It was in fact as described: two bolts, copper wire, a toy baby lashed to the cross.
“Could be some prints on the plastic baby,” I said. “Where did you find this?”
“In Bagman’s gullet,” Claire told me, taking a swig of water. “Someone tried to ram it down his throat.”
Chapter 8
I WAS EAGER to hear Joe’s thoughts on Bagman Jesus.
We were having dinner that night at Foreign Cinema. Although it is located on a crappy block in the city’s dodgiest neighborhood, surrounded by bodegas and dollar stores, Foreign Cinema’s marquis and fine design make it look as though a UFO picked it up in L.A. and dropped it down in the Mission by mistake.
But apart from the way it looks, what makes Foreign Cinema a real treat are the picnic tables in the back garden, where old films are projected on the blank wall of a neighboring building.
The sky was clear that early May night, the evening made even cozier by the heat lamps all around the yard. Sean Penn was at one of the tables with some of his pals, but the big draw for me was having a dinner date with Joe without either of us having to book a flight to do it.
After so many gut-wrenching speed bumps, the roller-coaster ride of our formerly long-distance relationship had smoothed out when Joe moved to San Francisco to be with me. Now we were finally living together.
Finally giving ourselves a real chance.
As The Umbrellas of Cherbourg, an old French film, flickered without sound against the wall, Joe listened intently as I told him about my astounding day: how Conklin and I had walked our feet off trying to find out who had murdered Bagman Jesus.
“Claire took five slugs out of his head, four of them just under the scalp,” I told Joe. “The fifth shot was to the temple and was likely the money shot. Then Bagman took another slug to the back of the neck, postmortem. Kind of a personal act of violence, don’t you think?”