Iron River (19 page)

“Then you will pay everything, if that’s what she costs. Simple!”

Rocky drank rum and Coke, and Bradley drank iced tea, as they weighed and pressed and vacuum-packed the cash. Rocky played
corridos
and love songs on a commercial-grade jukebox brightly illuminated by colored neon lights. From the far corners of the warehouse, gunmen watched.

The cash was drug payment from throughout Southern California, Herredia’s largest market, earned a few dollars at a time by thousands of young homeboys and passed up the line to Rocky’s soldiers and lieutenants and captains until once a week it was consolidated here in the old El Monte warehouse, the last stop before heading south to Mexico. Bradley and Rocky used two expensive digital scales to do the weighing. A pound of twenties was worth $9,600. A pound of hundreds was worth $48,000. Bradley’s first and only partner in this business had once told him that the weights and values made him believe in a just and merciful god, though Bradley saw no god in them at all.

“You need a partner to help you with this job,” said Rocky. “There’s too much at stake for one man. I’m surprised that Herredia doesn’t supply you with one. I can.”

“I don’t work for you.”

Rocky smiled and shrugged. “It’s no less for me. I’m thinking of you, my friend.”

“I understand, Rocky. And I respect that. But I don’t have anyone quite right for this job.”

“You have other partners.”

“They have other skills.”

Bradley thought of Clayton the forger and Stone the car thief and Preston the phone fraud master. Good men but not action men. Men with criminal records, in fact, lightning rods for trouble. Not who you needed sitting next to you on a run through the border into Mexico with hundreds of thousands of dollars at hand. You needed someone capable and calm, someone who would not arouse suspicion. Someone distracting, even. Someone manifestly not guilty. And of course, someone who could pull a trigger if they had to. He thought of Caroline Vega, with her uniform and badge and her avowed passion to
burn through L.A. one way or another.

“You need the help,” said Rocky. “If you get tired or sick or late, you can become careless. One mistake and El Tigre is out a lot of money. And he loses trust in you and loses trust in me and we know what happens when trust is gone.”

They compressed and sealed the bills with a vacuum packer made for game meat. This minimized scent and bulk. Finally, they stashed the packs in three large rolling suitcases, then buried them with brand-new clothing still tagged and folded, in case the
Federales
decided to snoop. Bradley always took several more tubs of the new clothing as a donation to various Baja parishes, along with a note on Los Angeles Diocese letterhead forged by Clayton and identifying Bradley Jones as a representative of All Saints, an El Monte Catholic charity. He had never had a problem heading south through the border, and now that he could wear his Explorer uniform and present a replica LASD badge also made for him by Clayton, he felt even more confident.

Shortly after dark, he left El Monte for Tijuana in a Ford Freestar with twenty-five pounds of cash worth $384,000 and ten plastic tubs of new clothes. Already hidden in the van were the first five production Pace Arms Love 32s for Herredia’s perusal, a deal separate from Rocky and about which Bradley had said nothing. Two carfuls of Rocky’s pistoleros trailed him through the surface streets to the freeway, then fell away. Bradley now wore street clothes instead of the conspicuous and uncomfortable Explorer uniform.

Bradley drove within the speed limit and signaled his lane changes and listened to the radio. His mind was clear and he was alert from the caffeine in the tea. He thought of the Love 32s nearby and could not fail to think of the five men whom Herredia had extinguished using the prototype. He knew that they were Zetas and had chosen to be killers, but he also knew that as men they were conscripted not only by their free wills but by history and the complexities of luck. He believed that those men had died at that time so that he did not have to, and for this they had his respect.

His phone buzzed and he saw the call was from Owens Finnegan and he let it ring. He didn’t know what to make of her and he did not trust her, but he was not in the habit of turning down help from people who offered it. That was how you filled out your team, grew your people, expanded. Clayton. Coleman Draper. Israel Castro. Rocky. Ron Pace. Owens and Mike Finnegan. Caroline Vega? You never knew where you’d find them or where they would find you. He’d met Clayton in jail and found Coleman Draper at a sheriff’s department recruitment booth. Draper introduced him to Israel Castro, Mike Finnegan had introduced himself and his daughter, Owens, at one of Erin’s performances up on the strip. And Caroline Vega was training for Explorer, just like he was.

He pulled over at a rest stop and called Erin and they talked for nearly half an hour. She was performing tonight and this pricked his longing and his anger at having to miss the performance.

Back in the car he thought of her and his heart tripped because his distance from her was growing, but he reminded himself that ten hours from now, befriended by the early morning darkness, he would be driving into his garage at home up in the desert of L.A. County with $15,360 stuffed into a hollowed body panel in the van, his share for the night’s work, his base paycheck for the week, and plenty to cover the stage boots and the couture dress and some of the mounting expenses for the wedding, and Erin would be standing backlit in the doorway between the house and the dark garage, radiant and his.

 

 

 

 

H
oldstock tried to smile at Hood as he walked in. He was unshaven and his hair was aslant, his eyes vacant. His hands were heavily bandaged, each finger thickly delineated by gauze, and they rested beside him like the root balls of trees upturned.

Hood held up the music CD he’d bought for Jimmy, then commenced opening it with his pocketknife. It was a collection called
The Bakersfield Sound
and Hood thought Holdstock would like its emotional straightness and down-and-out humor.

“Thanks,” said Holdstock. “Isn’t that where you’re from?”

Hood sat in a visitor’s chair and yapped about growing up in Bakersfield for a minute or two. Heat, wind, oil fields. Good music and good people. It was late Sunday afternoon, and Imperial Mercy was quiet. He could see Holdstock’s interest drifting, so he stopped talking and looked along with Jimmy through the window to the blue Buenavista sky. They were six stories up.

“The deputies are still here, right?”

“Yeah, Jim. Two of them outside and two inside the stairwell. They checked my badge before they let me in. Don’t worry.”

“When I dream about my family, Gustavo is with them. He holds the girls’ hands. He’s white. He’s in charge of them. He’s going to escort them to either the grave or heaven. I can’t tell by his expression what he’s thinking.”

“You won’t dream about him forever, Jimmy. It was an accident. No one on earth blames you.”

“Benjamin does. Honor. That’s why they’ll come to get me.”

Hood had learned that in his seven days of capture and torture, Jimmy had been injected with adrenaline and other stimulants so he would remain conscious and endure more pain. A doctor said this would induce a psychotic state that would take some time to abate. Not only had his fingernails been pulled out but they had crushed two of his molars and hobbled him by breaking both of his big toes. A psychiatrist had told Ozburn that Jimmy was more devastated emotionally than physically. The doctor had treated prisoners of war and said that in some ways this was worse because Jimmy had been singled out, perhaps by chance only. No fellow soldiers had gone through this with him. He had been utterly alone. He had only himself to blame. That was why it was important to visit him often and let him know that there were other people who were on his side. It was going to take time. Much longer than the fingernails that would or would not grow back, depending on the damage done to the germinal matrix, or the healing of the bones, or the building of crowns to fill the place where his teeth had been.

“Charlie, can you get me a gun?”

“I can’t, Jimmy. Oz and I asked about that, and they turned us down.”

“You’ve got yours.”

“I’m not a patient here, Jimmy.”

The truth was that Holdstock had no way to fire a handgun with the gauzy stumps of his fingers, and the psychiatrist had said that if he could, Jimmy might use it on himself.

“Because if they come after me here, I’m going to need a gun,” said Holdstock.

“They won’t come after you here.”

“I have no defense.”

“You’re not ready to shoot yet, Jimmy.”

“These bandages won’t be on forever.”

“I’m not going to bring you a gun.”

“Well, then fuck you, Charlie. And fuck everybody who looks like you.”

“I had a friend in high school who used to say that to me all the time.”

“I’m sorry, man. But you try lying here, can’t pick your own nose. And your wife cries when she looks at you and you know she notices other men. And your kids stare at you like you’re some kind of pathetic freak. And you pray and you pray and you pray, and so what?”

“I know it’s bad, Jimmy.”

“Bad? I’ll tell you what’s bad—I think those Zetas are going to come through the damned door any minute and drag me back down there. It’s irrational. It’s crazy. It won’t happen. But none of that matters. I spend the night with my eyes wide open, and sleep a few minutes during the day. They got into my head, Charlie. I keep hearing ’em.”

Out of respect for what Jimmy believed and heard in his mind, Hood said nothing.

“Would you ask Jan or Oz to bring me a gun?”

“They won’t. It’s not about guns now, Jimmy. It’s about you getting healthy enough to go home.”

“I won’t go home. They’ll break into my house and kill me in front of my wife and girls.”

In fact, Hood knew that this had just happened to a Baja policeman, and that such things were happening to cops and prosecutors throughout Baja, and now that Benjamin Armenta and his Gulf Cartel had crossed the U.S. border to capture Jimmy Holdstock, the rules had changed.

And again, out of respect for Jimmy and the newly possible, Hood said nothing.

“I asked Jenny not to come today,” said Holdstock. “It’s too hard on me.”

“I understand.”

“How can you understand?”

“Sometimes it’s better not to see people. You have to be ready.”

“I love them.”

“They know you love them.”

“I want my life back, Charlie.”

“You can get it back.”

“How?”

“Want it. It’ll just take time.”

Hood heard Luna’s powerful voice:
Does hope or lack of hope cause anything that happens?

“I’d still rather have a gun.”

Hood looked out the window to where the vast horizon met the blue heat of the sky. “You know an L.A. guy named Mike Finnegan?”

“No.”

Hood told Jimmy about the small man hit by a car while changing a flat out on Highway 98, and how this man had Hood’s name and his new post office box number written on a piece of paper folded in his wallet.

“Why would I know him?” asked Jimmy.

“He knows your name and a little about you, and who you work for.” Hood immediately regretted his words.

“Then he’s probably a fucking Zeta,” said Holdstock.

Hood saw the fear on Jimmy’s face and it was genuine. “He’s in bathroom products. He’s in a cast pretty much head to toe. His daughter is an actress.”

“Or maybe a reporter snooping around Blowdown, looking for a scandal.”

“I don’t think he’s that important, Jimmy.”

Jimmy looked at Hood, and Hood could see his fear subsiding. Holdstock sighed and shrugged. “Charlie, just tell me some Blowdown stuff. How are the field interviews going? You tried Hell on Wheels? Did you meet Dragovitch and his weird-ass wife yet?”

 

 

 

Beth Petty and Police Chief Gabriel Reyes sat on either side of Mike Finnegan’s bed. There was one window to the north, and Hood could see the distant hills corrugated by centuries of rain now shaded to blue by a great white cloud. He noted the stack of books on a stand by the bed, not one title the same as last week. And a fresh stack of magazines with the latest
Scientific American
on top. Finnegan’s new head bandage revealed slightly more of his face, but the rest of him was still encased in plaster, and his head was still immobilized by the steel skull clamp and rods.

“Come in, Charlie,” said Finnegan. “They’re interrogating me about the bullet.”

Petty smiled at Hood, and Reyes nodded. They were both in street clothes. Hood had never seen Beth Petty without a white doctor’s coat and a stethoscope. A nurse rolled in a chair, and Hood sat at the foot of the bed.

Finnegan’s eyes were blue and his nose and cheeks were freckled. An orange stubble covered his face. His lips were full, and Hood thought they might be swollen still from the accident. He saw the clench of the wired jaw and the difficulty with which the man spoke.

“There is some problem with the age of the thing,” said Finnegan.

“He means the bullet,” said Petty.

Reyes looked at Hood. “It was manufactured sometime between 1849 and 1862.”

“A cartridge can remain viable for centuries,” said Finnegan. “This idea confounds Chief Reyes.”

“What confounds me is how the bullet got into your face,” said Reyes.

“Isn’t that self-explanatory?” Finnegan smiled fractionally, a labored maneuver of lips and stationary jaws.

“He said he was shot by his lover,” said Reyes. “He said she just happened to be packing an ancestor’s thirty-one-caliber Colt repeating revolver.”

“Percussion repeating revolver,” said Finnegan. “Which was introduced by Colt in 1849. It helped settle the West.”