The Famous and the Dead

13



After dark Hood got a large coffee and drove out to Castro Ford in El Centro. Again he parked off the street behind the parts-and-service yard. He sipped the coffee and turned the news down low and looked through his camera at the new-car prep bay, which was open and well lighted. Two men he didn’t recognize were peeling the protective film off a shiny new Taurus. Beside it was a stunning Explorer painted a metallic cobalt blue, still partially wrapped in white. Across the expanse of flat sand desert that separated Hood from the dealership he could hear the sound of the Mexican music playing from the radio while the men worked.

Half an hour later he drove around to the front and parked again in one of the guest spaces. Israel’s Flex wasn’t there. Hood wandered through the showroom, coffee in hand, admiring the new cars, then walked past the financing cubicles and past the just-closing service center. He found a restroom, then took the EMPLOYEES ONLY door that let him into a hallway that led to the parts and used-car offices and the new-car intake area.

Hood walked across the compound, toward the spray of light coming from the intake bay. He came through the rolling door and nodded at each of the men, then approached the Explorer and stopped. The older of the two men slung a shop rag over his shoulder and walked to a workbench and turned off the radio. The other, young enough to be his son, continued peeling the film off the Taurus.

“What I can help you?” asked the older man. His hair was curly and gray and his face etched by the sun.

“I’m interested in this Explorer.”

“You talk to sales. We are not sales.”

“Does it have the same gas-guzzling six cylinder as the old one?”

“No. Is V-eight. Now you go to sales. They make you a very good deal.”

Hood walked around the car, frowning, fingers to his chin. When he had completed his circumnavigation the older man was still there, his polish rag still over his shoulder. Hood nodded and turned his attention to the two Lincoln MKZs and two Ford Tauruses that he’d seen delivered here a few nights ago.

He pointed. “Better mileage if I got one of those.”

“You decide, then go to sales.” The old man shrugged, then took his shop rag in hand and turned the radio back on and returned to the Taurus. Hood listened to the banda ballad, heavy on the accordion and tuba. He sipped his coffee and strolled closer to the MKZs and Tauruses. To him they looked showroom-ready, right down to the fresh tire black and the MSRP and Monroney labels. He threw open a driver’s side door and leaned in. The smell was terrific. He pulled the trunk and hood latches and had a look at the engine first. It was amazing how densely packed the compartment was. Around back he lifted the trunk lid and thought of Clint Wampler’s finger, and noted that the spare was not in its well but rather lying out in the open. The cover was loose and out of place. He pulled it up out of curiosity and saw the empty declivity where the spare would sit and the big bolt and plastic nut to hold it fast. He saw the dusting of off-white powder in the well, and he glanced over at the hardworking men before running his finger through it, then touching it to his tongue. The dust was cool and bright and a moment later the tip of his tongue was numb. I’ll be damned, thought Hood.

He looked through the other MKZ and the two remaining Tauruses and he found another dusting of cocaine in one of the trunks, this time in a small tool compartment. He slammed the trunk lid authoritatively. He used the bathroom and strolled back through the bay. He found the delivery whiteboard propped on a long table between a water dispenser and a very stained coffeemaker. He saw that the MKZ/Taurus shipment of days past had originated at the Hermosillo Ford Plant in Mexico. He wondered if that was where they loaded in the magic powder, or if the new Hermosillo cars made another stop before Castro Ford. The next Hermosillo delivery was set eight days away at nine thirty A.M., a Saturday.

Hood returned to the Explorer, wrote down the VIN in his notebook. “I really want this car,” he told the older man.

“Then you go to sales.”

“I might need financing.”

“Go to sales and they give you it.”

“Maybe I need to think about it. The GMC Yukon gets better mileage.”

The man shook his head and turned his back to Hood and went back to his job.

• • •

Hood walked back through the dealership building to the showroom and paused again to check out the new Mustang. Over invoice but sweet. He stopped to talk to one of the salesmen about the Explorer back in the intake building, explaining how Consumer Reports had said buyers could sometimes save a few dollars by buying a vehicle that hadn’t been totally prepped yet. The salesman offered to bring it around for a drive, but Hood said he was in a hurry. He drove away, then circled back a mile down and parked behind the dealership again, with a view of the new-car intake yard. The rolling doors were still open, and when he rolled down his window, he could hear the radio sounds lilting across the desert toward him.

He reclined his seat slightly and rested his head and watched. He called his mother, which he often did during surveillance. She was angry at the staff of her husband’s board-and-care there in Bakersfield because they’d stopped trying to give him solid food of any kind and Douglas was “wasting away.” Hood’s father had been struck hard by Alzheimer’s five years back. It seemed as if he’d live on forever like that, sound of body but stripped of mind, until the stroke. Since then, just a downward slide—partial paralysis, atrophy, cardiopulmonary decline, infection. He recognized his wife and son only occasionally and, when he did, he was venomous in his complaints about the care they were taking of him. He loathed and feared the staff people, hated the food. Hood let his mother vent and tried to be comforting. He felt bad for her because she had loved her husband and pledged to endure with him in sickness and health, and that pledge was irrevocable. Three of Hood’s several siblings still lived in Bakersfield, so at least she got some help, and Douglas got some company. Hood dreaded his visits, felt numbed by the dying, ghostlike oldsters and the knowledge that his turn for this would likely come. And his dread shamed him because the furious heap of skin and bone upon the bed before him, growing lighter by the week, was his father, who had been a funny and generous and gentle man, and Hood had loved him.

Hood saw the young man come to one of the rolling doors and grab the rope and pull it down. Across the desert and over the music he heard the metallic clanking and one rectangle of light was replaced by darkness. He told his mother about Buenavista’s new Walmart and the surprisingly cold and wet winter they were having, and the unusual amount of seismic activity in Imperial Valley, but said nothing about world current events. She read no papers and watched no news and had little interest in the world outside her husband’s care, the garden in her backyard, and her two now-aging Chihuahuas. Hood warbled on about Beth, working hard but saving lives at the ER, and how he cooked for her when she came home and they traded tales of the day, how it was tough to figure out a good meal when you only knew how to cook a few things, but really the secret was to buy good ingredients and not overcook them. He watched the big man pull down the second rolling door. “I love you, Mom. I’ll be up soon to see you and we’ll visit Dad.”

“When?”

“I’ll be tied up this weekend. Maybe next.”

“I have you down for next. I’ll make sure your room is clean. Beth can have Mary’s old room. I got a list of things I need for you to do.”

“Terrific. I love you. Good night, Mom.”

The young man pulled down the third door and the last rectangle of light was gone. Hood sat awhile longer, watching and thinking, feeling sadness for the world and the people in it.