The Famous and the Dead

35



Mary Kate Boyle watched Hood come into the Buenavista ATF field office lobby on Monday morning. He looked haunted and sucked of life, real diamonds in a fake smile. She looked at Oscar and even the big guard had an expression of brooding concern as he watched Hood. He led her back to his work cubicle and she handed him the voice recorder with her and Clint’s last conversation. That conversation now seemed ages ago, but it wasn’t her fault Charlie had been out of state and out of touch. He set up another recorder to make a copy, checking the available recording time and the battery like he always did with those steady, unhurried hands.

“Where you been?”

“Washington.”

“I heard it snowed a lot.”

“Lots.”

She smiled and looked away, but he wouldn’t look back at her. At least she could smile, slightly, without bleeding. She looked out the window to the waning light. It was winter but she could sense the season starting to lose hold. People out here had no idea what a real winter was. She liked weather. She thought of the long Missouri summer days, the sun on her body on that flimsy deck out behind Skull’s double-wide.

Hood listened to the conversation, staring at the little recorder and occasionally looking at her with an approving glint in his eyes. He tapped on his computer keyboard and glanced at the monitor. He made notes on a yellow pad. She listened to herself explain to Clint what all the noise on her phone was as she was trying to get the recorder set up fast, then leading Clint on with the whole coming-to-California idea, and also doing a fair job of getting info for Hood on his car and the missiles and where he might be. She really was a good actor. She’d fooled Clint, and Clint was smart. Not book smart but crafty and alert, like a weasel. They played the tape again, then once more.

“I didn’t want to press him for a phone number,” she said.

“No.”

“How’d it go in D.C.? You look like they shot your dog.”

“It went okay, Mary Kate.” Hood tapped on the keyboard again and again looked at the screen.

“You don’t tell me much more about what you’re doing than Clint does.”

Hood looked down at his notes. “My father died after a long illness. It wasn’t a surprise but it was still a shock.”

“Oh, Charlie—I’m so very sorry for him and you.”

“He had a good life. He was loved. Don’t feel bad.”

“I’ve never lost someone close. I know it’s going to change everything about me. Ma says it’s death that gives your life a shape.”

“Good words.”

“Did they send you back to D.C. because of that political murder in San Diego?”

“Yes. Someone needs to draw some fire. It’s going to be me.”

“You mean get blamed?”

He looked at her and nodded.

“I read the headlines on the newsstand paper this morning and it said that ATF—see, I didn’t say FAT, now, did I?—had something to do with the gun that killed the congressman. They showed a picture of the gun. And of course the congressman. Agent Bly said some things. And then at the San Diego bus station there was one of those TV news loops on and they had a story about the assassination, too. They showed the same gun. And they showed just a second or two of you talking into a microphone in a big room full of important people. And later, Bly. But the sound was off so I couldn’t hear anything.”

Hood felt his stomach tighten. He pictured Representative Grossly’s florid mask of outrage and heard his offended voice. “That gun got away from us during an undercover op four years ago.”

“So you get blamed?”

“I get to be the face of blame.”

“Like put you all over TV and magazines?”

“That’s possible.”

“I’m trying to get on TV and magazines.”

He smiled and for the first time today it seemed authentic. “I remember you saying that you wanted to be a model or star. Or a nurse.”

“I read for a part in a play last week. And I got it, Charlie. I got it! I’m still pinching myself. The director’s a chick and she said she was going to work my black eye and the split lips into the character. ’Cause Curley’s wife is a sexualized object and is punished for it. And since my face’ll heal up before opening night, she’s going to have makeup do me up like it just happened. So I can thank Skull for getting me the part.”

Hood managed his second authentic smile in a row. “I’m happy for you, Mary Kate.”

“Maybe you’ll come see me.”

“Maybe I will.”

“I don’t make any money. It’s not an Equity play.”

“Maybe it will lead to something better.”

“Enough about me. How we gonna trap Clint?”

Hood turned the monitor her way. “Here’s the Trailways schedule. We want him to pick you up in daylight hours so we can see what we’re doing. We’re in luck. There are arrivals through Las Vegas Monday through Saturday, ten thirty every morning.”

“Maybe I could actually take a bus into San Diego. Make it more real and convincing?”

“I don’t want you anywhere near the Greyhound station or Clint Wampler.”

“You’re a good boss, Charlie.”

“Tell him Saturday, ten thirty. Five days from today. Less people downtown.’’ Hood copied the Greyhound schedule on a noisy old printer and circled the Saturday ten thirty arriving from Las Vegas, like she was too dumb to remember it. He pulled a San Diego Thomas Guide from a desk drawer. “Let’s go to the conference room. I want to bring Dale and Janet and Robert in on this—we can get your lines right and figure how this should work.”

“I don’t stay in any room with Dale. It’s him or me and you can choose.”

“He’s not a bad guy. You embarrassed him.”

“I embarrassed him? And he’s not a bad guy? Don’t you tell me how to interpret character, Charlie Hood.”

“How about this? We’ll leave him out but he’s still not a bad guy.”

“You just gotta win, don’t you? Even if it’s just a little something, you still have to win it. I understand that. I’m the same damned annoying way!”

• • •

It was dark by the time the meeting was over. Her shoes echoed faintly with Hood’s on the marble of the ATF hallway. On his way past the security station, Hood rapped his knuckles lightly on Oscar’s desk, so Mary Kate did, too. The big man offered her a withering look, then a smile. Under a deep purple sky they walked from the lobby to the intersection near the bus stop and she said good-bye and could tell by his expression that he felt bad leaving her there alone.

She buttoned up her coat and headed toward the old part of Buenavista because she’d heard the Mexican food at Club Fandango was the best. Of course she’d invited Hood and the two agents to go with her and of course they’d turned her down. There was a line with these people, she had concluded: They could help you if you could help them but that didn’t establish anything at all personal. And Charlie Hood maybe didn’t have a woman in his life but that didn’t mean he had one flicker of interest in her. An SUV came up behind her going kind of fast and she moved over and turned her back to it and watched the thing whiz past, brand-new, beautiful blue paint job, looked like it was right off the showroom floor.

She climbed a gradual rise and the streets turned from asphalt to cobblestone and became narrow. The buildings grew older and somehow more interesting, and although many were simple flat-roofed rectangles, many were built with ornate arched doorways and cool-looking mud-brick adobe walls. One building had a plaque outside about it being in the National Historic Register because a man born there had distinguished himself in the War of 1812 and later become the vice president of the United States. There were iron streetlamps on curved stanchions that looked a hundred years old but she was pretty sure there wasn’t electricity in Buenavista in 1913, so maybe these were added. Their light had a nice glow that showed off the crooked stone street. Above, the sky was the same dark desert blue as that swanko SUV, with small stars just peeking out then ducking back behind the darkness again like they were shy.

She entered a wide, flat circle with a beautiful old church and big shade trees and people sitting and walking. She liked the way that many of the young men were dressed, not like in Russell County at all—all hoodies and jeans with their butt cracks showing—and she saw that many were Mexicans, which reminded her that Tony, her boss at work who had Mexican blood in him, was always groomed well and dressed nicely compared to most of his Anglo counterparts. She had read that Latino American men spent twice the money on personal grooming products as other American men, for whatever this was worth. She read another plaque, which identified the church and explained that this area, called a zócalo in Spanish, was the center of Buenavista social life until the city had been divided into two sides along the border in 1848. Since then the Mexican side of Buenavista had built its own zócalo while this place remained a part of California and the United States.

She came to a marketplace where most of the merchants were packing up their wares for the day. She wondered why they moved so unhurriedly. Under the strands of tiny twinkling lights lay tables of big yellow grapefruit and tomatoes and oranges and lemons and avocados, flats of chilies, piles of onions and garlic. She was suddenly very hungry.

Soon she came to the lighted plaza with its restaurants and clubs and shops and galleries. Behind the buildings the mountain rose and above the mountain the moon was buttoned, not quite half full now, but very clear and bright. She walked past a bunch of expensive cars and trucks and a large muscular doorman and into Club Fandango. It was dark and reminded her of a saloon in a Western movie. A pretty hostess greeted her and suggested she dine in the cantina if she was dining alone.

The cantina was nearly empty this early and Mary Kate got her own booth. She ordered a margarita and the cocktail waitress asked for ID, so she presented the good fake that Skull had gotten for her so they could drink in public. Skull. Seems like a thousand years ago, she thought. What on earth did I see in you? Even with the straw, the salt on the margarita burned her lip cuts, but only slightly, so she lifted the glass and muttered a toast to herself and drank the whole thing down in two gulps. She caught a glimpse of herself in a mirror and thought she looked goofy sitting there alone with a beat-up face and an empty margarita glass. So she ordered another, then her arroz con camarones diablo arrived. Even though the dish was already “of the devil,” she had asked for extra spicy and indeed it was, an inferno of flavors and textures. It was hot enough to make her nose run and her whole lips burn, not just the cuts. She enjoyed it so much she ordered another. The waitress admitted it was her favorite dish also and brought her a complimentary margarita to help cool the fires.

• • •

Later back in San Diego she tiredly stepped off the bus and started the longish walk to her hotel. Her feet hurt. A light rain was falling and it was cold but nothing like Russell County cold. On Fourth, another blue SUV came sweeping past her, new and sparkling like the one in Buenavista. Even in the dark the cobalt blue was undershot with a wonderful metallic glow. Same truck twice in one night, seventy-five miles apart? Or two different vehicles, just a coincidence and nothing to worry about? Two different, she thought—get a grip, girl. She cut across the Gaslamp District and ducked into the Rack to find Tony and some of the other Kentucky Fried Chicken employees. They invited her for beers and no-slop eight-ball and she held her own against them, having spent some hours at this with Skull and Peltz and weird Wampler. All the while she kept her eye on the street outside, but the blue SUV never came by again and that was fine with her. Tony and Luis walked her to the Windsor Arms and when she got up to her room and looked out the window they were gone and a cobalt blue Explorer passed by, brand-new, no plates on yet, windows so dark she had no hope of seeing who was behind the wheel. Could be J-Lo or John Steinbeck or the man in the moon, she thought.

She turned off her lights and sat back from the window in a comfortable old chair with the bedspread over her and called Hood. He wasn’t angry and didn’t sound sleepy even though it was after one in the morning, and he kept her on the line awhile, talking her down in his calm, one-thing-at-a-time voice. She said her first thought on seeing such a truck three times was Clint Wampler, but he’d just gotten the new Sebring, so that didn’t make sense. And she’d been fooling Clint real good over the phone. How could he know she was there? Hood was quiet for a moment, then he said she should file a police report in the morning—it was good to be on the record with things like this. He made her tell him several times exactly where she’d seen the vehicle. Then he asked who knew she was living in San Diego and she had to think about that one because really, she’d only told her mom and one brother back home, and of course Amy and Victor in L.A. knew because she’d stayed with them while she found a job. Hood wanted to know if any of them knew she was at the Windsor Arms or where she worked. Yes, she said, she’d given them all her new address, and told them about KFC, too. Not a single call or text back, however. Hood seemed very serious about every detail and very concerned that she’d told her family these things. He asked her to text him numbers for her mother and brother, and for Amy and Victor, just as soon as they were done talking.

“Do not forget.”

“I’m not an imbecile, Charlie.”

“I know. But you’re tired and worried.”

“What if it’s Clint and now he knows I’ve been here all along, leading him on? And what if he saw me going in and out of the ATF office, and he puts me together with you? You told me he was furious at you, for treating him like a moron and smashing his finger. He’ll be triple furious if he knows we’re a team.”

“That’s what we’ll find out, Mary Kate.”

“I like it when you say my name. Please talk to me now as an equal.” He asked about dinner and laughed when she said it was so good she’d eaten two. He asked about the play she was going to be in, and he said he’d always liked Of Mice and Men, and that he’d seen the countryside in California where the story was set. They talked about how her work at KFC was going, and after a while she felt like this was a conversation with a friend or relative. The SUV did not return. After she hung up, she got the numbers from her phone and her tattered address book, then settled back in the chair facing the window and texted them to Hood. She looked out at the street after every few entries. The rain looked like the tinsel you’d put on a Christmas tree. Two hours later she woke up with the bedspread pulled up tight and her phone on the floor.