The federal agents who wander into the script are even more impressive. They have tanned skin, little-boy haircuts, and the anatomies of California surfers. Their psychoanalytical knowledge of the criminal mind is stunning. Without hesitation, they conclude for the viewer that serial rapists possess violent tendencies toward women and people who plant bombs on airplanes are antisocial.
But my thoughts on the subject are cheap in design and substance. It’s easy to be facile about law enforcement. The truth is the good guys are understaffed, overworked, underfunded, and out-gunned. Most of the time the bad guys win, or if they do take a fall, it’s because a wrecking ball swings into their lives for reasons that have nothing to do with jurisprudence. If you have ever been a victim of violent crime, or if you have been threatened by deviates or sadists—and by the latter I mean wakened by anonymous phone calls in the middle of the night, surveilled by people you’ve never seen before, forced to take public transportation because you’re afraid to start your car in the morning—then you know that what I’m about to say is an absolute fact: You’re on your own.
Law enforcement agencies don?
??t prevent crimes. With good luck, they solve a few of them. In the meantime, if violent and dangerous people intend to do you injury, your own thoughts become your worst enemies. The morning might start with sunshine and birdsong, but by noon it’s usually filled with gargoyles.
I walked around the house aimlessly, trying to chase down each of my thoughts and hold it in a bright place in the center of my mind, face it down fair and square. But it was to no avail. Thunder ripped across the sky and rain pounded on the roof and swept in sheets across the hillside. Through the kitchen window I thought I saw L. Q. Navarro standing among the fir trees, wearing his pin-striped suit and ash-colored Stetson, his face lit briefly by a flicker of lightning.
Take this guy Mabus off at the neck. Smoke him and put a throw-down on the body and buy your wife a trip to Hawaii, he said.
I wish I could, L.Q.
Don’t think about it, just do it. Everybody dies. You want this guy to kill your wife or unborn child or Lucas? Take care of your own and screw the rest of it.
That easy, huh?
There’s nothing wrong with this guy Mabus a two-hundred-and-thirty-grain brass-jacketed hollow-point wouldn’t cure.
But I did not listen to L.Q.’s words. Instead, I found Karsten Mabus’s business card, the one he had given me with his home telephone number written on the back. I hesitated only a moment, then punched the number into the phone, thereby beginning the commission of the most cowardly act of my life.
“Hello?” he said.
“It’s Billy Bob Holland, Mr. Mabus.”
“How you doin’?”
“I don’t want my wife or boy or unborn child hurt.”
“I don’t, either. But why are you telling me this?”
“Call your guys off. I don’t have the goods from the Global Research boost.”
“Mr. Holland, I couldn’t care less about that stuff. Look, can you and your wife come out to dinner this evening? I realize it’s late notice, but—”
“Johnny American Horse dumped a metal box of some kind on my property. But I don’t have it and neither does Johnny or his wife, Amber. Wyatt Dixon found it and has it in his possession.”
My own words sounded strange and apart from me, separate from my life and the person I thought I was.
“Can you please tell me who in the Sam Hill Wyatt Dixon is?” Mabus asked.
“Leave Wyatt alone and he’ll probably blow out his own doors. But whatever you do, just stay away from us,” I said.
“At this point, gladly, sir. I guess I have a great personal flaw, Mr. Holland. I’m obviously a terrible judge of character,” he said, and hung up.
Chapter 22
IT WAS STILL raining when Johnny was wheeled in a chair down a corridor to the X-ray room by a nurse and the U.S. marshal, who ate a candy bar while he talked. Before leaving the room, Tim cuffed Johnny’s right wrist to the arm of the wheelchair.
“You’ll be back in your room before lunchtime. If you want, I can get you an extra dessert from the cafeteria,” Tim said.
Johnny didn’t answer. Out in the hallway the painters were erecting a scaffolding against the wall.
“Did you hear me?” Tim said.
“Sorry, I got a toothache,” Johnny said, touching his jaw.
“If I don’t cut down on my sugar, that’s what I’m gonna have,” Tim said.