“How long can you keep him here?” asked Hood.

“As long as he can pay. I’m not supposed to know or tell you this, but his ninety grand is now down to thirty-five. It’ll last about three more weeks if he doesn’t require more surgery or exotic tests. Then he either comes up with more money or insurance or we transfer him over to rehab for a month on the county. At the rate he’s going, he’ll be ready for rehab in three weeks. He’s tough as leather. I was doing an ER shift when they brought him in that morning. I stabilized him and assisted the surgeons who set the broken legs and arm, wired the jaw, and repositioned the cheekbones. We fitted him with the cranial rods and collar because two neck vertebrae showed fractures. We didn’t do anything with his broken ribs-four fractures, thank goodness. The big worry was his skull-two fractures, deep and long on the X-rays. We peeled a portion of his scalp and stapled his skull, loosely. There has to be some give if the edema gets bad. We loaded him with antibiotics and steroids, and so far, no infection and no swelling. Well, very little swelling. That man was busted up something bad, deputy. I didn’t expect to hear a peep out of him for three or four days, and now, well, you’ve seen him in action. He rarely sleeps. If someone is in the room and conscious, he talks to them. If not, he reads. Those are all library books you saw in there. He talked two day nurses into making a run for him, gave them a list of books he wanted. He offered them each a hundred dollars for their time, but they didn’t take it. He keeps telling me how hungry he is, wants us to cut his jaws free so he can eat. He’s slurping down the liquid diet like you wouldn’t believe.”

Hood tried adding up all of this but couldn’t even get ballpark. “Oh,” said Beth Petty. “There was a bullet lodged in his face, behind the left cheekbone, below the eye. It looked like it had been in there quite a while. We cut it out. I gave it to Gabe Reyes.”

“Small caliber, large?”

“You really are a cop, aren’t you? Can’t a bullet in a man’s face just be a bullet?”

“Yes.”

“I’m sorry. My father was a cop. He…”

Hood waited for elaboration but got none. “Where?”

“ San Diego.”

He nodded and looked at the doctor, then out the window. The morning was bright, and still early enough for shadows. On the patio outside were tables with built-in metal umbrellas, but the only diners were blackbirds pecking at a syrup tub on an abandoned breakfast plate.

“Why all the uniforms here?” asked Hood.

“To protect bad guys from other bad guys. The uniforms are federal and so are the suits. The bad guys are cartel heavies. There’s a deal between the U.S. and the Mexican governments. We treat their VIPs because the Mexican hospitals don’t have the facilities. We do level one trauma here, the only hospital for a hundred miles. It’s hugely profitable for us, I hear. But there’s a lot of security involved. There was an incident.”

“Incident?”

“A man with a gun, a criminal record, and a cartel affiliation. There was a rival cartel captain up in the ICU where Mike is now. No shots fired-security did its job. You probably didn’t hear anything. Imperial Mercy does a good job of keeping things upbeat and quiet. We have a PR staff for that, actually. And of course the feds don’t say much to anybody but each other. There’s talk of new security here-scanners and wands, like an airport.”

Hood looked at the four men across the room.

“I’m sorry about what happened over in old town,” she said. “Were you there?”

Hood nodded but said nothing.

“Just like Dad,” said Beth Petty.

“It was one of those situations where everybody does their jobs and an innocent man dies anyway. Maybe like the ER.”

“Completely none of my business. I’m sorry. I could never get anything out of Dad, either. I think it scarred me for life. Terribly.” She smiled and blushed. “So I keep trying.”

“I’ll talk to you anytime, Dr. Petty.”

“Beth.”

“Charlie. But watch what you ask for. You get me going and I’ll make Mike Finnegan seem quiet.”

Her smile was tentative, then full. “What about that little dude?”

10

A small padded envelope arrived in the U.S. mail that afternoon, addressed to Blowdown. The senders had the correct task force field office location in El Centro. It contained a DVD.

Hood, Ozburn, and Bly sat in their small conference area with the bad air conditioner and the TV and DVD player. Ozburn dialed his cell phone while Bly fed the disc into the machine and pressed PLAY.

A warehouse maybe, one wall visible in deep background, no windows, the light fluorescent, chilly and bright.

Jimmy strapped into a chair, wrists taped tightly to the armrests, fingers red and bloated.

Jimmy, eyes wide at the camera and sweating hard as someone stepped into the picture-a man in a Halloween werewolf mask and pliers in one gloved hand who roughly lifted one of Holdstock’s swollen fingers above the others. The werewolf mask was blue-faced and black-haired. Then the camera zoomed to steel teeth on a fingernail. Hood watched. What he saw and heard scalded through him like a dose of venom and it briefly left him short of breath.

In a break between Jimmy’s inhuman screams Hood could hear Ozburn talking softly into his cell phone.

The government Bell landed ninety minutes later in a patch of desert behind the task force office, blowing sand into an opaque fog from which emerged four men. They leaned low and single file beneath the rotors as Hood watched through a window. He recognized ATFE agents Soriana and Mars from his Blowdown training.

Soriana threw open the door of the task force office and marched inside. Mars followed him, carrying an oversize leather briefcase strapped over a narrow shoulder. It was heavy. Soriana introduced government consultant Dan Litrell from Washington, and Baja state police sergeant Raydel Luna. Litrell was red-haired and freckled and looked to Hood like an athlete. His handshake was powerful. Luna was taurine, both tall and large, with a thick neck and rounded shoulders and bowlegs. His head was shaved and tanned to the very top, where the hair was tapered up to form a short black mesa. His temporal and jaw muscles were pronounced. He shook Hood’s hand softly and his smile was not a smile and he said nothing, then turned his black eyes on Janet Bly.

They brought in chairs, and everyone but Luna fit around the small conference room table. Luna stood in a corner like a punished schoolboy or a minor deity. The air conditioner wheezed loudly and produced a small amount of cool air. The men took off their jackets, and Janet Bly put her thick brown hair up under an ATFE field cap.

Mars produced a small digital recorder and placed it in the middle of the table and turned it on. He established time and location and participants, but Hood noted that he said nothing about Raydel Luna.

“Look, Sean,” said Soriana. “You start us off with the Blowdown buy at Guns a Million. Just walk us through all that because it sets the table for the rest of it. I’m going to record this whole meeting and I’m ready to roll when you are.”

Ozburn told them the story up to the arrival of the Polaroids, which he then displayed. In his biker’s vest and black T-shirt he looked like a roadhouse gambler dealing poker. Then on to the DVD. The seven law enforcers watched the DVD in silence. Not one word. Hood thought that by him watching, Holdstock had to feel the pain anew, though this was preposterous.

There was a moment of quiet after the last of Jimmy’s screams was cut short by the cameraman.

“We need to go get him back,” said Bly. “They’ll kill him if we don’t.”

“We can’t invade Mexico,” said Soriana. “We have to go through diplomatic channels. This is our only way.”