The Famous and the Dead

39



Wampler stood on the deck of his Imperial Beach apartment, peacoat buttoned, considering the Pacific. It looked heavy and dangerous, big, frothy slabs of ocean banging against one another, all mixed up. The wind huffed and howled and two skinny kids in black wetsuits paddled around. Looking to his left, he could see Tijuana with its first lights of evening coming on. The property manager had told him that this complex was the last one south on the California coast—next stop, Mexico, just a few hundred yards away. She said the river between the two countries was filled with sewage and poison and don’t go in it. She also said the new wall and the bad economy were keeping a lot of the Mexicans out, but keep your apartment and garage locked or your stuff will get ripped off, no doubt.

Wampler stared out at TJ. He liked the idea that he could walk down the shoreline dragging his new kayak behind him, then paddle it across a tidal channel and just minutes later be in Mexico, far beyond the reach of American cops. Not a bad feature for a man who’d murdered an ATF agent and was now taking down scores of thousands of dollars selling Stinger missiles to Mexican cartels, dollars that would be sealed in plastic bags in the hold of the kayak, along with a gun or two. His emergency exit plan.

Clint took a deep breath and tasted the thick salt air. He felt a shrewd pride that he had been able to pull himself out of poverty from one of the poorest places in America and make something of himself. Mr. Clinton Stewart Wampler regarded his Pacific Ocean.

Mary Kate would have dug this, he thought. He’d kept her in mind as he rented it. Beach right here. Romantic Mexico right next door. Her own furnished and clean apartment, with a refrigerator that wasn’t loud and didn’t drip, a gas heater instead of a stinking electric plug-in, windows covered with blinds rather than plywood and aluminum foil like Skull’s flop. Sunshine three hundred days a year.

Too bad that Mary Kate was now in for a slightly modified program. He pictured her cute little face and was still pissed that Skull had messed it up for him. But even more pissed at her for sneaking around Buenavista with ATF agent Glitter Gums Charlie Hooper, all the while pretending she was back in Russell County getting ready to come be his girl. Pissed wasn’t even the word for it. Clint thought they needed a new f*ckin’ word for what those two made him feel. Sweet revenge it would be. A package deal.

He got a sixer of premium beer from the stainless steel fridge and went downstairs to the garage. He used the remote to open the door and stepped inside, then closed it quickly so as not to advertise the new Ford Explorer.

It was beautiful. It was part of his reward for the last seven Stingers. Unfortunately, the cobalt blue beauty was also of interest to Charlie Hooper, according to Castro. And therefore of interest to every other law enforcement agency in America, Clint had to figure. So he had bought a cheap used Kia Something or Other—cash, private party—for his day-to-day transportation needs. Parked it on the street.

Now he used the Ford key fob to unlock the Explorer and he climbed in and pulled the door closed. God, the smell. He turned on the premium sound. The fancy subscription radio had a whole station dedicated to good, hard, head-banging death metal, which was what he liked. Israel Castro had had his guys install a subwoofer in the back and it truly throbbed. No charge. Clint broke off the first beer and set the rest on the passenger floor mat, not on the milk-white leather. He ran his hand over the seat instead and thought of MK and felt the music rattling his bones. Someday he’d get to drive this thing wherever and whenever he wanted. He checked his look in the rearview and was startled by the self-shorn and self-dyed hair, a styling disaster of divots and whorls and wrong angles and flubbed-up cuts, all shiny white. Platinum Frost. He patted the mess but it did no good. Truly, he didn’t care.

• • •

A nap and three beers later he drove the Kia out to Alpine, where he met two of Castro’s men in a casino parking lot—Clint’s choice of places, and far from Imperial Beach because Castro and his men were getting harder to trust. But the money was there and right. It was heavy and packed in two cloth shopping bags, and Wampler said not one word to the bagmen other than “hey” and “see ya.” The deal was for four more Stingers at $35,000 each. Way up I-15 north he got off at Gopher Canyon, used the darkness to break off his $44,000 and stash it on the backseat floorboard.

By ten, he was in Fallbrook, where he forked over $96,000 for four more Stingers. Skip and his muscular buddy loaded the crates into the trunk and that was that. Clint stopped at the pay phone he’d used before and called Mary Kate. He’d made his plan and it was important to keep up appearances. “You coming into San Diego tomorrow morning or not, MK?”

“Yes. The bus is on time. So here I come.”

“Where you at right now?” Snuggling up to Charlie Hooper? Runnin’ your little pink tongue over them diamonds?

“Just left El Paso. What’s the matter with you?”

“What is the matter with me, Mary Kate?”

“You don’t sound very happy is all.”

“I got a lot to deal with.”

“Everybody does.”

“What everybody don’t have is a goddamned army after ’em, like I do. What you’re gonna do is get off that bus and walk across the street. It’s Sixth Street, I looked it up on a map. And then you’re gonna stand right there and wait for me.”

“What if it’s raining?”

“It don’t rain in San Diego.”

“Weatherman says big storm tonight.”

“Then use an umbrella, MK—shit, how hard you going to make this? It’s like we’re already married and sick of each other.”

“We’re about as far from married as two people can get.”

“Just get to San Diego and we’ll figure it out.”

“Don’t leave me standing in the rain, Clint.”

“Do what I said, Mary Kate.”

“Now you sound mad.”

“Maybe you’ll cheer me up.”

“Remember this is about me visiting California, not me visiting you.”

“Over and out.”

Wampler hung up and drove toward Jacumba to deliver the product to Castro. He felt humiliated by MK’s betrayal, and infuriated by the arrogance she showed in thinking she had fooled him. For a few miles everything he saw through the windshield was outlined in red. Seeing red through the windshield of a goddamned Kia, he thought. He would put Mary Kate Boyle in her place. He looked forward to it. And really, what she had done to him gave him an advantage over Hooper, and Hooper was what he wanted most. By Lake Cuyamaca the red was gone and he had begun to feel that good, cold clarity settling back over him.

• • •

This time the delivery was at Amigos, the restaurant Castro owned. Castro had told him it was out of the way and safe and to park around back by the kitchen Dumpsters. Clint pulled up and two dark, burly men in white straw cowboy hats came from the kitchen toward the Kia. He let them get close, then fully extended his arm through the open window and pointed the semiauto at them. “El-stop-o right there-o, amigos.” Clint smiled slightly as he heard the sound of their boots braking on the old asphalt. He saw Castro trot from the kitchen toward his men, then shove between them, his hands out beseechingly, shaking his head.

“Clint, you’re going to get yourself killed for no reason someday. Just by being who you are.”

“They look closer to being kilt than I do.”

“They’re our friends, Clint. Friends with money to spend. Man, that’s quite a hairstyle.”

Wampler did a fancy gunslinger twirl and retracted the pistol, though it was difficult with his arm-room constricted by the window. “Go to hell if you don’t like it.”

“I do like it.”

“Maybe I’m a little on edge. I can’t even drive my brand-new Explorer, there’s so many cops out there, all looking for me. But it’s no problem going the speed limit in this Jap piece of shit.”

“It’s Korean and well built. Considering.”

“Good—I’ll make you a deal on it.” He threw open the door and stepped out. The two big men regarded him without expression but Wampler caught the disdain in their eyes. He hit a button on the key fob and one of the men lifted the trunk lid. Clint thought again of Charlie Hooper and what he’d done to his finger with the trunk of the Charger. Hard to believe that Mary Kate had really teamed up with that diamond-toothed sonofabitch. How many ATF people worked in the Buenavista office? How many of them would be waiting for him at the Greyhound station tomorrow morning?

He raised the finger and looked at the dirty white tape around his fingertip. Soon as he changed the tape it was dirty again. Below the tape the finger swelled red and shiny and there were no visible wrinkles or marks because the skin was taut. And hot, he thought. It felt microwaved. Lucky he could still shoot with it. One of the Mexicans was looking at him and it took Clint some real willpower not to draw his gun again and shoot him.

When the two men had loaded the crates into the pickup truck Wampler lugged out his $44,000 grocery bag from the back of the Kia and looked at the men. “You wanna do the windshield, go right ahead.”

He followed Castro back into the noisy restaurant kitchen, then down a dark, short hallway and into a good-size office. It was furnished with futuristic leather-and-stainless-steel sofas and chairs, a glass-topped desk, and an art painting that to Clint looked upside down.

“That thing worth any more’n the paint that’s on it?” he asked, nodding at a framed swirl of thick red and black, lighted by its very own beam from a hidden ceiling lamp.

“I took it in trade. Here.” Castro sat behind the desk and produced two twinkling glasses and a bottle of Scotch. He filled each glass halfway and pushed one toward the open chair across from him. Clint set the money on the floor and, still standing, drank the Scotch, then clanked the glass back onto the desktop. He heard the Mexican music playing in the cantina and the distant ring of plates and flatware. “That finger of yours looks bad.”

“Maybe you could get me a doctor that can make a house call and not rat me out.”

“I can do that. But first I want you to listen to an idea. I’m going to reach into my coat now . . . can you handle it?”

“Try me.”

Castro reached into a coat pocket, then set a tight roll of bills on the glass top of his desk. Clint picked it up and flipped it into the air and slapped it back to the desktop. “What’s it for?”

“I’m sorry you can’t drive the Explorer, but I’m glad you’re not. I don’t know how Hooper put you and it together. Maybe he was bluffing me. But it doesn’t really matter, because you don’t want ATF after you. And I don’t want them after me.”

Clint felt that cool, clear feeling starting to come back over him. “Everywhere I look there’s some cop.”

“You have a plan?”

“I have a plan nobody knows about.”

“You’ve made yourself some good money the last few days.”

“What did you tell Hooper about me and my new truck?”

“I told him to quit giving out guns to bad guys. Really got him on that one. I caught him on TV a few days ago, telling the government he let a thousand guns slip through his fingers.”

“By his own self?”

“The whole stupid agency.”

“How come soon as I buy a truck from you the feds show up?”

Castro nodded. “What I was thinking, Clint, is that you might want to get out of the country for a while. And I’ve come up with a good idea.”

Clint looked down at the forty-four thousand by his feet. All his. What a country this was. He’d make sure MK really got a full dose of understanding of what she had given up when she betrayed him, the most promising young outlaw in America. That might be very damned enjoyable. “I’m standing here waiting to hear this idea.”

“I have friends in north Baja who have invited you down to stay with them. They would keep you out of sight. You could leave right here tonight, out of Jacumba. I know the tunnels and the trails and the patrol schedules. One word and I can have people waiting for you on the other side. Capable men. A few hours later you’re in a guarded compound with more capable men. And some very lovely women.”

“Same friends that buy my Stingers?”

Castro shrugged.

“They gotta be, since nobody is dumb enough to do business with two different cartels at the same time.”

“No, you’re right, Clint. Nobody is.”

Wampler did some quick math, Castro style—offer babes and pennies to get the kid into capable hands, let the capable hands take his money and torture the Stinger phone numbers out of him, bury him in the Mexican desert and deal direct with the Pendleton wholesalers. One less middleman. ATF goes away. Save dollars. Save steps. He wondered, What makes people treat me like this?

“If you leave now, I can have the Explorer retagged and sent down to you. At least you’d be able to drive it. That cash in the bag ought to last you very nicely south of the border. The roll on the table is just for the señoritas. You can come back in a year, when things have settled down.”

“Why do you like me so much all a sudden?”

“I’d like to do business with you for the next twenty years, Clint. I can’t do that if you’re on death row for killing a federal agent.”

“That’s right. You can’t. Mexico sounds good to me.” Clint lifted the duffel in his injured left hand and swept the roll of bills into it. Castro smiled and held open the office door for him. “You first,” said Clint.

“Fine with me.”

“Why wouldn’t it be?”

“That’s another reason you should take a vacation—so I can get a break from your froggy bad attitude.”

Clint followed Castro down the hallway and through the kitchen and into the back lot. They stood in the pale wash of a security light fixed high on the wall. Castro’s beat-up truck waited by the Kia and the two stout Mexicans leaned against it, their arms crossed and their white hats tracking Clint in unison.

“Well, my amigos,” said Castro. “You’ll be going to Mexico tonight. As protectors of our fine young friend, Mr. Wampler.”

Castro turned and spread his arms as if for an embrace and Clint dropped the bag and drew both guns from the peacoat and shot Castro in the heart with his right hand, braced his left and shot the others. Twice each, center shots, tightly grouped, a belch of chaos lasting only an instant. Clint felt disembodied. Through the smoke he watched one of the Mexicans writhe and fumble for his gun, and he thought, It’s amazing how fast I am. He looked down at Castro flat on his back, trembling and gasping and staring wide-eyed at the moon or whatever you stare at your last few seconds.

He kept an eye on them as he loaded his money and the Stingers back into his Kia, then hit the road.

• • •

Back in Imperial Beach, Clint brought the missiles inside through the garage, then took a cold sixer to the deck and sat back in one of the chaise longues. In spite of the blustery cold, he felt warm on the inside, prosperous and accomplished, though still furious at MK for her betrayal and at Hooper for what he’d done to his finger. He peeled off the dirty white tape and threw the wad over the balcony to the sand. The cut oozed watery blood and pus again and the whole finger still throbbed every time his heart did. Should have gotten Israel’s house-call doctor before I shot him, he thought. He wondered if he could risk an emergency clinic visit, what with his new hairdo, but decided not.

The beers went down swiftly and Clint listened to the waves and the quiet spaces between them, then the next crash and hiss. Too bad about Mary Kate, he thought, because this is the kind of time you want your honey around, when you’ve had a long hard day and you want to relax and feel good. The sky opened and the rain fell hard. He sat for a moment and watched the drops pelt the wet sand. He went inside and browsed the late-night porn titles on TV but what fun was it watching what you couldn’t get none of?

He surfed way up in the channels where he never watched, clicking through them fast. It was hard to believe people paid to watch this stuff. Junk jewelry and online college courses and something to keep the spices in your cupboard from tipping over. When he came to diamond-fanged ATF agent Charlie Hood on Fox News at Eleven, admitting to losing a thousand machine guns, one of which had been used in the killing of Representative Scott Freeman, Clint knew he’d had more than enough of this guy. He’d be doing the country another favor if he just took him out.

He looked at his watch: Eleven hours from now, Glitter Gums would be waiting for him to pick up Mary Kate Boyle at the Greyhound station in San Diego, based on MK’s fine acting and Hooper’s gigantic stupidity. Of course, Mary Kate was already in San Diego, at a different hotel, that ratty-looking Regal, down in the Gaslamp District. You really fooled me, MK. She’d looked a little rattled walking down the street the other day, talking on the phone. To Hooper? Hatching some crafty little plan? Probably. It had been much easier for him to watch unnoticed from the Kia than a brand-new cobalt blue SUV. Clint wondered how many agents Hooper would bring to bust him at the Greyhound station. He wondered what a Stinger would do to them. He wondered what a Stinger would do to the Imperial Bank building that housed the ATF office in Buenavista, to all the other offices inside, and to the little café that had so many people in it that evening when he’d seen MK and Charlie Hooper come out together and walk across the street. He could tell by the way she walked and looked up at him that she was trying to get his attention. You got alla my attention, Mary Kate. Then some. My stuff is all ready. Clint’s on his way.