Iron River (22 page)

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.

Bradley set off east and fast. The new Cayenne Turbo was a dream, four-hundred-plus horses throbbing through him as he penetrated space like a bullet. He thought of his mother again, a woman who loved speed and was sometimes possessed by a reckless abandon that had thrilled him from a very early age. But now he was driving away from Erin, and this pulled at his heart like gravity and he believed he could feel the distance growing between them, and it seemed unnatural and perilous. He had never asked his mother if speed felt good when it was taking her away from what she loved. He had never asked her about her love of anything but himself.

At nine thirty he sped past the rest stop where the deal was going down and he caught a glimpse of Dragovitch’s big black Ram far back in the parking lot. Smiling, he gunned it. Forty minutes later he pulled into the driveway in the hills outside of Quartz.

She was waiting for him on the front porch. Her dark hair was up and she wore a red chiffon dress and stood partially hidden by a porch column, her arms bare and her neck bepearled and her nails lacquered. She was barefoot.

Bradley left the engine running and made the porch in a few long strides and dropped a black suede Harley-Davidson purse to the boards.

“You’re beautiful tonight, Sheila. Yes. Here’s five thousand for you.”

“You said nothing about money.”

“Burn it if you want. You earned every penny of it.”

“I never asked for a penny.”

“And I thought you’d like the Harley bag.”

“What else have I earned?” She stepped forward and lifted her face to his, and Bradley kissed her on the cheek. Her perfume was strong and enticing. “Please come in. We have time for a drink.”

“No. He’ll be back.”

“It would mean very much to me.”

“As it would to me, Sheila. But we can’t let love make us foolish. Ivan would shoot us both.”

“Don’t belittle love. I’ve seen it in your eyes. You can’t hide it.”

“No, I can’t.”

She took his face in her warm soft hands and he kissed her deeply and with some feeling, but foremost in his mind was to leave this place unshot and make it back to Erin as soon as possible. He felt Sheila’s body against his and the wonderful offered weight of her. She was more than three times his age and amply beautiful still, but this was Erin’s moment as were all moments, and in this thing that resembled unselfishness Bradley put stock and took pride. He broke away.

“You take my breath away, young lady.”

“I want something beautiful to remember you.”

He took her hand and looked into her eyes as he spoke. “‘Love is a war of lights in the lightning flashes / two bodies blasted in a single burst of honey.’ You can have that.”

She looked and he could see the pulse in the pale trunk of her neck. “You wrote that for your fiancée.”

“Neruda wrote it for my fiancée.”

“But you gave it to me.”

“The more you give away, the more you have.”

“So it is only about you having more?”

“I hope to be a better man than that someday. Until then, enjoy the five grand. And you might want to do something about the lipstick before Ivan comes home. I don’t think he’ll be too happy. Sheila, I thank you for bringing such a treasure to me.”

“You’re nothing but a criminal. But I know I’ll dream of you again and again.”

Bradley touched her cheek and got back into the Cayenne and drove hard.

 

 

 

At almost ten, Dragovitch hoisted himself off the tailgate of his truck and flipped open his cell phone with a fast flick of his wrist. The dog sat up. Hood watched the man shake his head and grab a handful of his own hair and pull on it. A moment later, Dragovitch came lumbering across the parking lot toward the Dumpster.

Hood climbed out, his heart sinking, pissed off.

“Tragedy, Deputy Hood. Mr. Savage was kidnapped by four masked men at gunpoint while loading the product into his truck. He was blindfolded and his money and cell phone were taken. He was driven far into the hills and released without his shoes or socks. It took him two hours to get to a phone and call me. His truck is gone. The ammunition is gone. He tore apart his shirt to make shoes. He is furious.”

This tale confirmed what Hood had felt, and now he was angry at himself for not feeling it more strongly and more clearly. “Ivan. I’m looking at a real short list of suspects who knew about this deal.”

Dragovitch spread his arms wide, hands open. “And of course Mr. Savage said the same thing about me and the armed robbers. But I will tolerate no suspicion. None from you and none from Mr. Savage. My reputation with law enforcement is perfect. Mr. Savage has his enemies and they have delivered him to this. I take no blame. The world has many ears and many pockets, Mr. Hood. You know this.”

“Fuck, do I ever.”

He stepped away and called Ozburn. Halfway through his explanation, he thought he understood Sheila Dragovitch’s intent stare at Bradley’s photograph. On this hunch he asked Ozburn for directions to the Dragovitch home in the Quartz hills.

He caught up with Ivan in the pet area, where the papillon sniffed and lifted his leg with an air of discrimination.

“I want you to stay here for half an hour, Ivan.”

“Why?”

“Stay put. Don’t move. Direct order.”

Hood pushed the tow truck hard, but it did him little good. It was all torque and no speed. He fruitlessly watched for Bradley’s Cayenne coming from the other direction. Forty minutes later he rumbled slowly down a dirt road until he came to the Dragovitch driveway. He switched off his headlights. He saw no cars, and the garage was closed. The house lights were dim inside. He drove past and up the hill opposite and parked. He could see the front of the house and the drive and garage. TV light shifted inside. Someone moved within the living room window, and Hood followed the shape behind the loosely closed blinds. Through his binoculars he saw Sheila carrying a drink toward the TV light. She sat. She was wearing a light blue robe and her hair was down. She set the glass on a side table and curled her feet up under her and settled the robe over her legs. Her face was shiny with cream. She pulled the robe collar up closer to her neck and hung her head, and it looked to Hood like she was nodding off or sobbing or both. Twenty minutes later, Ivan’s truck turned onto the driveway. Hood waited a few minutes, then left.

 

 

 

 

T
o my surprise, Uncle Chester is standing in front of my third-floor desk. For a huge man, he’s always been quiet, and he’s staring down at me before I can even guess why he’s here. He’s wearing his usual unstructured cream linen suit, wrinkled and world weary. Blue dress shirt, no tie.

“Ronald.”

“Uncle Chester. Terrific to see you.”

“If you say so.”

I stand and come around and we hug. He feels unnaturally strong. With my arms around him, my hands won’t even come close to touching. As always he smells of baby powder. When I was growing up, it was said that Chester had once crushed a two-hundred-pound mastiff that had attacked him without provocation outside a camp-ground bathroom in the Sequoias. I have no reason to doubt it and I can feel that he could do the same to me here right now if he wanted to.

He lets me live and I step back. I haven’t seen him in over a year, since just before the judgment that finally flattened Pace Arms. He has never changed: same overlarge body, same shiny shaven head, same blue eyes, same baby-skin face with the pink blossoms on his cheeks, same trim white teeth. If I paint him as a grotesque, he is not quite. There is something leonine about him, something graceful and powerful and feral. He might be twenty-five or seventy. There’s just no way to tell by looking. I know him to be fifty-two, two years younger than his brother, my father, would be, and four years older than my mother, whom Uncle Chester married a year after my father’s suicide. Dad committed the act here at Pace Arms while seated at firing station two, down in the basement, using the same model Pace Hawk .40-caliber autoloader that would later discharge and kill eight-year-old Miles Packard when he dropped the gun while playing with it.

I move a good chair into place for him.

“I didn’t come halfway around the world to sit down.”

“We can stand.”

“Let’s stand in manufacturing.”

We take the elevator down. Uncle Chet stands with his hands folded before him and his head bowed and his eyes closed. He takes up more than half the space in the elevator car.

“I enjoy familiar sensations,” he says. “Your mother says hello. She’s stable as she can be, it seems.”

“She likes the new room.”

“I’m glad it makes her happy. It destroys me to see her like she is. Literally destroys.”

Which makes me wonder if that’s why he’s been gone for over a year. My mother, Maureen, was institutionalized not long after Miles accidentally killed himself. She’s a 295.30—paranoid-type schizophrenia, episodic with interepisode residual symptoms. She is only occasionally violent and twice suicidal. The doctors said that the boy’s death probably contributed to her sudden break, but they couldn’t say how much. Certainly she had already been destabilized by my father’s act. As if all that wasn’t enough, there is also a lineage of madness in her family. Chester said that she died when Miles died, that it just took a little time to become apparent. He said this often. Mom started out at a nice private sanitarium in Tustin, but with the death of Pace, Chester had her committed to a group home run by Fairview State Hospital here in Costa Mesa. It’s not a grim place, and she has her own room. Through longevity she recently graduated to the best and largest room in the home, first floor, corner windows, southwest exposure. The window glass is reinforced with steel mesh.

“I see her twice a week,” I say.

“Of course you do.”

We step out and I key us into the manufacturing bay. Chester holds his small hands together behind his back and strolls. This was a posture I imitated during my head-of-production days and I feel compelled to use it now. I fall in beside him. He moves down and around the long tables, towering over them, looking down at the wheeled chairs, the task lights and the table magnifiers, the power buffers and grinders, the trays of hand tools, the piles of new red shop rags, one per work station, the spray cans of oil and solvent, the bins of pins and bolts and springs and all parts machined, the files and tweezers, needle-nose pliers and nylon hammers, the waterless hand soap and the unempty ashtrays and the coffee mugs.

He stops. He wipes an index finger across the worktable and shows me the gray metal dust. He wipes his finger on a clean shop rag, then picks up a coffee cup and holds it upside down over the floor and waits. It takes a few seconds, but finally one milk-heavy drop of coffee rolls to the rim and hangs there.

“What are you making?” he asks.

“It’s called the Love 32.”

“I asked what are you making.”

“It’s a thirty-two-caliber full auto pistol, silenced. I’ll show you.” Down in the basement range, I pull out the lacquered box and unveil the Love 32. Uncle Chester sits at station five. He’s nearly my height when sitting. I assemble the gun. His blue eyes watch without blinking. His petite hands rest on his massive thighs, and his head is cocked. He has the same stillness that I remember. I release the brace rods and set them at full length though I know they won’t be long enough. I leave off the noise suppressor for now. I hand him the gun.

The last person to occupy his seat was of course Sharon, and I think of her sitting there with the peanut butter-filled pretzels sliding off her lap, and her sad beautiful face hidden behind her tangled blond hair. Right now she’s on break, off to South Coast Plaza for lunch with her mom and dad. She’s better. She has slept nine straight nights in the penthouse. That’s every night but one since her wedding day. During her one night of absence, I couldn’t sleep but I didn’t ask her about it. I don’t know what she does at night in the penthouse after I leave. I hear her lock the door after we’ve talked and watched TV or sometimes read. She sleeps late. But during her workdays, she has shampooed two stories of carpets, replaced the plastic electrical outlet faceplates with more fashionable models, purchased cheap but attractive framed photographs and area rugs for the vestibule that once held the Catlins and the mounted bear and buffalo, painted the bathrooms on the second and third floors, and replaced every bulb of recessed lighting with the new fluorescent minis that she found on sale at fifty cents each through a power company promotion. She has the energy of a .44 Magnum. Even without measurable evidence, I believe she will invite me to join her in my bed soon, and the idea of this momentarily obliterates Chester’s presence in my world.