James C. Wilson’s latest Fernando Lopez novel follows a dying assassin’s quest

James C. Wilson’s novel “Dancing with Dennis Hopper’s Ghost” opens with a midnight shooting death outside the entrance to La Fonda in Santa Fe.

The death is a minor event in the thread of the story. What’s relevant about the incident is the identification of the shooter — Jack Lacy. You could say he gets away with murder.

Lacy, the novel’s main focus, is a retired Marine sniper and professional assassin. Suffering from brain cancer, he fears he doesn’t have long to live.

Lacy’s deathbed wish is to be buried near where his late friend, actor-director Dennis Hopper, is interred in the Jesus Nazareno Cemetery in Ranchos de Taos.

Lacy enlists the help of his old Marine buddy Antonio Blake to help arrange for the purchase.

In turn, Blake asks his friend, Fernando Lopez, a former fellow Santa Fe cop, to aid them. Lopez reluctantly agrees.

The story follows the trio’s escapades, presented in some flowing, some meandering, episodes.

They’re staying in the Gate House Cottage of the Mabel Dodge Luhan House in Taos. Fernando remembers drinking and smoking marijuana in the main house in his “heady counterculture days,” though he had never met Hopper.

Antonio tells his companions that the house has a history of ghosts.

“Ghosts of Mabel and Tony (her husband) and lots of others have been recorded throughout the house, but especially in Mabel’s bedroom. People walking and talking in the room when no one was there, doors opening and closing, chairs moving, stuff like that,” Antonio recalls.

While Lacy is napping, Antonio and Fernando drop peyote. Antonio speculates, “We might even talk to Dennis Hopper.”

A now-awake Lacy walks into Mabel’s bedroom and tells Antonio and Fernando, “I need to talk to Dennis now. I’ll call you when I’m done.”

There’s more talk about ghosts. Peyote-affected Fernando closes his eyes, sees bright colors that fade to black and white, leaving an image of a photo of Hopper he’d seen years before behind the bar at the Taos Inn.

Fernando now sees Hopper with a cigarette in his mouth as the ghostly figure speaks: “Come on across, man … free yourself … there’s no stress here … no worries …”

In another episode, Antonio arranges for a local curandera, who calls herself Luz, to guide Lacy when he’s ready to cross over to the spirit world so he can be with Hopper.

Luz wants to meet with Lacy before she sets up his cross-over session.

The book describes Luz as a woman wearing a long purple dress under a lacy purple shawl with a cross and a large pendant necklace with stars, animals, zodiac signs on a silver chain.

A few chapters later, there’s another scene of overheard mysterious conversation.

Fernando, after downing some beers with Antonio, retires, but whispers wake him from his sleep on a sofa in the Gate Cottage House. He stumbles out to a patio where Lacy is talking quietly with “a black object, a shadow among the shadows.”

When Lacy does show up to meet Luz, she’s accompanied by her closed-mouth, cryptic brother Daniel.

Luz’s planned crossover session with Lacy is private, Antonio and Fernando can’t be present. They fail to ask — and Luz fails to say — why Daniel remains if it’s a private meetup.

While waiting to retrieve Lacy, Antonio and Fernando visit with the cemetery’s caretaker.

They notice Hopper’s grave has a wooden cross with headbands and scarves wrapped around it, presumably left by fans of the actor-director who had lived in Taos. There’s also an empty whiskey bottle, two full cans of beer, a used bong and several joints on the side of the grave.

The caretaker says people tell of seeing Hopper’s ghost in the cemetery smoking marijuana left for him, weeping with Jesus at the cemetery’s entrance or walking on the mesa talking to himself.

The book suggests Hopper is remembered by Taoseños for his misbehavior.

A wider audience no doubt remembers him for his film career, notably his role as actor/director of the 1969 road movie “Easy Rider.” Part of it was filmed in Taos.

Antonio and Fernando return to pick up Lacy. But Luz informs them that Lacy has died and crossed over, but she doesn’t know where his body is.

The men track the would-be body snatchers — Daniel and a cohort, a man with a long criminal record, according to Luz. They want to collect a fat ransom in exchange for Lacy’s body.

More high-altitude action follows before the story concludes with Lacy’s graveside service and burial.

Ghosts, author Wilson said in a phone interview, have roles in about one-third of his 15-volume Fernando Lopez Santa Fe Mystery Series.

“I think the imagined world is just as real and as beautiful as what we call the real world. … I don’t believe in ghosts and I don’t disbelieve. The older I get I give people some credibility when they tell me they’ve seen a ghost,” the 77-year-old Albuquerque author said.

The book could have used closer editing to eliminate annoyingly redundant dialogue.