“What is Mike trying to do to me?” asked Hood.
“He wants to ruin you.”
“Why?”
“Ruin and chaos delight him. He told me that you came up in the net through Mom. He chooses promising people to befriend and use. He chose me because of my lineage. You saw Joaquin’s head in the barn, so you know what I’m talking about. Other people, just good regular ones, he torments for the fun of it and to stay busy during slow times. People like you.”
“And the Ozburns. They were good people, Bradley. He tortured and destroyed them, without ever touching either of them. Is Grossly one of Mike’s partners?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Did he point Grossly at me?”
“Did he ever. First Mike posed as a doctor to give Rovanna one of the Love Thirty-twos. Then he used ‘dream insertions.’ He said he inserted the same dream into Rovanna twice a night for three nights running. That’s the maximum, or the waking mind devalues the dream and it will soon be forgotten. In the dream, you gave Rovanna the weapon and told him to defend himself and his ideals with it. Rovanna told the cops he got the gun from you. Mike tipped Grossly through a friend in Washington, and Grossly’s office pried loose the police interview tapes.”
Hood thought of Rovanna’s terror of Dr. Walter Freeman and lobotomies. Freeman inserts orbitoclast. Finnegan inserts dream. “Where did Grossly get the interior photos of Pace Arms and the Love Thirty-twos?”
“From Mike.”
“But Mike was in a full body cast at Imperial Mercy Hospital when those pictures were shot.”
“Owens took them.”
Hood remembered the starstruck smiles and the puckered lips of the Pace Arms gunsmiths—hamming it up for the pretty woman with the camera. Owens, he thought, shilling for Mike again.
Bradley looked at Hood with a punished expression. He wiped his face with his hands and took a deep breath. “I did more than give Theresa Brewer your home address. I gave Dez all the stuff Mike had of you down in Yucatán. Mike shot some of it from a little bi-wing airplane. I shot some of it myself. One of Mike’s friends in the Mexican Army, an officer, contributed some video of the raid on Armenta’s castle. Owens shot some.”
“And you’re not present in a single frame or image of what you gave to Dez.”
“Correct. Mike edited me out. I’ve told CIB a thousand times I wasn’t there—I was tarpon fishing a few miles away. So long as Caroline Vega and Jack Cleary back me up, I’m solid. I look innocent and it looks like you trafficked a million dollars in drug profits to a Mexican drug lord.”
Hood wondered at the depths of betrayal in Mike and in Bradley. “I did it for Erin.”
Bradley nodded. “I know. I know. Hood . . . I’ll do what’s right. I’m ready to do what’s right.”
“Start by telling Erin the truth.”
“Like what, Charlie?”
“Everything. Start with Murrieta. Then tell her about the cash you’ve been delivering to the North Baja Cartel for the last four years. It took me a while to put it all together. But I investigated those Lancaster murders back in oh-nine, the North Baja Cartel cash couriers. I found out that Coleman Draper and Terry Laws murdered them to take over the delivery route. Good money, short hours. After Coleman killed Laws, he took on another partner. I didn’t suspect it was you until you put a bullet in Coleman. At first, I thought you were watching my back. Then I realized you were taking over the cash run for yourself. You doubled your take without him.”
Bradley looked vaguely sickened. He glanced at Hood, then away.
“Something had to explain the way you lived, Bradley. Everybody saw that you had too much. Erin told me once that you always worked Friday nights and Saturday mornings so you could spend Sundays and Mondays with her—she never gigged on Mondays. She was proud that you’d do that. But a friend in payroll told me you’ve only worked four Friday P.M. or Saturday A.M. shifts in the whole time you’ve been a deputy. So, Friday nights had to be the Baja nights.”
Bradley sighed but still didn’t look Hood in the eye. “Yeah, those were the Baja nights.”
“Tell Erin about the thousand Love Thirty-twos you sold to Herredia. Tell her about the deal you made with Mike. Tell her about last week, when you brought cocaine across the border in new Mexican-made Fords. The ones you delivered to Castro. I’ve got you on camera for that one.”
Bradley groaned.
“Part of her putting herself back together is sorting out your lies from the truth. You have no idea how much trust she wasted on you. So help her out, Bradley. Tell Erin who you are and what you’ve done. She knows the basics already.”
Bradley sat back and looked down at the plastic table. Hood saw the flush on his face. “If I do that, I’ll lose her. Then I won’t have anything.”
“Sure you will—you’ll have that little streak of decency you were born with. Grow some, Bradley. It’s time. And help me take down Mike.”
“How?”
“Owens is the key.”
38
Later Bradley sat near Erin and Thomas as they slept. He listened to the hum of Imperial Mercy Hospital and looked at his wife and son and wondered how he could feel so far from them when they were actually just a few feet away. But now that his small family was real, just when his direction should be clear, he feared that he would lose them. Maybe to Mike Finnegan. Maybe not. But lose them he would, when Erin learned the truth. He pictured a cat trying to hold on to a wet glass globe, claws scratching for a purchase that could not last.
He watched them sleep and wondered what it would be like to confess it all to her—what he had done, his history, his ill-gotten treasures, his deal with a devil. Was it really time? Grow some. Tell Erin what you’ve done. Then Erin would complete her banishment of him. And if Hood told Dez the truth of what had happened in Yucatán, the LASD would certainly fire and possibly prosecute him. He imagined prison, and what it would be like when he got out, trying to be a weekend dad, a man not with a wife and son but a man with mere visitation rights to what had once been his. He could not convincingly imagine such a life.
In the evening Bradley took the elevator down to the lobby and walked out to the parking lot. The sun had set and the eastern sky was purple and dotted with bashful young stars. He fished the pack of smokes from his sock—deputies were not allowed to carry tobacco products while in uniform—and lit it with a match. He called Owens and told her the news.
“Is he beautiful?”
“He’s very beautiful.”
“Does he look like you?”
“He doesn’t really look like either of us.”
“I am so happy for you. I am proud. You’ll be a strong and good father. And Erin will be a wonderful mother.”
“I want that.”
“I’ll tell Mike that Thomas Firth Jones is now among us. He’ll be glad to hear this.”
“We need to talk. Face to face. No Mike. It’s important, Owens.”
“He told me what you two were discussing at the convention before you made your exit. What he said about me is unflattering but true. I can be traded.”
“Can he be traded?”
She was silent for a long beat. “That’s a dangerous idea, Bradley.”
“Hear me out.”
“Name the time and place.”
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 fuckin’ 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 visib
le 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.”
The Famous and the Dead Page 27