Iron River

39

Hood watched the Pace Arms entrance through slitted eyes, his head back on the rest, radio turned to a music station. It was nine P.M. At ten thirty, Sharon came down and drove her Z-car from the parking structure. At eleven o’clock he saw Chester Pace’s black Town Car roll into the same structure and a moment later the big man lumber from the darkness to the building. Just as Chester reached the entryway, the door opened and one of the gunmakers looked up at Chester and nodded and held open the door for him.

A minute later, Hood saw a slight change of light in the penthouse, then movement behind the blinds. Fifteen minutes later, Sharon parked and walked out of the structure with plastic bags in both hands. She was dressed in a green dress and looked tanned and casually lovely.

Hood turned down the radio and watched. A few minutes later, the fog settled over the building tops and descended over the street-lights, muting the world. Hood rolled the windows up against the chill. The next time he checked his watch, it was after one A.M. No Chester. No nothing. Four hours to go to end of their shift.

Just after seven o’clock, the men emerged from the building into the foggy morning light. They shuffled to their cars wordlessly and began to drive away. Hood watched them go and counted them. Twelve had gone in. Only ten left. He felt addled from lack of sleep, and he was sore from the sitting. He felt like he had worked the shift alongside them.

His phone vibrated and he saw a new text message waiting:

my journeyman skills are exhausted

you are on your own maybe this

is how it should be i wish i could

have tempted you with bigger things

what you did for me and owens i

will not forget even to the close

of the age

mike

Hood called Beth Petty and asked her to have the ICU nurses concoct a reason to wheel Mike out of his room for a few minutes around eight A.M. When she asked why, he said it had to do with guns, cash, and human life. She agreed to do it. Then he called Gabe Reyes and told him to be at Imperial Mercy ICU at eight o’clock to retrieve Mike Finnegan’s cell phone and check it for calls or messages left or sent.

Forty minutes later, Hood was stuck in traffic in Corona. He slowed to a crawl and cursed and answered a call. Reyes gave him both of the numbers he found on Finnegan’s phone, both outgoing and both made within the last nine hours. One went to a number that Hood recognized as belonging to Owens, placed not long after Hood had left the ICU at Imperial Mercy. The most recent was a text message to Hood.