The Border Lords

by T. Jefferson Parker

  Which was fine with Bradley because he had plenty of non-physical work to do tonight.

  Rocky sat at the other end of the sofa. He was a small knot of a man, muscular, covered in tatts and the scars left by various enemies. Shirtless, and wearing the oversize basketball shorts, Rocky appeared gnomelike. His skin was pale from years at Pelican Bay and years of indoor living. As the linchpin of Carlos Herredia’s L.A. franchise Rocky liked privacy and anonymity. He rarely left this compound. He was the opposite of the showy gangsta and he claimed that his quiet life would allow him to live a hundred years, as his father had. The old patriarch had been gone a year now.

  “I hear El Tigre might have a deal for you,” said Rocky. “A proposal.”

  “Carlos always has something cooking.”

  “You’re gonna like it. Mateo told me not to tell you so I’m not telling you.”

  “No.”

  “He says it’s a good thing. I say it’s kinda like this Larry King deal, but bigger.”

  “What could be bigger than Larry King?”

  Rocky laughed. “You will be seeing what I mean.”

  Bradley checked his watch. “How’d we do this week?”

  “Three hundred fifty plus some.”

  “Down again.”

  “I don’t get it,” said Rocky. “In a bad economy people need to get wasted even more. You know they’re getting their kicks somewhere, man.”

  “Maybe from the Mara Salvatrucha—Armenta’s hired cutthroats. I hear his product is terrific. Well, let’s get this thing done, Rock. I have a long drive.”

  “Yeah, man. You rest. I got cut four times in a fight and they took me to a horse doctor ’cause nobody knew a real doctor that wouldn’t call the cops. It was one shit feeling when I woke up the next day. I killed the boy, too. Stupid. We knew each other. Fuckin’ Mexicans. I’ll get the stuff ready.”

  “Thanks, Rocky.”

  “Hey, amigo. Just in case I didn’t make it clear to you, I’m thankful for what you did for me. For Stevie. I’m thankful to you and God Himself.”

  “I’m proud to have you as a friend, Rocky.”

  “You’re gonna have me for a friend for another fifty years, man.”

  Rocky walked over to his game room. He grabbed the cue ball on his way past the pool table and backhanded it sharply into a corner pocket. In the corner was a large wall safe. A moment later Rocky swung open the door and stepped inside.

  Bradley went to a window and looked out at the compound. Rocky owned two adjacent homes on Gallo Avenue, which Bradley found amusing because gallo meant rooster in Spanish and it was slang for marijuana, of which Rocky moved tons throughout his So Cal network every year. Not to mention the heroin, cocaine and meth. The homes were old and two-story, and the lots were large. Rocky owned two more homes one street over and directly behind the Gallo Avenue houses, and these faced the opposite direction, so that after Rocky removed the fences, all four spacious backyards formed one big space. Rocky had walled off the front yards as close to the street as municipal setback codes would allow, giving the four-plex a fortresslike attitude. He and his wife and six children lived in the house in which Bradley now stood, while his brothers and sister and their families occupied the other three homes, along with countless children, stepchildren, relatives and friends. Rocky’s father, the hundred-year-old George Carrasco, had lived out his last quiet years shuffling from home to home, sipping tequila mixed with vitamin water, bearing gossip and news and describing the visions for which he was known.

  Bradley looked down on the central backyard. In the bright security floodlights he could see the little Mexican village/playground that Rocky and his family had established: the palapas and concrete tables and benches, the big freezers with the Pacifico and Corona and Modelo ads on them, the grills made from split fifty-five-gallon drums. There were dozens of tall palms and bird of paradise and plantain, and big pots of mandevilla and plumeria plants now dying back for the season, and succulents overflowing their pots and barrels. There were brightly painted plywood shanties for the kids to play in, a hoop and half-court for basketball, and a foreshortened football field with its one goal and a wall of upended pallets forming one out-of-bounds line. There was a chicken coop and a screened-off garden and an aboveground kiddie pool and bikes and scooters and skateboards and pit bulls lounging everywhere Bradley looked.

  He joined Rocky in the game room, where four large suitcases filled with cash now waited on the pool table. The cash had been separated by denomination and rubber-banded into blocks that a man could just get a hand around. Rocky had set the digital scales up on the bar counter. Bradley could smell the vacuum sealer warming up down by the jukebox.

  Two hours later they had weighed the cash and pressed it into tight bundles and sent them through the sealer. There were too many bills to count by hand, so they went by weight instead: exactly one pound of twenties contained four hundred eighty bills worth $9,600; a pound of fives was worth $2,400; a pound of hundreds, worth $48,000. The sealing machine was made for game meat but the thick plastic discouraged the ICE dogs from smelling the one-pound bundles. Bradley pictured a German shepherd with a forty-eight-thousand-dollar brick in its mouth, and this did not amuse him.

  He picked up one of the bundles and read the denomination through the plastic. All of this money was only about half the California profits for Carlos Herredia’s North Baja Cartel, he knew—four hundred grand plus for the week. Another hundred grand had gone into the pockets of Rocky’s hundreds of young pushers who worked the So Cal streets, and into the pockets of dozens of middlemen, and more to the lieutenants and captains he knew. And of course another fifty went to Rocky himself, some of which was shared with his Eme equals, most of whom could only dream of it from their prison cells. And this did not include the fabulously lucrative markets of the Bay Area and San Diego, also serviced by the North Baja Cartel, and by others. Bradley looked at the bundles and shook his head.

  “What a fucked-up country we are, Rocky.”

  “Yes, but we make a good living fucking it up.”

  “If we were smart, we’d just make it legal. You know, legal to have some for yourself. Legal to grow some or make some for yourself. Let the junkies kill themselves off. Let the crack and meth heads do the same. So people get stoned more. So what? It’s no worse than booze. Then there’s no market for us. We have to find other things to do.”

  “Americans won’t give themselves freedom like that. It would make them feel bad about themselves. It would hurt their self-esteem. And jobs would go away.”

  “No. It won’t happen.”

  “No. I’ll live to be a hundred and it won’t happen.”

  They put the money into one rolling suitcase and filled two others with new clothing, the store tags still on. Then two of Rocky’s men carried all three suitcases downstairs. They re-packed the cash into a cutout under the rear cargo space, then set the carpet back in place and slid in the two decoy suitcases. Around and on top of them they packed in store bags of loose clothing—jeans and shoes and shirts and underwear, all new, all in children’s sizes. Store receipts, too.

  Bradley got in. He strapped on the seat belt and glanced at his personal luggage on the seat beside him. On top of it lay a letter from the Los Angeles Catholic Diocese, beautifully forged by a friend, introducing him as a delegate of the Sacred Heart Charity of Santa Monica and tasked with delivering weekly gifts of clothing to the poor of Mexico. Beside this letter was a clipboard thick with invoices and charitable-donation receipts and IRS forms, and page after page of Mexican charities and churches to be receiving the gifts, and maps showing how to find these places. It was a blizzard of forged documents and scavenged forms but it was also his history—some of the dates went back almost three years.

  “Vaya con Dios, Bradley. You listen close to Herredia. I think you’re gonna like his idea.”

  He drove away from Rocky’s compound. There were armed escorts in the truck behind him and in the SUV ahead of hi
m and they accompanied him onto the freeway, then vanished.

  Bradley drove the speed limit and thought of his wife, Erin. He looked at the picture of her that he had taped to the dashboard and his spirit lifted. It was a promotional shot for Erin and the Inmates. They had her turned out pretty well, he thought—the hair and the makeup and the clothes and the whole ’tude of the shot. But there was so much more to Erin than simply her beauty. There was her heart, her soul, her life, her music. What heart, what music. Bradley glanced at the picture again.

  Since meeting her nearly four years ago, not an hour of his life had passed without him thinking of her. He had long wondered if this was not love at all but some kind of obsession. He had read about love, and talked about love with his friends and teachers and his mother and a minister he once liked, yet he had never heard nor read of a love like his. He absolutely craved being near her. Same room. Same space. He didn’t have to be touching her, didn’t need her attention. But she had to be close. And if she wasn’t there, he would imagine her, daydream her, mutter to her. He would picture himself as seen by her.

  He wondered if he was wired differently from other people. But wasn’t everyone? Didn’t they spend half their time and energy hiding the odd wires, the frayed connections, the suspect splices? Maybe nobody talked or wrote honestly about love. He wished he could write a poem about it. Poetry was big enough to handle love. The poets got closest to making sense of love, in his opinion. Neruda did. He thought of Neruda. A line came to him and he spoke it out loud in Spanish, then in English. Bradley wished he could steal a good poem the way he had stolen other things—an Escalade, say, or fifty thousand rounds of factory .32 ACP ammunition. But some things could not be stolen.

  He took a deep breath and spoke a voice-dial command into his headset.

  “You,” said Erin.

  “It’s so good to hear your voice. Talk to me. Say anything you want. Just talk and don’t stop.”

  “Okay. I can do that . . .”

  He listened. She talked to him for miles, his heart brimming with love at the sound of her, his mind firing with images, but every mile that led him farther away caused its own specific pain, too. The lights along I-5 stretched south toward the border, as if pointing the way to his fortune. But they were taking him away from Erin, and for this he cursed them.

  Two hours later he was at the border crossing in San Ysidro. It was Tuesday night and the traffic was light. Bradley rolled down the window and dangled his arm into the cool night. He wondered if he should show his badge. He tried to use it sparingly, but an aggressive ICE agent was always worth badging. He could see the agent questioning the next driver. The agent was an expressionless black man with big arms. He waved the Volvo through with hardly a word and Bradley thought: Piece of cake.

  He had yet to show the forged letter at the border—the Americans rarely asked more than his destination and time of stay. And the Mexicans, under Herredia’s firm influence, had yet to pull him over into secondary. The only thing they didn’t want coming into their country was guns, anyway.

  But, in Bradley’s opinion, it was important to give the border guards different looks: Sometimes he hid the money under pounds of fishing gear instead of charity donations. Sometimes he drove his black Dodge Ram; sometimes the classic Cyclone GT he’d restored. Sometimes he used forged plates. Sometimes he made the run in the early morning; sometimes at rush hour.

  “Destination?”

  “Ensenada, then Mulege.”

  “Business or pleasure?”

  “I have charitable donations from the Los Angeles Diocese. Mostly clothing. Nowhere near ten thousand dollars’ worth. I make this trip four times a year.”

  “What’s in the luggage?”

  “More clothing.”

  “To churches? Schools?”

  Bradley tapped the clipboard. “Mostly churches. Some orphanages. It’s all here.”

  “May I see that?”

  Bradley handed him the clipboard. The big man leafed through the first few pages, then placed a dark thumb under the bottom sheet and riffled through the stack like a deck of cards. Bradley sensed the sheer volume of the useless information dimming the agent’s curiosity. He handed back the clipboard.

  “Good deeds. Have a safe trip.”

  “Thank you.”

  Bradley left his window down and lit a cigarette as he joined the traffic moving south through Tijuana. He smiled to himself, checked his new haircut in the rearview. It was short but casual, kind of a jarhead meets Brad Pitt thing, he thought. This part of the trip always found him happy. He put on a new demo CD by Erin and the Inmates. God, could she sing. And write music. Gifts, he thought. But I have work. Work is for those who don’t have gifts.

  And Bradley was happy to have the work. These weekly runs from El Monte to Herredia’s compound, El Dorado, were the real corner-stone of his fortune. He made roughly fifteen thousand dollars per week, tax free, in cash, fifty-two times a year, year in and year out. Eight hundred grand in the last twelve months. All this for roughly eight hours of work per week—it was four hours down and four back, depending on the northbound wait at the border. Sometimes he’d stay overnight and party with El Tigre, but most weeks he would hurry home to Erin. That was the longest four hours he had ever experienced. It wasn’t like he could break the speed limit with fifteen grand vacuum-packed and hidden in the car, but seventy miles per hour was torture to Bradley with four hundred Porsche horses under his foot and Erin waiting for him just a few miles away. The danger, the cash, the speed limit, the lack of sleep and the absence of Erin all conspired to make Bradley something close to crazy. They made the most emotional love on those strangely beautiful mornings.

  So, coupled with his base LASD paycheck of $1,280 per week and the decent health benefits and retirement plan, not to mention Erin’s increasingly handsome income from her performances and recording and publishing, Bradley was amassing a fortune that hardly even showed. Erin had no idea of it, though to explain some large purchases, Bradley had intimated a substantial inheritance from his mother. He felt shame in this, one of his two large dishonesties with Erin. But he couldn’t tell her the truth without turning her into a criminal accomplice. His second sin was using Erin as part of an alibi to cover killing a man he hated. He had badly needed that alibi. He had not felt good about it and he still didn’t. She suspected what he had done but she had not confronted him. Charlie Hood knew he’d killed the man but he couldn’t prove it. The cops couldn’t prove it, either. Screw them, he thought: I did what needed to be done.

  He pictured his secret vault, beneath the big barn on their property. It contained his most important secrets—his history, his fortune, even the poems he had slaved at over the last five years. Maybe someday I can show her our fortune, he thought, driving through the black Baja night toward El Dorado. It’s really her fortune, isn’t it? She’s the reason for all this, isn’t she? It’s for her. For the children we’ll have someday. For their children. So they won’t ever have to be the weak of the world. So they won’t have to work their hands to the bone for someone else. So they can live a little.

  He imagined showing Erin the safes with the cash he’d earned, and the jewelry and watches he’d been stealing since he was eleven years old. He imagined showing her Joaquin, El Famoso, his ancestor. He’d love to watch her run her beautiful fair fingers through all the diamonds and gold and pearls, even the cold, grimy loot. All for you, my love. All for you!

  15

  Herredia’s compound awaited him, as always, at the end of a labyrinth of tortured roads and guarded gates and surreal walls that seemed to separate nothing from nothing and were patrolled by men in Federal Judicial Police uniforms. Bradley knew that some of them were real FJP officers, others less so.

  He also knew that he had never been brought to El Dorado exactly the same way twice. For the last half hour of driving he was accompanied by two SUVs bristling with men and guns, one behind him and one ahead. Tonight a helicopter hovered
low, like a Christmas star to lead them on. Then Bradley saw the pastures and the cattle frosted by moonlight and the airstrip and the nine-hole course upon which Herredia merrily hacked and cheated on his scores, and then Bradley saw the compound softly lit and nestled into a valley ahead.

  Bradley dined with Herredia and old Felipe in the stately hacienda-style dining room, the rough-hewn table piled with grass-fed beef and quail shot the day before and a dish of white asparagus roasted with goat cheese, and platters of fresh cold jicama and cucumbers and carrots served with lime juice. Herredia was a big man, thick-bodied and curly-haired, often sunburned. He was a man of extremes, Bradley had found, capable of generosity as well as mayhem.

  Herredia told them tales of his latest fishing expedition, a ten-day raid on Isla Cerralvo near La Paz. One night after fishing he’d gone to one of La Ventana’s fabled cockfights and drunkenly bet two thousand U.S. dollars on an unfavored rooster. But he had won the bet and bought freedom for his heroic gallo, then gotten half the village drunk for the next forty-eight hours.

  Bradley listened. Herredia was a good storyteller, although his stories featured only one hero—himself.

  Later they retired to the poolside cabana for cigars and brandy. Three pretty, well-dressed gringas joined them and the blond one talked to Bradley at length about G-20’s smart inclusion of developing economies, and the apparent fact that Iran’s latest “secret” uranium-enrichment site didn’t have half the centrifuge capacity that even the smallest nuclear power plant would need to operate, which, of course, left it good for one thing: weapons. Then she pried off her espadrilles and tossed her dress and undies onto a chaise longue and dropped into the pool and waved him to come in.

  Bradley excused himself and took a walk out to the pasture, tailed at a polite distance by three real or fake FJP officers. He looked at the stars and thought of Erin. He tried to bounce a message off the moon to her but doubted that it got through.