The Border Lords Read online

  “Erin? Charlie’s here to make his usual baseless accusations, but I thought you’d want to see him.”

  She cut a hard glance at her husband then smiled at Hood. “What did he do now?”

  “I congratulated him on rescuing the boy and he got very defensive about his astonishing good luck.”

  “Well, he’s a lucky one,” she said quietly. The smile was gone and Hood saw wear on her face.

  Bradley sat down and took up the Gibson and took the high E string from its envelope and worked it into place.

  Hood looked at Erin while she told him about the upcoming Erin and the Inmates tour. She was a trim redhead, pretty in an open and forthright way. Blue eyes and a smile that made you smile. Raised mainly in Texas, four years older than Bradley. But her easy good humor didn’t prepare Hood for the stark emotions of her lyrics or the fragile beauty of her music. She seemed wiser than her years and this impressed and intrigued Hood. He was eight years older and somehow looked up to her. So it angered him to think that Bradley Jones was leading a double life just as his mother had led, and was less than truthful with this woman. And it angered him to suspect with good reason that Bradley had used her as an alibi for a murder. He sometimes wished that he had met her first, one of the several moot wishes of his thirty-two years.

  “. . . then there’s the Broken Spoke in Austin, the West End in Dallas and we’ve got two shows in Houston but I’m not sure where, then on to New Orleans and Miami and on up the East Coast. We’ve got twenty-eight shows in thirty days. No rest for this little band.”

  “I’ll catch the Belly Up show in Solana Beach.”

  “You better. Bring that pretty doctor with you in case you need medical attention.”

  “Looked like she could cure about any ailment you might have, Hood,” said Bradley.

  Bradley tightened up the E string and attempted to tune the guitar by ear while Erin squinted, pained by the sound of his crude aural approximations. Then he picked the opening nine notes of the “Dueling Banjos” and offered a brain-damaged smile.

  “Honey? You’re more than a little flat there and it’s making my scalp crawl.” Hood heard the edge in her voice.

  “No. I’ve got perfect pitch.” Bradley pouted and clunkily strummed the first chords of “Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door.”

  Erin put her hand over the hole of the guitar and the chords died against her fingers. “Come on, men, let’s get a beer and set on the porch.”

  They sat three across on a picnic bench in the shade of the porch. Dogs lay strewn about, panting. Erin absently picked the Hummingbird and told Hood about getting a guitar made by a fella back in Texas, would take him almost four months to do it but he hadn’t even started yet. He made them for Clapton and Sting and James Taylor and pretty near all the stars. Only reason he’d make hers was one of her brothers knew him. Hood listened and looked out at the rolling hills and the green oaks with their branches overgrown to the ground and their afternoon shadows flat and blue on the tan grass.

  “Have you seen Mike Finnegan lately?” Hood asked.

  “He and Owens pop up at the L.A. clubs sometimes,” said Erin. “Weird people. It’s been months. Why?”

  “He keeps popping into my mind. I’d like to talk to him.”

  “About what?” asked Bradley.

  “Why do you care?”

  “ ‘Why do you care?’ You’re sounding like that prying old woman again, Charlie.”

  “Knock it off, you drooling primates,” said Erin. “We don’t have any way to get hold of Mike, do we, honey? I know I don’t.”

  “I don’t, either,” said Bradley. Then he stood and stepped around a big husky and hopped the porch railing to the ground. The dogs all rose and stampeded down the steps after him, the terriers barking.

  “Charlie, throw me your keys. I want a look under the hood of this thing.”

  Bradley caught the keys just before a leaping Labrador retriever could close its mouth on them.

  Hood sat back down on the bench. He thought of the strange conversation he’d had with Mike Finnegan, about a year and a half ago, in Imperial Mercy Hospital down in Buenavista. He was in a full-body cast and his broken jaw was wired, but his words were clear:

  . . . Charlie, you are just the kind of person I would love to form a relationship with. It likely wouldn’t happen—you’re much too strong-willed and law-abiding for the likes of me. Unless, of course, there was something you wanted very, very badly. Something I could help you with . . .

  “Anyway, the next time you see Mike, give him my numbers.”

  She looked at Hood with a small smile. “Not so you can find Owens?”

  “Not Owens. Mike.”

  “She’s one spooky beauty.”

  “That she is.”

  “Damaged goods, Charlie. Stay away from her. That’s my decision.”

  “There you go again, giving me advice I didn’t ask for.”

  “I gave advice to all my brothers, older and younger. When I love someone I feel the need to run their lives.”

  Bradley had the hood of the Camaro up and he stood looking down at the engine as if it were a chessboard. He wiggled the fan belt and a battery cable and swung the dipstick out over the gravel so it wouldn’t drip on the car. “You don’t love Hood. You love me.”

  “There are different kinds of love, Bradley.”

  “You run natural or synthetic in this car, Charlie?”

  “Synthetic.”

  “Why did I even ask? She doesn’t love you.”

  “She just said she did.”

  “I do love you, Charlie. No matter what he says.”

  Bradley held up the stick to the light. “About due for a change, Hood. Looks like you got at least four thousand on this stuff.”

  “Thirty-two hundred is what’s on it.”

  Bradley swung a drip onto the gravel, then slid the stick back in. He banged the hood closed and wiped his hands together, then on his jeans. “I couldn’t love a man who doesn’t keep his engine oil clean.”

  He unhooked the cell phone from his belt and walked out into the barnyard.

  There was a long silence. “How are you?” asked Hood.

  “I’m okay. It’s all good.”

  “I worry when I hear that sentence.”

  “Bradley’s trying to do a good job at the deputy work. He . . . takes it seriously. Looks forward to it.”

  “I’m glad to hear that.”

  “I mean, we all make our mistakes, right?”

  Hood said nothing but she offered no explanation.

  “You still don’t trust him, do you, Charlie? But you like him. You see something of yourself in him. And something of his mother.”

  “I owe him. I hurt his chances in life when I took up with Suzanne.”

  “You don’t get to take any blame for what happened to her, Charlie. Suzanne was hell-bent and she got unlucky.”

  He nodded.

  “Something’s changing,” she said. “I don’t know what it is but I’m changing.”

  Hood considered this. Her words were an eerie echo of Sean and Seliah Ozburn’s. “Explain that if you’d like.”

  “I can’t. I have nothing firm to report.”

  “Good change or bad?”

  “It feels like both. Maybe it’s two different changes.”

  “I’ll be your ears anytime, Erin.”

  “I’m seeing that he’s like his mother. More and more.”

  Hood tried to find the right words but he couldn’t. “If you know something—”

  “God, Charlie, I married him and I love him.”

  “Love him all you want. But don’t take a fall for him.”

  “You’re trespassing.”

  “I didn’t see the sign.”

  “I don’t think you miss much. You just blunder in anyway.”

  “Man, that’s the truth, Erin.”

  Hood watched a flock of gnatcatchers swoop in unison into the oak tree. They vanished into the leaves but he
saw the flicker of tails and wingtips. He set his empty bottle on the deck and stood. She rose and hugged him with one arm, the other hand clamped to the neck of the Gibson.

  “If I run across Mike Finnegan, I’ll tell him you want to talk.”

  “I’d appreciate that.”

  “I really don’t like or trust that man.”

  “Don’t ever change.”

  “I just told you I was changing.”

  “Well, okay. But not too much.”

  “See ya, Charlie.”

  Hood waved to Bradley and got into his Camaro. He swung a turn and rolled down the dirt driveway, glasspacks rumbling and the dogs setting up a dust storm behind him.

  20

  Two nights after the great crash of his faith, Ozburn landed Betty at a private strip near Indio, California. The runway had been offered by one of the Desert Flyers. He called a cab that took him to one of the motels along Interstate 10. He had his mane tucked up under a cowboy hat, and he wore a Mexican poncho over his shoulders. As always now, he wore his sunglasses against the brightness of the light, even after dark. It felt right to change his look. ATF was certainly out there, tracking him like a pack of silent hounds.

  He got an upstairs king with free Wi-Fi. He swung his duffel onto the bed and pulled out a fresh bottle of tequila and poured half a plastic cupful. He drank it in a gulp, to an ovation of warmth and excitement inside. He counted out his vitamins and supplements and washed those down with another gulp.

  While Daisy sniffed around the room, Ozburn drew the curtains tight against the night and hung bath towels over the bathroom mirror. He could look at his reflection only very briefly before revulsion made him look away. He closed his eyes against this apparition and he felt the urge to pray. But who do you pray to when you have pulled your faith out by the roots and flung it into the dust forever?

  At eight P.M. the room phone rang as planned, and Ozburn told the caller his room number. He made sure both of the Love 32s were fully loaded and off safe and he slung one over each arm and moved a chair to the middle of the room facing the door and waited for the knock.

  Half an hour later he heard it and said, “Come in.”

  Big Paco lumbered into the room with the same briefcase in which Ozburn had delivered the first Love 32 to him. He was not as tall as Ozburn would have thought but he was certainly as big. His sport coat must have been fitted by a skilled tailor. He wore his sunglasses as before and his pitted face caught the light unhappily. Paco shot out a stout leg and the door slammed shut. Ozburn stood.

  “Tequila?”

  “Yes, please.”

  Ozburn poured drinks into plastic bathroom glasses while Paco set the briefcase on the bed and opened it. Ozburn handed him a drink and Paco handed him a small digital postage scale. Ozburn set the scale on the tabletop and turned it on and reset it. When the weight settled to zero he set the stacks of hundred-dollar bills on it and read the readout: one pound, eight ounces. Ozburn tapped his calculator. Seventy two thousand dollars. Then he weighed the twenties and the fives. There were eighty-seven thousand, five hundred dollars—one-half of the total.

  “The first ten are almost ready,” said Ozburn.

  “The sample gun is very good. Is quiet. We are ready for the first ten.”

  Paco placed the money back in the briefcase and shut it. He slipped the scale into the pocket of his sport jacket. They touched plastic cups.

  “I want to trust you,” said Paco.

  “As I trust you.”

  “But you now have eighty-seven thousand and five hundred of our dollars and we have nothing. You know that the Gulf Cartel can’t be in the business of loaning money to strangers.”

  “You have my word and you will have the guns. Someone has to trust someone for things like this to work, Paco.”

  “We have something even better than trust. Come see.”

  Ozburn followed Paco outside to the parking spaces where a new Escalade waited. The windows were darkened but Ozburn saw movement inside. Then a rear door opened and a man in a green military uniform stepped out. He had a machine gun strapped over his shoulder. He looked at Paco and Oz, then reached back into the vehicle and brought Silvia out by the hand.

  There was no sign of her having been severely stung by the scorpion but the girl was plainly terrified.

  “We have friends in Agua Blanca.”

  “There’s no reason to bring her into this.”

  “We want no reason to hurt her. She is our guarantee that our money and our good friend Sean Gravas will not disappear. She guarantees that the guns will be delivered to us.”

  “You people have no rules anymore.”

  “You saved her life. Now her life depends on you, again.”

  Ozburn turned and walked back into his room.

  Time to call an old friend, he thought. He unwrapped one of his several new preloaded phones. He drank more tequila, then lay back on the bed and called Charlie Hood.

  “Charlie, Gravas here.”

  “It’s good to hear your voice.”

  “Do I sound like me?”

  “You do.”

  “I looked in the mirror a second ago and I thought, man, what happened to you?”

  “Something did happen to you and we can find out what it is.”

  “If I’ll come in and surrender. Not yet.”

  “Seliah’s falling apart without you. If you can’t come back for you, come back for her.”

  “Charlie. You dear old friend. You square. You cop. You Boy Scout.”

  “That’s what you were, too.”

  “But it doesn’t apply to this.”

  “What is this? Define your mission.”

  Ozburn thought for a moment. “Perform good acts and defeat evil.”

  “That’s not good enough, Sean. Try again. Why did you gun down the safe house assassins?”

  “Disgust. We provide a home for them, so they can murder? No. No more living off the fat of the American land for those killers. Herredia is the mother rattlesnake and they are all his living children.”

  “It was an experiment. We were working them. We were getting some good intel out of it.”

  “All our plots and plans. All our manpower and money. It’s all useless, Charlie. It’s a jobs program for people like us. It’s make-work. Like digging a hole and filling it up again. Over and over. Don’t you ever feel the need for clean and clear action? For defined and attainable goals? Something simple with the pure ring of accomplishment in it? Don’t you just want to take a really high-quality, well-built gun, and feel the balance and weight of it in your hand, and kill somebody who deserves it?”

  “I’ve felt that.”

  “These Love Thirty-twos are awesome, Charlie. You put your hands on one yet?”

  “The one you left in the Buenavista house. I haven’t fired it.”

  Ozburn looked down at his filthy jeans and his dusty boots and the big gnarled hand resting across his dirty poncho. “It builds up, Charlie. Over the years. I guess the undercover did me in. I couldn’t take it anymore. Then Sel took me down to Costa Rica and somehow I got better. Then I got a whole lot worse. I’m not sure I’m me anymore. That make sense?”

  “I don’t doubt you, Sean. I know who you are.”

  “You don’t doubt me or yourself, because you’re simple.”

  “If you say so.”

  “Simple is good. It must be like having a flashlight with batteries that never wear out. You can depend on it and it will show you whatever you want to see, whenever you want to see it. I was like that, but now I’m not. When I shine the light I see dark.”

  “I’ll come get you. Right now. We can figure a way to make things work, Sean.”

  “I’ve got something better.”

  “Explain.”

  “The Love Thirty-twos? They’re being made in TJ now, in a secret factory run by Ron Pace and protected by Carlos Herredia.”

  “Pace Arms is operating out of Mexico?”

  “That’s the
word. And if you think it through, it makes sense. Global economy, man. So, how would you like to nail some Gulf Cartel men with a hundred of those guns and one hundred and fifty thousand dollars? Right there in L.A.?”

  “Quite a bit.”

  “Good, because Sean Gravas is the dealer. With a little help from me, the guns, the men and the money will all be yours. It’ll be the biggest deal I ever did for ATF.”

  “You murdered three men, Sean. That kind of puts you on the outs at ATF.”

  “Murders? Why? They land me right where I need to be, don’t they? According to the new cartel rules?”

  Hood said nothing for a long beat. Ozburn chuckled. “I’m still ATF, Charlie. In my little wooden heart. You don’t think I’m out here just having fun, do you? I’m on to something big. I’m going to accomplish it. And when I deliver the guns to my buyers, you can be there. I’ll surrender to you. But not before. I’m not coming in until I have something to show for all this.”

  “When?”

  “I’ll be in touch.”

  Ozburn hung up and dropped the cell phone to the bed. He sat at the table and set up his laptop and wrote.

  Dear Seliah,

  I MISS you terribly, like a phantom limb, like a piece of my heart. We’ll be together soon in a better place and we’ll begin again.

  I’ve lost something. FAITH. The words to express faith. Everything I thought was TRUE. But you know something? I feel okay with that. I feel that I am enough and that my days here on EARTH are to be of value.

  I’m so TIRED right now, body and mind.

  I hunger for your touch.

  Sean

  He took the bottle and cup outside to the small deck and sat on a plastic chair and watched the cars on the interstate. Daisy sat beside him. He felt the spasm of his throat muscles. The supplements and tequila seemed to be somewhat of a palliative but when the spasms became cramps, there was little he could do but fold to his knees and press his forehead to the ground and shudder with pain. He drank. He thought of Hood. He thought of Seliah.