“It’s different.”
“What.”
“Everything. The world now. The guns and drugs. The heads. The cops that aren’t cops. All the slaughter. It’s no longer occasional. Thousands of abortions every month and women leave babies out back of the hospital all the time. Something got out of its bottle. I’m not sure I want to know what it is.”
“Okay.”
“I don’t believe in the end of the world. I believe it keeps going and it becomes what we make of it. Approximately.”
“I hope you’re right.”
“I saw you check my ring finger that very first second in Mike’s room.”
“You nailed me, Beth.”
She put the menu back up and talked from behind it. “I’m starved. That was a long, long night at the cop house. Cops are slow people. Deliberate people. The German plate sounds good. Either that or the chocolate chip pancakes on the kid menu, side of bacon. And I’ll be honest with you, it felt good to have that finger checked.”
“I’m sure it happens a lot.”
She moved the menu to see him. “I was married through med school and it was a disaster. We about ruined each other. Should have never done that. Live and learn and no hard feelings. You?”
“No.”
She positioned the menu over her face again. She said nothing for a long while, then, “I hate having to explain myself. That’s why I don’t date much. When I do, I pray for a guy who talks about himself the whole time. I escape with my privacy intact. Not that I have secrets. I’ve had a very ordinary life. Maybe a quirk or two, sure, everybody’s got those. I can’t guess what kind of date you would be. But then, this really isn’t a date.”
“Want me to start in talking about me?”
She spoke again from behind the plastic sheath. “I’m going kid menu and side of bacon, large milk. Guilt free. I love this place because there’s not a single health-conscious thing in it. I used to fast once a week for a day. All I can say is, it’s hard to sleep that night. I love to eat. There’s an overweight woman inside me, just waiting to get out.”
“You talk a lot for a person who doesn’t talk a lot.”
Menu down: “Wrong. I don’t like to explain myself but I love to talk at certain times. I talk when I’m hungry. I talk when I’ve had a hard day, and men with guns have been creeping around in my hospital. I talk at meals because for eight hours a day most everything I see has to do with blood, guts, illness, and death. I talk to my dog. I like saying words such as violet and Saskatoon.”
“You want a guy who can listen to you blather on and on without a comma and never even get tired of it.”
She raised the menu again. “He’s bound to get tired of it, but he still has to listen. I value good manners very highly. You know, I could do the German plate and the kid plate. And I’ll bet you right now, if I ate all that I could still have dessert. Which begs the question of what’s a good dessert after chocolate chip pancakes? What do you think?”
“I think it means you were raised in a large competitive family.”
The menu stayed up. “Five kids.”
“Ours, too.”
“Then how come you’re not talking your fool head off?”
“I’m letting you.”
When Beth Petty lowered the menu, there was a straw in her mouth aimed at Hood and she blew a spitwad into his chest.
20
Hood sat on his stool in Hell on Wheels, the ATFE Dumpster modified for surveillance. The tow truck he had used to transport it was now parked over near the restrooms. Hood was borderline claustrophobic and disliked being caged. He ate a candy bar and drank a can of odd-tasting iced tea.
Twelve hours ago, Ivan Dragovitch had called Hood about the ammo sale, and Hood was now near ground zero of the deal, a rest stop on Interstate 8 midway between San Diego and Yuma. Ozburn and Bly had given him hell and their blessing, but this was still a legal deal, and bad as it smelled, it didn’t warrant the whole Achilles team. Within the ATFE ranks, small individual operations were encouraged because they often got results and were an important method of finding possible informants. Hood told them nothing of his relationship with Kyle Johnson. He wanted to see Bradley buy fifty thousand rounds of.32 ACP with his own eyes.
Dragovitch had suggested the rest stop. Here, in the far corner, at nine P.M., Kyle Johnson would inspect and legally purchase the product from an unlicensed munitions dealer named Wesley Savage. Ammo sales were not federally regulated, and the state forms were cursory at best. Dragovitch would preside and Hood would witness and record. Hood knew that Bradley could have gone online to any number of sites and had the quantity drop-shipped to his home, but this would have subjected him to the security protocols of the company and to their suspicions and possible relationship to ATFE. Savage’s prices were higher because he had no questions and filled out no forms.
Sitting now on the stool in the Dumpster in the middle of the immense desert, leaning forward with his elbows on his knees and his fingers crossed, Hood saw himself from the outside for a moment. There I am on a stool in a cage. All the many paths have led to this.
He thought of Beth Petty and her nervous chatter and the tone of her skin against the yellow dress. He wanted to touch her.
He held the video recorder up to one of the holes. He had positioned Hell on Wheels way out on the edge of the parking area to give himself a generous field of vision. With the zoom he could see across to the “Dangers of the Desert” display and the vending machines and the strip of ground with the NO DOGS sign above it and the sun-blackened turds dry in the dirt. Past them were a flat expanse of desert in which the creosote and ocotillo and cholla stood disparate in the windless evening. At the end of everything, the sun lowered into a lake of red.
Dragovitch pulled into the rest area at eight o’clock. Hood watched his black Dodge pickup lap the parking lot once, then roll to the far corner, closest to the desert, where pets were allowed. Dragovitch got out and left the door open, rolled his shoulders, looked around with casual alertness. Hood expected Sheila to get out next, but she didn’t. Instead Ivan whistled sharply and a white blur sailed from the pickup cab and into his waiting arms. Dragovitch held up the wiggling papillon, then set it down, and it pranced sharp-footed to business in the dog patch.
Hood sat on his stool and noted the final lengthening of shadows before sundown. He rechecked his recorder settings and the clamp holding the concave mike dish. He watched through a peephole. The rest area was getting busier, cars pulling in and out, and families hustling for the bathrooms and lining up for the vending machines, the big rigs moaning into their dedicated area and moaning out again.
The meeting time came and went. Dragovitch paced and the papillon lay on a cushion on the tailgate. Hood was tired of sitting in the Dumpster and he had the feeling of things going wrong.
A kid ran all the way from the vending machines to throw away a wrapper. Hood lowered the mike and backed away from the spy hole. He watched the boy lift the top and he felt the wrapper tap his head, then fall to the floor of the bin beside him. The kid brushed his hands together with a job well done, then turned and sprinted away.
Nine fifteen.
Bradley and his gang unloaded the ammunition in the Jacumba garage of Israel Castro, a friend and confederate. Jacumba was a smuggler’s roost between San Diego and El Centro, a hilly warren of trails and tunnels and dirt roads straddling Mexico and the United States, and Bradley liked this rough country and the lawlessness that hovered over it. He had met Castro through Coleman Draper, the reserve deputy shot dead by Hood. Castro had offered to store and later transport the ammunition, and get Savage’s truck down into Mexico for sale. Bradley knew it would fetch a good price from any narco with horses and acres to enjoy, or simply product to transport. The men worked quickly and silently, and when the heavy crates were arranged on the pallets, they said good-bye with the touching of fists. Car doors opened and closed and the metal garage door rumbled down and the motion lights at the gate held the dust for a moment, then even that was gone.