“A knife ain’t nothing.”

“It’s enough to get you kicked out. Then you won’t make the big money from Mike.”

“Oh, I’ll get that money. I’m getting all A’s and Mike always does what he says. He’s never lied to me, not once.”

Owens Finnegan answered the door of her El Centro home. Her face was made up and her lipstick was red. She was wearing a sleeveless white dress and wide carved African tribal bracelets and she was barefoot again. Hood stepped in and saw no change: same boxes stacked, same bare walls, same director’s chairs. The kitchen was still bare as she led him outside to the picnic table.

“I made some iced tea since I knew you were coming.”

She poured two tumblers from the glass pitcher. There was a sugar bowl and spoons on the table.

Hood brought up the image of the steel mesh vest on his cell phone and set the phone on the table in front of Owens. She turned it and shaded the small screen with one hand.

“That’s from your father’s closet in L.A. What is it?”

“A vest of some kind. I’ve never seen it.”

“You never lived in that apartment on Aviation, either.”

“No.”

“But he’s been there since the 1960s, when that black-and-white TV was new and he was ten years old?”

“That’s always been his place of business, Charlie. Since seventy-something. He buys old stuff because he likes it. That old TV never even worked. We lived in various places-Sierra Madre, Glendale, Los Angeles -not on Aviation.”

“I don’t enjoy being lied to. It wastes my time and it pisses me off.”

“I never told you I lived in that apartment. I can’t control what Dad said. I’m sorry if I’ve never seen that article of clothing before.”

“What about the clips? The stories from the small towns in California? All the inventors and promising children and small-time criminals?”

“Dad’s interests are across the board.”

“No shit, Owens.”

Hood drank some tea and put his glass down, then stood and walked across the dead brown grass and looked out to the desert beyond the wall. To the southeast, thunderheads loomed out of Mexico, great white anvils climbing the blue.

She stood facing him and handed him his tea.

“Mike knows way too much about Mexican drug cartels, and the ATF,” said Hood. “He seems almost fixated on a man I work with. Mike knows things about him he just shouldn’t know. Did he do investigations? Do you have law enforcement in the family?”

“None that I know of.”

“Government, military, intelligence?”

She shook her head, and the dry desert breeze lifted her hair. “It was always passion and bluff. He wants to be an insider. He has an extravagant and sometimes powerful mind. I’ve never known anyone as intelligent as he is. Or as crazy. I’ve seen him lie in bed for days, crying and never eating. I’ve seen him stay awake for days, making phone calls and doing sketches and reading, reading, reading. He doesn’t invent stories or friends or incidents. He invents entire worlds. They are populated and specific.”

Hood looked into her eyes, now almost silver in the bright sunlight. She took his glass and flung the tea and ice against the wall and dropped the glass to the dry grass. He felt her hands cool on his cheeks again and the warmth of her breath on his face, then the softness of her lips on his. He lifted her hands off his face and felt the risen cords of scar-flesh under his fingers.

“They’re me, Charlie. Past, present and future, all in one. Don’t be afraid of them.”

“I respect them.”

She took his face in her hands again and kissed him again. Hood broke it off and lifted her hands away and kissed the underside of the left wrist, then the right wrist, and as he did this she closed her eyes and exhaled quietly.

“There might be another day for this,” he said.

“Tell me when you find it, Charlie.”

23

Holdstock lay awake and listened to the late-night sounds of the hospital. His door was closed. He was taking less medication for pain and to sleep, so his native energy had started to flow again.

He got up and used his crutches to make the toilet, clumsily balancing on his armpits while parting his gown with the thick gauzed trunks of his fingers. His broken big toes were operational for indoor distances. The crushed molars had already been replaced by crowns, and his swollen face had almost returned to normal size. Frank the security guard had confiscated his gun, and two nurses had rebuilt the right-hand bandage that Charlie Hood had so trustingly modified. Jimmy’s hospital gunslinging days were over and this left him feeling naked and defenseless again.

He managed to get the gown closed, then he worked his bandaged hands back into the crutches. With his weight born by his palms and the crutch handles, his fingers throbbed with pain, but it was a bearable pain. On his crutches he shouldered his way through the half-open door and into the hallway. There was only one deputy on duty at this hour and he sat with his head bowed to the Car and Driver spread across his lap, but he was asleep.

Jimmy labored down to the nurses’ station and talked with Lourdes for a minute or two. Standing at rest he used his armpits to bear his weight and was able to lift his hands upright to let the blood drain back down from the infernal fingertips. With his hands up like that, Jimmy thought he must look like a man being arrested. There was a Dodger game on the little TV in the station, so Jimmy somewhat illogically told Lourdes about a touchdown he’d scored for Wisconsin, a last-second reception and twenty-three-yard run that put them past rival Indiana 21-14. When he was done, Holdstock felt a little short of wind and he made a joke about getting more tired talking about the touchdown now than actually scoring it. He breathed deeply and noted the simple pleasure of feeling fresh air coming into him.

He continued down the hall. Slow going. This was his fourth exercise session in four days. Ever since Hood had spotted the two fake deputies, Jimmy had understood that he’d have to get his strength back in order to survive. He needed to get out of here. He needed to be home with his wife and daughters, no matter how much of a burden he might be, no matter that their pity shamed and angered him. It was only in the last four days that Jimmy had begun to truly want to live. He had not dreamed of the blue-faced werewolf in five nights. Sometimes he would lie in the bed smug and satisfied that the beast wasn’t there. Then he’d glance up at the ceiling to make sure.

He passed through the open double doors and stopped at the children’s art display, breathing hard again. He transferred his weight to his armpits and raised his hands and felt the pain drain down. He looked at the display. T. Ford’s airborne skateboarder was still his favorite, with A. Anthony’s cotton field and M. Gonzalez’s fire-breathing monster right up there, too. He wondered what Patricia and Matilda would come up with when they were a few years older. Hopefully not their father lying in a hospital bed. He wondered if Gustavo Armenta had made drawings as a boy, if he had made his father proud. What would a son need to do to make a drug trafficker feel pride? Jimmy had heard that Gustavo was college-bound, a business major, a good young man. He repositioned his hands on the crutches and continued on.

At the far end of the hallway, he came to the waiting area alcove. There was a suite of chairs and two tables of magazines and good windows. This was as far as he’d made it in the past. He was tired by now, so he hobbled over and plunked down into the orange fabric chair he liked and he looked down through the big window. The sky was black and pricked by stars up high. No moon. Lower in the window, the hospital lights were strong and Jimmy could see the big concrete overhang that shaded the main entrance below, the palms uplit, the sweeping drive. There were no cars parked in the drive now, no admissions or discharges in this early morning.