“True. Close your eyes again, Nick. Don’t talk so much. Just think about the first time Willie caught a fish.”

“Well-”

“Nicky, I don’t want to hear about it, I just want you to be quiet.”

“It was at the county fair. He tossed a Ping-Pong ball in a little bowl with a fish in it. I got Stevie a turtle painted blue and Katherine a chameleon on a string. Kids sat in the back of the Red Rocket on the way home and watched it turn colors.”

“I like it when they’re that age,” said Lobdell.

“Katy’s gonna kill me for leaving that car down there. It cost us almost three thousand dollars.”

“Maybe we can get it back when we come down to see Ynez.”

Nick felt compelled to check his watch and did so. Immediately forgot the time and why he’d wanted it. Shifted again in the seat and felt the deep stab of pain in his guts. Moved the wadded towel and looked down. Seat not blue anymore. Running down the front and into the carpet now.

“I’m not gonna die.”

“There’s the TJ bullring,” said Lobdell.

THE BORDER wait was long, though Nick had no way of knowing this. He was aware, then unaware, lucid one moment and nearly unconscious the next. Lucky had covered him with a blanket. Nick looked out through the window steamed by his own quickening breath, saw an old man in a white straw hat hold up a purple plaster Buddha bank, kept saying “One dollar, one dollar,” turning it to show the slot where the coins would go. Saw a kid with a bunch of yellow paper flowers big as basketballs. Saw a Tarahumara woman with a weaving of a man running after a stag. Then he felt Lobdell putting something between the fingers of either his right hand or his left, heard Lobdell explaining he was going to light this just before they got up to the Mexican customs guy, and if Nick could take one puff on it and nod, that would really help them out. Didn’t have to say anything or even open his eyes, just take a puff on this cigarette and maybe nod if he could and everything would be cool. Then, Lobdell said, they’d go about fifty yards and have to stop again for the American customs, but Lucky was just going to badge them, say his partner was sick and slide right through. If Nick could maybe open an eye or take a puff for the Americans, that would be patriotic, wouldn’t it? Lobdell said Bay Hospital in Chula Vista was a good place, had a friend there once for tonsils. Just up the freeway. Then a minute later, maybe an hour, Nick was aware of a burning smell and he felt the cigarette between his fingers and heard Lobdell order him to take a puff. Nick brought the thing toward his head, got his lips around it. Drew in and nodded once and lowered his hand onto the blanket. He heard Lobdell saying something about his friend getting bad lobster in Puerto Nuevo last night. And maybe too much tequila at the Rosarito. Or not enough menudo this morning.

“Tequila,” Nick said softly. Took another puff.

“Hey, he’s still alive,” said Lobdell.

“What is in the trunk?”

“Jumpers, a jack, and a spare.”

“Visit Mexico again someday.”

“Be back before you know it.”

Nick was aware of motion.

“One down, Nick,” said Lobdell. “One to go. Swim hard, partner.”

Nick never experienced the brief stop at U.S. Customs. The next thing he knew he was lying flat on his back looking up at the ceiling lights of an emergency room and someone was jabbing his arm and his stomach had burst into flames.

31

ANDY GOT KATY and the kids to the hospital in Chula Vista first. Nick was in surgery and the waiting room desk nurse said it might go long.

He took her aside.

“Is he going to be all right?” asked Andy.

“He’s in surgery, Mr. Becker. That’s all we can say right now.”

“But what’s his condition? This is a hospital, you must know what his condition is. If you don’t, who does? Is he going to make it?”

“That’s all we can say right now. Please sit down, or maybe take a walk.”

Andy started toward Nick’s partner, Al Lobdell. Lobdell was standing with a group of what could only be plainclothes cops. He appeared to be explaining something very intense and complex, his hands out for emphasis, his big head forward.

Lobdell broke away and took Andy outside. Told him about the arrest warrant and the tip and waiting for Bonnett at the border. Pulling over his car in National City. Three guys with him. Bonnett making them, the foot chase, gunshots, the knife. Bonnett was critical, too. Shot up. Nick’s car shot up, too, two blown-out windows. But Lobdell had brought Nick and Bonnett both right here to the same damned hospital in Nick’s car, believe it or not. Faster than waiting for an ambulance.

When Andy had enough for a story he called it in to Teresa from a waiting room phone, dictating from his notes.

“My God, Andy. Is he going to make it?”

“They won’t tell me anything.”

“Are you okay? Are you coming home tonight?”

“It might be a couple of days. I’ll call you later tonight.”

He sat with Katy on a yellow sofa. No expression on her big pretty face. Willie and Stevie on either side of her with their feet swinging back and forth. Katherine sat on the carpet finding the hidden pictures in a Highlights magazine.

Andy had never seen them this quiet.

DAVID CAME into the waiting room half an hour later with Max and Monika.

Andy thought his brother looked pale and thin but somehow strong, too. Like rope. Like a man who had gone through bad things and survived.

His mother wore a hopeless expression. His father stared at the other people in the waiting room as if daring them to give him bad news.

Just then a doctor pushed hurriedly through the back doors and waved the adults into a prayer room. He shut the door.

“I’m sorry but Nick has died.”

Andy felt his body tilting back into the earth. Sensed the deep black hole into which he was falling. Stared into the doctor’s pained brown eyes, and opened his mouth but couldn’t speak.

“I need to see him,” said David.

“You can’t.”

“Of course I can. I’m his brother and an ordained minister. Take me to him immediately.”

Andy saw the strength gathered in his brother’s eyes. The same strength Andy had always seen there, but it was focused now. It was narrow and intense. Not broad and radiant. Looked more like fury than love. Ferocious and irresistible.

The doctor nodded, turned, and led the way.

DAVID’S WORLD tunneled down tighter with every step. He knew that his God and his faith and his brother would be salvaged or destroyed in the next minute.

He had never been in an operating room. The light was dim. He could sense that a fierce battle had just been lost here. Nick was under a bloody white blanket. A surgery nurse with her back to him was clanking implements from a stand into a stainless steel tray. The heart monitor showed a steady green horizontal line unbroken by life. A man in green scrubs and rubber gloves bloody to the wrists padded in, saw David, immediately turned and walked back out. The nurse folded back the blanket and revealed Nick’s face. David’s heart dropped and kept dropping. He touched his brother’s forehead. Not warm, really, but not yet cool.

David closed his eyes. Felt nothing of his own body now except for his hand on Nick’s head. Heard the clink of tools in the tray. Heard the human murmur outside the room. Heard the hum of lifesaving machines and waiting room music sneaking through the ducts and airwaves. He silently told his God that now was the time to answer his prayer. Now was the time for God to reveal Himself in a visible and useful way. Now was the time to break the indifferent silence. A miracle was required. This modest miracle would be a declaration of His being and His caring. Simple gratitude, not to all mankind but to one man and his family. A way to acknowledge the bottomless love that David had always felt for Him, his God, who had remained reluctant and unavailable for so long.