"I want to write a new story," he said.
"You want a happy ending."
"It doesn't have to be happy. Just one where the characters get what they deserve."
"We don't live in fairy tales, Charlie."
31
Ozburn watched the safe house blur and disappear under Betty's nose. His eyes had started doing funny things to him-bright green tracers and extreme perspectives-but he could still make out the red-tile roof of the safe house and the red gravel yard in front. Later, little amigos, he thought, if you haven't all run away yet.
He eased the aircraft into a gentle climb as he pictured the black Ford ATF Explorer parked under the row of greasewood trees back behind him, shiny as a mirror. He thought bitterly of their foolishness and the treachery of Don August. There was probably more ATF near the house itself, he guessed, waiting to intercept the mad-man Ozburn. A curse on them all.
An hour later he was circling the strip near Jacumba for the third time, seeing nothing but the red pickup truck he'd been told to look for. A few minutes after that Ozburn was touching down Betty to the flat, hard runway.
It was an old smuggler's strip, not a hundred yards from the un-fenced border, and he remembered the night, just a couple of years ago, when he and his Blowdown brethren had nailed two gringos with a Beechcraft filled with cash and thirty guns with the serial numbers gouged roughly from their frames. The smugglers were sitting around a small fire on a freezing windy night, smoking dope and waiting for their partners to cross the border with the shipment. Armed with a tip from a good informant, Ozburn and his team had run their vehicles hard through the darkness and rough desert like beings launched from hell, toward the flames of that little fire. The smugglers had simply stood and raised their hands like bad guys in a Western, plumes of breath hanging on their faces. And later Ozburn had entered the strip coordinates on his GPS, for the day when he or one of the Desert Flyers might want to visit Jacumba without paying airport fees or suffering FAA supervision. Good days, thought Ozburn. Days when I believed and acted well. Will there be any more like that?
He taxied in a wide circle that brought Betty to a stop downwind near the red Dodge Ram king cab. He shut down the engine and climbed out and stood unsteadily. It was like his feet were only half there, like the toes had frozen and fallen off. He marshalled his strength and lifted Daisy from her seat to the ground.
She ran to Father Joe Leftwich, who sat on the lowered tailgate of the pickup truck, his priest's clothes traded out for Wranglers and a red yoked cowboy shirt with mother-of-pearl snaps. His cowboy hat was black and broad. He sat with one boot up on the gate while the other dangled well short of the ground, and he leaned an arm on the upraised knee. He had a toothpick in his mouth. He reached into his pocket and tossed Daisy a small biscuit shaped like a bone.
"You just see Brokeback Mountain?" asked Ozburn.
"You try wearing the same clothes every day for thirty years."
Leftwich helped Ozburn tie down Betty and he stowed Ozburn's heavy duffel across the backseats of the extended truck cab. Ozburn squeezed into the driver's seat and found the control and slid it back. He remembered one of the hundreds of ways in and out of Jacumba, a onetime smuggler's Mecca. DEA pressure had slowed it down for now, but Ozburn knew Jacumba would get hot again just as soon as law enforcement focused on someplace else.
Daisy sat in back, upright and alert. Leftwich offered Ozburn a nip from his ancient battered flask, then took one for himself. Ozburn was pleased as always by its flavor and cool temperature. It hit him hard and fast. It wasn't like other drinks, Ozburn thought. It brought energy and clear thinking and confidence.
"Nice truck," said Ozburn.
"I'm happy to help. And I have a table for us at Amigos, just as you asked. How is Seliah?"
Ozburn looked over Daisy's snout at Father Joe. The priest's face gave off green tracers. "We'll talk about that later."
"But is everything okay?"
"Why wouldn't it be?"
"I don't like the sound of this, Sean."
They sat in a booth at the back of the restaurant, Daisy allowed to join them after Ozburn growled at the manager and Father Joe gave him a fifty-dollar bill. She lay under the table, next to Ozburn's duffel.
Ozburn ordered a Tecate and two shots of reposado, Leftwich the same. The waitress brought the drinks and a bowl of water for Daisy. They ordered dinner and when she was gone they toasted with the tequila shots. Ozburn dug two vitamin packs and five aspirin from his pocket and washed them down with beer. Anything to keep the feeling in his feet and the pain from his joints.
Leftwich watched him. "So you visited the Yuma safe house, did you?"
"Not quite. They were expecting me."
Father Joe regarded Ozburn with his usual optimistic expression. He looked ridiculous in the cowboy hat. "You must have expected that, after your visits to the other two."
Ozburn said nothing.
"Exactly who was expecting you-ATF or the baby assassins?"
Ozburn sipped the tequila and thought about Seliah. He felt his anger stir. His body was aching more now and he wondered if he should increase his vitamins and supplements again. "It was probably Hood. He's the most durable of them."
"Be very cautious if you try again, Sean. Blowdown will be expecting you, and the sicarios will either be gone or very jittery."
"I didn't ask you here for advice about Yuma."
"No, of course not," said Father Joe. "Just trying to catch up with your busy life, Sean."
Ozburn waited until the food came and the waitress had left. He looked across the dining room through the bright green tracers at the scattered guests. Even with the sunglasses his eyes stung and watered. His fingertips tingled. He couldn't feel his feet and he wondered if he could stand up right now. He was thirsty but just the sight of the red plastic tumbler of ice water made him nauseous. For the first time in all of this he was feeling the scouts of defeat, stealing up on him for a look into his empty soul. He finished the tequila.
"Father Joe, Seliah is sick and I am, too."
"Sick?"
"Body and soul. Deeply."
"But you look young and strong, Sean."
"Tell me about the bat in your room at the Volcano View, Joe. Tell me the truth or I will become very angry."
Father's Joe's face went stone serious. He lifted off his hat and set it on the padded leather bench beside him. He ran a hand through his short dark hair.
"I don't know what you're talking about."
"The maid found a bat in your room the morning after I fell asleep in your bed. In the bathroom wastebasket. It was a vampire bat and it was alive."
"A maid claimed this?"
"Itixa, the head of housekeeping. Hood went down there. He talked to her."
"There was no bat in my wastebasket unless she herself put it there. I know what I put into my own wastebasket, Sean. Don't you? Rest assured, there was no bat. And I can tell you that Itixa has a passion for beer. She swills the stuff. I saw her unable to walk because of it. And she's widely known around Arenal as a storyteller and a gossip and a woman who has visions."
Ozburn looked at Leftwich, thinking how easy it would be to snap his neck. The priest's face dissolved in a shower of green tracers. "Seliah saw the bat, too."
Leftwich cut into his steak, looking at Ozburn with a questioning expression. "Oh?"
"Yeah, oh. She looked through your window screen and you were sitting at the foot of the bed. When I was conked out. You were leaning forward, doing something to my feet with your hands."