The Famous and the Dead

by T. Jefferson Parker

  But by the time “City of Gold” was over so were his violent memories, and he was sobered again by Erin’s continuing anger and distrust of him. He knew he deserved these things, and likely more. He had been a reckless fool and he had endangered her, Erin, the fire of his heart, his reason for being. How could he have been so stupid? How could he have thought a hidden room could possibly protect her from professional kidnappers and killers? How could he have allowed these men to have observed her, and himself, and their property, long enough to discern the weakness in their defenses? How could he have failed to electrify the perimeter fence of their Valley Center ranch, and install motion sensors and wire them to his central monitor in the bedroom? That fence was his Achilles heel and Armenta had somehow found it. Never again, he thought. I’ll never be that stupid and careless again.

  Still, in a larger sense, he had successfully gotten Erin away from her tormentors. That task had been on par with any labor of Hercules, in his opinion. A young deputy and a few friends, up against one of the most powerful criminals in the Western Hemisphere, on his own turf, on his own terms. Bradley had told her he would prevail. He had promised. And he had delivered. He’d taken her back to the home they had made and fortified it against further attack, so she could give birth to the life they had created together. He’d even come away with most of the ransom money. And after all that, still she had left him.

  Now he pictured her in Charlie Hood’s dusty hovel down in scorpion-infested Buenavista. What was she doing? Playing her guitar? Watching TV with fucking Charlie? Listening to the hobbled old cop’s war stories? Hanging with Dr. Beth? He turned off the music and cracked his window for a moment and let the cold hit his face. Emboldened, he rolled the window back up and used the voice dial. When she answered, the sound of her made his heart stir. “You’re a soundtrack I never want to end.”

  “You’re full of it, Bradley.”

  “I’ll always be full of it. Are you okay?”

  “I’m fine. Are you?”

  “Good. Driving to Escondido for some takeout. Long day. Can I come see you tomorrow? Around noon? You said maybe.”

  “I know what I said. I’m not sure yet.”

  “Is he moving a lot?”

  “All the time. He kicks and hits. I can feel his little fists in there. The doctor predicts a stubborn and gifted person, but he’s just saying that.”

  “Why wouldn’t he be stubborn and gifted?”

  She was quiet a moment.

  “I miss you every second,” he said.

  “I miss you sometimes.”

  “Say that again.”

  “No. It’s already passed.”

  “Ouch.”

  “Self-defense.”

  “It’ll be caesarean, then.”

  “Well, he, not it.”

  “Dr. David better do a good job.”

  “He’s done hundreds of them.”

  “I’m going to be there.”

  “You should be there.”

  “Amazing how cold your voice can get.”

  “It just follows the rest of me,” she said. “But you seem stronger the last few days. Your voice and your attitude. You sound different. More positive.”

  “I’m bullish on you and me and the baby. Decide on the name yet?”

  “I still like Thomas.”

  “Jones or McKenna?”

  “You keep asking that. Still Jones. We’re married. I’ll honor it.”

  “Thank you. I’d like the middle name to be Firth. After your mom.”

  “She would be very proud of that.”

  Bradley looked out at the black ocean sprinkled with the lights of Oceanside. The Coaster train glided over the fog-misted marsh and he saw passengers reading in their seats, each passenger upright, individually lighted and alone. “I like that time we made love in the sand dunes. How can you make love in a sand dune? We did.”

  “And that laundry room up at Zach’s that smelled like fabric softener and dryer lint and somehow it was so . . . just took my silly breath away.”

  “That time in Nordstrom.”

  “We used to have a lot of that,” she said.

  His heart sped up at the sound of melancholy in her voice. The sound of loss. It meant that she wanted him back, or soon would. Wouldn’t she? “I dwell on it. I’ll probably go to my deathbed picturing one time or another, what we did. Like, remember—”

  “I wish I could dwell.”

  “I could help you.”

  “I’m going to have a baby and I feel empty and alone.”

  “If I was there you would only feel empty.”

  “Very funny.”

  “What’s the difference between a musician and a large pizza?”

  “A large pizza can feed a family of four.”

  “It’s important to laugh,” he said.

  “I’m trying to talk to you.”

  “I’ll listen anytime.”

  She was quiet for a long beat. Bradley stayed at seventy down into Carlsbad. The smokestack at the electric plant wafted steam into a starry sky. “Did youth get wasted on us?”

  “I don’t see waste, honey.”

  “This whole thing. Didn’t you feel golden for a few years? Just really . . . blessed and full, like the world was happy to have us in it?”

  “I still do feel that way.”

  “I don’t. I feel like I spent all my goodness. Pissed it away on a man who lied to me. Like I just got plain old faked out.”

  “Guilty as charged. Again. But I’ve changed, Erin, for the better. You’ll see it as our lives move forward. You and me and Thomas. But you have to let me up off the floor someday, girl. I’m no good for anyone down here.”

  “Noon,” she said and rang off.

  • • •

  Beneath a foreign glow of moonlight he drove the last five miles to El Dorado, Carlos Herredia’s compound. It was in the general vicinity of Cataviña, near the middle of the state of Baja California. There were several routes he had been brought in on over the years, some gated and heavily fortified, some roadless and nearly impossible to see unless you knew what to look for. Tonight the way was new. Two SUVs with shooting ports built into the rooftops led the way, and two more followed. Dust billowed through the path of his headlights and surrounded the small convoy.

  Coming up the last mile to El Dorado, Bradley felt a fresh wave of nostalgia break over him. The lights of the compound lay sprinkled on the hillside up ahead. And then he saw the spring-fed pasture for the cattle. And there was the nine-hole golf course upon which El Tigre so boldly cheated, and there the paddocks and hot walkers and barn for his thoroughbreds. Then came the helipad upon which sat not one but two immense transport helos and a half dozen smaller, heavily armored gunships. One of the big helos was a CH-47, painted over in Red Cross insignias, the one they had used to carry a thousand automatic pistols down here to Herredia while Hood and the other ATF morons were focused on boxes of clothing going south to benefit poor Mexican children. What an operation that had been! Tonight on the airstrip was something that Bradley had never seen before: a Lear Jet, lean and proud and somehow smug.

  At last he approached the compound proper, several stone-and-adobe buildings low slung and countersunk into a boulder-studded hillside. He saw the outbuildings and the lights of the swimming pool and cabanas that Carlos had so often stocked with dazzling young women that Bradley had always refused out of loyalty to Erin, though in truth she was more lovely to him than all of them put together.

  Another surprise waited for him as he swung into the large circular cobblestoned drive: a transport truck and trailer filled to capacity with glittering new automobiles. Herredia himself stood beside the truck, wearing his usual uniform of shorts and flip-flops and a T-shirt with a sportfishing logo of some kind. Behind him was old Felipe with his eternal sawed-off shotgun. Standing with Herredia were two men. Bradley’s escorts broke away and he pulled to the curb.

  Herredia strode to greet him. He was large and powerful, wi
th thick legs and a barrel chest and skin browned from long hours of fishing. His hair was a curly tangle and he had an expressive face and telltale eyebrows. He hugged Bradley with considerable strength, then stepped back and clutched Bradley’s face in both hands, using his thumbs to lift the lips as one might do to a horse. He turned Bradley’s head one way then the other, up then down. “En buen estado. You are well repaired.”

  When the thumbs were finally removed, Bradley could speak. “The teeth are almost too good. But the lip healed up well.”

  “Perfecto. And with most importance, you are now free to be doing your work with me again. I must hear all details tonight at dinner, of how this became possible. I have a new jet. And tonight there are important guests here for you to meet. Come now.”

  Felipe had already laid his scattergun across the trunk of the Cayenne and begun stacking the bins of cash and clothes on a hand truck. Felipe had designed and welded the secret compartments beneath the floor of the storage area of Bradley’s Porsche, as well as the front-end containers that could only be opened electrically, using a car battery. Felipe was small and goatlike and sharp faced, and he appeared very old but he moved with a lithe ease. Bradley knew that he would weigh out the bricks of cash and set aside his courier’s fee, which was based on the total amount transported. Good couriers were highly valued in the drug world, not only for their honesty, which was a prerequisite, but for their ability to smell out dealers who had turned to informing. Bradley, as an LASD deputy with close friends in narcotics, had special powers in this area and had identified two such young men, who were no longer.

  He stood off to the side of the big auto trailer and looked at the shiny new Fords. Even the dusty journey from the Hermosillo plant to El Dorado had not ruined the sheen of their paint where it showed between the protective sheets of white plastic, or the occasional glimmer of chrome. There were four Fusions, four Lincoln MKZs, and four Ford Tauruses, in varying colors. He wondered if these cars might have something to do with what Rocky was hinting about.

  Herredia introduced the men not by name but by their positions in Ford Motor Company, Hermosillo Manufacturing Plant, Mexico. The young, tall one was the assistant director of quality control and the short, stubby one was the transport manager. Herredia said they had personally delivered the cars and were here to make sure the fourth and final leg of their new Fords’ journey began well.

  “For the U.S. market?” asked Bradley.

  “Yes,” said the transport manager. He was dressed in a crisp guayabara and jeans and tan lace-up work boots. “Hermosillo now has the highest quality rating of any Ford plant in the world. J. D. Powers & Associates have proven this.”

  “How come you brought them through Baja?” asked Bradley. “That means you had to trailer them south to Guaymas, then ferry them to Santa Rosalía, then trailer them all the way here. If you went straight north from Hermosillo to Nogales, it’s less than half that distance.”

  The tall man looked coolly at Bradley and drew on a cigarette. He had a patrician face and a pale olive suit and a white shirt open at the collar. “What concern are our freight routes to you?”

  “I’m just curious why you go four hundred miles out of your way.”

  Herredia stared dolefully at Bradley, then he laughed and his eyebrows shot up in a mirthful display. He turned to the men. “See? I told you my gringo partner has a sharp eye for opportunity. I’ll bet that he already has a strong suspicion of why you bring your new Fords hundreds of miles out of their way to the United States.”

  “He can suspect whatever he wants,” said the tall one. “He is a danger and I don’t approve of this.” He flipped his cigarette into the gravel and stepped on it, then walked around the trailer toward the compound. Bradley could see him between the Fusions, glancing back at him.

  • • •

  Dinner was an unusual banquet consisting only of meats, seafood, asparagus, and various alcohols, part of Herredia’s slimming diet. He wanted to lose twenty pounds. Bradley had often seen him doing his two miles a day in the big saltwater pool out by the cabanas, though it looked to Bradley more like pounding than swimming. Herredia attacked the water as if it were the enemy.

  At dinner the tall quality control assistant director, Arturo, argued that the Mexican drug cartels were stifling the common people with their violence and there would someday be a grassroots uprising against the cartels. Herredia boomed back that the uprising would be not against the cartels but against the government, which did little to protect the people. Bradley sided with Herredia. The transport manager, Caesar, agreed that the people would eventually tire of cartel violence and there would be a popular revolt against someone.

  “Using what as weapons?” asked Herredia. “Shovels?”

  “Corazóns,” snapped Arturo, tapping his fist against his heart. “Connected by cell phones.”

  Herredia leaned forward and Bradley saw his brows knit down over his dark eyes. “Arturo, your brave heart is angry because you believe you are a hypocrite. But you are not a hypocrite. I understand what the government does not understand, and that is that some of the people are dissatisfied. You, for example, are men of great ambition. Yet what does the government allow you to do with such ambition? Look around you at what I have made with my own hands and brains. You have two of the best jobs in all of Mexico but is that enough to satisfy you? To work for the great gringo makers of cars? To lick the shoes of J. D. Powers for thirty years? No! You want more. You demand more. So you come to me with your idea, not to Ford.”

  “Ford would not have liked our idea,” said Caesar, smiling.

  “You are wrong about the people and the narcos,” said Herredia. “The people need the narcos. The people are the cartels. I have rebuilt churches from Tecate to Mulegé. I have built schools in Cataviña and Guerrero Negro and San Felipe. I have donated two million dollars for a hospital in Santa Rosalía. I have paid for medicine and operations and funerals and weddings and shrines for people I do not know. I have given millions of dollars to charities and churches. For every Mexican in Baja who tolerates the government, there are ten who love me.”

  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.