“I have a few nice things,” she said.
“Very nice.”
“There is always more than meets the eye, Deputy Hood.”
“You are right, Miss Finnegan.”
She walked him out to his car. The neighborhood looked like it was built in the late fifties, small identical houses with attached garages. There were For Sale signs, and the home across the street had boarded windows. Hood noted the black late-model Mercedes convertible in her garage.
“May I see your cell phone?” she asked.
He worked the little holster off his belt and handed the phone to her. She opened it and began pressing buttons expertly, and Hood watched her fingers and the scars. A moment later, she snapped the phone shut and gave it back to him. “I want you to call me.”
“Why?”
She stepped to him and took his face in both her cool hands and turned it so Hood was looking away from her. Then she turned his face the other way. He felt like an animal being examined. She came closer and turned him back to her, and Hood stood before her metallic eyes.
“You will have a reason.”
Dr. Petty intercepted Hood at the nurses’ station and veered him away from the ICU.
“He’s taken some kind of turn. He’s having seizures and talking nonsense-murders and criminals and God knows what. He says he saw Bobby Kennedy die at the Ambassador. He talked about Manson and the beautiful smoggy sunsets at Spahn Ranch. We gave him sedatives and a dose of steroids and ran an MRI. The swelling is pronounced.”
“Can I see him?”
“He’s finally stable, so don’t wear him out. Come.”
Hood and Beth Petty stepped inside the privacy curtain drawn around Finnegan’s bed. The monitor readout showed a pulse of seventy and normal blood pressure.
“Charlie. Hello, doctor. I’m so glad you came to visit.” Finnegan’s voice was a drawl and slightly lower than usual. Hood figured the sedative.
“They finally hung him in San Jose,” said Finnegan.
Hood looked at Petty and she glanced at him but said nothing.
“Who?” asked Hood.
“Tiburcio Vasquez. He was a bandit and a good guy. Ladies’ man, gambler, hell of a shot. I stood in the crowd, way in the back, and I could see the gallows in the shafts of sunlight filled with the dust the horses kicked up. A free drink for every white adult male at Henderson ’s Saloon, Henderson himself an ass, but a free drink is a free drink. You should have seen the women. They were dressed up, hundreds of them, the ladies loved Tiburcio. He had his way with them, that’s for sure. Dr. Petty, you look very much like one of those women and I think you brought this whole memory on. Beauty is changeless. Only the bodies that house it change. Tiburcio’s buddy Abdon Leiva was the betrayer. He ratted out Tiburcio after catching him with his wife. I told Tibby it would happen, but he didn’t listen. They almost never do. There were a bunch of kids inside General Livery and you could see their faces lined up along a crack in the door, getting a look at the hanging. And Sheriff Brewster, he asks Tibby if he’s got any last words and Tibby says, ‘Oh yes, yes yes.’ See, he’s got a little statement all ready to go. I encouraged him to do this, but the composition was all his own. He said, ‘A spirit of hatred and revenge took possession of me. I had numerous fights in defense of what I believed to be my rights and those of my country-men. I believed we were unjustly deprived of the social rights that belonged to us.’ And Brewster says, ‘Anything else, Tiburcio?’ And Tibby says, ‘Pronto!’ and the hangman springs the trap. It’s hard to write a story with a better ending than that.”
“That is a good story,” said Hood.
“He’s been talking on like that all morning,” said the doctor. “Frank James and Sirhan and Manson and even O.J.”
“Vasquez and Manson had revolutionary potential. Vast egos and the indispensable ability to believe their own lies. Foundation of the statesman and the dictator. Actually believed they were righting wrongs by robbing and murdering people. Otherwise, there would have been no reason to monkey around with them, now would there?”
“Explain,” said Hood.
“When you choose a friend or an enemy, don’t you look for the strong?” drawled Finnegan. “For people with ambition? People with appetites and talents and profound, profound energy?”
“Sure.”
“Dr. Beth hit me hard with steroids and Seconal.”
Hood glanced at the monitor. Finnegan’s pulse was up to ninety, but his blood pressure hadn’t changed. “I saw Owens this morning. She said she’d come see you. She didn’t say when.”
“Bravo, Charlie. Thank you so much. Quite a woman, isn’t she?”
“She’s lovely, but she didn’t smile, not one time.”
“She’s never been happy.”
“I saw the scars on her wrist.”
Beth Petty looked at him, and Hood held her look for a moment.
“They found her just in time,” said Finnegan. “No note. It was a serious attempt, not a cry for help.”
“Why?”
“She genuinely believed she had no reason to live. She loved nothing and was interested in nothing.”
“Didn’t she love you?”
No one spoke for a long moment. Hood could see the shine of Finnegan’s eyes deep within the bandages. “I wasn’t a good father. I was gone a lot. Bathroom products. Family affairs in Napa County. My father and mother… well, that’s a long story. Owens felt abandoned. She was thirteen, terribly overweight, bad acne. She was almost totally inscrutable to me, a man lost to commerce and pleasure and to his own demons. After that dark day when she tried to end it all, I tried my hardest to be there for her. Gradually, she found herself. As if she were born again into the world. It was a long and sometimes painful awakening. So, all the more difficult for me when her vanishing acts began. Which is why it was so important to me that I know she’s all right. Thank you, deputy. Now please describe her home to me.”
Hood described the house and yard and asked about Owens’s acting career.
“Well, not much of a career because she’s still in school. But she’s gifted in that way. It took us some years to discover those gifts… I just had the thought that, Dr. Petty, you also remind me of a prostitute who worked for Ida down in the old San Diego red-light district. They called it the Stingaree. Ida ran the ladies around town in horse-drawn buggies, and the johns would come to Wyatt’s saloon on Sixth and go upstairs. Nice place. Fantastic sin zone then, the cat’s pajamas. San Diego was really the place to be if you had a wicked streak. A busy port means horny sailors. Still true today. I don’t know what it is about you, Beth, maybe that nice round forehead and cute little nose, or maybe something in your eyes, just makes me think of women I’ve met before. I guess if you get old enough, everyone reminds you of someone else.”
“I’m so happy to remind you of a whore.”
“Please don’t take offense. The canvas is limitless and impersonal. It is a meeting of time and space, and your place on it is not much larger than a dot and not much longer than a moment. The prostitute’s name was Marie. She carried someone’s beauty and you carry hers and someone will someday carry yours.”
“Oh.”
“How old are you, Mike?” asked Hood.
“Fifty-one. Did Owens appear to be well fed? She’s prone to letting her nutrition go and simply living on energy drinks.”
“She looked healthy.”
“Eyes like the moon, eh?”
“Somewhat.”
“I’d like a full report on Holdstock, but I’m too tired right now to remember anything. Later, Charlie? This evening or tonight, maybe?”
Hood now felt something that he had felt only one time before. It was like surprise and like recognition and like dread, but he didn’t know a word for it or if there was a word. Once when he was a boy in Bakersfield, walking to school, he watched a tiger cross the street in front of him and trot off toward the park. It glanced back at him. Its size and coloring and movement were not within his experience of the world. Later he learned it had escaped from a private collection. He felt now as he felt then, and it was indescribable.