Iron River (17 page)

Then down to Brawley, where the owner of Tracker Joe’s was eager to point out that he had filed two reports of suspicious buyers with ATFE one month ago, but there had been no questionable activity since.

Driving east from town to scorching town, Hood hit the Firing Line and the Shoot Shack and the Gun Locker and Freedom Arms and Floyd’s Surplus and the Bullseye, but nobody had sold a gun to a suspicious buyer. There’s no such thing as a suspicious buyer, Hood was told, because if they’re suspicious, we don’t sell to them. Laughter. He wondered again at the idea of an industry left to regulate itself. With guys like Crockett in the deal, it was a wonder ATFE could enforce anything at all. Crockett had opened something in him and he felt sick in his soul and he couldn’t erase Mulege. Jimmy’s fingers. Jimmy’s face. He drove fast, but not even the motion that he had craved as a boy could put distance between him and what he had done and seen.

Then it was dark and he was hours from Buenavista, so he got take-out food and water and bourbon in Yuma and took the prison turnoff. Near the river, he found a dirt road and he wound his way down it in his Blowdown SUV. The headlights cut through the dust as gravel cracked off the undercarriage. He came to a broad turnaround and he shut off the engine and got out. There was a bank lined with cattails and beyond it he heard the Colorado running fast and deep. The smell was as sweet as any he could remember, and the cattails were black slashes against the lighter black of the sky. To the east the walls of the old Territorial Prison rose in the blackest shade of all, and Hood could make out the watchtowers and the old adobe ramparts. He had visited the prison as a kid. It was by then a museum, and Hood had been surprised by how small the cells were, and his father had taken a picture of him sitting on one of the tiny steel bed frames built into the floors, Hood making a face to get his brothers and sisters to laugh.

He sat on the tailgate of the SUV and ate the tacos and drank the water and bourbon separately. He found some music. Later he stripped down to nothing and waded out through the cattails and lowered himself into the fast cold water and, holding on to the cattails, realized how swiftly he would be carried away if he or they were to let go. He stood by the car in the darkness and let the hot desert breeze dry him and then he put on only his underwear and hung his pants and shirt by the garment hooks and spread the coat over the back of the driver’s seat. He lowered both rows of back-seats and opened all the windows and set his holster close, then stretched out there but was not comfortable. He listened to the river and to the bugs tapping around him. As a shield against Mulege, he got out his cell phone and called Owens Finnegan.

“You were right,” he said. “I have a reason to call you.”

“What reason is it?”

“I want to know why you held my face like that. What were you looking for?”

“A face is a map of the heart.”

“What did you see on the map?”

“Innocence.”

“You must have seen violence and death, too.”

“Innocence is their measure. I love that you can still be measured.”

Hood said nothing for a long moment. “When I saw your scars, they made me want to save you.”

“All men want that. I don’t need saving anymore. Where are you now?”

“By a river near a prison. Where are you?”

“In my bed. It’s late, Charlie.”

“Your father was relieved that you’re okay. He wanted me to describe your home. He was concerned about your diet because you’re prone to living on energy drinks. He insists that you are going to college.”

She laughed softly.

“Then he hallucinated about the hanging of an outlaw, and the assassination of Robert Kennedy and drinking with Wyatt Earp in San Diego.”

“Dad. What an imagination.”

“It’s like he was really there. Details, sensory stuff.”

“He never told me about drinking with Wyatt Earp, for whatever that’s worth. Don’t buy in to what he says, Charlie. But be forgiving of him. He must have suffered head trauma when that car hit him.”

“There was sudden swelling. The doctor says it’s not unusual.”

“I’ll visit him soon.”

“That would make him happy.”

“When will you visit me?”

“Soon.”

“I know I’m frightening. I can’t hide the scars. So, Charlie, you come see me again when you’re ready.”

He slept lightly and went back to the river once but didn’t go in.

 

 

 

At eleven o’clock the next day, Hood stepped into Dragon Arms in Quartz, California, population 1,200, elevation ten feet. It was 104 degrees according to the hardware store thermometer across the street. Even after the just-bought deodorant, he smelled strongly of the river, a dank mix of water and vegetation and mud.

Dragon Arms was a small, cool basement store that appeared well cared for. A man and a woman stood behind the counter when Hood walked in, both watching him enter, and Hood knew they had been waiting for him. The man was stocky and silver-haired, and the woman was a big-haired brunette in a green silk dress. They looked early sixties. The man came around the counter and swung his hand into Hood’s.

“Ivan Dragovitch,” he said. “You are the new Blowdown agent.”

“Yes, Charlie Hood.”

“This is my wife, Sheila.”

She offered her hand from behind the counter, and Hood shook it over the pistols.

“I respect ATFE,” said Dragovitch. “I admire agents Ozburn and Bly and Holdstock. Come, sit. I have some new faces for you.”

The Blowdown crew had told him of Dragovitch’s selective contempt and adoration for his customers. He’d shot a biker-robber dead the week his store had opened, then chased the man’s accomplice outside and shot him dead, too. He was openly disdainful of anyone who looked off-center to him. If you were clean-cut and had decent manners, Dragovitch could be courtly and deferential. If he offered coffee, he liked you. He adored law enforcement and made no secret of it. He had had Ozburn, Bly, and Holdstock for drinks once at his home in the hills outside Quartz, and Ozburn said he was gracious. Ozburn also said he was borderline paranoid, but so what.

Dragovitch led Hood to the counter and found him a stool. He was thick-necked and blue-eyed and he styled his silver hair in the jutting prow of a TV evangelist or NFL head coach. Hood sat and smiled at Sheila, who remained standing near the register. She was heavily made up and pretty.

“Coffee, Deputy Hood?” Dragovitch asked.

“Sure. Black is fine.”

Dragovitch went through a door in the back and shut it.

“Do you like the ATFE?” asked Sheila.

“They’re good people. I’m a sheriff’s deputy on assignment.”

“The gun sellers get a bad rap. Ivan tries his best to comply and be helpful.”

“If all the dealers were as helpful, we’d have a much easier job.”

“There were rumors about Agent Holdstock.”

“Oh? I didn’t hear them.”

“That he was taken to Mexico and tortured, but the Baja police rescued him.”

“That’s quite a tale. I saw Jimmy just yesterday and he didn’t say a thing about it.”

She smiled and shook back her hair. Her fingernails were red and carefully kept. “You wouldn’t tell me anyway.”

“Naw. I wouldn’t.”

Hood looked down through the glass countertop at the handguns, price tag strings looped through the trigger guards. Dragovitch’s prices were on the high side, but his wares were polished and tastefully arranged and the countertop glass was etched with use but without a smudge. Hood looked up and around for the surveillance cameras but saw none.

“There are four of them, all hidden,” said Sheila. “It makes the customers more relaxed. I do the faces.”

Dragovitch came back with a mug of coffee and two black three-ringed binders. Sheila produced a Dragon Arms coaster from behind the counter, and he set the coffee on it. He handed Hood one of the black binders. Hood saw that the contents were sectioned off by month. He turned to June, the last month that Blowdown had been here for a routine field interview. As Hood patiently flipped through the pictures, Dragovitch flipped correspondingly through his binder, which was thick with FTRs. Hood was impressed by the quality of the images. Although taken from the digital video cameras, the stills were clear and focused. Sheila had spent some time on this.

Dragovitch narrated. “There, the first, a man who bought two very nice Ruger twenty-twos. It just took a while for the background to come through. I don’t know. They say the computers are slow, but maybe there’s a problem with this man, eh?”

From the FTR, Dragovitch rattled off the buyer’s name and age and address.

Hood, sharing none of Dragovitch’s suspicion, nodded politely and turned to the next page.

“Then, this man came in three days later and he bought two more of the same Ruger twenty-twos. This is strange. This seems like more than coincidence to me. When he purchases, I realize his home city is the same as the man who bought the two twenty-twos three days before—Oceanside. Why Oceanside? Why so many Rugers?”

Hood nodded politely again and turned to the next page.

“Now that next man was a human scum. He was rude. He smelled badly. I refused service to him according to the sign above my cash register. He cussed me vividly and made a gesture to Sheila and walked out. I have no FTR, so I don’t know anything about him. But I suspect one thing—he will not be back.”

Hood continued. Most of the pictures were of shoppers who did not buy. They were simply people whom Dragovitch suspected of being suspicious. Hood did see a pattern here: younger buyers with facial hair, biker or hippie types, Hispanics of all description, blacks. Dragovitch made his judgments on an odd array of detail: One buyer had an eye patch, one wore a Che Guevara T-shirt, one claimed to be of Croatian descent but didn’t know Zagreb, one used an inhaler, one had a broad forehead and thick black eyebrows and a swatch of bleached hair combed back.

“Meet Silenced Automatics,” said Dragovitch, looking down at the picture. “Silenced automatics are all he talks about.”

“But you won’t sell him silenced automatics,” said Hood.

“A man who looks like that?”

Hood flipped the last picture over and closed the binder.

“Thank you, Mr. Dragovitch.”

“Deputy Hood, I do have something for you today. Something solid. I’ve been eager for you to see the picture and hear the story.”

Ivan looked at Sheila. Hood saw her nod and color. She reached behind the counter and offered still another picture to Hood.

“Here,” she said.

Hood took the sheet. It was a rather nice portrait of Bradley Jones. He was wearing a leather cowboy hat and sunglasses, but it was unmistakably Bradley, from the leather vest to the goatee to the lanky posture.

“His name is Kyle Johnson,” said Dragovitch. “He has been in here several times the last year. He has not purchased anything, yet. Yet. He implies some connection to law enforcement. He said he was looking for something small and automatic. I said you mean semiautomatic and he said no, I mean fully automatic. I told him there was no such gun that I can legally sell. These are military weapons. He would say it was all a joke, that he wasn’t serious. But he would return a few weeks later and we would have the same conversation. He would attempt to be charming, but he is only arrogant. He would look at me and Sheila and smile with some wickedness and he would suggest that we could produce such an automatic firearm if we wanted to. I said the world is awash in AK- 47s and M16s and all manner of MACs, so why not find an unscrupulous dealer to sell full automatic? Why keep coming here? And this young man, he would ask questions and examine everything in the store and then he would leave. We were uncertain whether to make his picture. He never bought, true. But he is young and proud of himself and dresses with subversion and he stands against everything I believe in. He brought Sheila a flower in a vase. He brought me a quality bottle of vodka. Still, I do not like him and he does not represent America. But now that he has agreed to purchase, we believe you should be aware of him. We have run his background check and he has passed it, of course. His driver’s license is valid. He is a legal customer.”

“What does he want?”

“Ammunition only. No firearms.”

“What round?”

“The thirty-two ACP.”

“How many?”

Dragovitch raised his eyebrows. “Well. This will be of some interest. He wishes to buy, ah, fifty thousand rounds.”

“Fifty thousand rounds.”

“New shells, U.S. made. I know a wholesale supplier in San Diego. Kyle has agreed to a cash price of eighteen thousand dollars.”

Hood looked at the picture. “When?”

“This depends on the source of the supplier. The quantity is large. Perhaps one more week.”

“Where?”

“All specifics will be discussed. Everybody trusts everybody, yes, of course. But there are always cautions with such things. There will be transport and logistics and security. Many details.”

“When was he in here last?” asked Hood.

“Saturday. He has shaved and cut his hair short since that picture. He looks more clean. He wore clownish clothing—plaid shorts and flip-flop sandals and a very bright flowered shirt. I intermediated the agreement and negotiated a proper fee for myself. But now I report my suspicions to law enforcement. Sheila and I looked forward to bring you this good news, Deputy Hood. We hope you are pleased. And we hope that your investigation will be successful. We wish our part in this to be invisible. Dragon Arms cannot continue to do business if we ourselves are suspected.”

Hood sat, flabbergasted to the core of his hope, but in other places not surprised at all. He stared down at the picture of Bradley and the array of guns floating in the background beneath the counter glass. A finger with a shiny red nail rotated the picture. Sheila looked at it intensely, her expression hard to read.