The Famous and the Dead

49



Awakened by a dream in which Thomas was sold for one large silver coin to three faceless traders in a bazaar, Bradley lay on the long leather couch in Hood’s living room and listened to the breeze hiss through the yuccas and ocotillos outside. He pulled on his pants and boots and heavy canvas barn coat and took the gun from under the pillow and put it in his coat pocket. He walked quietly back through the house and looked in on Erin and Thomas, both deeply asleep, touched by a faint band of moonlight. He went out the front door, triggering the motion lights. The giant and the two dwarves stood out by the stone wall on the other side of the carport. Bradley could see the twinkle of a vehicle down the roadside, parked out of earshot of people and dogs. He approached. “What do you ugly f*ckers want?”

“We apologize for waking you up,” said the giant. His voice was deep and clear; his tone was polite.

“I saw you earlier. You don’t blend in.”

Both dwarves motioned him down the road and Bradley followed, the giant so tall his head seemed to brush the sky, while the dwarves on either side of him were as short and stout as bookends. Fifty yards down all three stopped and turned to face him. “What we want to do is help you,” said the giant. “Mike wants your son and he’ll do harsh things to get control of him. We have differing opinions on how Thomas should be raised. We think there’s only one person who can do it properly. And that person is you. Not Mike.”

“Thanks for the vote of confidence.”

“It’s not confidence in you we have,” said one of the dwarves. “What we have is belief in nature’s order. You are the father. And we are here to help you do whatever is necessary to secure your son. We are here for you.”

“I don’t want you here for me. I want you as far away from me as possible.”

“Of course,” said the giant. Bradley guessed him at close to eight feet tall. He wore a dark suit that fit perfectly. He brought a wallet from his coat pocket, and in his giant’s hands, it looked like a child’s plaything. But his fingers were deft and he extracted a card. Then, with two strides he covered the ten feet to Bradley. “My business card.”

Bradley took it without looking at it. “I hit you, didn’t I?”

“Yes. Fine shooting.” The giant put back his wallet, then lifted his shirt and showed Bradley the small red slit, inflamed but apparently healing. “Still rattling around inside, too.”

“I’d shoot you again if it would do any good.”

The dwarves looked at each other and shook their heads in disdain.

“We feel pain,” said the giant.

“So do we.”

“Bradley, we watched the fireworks down at Valley Center last night. It was a spectacular attempt to escape your own past. We all know it can’t work because you can’t change who you are. That would be like a tree frog trying to become a tree. But we knew that the real point was to put your wife and Hood at ease, so I think the spectacle was a meaningful performance.”

“It was not a performance. It was real. I am not what I have been.”

The dwarves let loose a tight, vicious laugh.

“We did have the thought, though,” said the giant, “that you might need some financial assistance to get started fresh. So, we’d like to offer you this. Just a beginning, of course.”

One of the dwarves waddled forward holding up something flat and black and shiny, as if he were badging Bradley. Then he reversed it to reveal a similarly sized white card rubber-banded to its back. He turned the dark side to Bradley again and wiggled it to catch what there was of the moonlight. “A Visa Black Card,” he said. “Their best.”

“There’s a quarter-million-dollar limit,” said the giant. “But if you need more than that, just call the number on the business card I gave you. We’ll take care of it. And the CDL on the other side is genuine, though, of course Bradford Johnson and his personal information are not—quite. We have a much more generous budget than Mike Finnegan will ever have. But more importantly, we have far more progressive, forward-looking ideas about how best to serve our partners. We’re part of an elite group. I am not bragging. Keep a hapless angel in a mineshaft for one hundred years? Inflict senseless cruelty on human beings we don’t judge to be worth our time? Delight in human pain and chaos? We are not this. This is not how we behave. Think about it. Think about Thomas and what you would like him to become. Let your imagination run wild and let us help you make your dreams real.”

Bradley took the credit card and looked at it and turned it over. The moonlight was just enough to reveal his own image on the driver’s license, a picture he hadn’t known was being taken. The giant went down to one knee and he spread his enormous arms. He and Bradley were roughly eye level now and the outstretched arms spanned far wider than Bradley was tall, and this freakish display brought him a woozy rush. “Bradley?” whispered the giant. “Fetch Thomas and Erin immediately. She’s a key part in our hopes for Thomas, unlike in Mike’s. Now. Bring them out. Save your wife and son, and we will help you build upon your life. Don’t throw them away!”

Bradley looked at the kneeling giant, who was smiling now, and felt a shudder come up through him. He slipped the business card into the bundle and flipped all three back to the dwarf. They hit his chest, but he caught it before it fell. “Go to hell, all of you.”

“I told you,” said one of the dwarves. He snatched a rock off the ground and hurled it into the darkness and Bradley heard it hit far away. “A complete waste of time.” He spun in the gravel and crunched down the road toward the vehicle, the second small man close behind him.

“Won’t you at least take one of my cards? As a matter of respect between gentlemen?”

Bradley pulled the Glock and aimed it at the great prow of skull above the giant’s eyes. “Bradley—I am disappointed. But please know, no matter what you do or where you choose to do it, I will be looking in on you over the many years you will live.”

“March.”

“As you wish.” He nodded and rose with a grunt, holding up a huge hand in appeasement, then turned and followed his associates down the road, his shoulders hunched, as if expecting a pesky bullet.

Angry and anxious but clearheaded, Bradley sat in Hood’s living room until the first light of day came gray and faint through the blinds. He felt like a beetle caught in a spider’s web. It seemed impossible to move without making things worse. He wrote a passionate letter addressed to Erin and Thomas, folded it neatly, and put it in his pocket, then woke up Hood and Reyes and Beatrice and told them he’d be gone awhile.

• • •

By nine thirty he was in El Monte, being waved into Rocky Carrasco’s property by a thin man with a big holster on his hip, cowboy style. Rocky’s lair was a contiguous four-parcel spread with a large, aging two-story home on each parcel. The properties were surrounded by a single high concrete wall long overgrown with fragrant trumpet vines. With all of the backyard fencing removed, Rocky had built his compound—four apartments over the four detached garages, and a common area containing a playground for children and palm frond palapas for shade and a basketball court, horseshoe setup, and small swimming pool. There was also a small beach-style cantina made mostly of corrugated aluminum and metal beer signs, with steel-drum barbecues and plenty of tables and chairs, similar to those cantinas found around his favorite Mexican city, Mazatlán. All of this amidst lush palms and giant birds of paradise and plantain and huge agaves, some of which grew almost to the power lines.

Now Bradley and Rocky sat in this cantina in the morning sun. Rocky was a small knot of a man, heavily tattooed and bald, with a large bushy mustache. He wore a gold Kobe jersey and a pair of oversize athletic shorts. Bradley noted again that Rocky’s skin was still prison pale from his years at Pelican Bay and his compulsively private, indoor life since his release. Rocky’s idea of a good time was to watch basketball, fútbol, and boxing on the several large-screen televisions in his house—live broadcasts and taped events all blasting away simultaneously. And of course The Simpsons, Animal Planet, and Pimp My Ride. This replica Mazatlán cantina was Rocky’s only encounter with the outdoors that Bradley had ever known—inspired by a beach that Rocky had probably not seen in four decades.

“I worry,” said Bradley. He could not remember ever having to choose his words so carefully, except perhaps when he was trying to deceive Mike Finnegan.

“That’s what every new father does.”

“Erin distrusts me.”

“Maybe she is too beautiful for trust.”

“I don’t think it’s that. I put her in danger. She no longer believes in me.”

“But so long as she obeys you, then the belief and trust can come back.”

“She’s never obeyed me. I’ve never expected her to.”

“America was ruined in the sixties.”

“I want her back.”

“Then you keep on trying, man. You get her back with good words and good actions. And if that doesn’t work, you get a girlfriend.”

Bradley nodded and looked out at the horseshoe court and the hoop and the brightly colored pots of flowers. “The watchdogs are all over me at work. They know I was down there when Armenta got it, but they can’t prove anything. Yet. They’re pretty sure I’m tied in with Herredia, but they can’t prove that either. Yet. They know I rescued Stevie from the Salvadorans, so therefore you and I must have something going. Suspicion creates its own truth. You know what I’m saying?”

“How’s it going with the Fords?”

“Fine right now. But I worry who’s talking about me.” Bradley watched Rocky’s face for a reaction but he just stroked his drooping mustache and waited. “Warren knows things he shouldn’t know. Is Cleary singing? Vega? I hope not. Rocky, let me be honest. I hope it’s not someone close to you.”

Rocky leaned forward. “He came to me. Warren. He wants to nail you, man. He wants to nail me. He keeps Octavio because Octavio talks. And talks. So what can I do? I say words. He knows about you and me and my son. So I say more words. He knows things, just like you say he does. More words. All words that say nothing. Even after years in Pelican Bay I never named.”

Bradley sat back and looked up at the white spearlike blooms of the giant bird of paradise, so tall they cleared the vine-choked wall to catch the sunlight. “Thanks, Rocky. I want to raise my son.”

“I get you.”

“I know you do. I want to be like you someday. Sitting in a place I love with family and friends all around.”

“Sixteen grandchildren, four great ones!”

“Well, maybe not quite that much like you.”

Rocky smiled.

“But I can’t go to prison like you did. I don’t have the courage.”

“Prison takes patience, not courage.”

“Rocky, if you have to trade me for your freedom, or the freedom of someone in your family, all I ask is a warning. Give me that one small thing.”

Rocky looked at him steadily and without blinking. His eyes shone with life and vigor, but Bradley saw the flat, blunt force in them. The man who wouldn’t name, even in Pelican Bay, he thought. Rocky sat back, the big Kobe jersey hanging loosely on him. He crossed his muscular arms with the full-sleeve tatts. “I believe in Los Angeles. I was born in an apartment on Aviation. Eight kids. My padre, he worked as a janitor. My mama, she did other people’s washing and made tamales. Thousands and thousands of tamales. They take time to make. She’s ninety-three this month. She don’t make tamales anymore. She lives upstairs in that house, right there. Papa wanted to live to be a hundred and he did. He died right there on the basketball court. Look at all this.” Rocky unlocked his arms and held them out in a gesture of presentation, then let his hands drop to his knees.

“You’ve built a good life, Rocky. It’s perfect here and you have everyone and everything you need. I believe in Los Angeles, too. And I’ve worked very hard, like you. But I think I’m about to get crushed, along with my wife and son. So, like I said—I worry. How much should I worry, Rocky? That’s why I came here. Because you’re wise and you know when to fight and when to get out of town.”

Rocky nodded and stroked his mustache again. “You have the warning you asked for.”

“Thank you. You’re a true friend.”

“I’m sorry, but I have my worries, too.”

“I understand.”

“Good luck.”