that hung from the wall. She clipped a series of three across the top and stood back. Hood looked at the contours of Finnegan’s skull, the gradients of light and dark and density.
“There,” said Petty. She pointed out a very faint circle of darkness on the anterior left side of the skull.
“What do I win?” asked Finnegan.
Reyes stood and stepped up close to the X-ray film. “Are you sure that’s a bullet hole? Kind of faint, isn’t it?”
“The bone will heal over time if the wound is small. What we see here is probably regrowth.”
“How much time?”
“I don’t know exactly. Years.”
“What about damage to the brain tissue?”
“There is some evidence of disturbance. It appears slight. See the pale finger here?” She tapped her own finger to the film.
“Only slight damage from a speeding bullet?” asked Reyes. “Account for that, doctor.”
“I can’t. But there must have been very little brain damage to begin with because brain cells don’t replicate. The brain is a miraculous organ in the sense that we can live without relatively large parts of it. The compensatory powers are impressive. People live normal lives with bullets and other objects lodged deep in their brains. I’ve seen it.”
Reyes looked at the little man, then back to the film. “You’ve got the worst luck in the world, but you’ve got the best luck, too. You get shot in the back of the head, bullet goes through both skull and brain and should have killed you, but instead the hole heals up just fine. Then you get hit by a two-ton Mercury doing sixty. It breaks your neck and half the other bones in your body and messes up your lungs, kidneys, and liver. It breaks your skull and batters your brains, but you crawl a half a mile through the desert. Now ten days later, you’re offering me advice on how to talk to my son. You’re a strange man.”
“I like you, too, Gabe.”
Reyes took another long look at the X-ray, then turned to the doctor. “So, Beth, how is Mike’s overall recovery coming along?”
“Very well. The swelling was a setback and I can’t account for it.”
“You told me his resting pulse is seventy and his blood pressure is in the normal range for a twenty-five-year-old man in good physical shape.”
“Grandma called that an iron constitution. She said it was fresh vegetables, low salt, no tobacco, prune juice.”
“You subscribe to all that, Mike?”
“Don’t ask me about food. I haven’t eaten real food since I got here. Even prune juice sounds good. I’ve never smoked anything in my life.”
“I’m going to ask you about that ninety grand again,” said Reyes. “Where’d you get it?”
“I earned it. I saved it for this, a rainy day. Mike Finnegan Bath.”
“I got the number and address in L.A. from information,” said Reyes. “I’ve called four times. All I ever get is a recording.”
“The landline and office are formalities, really. I mostly use the cell. My clients all know how to reach me.”
Reyes exhaled, shaking his head. “Is the key in your wallet for the office?”
“None other.”
Reyes stood over Finnegan. “I still don’t believe your story, Mike.”
“Which one?”