The Famous and the Dead

24



That Friday Bradley embarked on his first Baja run in nearly a year and a half. The evening was crisp and breezy, and the sunset was framed by towers of black clouds limned in orange. It was a glorious feeling for him to leave Rocky Carrasco’s El Monte warehouse without the Blands tailing him. Heaven on earth. He kept checking the mirrors and smiling to himself. He wore the Santana Panama for good luck.

His heart was filled with nostalgic memories of such nights, and the hidden compartments in his Cayenne Turbo were filled with bricks of cash. So were the bottoms of the plastic tubs that otherwise held new clothing for poor Mexican children. The cash amounted to $412,500 and he’d end up with approximately $14,000 for himself. Of which he would lay off $2,000 each to Caroline Vega and Jack Cleary. All of it was Southern California drug profit for Carlos Herredia’s North Baja Cartel.

He drove the speed limit south on Interstate 5, past the nuclear power plant at San Onofre and then along the hills of Camp Pendleton. To his right the Pacific Ocean looked plated with gold, which made him think of the silly gold-plated pistols that Herredia loved so much, which made him think of drug lords so he put on a recording of the song Erin had written in captivity four months ago. It was called “City of Gold,” and she’d been forced to write it by Benjamin Armenta, one of Mexico’s most powerful drug lords, as a way of gaining greater fame and notoriety for himself. Thus, it was a lowly narcocorrido, one of many such ballads commissioned over the years by cartel players in order to glorify themselves. But because Armenta came from Veracruz he’d made Erin write the song in the well-known jarocho style of that city. So, although the song told the story of a violent drug lord, it did so with exuberance, a lovely harp-decorated melody, a hint of Caribbean rhythm, and exotic percussion instruments. The dissonance between subject matter and sound somehow made the song beautiful.

Armenta had never heard the full version because Bradley had blown him into eternity right there in his own recording studio in his secret castle on the Yucatán. Erin had foretold such an ending in her song. What a journey that had been, he thought now, what an astonishing ten days of trying to rescue her from the hell that he had helped put her in. He remembered the moment he swung open the door to the studio control room and through the glass saw Erin at the piano, facing him, and Armenta standing with his accordion on and his back to Bradley. He pictured it all again: charging into the hushed tracking room, opening fire with his silent machine pistol, the window glass shattering and falling, the dozens of bullets that the bearlike Armenta took before he finally went down in a heap, draped over his instrument. Bradley turned the volume up and started the song again.

But by the time “City of Gold” was over so were his violent memories, and he was sobered again by Erin’s continuing anger and distrust of him. He knew he deserved these things, and likely more. He had been a reckless fool and he had endangered her, Erin, the fire of his heart, his reason for being. How could he have been so stupid? How could he have thought a hidden room could possibly protect her from professional kidnappers and killers? How could he have allowed these men to have observed her, and himself, and their property, long enough to discern the weakness in their defenses? How could he have failed to electrify the perimeter fence of their Valley Center ranch, and install motion sensors and wire them to his central monitor in the bedroom? That fence was his Achilles heel and Armenta had somehow found it. Never again, he thought. I’ll never be that stupid and careless again.

Still, in a larger sense, he had successfully gotten Erin away from her tormentors. That task had been on par with any labor of Hercules, in his opinion. A young deputy and a few friends, up against one of the most powerful criminals in the Western Hemisphere, on his own turf, on his own terms. Bradley had told her he would prevail. He had promised. And he had delivered. He’d taken her back to the home they had made and fortified it against further attack, so she could give birth to the life they had created together. He’d even come away with most of the ransom money. And after all that, still she had left him.

Now he pictured her in Charlie Hood’s dusty hovel down in scorpion-infested Buenavista. What was she doing? Playing her guitar? Watching TV with f*cking Charlie? Listening to the hobbled old cop’s war stories? Hanging with Dr. Beth? He turned off the music and cracked his window for a moment and let the cold hit his face. Emboldened, he rolled the window back up and used the voice dial. When she answered, the sound of her made his heart stir. “You’re a soundtrack I never want to end.”

“You’re full of it, Bradley.”

“I’ll always be full of it. Are you okay?”

“I’m fine. Are you?”

“Good. Driving to Escondido for some takeout. Long day. Can I come see you tomorrow? Around noon? You said maybe.”

“I know what I said. I’m not sure yet.”

“Is he moving a lot?”

“All the time. He kicks and hits. I can feel his little fists in there. The doctor predicts a stubborn and gifted person, but he’s just saying that.”

“Why wouldn’t he be stubborn and gifted?”

She was quiet a moment.

“I miss you every second,” he said.

“I miss you sometimes.”

“Say that again.”

“No. It’s already passed.”

“Ouch.”

“Self-defense.”

“It’ll be caesarean, then.”

“Well, he, not it.”

“Dr. David better do a good job.”

“He’s done hundreds of them.”

“I’m going to be there.”

“You should be there.”

“Amazing how cold your voice can get.”

“It just follows the rest of me,” she said. “But you seem stronger the last few days. Your voice and your attitude. You sound different. More positive.”

“I’m bullish on you and me and the baby. Decide on the name yet?”

“I still like Thomas.”

“Jones or McKenna?”

“You keep asking that. Still Jones. We’re married. I’ll honor it.”

“Thank you. I’d like the middle name to be Firth. After your mom.”

“She would be very proud of that.”

Bradley looked out at the black ocean sprinkled with the lights of Oceanside. The Coaster train glided over the fog-misted marsh and he saw passengers reading in their seats, each passenger upright, individually lighted and alone. “I like that time we made love in the sand dunes. How can you make love in a sand dune? We did.”

“And that laundry room up at Zach’s that smelled like fabric softener and dryer lint and somehow it was so . . . just took my silly breath away.”

“That time in Nordstrom.”

“We used to have a lot of that,” she said.

His heart sped up at the sound of melancholy in her voice. The sound of loss. It meant that she wanted him back, or soon would. Wouldn’t she? “I dwell on it. I’ll probably go to my deathbed picturing one time or another, what we did. Like, remember—”

“I wish I could dwell.”

“I could help you.”

“I’m going to have a baby and I feel empty and alone.”

“If I was there you would only feel empty.”

“Very funny.”

“What’s the difference between a musician and a large pizza?”

“A large pizza can feed a family of four.”

“It’s important to laugh,” he said.

“I’m trying to talk to you.”

“I’ll listen anytime.”

She was quiet for a long beat. Bradley stayed at seventy down into Carlsbad. The smokestack at the electric plant wafted steam into a starry sky. “Did youth get wasted on us?”

“I don’t see waste, honey.”

“This whole thing. Didn’t you feel golden for a few years? Just really . . . blessed and full, like the world was happy to have us in it?”

“I still do feel that way.”

“I don’t. I feel like I spent all my goodness. Pissed it away on a man who lied to me. Like I just got plain old faked out.”

“Guilty as charged. Again. But I’ve changed, Erin, for the better. You’ll see it as our lives move forward. You and me and Thomas. But you have to let me up off the floor someday, girl. I’m no good for anyone down here.”

“Noon,” she said and rang off.

• • •

Beneath a foreign glow of moonlight he drove the last five miles to El Dorado, Carlos Herredia’s compound. It was in the general vicinity of Cataviña, near the middle of the state of Baja California. There were several routes he had been brought in on over the years, some gated and heavily fortified, some roadless and nearly impossible to see unless you knew what to look for. Tonight the way was new. Two SUVs with shooting ports built into the rooftops led the way, and two more followed. Dust billowed through the path of his headlights and surrounded the small convoy.

Coming up the last mile to El Dorado, Bradley felt a fresh wave of nostalgia break over him. The lights of the compound lay sprinkled on the hillside up ahead. And then he saw the spring-fed pasture for the cattle. And there was the nine-hole golf course upon which El Tigre so boldly cheated, and there the paddocks and hot walkers and barn for his thoroughbreds. Then came the helipad upon which sat not one but two immense transport helos and a half dozen smaller, heavily armored gunships. One of the big helos was a CH-47, painted over in Red Cross insignias, the one they had used to carry a thousand automatic pistols down here to Herredia while Hood and the other ATF morons were focused on boxes of clothing going south to benefit poor Mexican children. What an operation that had been! Tonight on the airstrip was something that Bradley had never seen before: a Lear Jet, lean and proud and somehow smug.

At last he approached the compound proper, several stone-and-adobe buildings low slung and countersunk into a boulder-studded hillside. He saw the outbuildings and the lights of the swimming pool and cabanas that Carlos had so often stocked with dazzling young women that Bradley had always refused out of loyalty to Erin, though in truth she was more lovely to him than all of them put together.

Another surprise waited for him as he swung into the large circular cobblestoned drive: a transport truck and trailer filled to capacity with glittering new automobiles. Herredia himself stood beside the truck, wearing his usual uniform of shorts and flip-flops and a T-shirt with a sportfishing logo of some kind. Behind him was old Felipe with his eternal sawed-off shotgun. Standing with Herredia were two men. Bradley’s escorts broke away and he pulled to the curb.

Herredia strode to greet him. He was large and powerful, with thick legs and a barrel chest and skin browned from long hours of fishing. His hair was a curly tangle and he had an expressive face and telltale eyebrows. He hugged Bradley with considerable strength, then stepped back and clutched Bradley’s face in both hands, using his thumbs to lift the lips as one might do to a horse. He turned Bradley’s head one way then the other, up then down. “En buen estado. You are well repaired.”

When the thumbs were finally removed, Bradley could speak. “The teeth are almost too good. But the lip healed up well.”

“Perfecto. And with most importance, you are now free to be doing your work with me again. I must hear all details tonight at dinner, of how this became possible. I have a new jet. And tonight there are important guests here for you to meet. Come now.”

Felipe had already laid his scattergun across the trunk of the Cayenne and begun stacking the bins of cash and clothes on a hand truck. Felipe had designed and welded the secret compartments beneath the floor of the storage area of Bradley’s Porsche, as well as the front-end containers that could only be opened electrically, using a car battery. Felipe was small and goatlike and sharp faced, and he appeared very old but he moved with a lithe ease. Bradley knew that he would weigh out the bricks of cash and set aside his courier’s fee, which was based on the total amount transported. Good couriers were highly valued in the drug world, not only for their honesty, which was a prerequisite, but for their ability to smell out dealers who had turned to informing. Bradley, as an LASD deputy with close friends in narcotics, had special powers in this area and had identified two such young men, who were no longer.

He stood off to the side of the big auto trailer and looked at the shiny new Fords. Even the dusty journey from the Hermosillo plant to El Dorado had not ruined the sheen of their paint where it showed between the protective sheets of white plastic, or the occasional glimmer of chrome. There were four Fusions, four Lincoln MKZs, and four Ford Tauruses, in varying colors. He wondered if these cars might have something to do with what Rocky was hinting about.

Herredia introduced the men not by name but by their positions in Ford Motor Company, Hermosillo Manufacturing Plant, Mexico. The young, tall one was the assistant director of quality control and the short, stubby one was the transport manager. Herredia said they had personally delivered the cars and were here to make sure the fourth and final leg of their new Fords’ journey began well.

“For the U.S. market?” asked Bradley.

“Yes,” said the transport manager. He was dressed in a crisp guayabara and jeans and tan lace-up work boots. “Hermosillo now has the highest quality rating of any Ford plant in the world. J. D. Powers & Associates have proven this.”

“How come you brought them through Baja?” asked Bradley. “That means you had to trailer them south to Guaymas, then ferry them to Santa Rosalía, then trailer them all the way here. If you went straight north from Hermosillo to Nogales, it’s less than half that distance.”

The tall man looked coolly at Bradley and drew on a cigarette. He had a patrician face and a pale olive suit and a white shirt open at the collar. “What concern are our freight routes to you?”

“I’m just curious why you go four hundred miles out of your way.”

Herredia stared dolefully at Bradley, then he laughed and his eyebrows shot up in a mirthful display. He turned to the men. “See? I told you my gringo partner has a sharp eye for opportunity. I’ll bet that he already has a strong suspicion of why you bring your new Fords hundreds of miles out of their way to the United States.”

“He can suspect whatever he wants,” said the tall one. “He is a danger and I don’t approve of this.” He flipped his cigarette into the gravel and stepped on it, then walked around the trailer toward the compound. Bradley could see him between the Fusions, glancing back at him.

• • •

Dinner was an unusual banquet consisting only of meats, seafood, asparagus, and various alcohols, part of Herredia’s slimming diet. He wanted to lose twenty pounds. Bradley had often seen him doing his two miles a day in the big saltwater pool out by the cabanas, though it looked to Bradley more like pounding than swimming. Herredia attacked the water as if it were the enemy.

At dinner the tall quality control assistant director, Arturo, argued that the Mexican drug cartels were stifling the common people with their violence and there would someday be a grassroots uprising against the cartels. Herredia boomed back that the uprising would be not against the cartels but against the government, which did little to protect the people. Bradley sided with Herredia. The transport manager, Caesar, agreed that the people would eventually tire of cartel violence and there would be a popular revolt against someone.

“Using what as weapons?” asked Herredia. “Shovels?”

“Corazóns,” snapped Arturo, tapping his fist against his heart. “Connected by cell phones.”

Herredia leaned forward and Bradley saw his brows knit down over his dark eyes. “Arturo, your brave heart is angry because you believe you are a hypocrite. But you are not a hypocrite. I understand what the government does not understand, and that is that some of the people are dissatisfied. You, for example, are men of great ambition. Yet what does the government allow you to do with such ambition? Look around you at what I have made with my own hands and brains. You have two of the best jobs in all of Mexico but is that enough to satisfy you? To work for the great gringo makers of cars? To lick the shoes of J. D. Powers for thirty years? No! You want more. You demand more. So you come to me with your idea, not to Ford.”

“Ford would not have liked our idea,” said Caesar, smiling.

“You are wrong about the people and the narcos,” said Herredia. “The people need the narcos. The people are the cartels. I have rebuilt churches from Tecate to Mulegé. I have built schools in Cataviña and Guerrero Negro and San Felipe. I have donated two million dollars for a hospital in Santa Rosalía. I have paid for medicine and operations and funerals and weddings and shrines for people I do not know. I have given millions of dollars to charities and churches. For every Mexican in Baja who tolerates the government, there are ten who love me.”