The Famous and the Dead

by T. Jefferson Parker

  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.”

  50

  Two mornings later Hood, burrowe
d like a dog into the cold mud bank of Piru Creek beneath the overhang of a willow, shivered in the darkness. He could see the roofline of Mike’s cottage a hundred yards away, and the pale smoke rising steadily from the river-rock chimney. A rooster crowed to the north and Hood checked his watch: thirty-five minutes to sunrise.

  Upstream where it ran behind the cottage, the creek gurgled and splashed through a rocky riffle. But then the water widened and deepened into a quiet pool nearly thirty feet long and fifteen wide. At the far downstream end of the pool stood several large boulders that formed a spillway through which the creek tumbled impatiently into a lower, narrower channel. Across from the boulders Hood was buried in the bank near the end of the pool, under the willow. Owens had said this pool was where Mike lingered longest—submerged, weighted, and masked—observing and sometimes taking pictures of the fish and insects. The boulders at the end of the pool were where he usually climbed out. One of the rocks was large and flat enough for Mike to sun himself on, in hot months. He never wore a wetsuit. Hood could see this pale rock in the darkness and he guessed it was no more than twenty feet away.

  He looked out at the surface of the water, broad shifting concavities of black and silver. He felt unfamiliar to himself. He had a gun but no authority to use it, no badge. He still felt as if he were in law enforcement but he knew that he was nothing now but a mud-caked creature with a grievance.

  He listened to the rooster and let his thoughts and memories roll past unexamined. More and more these days Hood enjoyed engaging the world as if he were not in it. He wondered if a light sink-tip fly-line would be a good way to catch the fish in this deeper pool. Maybe cast cross-stream from above the pool head and give it a mend and let it swing with the current, sinking. This was the kind of thing his father never tired of talking about, and in fact Douglas had been a very good angler in his day. Going through some of his father’s things out in their Bakersfield garage after the memorial service, Hood and one of his sisters had found a heavy magazine-shaped journal with forty years of Douglas’s fishing notes and sketches. The cover of the journal was leather and carved with a jumping trout. The notes were written in Douglas’s unmistakable half-printed, half-cursive hand, developed in his early years as a drafting student. The drawings were clear and simple—water flow, structure, location of fish, cast direction and drift, etc. He remembered the look on Julie’s face: You should hang on to this, Charlie.

  Gradually the light coalesced and Hood could see the far bank and the willows and the upstream riffle. Smoke continued to waft out of the chimney. Apparently Mike had either gotten up during the night, or stayed up for most of it to tend the fire. Birds called, still deep in the trees and bushes, their songs meek and tentative on this cold winter morning. He looked at his watch again. Owens said that Mike was in the water just after sunrise during summer and early fall, but not until around eight A.M. during cold weather. Two hours, Hood thought.

  He unbuttoned his coat and checked the Taser gun, body warm and dry in its holster. It was an X26c, modeled after the police-grade weapon, with fifteen-foot conductive wires and eighteen watts of what Taser called “Electro-Muscular Disruption” (EMD) technology. Hood learned that bare wet skin would provide enhanced “Neuromuscular Incapacitation” (NMI) according to the Taser tech adviser, who also suggested sharpening the probes with carbide #8 sandpaper for increased penetration and hold.

  Hood shifted within his half burrow, hoping to get the circulation back in his right foot. He’d worn full-length thermal underwear and wool socks and a good down jacket and his waterproof Red Wings, but his feet felt colder than in the snowstorm in Washington, D.C. He sipped the still-hot coffee from his insulated container, and dug some granola bars and an apple and string cheese from one of his coat pockets. He watched the house.

  Just after eight, Hood heard a screen door rap shut and he saw Mike walk onto the back deck of his cottage. He wore red shorts and red rubber spa sandals, a short blue jacket with the collar turned up. He brought a mug of coffee to his mouth and looked out toward the Hopper Mountains. He took a call on his cell phone and listened for more than a minute, before speaking briefly and punching off. Hood shivered but hardly moved until Mike had gone back inside.

  A moment later the screen door tapped shut again; Mike was back, barefoot and without the jacket. A diving mask with a snorkel rested just above his forehead, a pair of blue swim fins dangled from one hand, and what looked like a camera swung by a lanyard on his other wrist. He placed an orange-and-yellow beach towel over the railing. Strapped around his stout pale middle was a wide belt with weights spaced evenly around it, several inches apart.

  He came down the steps and looked out again at the mountains, then turned downstream and stared directly at Hood. Hood remained motionless and watched through the dense willow branches that enclosed him. He wondered if Mike would be able to read his thoughts from underwater when he got closer. It didn’t seem likely, given the reflective qualities of the surface water, and unless Mike was expecting someone during his morning swim in the remote solitude of Piru Creek. And even if he sensed someone nearby, maybe it would be too late by then—maybe the current would have already delivered him to within Hood’s take-down range of fifteen feet.

  Mike came down the wooden steps and stepped into the grass. His legs were stubby and muscular and tinted with red hair. His torso was powerful and compact. His head, which always seemed large, was now exaggerated by the mask and snorkel. He walked down to the waterline and stood on one leg while pulling on one swim fin, then the other. When the fins were on, he lifted the mask off and spit onto the glass and knelt while he dipped the mask in the river and worked his fingers over the surface. Again he looked downstream to Hood. Then he settled the mask over his face and took the snorkel in his mouth and waded in. He shivered and squealed like a little boy as he lowered himself into the river. By the time he reached midstream his body had sunk beneath Hood’s vision. Hood watched the white snorkel with its orange tip slowly coming downstream.

  It looked to Hood that Mike was taking his time, probably bracing his hands on the rocks to slow his speed. Must be cold, he thought. He remembered his father saying that most fish would wait until the sun was on the water to feed when the days were short and the weather was cold. So maybe Mike was photographing the still lethargic trout before they became too skittish. An Internet search had told him that Piru Creek was running at fifty-one degrees. He wondered how Mike could stand the cold with no wetsuit, but Hood had experienced Mike’s physical strength and it was remarkable.

  Hood gradually worked his feet and legs free of the mud and rose to his knees and brought the Taser from under his coat. He checked the probes, which were clear of debris and shiny-rough where he had sanded the sharp points sharper. Crouching within the curtain of willow branches he released the safety and tested the laser sight along the mud bank beside him. He looked to the middle of the pool and saw the snorkel tilting left, then right, then back again, lazily making its way toward him.

  He rose and climbed the low embankment behind him, then came back to the shore ten yards farther downstream, near the big boulders that framed the tail out of the pool. He crouched behind one and waited. The orange tip of the snorkel wobbled casually in its slow progress. Soon he could hear the faint sound of breathing over the rush of the water—long, hollow intakes followed by wet exhalations as Mike inched along. Then the snorkel stopped and it was still, and Hood saw a muted silver flash beneath the water. The camera, he thought. Then slowly again the snorkel came his way. Another flash. Another few feet. When the snorkel came near the boulders it grew in length from two inches to nearly a foot, and Hood saw the white bulk of Mike’s body rising through the dark water, then the back of his head and the strap of the mask, and then Mike was standing thigh deep in the creek looking through the glass at Hood. He spit out the snorkel. “Oh. Charlie.”

  Hood shot him in the middle of his chest. There was a fizzing electrical crack as the probes delivered the
electricity. Bradley burst from behind another boulder with two hands extended and discharged both of his Taser guns into Mike’s back and Hood saw the wires flashing in the young sunlight. Mike arched and grimaced but he was still upright, bleeding and sparking where the darts hooked his wet flesh. He growled viciously and his body spasmed. Behind the mask his eyes were wide and fixed on Hood. But with the clumsy swim fins still strapped to his feet, he could neither attack nor retreat, which left him rocking precariously on the slick boulders. Reyes barged out from behind a large black cottonwood and was practically on top of Mike before sending another set of electrical spikes into his thigh, the barbs sparking in the wet nylon of the swimsuit and the wires jumping crazily with current.

  Mike quaked and slipped and crashed onto the boulders, hitting his head hard and knocking off the mask. The electrodes shorted out. The three men jumped in and held him under. His strength was great, but in the weakening seizures Hood could feel that Mike was not equal to them and the weights he wore and the numbing cold of the creek and the powerful volts of muscle-stunning electricity he had just endured. Five minutes after his struggling ceased they dragged him to the bank where Beatrice had already laid out, like fence railings, the five ropes that Bradley had made of her hair. They lifted and set him crosswise upon the ropes while Reyes reloaded his Taser gun and sent a fresh charge into Mike’s unconscious body. Beatrice had to stumble away, weakened by Mike’s proximity. “But he feels me, too,” she said. “And he’ll continue to feel me as long as my hair is his prison!”

  Bradley wrestled Mike’s shoulders off the ground and Hood very tightly looped one of the ropes around his chest and arms, three times, then knotted it. Hood could tell its strength. Then they wrapped and tied Mike’s belly and waist, trapping his arms and hands against his sides. Then his knees and ankles. The angel-hair ropes were nearly twelve feet long, providing enough wraps to nearly mummify Mike. Still he had not opened his eyes or made a sound. Hood pulled off the swim fins and threw them up on the bank. Reyes slid a needle into Mike’s blue-cold forearm and slowly injected the sedative that one of his doctor friends had recommended, though at ten times the usual dose. Beatrice came sliding down the muddy embankment with a roll of weed-guard fabric, which was light and strong and was sold in a four-by-ten-feet rectangle ideal for this application. They packaged Mike in it, using his weight and the slight downward slope of the embankment to roll him tight, and duct tape to seal him in.