Iron River

8

That evening, Hood sat in the shade of his modest courtyard and watched Bradley’s green Cyclone stream up the hill toward the house. The music blared and the dust danced. Bradley’s fiancée was riding shotgun and Hood could see her red hair flying behind a black scarf.

He waved them into the carport, and Bradley goosed the car into the shade. It looked good next to his IROC Camaro. Hood had always loved the single-minded power of muscle cars, their half wildness and partial comforts. The music stopped and Erin turned and looked at Hood, then the doors opened at the same time.

Bradley was wearing plaid shorts and flip-flops and a white guayabera and a narrow-brim hat. His hair was cut short and his face clean shaven. “Why’d you pick this place?”

“Location,” said Hood.

“We can’t stay long. Just came by to give you the good news.”

Erin got out and stretched and tossed the scarf into the car. She pushed her sunglasses up into her hair. She wore a white dress with black polka dots and no shoes. “I’ve got dust on my dust. Good to see you, Charlie.”

Hood showed them the house, then they sat in the courtyard at a round rough-hewn table and benches without backs. The courtyard faced east to get the cool of evening if there was any. Hood brought out a pitcher of ice water and glasses. The desert spread in a flat infinity below them. Hood thought of Holdstock.

“There have been some changes since we talked to you,” said Bradley. “ Erin? Want to get this show started?”

He watched Bradley and Erin exchange looks. Erin went to the Cyclone.

“So, how’s the Iron River?” asked Bradley.

“Quiet for three whole days.”

“Not a shot fired?”

Hood shook his head absently. He couldn’t get Holdstock out of his mind. Pliers and a circular saw, he thought. Christ, what have we come to?

“You glad you came down here?” asked Bradley.

“Oh. Yeah.”

“You don’t look too glad.”

“That was your word.”

“Okay, friend. Just talkin’, just filling up space.”

“Do you know Victor Davis? Your mother bought a gun from him four years ago. The one you gave me after she died.”

Bradley shook his head. “She had more than one gun.”

“You tried to buy six.”

Bradley looked at Hood and nodded. “It never happened. I was fifteen.”

“That’s what worries me.”

“Worry about yourself.”

Erin was back with a plastic garment bag on a hanger slung over one shoulder and a square envelope in her other hand. She lay the bag over the low courtyard wall, then sat back down and handed the envelope to Hood.

It was heavy and cream colored, and on the front in beautiful cursive writing, it read: Charles Hood & Guest.

“That’s your handwriting, Erin.”

“It sure is. Open it.”

The wedding invitation inside was classy and brief, though Hood read it twice to make sure he hadn’t made a mistake.

“It’s a three-day wedding celebration?”

“We hope it’s enough,” said Erin. “The Valley Center ranch is where I first saw you. Bradley and I were moving out. Remember?”

“I remember.”

Hood pictured the Valley Center compound where Suzanne Jones had lived, now partially owned by her son, Bradley. It was eight acres in the hills near Escondido. Hood could see the big house and the outbuildings and the grassy expanse of the barnyard and the small creek that formed the south property line. It was tucked back into Cahuilla Indian land.

“It’s going to be like the rancho days,” said Erin. “The Calironios, you know, they’d party for a week at a time. They’d feast and drink and dance and crash and wake up and keep going. Music, music, music. They wore beautiful clothes, old-world fashions because a lot of them were Spanish. They were generous and gracious and maybe a little dangerous. Anyway. Hope you can come.”

“I’ll be there,” he said.

Erin looked at her fiancé. Bradley was drumming his fingers on the old wooden table.

“You’re on,” she said.

Bradley set his hat by the invitation, then collected the suit bag and disappeared into Hood’s house.

“Congratulations again,” said Hood.

“He’s coming around, Charlie. The old ghosts are clearing out. He’s growing up well.”

“Good.”

“He’s nineteen.”

“I hold him up to high standards,” said Hood with a smile. “I demand the best for you.”

“I’m a happy woman.”

“You deserve it.”

“You’ll be doing the same thing soon.”

“Is that right?”

“Yes. And thank God it’s over with that prosecutor of yours. Ariel?”

“Don’t diss Ariel.”

“As your guardian angel, I must. She was too intense, too… what’s the word, Charlie? Prosecutorial? No. You’re going to meet your match one of these days. Don’t be in a hurry, though. Be picky. Extremely picky.”

“I like getting advice from twenty-two-year-olds.”

“Thirty is not old, Charles.”

Hood saw the small smile on Erin ’s face.

Bradley strode back into the courtyard, wearing a Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department Explorer uniform. It was khaki and slightly baggy for his athletic shape. The nameplate on his chest read JONES. He lay the garment bag back over the wall.

“They accepted me into the Explorers program, Hood. Without your help or your recommendation or anything else from you. They took me because of who I am and what I can be someday. I start next week. Can you believe it? I’m gonna be one of the good guys. I’m proud of me.”

“Congratulations. I mean it.”

“Accepted.”

Hood saw a brief darkness pass through Bradley and it reminded him of the darkness that would sometimes pass through the boy’s mother. Bradley had loved her powerfully, and had despised Hood for intruding into their lives. Just a few weeks later, she had died in a holdup, shot by a boy named Kick. Bradley vowed to kill him. Kick had been murdered last year and Hood suspected Bradley had kept his word. Bradley had an alibi that the LAPD believed and Hood didn’t- Erin.

“But I still think you took out Kick,” said Hood. “And used Erin to cover your ass. And that is something we should acknowledge here, no matter what costumes we wear and who calls who friend.”

In the silence, Hood felt the wind come up behind him, then roll on over like a wave, lifting wisps of dust on its way down the slope toward the desert floor. Bradley’s hat started across the tabletop, but Hood caught it and sailed it to him.

“You tell me I’m a murderer and Erin is a liar. Why am I standing here? I told you this visit was a dumbass idea, sweetie.”

“I guess,” she said quietly. “Hood? Charlie? He was with me.”

“I hate the sight of you lying. I hate the sound of it.”

“I’m going to be an LASD deputy, Hood. Get used to it. You don’t own the department. You don’t own me. I’ll probably be your boss before you know it.”

“I might have killed him, too,” said Hood.

“You don’t have the balls. Well, I’ve had enough of this beautiful desert for now. Erin, get in the car.”

Bradley grabbed the suit bag and jumped the wall. Then he stopped and turned and smiled back at Hood. “But I still want you at the wedding, Charlie. I want a big expensive gift, too.”

Erin stood by the table. She looked at Hood, then back at Bradley waiting by the car now, then at Hood again.

“We didn’t deal those cards, Charlie. We played them.”

Late that night, Hood was back on his courtyard, writing a letter to his mother and father. Only his mother would fully understand it, but she would read it out loud to her husband, a once warm and energetic man now nearly incapacitated by Alzheimer’s disease. Hood’s father loved getting the letters he only partially comprehended, and Hood did this mainly for him. He had bought high-cotton stationery and an expensive pen and a book of stamps. He thought before he wrote and tried to say what he thought.

Dear Mom & Dad,

I hope this note finds you well. I’ve moved into my new home here and I like it. I can see all the way to Mexico if I look south. Buenavista is kind of pretty, though dusty and very hot. Some of it is a sleepy Western town, with a beautiful old church and stone streets in old town, and saloons and outdoor markets, but it has Rite Aid and Dairy Queen and a big new hospital, too. In the old square up on the hill, you can hitch a horse or park a Porsche, and you see plenty of each.

Things have not gotten off to a good start. I don’t mean to worry you, but I promised to be truthful. My second day here, our task force unit killed two young men. On my fourth day, one of our task force agents was abducted on American soil and I fear that he has been executed but fear more if he has not. This has never been done before. Mom, Dad, there are headless bodies piling up all around Mexico, thirty-four in the last ten days. Nearly 6,000 people have lost their lives to the cartel wars this year alone and the year is far from over. Some are innocents-some are women and children. Things are unraveling here. It’s something larger than the guns and the murders and the mutilations. We’re losing the rules of human being. I feel like there’s a big storm coming, something terrible and cleansing. In some very mysterious way, I feel needed here. What this says about me I don’t know. But I do know I miss you. I hope this note helps in some small way to bridge the miles between us. Give my love to all my brothers and sisters.

Love,

Charlie

Hood readied the envelope and put it in his pocket and slipped his jacket over his gun and drove into Buenavista. This late the town was quiet. Hood parked near the zocalo and walked past the church and the fountain and civic buildings to the post office and dropped the letter in the slot.

He was surprised to find a postcard in his post office box, likely from his mother. It was a picture of Imperial Mercy Hospital taken on a clear day under blue skies. On the back was a brief paragraph about the state-of-the-art medical facility, and a handwritten note that appeared to be slowly and painfully accomplished:

Dear Deputy Hood,

We have some things to talk about. Mornings and nights are best. My daughter vanished six weeks and one day ago and my heart hurts much more than my body. Please come.

Mike

Hood pocketed the card and walked up the street where they had chased Tilley and Victor Davis, past the shops and the galleries and the market, all closed now. He stopped within the shadowed columns of the colonnade and looked at the Club Fandango, where a doorman stood outside with his arms crossed and his feet spread as if against a crowd of onrushers, but there was only a blond girl who looked too young to get in and the man was shaking his head no. Music pulsed faintly from inside, and the light behind the shaded windows randomly changed colors and depth.

As Hood watched, three black Escalades rumbled up the stone street and came to a stop in the No Parking zone at the entrance. They were almost new and the windows were blacked out and the roof-tops bristled with antennae. California and Mexico plates, he saw, Sonora and Sinaloa. Two of the men who got out of the middle vehicle were young and black-haired and trimly dressed. The two others were older and larger and they dressed in looser clothes meant to conceal. There were two women, young and stylish, hair up and earrings dangling and high heels sounding on the street stones, and the trim men offered their arms to steady them for the walk to the door. A similar contingent exited the SUV farthest from the entrance, and Hood heard a quick shriek as one of the women stumbled and was caught by the other. Men commented and laughed. No one left the first vehicle.

At the door, the young men had words with the doorman and the girl, then the doorman swung open a tall wooden door and the men went inside. Hood watched the girl say something to the doorman, then sling her bag over her shoulder and saunter to the nearest Suburban. Her hair flashed golden in the light of the streetlamp. A back door opened and an arm came from the black interior and helped the girl climb inside. Hood stood unmoving for half an hour and watched, though he didn’t know for what. Then he walked back to his Camaro and drove home.