"We were good. We were golden. We were the best of them. Write. Call. Pray."
"I'll write and call," Ozburn said. "And I'll come to you when I'm finished. I promise."
"We're never going to see each other again. Do you understand, Sean?"
"I don't believe that. I can't believe it and live."
She put her arms around him and rested her head on his chest. Ozburn felt the weight of it with each beat of his heart. He held her gently and the minutes went by.
He rolled her suitcase to the car and put it in the trunk. He put her laptop and the bouquet of paper flowers on the passenger seat of her car. He was still having trouble feeling his feet and his legs felt heavy as iron.
Ozburn stood in the parking lot watching her drive away. Daisy sat beside him. He watched the Mustang as it slowed, then swung out of the lot and onto the road. It was a red car and it looked optimistic against the gray asphalt but it picked up speed and headed for a rise and she was gone. Ozburn's heart finally broke. He stood there for a long while, dazed by the new silence, waiting for the feeling to come back into his feet so he could walk back into the room.
He ate the leftovers and guzzled some vitamins and packed as quickly as he could. His feet felt better. He found one of Seliah's earrings wrapped up in the bedsheet and for a beat the breath in him stopped. I am alone, he thought, and it is now up to me and I will see you again. I will see you again.
He swallowed the earring then called Daisy and paid cash for his nights at the Estero and drove Father Joe's loaner to the airstrip where Betty waited, yellow and freshly washed, eager to take to the sky.
29
Four hours later Hood was parked outside the Ozburn home waiting for Seliah to come out. In the time it had taken her to get here from Ensenada, Hood had called in a favor with his old LASD patrol sergeant and was now at the wheel of a white slickback Interceptor with screened-in backseats for transportees and a short bar of interior running lights and bulletproof windows. The sergeant had offered a backup unit and two uniforms but Hood had declined. He was afraid they'd set her off and she'd change her mind. He was afraid she might change it anyway. She said it would take a few minutes to pack up some things.
He pulled the buzzing cell phone off his belt.
"Charlie Hood, this is Mike Finnegan. Erin told me you wanted to talk. I was so truly happy to hear that."
Hood looked up at the Ozburn front door. No sign of Seliah. He felt the same uneasy suspicion he'd always felt when talking to Finnegan, a suspicion that the man was somehow outside of his own understanding and experience. Mike's companion, Owens, had once told Hood that the only way to comprehend Mike was to understand that he was insane. But Hood had wondered if it was more than that. As a boy, Hood had seen a tiger walking down a Bakersfield sidewalk-escaped from a private collection, he later learned-and Hood had realized that nothing in his life had prepared him to understand such a being. He had the same feeling now.
"How have you been, Mike?"
"I'm no longer in bathroom fixtures."
"Where are you living now?"
"I can't seem to leave L.A. Owens and I share some nice quarters here. She's getting lots of work."
"And you?"
"Well, the family sold off part of the old Napa County estate. My share was, well, not insubstantial. You wouldn't believe what a few thousand acres of grapes is worth. Of course, the new owners will build embarrassing mansions on it and probably let root rot kill the grapes, but that's progress, American style."
Hood thought back to the first and last time he'd actually seen Mike Finnegan's face. It was a year and a half ago and it was the day Mike had suddenly checked himself out of Imperial Mercy Hospital. His body cast lay in pieces on the floor of his ICU room. He'd been caught on security video, dressed in new street clothes, leaving the hospital with Owens.
Hood found his L.A. apartment abandoned and his phone number no longer good. No forwarding information. Neighbors knew nothing. Ditto Owens. Hood made inquiries but got nowhere. Hood suspected that Mike had tipped Bradley Jones and Ron Pace about ATF's surveillence of the Pace Arms gunmaking facility in Costa Mesa. But he could prove nothing.
"Why did you leave Imperial Mercy like that, Mike? What was the hurry?"
"I just can't sit still sometimes."
"You tore the cast apart with your bare hands?"
"What else could I have used?"
Hood glanced up at the Ozburns' front door. "Of course you know that Pace and Bradley smuggled the guns out of the Costa Mesa manufacturing plant, got them down into the hands of cartel shooters. A thousand of them. They're being used to kill people on both sides of the border."
"How sad. The chaos down there is bound to get worse before it gets better. But Charlie, this was a year and a half ago-ancient history. So, catch me up with your world. Who is this fascinating Sean Gravas character?"
Hood felt his scalp crawl. "You and I both know who Sean Gravas is."
"Yes. Few people do. We're all strange bed partners, aren't we-ATF and the North Baja Cartel and little old me?"
Hood looked up to the Ozburn home. No Seliah. Had she changed her mind? He checked his watch.
"Mike, a few days ago I stood in the Mexican desert where a rabid man had chained himself to a post so he wouldn't hurt anyone else. That's where he died. The post was still there. And his grave. I thought of you."
"Juan Batista! I love that part of the West. From the cerveza to the curanderas."
"You know everything, don't you, Mike."
"I absorb your flattery."
"So, what do you know about the Arenal Volcano and Father Joe Leftwich and his vampire bats?"
Silence.
Then: "Charles, I told you once that if there was something you wanted very badly, something I could help you get, that we might form a relationship."
"I don't want a relationship."
"Then what do you want? To make me your informant?"
"Call it that."
"What do I get in return? A lighter sentence when my day in court arrives? Perhaps some cold hard cash? An ATF windbreaker?"
"You can have any or all."
"I don't want any of that. I want like for like, Charlie. That's all I'll ever want from you."
"Okay."
"Okay? Just like that?"
"I said okay. I'll play by that rule. Like for like."
Hood expected Mike to laugh but he didn't. When he'd seen the tiger in Bakersfield, the huge svelte beast had lit a spark of panic in him but Hood had kept on walking toward school anyway. What else could he do? His destination was the only answer to his fear and he knew exactly how to put one foot in front of the other. And again. The tiger had faded into a stand of oaks, stripes blending into the shadows.
So now, too, Hood kept walking, toward what, he wasn't sure, but he was walking and his legs were strong. His eardrums buzzed but his eyes saw far and clearly as he looked out over the silver Pacific. He felt cold in his heart and knew this coldness was right.
"Charlie, who murdered the three young assassins in the Buenavista safe house? And the two others in San Ysidro?"
"We don't know yet. We suspect the Gulf Cartel but we don't have good evidence. We do know they're trying to move into the North Baja Cartel's turf in Southern California. The Zetas are going their own way so Armenta needs firepower. Now you, Mike, like for like-Arenal, Costa Rica. Speak to me."
"Where to start? Central America is literally crawling with us. The heat, the beauty of the land and the ocean and the proximity to Caribbean culture. But most of all, the generations of colonial exploitation and craven, power-mad governance. Dictatorships both private and military! Rampant corruption, rampant lust. From Papa Doc to Trujillo to Noriega-it's difficult to find a more fertile place to work. And factor in a widespread belief in magic-they believe! Garcia Marquez can bring tears to my eyes, even though I've never been to the Caribbean. I'd so love to meet him. The whole region is brimming with rich potential for us."