The Famous and the Dead

25



That evening after dinner the men followed Felipe to the coops where Herredia kept his fighting birds. The building was a prefabricated metal structure designed for agriculture or light industry. It was coyote and dog proof, air-conditioned and heated for steady temperature. Felipe waited outside with his shotgun as the others went in. Bradley smelled the dank stink of feathers and the sweeter smell of the scratch on which the birds fed. The overhead fluorescents glowed down with faint shivers. Herredia was renowned for his fighting cocks, some of which were scheduled for battle the next day in La Paz, five hundred miles to the south. Thus, the Lear jet, Bradley had learned.

Bradley and the Ford men followed Herredia on the tour: first the incubation room, then the exercise runs, the sparring pit, then the various pens. Each rooster was separated from any others except for the breeding pairs. They were handsome birds, and bold of eye. Bradley had seen cockfights and hated them, hated the blades and the pain and the selling of bravery for entertainment. Though he also knew that solid money could be made.

On the way back toward the pool the Ford men talked with Felipe up ahead while Herredia fell back to walk with Bradley. Bradley looked out at the mountains, black and jagged. He had spent many nights here, all but a few without Erin, and therefore she was always poignantly in his mind at El Dorado because all he could do was imagine her and picture what she was doing. The cell phones wouldn’t work and the satellite phones were a security risk, so virtually every night here was a night without her or her voice, a tribulation.

“Come this way, Bradley.” They veered around the pool and cabanas and walked back to the drive where the trailer of new cars stood in the moonlight. “I need a driver for these cars. Caesar and Arturo have made the delivery only once and I believe they are not reliable. This trailer has very dependable state-police escorts to the border at Tecate. My friends at Mexico and United States customs will make sure that there are only minor inspections, if any. As you probably know, a trailer carrying new cars from a U.S. factory is not a thing of suspicion. In Mexico, it is a thing of pride. In the United States, it is the great Ford Motor Company. And not to be suspected. That is the beauty of this idea. Almost no suspicion. I’m surprised that Arturo and Caesar could think of it.”

“What’s in them?”

“Heroin and cocaine, packed solidly into the spare tires. And in the spaces created for subwoofers in the trunks. And in the tool compartments. We also created flat bricks, only eight centimeters thick, and glued them to form plates underneath each car, like an off-road vehicle. They are triple-wrapped against the dogs, and painted the same black as the chassis, and have genuine bolts driven into each corner. Very realistic. But there will be no dogs. It is just a precaution.”

“What’s the total weight?”

“One hundred kilos per car.”

“A ton and a quarter. Half blow and half junk?”

“Más o menos.”

Bradley did a quick calculation on the street value of the drugs contained in the twelve new cars—roughly twenty million dollars by the time the last diluted gram hit the streets of L.A. “Wow.”

“The destination is Castro Ford in El Centro. A pleasant and relaxing three-hour drive from here! I know you and Israel are old and very good friends. We are new friends. The Tijuana Cartel has treated him poorly. He came to me. He is very influential in California. And we agreed that you would be a good courier for us. You have the class C license necessary in the United States. You are a gringo but you speak good Spanish. You can use your skills of bullshit if you are questioned. You can use your sheriff’s department badge should any trouble or controversy happen. You are made by God for this job.” Herredia smiled.

“How often?”

“It is variable. Once a month. Then maybe twice.”

“So I’d make the runs here on Friday evenings, but once or twice a month I would leave my car and drive the trailer back north.”

“I will arrange for your Porsche to be waiting for you at Castro Ford. Israel will give you a complimentary wash!”

“Twenty million dollars, retail,” said Bradley.

“I will pay you ten thousand as a flat rate. No matter the amount of product transported. Israel will pay you ten thousand more upon each delivery.”

Bradley inwardly smiled at a minimum $240,000 a year of tax-free cash, for roughly four hours of work a month, driving the same homebound route he’d be driving anyway. Herredia chuckled, then laughed. “Son of Joaquin!”

“That’s me, alright.”

“I can see by the light in your eyes that we have an agreement.”

“We do.”

Walking back toward the pool, Bradley wondered again at how his fortunes had begun to change so abruptly for the better, almost from the instant that he’d recited the Statement of Parity and asked Mike Finnegan to be his partner. Warren? Off his case. The Blands? Dismissed. Hood? Headed for genuine catastrophe. Herredia? Instead of punishing him for eighteen months of spotty service, El Tigre was heaving fresh fortune his way via Ford Motor Company, Mexico. Could all of this derive from his arrangement with Mike? Or were these upgrades largely just a matter of his own attitude? What could Mike really be other than insane? Yes, Mike had beautifully staged the Theater of Beatrice. But it was clear that the “angel”—most likely Owens using her actor’s vocal skills—was not truly trapped in the mineshaft at all. There was probably a ladder bolted to the rock walls, or perhaps some kind of powered miners’ funicular by which she came and went. But, Bradley thought, if Mike and his silly rituals were just a placebo that swelled his good luck, then so be it. His terrific reversals of fortune were almost everything he wanted in the world. Except for Erin, he thought. Erin. But this was all for her; his fortune was for her. And their son. And down near the center of Bradley’s cunning soul he knew that Erin was coming around to him. He would win.

• • •

The four men drank and smoked cigars around the pool late into the brisk Baja night. Felipe with his craggy face and shotgun kept to the edges of light and darkness. There were six women—three Mexicans and three gringas, pretty and friendly and well dressed. Bradley was polite but uninterested and enjoyed Caesar’s company and shoptalk about the Hermosillo plant. Caesar had a hopeful face and tone of voice, and he was a proud Ford man all the way. His wife’s staggering gambling and shopping debts had led him to the other side of the law. Those, and his daughter’s seemingly eternal college studies in the United States.

Herredia regaled them all with fishing stories of which he was the hero. Arturo in his olive suit drank heavily and extolled the virtues of ignorant, promiscuous gringas over wary, repressed Catholic Latinas. He danced with a gringa who wore a gold dress and she was nearly his height in her gay rhinestoned heels and when they finished he whispered something into her ear, then knocked her into the pool with a roundhouse punch. She looked like a mermaid gliding to the shallow-end steps and climbing out, sheathed in gold, bent in pain, the high heels still on. She gathered up a towel from the cabana and pressed it into her face as she ran in short steps, shivering, toward her guest casita.

Arturo said something about the way a wet dog shakes itself dry and laughed at his observation. One of the Latinas followed the drenched blonde and the other four women migrated to the cantina at the other end of the pool. Their anxious words and brittle laughter carried across the water. Arturo brought another bottle of tequila to the table and cracked the seal, then poured himself a shot. He pushed the uncapped bottle toward Herredia, and by some small miracle it slid to a stop instead of pitching over into El Tigre’s lap. “Carlos,” Arturo said. “I quit. I resign from this. I am ashamed of what I have become.”

Herredia tipped the bottle and Bradley saw the downward furrow of his eyebrows as he measured the pour. Watch out, Bradley thought.

“I truly thank you for your friendship, Carlos,” said Arturo. He burped. “But I am not the man I thought I was. I am an engineer. I am in control of quality. I have skills. I have no nerves for this kind of work.”

“You had nerves enough for the many thousands of dollars I shared with you.”

“You bribed me for the use of my automobiles,” said Arturo. “Isn’t that more accurate? In addition, I will pay you back.”

“Don’t lose your bravery now,” said Caesar. “We’re almost finished here. Señor Herredia only has to fly us home in his jet tomorrow. You drink too much, Arturo.”

Arturo burped again and knocked back the shot. “When I drink too much the veil is lifted and I see the world for what it is—a cauldron of greed. I want to go home tonight. I want to sleep in my bed and wake in the morning without the stain of greed in my heart. I want to confess my sins to Father Patricio.”

“Confess?” asked Herredia.

“Fully and truthfully.”

“Fully and truthfully. I understand. But you can’t go home tonight. My pilot is drunk and sleeping.”

“We drove here. And we can drive home.”

“We cannot drive home the trailer loaded with new Fords,” said Caesar with a smile. “We have made a deal and they are going to El Centro. And we would look crazy driving back to where the cars were manufactured.”

Herredia studied Arturo in the short silence. “Go to the garage and choose a car to your liking,” said Herredia. “The keys are in the ignitions.” He gestured invitationally but in the candlelight Bradley saw the pronounced blackness of his eyes. Bradley sensed that he was reading a story that would end in blood. Herredia barked an order to the women and they trailed off toward the guest casitas, drinks in hand.

“You are coming with me?” Arturo asked his friend.

“No,” said Caesar. “But I will prevent you from driving in your condition.”

“I shall now be finding a car. Can it be a Ford, El Tigre? So that I can be assured of its quality?” Arturo swayed upright and zigzagged along the pool without falling in, then made it past the cabanas. Bradley heard the crunch of the drunk man’s feet on the dry desert gravel.

Caesar tried to rise from the table, but Bradley stopped him with a hand on the man’s shoulder. “I will stop Arturo from driving away,” said Caesar.

“You will sit and stay,” said Herredia.

Bradley watched old Felipe appear beside Herredia’s chair as if by magic, and lean down close for El Tigre to whisper in his ear. Then Felipe hustled off, bandy-legged, unslinging the shotgun from his shoulder.

“Caesar,” said Herredia, “we have arrived at a problem.”

“I know it. He will kill someone on the highway at night. Or be killed.”

“He will not get to the highway.”

Caesar’s hopeful expression had fallen away. He looked at Bradley as if for help.

“Everything Arturo has seen and heard here can be told to authorities,” said Herredia. “He is made rotten by fear and he cannot be trusted with our secrets. Do you understand this?”

“He is a harmless quality control engineer.”

“He is a foolish and greedy child. And you, Caesar? What are you?”

Caesar looked past Herredia, toward the garage, then back to his host. “I am interested in remaining alive.”

Bradley looked up the drive to see Felipe and Arturo walking back toward the pool. They were little more than faint apparitions but Bradley saw that Arturo was weaving drunkenly and Felipe was well behind him. Felipe’s cackle rode in on the breeze and the two men walked to the barbed-wire pasture fence and stopped.

“If I cannot trust Arturo, why should I trust you? You are as important a danger to me as he is. You have seen what he has seen. You know what he knows.”

“His courage failed. Mine has not.”

“But you are together. You two are a link in the chain. And the chain is only as strong as the weak link. Look how weak Arturo has turned out to be. He wants to go home and confess!”

“Yes. I see.”

“And you are a part of him.”

“But I am not weak.”

“You say you are not weak.” Herredia reached behind his back and set his Desert Eagle on the table, pointed at Caesar. It was a .50-caliber semiauto, bulky, gleaming, and incontrovertible. Herredia set his big brown hand upon it. “Your words are like drops of rain on the ocean. They fall and can never be found again. But this? This is how words are made to be real. You say you are not weak. This is the true maker of weakness and of strength. Not words.”

“Why is it pointed at me?”

“It is judging you.”

“What are the charges against me?”

“Weakness. Disloyalty. Betrayal.”

“I am none of these.”

Herredia lifted his hand from the gun and rested on his elbows, leaning toward Caesar. “Then use this tool to make your words real. You know what must be done.”

Caesar glanced at Bradley again and Bradley saw the panic in his eyes. “How? How am I to . . . ? I have never touched a gun.”

“It’s the only way to continue your life, you fool.”

Bradley followed Caesar’s gaze to the Desert Eagle as he drew his own civilian sidearm, a compact nine-millimeter. He set this on the table in front of him with both hands upon it, in case Caesar tried to shoot his way out of this predicament, unlikely though it was. He caught Herredia’s approving glance. Caesar placed both hands against his face and pressed against his eyes as if he could wipe this terrible moment from his vision.

Bradley looked out to the pasture fence. Arturo was haranguing Felipe but the old man, hunched and gnomelike, stood with his shotgun pointed at the quality control assistant manager.

“Murder,” said Caesar.

“Weakness and strength. Loyalty and cowardice. These are only words that stand for something. But they are not what they stand for. They are all equally without meaning. You choose which ones are to be made real and then you make them real.”

“He is a good man.”

“He has treated you very poorly. He has forced you to the edge of death with his own weakness and shame. Yet El Tigre has seen a way for you to live.”

Caesar looked toward the pasture. He wiped a tear from under each eye, then took a deep breath. “You just pull the trigger?”

Herredia offed the safety and placed the gun in front of the man. Then the tequila. Bradley tapped his fingers on the nine. Caesar drank deeply, then stood. “Only two months ago everything was good. There were no drugs hidden in our cars and my friend Arturo was not about to die.”

“Think about your debts,” said Herredia. “Think about a future that has great riches no matter how much your wife gambles and spends. Or how many degrees your daughter needs to have. Caesar, be a man. If you hesitate much longer I’m going to be very happy to shoot you both.”

Caesar took up the .50 caliber and walked past the cantina and the poolside palapas and onto the road. Bradley could see him stop and look back, and beyond him he saw Arturo still gesticulating and Felipe with the shotgun on him. Arturo’s voice, shrill and angry, came in fragments. Caesar trudged toward them and Bradley heard the road gravel rasping under his shoes.

“Will Felipe kill him?” asked Bradley.

“Only if he loses his courage.”

Bradley watched Caesar approach the two men. There were still fifty feet between them. Arturo turned and said something and Felipe didn’t move. Caesar answered, still advancing. Arturo spoke again and his voice ended on the upsweep of a question. Caesar began talking fast but Bradley could only catch a few words, something about the truck and getting back to Hermosillo and their esposas. Arturo exclaimed something to the old man and proudly slammed his fist to his own chest. He took one step toward the new Fords, then an orange blast from the Desert Eagle blew him like a rag into the pasture fence. He shrieked and thrashed awhile, then his head sagged forward with the great exit of his life. His coat sleeves caught up on the barbs so his arms and body slid only partially free and he hung there, half in and half out of his coat, with the dark liquid blooming on his white shirt.

“Now both men can be trusted!” boomed Herredia.

Bradley watched as Felipe sprang forward and tore the gun away from Caesar, who did not move to stop him. The old man came scampering down the road toward them, his gargoyle face delighted in the moonlight. Bradley saw that Caesar had knelt and wrapped his arms around his friend. His lamentations arrived in a cadence broken by the breeze.