“You can’t pass her like a football.”
“But I couldn’t protect her, either, could I? It was my number-one thing to do in this life and I didn’t. I’ll do anything to get her back. I’ll die down there to make it happen.”
“You know I’m in.”
Bradley pulled a cell phone from his belt and tossed it to Hood. Daisy watched its flight. “Their phone. Pre-paid Mexico minutes, non-traceable by Mexican law enforcement. Just answer it when good old Gonzalvo calls and do what he says.”
Hood pictured himself alone in Mexico with a million dollars and maybe a handgun, lined up against the Gulf Cartel. He felt the dread leaking into his brainpan like rainwater through an old roof.
“And here’s a phone just for you and me.” Bradley unclipped the satellite phone and handed it to Hood. “Best satellite job money can buy. I’ve signed us up for unlimited Mexico calling for the next two weeks. My number’s already programmed in. They promised reception in all thirty-one Mexican states, plus the federal district.”
Hood considered the two phones, the million in cash at his feet, and bright, lovely Erin McKenna in the hands of killers. “We’ll make it work.”
“It has to work. By the way, I thought the name Charlie Hood might get Armenta buzzing after what ATF did to his son last year. So I told them your name was Charlie Bravo. Charlie the Brave. That okay?”
“It feels like an unfair advantage.”
Hood watched Bradley’s smile go from wicked to haunted. “Deliver her, Charlie. And if I don’t come back, well, you three figure it out.”
They stood outside on the stone porch while the bugs slapped against the light and the mantids walked their elongated shadows on the adobe.
“Any luck with Mike Finnegan, Charlie?”
“No luck with him.”
“He’ll turn up. He always seems to. Crafty little guy.”
“Tell me if you see him.”
“You bet. That’s a promise, Charlie.”
Bradley walked down the gravel path toward his Cayenne, then stopped and turned. “Thanks for doing this, man. I knew you would. I’ll pray to God in heaven for you. And to anyone else who might help.”
6
Later Hood took half of the extra fifty grand and distributed the cash among his wallet, his shave kit and his Expedition.
Out on his patio in the dark he felt the temperature finally drop. He called Frank Soriana, his managing ATF superior in San Diego, and cleared the next eleven days for personal time. He also talked Soriana into issuing him a diplomatic pouch to carry his gun into Mexico.
“Personal, huh?” asked Soriana. “Sounds like you should be on ATF time.”
Hood laughed quietly. He pictured Erin in the hands of cutthroats. He wondered if the million dollars was all Armenta really wanted from Bradley Jones. “See you tomorrow early, sir.”
Next Hood called his mother in Bakersfield. She was a talker. The Buick was making a funny sound and the strawberries at the market were plenty big but almost tasteless. His father was doing okay in assisted living but he had tackled an orderly that morning. He was an Alzheimer’s sufferer and his mind was nearly gone but his body was fit and strong. His mother was trying to forget the man he was now, but to remember the man he used to be, trying to steel her heart, but Hood knew that this was breaking it instead. He invented a story about going back to D.C. for ATF meetings.
“Then I’ll see you in a week?” she asked.
“A little over.”
“Less than two, though?”
“Less than two, Mom.”
He called Beth and left a message on her home phone. He rarely called her at work because she was a night-shift emergency-room doctor at Imperial Mercy in Buenavista and she was almost always busy. In the last year Hood had been working more and more assignments for the ATF Blowdown task force so it wasn’t unusual for him to be out of touch. He told her he would call just as soon as he could. Although Beth had never said so, Hood knew that absences like this were taking their toll on them. She wanted more closeness not more distance, but he could only give her what he had. Thus he felt bad. The cool fog of disappointment had begun to settle down upon them. And Hood had started wondering if he worked long and sometimes dangerous hours so he could remain a distance from the demands of love and family and friends.
He told Beth’s answering machine that he’d be gone ten days and asked her to come get Daisy if she could. He promised her he would call and write. As he rang off he pictured her face and his breath caught achingly and he doubted that he knew even one thing about love. He set a box of stationery and an elegant pen she had given him in his duffel, beside his gun and holster and three plastic wrist restraints, and the CD slipcase for the most recent release from Erin and the Inmates.
When he was done packing he sat on a bench in his home office-a picnic table in his dining room. He checked his website, Facebook page and Twitter, hoping for a tip that might lead him to a man he had been trying hard to find for the last year. The man had introduced himself as Mike Finnegan, a bathroom-products wholesaler based in L.A. But as Hood came to learn, Mike had also gone by other names and claimed other occupations. It was very possible that he was insane, as someone close to him had said. And it was likely that he had done some very bad things to some good people-good friends of his, in fact. Then Mike had vanished.
Because of his dual citizenship with the Los Angeles sheriffs and the ATF, Hood had many contacts in law enforcement. Once a week he would blast:
Dear Paul (John, Barbara, Philip, Donna, Friends…),
Charlie Hood checking in. Anything on Mike Finnegan? Here again are the six known photographs of him. Please continue to distribute. I hope this note finds you well and I truly thank you for all the help you’ve given.
Sincerely,
Charlie Hood, Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department;
Alcohol, Tobacco amp; Firearms Blowdown Task Force,
Buenavista Field Office
But no e-mails back today. And no messages on the website. There were several useless postings to his Facebook page, where he trolled the general public, and some more irrelevant tweets.
A year ago, his opening inquisitions had led to some promising “tips” about Mike. But these had trailed off quickly and Hood had been forced to face a numbing truth: not one of his hundreds of contacts had anything at all on the Mike Finnegan he had met in L.A. He was in no database. Not the IRS, not the DMV, not the Social Security System. No one in law enforcement, intelligence or security had anything. No fingerprints, no dental records, no DNA. And apparently, the world outside of law enforcement knew even less about him.
Hood sat straight-backed on the hard picnic bench and looked at his wall, where he had tacked copies of the eight photographs he had of Finnegan. Three were extracted from security video, and showed a small, thick, middle-aged man and an attractive younger woman. Possibly his daughter, as Hood knew, but likely not. The video was taken a little over two years ago as they were leaving Imperial Mercy Hospital in Buenavista. Finnegan had been critically injured in a car accident just weeks prior and had checked himself out of the hospital against doctor’s orders. His “daughter,” Owens, had picked him up. In the three pictures Mike looked pale and relaxed and maybe a little tired after having half the bones in his body broken, his skull cracked in two places, life-threatening internal damage, and being in a full body cast for almost three weeks.
Hood studied the other pictures, one at a time, still hoping to dredge out some helpful detail he had missed, or achieve some insight that only repetition could spark. One was taken by a German bird-watcher in an eco-resort on the Arenal Volcano in Costa Rica, where Mike was billing himself as Joe Leftwich, an Irish priest. And Arenal, Hood had learned, was where Leftwich had commenced the almost unimaginably cruel destruction of two of Hood’s closest friends.