“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.

9

Mike Finnegan sat nearly upright in his ICU bed. Hood saw the twinkle of his eyes deep in the gauze. His TV was tuned to the morning news, where a meteorologist called for very warm weather in Imperial Valley, midnineties and humid with subtropical moisture.

“Why won’t he use the word hot?” asked Finnegan. His voice came tightly from within his wired jaws. “Ninety-five is not very warm. It is hot.”

“The power of suggestion.”

“Yes, weathermen come to believe they influence the weather, like craps players with dice or you policemen with crime rates. Her name is Owens and she’s twenty-one. Five seven, one fifteen, brown and gray. She didn’t get my cramped little body and brain. She’s beautiful and smart. Her mother died six years ago. A heart attack.”

“Did Owens run away?”

“Vanished. She didn’t run away. She didn’t pack anything. She had just finished her junior year of college with a GPA of 4.25. She was working part-time at a bedroom store and volunteering at a Skid Row soup kitchen in L.A. on Saturdays. When she disappeared, it made the local papers. I filed all the proper police reports.”

“Was she living with you?”

“She had an apartment in Glendale.”

“Boyfriend?”

“No. Some casual male friends. Nice young boys.”

“You’ve talked to them?”

“Absolutely. No calls. No ransom demand. No contact whatsoever… I read about the mishap in Buenavista. Two days after you get here, boom-the body count jumps by two. Gustavo Armenta? I shuddered when I read his name in the paper, then I thought, no, certainly he can’t be related to Benjamin of Gulf Cartel fame. But then again, he certainly could be.”