The Famous and the Dead

26



Bradley was ready to set off at sunrise on three hours’ sleep, sitting high in the tractor cockpit as Baja California came alive in the clean pink light. He’d always liked driving eighteen-wheelers, and was taught to handle them by one of his uncles, who drove long hauls for a living. At age sixteen, Bradley had stolen a big rig from a drunken operator at a truck stop. Just a joyride, really, though he had gone all the way to Reno. But this morning’s ride was an even bigger joy: $24,000 stashed in a toolbox, another ten thousand cash coming at Castro Ford, followed by the greatest joy of all, Erin. He’d have time to buy her something nice.

He had a tall mug of strong Mexican coffee between his legs and the nine-millimeter holstered under the seat. Herredia waved like a proud father, two pretty women standing on either side of him, one of them the gringa who’d been knocked into the pool. Bradley picked his way through the first few gears, felt the great tonnage pressing from behind him like something untamed. Two gunships, four men each, rumbled along up ahead, and two more trailed behind. They’d get him as far as the first paved road, then the way north would be secured by various state police. Dust rose around him. The cardón cacti, tall and singular, passed his windows slowly, then less slowly, then not so slowly at all and El Dorado was gone.

He drove Highway 1 west through the spectacular Baja desert. The clouds were dark blue but through them sunlight slanted down in bright girders. The beauty of it fought his nerves to a draw. He listened to Mexican songs on the radio and thought of Erin.

Off Highway 3 he stopped in a village with a lovely old church because he suddenly wanted to say a simple prayer in the house of His Lord. Maybe mention poor Arturo. He set his hat on the seat beside him and climbed down from the tractor. He checked the pigtail, then walked the length of the double-deck trailer, eyeing the tie-downs and chains, three per automobile.

The church was of minor historic note because it was made almost entirely of copper. The door was copper-covered wood inlaid with a full-length stained-glass image of Saint Francis of Assisi. There were birds on his shoulders and a lamb and a lion at his feet. Bradley pulled open the door and stepped inside, smelled the soot and smoke of many candles, the decades of incense, the faint earthy scent of the pavers.

He sat in the back row of pews and looked at the simple altar and the communion table with its wooden candelabras and folded white towels. High on the chancel a bleeding Jesus hung on his cross. Bradley began the Lord’s Prayer but as soon as he thought Our Father a wave of nausea broke over him and his face went cold. He felt dread. He bent over slightly and looked at the floor, reviewing what he’d eaten for breakfast at El Dorado: ham and eggs and tortillas and grapefruit juice. He had always had an iron stomach and was proud of it. The nausea passed so he knelt as his mother, a very lapsed Catholic, used to do on the family’s rare excursions to church.

He began his prayer again, but he felt his stomach turning over and the cold flash of sweat on his back, and again he had to stop at Our Father. Bad ham? It had tasted fine. Too much coffee? That was hours ago. Maybe it was just the pressure of smuggling over a ton of drugs into the United States. And all that cash. If convicted he’d get, what, fifteen years? Twenty? He thought of the Blands. What if they really weren’t off the job? What if Dez had changed her mind? Dread nagged him. Could this be some kind of delayed reaction to last night’s murder of Arturo? Certainly not the first killing he’d seen, and he’d never had such a reaction before. Then he wondered if this might be Mike Finnegan’s Declaration of Parity coming back to bite him. Asinine, he thought. The second wave of nausea left him breathing faster and more heavily, and even when he straightened his back and felt all his weight being borne by his knees he couldn’t quite seem to get his breath.

Movement on the floor beside him caught his eye and he looked down at the red diamond rattlesnake inching toward him across the pavers. It was very small, no more than eight inches long. Wide head, thin neck. It was nearly the same brick red as the floor, but its diamonds were outlined in white and black and its tail had black and white rings. The pupils were elliptical. The rattle was but two small buttons. Bradley was conversant with the behavior of some snakes, having lived on the Valley Center property for much of his life, where he had observed that in spring and summer the rattlesnakes were active, less so in the fall, and in winter were almost never out moving around unless it was very warm or very late in the season. This February activity was unusual. The day was cool. The snake approached slowly with its tiny tongue darting in and out and made small directional adjustments, but its course was directly at Bradley.

Suddenly the nausea hit again. Using the back of the pew in front of him Bradley pulled himself off the padded prayer kneeler and stepped into the aisle and stumbled for the exit. Outside he rounded the building and bent over with his hands on his knees in the cool shade. But the nausea passed again, and he straightened and felt the blood coming back to his face. Settling into his seat in the tractor, he had a headache but no longer felt sick. He glanced at Saint Francis of Assisi and wondered what had just happened in there.

• • •

By eight thirty, he had passed through both Mexican and U.S. customs with only cursory inspections. Both sets of officials had cheerful words about the high quality of the new Fords made in Mexico but neither asked why he’d driven nearly five hundred miles out of his way, or endured the tedious Guaymas–to–Santa Rosalía ferry, instead of just crossing at Nogales. He felt safe in using his cell phone now that he was stateside, and his heart fluttered when he saw that Erin had left him not one but three texts. Thomas turned! No caesarean needed! Due in eight days and I feel very happy right now!

Shifting quickly through the low gears as he left the customs plaza, Bradley felt the great weight of his dread diminishing and he noticed that his headache was gone and his hands were no longer so tightly clenched to the wheel. El Centro was just little over an hour out. He set his phone on the seat beside him and voice-dialed Erin.