I pushed Archie fast for the courtyard exit, watching in astonishment as he curled a finger around the side of his wheelchair arm, launching a smoke bomb from the back frame. It rose as high as the second-story guest rooms, then fell back into the restaurant in a billowing cloud.
Barreling toward the lobby I was aware of the waitstaff and the maître d’ peering at us from behind the archway columns, and the guests proned out on the floor, and the cooks pressed to the kitchen door windows, and the lights in the guest room windows going out as the smoke hung. I muscled Archie through the lobby and down the colonnade toward the Econoline.
Virgil drove briskly toward the border, most of us chattering nervously and wiping off blood. Tola sat speechless beside me, pale as a ghost, her head lolling as I cleaned off her face with my shirtsleeve.
We got the same Mexican border guard, who was once again pleased to see the celebrity Archie Strait in the passenger seat, smartly groomed and pleasant faced.
“I give my wife the picture,” he said.
“Splendid, Pedro,” said Virgil. “Now open that gate and we’ll be on our way.”
The U.S. agent waved us through and Virgil stomped on it.
Thirty-Nine
Tola dreamed and trembled. Terrified words and anguished yowls.
At dawn the Marine Corps artillery started up on Camp Pendleton, just a few miles from where I live. Thunder on thunder. Practice makes perfect. Tola was tightly balled under the covers, only a slice of her face and a flood of red hair visible.
“Sound of freedom,” I said.
“Maybe I should join up. Do they accept killers?”
“They create them.”
“I’d be ahead of the curve.”
Downstairs I made coffee and breakfast, brought them up. She stood in my robe, showered, her hair up in a towel, looking out to the pond as the artillery thumped and the window glass shook.
We sat on the hefty old trunk at the foot of my bed, plates on our knees and coffee cups on the floor.
“My soul is gone,” she said.
“It’ll come back when it trusts you again.”
“Will you trust me again?”
“You killed three men last night, Tola. You can say they deserved it and you might be right. Varying gods would weigh in with varying opinions. The one you prayed to in the van? The one you said may possibly not like you? My guess is that that god would approve.”
She gave me a long look, her face specter white with dark hollows. Her eyes flat green pools.
“Get me out of here,” she said. “Anywhere.”
I drove Justine’s red Boxster convertible. Put the top down and a CD from her wallet into the player.
I couldn’t clearly define my emotions as I tore through the curving back-country roads toward I-5: the slaughters on Palomar and in the hotel just hours ago; memories of Justine flooding me as I sat inches away from Tola, hearing the old music.
We stood on a bluff at Fort Rosecrans National Cemetery, facing the grave of Private First Class Ernest Avalos, 1985–2004.
“Why here?” asked Tola.
“Perspective.” I told her about Avalos in Fallujah.
“Here but for the grace of God are you?” she asked.
“Certainly.”
“Do you feel responsible?”
“Just that I got the luck that day and he didn’t.”
“A good guy?”
“A good man. Humble and kind-natured.”
“I didn’t think marines could be that.”
I smiled.
Tola took my arm and we watched a burial taking place two hills over, the headstones fanning away from us in diminishing perspective, perfectly uniform, an undulating river of stones, over a hundred thousand in all. One hundred thousand. The gulls wheeled over Point Loma.
“I feel that I have sinned,” she said. “And I feel that if I was asked to do last night again, I would. I know I would.”
“Do something good for someone living,” I said. “You’ll feel better about yourself.”
“Feeling better about myself doesn’t seem like an appropriate motivation. On the backs of three dead men.”
I thought of my Five. The Five I’d never told anyone about until I confessed to Harris Broadman and Dalton Strait that day in bungalow nineteen. What good could come of opening those wounds to Tola?
But I did.
When I was finished her head hit my shoulder and I felt the strength of her grip on my arm. Felt the strength it takes to keep going, to fight fear with hope, to bear heartbreak on the slender shoulders of joy.
“Take me to a church,” she said. “One with a lenient god and rituals I don’t understand.”
Which landed us at St. Peter the Apostle Catholic Parish back in Fallbrook.
Tola wanted to talk to the priest, so I waited outside.
A buzz in my pocket and Lark on the phone:
“We shot it out with Weld and Deuzler an hour ago at his home in Valley Center,” he said. “Weld’s dead but Gretchen Deuzler is going to be okay. Weld took a bullet from you or Burt when they flipped your tracker in Ramona. No sign of Broadman and the rest of The Chaos Committee. No sign of Natalie Strait, either. There’s almost five hundred feet of tunnel under and out of the Bighorn. Some new, some part of the old mine. The masks, the torture wall, the anarchist library — never seen anything like it.”
I asked Lark if the National Allied Building in San Ysidro had panned out.
“Pan out? It’s bomb-making central behind the import storefront. Small room, no windows. Explosives, fuses, timers, wires, blasting caps, Semtex — you name it. Shipping boxes and envelopes from every delivery service in the country. Lists of prospective targets and their addresses. Guess who made the list?”
“Special Agent Mike Lark. You owe me a solid,” I said.
“Name it.”
“We’ll see.”
“Where’s Dalton?” he asked.
“Moving between his home, his campaign headquarters, and his apartment in Sacramento.”
“And maybe McKenzie Doyle in Newport Beach?”
“Maybe,” I said. “He’s due in court again next week. He’s being sued for slandering Ammna Safar as blood related to known terrorists.”
A beat of silence.
“Broadman abducted Natalie out of vengeance,” said Lark. “I fear for her state of body and mind. Broadman’s Chaos Committee might be shot up, but I think he’s more dangerous now, not less. Dalton is personal.”
“I agree.”
“Let’s hope he’s got enough sense to stay away from packages that arrive by mail.”
“He’s fearless,” I said. “Choosing off The Chaos Committee in the media, when he knows they’ve got his wife.”
“What did he call them in that last tweet?” Lark asked.
“Impotent morons.”
“Proetto and Hazzard have backed off on him,” said Lark. “They don’t think he was involved in her abduction. In spite of his shaky timeline. Doyle offered herself as his alibi.”
“That was never the right call.”
“And you be careful, too, Roland. You’re the pesky PI who put the feds onto Broadman. You came out of Fallujah in one piece and he didn’t. Broadman might enjoy blowing you to bits.”
I saw Tola and the priest walking slowly side by side in the parish garden. A pool and a waterfall and statues of the saints. A riot of springtime colors, the priest’s hands behind his back, Tola’s head bowed in thought.
“I thought of that favor you can do me,” I said.
A grunt from Lark.
“Tola took Crag Face’s bait, right?”
“That’s right.”