• • •
In their bedroom Hood set the chocolates on Beth’s pillow and put the bottle on her nightstand with the card propped up against it. Then he threw open the heavy window curtains, which left him facing not a window but a heavy steel door built into the wall. He pushed the combination code, then flipped a light switch and went down the stairs, his shoes twanging lightly on the metal steps. Sleek Daisy and stout Minnie impatiently clicked down behind him. At the base of the stairs was another steel door with a prison-style pass-through about waist high. This door he opened with a different code, then stepped into his new wine cellar.
Hood had built the cellar beneath his home at some expense, and it was only recently completed, though he owed twenty more monthly payments on the loan. He had sold his restored IROC Camaro to help pay for it. The four underground rooms were cold and high-ceilinged and there were no windows or doors but the light was incandescent and good. White walls-lath and plaster, hard as stone, not sheetrock-and a textured concrete floor. High in the ceiling of each room was a steel grate, but no light came through the heavy grids. The cellar was only minimally furnished, with racks and a few bottles of red wine aging. A couch and entertainment center with a TV and some DVDs. There was a small bath and shower, a kitchenette, and one of the rooms had an empty bookcase and a double bed, made up.
He sat in a folding chair at a folding table in the bedroom and let his eyes wander the tabletop: a laptop, an external hard drive, an envelope containing eight eight-by-ten-inch photographs of Finnegan, a row of identical photo booklets containing four-by-six copies of the same photos. A coffee cup brimming with pencils, a pad of graph paper dense with notes and scribbles, a stapler. It was all very neat. He’d had to move his work space down here with the arrival of Beth, Erin, and Reyes, but this had allowed him to discard the chaff and keep the wheat.
Hood looked up at the grate, beyond which was only darkness. He remembered Veracruz, and the quick grind of the knife blade against his skull, and the wash of blood that draped his eyes and blocked his vision while Mike fled down darkened M. Doblado Street. Hood ran his finger along the scar and thought, I’ve got room for you. He looked into the amber twinkle of the glass and he sensed that he could become lost in it, and he wondered again if his sanity was eroding, and he told himself again-for what, the thousandth time? — that no, no, no, his mind was sound and his mission was clear and right. Just look at the neatness and order of the tabletop, he thought, a reflection of sound thinking. He reminded himself that he had seen what few had seen. This is why he had been given the scar. As a seal of authenticity. I’ll find you, he thought. And when I do, you will never so much as brush up against another person on this earth.
• • •
Back in the living room Hood saw the flicker of headlights coming up the steep dirt drive. “He’s here,” said Erin. She sat at the far end of a long leather sofa, close to the fire, a Pendleton blanket over her. Even through the heavy blanket, her middle registered as a large, stout ball. Her face was pale and flushed and slightly fuller these last few weeks. Her hair shined red in the firelight. “Thanks again for waiting up for me.”
“You know I don’t mind.”
“Beth should be home soon.”
A minute later the motion lights outside the house came on and Hood saw Bradley’s black Cayenne pull into the carport. The dogs were already at a window, up on their back legs for the view. Hood undid the locks and swung open the heavy wooden door, then walked back to the living room and sat.
Bradley swept in, the untucked tails of his shirt trailing, his face pinched and hollowed, eyes hard until he saw Erin. He held a long spray of cut red roses in one hand and a white plastic sack in the other. He stopped and stared at her in silence. He set the flowers on the sofa beside her, then slid a colorful box from the bag and broke it open and bowed somewhat formally to hand her a chocolate ice cream bar on a stick. “Happy Valentine’s Day.”
“Fudge Bars,” she said softly. “My hero. That’s Charlie sitting right there, in case you didn’t see him. Maybe you should offer him one, too.”
Bradley turned and took in Hood, then tossed him an ice cream bar. “Nice suit, bro.”
“Thanks for saying so.”
“You still look more like a cop than a gun dealer.”
“You look unhappy. Did they fire you?”
“They’re trying.”
“Can’t get used to you working for the North Baja Cartel?”
“Hood? I endure your piety only as a way to get into your home and visit my wife.”
“If it was up to me, that door would still be locked.”
“You’ll make someone a sweet bitch someday.”
Erin snapped her empty stick and set it on the wrapper beside her. “Can’t you drooling primates shut it off for just one minute?”
“I’ll be in the kitchen,” said Hood.
He put the pops in the freezer and poured a light bourbon and sat at the stout wooden table. From back in the house Reyes’s bathroom pipes thumped and whined. Hood listened to the soft voices coming from the other room. He couldn’t hear the sentences, just fragments and syllables here and there, but the tone was of pleading and denying, apology and accusation. He looked into the living room where the couple faced each other from opposite ends of the long sofa, and he saw the firelight play upon their profiles-Erin’s fine features and Bradley’s tragic mask alike etched by light and shadow. He understood that Bradley would win this war because his need was larger. It was only a matter of time. He thought again of Bradley’s mother, Suzanne, and the reckless need she had awakened in him. Maybe need was a kind of strength, he thought, though he had never heard it called that. Daisy and Minnie lay on the tile near Erin and facing Bradley, their muzzles to the tile but their eyes asparkle like bits of glass.
Using his phone, Hood checked his e-mail and social networks and his Mike-specific webpage but found only two new messages, chiding and familiar, from “Incipient Madness” and “Bonkers,” which he suspected to be Mike himself. Nothing else. Not one sighting, not one lead, not even a crank reply to his endless inquiries in the ether. In the last few months, roughly half of his contacts had asked him to cease and desist. But there were always new contacts. New hope. New blood. He turned off the phone and slid it back onto his belt. When he looked up, he saw Bradley on his feet, leaning over Erin to kiss the top of her head while she slept.
Bradley walked toward the door, then stopped and turned to her, and from where he spoke Hood heard his words clearly. “Let me make a home where we can begin again.”
He waited for her reply, but she didn’t move. He stared at Hood for a long moment, then came into the kitchen. He went to the cupboard and took down a glass, which he filled from the tap and drank down. Then another. “Have you talked to Warren?”
“No. I’m letting you hang yourself.”
“I appreciate that. An hour with Warren, though, and you could pretty much take me down. Isn’t that what you want? Or are you just going to let me turn in the wind a little longer? Really enjoy the show before you sell me out.”
“Sell you out. That’s funny. Wake up. My silence is for her.”
“Everything we do is for her.”
“She’s a good reason but a bad excuse.”
“I hated the way you tried to take over my mother. And I hate the way you’re trying the same thing with Erin. You’ve got the morals of a dog.”
“Suzanne took over me. And Erin I’m protecting.”
“From me. Protecting my wife from me.”
“Yes, from you-someone arrogant and selfish enough to almost get her and the baby killed. Or have you forgotten that already, in your rush to reacquire what you want? You also betrayed her trust and broke her heart. Now you have to let her put it back together. It’ll take time. And I’ll tell you one more thing-it’s not about Fudge Bars, bro.”