The Famous and the Dead

16



The black town car glided to a stop in front of Bradley Jones’s Valley Center ranch house, the dogs closing around it, barking but never touching the car. It was two days later, just before noon, and the sun hung in a blanched, cold pre-storm sky. Bradley sat at the long picnic bench on the covered deck. He had worked his four tens for the week and now had three days to himself. The call had come to his cell this morning just before sunrise: Chief Miranda Dez would be there at noon. The meeting would take one hour. Wonderful, he thought. She had taken the bait. Either that or she’d bring some big deputies and arrest him.

A large uniformed deputy held open her door and Dez stepped onto the drive, straightened, and glanced up at him through her aviator sunglasses. She was forty, fit, and handsome, and reminded Bradley somewhat of his mother, Suzanne. It was more her attitude than appearance. She turned slowly, looking around the property. Her black hair was pulled back in a taut French roll. She wore a tailored tan winter-weight uniform with a necktie rather than the patrol-ready open-collared blouse and T. Her badge was polished, her chief’s collar stars were bright, and her tie clasp and nameplate were perfectly horizontal in relation to the necktie.

She strode into the thicket of dogs without acknowledging them. They sprang and skulked out of her way and she climbed the steps to the porch. She carried a laptop in a black leather case. Bradley stood and pulled out the picnic bench opposite his and she set the computer on the table and sat.

“Where did you ever get the money to afford all this?”

“My mother and some good investments.”

“You wouldn’t think a schoolteacher and part-time car thief would be worth millions.”

“She was smart.”

“Smart enough to get herself shot and killed? Jim Warren at CID has other explanations for your . . . comfortable lifestyle.”

“My mother’s life is a past thing, Chief Dez. Jim Warren is a good old man with bad ideas. I hope you didn’t come here to talk about them. I hope you’re here to talk about our futures.”

“Our futures. Good. But can you find me a cup of coffee here in the present?” She nodded down to the deputy, who was still standing beside the town car. Before going inside, Bradley watched him get in and drive to the far side of the parking area, which was shaded by an enormous oak tree and had a nice view of the pond.

He set two mugs of coffee and a quart of milk on the rough, old picnic table. Dez already had her laptop up and booted and she positioned the machine so they both could see the screen.

“First of all, Deputy Jones, where did you get this stuff?”

“It was shot on location in the states of Baja California, Campeche, and Yucatán, Mexico, four months ago.”

“By whom?”

“Mexican law enforcers. The real ones, not the corrupt ones. There were several shooters. I can’t reveal my sources until later. The point is, the footage and images are authentic and untouched by editors or editing programs.”

“Tell me what I’m looking at.” She slid the mouse across to Bradley

“This is Charlie Hood. He’s one of our deputies, on loan to ATF. A very distant acquaintance of mine.”

“He was involved with your mother.”

“Here he’s involved with a crooked Tijuana cop named Rescendez. You can see the Jai A’lai Palace in the background. Hood doesn’t know there’s another TJ lawman working a cell phone camera from one of their police cars.”

“What are the other cops looking at?”

“This.” Bradley clicked the mouse and a picture of a duffel bag filled the screen. It was zipped open and there were bricks of plastic-wrapped cash inside. One of the bricks had been opened to reveal the hundred-dollar bills.

“The TJ cops are on the payroll of the Gulf Cartel,” said Bradley. “The money is drug profits, collected in the United States. Hood drove it south. Remember, this was a few days before Benjamin Armenta was killed in the shootout.”

“Armenta’s money.”

“Correct. Now, here’s Hood in Juárez. The guy on his right is Valente Luna and the fat guy is Julio Santo. Both Ciudad Juárez cops, both button men for Armenta.” He clicked the mouse and the screen went to video. Like most of the video and stills on this memory stick, this clip had been shot from fairly far away by Mike, but he had used good equipment. Hood and his friends looked like small players on a small stage and Bradley felt Zeus-like looking down on mortal Charlie Hood. “Now, here they are leaving Reynosa.”

“Where’s Santo?”

“Killed in a shootout about five hours previous.”

“Why no pictures of that?”

“I have no idea. I was not the cameraman. My informants tell me that Carlos Herredia’s people found out about Hood and the money. Unfortunately, they sent mere children to take it away, and Hood and Luna killed all five of them.”

Dez took off her sunglasses and set them on the table. “How could Hood have slipped off leash like this?” she asked.

“When he attached himself to the feds, it gave him a chance to do what he wanted. Which, apparently, was to go private and upriver.”

“Unreal.”

“Real.”

“How much money is he carrying?”

“Beats me,” Bradley said with a smile. “They said a million but I wouldn’t know.”

Bradley clicked forward through a series of still photos taken at some distance: Hood and a boy walking toward a city during high wind and rain; a shelter in a small Mexican town, where the boy hugs a woman; Hood and Luna waiting on a rooftop while a helicopter comes down from a troubled black sky. “This is the village of Tuxpan, just after Hurricane Ivana went through. Hood got swept away and came up with the boy. Next up, Mérida. See, he’s heading south still, toward Armenta.”

The next video showed Hood on a busy street, buying from vendors, looking around, apparently nervous. The palms swayed with post-Ivana wind, and puddles of standing water pocked the old colonial streets. “Luna is at the hotel with the money,” said Bradley. “They took shifts guarding it. Now, these next shots are of a camp in Yucatán, a few miles from Benjamin Armenta’s castle.”

“That’s where the Mexican Army stormed in and killed him.”

“Not exactly. The men you will see next are soldiers of the North Baja Cartel—far, far from home. With orders to take the castle and murder Armenta. Watch.”

The camp wasn’t much more than a crude opening in a thick jungle. As the video rolled, Bradley saw the first sunlight coming down through the trees, and the dirty, exhausted faces of the men. They cursed at the cameraman in Spanish, gestured. The camera caught the SUVs, partially hidden from above, under cut fronds and branches. Then the camera panned left, where at a distance Charlie Hood and Valente Luna could be seen, trudging after a young man along a trail toward the camp.

“Hood’s got a shotgun over his shoulder and no money,” said Dez, looking at Bradley.

Mom’s eyes, he thought. Not how they look but how they see.

“He was never going to give it to Armenta in the first place. Neither was Luna.”

“Then where is it?”

“At the hotel in Mérida.”

“So there’s been a change of plans.”

“I’d say so.”

The next video was shot from an airplane, its engine working away with a high-pitched whine. There was a bounce to the picture and its subject was some distance away. Slowly it came into view, a multistoried building and compound surrounded by dense jungle.

“Armenta’s fortress?” asked Dez.

“For another minute or two.”

The airplane overran the compound and a moment later it had turned around to approach again. Several men, each carrying a compact pistol with a sound suppressor, emerged from the green and advanced across a road toward the structure. “They’re sneaking in,” said Dez. “In broad daylight. Because their weapons are silenced.” The camera zoomed and Charlie Hood grew larger as he ran from the jungle. The shotgun was strapped over his shoulder. When a man ran into a courtyard and leveled an assault rifle at him, Hood blew him down with a burst from the silenced pistol.

“This is just goddamned unbelievable, Bradley.”

“Keep watching.”

The plane made another pass. The cameraman had switched to a still camera with a strong telephoto lens: Hood exiting the castle through the front door, Luna behind him.

“Armenta is already dead by now. Hood and the rest of Herredia’s hired cutthroats murdered him while he was playing accordion in a recording studio. They shot him up good and blew the accordion to pieces, according to one of the castle servants.”

Then came video of Mexican Army troops swarming the compound from one direction while an assortment of civilians—black domestics dressed alike in gray, people wrapped in white robes and balaclavas, a tall angry priest and his frightened young novitiates—fled the castle and vanished into the jungle. Bradley stole a look at Miranda Dez; she was transfixed by the spectacle. The last half minute of video showed the castle stewing in flames, smoke billowing all the way up into the camera until the screen went black.

“Pardon this,” said Dez. She fished a pack of cigarettes from a boot sock, pulled the matches out from behind the plastic wrapper, and lit up.

“Something to calm you down,” said Bradley.

“I’m not really sure what to say.” Dez stood and walked to the railing and looked down at the many dogs. Only Call, the unrivaled leader of pack, was allowed up on the deck proper. He lolled in a sunny spot out past the overhang with his eyes open and on Dez. She blew a plume of smoke that hovered, then thinned to nothing. She looked out over the rolling hills of Valley Center, toward the creek and the Indian property on the other side of it. He thought of his mother standing right about there, the same tilt of head and line of jaw. Finally, he thought, I’ve found it: a way to punish Hood for taking her body and a piece of her heart, and leaving her unprotected in the world. “And I’m not really sure what to do.”

“Get Warren off my back and deal with the real bad guy here. How can you not?”

“Warren thinks you were part of this Armenta thing.”

“You just saw with your own eyes that I wasn’t. I was in Yucatán with my pregnant wife and two good friends—fishing. Sometimes a coincidence really is just that. No matter how many times I tell Warren, he refuses to believe me. That’s where you come in, Chief Dez. You’re on the CID oversight panel. You can talk to the others, and redirect Warren’s pathetic investigation of an innocent deputy. Get them off me, especially the watchers. Now. Every time I turn around, there they are. Turn Warren loose on Hood. In return, you’ll have this recorded evidence to get started, and my full cooperation. And the full cooperation of deputies Caroline Vega and Jack Cleary, both in good standing, both of whom were there with me at Bacalar while Hood was gunning down Armenta. They’ll corroborate my story from the top down.”

Dez tapped some ash over the railing. “You’re the most manipulative young man I’ve ever known.” Bradley shrugged, reached down, and ran his hand over Call’s sleek, hard head. “Do you hate Hood for carousing with your mother? I wouldn’t blame you if you did.”

“You’re not qualified to not blame me.”

“Then I’ll retract that statement.”

“In fact, I feel sorry for Hood,” said Bradley. A strangely delicious warmth swaddled his heart. Lying was a genuine pleasure at times like this. Wickedly genuine. “He was a good man and he’s lost his direction and clarity. His windmills are devils.”

“Devils.”

“Ask him about them.”

Dez stubbed out her smoke on the underside of the top rail and let the butt drop to the ground. “I’ll take that thumb drive back with me. The panel should see it. Undersheriff Counts isn’t a fan of Warren, not since the Renegades scandal. And he’s been dubious about the Jones investigation from the start. He’ll see this my way, and the sheriff himself will lean with him. They’re tight. Warren’s men won’t follow you again.”

“I feel like a window has been opened.”

“How much money do you think Hood has made off Carlos Herredia over the years?”

“Scores of thousands. Maybe hundreds. Maybe you’ll be able to tell me someday.”

Dez stood in front of Bradley and looked up into his face. “If this is some kind of frame, or if your intel doesn’t wash, or if I begin to suspect your motives or your honesty, I’ll give Warren the green light to take you down.”

“I’m going to sleep at night, in spite of all that.”

“You’re a strange one, Jones.” Dez put her sunglasses back on and looked out to her driver. “Isn’t your wife due soon?”

“Next week.”

“Congratulations.”

Bradley smiled and nodded. “I’m truly blessed.”

“Fatherhood will make either a man or a fool out of you.”

• • •

After dinner Bradley went into the barn and lifted weights, then rode the stationary cycle for an hour plus. His muscles buzzed. He’d been missing the hapkido training but now it would be easily affordable again, thanks to Israel and certainly Mike. And Dez! What great good fortune, he thought. What a team. After the weights, arm heavy, he hit Ping-Pong balls against the raised half of his table, concentrating fully. When he’d had enough of this he tossed the ball and paddle onto the workbench and pushed a hidden button. With a whirring sound, the Ping-Pong table and the wooden rectangle of floor on which it stood rose into the air on hydraulic lifts. He’d taken them off trash trucks he’d stolen from the city of Escondido years ago. He climbed down the stairs into his vault.

He opened one of the four heavy safes just to see what was inside, though he knew. He admired the nearly four hundred thousand dollars inside, and the two cigar boxes filled with expensive wristwatches he’d bought for pennies on the dollar from a couple of his smash-and-grab friends. There were two jewelry boxes also, each crammed with treasures for Erin, similarly purchased for peanuts from bandits more daring than he—diamond brooches and ruby chokers and sapphire earrings and gold and gold and gold. The other three safes were comparably stocked.

He opened and checked them also, running his eyes and fingers over the bricks of compressed cash, the jewelry and old silver dollars, some loose gemstones waiting to be sold or set. He liked to see his loot in mild disarray and casually stored, more or less heaped, like a pirate might do. He lifted a wad of necklaces, mostly gold and pearls, then dropped them back to the safe bottom. There was even a cigar box that held the first few items he’d shoplifted, as a ten-year-old. He opened it and looked in at the baseball-card bubble-gum packs, now hardened and cracked within, the jawbreakers, pocketknives, toy cars and plastic reptiles, the tube of BB’s, and the miniature skateboards.

Pleased, Bradley locked the safes, then walked over to the long table that stood along one of the walls. There were three colorful serapes spread upon it. He carefully pulled each one away and let them drop to the floor. Then he looked down on remnants of his history: Joaquin Murrieta’s walnut-handled six-guns in old hip holsters; a bulletproof vest made for Joaquin by a French-American blacksmith in 1852; Joaquin’s journal; the leather-bound journals written by various Murrieta descendants, including his mother, during the century and a half since his death, all of them filled with lawless exploits and seductions and great bravery and generosity, and no little violence. And of course Joaquin’s severed head was there, too, still in the jar in which it was originally displayed after the shootout at Cantua Creek—the charge was one dollar to see the head of the bloodthirsty murderer and horse thief, Joaquin Murrieta!

Bradley ran his hand over the smooth leather of the holsters and the cool handles of the revolvers. He lifted his mother’s first journal, begun when she was ten years old, and read out loud her opening line for maybe the thousandth time: “Dear Children, do I have a tale of adventure for you!”

A tale of adventure was right, he thought. He pictured her and set the journal back with the others.

Now Bradley beheld the head. It was pale and roughly severed. The original preservative was brandy but this eventually had been replaced with isopropyl alcohol, then formaldehyde. It had yellowed, slightly. The face was vaguely handsome, as Joaquin had reputedly been in life, but his famous wild black hair had fallen out through the decades and now lay at the bottom of the jar. Sometimes he looked noble to Bradley, and sometimes only hapless and forlorn.

He tapped it twice and watched the head sway and the hair lift and lilt. How could you have been everything they said you were? Bradley wondered. They said you were a real man. But they also said you were only imagined. They said you were short and dark. They said you were tall, blond, and blue-eyed. They said you murdered for fun. They said you were generous and kind. They said you were loyal to Rosa. They said you seduced hundreds. They said you died young and were beheaded. They said no, it was a friend of yours who was beheaded. They said you lived and died very old with your head still on and a large family all around you. So what am I supposed to make of you, El Famoso? You’re my history, but which history? How do I discover what I am when I know so little truth? What should I do with you? This is the twenty-first century, dude, and nobody needs a head in a jar. Especially a head that may or may not be what it’s said to be. What am I going to tell Thomas about you? Mom got driven half crazy by that question—she worried for years what to say to me and my brothers. Should she tell us the truth? Tell us lies? Tell us nothing? Tell some of us some things and some of us other things? She agonized over it. Because she knew that I would fall for you. She knew I had something that she had, and that you had. Something waiting to be set free. Something wild. She died undecided. You must understand what a problem you are to me, Joaquin. Maybe I’m better off without you. Has knowing you made my life better? Well, you’ve helped me become reckless, brave, and rich. Yes. I’ve murdered several men, though I might add that they all deserved it. I’ve stolen. I’ve stolen a lot. I am steadfastly dishonest, manipulative, and self-serving. I’ve deceived and endangered the only person I love. And of all those things, the only one I regret even a little is the last—what I did to Erin. And here I am, doing it again. Hell, she doesn’t even know about this place, and all the things I’ve done. So, Joaquin, why should I keep you around? Haven’t you had enough? What does my son need with you? What good are you to me?

Bradley went to the workbench and poured a neat Scotch. He brought it back to the table and clinked the glass to Joaquin’s. “To the river that carries us all,” he said. “Run long.” Then he covered Joaquin back up.