The Border Lords (16 page)

Bradley pictured the new Pace Arms factory hidden in Tijuana, partially financed by Herredia, and fully protected by him. Ron Pace had pumped out thirteen hundred more beautiful new Love 32s earlier in the year and it had taken him all of eleven days.
Eleven.

“And you think Armenta will pay fifteen hundred per gun?”

“He’ll pay whatever Gravas asks. The Zetas are abandoning him here in Mexico. If he doesn’t rearm quickly, I’ll bury him. He knows this. It’s why he is attacking my men in California. Do you accept my gift?”

Bradley weighed the consequences. At age eleven, he had dreamed of jumping off the Oceanside Pier at night with his eyes closed. In the dream he was too afraid and he couldn’t do it. But the next night he’d badgered his mother into driving him to the pier. He lied about his reasons. He had a beach towel and a heavy winter jacket with him. It was summer but the breeze was cool and the water, Bradley had read in the
Union-Tribune
, was sixty-one degrees. As they walked toward the end of the pier, he had explained to her what he had dreamed and what he was doing now and she said almost nothing. This surprised him. When they reached the end he told her he loved her and he closed his eyes and jumped. The pier was higher than in the dream, and the fall was longer than he had imagined, and the impact harder. He had swum back to the beach and climbed out of the cold Pacific and his mother had met him on the sand at the foot of the pier with the towel and jacket. He was numb with cold. She had hugged him tight and he had felt her large warmth trying to get into him. Shivering, his heart pounding, he had asked his mother to hold the beach towel around him, then stripped naked and pulled the big winter parka over himself. She had gathered up his wet clothes and put her free arm around him and together they hustled back to the car.

“Yes,” he said. “I’ll accept that gift.”

Herredia’s weathered fisherman’s face broke into a smile. “I want this transaction to happen without delay. It will bring us to deeper friendship, Bradley. I will deliver the prize to you and your Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department.”

“This is good, Carlos.”

“There are no bullets that can kill our dreams. It was true before and it’s true now. Thank you, Carlos. You continue to smile on me.”

“Malverde smiles on both of us.”

“Malverde kind of gives me the creeps, sir. Now, tell me what you want in return.”

Herredia laughed
and Bradley drew on the cigar and felt the smoke soothe his nerves and thought of Erin and waited for El Tigre to tell him what he wanted in return for Sean Gravas. Herredia refreshed the brandy in their snifters.

“What is it you want, sir?”

“I have a thought. It makes my heart heavy. It wakes me from beautiful dreams beside beautiful women. It is this: My people in L.A. are under siege by Armenta. Twenty of my men dead this year in Southern California. Two every month. Then suddenly three more in Buenavista, when Sean Gravas betrays my men to Benjamin. Do I know each boy they have murdered? No. But these are my soldiers. These are my representatives and they are being treated very poorly. My earnings are down, as we saw again tonight. Six months down, Bradley. Six! Armenta’s Maras are overrunning Los Angeles.”

Herredia drank more brandy and re-lit his cigar. From the bar Bradley heard the women laugh, and some American rock and roll came on. The centrifuge blonde smiled at him directly. Then the women began to dance. Felipe sat upright in his chair across the pool, still as a statue.

“I need friends in L.A.,” said Herredia. “I need help from the law enforcers to whom I am generous. I need Armenta’s network prosecuted like the murderers and rapists that they are. I need my good men free to do the business that keeps both the lawless and the law enforcers employed. This to me seems like a humble and realistic request.”

Bradley was an optimist and he began to catch the whiff of possibility. He considered Herredia, accepted the lighter from him and re-lit his cigar.

“It would take several lawmen.”

“You must know many men who would do this.”

“I don’t know a single one, sir. We’re talking about the United States of America. Not Mexico.”

“Your country is very backward.”

“Well, call it what you want. But American cops are American cops. They swear to uphold the law and most of them take that pledge seriously. Unlike your cops, ours make a decent wage. They raise families and they don’t get murdered for doing their jobs. Not like down here.”

Look at Hood
, he thought. No way Charlie would bend for something like this, no matter how big a fish Sean Gravas might be to Hood’s ATF handlers, no matter how much of that hundred thousand dollars might find its way into his pocket. Coleman Draper would have signed on, but Coleman was dead. Caroline Vega would approve of this arrangement if she could dip her beak into the cash, but as a yearling she was virtually powerless within the LASD.

But what about Jack Cleary
, he thought,
the sergeant?
He was resourceful, self-serving as a dog, and fundamentally unprincipled. Bradley had befriended him, even invited him to his wedding, because he had the feeling that he would be able to use Cleary someday. Cleary could be persuaded. Cleary spent too much time losing at the Caesar’s sports book. Cleary was assigned to narcotics now. That was good luck. As an old-fashioned, tough-on-crime detective, Cleary might have the street clout to mess up Armenta’s L.A. network, one man at a time. Might.

He looked up at the moon and thought of Erin again.
Everything I do, I do for you
, he thought.

“I’m sorry, sir. I wish I could help you in L.A. But I can’t.”

“Why not?”

“Because law enforcement in the United States cannot be bought by cartel gangsters.”

“But I have bought you!”

Bradley nodded, already doing some math in his head. “But I’m not enough. I would need more me’s. I would need friends to help me protect your interests in L.A. But I can’t ask my friends to risk their jobs and their lives for nothing, Carlos. You must see this.”

“One hundred fifty thousand dollars and one hundred new automatic weapons is not nothing.”

“With all respect, sir—the guns would get melted down and then most of the cash would be forfeited to the State of California. You are asking protection in return for impressive gifts that are not useful.”

Herredia glowered. He looked down at the snifter in his big suntanned hands and Bradley wondered if it was about to burst. “But
could
you do it? Could you and your friends ruin my enemies and leave my business alone?”

Bradley sensed the possibilities here, good and authentic possibilities. Outlandish as they might seem, they could be made real. They were simply jobs that could be done with the right attitude and the right people. “Of course.”

“How?”

Bradley nodded and stood and strolled around the pool. His mind was racing and his heart was going hard. The blonde snapped his butt with a towel and Bradley yanked it away and dropped it to the pool deck without missing a step. By the time he came back to Herredia the words were jumping out of his mouth.

“First of all, when I pass along the Gravas story to my superiors, I make sure they know he’s in business with the Gulf Cartel and their L.A. Maras. Right from the get-go, the Gulf Cartel is the target. Next, I’d hit the street-level Maras. Bust them left and right—drugs, loitering, jay-walking. It’s not like they’re hard to find. I’ve got some TV contacts who might like some fright-night stories on the Maras and the Gulf Cartel working in L.A. Fear is television bread and butter. And L.A. is already afraid of the Gulf Cartel—the kidnappers of Stevie Carrasco were Mara Salvatrucha doing Gulf dirty work, right? The Maras are perfect for TV, because they got those ugly-ass tatts up and down them. They’re graphic. Perfect bad guys. Everyone will start screaming about the menace Benjamin Armenta. That’s how it works. But you? You would be quietly doing your business the whole time. You might even feel neglected because Benjamin gets all the attention. I like that. Yeah. How’s that for a business plan, Carlos?”

“You think like a college-educated
narco
.”

“That’s a nice compliment. But you know, Carlos, just like you, I’d need to generate logical and profitable returns. This isn’t a small undertaking. It’s a large one.”

“How large?”

Bradley’s mind was spinning now, but it spun around a very clear and calm center: ambition. “Ten thousand a week.”

Herredia’s brow furrowed and his face darkened. It looked now as it had looked that sunny day last year when Herredia had test-fired his first Love 32. For targets he used five men chained to a dock at a remote private beach. Rivals. Captives. Bradley had watched them twist and grasp helplessly as Carlos cut them to ribbons. Blood in the air. Blood in the water and on the sand.

“I will pay you five.”

“Carlos, your people are getting wasted in L.A. Your earnings are down twenty percent in six months from Rocky’s network alone. That’s seventy grand a week. In six months you’ve lost almost two million dollars! Don Carlos,
con permiso
, but we’re talking about ten thousand dollars to reverse this damage.”

Herredia stood and looked down at Bradley.

Bradley stood not in defiance but respect.

“You have a deal,” said Herredia. “And I will have American lawmen to look after my interests in Los Angeles.”

Shit
, thought Bradley,
that was easy
. Ten grand a week for running down some Mara thugs and letting Theresa Brewer in on a good bust or two. Cleary would love this. Cut him in for two grand. Caroline, too, another couple thousand. Bradley drew on his cigar, thinking that he might be able to pull this off.

Bradley sat down again. He felt suddenly very excited. His head was still spinning and he already felt $520,000 a year richer. Adrenaline was better than alcohol.
A majestically good feeling
, he thought. He thought of Erin.

Herredia looked at Bradley with a twinkle in his black eyes. “Now we have new business to celebrate. Tonight we drink and enjoy the women.”

“Not tonight, sir.”

“You will be missing magnificent tits and ass.”

“I’ll be missing nothing.”

“Bradley, sometimes you are such a hard man. And sometimes you are such a soft boy. You won’t take the whore tonight because you love your wife. You won’t even stay the night here. You will drive home to be with this one and only woman you can love.”

“True.”

Herredia smiled and wrenched Bradley up in his big arms, pounding his great paws against Bradley’s back, laughing.

Bradley gasped in pain but he didn’t flinch or push Herredia away.

“Oh, Bradley Jones. You son of the son of El Famoso. You stay with me and you will be bigger than him someday. Your name will be like thunder across the world! And when they cut off your head people will pay not one dollar to see it but hundreds! Thousands! There will be a TV show about you!”

“I’m in no hurry for such a show, Carlos.”

“No. We have many things to accomplish before we meet the devil. Let’s go get your money. I will pay you the ten thousand for the next month of protection. Then you can go home and have your woman and I can have mine.”

 

 

Erin was waiting for him
on the porch of their Valley Center home. She was wrapped against the chill in a Navajo patterned robe and in the porch light her hair was a shining wall of red from around which her fair face looked at him. He could tell by her posture and expression that something was wrong. He slammed to a stop and killed the engine and ran up the wooden steps to her. She stood and he took her in his arms and held her close. His chest throbbed where the potato peeler had been.

Only after a long time did Bradley step back to see her. Tears ran freely down her face but she made no sound.

“What is it, Erin? Talk to me.”

“Nothing, Bradley. Nothing happened. I’m okay. Nothing happened.”

“Then what?
What?
”

She stepped in close and hugged him again but this time it was harder. Bradley felt the urgency in it.

“I got off the House of Blues gig at one. And I got kinda lost in West Hollywood even though I’ve been there a million times. I finally got to the freeway and I went the wrong
way
. And when I got off to turn around I couldn’t get on southbound because of construction so I pulled into a gas station and the guy looked at me like . . . like I don’t know what. And, honey, right then I was so sure that something had happened to you. I felt it so strong and clear. Like I’d been kicked in the chest by a horse. And you know this, hon, I can’t call you when you leave me at night like that. Once a week I can’t call you and you don’t call me pretty much all night. And I was scared, Brad. I was so scared and I needed to talk to you and I couldn’t. And I really need to know what you’re doing out there one night every week. You have a girl, Brad? You have a poker game? You have something you can’t tell me? What’s the deal with you, man?”

He held her firmly and stroked her back and pressed the side of his face and neck into hers. He smelled the dizzying aroma of her perfume. His heart opened and his brain tried to close it down fast but it was too late.

“I drive a load of cash from L.A. to Mexico every week. The customs people are paid off and I make good money for my time. There’s no risk. It pays ten times what I make in a week from the Sheriffs.
Ten.
It helped pay for this ranch and the cars we drive and the clothes we wear.”

This time Erin stepped back to look at him. Her face was always lovely and always readable. He saw it coming but did nothing to stop it, not even squint. Her open hand cracked into his cheek once. Then the other. Then the first again. She cried softly and her eyes bored into him. “That morning last winter when you were gone, Brad. When I told Charlie you were with me and the guys. And the gangsta that shot your mom got murdered up in L.A. Did you do that, honey? You can tell me. I’d understand if you did it. But you have to tell me the truth if we hope to make this marriage work.”