“Yes.”
“And you’d been assigned to ATF for how long?”
“It was my first month.”
“And on only your third day, you were involved in the shootout that killed Benjamin Armenta.”
Hood said nothing. He had not fired on Armenta and he knew that Grossly must know this. The shooting had been covered widely by the media.
Next, the monitor showed various pictures of Mexican crime scenes, all containing Love 32s. The police officers and military men looked down on the bloody bodies and guns. Then came a video news clip from a Juarez shootout that showed masked gunmen firing automatic weapons that were almost certainly Love 32s.
The following video clips showed the weapons back in the United States one year later: police and ATF footage of the aftermath of a rampage in Buenavista that left three young men dead-and two Love 32s to be recovered.
“Buenavista,” said Grossly. “Not the Mexican side. The American side. Our side. ATF let one thousand machine guns go south into Mexico and now they’re coming back.”
“Hold it,” said Lansing. “A thousand machine guns got away.” He looked dolefully at Hood, then to the congressman. “But we have seen no fault of ATF. We did not let these guns walk. This was not part of Fast and Furious. This was not failed policy. Don’t try to make us a scapegoat. I won’t stand for it.”
“Is that right? Then I’ll ask Mr. Hood directly-who in ATF gave the orders on this investigation?”
Hood looked at Lansing, who stared back. “Sean Ozburn was the team leader.”
Grossly gasped incredulously. “Sean Ozburn murdered three people, was mixed up in a Mexican cartel gun deal in L.A., and later died in an airplane accident. Correct?”
Hood nodded and felt fury that a man in such a high position could be so ignorant of what Ozburn and ATF had been through with regards to those thousand machine guns. What Grossly had said was true, but it was not the whole truth. And what Grossly chose to ignore was much larger than what he chose to see. “He was murdered. He lost his life in the line of duty. And you have the chronology wrong, also.”
“Well, okay. We all see what we want to see, don’t we?”
“I was just thinking the same thing.”
“Then who was above him? Certainly Special Agent Sean Ozburn, young and zealous, was not calling the shots on all of Blowdown.”
“That’s above me, sir,” said Hood. “I had no contact with upper-level management at ATF. I joined the Blowdown task force in order to work along the border. I followed orders and did my job. If all you need is someone to hang, go ahead. Hang me.”
“You’re not big enough.”
Hood looked at the representative but did not speak.
“I will look until I find him,” said Grossly.
“ATF is blameless in this,” said Lansing.
“ATF blameless? First Fast and Furious, now this? If you are blameless, then I have never seen a more inept governmental bureaucracy in my entire life. One thousand new machine guns flown out of the United States into Mexico under your noses? And you suggest to me that a murderous and perhaps half-crazy ATF agent doing deals on the side was responsible? I beg your pardon but that’s not how things work. Things work top to bottom, not the other way around. And all I want to know is how far up the line did the real decision-making on this whole thing go? Who let it happen? I’m going to find out. I’m done here, people. Agent Hood, thank you for your time. We will most certainly be in touch.”
23
Mary Kate Boyle rang up another Family Bucket Extra Crispy and took a handful of wadded bills from a very short woman who looked exactly as wide as she was tall. Mary Kate sorted the damp currency and made the change and when she handed it to the customer she had to bend over the counter and reach down. The woman waddled out with a white-and-red KFC bag in each hand, their bottoms scarcely clearing the floor. Tony, the manager who had hired her, helped another customer at the next register. He’d been shuttling between the front and kitchen all day but, now that early evening had come, he had to concentrate on the waves of hungry working people who hit just after five o’clock. Tony glanced very quickly at her, then away. He’d been doing that. Mary Kate pulled her cell phone from her apron pocket and checked the time, then put on a smile for her next customer.
Thirty-five minutes later she was at the Lowell Theater on Fourth, breathing hard from the long, fast walk, trying to steady herself to read for the part of Curley’s wife in Of Mice and Men. It was a Community Theater Players production, non-Equity. In the theater lobby she scanned through the brief story synopsis and character description of Curley’s wife. She’d read the book twice, years ago. She had liked it that Curley’s wife didn’t have a name and wasn’t allowed to exist outside of the way the men on the ranch saw her. But she knew that Curley’s wife had a whole other existence, invisible and outside the written story, like many women where Mary Kate came from. Secret hearts, she called them. A good many of the women she knew had them. Some men, even.
Waiting in the near darkness she watched the other actresses read. They were doing the scene at the end where Curley’s wife talks to Lennie in the barn. Mary Kate noted the training and skill and robust beauty of the real actresses. Several of them seemed to know one another. Still, after four readings, she saw that there were things about Curley’s wife that these women did not quite get. They played her as a sexy tramp, but didn’t give her true loneliness and her sharp fear that her life’s possibilities had almost totally slipped away. Those qualities were what made her more than just Curley’s wife, which is what the writer knew but his characters didn’t. Mary Kate sensed she wouldn’t get the part, especially with her split lips and black eye, though the wounds were healing. But the idea of not getting the part somehow calmed her. She felt good inside. She was out of the sticks and into a city full of terrific food and good people. Her pulse was normal as she waited, her thoughts drifting peacefully along with the dialogue, a sense of confidence settling in. Her fight. The one thing she knew she had a lot of. A lot more than most people could even see. It was hers. Only an empty stomach could take away that fight, and her stomach now was filled with fiery chicken thighs and mountains of coleslaw and those terrific mashed potatoes, and there was more where all that came from.
“Mary Kate Boyle?”
• • •
The casting director said he might or might not call. Later she met Tony and some of the other KFC crew at a diner in the Gaslamp District. It was not far from her fleabag hotel, and it was noisy and busy and had the buzz of a local’s hangout. Tony bought beers for everyone because he was the manager, though he explained that he made little more than his cooks and front-store employees made, and put in twice the hours. Three of the cashiers were there, all about Mary Kate’s age. Two of the cooks came by later. Mary Kate liked the cooks. They were Mexicans, like Tony. For the past few days during slow times at KFC, she would go back into the kitchen just to watch them work. She liked their coordination and athletic balance and goofy singing as they slid around the greasy kitchen floor carrying heavy pressure kettles-boiling with fat and chicken-from the flame-belching stoves to the drainers. They looked like they were roller-skating. They were a happy bunch of daredevils, sliding around like that, but she hoped they weren’t just showing off for her. Don’t want to be like Curley’s wife, she thought. That story had haunted her since the day she finished it.
They shot some pool at the Rack and when it got late Tony walked her out. The Gaslamp was quieting now and the breeze off the ocean was up and Mary Kate buttoned her coat high and put her hands deep in the pockets. Out in front of the Winston Arms, Tony embraced her politely and waited until she’d gone inside. By the time she got upstairs to her window he was gone, and this was good. She liked him but didn’t want him stuck on her. Her phone rang and she checked the number and didn’t recognize it, except the area code, which was Russell County. “Hello?”