McMichael remembered a time when he was six and asked his parents for a dog. His mother was against it because dogs were dirty and she was a fastidious homemaker and she had her hands full with baby Raegan.
Their little two-bedroom in Logan Heights shone like a jewel under Margaret's determined care. McMichael could remember the smell of lemon oil on the Sears Early American dining room set, of vinegar on the window glass and pine disinfectant on the linoleum floors. Once, his father, dramatizing some point about Margaret's domestic obsessions, had eaten a fried egg off the floor, rising with a victorious smile.
They didn't get the dog. Gabriel seemed to take this harder than his son. Though the specifics were no longer clear to him, McMichael recalled that Gabriel was around the house even less, and more than usually short-tempered.
But McMichael clearly remembered Gabriel showing up one Saturday afternoon around Christmas with a Shetland pony borrowed from a friend. He'd watched his father lead the shaggy animal up the walk of their house, push open the front door and slap the animal through with a hearty "Eeee-hahhh!" A theatrical fight had followed, with Margaret screaming both Gabriel and the pony back out of the house, Raegan wailing and the neighbors all gathered outside to see the show. Gabriel had led the horse around the block for hours after, every kid in the 'hood getting a ride. McMichael didn't see his father around the house again until midsummer.
McMichael thought of all this as he sat with Raegan next to his father's hospital bed early Thursday morning, three short hours after the catastrophe at the border and Jerry Bland's attempted murder-suicide.
Raegan's message had greeted McMichael when he finally got home that morning, well after two o'clock, his mind strangely disengaged and his guts just starting to unknot from the shock.
Tom, Dad's had an accident. He's okay, Tom, but some bones are broken. We're at General.
Captain Don Rawlings was dead.
As were Mason and Martin Axelgaard, and two of the gunmen on the catwalk.
And Jerry Bland.
Mitzi was critical.
Hatter had a bruise the size of a soccer ball on his chest: Mason Axelgaard's.38 soft-tip had almost- but not quite- made it through the vest.
McMichael let go of his father's hand when Tim Keller walked in, reeking of alcohol.
"Ah, Tommy. Like I told Raegan, we were on our way back from St. Agnes's- spaghetti night- and Gabe just walked into the street. The car wasn't going fast but it knocked him up on the windshield. Two broken legs, as you can see. And a concussion, too."
"I do see, Tim. Excuse us, please."
"I'm sticking with a friend, Tom. And don't be blaming me."
"Go."
"I'm stick-"
McMichael rose and guided Tim out by the collar of his jacket, slammed the door. He sat there with Raegan until the sun came up and Gabe finally opened his eyes, just barely visible beneath the gauze turban that covered his head.
Gabriel's eyes moved left to right, then back again. Then up and down. They found his daughter, then his son, and settled. His eye sockets were black and the whites were a bloody red.
"Tommy. Rae," he whispered.
"You're okay, Pop," said McMichael. "You're going to be just-"
"I love you, Dad," said Raegan.
"I never saw a thing."
"You don't have to talk," said Raegan.
"My head feels like they've got it in a vise."
He sipped some water that Raegan held up for him. A nurse bustled in and shot something into the IV drip, bustled out.
Gabriel's eyes closed and he slept.
McMichael lay on the floor beside the bed, a blanket under his head, his jacket zipped to his chin and his feet freezing cold. He dreamed of red waves breaking on black sand- wave after wave, set after set, endless red waves stacked all the way to the horizon.
He woke at first light to a nurse with a cup of coffee for him.
"Where's Rae?"
"She went home, Dad. Up all night."
"Good."
"Why is that good?"
"Hold my hand, Tom."
McMichael held the rough old hand, thought about the feel of that hand on his face back when he was seven and had stumbled into a glass coffee table. The glass had shattered and cut his cheek deeply, but McMichael had feared repercussions and had hidden in a closet. Gabe heard the sound and followed the blood trail. Gabe found him and helped him out and held his son's blood-and-tear-covered face in his big hands. The roughness is what McMichael remembered now, and the soothing, lighthearted way that Gabe got him into the bathroom and then to the emergency room for shots and stitches.
"Over the years, there's been a lot of talk about what happened to Victor Braga behind the Waterfront."
"Sure has, Pop."
"I think you should know the real truth of it, son."
"Yes."
"I did it."
"I know."
"How?"
"It lined up."
"I was angry. I was furious. I was looking for trouble. Your grandfather Franklin was a good and gentle man."
"It's okay, Pop."
"I didn't want to go to jail."
"No one does."
"So there it is. The policeman's old man damn near beat a boy to death and never paid for it."
"I think you paid."
"There's some truth in that, Tom. I don't know what to tell Rae."
"Tell her what you told me."
"Don't know if I can. Maybe you could."
"It would mean more from you."
"Same story, either way."
"Not really."
Gabriel was quiet for a long while. "Tommy, could you find me a cup of coffee like that, maybe put a nip in it? I feel a little off. There's a bottle in my coat, in that closet there. I remember checking it in the ambulance. Never broke! And they try to tell you there's no God."
McMichael walked down Market Street in the early morning light, the collar of his bomber's jacket up, a Padres cap low. The storm clouds were black in the north, as if it were still night in that direction. He resolved to do something about his father, though he wasn't sure what. Move him in, maybe. Get Gabe on a monthly allowance so he wouldn't be busing and walking five miles for a handout on Wednesday nights. Check him into a detox program, but McMichael guessed that it would end up like the other two times: Gabriel would only stay sober under lock and key. Maybe he and Raegan could come up with something workable.
He tried to think of some way to help Victor, too. While McMichael had always suspected his father's guilt, to have it confirmed brought to him a fuller sense of his own responsibilities. He realized again that a truth can heal but a lie is an open sore, year after year, generation after generation.
The rain started hard and fast and McMichael felt his cell phone shake against his hip.
"Tom, Hector here. You got to see this. We're in the Property Room."
Hector met him at the door. In a brightly lit back storage room, Barbara and Hatter, the chief, Arthur Flagler and Assistant District Attorney Gerald Dale all stood around three large rectangular aluminum crates. A faint vapor rose slowly from them. A big man in a welder's suit stood like an executioner off to the side, his torch and bottle and helmet hung on a stand by the wall, his gloves still in his hand.
Lying near the crates were three gray duffels that McMichael saw were similar to those from last week's Tijuana run- same size and color.
"Here's our dope," said Hector. "It took us half the night to convince the Feds that this was our case and our evidence."
McMichael knelt and looked into one of the boxes. Four small coolers were arranged tightly inside; around them were blocks of dry ice. The coolers had been fitted with what looked like very small refrigerator racks. On the top rack rested a row of thick, nearly identical, organic items. Six, each sealed in a plastic bag filled with a clear fluid.
Staring down through the rack, McMichael saw another row.
"Kidneys," said Flagler. "Human. One hundred and forty-six of them."
McMichael stood. He felt a little dizzy. Scores of chaotic murder scenes had not prepared him for the neat mutilation before him now. "We need to talk to Jimmy."
"I'm prepared to offer him a deal," said Dale. "You can present it to him. You're the only one he'll talk to."