The Famous and the Dead

44



Hood’s phone vibrated and he answered. “Hood, this is Clint. I got your number from our mutual friend, Miss Mary Kate Boyle. MK? Say hi to Twinkle Tooth. Then I’ll tell him how it’s gonna be.”

Her voice was faint and flat and almost choked up. “I’m so sorry. He was following me on foot yesterday when I called you. While I was looking for the damned blue SUV. I’m so sorry, I got fooled and conked and am now adding to all your troubles.”

“Has he hurt you?”

“He hit me awful hard.”

Hood heard static, then Wampler again. “How’d you like the explosion at ATF?”

“You killed a nice guy and hurt a bunch of innocent people.”

“I’m weepin’. Were you in the office when the rocket hit? What’d it sound like?”

“A rocket hitting, Clint. Where are you?”

“Hood, I’m going to take Mary Kate to the ocean for a picnic. We’ll be at the TJ River south of Imperial Beach. Waiting on you. I’ll be able to see in all directions on account of it’s a flat beach. Which means you come alone. Which means if I see another human being or car or even a damned helicopter I’ll kill her. You know I’m capable of this. Come alone, Hood. We’re gonna settle this like they used to, before the whole country turned queer like you. I’ll have my pistols in my pockets as is my style. You can pack anything any way you want—it ain’t gonna matter to me. You can call it a gunfight although it’ll be more of an execution. But it’ll be fair. Clint don’t cheat. The winner gets MK and the loser gets dead. All of this is subsequent of what you did to my finger. Where exactly are you at right now?”

“Five miles east of San Diego. You beat me to her.”

“When you get there, head south, amigo. Walk out on that beach alone. We’ll be there. You got exactly half an hour.”

“Clint, this is stupid, even for you. Let Mary Kate go. She’s a sweet girl and she never hurt you. Just drop her off and keep on driving. Go back to Russell County or wherever else you want to be.”

“Where I don’t want to be is on death row, for that fed I blew away in El Centro. I’m not too stupid to figure that out.”

“Blowing away another fed won’t help you.”

“Me and MK are already making plans for our future. Aren’t we, cupcake? You better show up alone, Glitter Gums. You’re down to twenty-nine minutes.”

• • •

Hood trudged through the rain-soaked sand, south along the Pacific. The sky was dark gray and stacked with great columns of pale gray clouds. The water heaved and chopped and the wind sent spindrifts off the crests. There were no surfers out and no one on the beach. Ahead of him was the river and beyond that the hills of Tijuana, faint in the distance. He zipped his jacket up against the biting wind and snugged its elastic hem between his holster and his hip, popped the strap and turned it down and out of the way.

Soon the estuary was on his left and the ocean on his right. Hood continued down the wide sand beach, the shoreline eroded by the recent storms. He saw two young lovers wrapped in a blanket, leaning into each other and picking their way down the beach toward him. A flock of seagulls stood in the sand close together and all facing west as if waiting for something to come in on the water. The slough glimmered and its surface rippled in the breeze. Another quarter mile down the beach the dunes were deeper and sharper, and he saw that Clint could be watching him from one of them and be very hard to see until Hood was close upon him. He stopped and looked back to the last buildings in the United States, then ahead to the tall iron border wall jutting into the ocean. A woman in sweats and a hooded raincoat ran up the shoreline toward him.

“Hooper.”

Hood turned and saw Clint Wampler climbing out of a dune. He was holding Mary Kate Boyle’s arm and she was having trouble getting up the slope of sand. Wampler pushed her along in front of him with one hand, keeping her body between himself and Hood. His other hand was in the pocket of the peacoat. Hood could see by Mary Kate’s brief, dispirited struggles that she was exhausted or injured or both. Her hands were bound. They stopped a hundred and fifty feet away and Clint pressed her down into the sand. Her knees buckled and Hood heard her cry out. Wampler took a knee beside her and he seemed to be giving her instructions. He gripped her face in one hand and turned it to him.

Wampler then stood and took a few steps toward Hood and stopped again. He had both hands in his coat pockets. He looked back at her and said something and she nodded. “I think she’s pulling for me!” he called out. “Mary Kate just has trouble showing her feelings.”

“Let her go, Clint. Get to your car and get out of here. I’ll make sure she’s taken care of.”

“She’ll be coming with me. Don’t you get that? I want this chick.” Wampler started toward him. “Make your move when you think you can hit me, Hood. I’m going to do likewise. This is what you get for treating another human being like you treated me.” Hood used his left hand to pull the tail of his Windbreaker taut. He could feel the cold wind through his shirt above the holster but he knew the grip was unencumbered now and he knew exactly where it was. Don’t hurry, don’t miss. He took a deep breath and thought, Help me.

Hood walked. He heard his own breathing and the soft crunch of sand under his feet. Wampler’s hands were deep in his pockets as he ambled forward. Hood concentrated on Clint’s shoulders. At ninety feet the shoulders rose.

Hood began his draw but he had scarcely touched the grip of his weapon by the time Clint had fired twice, then gone down with a sharp yelp. Hood never saw his gun and his first thought was Someone must have shot him in the back.

He charged, gun steady before him in both hands, Clint still down and screaming. At twenty feet, Hood crouched into a shooter’s stance and held the sights steady on Wampler as he struggled to stand, one hand waving high for balance. The other hand was still stuck in the pocket and Hood knew the gun had caught on something. He saw Mary Kate running at Clint from behind, weaving in and out of his line of fire.

Hood was scrambling for a safe shot when Clint finally cleared the gun from his pocket. Then Wampler collapsed, Mary Kate attached to his back, her still-bound hands clinched tight around his throat. Hood ran and tore Wampler’s weapon from his hand and threw it out into the sand. Clint wailed again, his cry partially strangled by Mary Kate’s grip. Hood threw Wampler’s other gun over by the first. Clint writhed in the sand, trying to twist himself free of her grip. Hood whacked him hard with his .45, and Mary Kate swung her arms over his head and rolled away.

Hood smelled the blood before he saw it, then he saw it everywhere—red and fresh on Clint’s legs, encrusted with sand, pools and splatters everywhere. He wrestled Clint facedown and managed to get a plastic tie around his wrists. Wampler was groaning and half-choked by sand by the time Hood pulled him onto his back. Hood stood and Wampler kicked at him, but Hood caught the cowboy boot and pushed the blood-drenched thing back down. Then he dragged Clint a few feet by the shoulders of his coat and propped him against a dune. Wampler’s left calf was gurgling up blood. It took Hood a moment to figure it out.

“You shot yourself, Clint. Twice.”

“The left gun got caught on my sap so I shot my foot on accident. Then I flinched and the right one fired, too. Foot hurts the worst. God, it goddamned hurts! God, it hurts!”

Hood looked down the beach at Mary Kate, who was running across the dunes toward two joggers loping south along the shore.

“Look at all that blood.” When Clint raised his foot in the air, the blood poured from the boot and splattered onto the sand.

“She’s calling cops and paramedics,” said Hood.

“Shoot me before they get here,” said Wampler.

“Can’t help you.”

“Because you’re a queer.”

“If you say so.”

“And a fag homo fairy piece of shit, too.”

“Right, Clint.”

“And a women’s liberal who voted in a half-nigger president who wasn’t even born in America. Probably voted for him twice. I’m getting death for whacking that agent, Hood. So why don’t you get the satisfaction of offing me right here and now? You get to be a hero instead of someone everybody hates. And I don’t have to sit on death row for ten years.”

“You should sit on death row for ten years.”

“Dirty Harry would shoot me. He’d scowl, and he’d pull the trigger and feel good about it.”

“Times have changed.”

“What’s changed is you’re a sorry excuse for not having a single hero nationally remaining. Ahhh! Ahhh damn, this hurts! You think I’ll bleed to death before they get here?”

“Fifty-fifty, Clint. I can see Mary Kate talking on a phone right now. You hold still, I’ll cinch my belt around your leg and yours around your ankle.”

“Don’t touch my belt buckle, you fruit.”

“You try to knee me or a head butt or something, I’ll hit you again.”

Clint threw his head back against the side of the dune and bellowed in pain and frustration. Hood cinched his belt tight below Wampler’s knee, keeping an eye on him while he worked the end under the wraps. When he was finished, the bleeding slowed.

“Don’t touch my belt.”

“Have it your way.”

“My way is you shoot me. I can’t live in prison the rest of my life. I can’t. I’m going to stand up and kick your ass into that ocean. So you’ll have to shoot me.”

Hood took a step back and drew his gun and waited for Clint to get upright. Wampler stood and struggled up the flank of the dune, cursing, the muscles in his neck and face flexed. He stood wobbling for a moment, then charged Hood and lunged head first at him. Hood stepped aside and let Wampler land facedown in the sand. He lay there, panting and groaning, and after a few moments he rolled over and looked up at the low gray sky, his face encrusted with sand. “Who’da thought Clint was so fast he’d shoot Clint?”

Wampler heaved himself up to a sitting position, legs out in the sand. He looked at Hood and shook his head. Hood looked north toward Mary Kate Boyle, who was now walking slowly up the beach toward him. A moment later a black-and-white SUV came whining past her, water and sand shooting out behind it.